Introduction to the Sackner Archives:

History

Ruth and Marvin Sackner founded the Archive in Miami Beach, Florida in 1979. Its initial mission was to establish a collection of books, critical texts, periodicals, ephemera, prints, drawings, collages, paintings, sculptures, objects, manuscripts, and correspondence dealing with precedent and contemporary, internationally produced, concrete and visual poetry. The antecedent material had at its starting point, Stephane Mallarme ’s poem, “Un Coup de Des” (Cosmopolis, 1897). The historic examples included works with concrete/visual poetic sensibilities from such twentieth century art movements as Italian Futurism, Russian and Eastern European Avant Garde, Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Ultra, Tabu-Dada, Lettrisme, and Ultra-Lettrisme.

The initiators of the contemporary, international, concrete poetic movement included Oyvind Fahlstrom (1953), Eugen Gomringer (1953) and the Noigandres Group, i.e., Augusto De Campos, Haroldo De Campos, and Decio Pignatari (1955). The Sackners collected their works as well as those of subsequent poets and over the years expanded the scope of the Archive to include unique or small edition artist’s books that integrated text and image or consisted of experimental typography. They added examples of typewriter art and poetry, experimental calligraphy, correspondence art, stamp art, sound poetry, performance poetry, micrography, assembling periodicals, ‘zines,’ and graphic design as well as conventional poetry and prose written by concrete/visual poets and artists in the collection. Further, they collected experimental typographic, text and image works from such contemporary art movements as Fluxus, Transfuturism, and Inism. They included experimental fictional and non-fictional books with uniquely designed layouts such as Raymond Federman’s “Double or Nothing,” Alasdair Gray’s “1982 Janine,” B.E. Johnson’s “House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy,” Avital Ronell's "The Telephone Book," and Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves.” Pre-twentieth century examples of pattern poetry were added to the Archive such as Rabanus Maurus’ “Liber de Laudibus Sanctae Crucis” (1503) and Publili Optatiani Porfyrii’s “ Panegyricus Dictus Constantino Augusto ” (1595). The Sackners collected manuscripts, sketchbooks and letters written by poets and artists including Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houedard Tom Phillips, William Jay Smith, Jean-Francois Bory, Jake Berry, and F.A. Nettelbeck among others. The Archive evolved into a word/image poetic and artistic resource rather than a restricted collection of concrete and visual poetry. In March 2005, the Sackner Archive moved from their house in Miami Beach to a two story rental apartment in Miami . The floor space of the two dwellings is comparable but the layouts very different. In the house, books were displayed in two large li braries. But with limited space to display books and much greater wall space in the apartment, artworks dominate the view.

The Archive collects several hundred artists/poets worldwide in depth:  

The first catalogue of the Archive was compiled with a word-processing typewriter that placed stringent limitations on revision. It was privately published in 1986 in a run of 500 copies and is long out of print. The citations of the Archive holdings were entered into a computer database in 1990. The bibliography at this site was modified from the current database developed for the Sackner Archive by Dave Edwards , President of Re:discovery software. In its first WEB presentation in Fe bruary 1998, it comprised about 29,000 citations which were almost half the items then in the Archive. The first revision in January 1999 consisted of about 32,000 citations, the second revision in November 2000 about 35,500 citations, the third revision, about 39,000 citations, the fourth revision, about 41,000 citations, the fifth revision of September 2004, about 43,000 citations, the sixth revision of June 2005 about 44,000 citations, the seventh revision of June 2006 over 45,500 citations, and in this eighth revision over 47,000 citations. About 25,000 items are partially catalogued or uncatalogued and will be added to this WEB presentation on an irregular basis. In this eighth revision, there are over 6,200 images. Because of limitations imposed by the Internet in transfer of the Re:discovery program, some of its search features that run on the personal computer in the Sackner Archive could not be included in this WEB version.

Entry Fields

Clicking on the icon with the moving magnifying glass brings up a Keywords entry box. Clicking on Advanced Search brings up the fields listed below. Specific fields in which a query may be entered include Author/Maker, Title, Contributors (direct or cited [(c)], Classification and Keywords. Queries regarding data in other fields can be entered into the Keywords box but specificity of the search is limited in this Internet version of the database. For example, suppose the reader desires a listing of all exhibition catalogues with the title, “visual poetry.” If this query is entered into the Keywords box, then all exhibition catalogues, books, announcements, classification, annotation, etc. that include this search phrase will be listed including fields that include Visual Art and Conventional Poetry not the desired Visual Poetry. Such a search phrase is an inefficient means of finding the desired items.

Duplicates can be found by entering a query into a specific field, setting Cross Field Search Option field to the ‘and’ option (match all fields). For example, to find duplicate works by Tom Phillips , enter the words, Tom and Phillips, into the Author/Maker field and the word, duplicates, into Keywords.

