1 Linear foot (Gift: (partially microfilmed on 2 reels))
37 Reels (Loan)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Reels
Date:
1954-1984
Scope and Contents:
Artists' files; institutional files; printed material and photographs.
REELS 2866-2878: Artists' files, 1960-1981, containing biographical data, correspondence, project proposals, contract agreements, invoices, receipts, newspaper and magazine clippings, exhibition catalogs and announcements, and press releases.
REELS 2952-2975: Organizational files, 1958-1972, containing Board member's and Board of Directors correspondence, 1958-1972, Executive Committee minutes and panel of selection correspondence and recommendations; correspondence of Garo Antreasian, Clinton Adams, John Sommers and June Wayne, 1954-1973; grant applications from Manolis Piladakis, Noemi Smilansky and other artists; data on staff, including biographical data, employment contracts and printed material; and material on printer training programs, artists, writers, printers and curators.
REEL 3051: Files, 1960-1978, containing correspondence with artists, Board of Directors, Panel of Selections, Clinton Adams, Garo Antreasian, June Wayne and others; and printer evaluation reports and general correspondence.
REELS 3052-3055: Organizational files, 1959-1981, containing correspondence, information on fellowships and printer and curatorial training, biographical data, printed material, photographs of artists and printers, progress reports and proposals, financial material and printed material; 4 scrapbooks of printed material, 1960-1972; and photographs of artists, printers, the studio, staff parties, workshops, special projects and lithographs. [261 duplicate prints of some of the above photos were given to the Archives April 2, 1984 for study purposes only].
UNMICROFILMED: Printed material, 1958-1984, including catalogs, brochures, exhibition catalogs and publications by the workshop and institute; price lists of Tamarind lithography editions, 1983-1984; publications concerning the art and technique of lithography and the marketing of prints; and photographs of William Brice, Sam Francis, John Hultberg, John D. McLaughlin, Aubrey E. Schwartz and Emerson Woelffer with June Wayne working in the studio.
REEL 439-440 AND SCANNED Seventeen photos of artists, previously microfilmed under Photos of Artists I, and subsequently scanned and returned to the Tamarind records. Artists include: Annie Albers, Josef Albers, William Brice, Richard Diebendorn, Sam Francis, John Hultberg, John McLaughlin, Nathan Loiveria, Henry C. Pearson, Miriam Schapiro, Aubrey Schwartz, Esteban Vicente, Romas Viesulas, Emerson Woelffer, and Adja Yunkers.
Biographical / Historical:
Lithography workshop; Los Angeles, Calif. Founded in 1960 by Garo Antreasian, Clinton Adams and June Wayne. Relocated to Albuquerque, N.M., 1970, by Adams and Antreasian and re-established as the Tamarind Institute.
Related Materials:
The bulk of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop records are held as a portion of the Tamarind Institute Records at the University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections.
Provenance:
Microfilmed as part of the Archives of American Art's Texas project, 1983-1984. Unmicrofilmed material and 261 duplicate prints of some photos on reels 3052-3055 donated 1984 by the Tamarind Institute via Clinton Adams, director.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Reel 3051 is ACCESS RESTRICTED written permission is required.
Occupation:
Lithographers -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Printmakers -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Topic:
Lithography -- 20th century -- California -- Los Angeles -- Study and teaching Search this
University of New Mexico. College of Fine Arts Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Clinton Adams, 1974 March 29. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Clinton Adams, 1995 August 2-3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Gallery of Modern Art Including the Huntington Hartford Collection Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Mary and Clinton Adams, 1998 April 24. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The papers of southern California contemporary art curator, critic, and historian Jules Langsner measure 4.4 linear feet and date from circa 1910s-1998, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1950-1967. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues; writings normal="1941"> travel, and works of art; and audio recordings of Langsner's lectures and eulogies given at his funeral.
Scope and Contents note:
The papers of southern California contemporary art curator, critic, and historian Jules Langsner measure 4.4 linear feet and date from circa 1910s-1998, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1950-1967. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues; writings by Langsner; exhibition files; printed materials; photographs of Langsner, others, travel, and works of art; and audio recordings of Langsner's lectures and eulogies given at his funeral.
Biographical materials consist of an address book and file, committee files, scattered financial statements, and documents related to the Ford Foundation and other foundations, teaching, and traveling.
The 0.9 linear feet of correspondence is of both a personal and professional nature. A significant portion of the correspondence is between Langsner and publications for which he wrote such as Art News, the New York Times, Meridian Books, Craft Horizons, Art International, and Art in America; galleries and museums where he lectured or curated exhibitions including the Art Institute of Chicago, California Water Color Society, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and the Fine Arts Patrons of Newport Harbor; colleges and organizations where he taught or was involved with such as the Graham Foundation, University of Southern California, International Association of Art Critics, and Ford Foundation; and artists that he worked with or knew personally including Rico Lebrun, William Turnbull, Man & Julie Ray, Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg, Adelaide Fogg, and Clinton Adams.
Letters to June Harwood were written while Langsner was traveling in 1964 and 1965 and discuss his travels and their relationship which culminated in marriage in Italy in 1965.
