Carol Robbins Records

The records have been arranged into nine series: Correspondence, Dealers, Objects and Collections, Installations and Exhibitions, Curatorial, Research Material, Photographs, Notepads and Zale-Lipshy University Hospital Project. The Correspondence series includes correspondence, incoming and outgoing, with colleagues, scholars, donors, and the public. Correspondence is filed alphabetically. If there were three or more letters/emails the person or institution has a named folder. If there were only one or two letters/emails then the correspondence is filed in a general letter folder. Museums and other cultural institutions are filed by the name of the instituion as there could be multiple correspondents from the same institution; University-based scholars and students were filed by name instead of institution.

The Dealer series includes general correspondence with dealers and offers of objects for purchase. The folders are arranged alphabetically by gallery or dealer corporate name. The dealer files also include internal correspondence regarding dealer items, and related shipping, object receipt and registration documentation. There will be cross-over with files in the Objects and Collections series which contains dealer correspondence and related documents for easily identifiable acquisitions or acquisition considerations.

The Objects and Collections series includes records for acquistions of specifc easily identifiable objects with more extensive documentation. The series also contains information on collections offered to the museum, which may or may not have been acquired. These files are arranged by subject/geography with sections on Indonesian, Native North America, Meso and South America, African and other textiles. The series also contains correspondnece on loans from the permanent collection - there may be some cross-over with the correspondence series. Finally the series contains records for DMA collections including correspondence, memoranda, lists, collection descriptions, and records of projects relating to the respective collection. These collections are: Pre-Columbian, Native North American, Textiles, Guatemalan Textiles, Nasher Collection, Indonesian, Wise Collection and Dozier Estate.

The fourth series, Installations and Exhibitions, contains records relating to permanent collection gallery installations in Carol's areas and exhibitions that she curated. The installations are arranged by geography/gallery and chronologically within an area; the bulk of the records for installations are for the Museum of the Americas installation in 1993; the reinstalation of the Arts of Africa, Asia and Pacific in 1996 is also a large portion of the installations. The exhibitions are arranged chronologically by opening date.

The fifth series is broadly titled Curatorial and includes records on Carol's participation in museum-wide activities such as conservation and the selection and implementation of collection managment systems; curatorial departmental activities; work with other departments, travel, publications and projects.

The sixth series, title Research Material, contains unpublished papers and small publications not suitable for the library on topics in Carol's areas. The series is arranged alphabetically by title.

The seventh series is Photographs. The photographs have been made their own series based on format, though they could also have been described with the Objects and Collections or Curatorial series. The bulk of the photos are contextual images for textiles and Indonsian objects. There are oversize contextual photos that had been mounted for exhibition. The series also contains informal documentation of Guatemalan textitles, likely the Nasher Collection loans, taken in the Textile Study Room. These photos are arranged in loan number order.

The eighth series are notepads used by Carol for her daily activities. The notepads contain general research notes and questions, to do lists, phone messages, notes from phone calls, meeting notes, etc. The notepads are not dated and are not arranged in any particular order, nor could any order be determined due to the variety of information in each notepad.

The final series documents Carol's work on the creation of a collection of Indonesian textiles for Zale-Lipshy University Hospital and includes records on acquisitions, payments, and a related exhibition.