The Lucinda Childs Archives, Exhibitions, and Recent Press

A substantial part of Lucinda Childs’s archives, together with the records of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company, is held by the Centre national de la danse (CN D) in France. Childs made her first donation of films to the former Cinémathèque de la danse. This collection was incorporated into the CN D collections in 2012. The initial gift was significantly expanded in 2016 through a major donation, the same year it was presented in the exhibition Lucinda Childs: Nothing Personal 1963–1989, co-produced by the CN D and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. A further donation in 2025 completed and enriched the collection.

The archive documents more than five decades of Childs’s choreographic practice through scores, diagrams, sketches, notes, photographs, films, videos, press materials, and records relating to performances, touring, and the activities of the Lucinda Childs Dance Company. Graphic notation has been central to Childs’s choreographic process since the 1960s. Early materials from her years with Judson Dance Theater include choreographic notes, floor plans, and texts developed in the creation of individual works. During the 1970s, these materials became increasingly elaborate and systematic, with choreographic scores incorporating floor patterns, diagrams, and counts used throughout the processes of creation, rehearsal, and transmission.

The collection provides insight into the compositional systems underlying Childs’s work and the methods she developed to organize movement in relation to space, rhythm, and structure. It also traces the evolution of her choreographic practice across successive periods of her career, documenting major works, collaborations, productions, revivals, and international touring activities. Childs’s scores and drawings have been presented in major exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Several of her diagrams are also held in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The CN D collection is available for research at the Gilberte Cournand MediaLibrary.