Arts Institution/Center

The Margaret Herrick Library collects a wide range of materials documenting film as both an art form and an industry. Its holdings include photographs, posters, books, periodicals, screenplays, oral histories, and extensive clippings files on people, films, and companies. The clippings files are organized under five headings: production, biography, general subject, festivals and awards, and Academy history. The general subject files contain clippings and photographs regarding aspects of Los Angeles such as homes, studios, motion picture theaters, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, Los Angeles as a location, educational and cultural institutions, theme parks, and landmarks; labor disputes and the formation of industry-related unions and guilds are also extensively documented in the general subject files. The Academy history files provide coverage of that very Los Angeles-based activity—the Academy Awards. The library's Special Collections contain materials relating to the careers of numerous directors, producers, actors, and other craftspeople and their filmmaking work in Los Angeles. Dating from the early 1900s to the present, the materials in Special Collections include scripts in various drafts, personal and business correspondence, production memoranda, sketches, clippings, music scores, recordings, scrapbooks, artifacts, and photographs.

Based in the Little Tokyo area of Downtown Los Angeles, VC was founded in 1970 by a group of pioneering independent filmmakers to record, collect, and preserve a visual record of Asian Pacific American cultural heritage. VC originally worked as a film collective, concentrating on honestly portraying accurate images of Asian Americans and meticulously capturing pivotal social movements. VC produced groundbreaking works about the Asian American experience, including: CHINATOWN 2-STEP, a documentary on the suburbanization of Chinese American community in Los Angeles and the role of the Chinatown Drum and Bugle Corps; MANONG, a film on the first generation Filipino American immigrants; and WATARIDORI, a documentary on early Japanese American immigrant pioneers. VC published three books, In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian Pacific America, Little Tokyo: One Hundred Years in Pictures, and Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Productions were used for education and activism that addressed setting up ethnic studies programs on local campuses, city redevelopment issues, the redress campaign for Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and the declaration of martial law in the Philippines. VC’s own past in all media, narrative films, documentaries and educational projects are intertwined with the Asian Pacific American movements of the 1970s, and in itself represents a rich resource for researchers of the Asian Pacific American movements. The Archives’ purpose is to document the history of the organization by organizing, preserving, and creating access to a variety of media art and primary materials recording impactful political moments and depicting the Asian Pacific American heritage for staff use, as well as by scholars who are interested in Visual Communications’ role in the Asian American communities and history. The holdings include over 300,000 photographic images, 1,500 titles in the Media Resource Library, 100 films and videos produced by Visual Communications, and over 1,000 hours of oral histories of pan-Asian Pacific American content. As a valuable resource of Asian media art representations, The Archives is open to a wide variety of users, and we encourage the public, artists, filmmakers, students, faculty and others to pursue an intercultural understanding of the Asian American heritage. VC’s vision for the archives is to accurately reflect and represent the diversity of the American populace and to cement Asian Pacific American experiences in the historical record through the preservation, access, and dissemination of our materials, which provide historical context and insight of Asian Pacific American influence not only for Asian Pacific Americans, but also for all Americans. Please refer to our list of holdings for more information: http://fromthevcvault.wordpress.com/vc-archives-collections/

The Max and Lore Zeller Library provides a specialized collection (including rare books) of over 6,500 volumes on Jungian psychology and related subjects: sandplay therapy, general psychology, anthropology, mythology, religion, alchemy, art and symbolism. The extensive book collection, 800 audio CDs, videotapes and DVDs, and 16 journals are available to the analytic community and the general public through an affordable membership fee. Library membership provides onsite access to the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS). Drawing upon C.G. Jung’s work on the archetype and the collective unconscious, ARAS is a pictorial and written archive of mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic images from all over the world and from all epochs of human history. The archive contains over 17,000 photographic images, each cross-indexed, and accompanied by scholarly commentary. The commentary includes a description of the image that serves to place it in its unique historical, cultural, and geographical setting. The ARAS commentaries honor both the universal patterns and specific cultural context associated with each image. The librarian is available to help steer readers toward their particular interests.

As the only collecting institution focused solely on the art, craft, and history of Hollywood writers and their labor union, the Writers Guild Foundation Library & Archive are vividlly relevant to the creative and business communities of Los Angeles. The holdings document a rich facet of Los Angeles culture in relation to the role of writers in the entertainment industry. The collections include Writers Guild of America historical materials, current and vintage produced and unproduced scripts, letters, periodicals, photographs, production materials, memorabilia, oral histories, and personal items pertaining to film, television, radio and new media writers. The non-profit Writers Guild Foundation strives to promote and preserve the work of writers for the screen, and to inspire and educate writers everywhere. In addition to the Shavelson-Webb Library & Archive, other esteemed programs include High School Workshops, the Military Veterans Writing Project, and a Visiting Writers program.

