The Fictional World of Archives, Art Galleries & Museums

His Bloody Project (2015) novel

2017-04-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

Title: His Bloody Project: Documents Relating to the Case of Roderick Macrae: A Historical Thriller
Author: Graeme Macrae Burnet
Publisher: New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015

A Man Booker Prize finalist, Burnet's second novel imagines a triple murder in a rural Scotland farming community through a series of documents, including an account by the 17 year old Roderick Macrae who's accused of the crimes.

The Novels of Steve Berry

2016-08-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

The Novels of Steve Berry

The Third Secret, 2005, about the Fatima vision, takes us into the Vatican's Riserva, "the special archive open only to popes"
The Templar Legacy, 2006, revolves around a search for the lost archives of the Knights Templar
The Alexandria Link, 2007, is about a search for the key to the location of the remnants of the ancient Library at Alexandria, Egypt
The Venetian Betrayal, 2007, involves European museums being destroyed by fire
The 14th Colony, 2016, sees hero Cotton Malone in Russia where he encounters a former KGB archivist, Vadim Belchenko; the archives of the post-Revolutionary American Society of the Cincinnati also play a role.

Braindead (2016-) TV series

2016-08-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

Title: Braindead (2016-)

In this witty political satire that features clips from the 2016 Presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, extraterrestrial invaders in the form of ant-like creatures find their way into the brains of various Washington, D.C., politicians and their staff.

In the episode titled "Taking on Water: How Leaks in D.C. Are Discovered and Patched" broadcast on August 21, 2016, character Laurel Healy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who works for her brother Democrat Senator Luke Healy (Danny Pino), meets with her lover Gareth Ritter (Aaron Tveit), chief of staff to Republican and infected Senator Red Wheatus (Tony Shalhoub), in front of the National Archives. The establishing shot before we see them shows a plinth with the engraved words "Study the Past". Another shot from ground level looking up at them with the building in the background shows its name over the columned entrance, "Archives of the United States of America."

The Vaults (2010) novel

2016-08-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Original Novel Title: The Vaults
Author: Toby Ball
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2010.

A debut novel that features a North American municipal archivist, Arthur Puskis, who's in charge of an enormous building in the unnamed City which contains criminal justice records dating back 70 years. The Vaults of the novel's title are located in a subbasement of City Hall. Puskis discovers a duplicate file, something that should not have happened. After reporting this error to the police Chief, he's ordered to take his first vacation in 18 years, which dates the novel's chronology to 1935. From there the mystery deepens as he undertakes his own investigation.

The Forgotten Room (2015) novel

2015-08-16T20:11:00.002-07:00

Original Novel Title: The Forgotten Room
Author: Lincoln Child
Publisher: Doubleday, 2015.

Lincoln Child, who also has collaborated on a series of well-received novels with Douglas Preston, sets his sixth solo novel in the rareified world of a Rhode Island think tank known as Lux. The forgotten room of the title references a hidden room within the huge mansion that houses Lux, the former home of the eccentric and wealthy Edward Delaveaux whose wife's ghost was said to still haunt a hallway of Lux.

The forgotten room contains a secret which one Lux researcher has already paid for with his life in a grisly suicide. Jeremy Logan, a Yale University professor who moonlights as an enigmalogist by solving unexplainable mysteries such as the Loch Ness monster or ghosts, is hired by Lux's director to investigate this out-of-character suicide. In doing so, Logan places his own life in jeopardy.

Early on during his investigation on behalf of Lux's director, he visits the institute's archives, located as archives usually are, in the mansion's basement. The think tank does not provide him with maps or signage nor did it occur to him to ask, so he has to find the archives on his own, where he eventually

"arrived at an open door with a sign that read ARCHIVES. Beyond the door, the walls and ceiling fell away, revealing a most impressive space bathed in bright yet pleasingly mellow light. Row after row of filing cabinets ran from front to back in achingly regular lines, but they were spaced far enough apart to forestall any sense of oppressiveness. At the far end, Logan could just make out another, smaller door, with what looked like a security station beside it. He stepped inside. ...

"Just inside the door, an elderly woman was seated at an official-looking table. A nameplate on one side of the desk read J. RAMANUJAN. She ran her eyes up and down Logan, lips pursing with an expression he could not decide was appraising or disapproving." (p. 78-79)

He's initially denied access because he has only a temporary ID card. He quickly overturns the archivist's decision with a letter the director provided him entitling him to unrestricted access. Not knowing exactly what he's looking for other than files pertaining to the 1930s, the archivist provides him with "blank document requisition forms." (p. 79)

After some discussion over the nature of his archival research and request to look for documents himself in the stacks, the archivist reluctantly agrees with the caveat that he "take no more than five folders from the stacks at a time. And please be careful when you refile them." (p. 80)

He spends a total of three hours at this research, "scribbling his observations into a small notebook with a gold pen," and realizes in the end that the files do not contain any records more recent than 2000 even though he was only interested in files from the 1930s. (p. 81)

The archivist informs him that more recent records are either with the scientists themselves or "'in archive two, beyond that door.' And she pointed toward the far end of the room." Archive two turns out to be off-limits to Logan even with his special letter of access. Seems he required "a level-A access or greater" according to the security guard who's armed with a nightstick and a can of Mace. "Then he [Logan] nodded, turned, and made his way back through the stacks and into the basement corridor beyond." (p. 81-82)

So the main archive stacks have no security other the guard who's at one end and who's purpose is guard against intruders to archive two. Filing cabinets for storage are so 1970s. Any archives worth its upkeep would more than likely not permit the use of pens to take notes. At least the part about the archives being relegated to a basement seems to accord with the location of many archival facilities with which I'm familiar.