Other options for Keywords aside from specific queries that the reader wants include the following fields. To access these fields, type the following letters/numbers followed by an equal sign. If more than one word is typed, then connect the words with ‘and.’ Q is the letter to retrieve periodicals (note that these letters are case sensitive but the word being searched is not). For example, to find all issues of the periodical “Wipe,’ in the keyword field, type Q=wipe and all issues will be retrieved. In addition, Sh’wipe and S’wipe periodicals will also be listed. To list only wipe, type Q=wipe not (Q=sh or Q=s). To retrieve the periodical, Shattered Wig, type Q=shattered and Q=wig; if Q=shattered wig is typed, then a search will be performed with the words, shattered and wig, from other fields in the record causing erroneous records to be retrieved.

Letters/numbers listed below are case sensitive.  

Browse Order and Reference Tables

The Browse Collection option offers the following selections, Heading, Catalogue Number, and Images. Selection of “Heading” causes listing of the following entries from the database that are commingled in alphabetical order: 1) Author/Maker, e.g. Phillips, Tom, 2) Exhibition Announcement, e.g., Books as Art, 3) Announcement, e.g., 3 Talks on Typography and Books, 4) Catalogue, e.g., 2^nd Artist Book International, 5) Exhibition Catalogue, e.g., Meaning as a Second Language, and 6) Periodical, e.g., Blast. In this example, these citations would appear in alphabetical order in this selection with these headings: 1. Artist Book International, 2^nd, 2. Blast, 3. Books as Art, 4. Meaning as a Second Language, 5. Phillips, Tom, 6. Talks on Typography and Books. Thumbnail images are also available along with their citations in alphabetical order. Selection of “Images” provides a view of single and multiple images from a citation listed in Heading alphabetical order. Clicking on the thumbnail image causes its enlargement.

The Browse Authorities option allows the reader access to the contents of selected fields that are listed in tabular form, viz., 1. Classification, 2. Periodical, 3. Publisher, 4. Contributors, 5. Author, 6.Subtitle Author, 7. Nationality, 8. Language, and 9.City, Country (of publication). Clicking on one of these Browse Authorities options provides listing of all the entries in the selected field. For example, the Author Authority Table lists the names of all authors in the database. Because of variation in translating names from some foreign languages to English, this table should is useful for the spelling of the author’s name in this database, needed to conduct a proper search. The Authority Tables also provide the reader with information regarding the contents of the database with regard to Publishers, Periodicals, etc.

Search Procedure

Although the re:discovery search program running on the personal computer offers searches on each discrete field and combinations of fields with logic expressions, the Internet version of this program offers limited selections: 1) Author/Maker (ordered as last name, first name, middle name or initial), 2) Title, 3) Contributors, 4) Classification, and 5) Any Field. Capitalization of Search words is unnecessary. The Contributors field lists the contributor as last name followed by first name initial; if (c) follows the first name initial, it indicates that the contributor is cited rather than directly responsible for the specific publication or artwork. The Cross Field Search key in the Search menu sets the search for the preceding fields to an ‘or’ function (Match Any Fields) or an ‘and’ function (Match All Fields). Multiple entries of words into a field are assumed to be an ‘and’ function. Within a field, logic functions can also be used. The program does not recognize punctuation marks for a field except for the parentheses separating logic expressions during a Search. Representative examples for Search Procedures follow below.

If the reader wanted to know all entries for Tom Phillips as a contributor, Phillips T, would be entered into the Contributors Field. If he/she wanted only citations in which Phillips were cited, the entry in the Contributors Field would read, Phillips T c, [no parentheses needed for cited (c)]. If only direct contributions to publications by Phillips were wanted, then the Contributors Field would read, (phillips t) NOT (phillips t c); here, the parentheses are needed to separate the logic expression, NOT (or not).

If the reader wanted citations for Adler as an author or Cobbing as a contributor, he/she would enter Adler into the Author Field and Cobbing into the Contributor Field and set the Cross Field Search key to Match Any Fields (‘or’ state), which is also the default state of this key.  If only citations were wanted with Adler as an author in which Cobbing appeared as contributor, then the Author Field would read Adler, the Contributor Field Cobbing, and the Cross Field Search key, Match All Fields (‘and’ state).

Combination of words for limiting the Search to specific citations must be ordered as they appear in the database. For example, if the reader wanted all works by Tom Phillips, then the Author Field should read Phillips Tom. If Tom Phillips is entered into the Author Field, then the Search fails to return a citation because it looks for the last name, Tom. However, if the reader enters Tom and Phillips, then and the Search procedure is the same as entering, Phillips Tom. A Search for Phillips alone in the Author Field gives more citations because other authors with last name Phillips and first name different from Tom are retrieved.

The utilization of an asterisk (*) immediately prior to or after a word is a wild card feature. Thus, if *web is entered into Title field, then citations are returned that might include the following in the title, "web" and "webern." If *web is entered into Any Field, then a much larger number of citations are returned.

All items in The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry made in 1938 and thereafter are owned by The Marvin and Ruth Sackner Limited Partnership, LLC and all items in 1937 and preceding this date are owned by Ruth and Marvin Sackner . This website presents information on all the works together to assist the interested public in appreciating and learning about this kind of art, poetry, and the people that make these pieces. 

To retrieve WEB comments through this feature, the reader should enter the word, web, into the Any Field row.

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