INTRODUCTION TO OUR COLLECTIONS AND DATABASES
The Roger Brown Study Collection holds multiple collections and archives that we make available to the SAIC community and general public. These collections have advanced databases that are mostly not currently available online, but can be accessed in person during your RBSC visit or remotely through an in-class or Zoom research appointment. Our RBSC Museum Collection phone app allows visitors to identify objects on view through their location, accessing item information and artist biographies as they explore the museum.
Our databases follow professional museum standards and are developed in FileMaker Pro by RBSC Collection Manager James Connolly to streamline internal collection management and enhance object-based learning for our visitors. By creating custom interfaces, relational structures, and advanced scripts, these databases enable powerful information retrieval and advanced tools that are integral to our ongoing internal research, interpretation, and preservation. The databases also act as educational tools, allowing RBSC staff to gain professional experience in collection cataloging and giving visitors insight into our collection as well as ongoing changes in museum practices.
LEARNING FROM OUR COLLECTIONS
Studio classes visiting the RBSC can gain deep insight into the working practice of Roger Brown and how it was informed by his collection of objects that remain installed how he lived with them. As artists explore our collection, they can investigate over 2,000 objects incredibly diverse in origin and materials, made by over 130 artists from around the work. Students can examine the material processes of these works, or learn about the rich histories and stories behind the individuals and cultures who made them from our staff and/or phone app. Studio classes may also be interested in our Roger Brown artworks and sketches database, which allows users to explore nearly 1000 major works by Brown alongside the sketches he made for them.
We also encourage art history, museum studies, arts administration, and historic preservation courses to consider utilizing our collections and databases in their curriculum. Our databases are designed to assist us in improving the way we manage, display, interpret, and teach from our collections. We are constantly striving to improve our practices, and we invite emerging museum and arts professionals to learn from and contribute to this process.
ACCESSING OUR COLLECTIONS
Our museum collection remains permanently on view, and our other collections contain items that can be pulled during class visits and general tours. Let us know via email ahead of your tour if you would like to spend time with any of our specific collections or databases during your visit and we will be happy to accommodate you!
A brief overview of each collection is below with a link to view more information.
RBSC Museum Collection
The RBSC museum collection consists of over 2,000 objects installed on the second floor of Roger Brown's former Chicago home. For the most part, these objects are preserved the way Brown lived with them when he gave the collection to SAIC in 1996. This collection contains a wide range of objects including artworks, domestic items, found objects, personal items, modern and vintage furniture, garments, and photographs.
More information: libraryguides.saic.edu/rbsc/MuseumCollection
RBSC Document Archive
The RBBC document archive consists of thousands of paper documents, including Roger Brown writings, correspondence, business records, educational records, loan forms, travel papers, exhibition materials, miscellaneous ephemera, and other things we are still processing.
More information: libraryguides.saic.edu/rbsc/DocumentArchive
RBSC Flat Files Collection of Works on Paper
The RBSC flat files collection of Works on Paper consist of thousands of original prints, posters, drawings, paintings, sketches, architectural drawings, and other materials. It contains original ephemera from the Hairy Who and False Image exhibitions, and original works by important artists including Eleanor Dube, Lee Godie, Phil Hanson, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg, Stanley Tigerman, George Veronda, H.C. Westerman, Karl Wirsum, Ray Yoshida, and many others.
Roger Brown Artworks and Sketches
We have a thorough database for all of Roger Brown's known artworks and sketches. All sketches have been connected to the paintings, sculptures, and prints that derived from them, showing the creative development of most of his works. All paintings and many sketches have been tagged with content so that Brown's artworks can be searched by over 400 common subjects such as politics, skies (all different types of sky patterns Brown uses have been tagged), weather events, people, places, modes of transportation, types of buildings, common Roger Brown motifs, and many others.
Roger Brown Photo Archive
All of Roger Brown's photographs and slides have been digitized and tagged with content in a database containing over 3,000 images. Photos can be searched by the people, locations, subjects, and Roger Brown artworks depicted. Included in the archive are images of Roger Brown and the Chicago Imagists at openings and other gatherings, family photos, travel images, photos of Roger Brown's three homes and collections, construction photos of Roger's homes in La Conchita, California and New Buffalo, Michigan, and many other things. Roger Brown took numerous slides of art environments including Jesse Howard's property in Fulton, Missouri; Herman Rusch's Prairie Moon Museum, Cochrane, Wisconsin, Fred Smith's Concrete Park in Philips, Wisconsin; Richard Klaveron's home in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Ma and Pa Wagner's Little Acre Shoe Repair Shop, Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, S.P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas; and Aldo Piacenza's home in Highwood, Illinois among others.
Roger Brown Library
Roger Brown's library consists of nearly 1,200 books from all three of his homes and collections. On display in the front room gallery and orientation space of the RBSC, the library consists of art books, novels, biographies, reference books, erotica, travel, architecture, philosophy, religion, travel, and many others. The database for this collection contains images of every book's cover, spine, and back cover, creating a visual resource that allows browsing books by genre, type, author, and other fields. All marginalia and residue left by Roger Brown and others is catalogues, showing how Brown used the book and, in some cases, their important provenance.
Roger Brown Vinyl Records
Roger Brown's vinyl record collection consists of all vinyl records Brown had at his three of his homes and collections. These records have been digitized, and each semester staff select a number of records we display in our front room that we allow visitors to select from to hear throughout the collection, activating the space sonically with the exact same music Roger Brown, friends, and family would have heard in the home, record player needle noise and all.