Zach Gibson at the LARB:
IN 2009, BRITISH ARTIST, writer, and broadcaster John Berger (1926–2017) donated his personal archive to the British Library. Though he was 82 at the time of the gift, his body of work proceeded to grow for another eight years. Berger continued to write until his death at 90. The collection—which included drawings, sketches, and paintings along with novels, poetry, art criticism, art historical monographs, and lyrically idiosyncratic essays—was, unsurprisingly, massive. Berger offered the entire catalog to the library free of charge. But the gift came with a catch: to retrieve the documents, he asked that the library’s archival staff travel to his remote home in the French Alps to pick them up.
The task initially fell to Jamie Andrews, the library’s head of modern manuscripts at the time of Berger’s donation. Writing in The Guardian, Mark Brown points out that getting the papers was a major “coup for the British Library in a competitive field.” Massive US institutions like the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, according to Brown, are often quick to snatch up the valuable archives of British writers. For Andrews, Berger’s caveat seemed fair: “If he’s giving us this incredible archive for free,” he told Brown, “then the least I can do is roll up my sleeves and help out with the harvesting.”
more here.
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