The California Historical Society collects materials of enduring historical and cultural value in support of its mission to inspire and empower Californians to make the past a meaningful part of their contemporary lives. In our North Baker Research Library, we hold some fifty thousand books and pamphlets, four thousand manuscript collections, half a million photographs, as well as ephemera, periodicals, posters, maps and more. For Los Angeles and the surrounding area we have nearly 23,000 photographs from the Title Insurance and Trust Company (TICOR) and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce (LAACC) housed and managed for CHS by the Regional History Center at the University of Southern California and viewable through the USC Digital Library (digitallibrary.usc.edu). Documenting development of the Los Angeles region from 1860 to 1960, the TICOR collection includes the work of many prominent local photographers, including C. C. Pierce. The LAACC collection includes promotional images in addition to depicting the growth of the city and the transportation system. Besides these two important collections and other photographs, Southern California is represented chiefly by printed books and pamphlets, periodicals, and ephemera, including many early promotional pieces with gems such as the 1888-89 Southern California Tourists’ Guide-Book, and an 1885 pamphlet entitled The Great Interior Fruit Belt and Sanitarium of Southern California, San Bernardino County, and Valleys Tributary Thereto.

We are a creating an archive of costumes, photos, newspaper articles, letters, and other ephemera to document the history of the Mission Play from 1911 to present, and the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse from 1927 - present. The archive will serve an important role in early California/Los Angeles history.

The Wende Museum collects artworks, artifacts, and personal histories that record daily life, creative expression, and political developments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. The collection comprises a variety of media including design objects, works on paper, ceramics, paintings, sculptures, posters, furniture, textiles, photographs, films, videos, sound recordings, books, periodicals, and archives. Special projects and collections relate these artifacts to Los Angeles history and its residents, including Cold War Culver City, documenting local historical sites from the Cold War, and From Red State to Golden State: Soviet Jewish Immigration to the City of Angels, an intergenerational oral history project and documentary film. We are also the repository for the oral histories collected by the Albanian Human Rights Project, a Los-Angeles-based organization dedicated to collecting, filming, and preserving the testimonies of Albanians who were politically imprisoned or interned from 1944-1991 during Albania’s communist regime.

The Baseball Reliquary maintains a large collection of artifacts, artworks, photographs, and documents related to baseball history in Southern California and the United States.

Collection Description: Virginia Robinson Gardens, built in 1911, was the first estate in Beverly Hills. Today, it is listed on the national registry of historic sites. Social doyenne, art collector and philanthropist Mrs. Virginia Robinson resided in the house for thirty years and, before her death in 1977, she gave it to Los Angeles County for the public to enjoy. This historic estate, which includes her home, complete with her extensive collection of American and European fine and decorative arts and surrounding garden, continues to attract visitors from around the world. There are tours for adults and a special children's tour for third graders. In addition, the Gardens hosts lectures and educational series that include talks by scholars, gardening classes, and visits to other significant cultural and botanical sites in the Los Angeles area. The collection consists of art objects personally acquired by Mrs. Robinson and her husband Mr. Harry Robinson. The estate houses a significant library, objects from France, India and Italy (among other countries) and a collection of china and glassware. The 6 acres of garden surrounding the house is bursting with diverse plants and flowers from around the world and remains one of the main attractions of this unique historic site. The Robinson Gardens enriches not only the city of Beverly Hills but the entire county of Los Angeles. Its popularity continues to grow as the staff works towards making the site better known and more accessible to the public.

Located on the Getty Center campus in Brentwood, the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute focuses on the history of art, architecture, and archaeology from prehistory to the contemporary period. Presently, the collections are strongest in the history of western European art and culture in Europe and North America; however, in recent years, they have expanded to include other areas, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, and selected regions of Asia. The library's foundation lies in its special collections of original documents and objects. Recent acquisitions and initiatives have documented developments during the postwar years in Southern California. The special collections include contemporary artists' photographers' by Los Angeles artists; archives and manuscripts of Southern California artists, writers, and curators such as Sam Francis, Robert Irwin, and Henry Hopkins; archives of art publications such as High Performance magazine; prints, drawings, and multiples, including a complete set of those produced by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; rare photographs and photographers’ archives, such as Charles Brittin's; architectural drawings and comprehensive archives such as John Parkinson's drawings for Union Station, the Walt Disney Concert Hall documentation, the Pierre Koenig and John Lautner archives, and the Julius Shulman Photography Archive highlighting Los Angeles architecture. Documenting the advanced art that put Los Angeles and Southern California on the map of the international art world, Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive, now part of the Research Library's collections, contains close to 5000 tapes and supporting files.