[Links]

The links below are directly related to the visual arts and design although most of the collections also contain non-arts related interviews.

The Archives of American Art oral history interviews is the most comprehensive collection of oral histories with American artists encompassing a variety of media. It includes transcripts, and a very useful keyword search facility.

The Chicago Architects Oral History Project was begun in 1983 by the Department of Architecture to ‘record the life experiences of architects who shaped the physical environment of Chicago and surrounding communities’. It is a comprehensive collection with interview ‘highlights’, and transcripts w ith a few video or audio extracts.

The Regional Oral history Office of The Bancroft Library, University of California collection focuses on the West Coast, especially California, and has interviews with individuals involved in architecture including landscape architects, fine art, photography, books and fine printing, fiber arts, and artists with disabilities. The site also contains interviews with artists and staff at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art http://www.bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/projects/sfmoma/interviews.htm>

The British Library National Sound Archive holds interviews with artists, architects, craftspeople, and designers, part of the Life Story Collection. The on-line catalogue provides detailed summaries of the contents of the recordings, a very few of which have also been transcribed.

Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office has produced a vast range of projects over the years which in the arts include: American Craftspeople recorded between 1984-88; Architecture (1961), the Hollywood Film industry (1971), New York’s Art World (1976-8), Popular Arts which focuses on performing arts including Hollywood in the 1930s, Photography (1976-78).

University of California at Berkeley ‘Conversations with History’ includes recorded video interviews and podcasts. Searching by topic is useful and includes Images and Perception: Human Values and Visual interpretation; The Information Age; Movies and the Imagination.

The National Electronic & Video Archive of the Crafts (NEVAC) collects and produc es digital and sound recordings with individuals working in the crafts in the UK. Apart from access to recorded extracts, advice about interviewing, the site also has useful articles on the crafts and oral history by Director Matthew Partington.

The Oral History Society provides useful and comprehensive advice on interviewing, ethics, funding, and oral history activity in the UK.

Tate online offers video artist’s interviews, clips fron the Tate Archive Video collection, Artist’s Talks, and the TateShots podcasts also available as downloadable transcripts. Though not oral history, they nevertheless offer a record of artists talking about their work.

The Victoria and Albert Museum 1960s Fashion has edited transcripts of interviews with ‘the most influential characters of the 1960s’ in the world of fashion and design. The site also contains images and recollections of the 1960's sent in by members of the public:
Memories of 1960's fashion

The website has also launched a series of V&A topical monthly podcasts relating to their collections including Ceramic Points of View, a series in which ceramicists, critics and curators talk about pots in the collection.

UbuWeb is an unlimited resource with unlimited space to fill. It is in this way that the site has grown to encompass hundreds of artists, hundreds of gigabytes of sound files, books, texts and videos. It has won many prestigious internet awards and are acknowledged web-wide as the definitive source for Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry.