NYT: 'Wayne Shorter Wanted Everyone to See His Archives. Now, They Will.'

[Mark Stryker]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/arts/music/wayne-shorter-archives.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Edited Thursday at 10:01 AM by Mark Stryker

[jazzbo]

Excellent. Thanks for sharing this article.

[Dan Gould]

Very curious about the photos in the archive ... and whether any of it will be available online or is it all to be held in NYC to only be seen by those who show up during business hours with specific requests?

The latter doesn't exactly embody "everyone to see his archives".

[clifford_thornton]

Well, depending on rights issues not everything can be shared online -- for example, when I worked for an artist's foundation in NYC, the photographers of the pieces (which were mostly performances) held reproduction rights, which is pretty common. Some of the photographers gave us carte blanche to do with images what we wanted, others were very careful about how their photos were distributed and worked with third parties to handle access and royalties. Depending on the contracts the Shorter family has with both photographers and the NYPL, the public availability online of certain things will vary.

Regardless, I think it's a good thing the archives are at NYPL and will be curious to see what unfolds. As I mentioned to Hank, 138LF of original manuscripts and images will take time to catalog, and there'll be a lot of treasures to (hopefully) examine in the future.

[Dan Gould]

I guess what I am really asking is if anything will be online (is it known they have a system akin to Vanderbilt's Aviary system?)  

Housed in a library for specific requests by patrons, with limitations on access or duplication - it's just guaranteed to make this a theoretical resource except for highly motivated researchers and crazy collectors.

[clifford_thornton]

yeah, remains to be seen what's available online. I could imagine the NYPL doing something like this: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/divisions/music-division

as you can see, some collections are onsite only, while others have digital availability, f.e.: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/913c4000-8fa8-0133-bc73-00505686d14e?canvasIndex=15

and yes, I'm familiar with Aviary. I can't remember what the NYPL uses for its online document viewer but I believe that a lot of their software is proprietary/in-house. They have quite a budget for such things.