Ari Greenberg, New York Public Library, Fall 2018
This week I conclude my MIAP internship at the New York Public Library (NYPL) under the supervision of Ben Turkus. Under Ben’s tutelage, I have also worked with Media Preservation Assistant Genevieve Havemeyer-King, Moving Image Preservation Production Supervisor Rhony Dostaly, and Preservation Sound Engineers Seth Winner and Jeff Willens. In addition to my work at the NYPL’s department of Preservation of Audio and Moving Images (PAMI), I also spent time at the NYPL’s Barbara Goldsmith Preservation Division in Long Island City.
My primary task has been to process audiocassette tapes from the New Music Seminar collection, a holding in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound numbering 102 tapes. As I noted in my internship agreement, these tapes document panel discussions—featuring luminaries including Chuck D, MC Hammer, and Johnny Clegg—at the prominent New Music Seminar conference held in New York City in 1989; as such, they feature music industry professionals, music journalists, and musicians themselves, with an especially strong showing from the heavy metal and rap genres. In addition to this collection, I have also worked with videotapes from the archives of experimental theatre artist Robert Wilson held in the Billy Rose Theatre Division, and with various materials from the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Schomburg materials I worked with included both recorded sound and moving image: open reel audio recordings of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters’ union meetings in the 1950s as well as 16mm film elements— primarily, screening prints of the produced-for-television Black Heritage Series from the 1960s. It has been a well-rounded three months!
