"It keeps me up at night, thinking about the future of this archive," said Tiffany M. Gill, associate professor of Africana studies and history and the University of Delaware. "You can't really tell the story of black life in the 20th century without these images from the Johnson archive. So it's important that whatever happens in this auction, that these images are preserved and made available to scholars, art lovers and everyday folks."
Several museums have expressed interest, and the obvious candidates are the Schomburg Center from Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library; The National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Another possibility that is feared by scholars: A private collector buys the archive and stashes it away.
COMMENT
The photo archives from Jet and Ebony document a cultural history of African Americans in the U.S., but the like many other print periodicals, these once-popular magazines are victims of the Internet. The photographic archives are set to be auctioned to whomever can pay for them. That is likely to be one of the world's billionaires, but it's impossible to say whether they will be friend or foe to the interests of scholars. On the other hand, if a library or museum buys them it will open up a whole new world of images; if a private buyer gets them they may be off-limits.
Libraries, in other words, are a kind of public space in more ways than one. It's not just the physical space but the information space where things like these photographs can be made accessible to the public. One frequent library story is about finding hidden treasure in dusty boxes. These photos no doubt contain such treasure if anyone is ever allowed to go looking for it.
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