Recollection Wisconsin digitizes Guido Brink collection

Thanks to the Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative, the Guido Brink collection at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) will soon be digitized and available for public access. Current UW-Milwaukee graduate student Ceceilia Loeschmann is digitizing and cataloging the collection during summer 2025.

“I’m here digitizing, describing and then arranging the Guido Brink files, which range from ephemera, like newspapers or his resume or letterheads, to photographs and actual works of art, to advertisements for exhibitions,” explains Loeschmann, a graduate student in UW-Milwaukee’s coordinated Library and Information Science and Art History MA programs.

Ceceilia Loeschmann in the MIAD Galleries storage space.

With a background in graphic design, and libraries and archives experience ranging from academic to museum to corporate, Loeschmann is well-equipped to preserve the Guido Brink collection for future use.

“It’s a really wide range of materials that you don’t often get in terms of archives internships,” Leschmann says. “It helps having a background in that era of art history and understanding what was happening, how [Brink] was really feeding off the energy of that time and following artistic trends as well.”

The Recollection Wisconsin Digitization Initiative places information school graduate students with content partners like MIAD. Interns receive training and guidance from Recollection Wisconsin staff and work with host site supervisors to digitize and create metadata for new collections, which are then made available through the Recollection Wisconsin portal. 

Improving access to and preserving the Guido Brink collection are Loeschmann’s main goals. “It will be available for both people here at MIAD to look at and see what we have … and people will be able to see it publicly throughout the world on the Recollection Wisconsin website,” says Loeschmann. “If a researcher wants to come in and do some research on Guido Brink, they’ll be able to do that.”

One of the seven founding members of MIAD, Guido Brink saw the college through many changes. “It’s been fun coming across some of that archival material for the Milwaukee School of Art and the Layton School of Art, and then see that he’s made an impact throughout each decade,” Loeschmann says. After summer 2025, the Guido Brink collection will be available through Artwork Archive and the Recollection Wisconsin website.

Learn more about Loeschmann’s work with Recollection Wisconsin and explore MIAD’s Galleries!