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Confluence Project Records, circa 1996-2017

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Confluence Project
Title
Confluence Project Records
Dates
circa 1996-2017 (inclusive)
Quantity
56 linear feet, (14 record cartons, 1 half-record carton, 12 large flat boxes, 6 small flat boxes, 17 tubes)
42 videocassettes
117 cds
2 minidvs
7 betacam sp
0.5 gigabytes, (80 digital files)
Collection Number
WCMss.444
Summary
In 1999, Maya Lin was commissioned to create a series of earthworks to commemorate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition from 2004 to 2006. The collective works are called the Confluence Project and were commissioned by a group of arts patrons working in collaboration with native tribes of the Plateau, Columbia River Basin and Pacific Northwest. The Confluence Project Records consist of administrative files, project files, education files, press clippings, and audiovisual materials.
Repository
Whitman College and Northwest Archives
Whitman College and Northwest Archives
Penrose Library, Room 130
345 Boyer Avenue
Walla Walla, WA
99362
Telephone: 5095275922
Fax: 5095264785
archives@whitman.edu
Access Restrictions

Collection is open for research. Series 3 and Series 5 contain unprocessed born-digital files on CDs, MiniDisks, Betacam SX, and VHS. Unprocessed content includes files from Confluence in the Schools, Confluence in the Classroom projects, recorded interviews, and footage from sites. For more information, please contact the Archives.

Languages
English
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Historical Note

In 1999, Maya Lin was commissioned to create a series of earthworks to commemorate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition from 2004 to 2006. The collective works are called the Confluence Project and were commissioned by a group of arts patrons working in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples of the Plateau, Columbia River Basin and Pacific Northwest. Lewis and Clark's Corps of the Discovery expedition failed to achieve its mission to find a contiguous waterway across the continent but the explorers' contact with the peoples, places and species of the West set in motion a brutal, blunt transformation of the Western landscape. It is this contact that Lin's work seeks to "memorialize." Lin is arguably most famous for her memorials, including the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, the Civil Rights memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama and the Women's Table on the campus of Yale University. Confluence Project planners sought Lin out based on this history and Lin took the commission, pledging that this would be her last memorial. In accepting the commission, she was explicit from the outset about not wanting to make monumental statues of two figures on a hill pointing westward like the ubiquitous image of Lewis and Clark seen throughout the region on historical placards and signs. When completed, the project will consist of six public art installations at various historical points and state parks along the Columbia. These include Cape Disappointment State Park, Washington; Fort Vancouver, Washington; Sandy River Delta, Oregon; Sacajawea State Park, Washington; and Chief Timothy Park, Washington. At the time of this writing, a final site at Celilo, Oregon is awaiting completion.

The Confluence Project, as originally conceived, was to include a seventh location. However, over the project's nearly twenty-year lifespan to date, this location evolved from a physical site to a virtual one. Until around 2008, the final Confluence site was going to be an environmental research center in Ridgefield, Washington. Following the financial crisis, plans for this physical location were abandoned. Instead, Lin has proposed that a website and a online publication will be the seventh location. Lin's interactive website WhatisMissing.net is a crowd-sourced website that documents species and habitat loss through interactive maps, videos, audio and links that incorporate scientific data with personal anecdotes to provide evidentiary claims of an environment in decline as a result of human activity. The website currently links to the Confluence Project's website thereby incorporating regional information about species and habitat loss along the Columbia River with similar testimonials and scientific information about habitat decline across the globe.

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Content Description

The Confluence Project Records consist of administrative files, project files, education files, press clippings, and audiovisual materials. The records span the years 1996 to 2016, and document the development of the Confluence Project from its early planning stages through the construction of the earthworks at Cape Disappointment State Park, Vancouver Land Bridge, Sandy River Delta, Sacajawea State Park, and Chief Timothy State Park. Although it has not been built, there is also documentation of a proposed site at Celilo Park. Within the project files, there are extensive designs and site plans of the earthworks as conceived of by artist Maya Lin, as well as eleven oversize models of the sites. The clipping files reveal how the Confluence Project was viewed by local communities and critics who responded to the project. The administrative records document the day-to-day operations of the Confluence Project including fundraising, financial records, meeting minutes, publications, and related material.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

Organized into six series: 1. Administration Files, 1996-2017. 2. Project Files, 2000-2013. 3. Education files, 2005-2014. 4. Press clippings, 1998-2015. 5. Audiovisual, 1997-2014.

Acquisition Information

Donated to the Whitman College and Northwest Archives by Colin Fogarty, the Executive Director of the Confluence Project, in May 2018. The accession number is 2018-021.

Processing Note

This collection received a basic level of processing, including rehousing and minimal organization. Folder titles are often based on those provided by the creator. Titles and dates have not been verified against the contents of the folders in all cases. Otherwise, folder titles are supplied by staff during processing.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Dana Bronson and Laura Rivale
2019

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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