Among the 2.8 linear feet of the writings of Jules Langsner are articles for Art News, Art in America, Art International, Arts & Architecture, Aware, Beverly Hills Times, Craft Horizons, Creative Crafts, Goya Revista De Arte, Yomiuri, and Zodiac. There are also essays, lectures, poems, drafts, notes, jottings of ideas, proposals and published and unpublished manuscripts. There are drafts and unpublished versions of "Painting in the Modern World", and numerous other essays on contemporary art. There are also extensive handwritten notes on his travels, Asian art, European art, and other subjects.
Exhibition files concern "Black and White" (1958), "California Hard-Edge Painting" (1964), the Man Ray Exhibition (1966), and the William Turnbull Exhibition (1966).
Printed materials include miscellaneous flyers, brochures, and news bulletins, and press releases.
Photographs are of people, places, works of art, and exhibitions. There are photographs of Jules Langsner, June Harwood, Philip Guston, Musa Guston, William Brice, Eddy Feldman, Rube Kadish, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Frank Perls, and unidentified individual people and groups. Photographs of Langsner's travels are of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other locations. Photographs of exhibitions include California Art Club, "Black and White," "California Painters & Sculptors, 35 & Under," and unidentified exhibitions. Photographs of works of art are by William Turnbull, Jack Zajac, Walter Mix, Marion Aldrich, Roger Majorowicz, and Jasper Johns.
Audio recordings include four untranscribed 7" reel-to-reel audio recordings and one cassette tape. The reel-to-reel tapes are of two lectures by Langsner, You & Art/Berlin Party, and of eulogies given at Langsner's funeral by Clement Greenberg, Henry Seldis, Peter Selz, Richard Brown, Donald Brewer, Tom Leavitt, Lorser Feitelson, Sam Francis, June Wayne, Gifford Phillips, and others. The cassette tape is a copy of eulogies.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 7 series. Photographs are arranged by subject, otherwise each series is generally arranged chronologically.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1957-circa 1960s (Box 1; 9 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1948-1998 (Boxes 1-2; 0.9 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1934-circa 1960s (Boxes 2-4; 2.8 linear feet)
Series 4: Exhibition Files, 1919, circa 1958-1966 (Box 4; 4 folders)
Series 5: Printed Materials, circa 1960s (Box 5; 2 folders)
Series 6: Photographs, circa 1910s-1960s (Box 5; 0.25 linear feet)
Series 7: Audio Recordings, 1954-1967 (Box 5; 0.25 linear feet)
Biographical/Historical note:
Jules Langsner (1911-1967) worked primarily in the Los Angeles area as a contemporary art critic, historian, and curator. He curated several seminal exhibitions of contemporary art, including the 1959-1960 show "Four Abstract Classicists" featuring the work of Southern California artists Lorser Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin.
Born Julius Harold Langsner in New York City on May 5, 1911, his family moved to Ontario, California in 1922. The family lived on a farm and opened the Paradise Health Resort which was run by Langsner's father, chiropractor Isadore Langsner, and was popular in Jewish and intellectual circles. In Ontario, Langsner became friends with three of the Pollack family sons, Jackson, Frank, and Sanford, as well as Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, Leonard Stark, and Don Brown as a teenager. Guston, Kadish, and Jackson Pollock were later mentored by Lorser Feitelston which helped to foster in Langsner an interest in avant-garde painting.
Langsner went on to study philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the early 1940s, Langsner married and had a son, Drew Langsner. He divorced in 1946. In 1944, he enlisted in the United States Army and served as a psychiatric social worker and psychologist during World War II in the United States.
Art & Architecture magazine was the first to publish Langsner's art criticism in 1948. Throughout the 1950s and 60s his work was published widely in Art & Architecture as well as Art News, Art in America, Craft Horizons, Beverly Hills Times, Zodiac, and others. Langsner wrote extensively about art history in both published and unpublished manuscripts, including Painting in the Modern World which he worked on until his death. Additionally, he taught art history classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and University of Southern California and lectured for a variety of organizations and occasions.
Langsner curated several influential exhibitions in southern California, including the "Four Abstract Classicists" exhibition for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1959 and in whose catalog he and Peter Selz coined the term "Hard-Edge painting." He curated the first full-scale retrospective of Man Ray in the United States at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1966.
Langsner received a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1964 that allowed him to travel throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe for a year studying regional art and architecture. He wrote notes on his travels and corresponded frequently with June Harwood, a Hard-Edge painter, whom he married in Italy in 1965.
Jules Langsner died unexpectedly of a heart attack on September 29, 1967, in Los Angeles.
Related Archival Materials note:
The papers of Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg at the Archives of American Art contain a significant amount of writings by Jules Langsner, including exhibition catalog essays.
Papers of Jules Langsner, 1941-1967, are also located at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Provenance:
The Jules Langsner papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in several installments from 1973-1996, and in 2004 by June Harwood Langsner, widow of Jules Langsner. Notes for a lecture given at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966 and 39 pieces of correspondence were donated in 1982 by the University of California Art Library, Los Angeles, via Librarian Virginia Steele.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Art critics -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Art historians -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Correspondence; exhibition catalogs; and photographs. Files of business correspondence include Lawrence Barrett (1977-1990), Bolton Brown, