Rani Singh on Harry Smith

The GRI has just released a collection of essays on and by the great Harry Smith. Artforum has an interview with one of the editors:

I was Harry’s assistant from 1988 until his death in November 1991, and when he passed away I started the Harry Smith Archives as a nonprofit and attempted to locate, collect, preserve, and present his materials, which, due to his irascible nature and peripatetic lifestyle, were essentially all around the globe. Smith lived a very bohemian life, to put it mildly. When I’d visit him, his stuff would be all chockablock––it was really an incredible experience. Whether he was staying at the Chelsea Hotel, at the Breslin Hotel, at Naropa Institute, or in a room in Allen Ginsberg’s apartment in the Lower East Side, it was always an experience. He would have a Seminole patchwork hanging up or a frozen bird in the freezer or a film project in the works and stacks and stacks of books. The room usually had a unique odor, a mix of marijuana and Salem 100 cigarettes and whatever kind of beer or cheap vodka was on sale that week. It was all very heady.