Where do Art, the Archives, and Digital Experience meet at The Phillips Collection?

Digital Archivist Amanda Acosta on creating a “virtual time capsule” with materials from the archives related to Breaking It Down: Conversations from the Vault.

Phillips staff across departments have been investigating various digital tools to activate the Archives in new and innovative ways. Breaking It Down: The Virtual Time Capsule is the first in a series of virtual galleries intended to extend the visitor experience beyond the gallery, increase access to the Archives, and dive deeper into our institutional histories. 

During planning for Breaking It Down: Conversations from the Vault, the Archives was invited to contribute records to the exhibition and create a companion archival gallery to further explore the relationships between the Phillips family and select unit artists. Faced with an abundance of materials and limited gallery space, the question of how a digital space may be utilized to not only continue the themes and conversations presented in the exhibition, but to also surface additional research and materials was posed. One solution: create a virtual gallery utilizing the spatial mapping platform Matterport. 

Operated and implemented by Assistant Preparator dRi Guillén since 2022, Matterport facilitates 360-degree virtual tours of physical exhibitions and installations at the Phillips. When combined with Treedis, a platform partner, there are opportunities to create immersive galleries, launch new 3D renders of art in the permanent collection, and even explore virtual reality.

This Time Capsule presents Guillén’s 3D renders of works by Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Gilliam, and Georgia O’Keeffe alongside correspondence, exhibition ephemera, oral histories, and installation photography that I selected. The art and archives on view draw upon the relationships highlighted in Breaking It Down: Duncan Phillips and artists, artists and artists, and artists and the museum. A special archival grouping introduces visitors to our recently digitized hanging records (installation reports) which provide a record of what was hanging in the museum on a given day. Historic photographs of the original Rothko Room and a solo exhibition of Marjorie Phillips’s paintings are paired with their corresponding hanging records, establishing a one-to-one connection between the objects. 

The Library and Archives and Digital Experience teams are excited to continue to experiment with the platform and other digital tools to better orient visitors with our institutional stories as told through our objects and archives. 

Explore the virtual gallery at: https://my.treedis.com/tour/w2urq4lp6i4