Artifact 01
Rooms instead of folders
Build a room for one person, one era, one house, one body of work, or one collection, then let related objects gather around the story they belong to.
A private archive for the things too human for cloud storage
Keep the voice, the handwriting, the recipe card, and the story beside it.
Lumen Archive helps families, artists, and small estates preserve personal material with care: scanned letters, annotated photographs, oral histories, catalogued objects, and permissions that respect what should stay private.
Context is the artifact
12k
letters, photographs, recordings, and fragments preserved in private family rooms
3 layers
object, story, and permission captured together for every important item
100 yr
export-minded stewardship for families who think beyond the next subscription cycle
Context is the artifact
A photo is rarely just a photo. Lumen keeps the who, the where, the permission, and the feeling close by.
The archive is intentionally slow. It gives people time to name what matters, decide who may see it, and attach the story that would otherwise disappear first.
Artifact 02
Oral history beside the object
Record the aunt explaining the photograph, the painter remembering the studio, or the grandson reading the letter aloud while the artifact is still open.
Artifact 03
Consent-aware sharing
Decide what is public, family-only, executor-only, time-locked, or never shared. Lumen treats privacy as part of the archive, not a settings afterthought.
Artifact 04
Museum-grade exports
Download structured metadata, originals, transcripts, thumbnails, and access notes so the collection can outlive Lumen, migrate to an institution, or rest on a hard drive.
A slower way to make something permanent
1
Gather without sorting too soon
Upload scans, phone photos, audio clips, inventories, and messy notes first. Lumen gives the material a quiet place to land before anyone imposes a taxonomy.
2
Invite the people who know
Family members, studio assistants, caretakers, and friends can add corrections, voice notes, dates, and the tiny context that rarely appears in official records.
3
Set the future terms
Choose who can see each room now, what changes later, and how the archive should be exported or transferred when stewardship changes hands.
"We had boxes of letters and nobody wanted to be the person who decided what mattered. Lumen gave us a way to preserve first and decide gently."
Mara Ellison
Family archivist for the Ellison and Cho collection
"My father's studio finally makes sense to people who never met him. The paintings, sketches, recipes, arguments, and jokes are all in conversation now."
Nico Alvarez
Executor for a painter's estate
Is this for professional archives or families?
Both. Lumen is designed for families, artists, writers, small museums, and estates that need careful structure without a large institutional team.
Can we keep some material private forever?
Yes. Items can be private, time-locked, limited to named people, or excluded from exports meant for public institutions.
Do you help with scanning and cataloguing?
Lumen offers guided workflows for self-service projects and partner support for scanning, transcription, translation, metadata cleanup, and estate preparation.
Some things should not vanish because they lived in a box.
Lumen Archive is for people who know memory needs structure, privacy, and patience, and want to build something their future family can actually understand.
Start a preservation consult