The World Before Us (2014) novel

2015-04-03T11:34:00.001-07:00

Original Novel Title: The World Before Us
Author: Aislinn Hunter
Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 2014.

This novel contains three timelines, one of which, 2010, has an archivist, 34 year-old Jane Standen, who works for a London museum that's due to close from lack of funding.

The Devil Colony (2011) novel

2011-09-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Original Novel Title: The Devil Colony: A Sigma Force Novel
Author: James Rollins
Publisher: William Morrow, 2011.

Rollins' novel The Devil Colony contains a typical mischaracterization of an archives as a museum. In this case, it is really inexcusable since he's profiling the United States National Archives which even has the word archives in its name. Yet he insists on calling it a museum, not once, but at least twice.

"Painter scrunched his brow. Why was Seichan sniffing around the National Archives? The museum was a storehouse of America's historical manuscripts and documents. ..." (p. 84)

Charpter 9 of Part 1 has some of the characters visiting the National Archives very late at night:

"Dr. Eric Heisman was one of the museum's [National Archives'] curators, specializing in Colonial American history." (p. 88)

And again on page 91 Dr. Heisman is referred to as a curator.

Super 8 (2011) movie

2011-04-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

The Super 8 movie released June 10, 2011 is written and directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The Editing Room section of the official Web site makes clever use of archival film footage that appears to have been heavily censored.

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978) movie

2011-04-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting is a 1978 movie by director Paul Ruiz. According to the DVD package blurb, "A bumbling art collect attempts to reconstruct the content of a painting missing from a series of seven painted 100years earlier by an eccentric artist."

The movie is adapted from a novel of the same name by Pierre Klossowski.

The Modigliani Scandal (1976, 1985) novel

2011-02-12T11:20:00.000-08:00

Ken Follett originally published his novel The Modigliani Scandal in 1976 under the pseudonym of Zachary Stone, at least that's my assumption since it was copyrighted that year to that person. The novel was reissued under his own name in May 1985 as a paperback.

The Rembrandt Affair (2010) novel

2010-11-25T14:27:00.000-08:00

Daniel Silva's 2010 novel The Rembrandt Affair features once again his art restorer-sleuth Gabriel Allon, this time, as the time suggests, on the trail of a stolen, priceless and deadly Rembrandt painting.

In addition to scenes inside art galleries (public and private), there is also at least one depiction of an archivist, "a tall man in his early forties with reddish blond hair" who worked in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. The scene between Gabriel Allon and him is on p. 83-85 (hardcover). On p. 172 (hardcover) there is also a reference to the "archives of Argentina's Immigration Office."

Red (2010) Movie

2010-11-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

Red, a 2010 movie about a retired CIA agent's life gone wrong, includes a couple of scenes inside a secret CIA records storage vault staffed by Henry the Records Keeper as played by Ernest Borgnine. Henry does not, however, have a sense of moral obligation to his employer and violates not only whatever statute governs his work but also ethical codes of conduct for archivists and records managers.

Taking Chances (2009) movie

2010-10-23T09:36:00.000-07:00

In actor Justin Long's 2009 movie Taking Chances he plays the wise, young curator of a local history museum in a dying town in Pennsylvania whose town council plans on building a casino operated by a local Indian tribe on the town's Revolutionary War battlefield. Long's courageous stand against the council and the town itself is aided by his one slacker friend and a female love interest, who happens to be a young prostitute, in bed with the mayor and desperately searching for her father.

The Atlantis Code (2009) novel

2010-09-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

Charles Brokaw's first novel The Atlantis Code is a religious-archaeological thriller based on the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis. A secret order within the Catholic Church has been guarding a secret and with linguist hero Thomas Lourds hot on the trail of clues, this potboiler explores some unusual territory. One of the characters is the Vatican City archivist Father Emil Sebastian (p. 48, hardcover). Museums, artifacts and historical records, including old books, also abound.

The Thieves of Darkness (2010) novel

2010-09-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

According to the dustjacket of Richard Doetsch's 2010 novel The Thieves of Darkness: A Thriller, "reformed master thief" Michael St. Pierre helps an imprisoned friend in a quest to find "a map containing the location of a holy place lost to the mists of time, a repository of knowledge and treasure predating Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

Heresy (2010) novel

2010-09-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

S.J. Parris' 2010 novel Heresy features the late 16th monk and early scientist-philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and the time he spent in England. The plot involves secret and old, even by 16th century standards, manuscripts and books.

