Welcome to the LAUSD Art & Artifact Collection/Archive and Museum Online Database!
Bienvenidos a Base de Datos de Colección/Archivo y Museo de Arte y Artefactos del LAUSD!
This Online Database is provided with support from the Steven and Deborah Lebowitz Foundation and LACMA.
For more information, please contact: Cintia B. Romero, Curator/Archivist and Collection Manager
Office: 213-202-8684
Email: cp-cintia.romero@lausd.net
LAUSD Arts Education Branch, Division of Instruction
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The Mission of the Art & Artifact Collection/Archive and Museum:
Engage and educate the Los Angeles community, including students, families, faculty, staff, alumni as well as independent historians, curators, librarians, and archivists about the history of LAUSD and its role within the greater community.
Preserve and protect the unique cultural heritage of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Encourage the school community to become involved in the dynamic process of contributing to the Collection/Archive and Museum in ways that reflect current environments and cultures.
History:
The LAUSD Art & Artifact Collection/Archive and Museum is a program of the LAUSD Arts Education Branch (AEB), Division of Instruction (DOI), in association with the Facilities Services Division (FSD). It consists of a public Collection across more than 1,000 schools and District administrative sites, a unique Archive located in downtown Los Angeles, and a historical Museum made to resemble a late 19th Century school house:
The LAUSD Art & Artifact Collection
located in across more than 1,000 school and administrative sites that have accumulated historical items, artwork, and artifacts, some as property of the District and others as gifts and donations. Teachers, staff, alumni, and library associations gave gifts of artwork, rare books, yearbooks, scrapbooks, and silver tea sets used in Home Economics classes.Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education records, 1875-2012 are now at UCLA Library, Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library. LAUSD Board of Education Records 1875-2012
Records before 1875, called the Common Council Minutes is kept by the Los Angeles City Records Center and Archives at the Piper Technical Center at 555 Ramirez Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
Schoology Access Code 7XGG-FCV6-538BH
The LAUSD Art & Artifact Archive
is a special repository in downtown Los Angeles that contains administrative and instructional documents, rare books, precious artifacts, and over 40,000 photographs, negatives, and slides of LAUSD school activities and architecture from the 1910s to the 1980s. District employees served as staff photographers for the Audio-Visual Section, Public Information Office, and other District branches. The accompanying, meticulously organized card catalog and the thousands of photographs and negatives are arguably the most impressive feature of the Archive.Other items in the Archive include the Carnegie Corporation of New York (founded in 1911) distributed rare books, prints, etchings, and folio collections such as the Carnegie Art History Collection to secondary schools in the early 1930s. The Californiana Collection consists of old curricula from the California State Series; also, a large donation from the Dawson Collection (formerly at George Washington High School) was mentioned in an issue of The Pacific Bindery Talk journal in September 1934. Ernest Dawson owned a rare bookstore called Dawson's Book Shop, founded in Los Angeles in 1905.
The LAUSD Art & Artifact Museum
opened in 2014 and is located on the 2nd Floor of LAUSD Beaudry Administrative Offices Headquarters. Meant to resemble a late 19th-century classroom, objects in the exhibit tell the story of LAUSD’s formation, administration, programs, and display miscellaneous historical items commonly found in a classroom. Desks, furniture, and objects are from the original Heritage Schoolhouse Museum, previously called the Vernon Avenue Schoolhouse and originally built in 1876. Reservations are available Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays 9am-5pm, excluding federal holidays. https://tinyurl.com/lausdmuseumFrequently Asked Questions:
If you don't see your school, contact the Curator. We are adding items all the time!
To add to the Collection, please submit LAUSD Art Inventory Form
May I come in during regular business hours to look at the Art Archive or Museum?
The Museum is available by appointment only. Appointments are FREE. Hours are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 9 am – 5 pm, excluding federal holidays. For reservations visit https://tinyurl.com/lausdmuseum Please note the Art Archive space is a warehouse, simultaneously being organized by staff, and is therefore not conducive to “tours” at this time. However, the Archivist is happy to research a subject or school on your behalf and provide FREE resources remotely.
Our school is celebrating an anniversary; does the Archive have any historic items?
The LAUSD Art & Artifact Collection/Archive may have photographs, yearbooks or other memorabilia to loan or digitize to support your project. Digitized historical photographs of LAUSD school activities, architecture, and aerials are available FREE for educational purposes. Please be patient with these requests, which can take up to 2 weeks to process. If you dig up treasures through your own research at school-site archives or with alumni, past faculty and students, the LAUSD Art & Artifact Collection/Archive would love gratis copies of any digital or print publication to add to the Archive and preserve and share your work for future generations.
I am interested in making an artwork, artifact, or memorabilia donation. What is the process?
Please see the LAUSD Donation Application that will be approved following District guidelines. All donations are outright and unconditional gifts to be used at LAUSD’s discretion. It is expected that copyright ownership will accompany all gifts to LAUSD. Gifts valued over $25,000 require Board of Education Approval. Once approved and acquired, a Donation Acceptance Letter with LAUSD’s tax identification number will be issued to the donor. The Archivist is NOT permitted to appraise the monetary value of a donation; the donor is advised to speak with their tax accountant, attorney, or hire an appraiser beforehand to ascertain the item’s value.