Diagnosing the Archive

Abstract

Focusing on the diary of Dr. William Henry Thayer, father of the artist Abbott Handerson Thayer, this essay calls upon scholars to probe archives for signs of health and disease, as a physician might investigate a patient’s body. The presence of this diary in the Thayer Family Papers raises important questions for art historians: What does it mean to understand an artist’s life and work through the lens of illness? Can we examine an artist’s archive for symptoms of disease, as a physician examines the body to diagnose a patient? What might be gained by reading an artist’s personal papers in medical terms? Like a medical subject, archives can often appear incoherent and incomplete, but a critical (one might say clinical) gaze can animate their surfaces and depths, generating new insights and possible futures.