A permanent record
of American
creative practice.
We document the people who make culture, the work they create, the places where that work happens, and the institutions and collaborators that make it possible.
When someone matters to the history of American culture, the evidence of what they made should not have to be reconstructed decades later from scattered programs, dead websites, forgotten credits and personal memory.
We start with what can be proven
The first layers of the ADC Registry are built from the public record. We collect and connect information from attributable sources, and preserve the source behind each fact.
These sources give us a place to begin. They let us establish names, dates, works, performances, organizations, collaborators, venues and other relationships — each one carrying the document it came from.
- music venues
- architecture firms
- publications
- event listings
- institutional archives
- artist websites
- programs
- portfolios
- interviews
- professional records
- 20,989
- records
- 3,688
- with their own page
- 19,645
- sourced facts
- 40,396
- captured documents
Counted at the last export, 2026-08-29.
But the public record is uneven
- Performance
A lead performer may be named
while the lighting designer is forgotten.
- Architecture
An architect may receive a building credit
while the craftspeople, fabricators, photographers and junior designers disappear from its history.
- Recording
A recording may preserve the name of the artist
while obscuring the engineers, musicians, arrangers, producers, assistants and technicians who helped make it.
ADC intends to go deeper.
Over time we will expand beyond easily accessible credits to document the fuller creative record — and the many other contributors whose work is routinely lost when culture is documented only from the top down.
- theatre technicians and production crews
- complete recording and discography credits
- design teams
- assistants
- craftspeople
- fabricators
- stylists
- producers
Building the record before history decides who mattered
Most archives begin after significance has already been established. We want to begin earlier.
ADC's long-term goal is a record that follows creative lives as they develop — not merely after museums, historians, critics or markets have decided which careers were important enough to preserve. That means documenting emerging practitioners alongside established ones, and preserving work that may otherwise disappear.
A privacy-first archive of student creative work
We intend to work with educational institutions to develop it. Participation should not require students to surrender control over their identities or personal information. The purpose is preservation: a durable record of work, attribution, development and creative lineage — while respecting the person who made it.
The ambition is deliberately long-term. If the 21st century produces its Picasso, Basquiat, Eames, Hadid, Prince or McQueen, we should not have to reconstruct their formative years fifty years later.
We should be able to see
- 01The student project.
- 02The first performance.
- 03The obscure collaboration.
- 04The assistant credit.
- 05The unfinished experiment.
- 06The small venue.
- 07The work before anyone knew it would matter.
And if history ultimately decides that someone else was the defining creative figure of the century, their record should be there too.
Culture is rarely made by individuals acting alone.
So ADC treats relationships as part of the historical record. Taken together, those connections show how creative communities actually function.
- Peopleworks
- Workscollaborators
- Collaboratorsorganizations
- Organizationsplaces
- Performancesvenues
- Designersmanufacturers
- Artistsscenes and institutions
The goal is not a directory of notable names. It is a source-backed map of creative practice broad enough to preserve both the celebrated figure and the ecosystem around them.
The Registry is intentionally unfinished.
Every new source can add another fact.
Every recovered program can restore another credit.
Every institutional partnership can preserve work that might otherwise disappear.
What exists today is the beginning of a record meant to become deeper, more precise and more representative with time.
We are building it now because the easiest time to preserve cultural history is before it becomes history.