Archival

Archival Collection

The Complete Ernest and Francille Wilson African American Library

by Malik Wilson

Selected, curated, and developed over the course of their 50+ year union, the Ernest & Francille Wilson African American Library is a remarkable, one-of-a-kind blend of African American academia, 60s and 70s Black art and poetry monographs, and original 19th and 20th century African American historical texts. It also houses Ernest Wilson’s hand-written journals, covering a 60-year period between 1960-2020, a remarkable time in world history, American history, and African American history. 

The library intimately captures the central relationship – the 50+ year marriage between Francille Wilson, neè Rusan, and Ernest Wilson. That union, and its confirming, creative, collaborative power, becomes a model for African American achievement in their generation. It shows how the binding forms of love and devotion, and of a commitment to family and uplift, have always been the sine qua non of communal and cultural progress in the Black community.

The library captures their interests, passions, and loves, and outlines an entire age of African American scholarship, from the rise of Black Studies programs in the late-60s (happenings they were a part of) to the new criticism of the 90s and 2000s to the panoply of newer and younger and more diverse voices of the 2020s. The collection also reveals the arc of African American artistic expression, from its humble beginnings in the 1960s DIY Black Arts Movements to long-overlooked artists finally receiving their due at major American institutions. 

Archival Digital

The Complete Ernest and Francille Wilson African American Library

by Malik Wilson

A partnership between Takoma/Gallery Place, the Takoma Foundation, and Takoma Archival Solutions, The Complete Ernest and Francille Wilson African American Library the digital version, is a set-aside application enabling the entire library to be viewed by the public.

Archival History

The Journals of Ernest James Wilson, 1960-2020

by Malik Wilson

Spanning nearly 60 years of introspection, consideration, and commentary Ernest Wilson's journals are a remarkable snapshot of American life and letters. They are also filled with the everyday rhythms of everyday life - work, marriage, family, and children. The scale of the journals themselves both humbles and awes, and in their totality, they stand as a monumental accomplishment and a monumental gift.

Archival History

"Everything Since Then": The Lifetime Ephemera of Ernest James Wilson

by Malik Wilson

What does a lifetime of effort, consideration, and activity ultimately look like, and how is it reflected and refracted in the sundry list of items, clippings, reports, images, notes, tickets? In "Everything Since Then": The Lifetime Ephemera of Ernest James Wilson, Malik Wilson assembles the beloved detritus of a beloved life and shows how the material remnants of a life frame our interests, loves, and hopes.

Archival History

"Every Single Thing": The Collected Works of James Rutherford

by Malik Wilson

James Rutherford's collecting and preservation habits span more than 50 years. They encompass a full range of tools, objet d'arts, furnishing, furniture, and other sundry items. Together, they form a kind of Adamic statuary of reformed things - past-purposed creations filed down, fixed up to be set aside.

"Every Single Object": The Complete Works of Jim Rutherford is the full, authorized record of every extant Jim Rutherford creation. Taken together, his material refinishings represent a kind of hearted pull to preserve that most pure of all boyhood instincts - the impulse to have, to see, to touch. This directed desire for beauty - to keep something and save it, appears in our time as a window into an older world. 

Archival Digital

"Every Single Thing": The Collected Works of James Rutherford

by Malik Wilson

A partnership between Takoma/Gallery Place, the Takoma Foundation, and Takoma Archival Solutions, "Every Single Thing": The Collected Works of James Rutherford the digital version, is a set-aside application enabling his entire oeuvre to be viewed by the public.