The Red Pyramid (2010) Novel

2010-08-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

Book 1 of Rick Riordan's The Kane Chronicles, whose title is The Red Pyramid (2010), is based on "a transcript of a digital recording. ... The author makes no claims for the authenticity of the recording. ..." Part of this novel for teen and young adult readers is set in the British Museum and features the kind of ancient Egyptian mayhem associated with The Mummy movies starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.

Inglorious Basterds

2010-06-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

Original title: Inglorious Basterds.
Director: Quentin Tarantino.
Original USA release date: August 21, 2009; DVD release date: January 14, 2010.

Summary: Without spoiling the plot, even though it's easy to guess from the many signals throughout the film what will happen near the end, a collection of over 300 nitrate 35mm motion picture films in a movie theater create a firestorm of unimaginable consequences for the Nazi villains and their guests in this Brad Pitt movie vehicle from master of ultra-violent chic Quentin Tarantino.

The Testament

2010-03-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

Original novel title: The Testament.
Author: Eric Van Lustbader
Publisher: New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates, 2006 (hardcover), 2007 (paperback)
Thriller writer Van Lustbader tackles the New Testament of the Bible in what can only be described as yet another Da Vinci Code readalike. According to the dustjacket, "For more than eight hundred years, the Order [of Gnostic Observatines] has preserved an ancient cache of documents, including a long-lost Testament attributed to Christ that could shake Christinaity to its foundations."

Destroyer of Worlds

2009-12-20T13:17:00.000-08:00

Original title: Destroyer of Worlds
Author: Niven, Larry and Lerner, Edward M.
Publisher: New York, NY: Tor, 2009 (hardcover)
The final volume in Niven and Lerner's trilogy prequel to Larry Niven's 1970 Ringworld, Destroyer of Worlds, like its two predecessors, Fleet of Worlds (2007) and Juggler of Worlds (2008) includes several references to archives. The human archivist Sven Hebert-Draskovics featured in the first two novels is no longer a character in the third volume.
We learn a little more about the importance of the Pak library, the alien species featured in Niven's 1973 novel Protector, which exists to protect the Pak culture after they repeatedly destroy their civilization due to their evolutionary nature:

"Thssthfok remembered visiting the Library before New Hope set out, poring over ancient records of Pakhome's climate. .... His work had gone slowly. Most information existed only as written text stamped into nearly indestructible metal pages, survivability taking precedence over ease of use. It was said that neither absence of electricity nor obsolescence of format could devalue the data--never that the archaic representations made work for Library staff, painstakingly transcribing from old languages to newer." (p. 25)

"At this distance [in space], the Library complex was no longer visible. The stamped metal pages of the Library would survive the catastrophe [the galactic core explosion] soon to kill everyone left on the planet." (p. 29)

References to the Gw'oth alien species and its archives, which were introduced in Juggler of Worlds, continue in Destroyer of Worlds, particularly on pages 71 to 74.
There are also some scattered mentions of shipboard archives aboard a human ship, the Don Quixote, on pages beginning with 119.

The Book of Air and Shadows

2009-11-25T22:36:00.000-08:00

Original title: The Book of Air and Shadows
Author: Gruber, Michael
Publisher: New York, NY: William Morrow, 2007 (hardcover)
This thriller features an intellectual property lawyer, a cache of 17th century letters and a previously unknown
literary work by William Shakespeare. This novel bears comparison with What Time Devours (2009), a thriller by A.J. Hartley.

The Bellini Madonna

2009-10-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

Original title: The Bellini Madonna
Author: Lowry, Elizabeth.
Publisher: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
A debut novel, this novel's protagonist, down-and-out art historian Thomas Lynch, does not sound very likeable. He's on a quest for a vanished painting of the Madonna by the Italian artist Giovanni Bellini and ends up at the home of, so he believes, its last owner.

Codex 632

2009-10-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

Original title: Codex 632: The Secret Identity of Christopher Columbus: A Novel
Author: Santos, José Rodrigues dos; translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin.
Publisher: New York: William Morrow, 2008.
First published in Portugal in 2005 as O Codex 632, this novel references several archives and historical manuscripts, all of which the author assure us, exist, including Codex 632 of the title. The author attempts to solve the mystery of Christopher Columbus' true identity. Unfortunately, the book reads more like a journalistic expose than a novel. I only managed to finish it because I wanted to read all the references to archives.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

2009-07-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

Original title: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Original movie release date: January 23, 2009; DVD release date: May 12, 2009
In this prequel movie starring Bill Nighy as the vampire king Viktor, there's a scene where Tannis (Steven Mackintosh), one of the vampire leaders while vacating their stronghold from an overwhelming werewolf attack, is attempting to retrieve scrolls from what appears to be an archives or office chamber. To Tannis Viktor angrily says word's to the effect, You don't have time to collect your precious scrolls.

The Illuminator

2009-07-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Original title: The Illuminator
Author: Vantrease, Brenda Rickman
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2005
Novel about a 14th century (medieval) manuscript illuminator.