The essays that comprise Elusive Archives raise a common question: how do we study material culture when the objects of study are transient, evanescent, dispersed or subjective? Such things resist the taxonomic protocols that institutions, such as museums and archives, rely on to channel their acquisitions into meaningful collections. What holds these disparate things together here are the questions authors ask of them. Each essay creates by means of its method a provisional collection of things, an elusive archive.  Scattered matter then becomes fixed within each author’s analytical framework rather than within the walls of an archive’s reading room or in cases along a museum corridor. This book follows the ways in which objects may be identified, gathered, arranged, conceptualized and even displayed rather than by “discovering� artifacts in an archive and then asking how they came to be there. The authors approach material culture outside the traditional bounds of learning about the past. Their essays are varied not only in subject matter but also in narrative format and conceptual reach, making the volume accessible and easy to navigate for a quick reference or, if read straight through, build toward a new way to think about material culture.

Whitfield Lovell: Kin centers on a sumptuously reproduced portfolio of the artist s Kin series, in which images of anonymous African-Americans are paired with found objects evoking their personalities and experiences. Tangible presences that powerfully connect with the viewer, Lovell s works invoke issues of cultural heritage and personal identity as they imaginatively reflect the lives of forgotten Americans. Also included are the artist s large-scale installations and works from the 1980s and early 1990s. Art critic, writer, and professor, Irving Sandler is the author of the memoir Swept Up by Art. Sarah Lewis is assistant professor of History of Art and Architecture and African and African American Studies, Harvard University. Kevin Quashie is professor of Africana Studies, Smith College. Klaus Ottmann is deputy director for Curatorial and Academic Affairs and Elsa Smithgall is curator, the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Erin Dziedzic is curator and head of Adult Programs, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Julie L. McGee is curator of African American Art, University Museums, University of Delaware