Pandemic Oral History Project: An interview with Astrid Preston conducted July 27, 2020 by Matthew Simms

Project Overview

To document the cascade of public health, social, and financial crises set in motion by COVID-19, the Archives of American Art created an oral history series that recorded responses to the global pandemic across the American art world. Conducted virtually, the Pandemic Oral History Project features eighty-five short-form interviews with a diverse group of artists, teachers, curators, and administrators. Averaging twenty-five minutes long, each interview provides a firsthand account of and urgent insights into the narrator's triumphs and tragedies in the summer of 2020. With more than thirty hours of recorded video and audio, the series bears witness to an unprecedented era as it unfolded in real time.

Biographical/Historical Note

Astrid Preston (1945- ) is a draftsman and painter who works primarily in Los Angeles, California. Preston was part of a network of artists in Los Angeles that included Lita Albuquerque, Loren Madsen, and Steve Kahn and was first involved in a revival of drawing that brought her into contact with other mainly women draftsmen.

Provenance

This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.

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Source: https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-astrid-preston-21986