This summer, I had an internship as an oral historian for UMBC’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture. I was interested in this internship because of my interest in public history and oral history. Once I learned that the oral history was going to be reflecting on the twenty-year anniversary of the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership, which not only had roots on UMBC’s campus, but across Baltimore city, I was interested. Even though I had just spent the first year of my master’s degree online, and thus had never even been on campus, I was excited to be able to tell the story of this piece of UMBC history. The tree partnership consists of four parks paying homage to 20th century German artist Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks Project. The original project’s full name: 7000 Oaks – City Forestation Instead of City Administration consisted of the placement of 7,000 basalt stones with an oak tree planted next to it by a volunteer, in order to encourage the greening of public space, and encouraging all to be participants in their environment. Beuys initiated this project in 1982, but was unable to finish it before he died in 1986. The project was completed by Beuys’ son the year following his death.
Renee Van der Stelt was the registrar and curator at CADVC in 2000, and had previously had a job at a museum that featured Beuys’ art. When she came to UMBC, she immediately had ideas to incorporate Beuys’ ideas of social sculpture, environmental art, and the expansion of green spaces to Baltimore. It was decided that there would be one sculpture park on campus, which would be the most cohesive and planned park. The other three parks in the project were already existing neighborhood parks with active community member run groups. The parks chosen in Baltimore city were Patterson Park, Carroll Park, and Wyman-Dell Park. These parks only received one rock and a small sign as a nod to the project. Otherwise, the trees were scattered throughout the park, with the main goal being to increase the tree canopy more than create a sculpture garden, like the one on campus.
Sandra Abbott, the Curator of Collections and Outreach at the CADVC since 2008, had decided to create a project honoring the twentieth anniversary of the project. It was decided that collecting oral histories of the main players in the planning and creation of the parks was in order. Sandra planned on interviewing people across the board who had involvement in the project: from the CEO of the grant organization that made the project possible, to UMBC’s head of Facilities Management, who aided in the planting of many trees on campus. These interviews were intended to be turned into the base of an archive for the project. Sandra explained to me that she has been contacted in previous years by researchers wanting to learn more about the project. However, she had nowhere to point them towards and nothing to give them. She hoped that creating this collection of stories and sharing them on MD-SOAR would allow for both researchers and UMBC students to answer any questions they might have on the project. Sandra also hoped that UMBC art students would be able to take these recordings and animate them into stories, like they have done in the past with other oral histories.
When I interviewed for this position in late May, Sandra was looking for two historians to collect these stories. However, I turned out to be the only one hired. I was nervous about the workload, as Sandra had hoped to record up to twenty oral histories over the summer. I was expecting to be very busy: researching subjects, preparing questions, the interview itself, transcribing, and creating a finding guide with abstracts. Not to mention trying to get into people’s schedules with the pandemic and a very quick turnaround. This would also be my first project of this scale. Even though I had taken Dr. Lanman’s Intro to Oral History course last fall, and used interviews as a research method quite often in undergrad as a Sociology/Anthropology major, I knew that this was going to be quite the undertaking compared to what I have done previously.
In my next blog post, I will discuss the oral history process, and how these expectations compare to reality!
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