Since the turn of the millennium an extensive digitalisation of the European cultural heritage has been underway. The aim is to make the common cultural heritage accessible to everyone and promote developments in education, tourism and the creative industry, among others. Historically, archival documents and works of art have been closely related as archival documents has served as a proof of an artworks history and autheticity, its’ provinance. Since the turn of the millennium the archive has become a recurring theme in contemporary art. Informed by post structuralist theories of the archive as both a material place and a structure for power and history.

In this paper the relation between archival documents and artworks are being examined. By studying the digitalisation project of Thielska Galleriet in Stockholm the aim is to answer how documents of Richard Bergh’s letter archive, preserved at Thielska Galleriet, are being affected when made digitally available together with the museum’s art collection. The study is framed by the archive science theory the accessparadigm. Occuring at the turn of the 21st century the paradigm correlated with the change from paper to digital information storage, changing the focus of the archive from custody to access. The analysis is taking an interdisciplinary approach in relation to the concepts provenance and authenticity, established in both archive science and art history and is further framed by the art historical dissertation The Archive Art Phenomenon: History and Critique at the turn of the Twenty-First Century by Sarah Callahan (Stockholm University 2018).

The case study shows that the relation between archival documents and artworks at Thielska Galleriet has been blurred in different ways historically. Though faithful to concepts of provenance and authenticity, the digitalisation project faced some challenges regarding how the status of some archival documents changed when registered in correlation with the art collection in the database. Seen through the lens of the Archive Art Phenomenon, archival documents might be considered artworks if they are conceptualised as such. Access to the digitalised archives and art collection of Thielska Galleriet opens up for considering the archival documents in new ways. The use of Richard Berghs letter archive in artistic work and processes is one such potential.