Audiovisual Collection - Extent: 1,367 items - Archive

Louise Bourgeois during a Sunday Salon hosted at her home, still from a moving image recording, January 17, 1999, New York; AV.00151, 0:33:33. Video: Pouran Esrafily, © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

There are over 1,000 analog moving image recordings (including copies) in the Audiovisual collection, representing the bulk of the physical items. Original media types include 16mm film, 1/2" open reel tape, Betacam, Digital Betacam, VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV, and 3/4" U-matic tape.

The earliest recordings are videotapes created using a Sony Portapak that Bourgeois purchased in the early 1970s. There are also reels of color film documenting the artist's Brooklyn studio and several exhibitions in the 1980s. Perhaps most notable are the 656 MiniDV cassettes containing over 600 hours of footage of Bourgeois's Sunday Salons, filmed between January 1999 and April 2007. A storied weekly event, the salons were open to all those willing to share their work and opinions to the gathered group.

.Original box from one of Bourgeois's audio tapes
Photo: © The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Within the 345 analog sound recordings are over 100 hours of audio diaries created by Bourgeois between 1967 and 1986. She made most of these diaristic recordings, which she called her "tapes," using a reel-to-reel audio recorder (pictured below on the left) gifted to her on Christmas in 1968. Like her written diaries, the audio diaries document the artist's daily life, studio practice, her interest in art, psychoanalysis and film, and her self-reflective thoughts on her diaristic practices. Bourgeois also recorded conversations, interviews, phone calls, radio programs, and events and gatherings.

"…I want to go on record as to say that the tape recorder that I rejected as useless, is indispensable to me. It is part of my tools of work…"