Barbara Turner Smith (American, born
1931) is one of the most influential figures in the history of performance and feminist art
in Southern California. Her work – which has taken the varied forms of painting, drawing,
installation, video, performance, and artists' books, and often involves her own body –
explores concepts that strike at the core of human nature, including male and female
sexuality, physical and spiritual sustenance, ecology, technology, and death. The archive,
which offers an exceptionally rich resource for Smith's highly personal artistic practice,
contains 160 diaries, 54 sketchbooks, hundreds of drawings, more than 850 vintage prints,
thousands of negatives and contact sheets, approximately 90 films and 1100 audio and video
tapes, in addition to all the notes, plans, and archival records related to her artistic
projects from her student days forward. The archive encompasses not only Smith's career as
an artist, but also her work as a writer, teacher, and advocate of the arts in Los
Angeles.
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Language:
Collection material is primarily in
English with some material in other languages.
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute Special Collections 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles 90049-1688 reference@getty.edu URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref (310) 440-7390
