Under Cover: Where Collection and Archive Meet

Artists: Eileen Cowin, Walton Ford, Barbara Kasten, and Rita Letendre 

The UAM tradition of working with excellent, cutting-edge, contemporary artists has created not only an art-historically important collection spanning decades, but a deep archive to support that work, full of historic photos, ephemera, and videos. This exhibition highlights four artists—Eileen Cowin, Walton Ford, Barbara Kasten, and Rita Letendre—who had important exhibitions at the UAM, are represented in the UAM Permanent Collection, and have videos in the UAM Archive. 

In the last five years, steps have been taken to digitize the videos in the UAM archive, as the sound and picture quality of VHS and Betamax formats steadily diminishes with time. These videos, though gritty, provide unique insight into these artists’ practices, often in their own words, and can be an enlightening accompaniment to the artwork itself.  

The documentary footage is presented on monitors in tandem with a single artwork from the UAM collection by each of the artists presented. 

Eileen Cowin. Untitled, 1986. Polaroid diptych. 24 x 40 inches. Gift of FHP Hippodrome Gallery, Long Beach, California 

Rita Letendre