This chapter gives an account of the history of the Archive and the services it provides for artists, which led Careof and Viafarini to open the DOCVA Documentation Center for Visual Arts at the Fabbrica del Vapore in 2008.
It is a repertoire of material dating back to the early publicity of the Archive, of the collaboration with Milan City Council’s Youth Department, as well as a report of various accounts given by those who have run the projects over the years.
It presents those curators who on a weekly basis have held meetings with artists, given them free advice, examined and filed their work. These were also the critics who organised annual group shows, drawing on the archive with the intent of promoting the artists demonstrating mature work. They selected the most consistent portfolios for the Open Archive, a sort of focus on that is regularly updated and is in constant evolution, and catalogued them on the countless shelves of the DOCVA Archive.