Driven by a great love for nature and my commitment to protecting it, like so many others, I happened to watch two weeks ago the 5th episode of the documentary ‘Healing Gardens’. It was about the healing properties of plants, focusing on the work of botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger [1] and her efforts to protect and preserve tree seeds from around the world. It was the moment I recalled my participation – among 41 other artists – at the art exhibition ‘Back to Nature’ held in Athens, in September 2023, where I created a painting depicting a tree trying to be saved in an imaginary ‘box’. Reflecting on my next blog post, I realized that the archive I have been working on – for about a year and a half now – could be seen as a kind of ark, a legacy safeguarding the seeds of cultural heritage.
Likewise, being part of the ArchivorumArk project, and particularly archiving the life’s work of Babs Haenen, I came to the realisation that artist archives are similar to seed storage projects. Both preserve something vital from the past so that future generations can grow from it, learn, adapt and even create something new. They are not only about safeguarding; they are about sustainability.
Seed banks, also known as seed vaults, collect and store varieties of seeds, sometimes rare or endangered. The most prominent example is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, often described as a “biodiversity insurance policy.” It safeguards duplicates from around the world against loss caused by natural disasters, war, climate change or neglect.
Yet these banks are not simply static repositories or museums. They enable regeneration: if a seed variety disappears elsewhere, stocks from the vault can be reintroduced, grown and adapted to new conditions. This process depends on careful cataloguing, detailed metadata and continuous testing of viability, often with contributions from many different sources such as the Millennium Seed Bank in the UK, the largest plant conservation project in the world with over 100 countries participating since it opened in 2000.
An artist’s archive functions in much the same way. It gathers original materials such as sketches, notebooks, drafts, letters, photographs and digital files, as well as any other document that record the artist’s process, decisions and experiments. Like seeds, these materials are fragile. Paper fades, formats become obsolete and art supplies deteriorate. Without an archive, much of this history risks vanishing. But when preserved, these materials regenerate cultural life. Scholars can trace how ideas evolved, curators can build exhibitions from unseen works, and artists can draw inspiration for new creations rooted in the past.
The strength of an archive lies in its structure. It is not simply a stack of boxes but a carefully organised system of catalogues, metadata standards and preservation policies. My colleagues and I devote passion to this work: ensuring that materials can be found when needed, arranging them logically by time, project or medium, and maintaining conditions that support their survival both physically and digitally. This structure becomes part of the legacy. It allows an artist’s work to be read as a living story rather than scattered fragments. With the opening of the new Archivorum Library in Turin, we are building environments where archives can exist both in physical form and as digital resources. Stay tuned for a future blog post where I will be sharing more on this milestone for the ArchivorumArk project.
It is easy to imagine archives as the domain of scholars, but they matter to everyone. They preserve cultural memory, showing not only the finished work but also what it felt like to create. They inspire regeneration by giving art schools, community groups and everyone interested access to materials that spark new ideas. And they protect diversity by keeping marginal, experimental, and often overlooked works alive, such as those of many women artists, ensuring cultural memory is not reduced to only the most popular voices. You can read more about this in my previous blog post on preserving women’s art and voices.
Like seed vaults, artist archives are guardians of resilience. They preserve under difficult conditions, but more importantly, they enable growth. If we treat archives as seed banks – valuing variety, ensuring viability and allowing for renewal – we not only safeguard memory but also make it possible for creativity to flourish from deep and lasting roots.
[1] Diana Beresford-Kroeger – Irish-Canadian botanist and medical biochemist, acclaimed author, and climate visionary known for bridging Western science with ancient Celtic plant knowledge to champion the preservation of global forests.
Marilia Fara
I really appreciate the way you connect archives with seed banks — it’s a metaphor that captures both fragility and renewal. Just as seeds in Svalbard or the Millennium Seed Bank are held not only to be preserved but to be reactivated, an artist’s archive also has this potential to regenerate cultural life. I found especially compelling your point that structure itself becomes part of the legacy: the archive as a living system rather than a static repository. It’s exciting to hear about the Archivorum Library in Turin — it feels like the perfect environment to nurture these “cultural seeds” into future growth.