A prior incarnation of "Lost and Unknown" was seen in May at the Rhode Island Historical Society, presented by curator Sara Agniel of Gallery Agniel, the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, and a Brown University class in oral history.

That class of 27 students, "Theories and Methods in Oral History," led by lecturer Paul Buhle, picked up the ball and ran with it. In addition to the exhibition and a forthcoming online presence, the class will continue to focus on the subject. In the past two years, some 60 people have been interviewed, with 18 represented in the show.

Buhle says the students did "a marvelous job," high praise from the author or editor of 27 books that include Popular Culture in America and Working Lives of Rhode Island. As he noted in an e-mail: "Truth is, poking around for 30 years, interviewing old-timers about working-class issues, the built environment, etc., there was SO MUCH that I just didn’t know or had only begun to learn about, I’m embarrassed to say. But perhaps all of us, even the most hip, only know of one chunk or another."

Among the four students who took on the challenge of refining an exhibition from the material, the selection process for what to include was amiable. We spoke in the Newport gallery, surrounded by displays to which they were putting final touches.

"We sort of made cases for different artists who we thought would be important," said Micah Salkind, who hasn’t taken the class yet but involved himself in this stage of the process because he’s particularly interested in arts culture. "We wanted to get females represented and wanted to represent different times. So it became a collaborative selection process."

"With only 60 interviews, you can’t have a comprehensive story with all of the central figures," said Krista Ingebretson, who coordinates the AIDS oral history project at Brown’s Swearer Center for Public Service. "But we did want to get people from a range of times, working in a range of mediums. People who were involved not only in their own work but in the community of artists in Rhode Island."

Megan Hall got them laughing with an observation about their culling methods. "You could say it was sort of a college admission process," said the urban studies concentrator, who has conducted and edited radio interviews. "You know, who knows why one person gets accepted to a college and another doesn’t? We were just trying to look at all these things and figure out how we could make the best combination."

The late artist Karnig Nalbandian was one colorful character who easily made the cut, descriptively brought back to life by his nephew George Manyan. As Julia Wolfson said, "He did every kind of art you can imagine and was amazing at all of it. He was in with the scene. He was one of the people who really knew everyone." Wolfson is the only class member who hadn’t done oral histories before this project, but she will be doing more this fall, collecting interviews in the artist communities of Jodhpur, India.

The four students have absorbed enough about Providence underground goings-on to contribute oral histories of their own, if only second-hand. Listen, for example, to Hall telling about the 1978 ‘Private Parts’ erotic art show in Providence.

"A ProJo reporter came the day before the show and took some photographs for an article about it, which is on the wall right there," she said, pointing to her left. "They hadn’t planned to advertise this exhibit. It was just supposed to be for the RISD community and friends to come and see. But because of the article, there was a line around the block to see the private parts — scandalous!"

"But the Providence cops also heard about it. And just a few days before the exhibit opened, Rhode Island had passed a new obscenity law. So the ‘Private Parts’ show was a test case. The cops interpreted the obscenity law to say that this show should be shut down. So the show was raided, the police came and ripped art off the wall or broke it, and then the organizers sued the city for violating their rights. In the end, they won. It was ruled unconstitutional to take the art down."

There are many more incidents and anecdotes that have yet to be gathered by the oral history class. If you’d like to suggest one, contact Buhle at Paul_Buhle@brown.edu. And like cultural history itself, the exhibition is an ongoing process. Not only will interviews continue with figures in the Rhode Island arts scene, over- and underground, but a website should be up by early October, with complete transcripts of interviews as well as images. Check for its link through brown.edu’s American Civilization Department site.

— B.R.