ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has temporarily suspended operation due to lack of funding this year. For the past five years, the Animation Archive has been funded by the membership of ASIFA-Hollywood ($15 from the annual dues of each member is earmarked for the archive budget). However, this year, due to the shortfall from the Annie Awards revenue, the Board of Directors was forced to reallocate the archive budget into the general operating funds for the organization.
According to the ASIFA website, the Board plans to reinstate the funding for the Archive as soon as possible. In addition to restoring the support of the archive through membership dues, the Board is hoping to refinance the project through grant writing and other sources, as well as an upcoming on-line auction.
“While the Archive is closed temporarily, we have ambitious plans to reopen it as soon as the project is funded,” says ASIFA-Hollywood president Frank Gladstone. “In fact, our plans include not only a revitalized digital archive but also a major effort to account for and categorize our practical archive. We have thousands of animation items and artifacts, donated to ASIFA-Hollywood over the past 40 years, from the collections and estates of the founders of our industry. Up to this point, we have simply been warehousing this work, but now we intend on formally evaluating what we have, categorizing the collection and storing it appropriately so that it will be available to students, animation professionals, researchers and historians in perpetuity.”
In the meantime, the Animation Archive, A-HAA Podcast and the Creative League continue thanks to volunteers and assistant archivists. The regularly scheduled operating hours of the archive facility in Burbank have been curtailed, but individual appointments can still be arranged.
If you would like to contribute to the valuable Archive Project, please visit www.asifa-hollywood.org.
