New Collections: Whitney Chadwick Papers and David Em Papers

This entry is part of an ongoing series highlighting new collections. The Archives of American Art collects primary source materials—original letters, writings, preliminary sketches, scrapbooks, photographs, financial records, and the like—that have significant research value for the study of art in the United States. The following essay was originally published in the Fall 2024 issue (vol. 63, no. 2) of the Archives of American Art Journal. More information about the journal can be found at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/aaa/current. 

The papers of art historian Whitney Chadwick (b. 1943), donated by Robert Firehock with the assistance of Sharon Spain, document the career of this important feminist art historian, whose publications have contributed to a disciplinary shift toward greater inclusivity of women artists and promoted increased awareness of the social and political barriers women artists have faced. Chadwick’s papers include biographical materials, such as a captivating high-school scrapbook dating from 1960, when she received an American Field Service “America Abroad” scholarship. Her CV indicates that she went on to study fine arts at Middlebury College before pursuing a doctorate at the Pennsylvania State University. She began her teaching career in 1973, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then moved on to San Francisco State University, where she taught from 1978 until retirement, in 1998. This aspect of her career is well documented in the papers in the form of lecture notes and university correspondence.

Among the materials relating to Chadwick’s many research interests are photographs and notes for her first book, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, published in 1985. That project brought her into contact with artists like Leonora Carrington, with whom she developed a warm friendship that is documented in the form of correspondence. In a postcard, for example, the artist congratulates the scholar on a recent publication on Carrington’s art. “I am very delighted,” she declares, “There is nothing to change.” 

The papers also contain fan mail related to Chadwick’s most widely read and celebrated study, Women, Art, and Society, published in 1990. “Bravo!,” reads one admiring missive, “You are to be congratulated from every viewpoint.” Others offered personal perspectives meant to reinforce or supplement Chadwick’s findings. “I have just finished reading Women, Art, and Society,” reports artist Ann Stewart Anderson. “In view of your final chapters on what women are doing now, I am writing to tell you of my work dealing with menopause (a subject which you did not mention in your study).” 

In addition to these materials, researchers will encounter character sketches and correspondence related to Chadwick’s 1998 crime novel Framed, in which the protagonist, a San Francisco-based art historian named Charlotte Whyte, is modeled loosely on the author. 

The David Em papers (b. 1952), donated by the artist with the assistance of Catharina E. Santasilia, capture the artist’s pioneering work as a computer artist based in California. An article from October 1985, published in Computer Graphics and Applications, the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, describes Em’s discovery of SuperPaint, developed by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC), which resulted in his first digital painting. Following this transformative experience, Em resolved to continue making computer-generated paintings, but wanted to set out on his own. 

A loose sheet of yellow gridded paper contains a shopping list with thumbnail sketches depicting electronic components he needed to construct his own framebuffer board. Researchers can trace Em’s early evolution as a computer artist as they page through five computational notebooks, which make up the core of the collection. Dating from 1978 to 1986, these logs are filled with engaging doodles, technical notes, and compositional sketches that track the artist’s day-to-day ruminations, visualizations, aha-moments, and effacements as he worked up virtual objects and digital worlds.

A photograph of the artist, seated at a large desk stacked with imposing monitors, and piled high with prints of his compositions, captures succinctly the high-tech context his work demanded. Inscribed “David Em JPL 1979” on the reverse, the image dates from his period as artist-in-residence at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (1976–1988). There, Em was able to access advanced computers, like those seen in the photograph, and imaging software, which had originally been developed for the transmission of digital information from spacecrafts to Earth. Em was also given access to JPL’s printers, which allowed him to print, proof, and eventually exhibit his work in fine art contexts. 

Files in the collection document his many exhibitions, including a solo show of his prints in 1981 at the Silverworks Gallery in Los Angeles. The same year, he was included in a group show billed as the “first state-of-the-art computer art show of its kind” at the prestigious ACM SIGGRAPH (Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics) annual conference, for which “works will be shown on high-resolution video displays receiving direct signals from computer memory.”

Together, these two new sets of papers contribute greatly to the Archives’ holdings of California collections. Chadwick’s papers offer an opportunity to explore the fascinating research agendas, personal relationships, and fictional explorations of an important feminist art historian, while Em’s papers provide a glimpse into the technical and aesthetic innovations of an artist poised on the cutting edge of computer-generated art. Em’s papers add to the Archives’ growing holdings related to computer art.

Matthew Simms is the Gerald and Bente Buck West Coast Collector at the Archives of American Art.