The  Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture at Bizzell exhibition is the public-facing expression of a year-long collaboration between OU Libraries and the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture. Behind the scenes, another activity is taking place: soliciting and gathering the American School of Architecture Archive.

The College of Architecture's work to collect the drawings, plans, project files, correspondence, and ephemera of OU architecture faculty and alumni during the 1950s and '60s to establish the archive has gained momentum as word spreads about the American School project through these exhibitions, the first in Venice in May 2018, now at the Bizzell Memorial Library (2018-2019) and later at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (2020). The exhibition featuring the work of Goff and his students is an opportunity to connect with former students, associates, and clients and build enthusiasm and engagement around the archive.

Materials are arriving in boxes and mailing tubes, portfolio cases and brown paper envelopes, and in the form of digital files. They come from the homes and offices of architects who studied or worked with Bruce Goff and others, or from clients whose homes became physical evidence of the work of Goff and his students. 

Recent acquisitions include drawings by Ernest Burden and Harvey Ferrero; ephemera and correspondence from Norman Rudi; material related to Mendel Glickman, who worked with Frank Lloyd Wright before joining the OU architecture faculty, and plans and correspondence between Bruce Goff and Celestine Barby, for whom Goff designed a home in the 1970s. Arn Henderson, the author of Bruce Goff: Architecture of Discipline in Freedom (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) recently donated his research files and drawings.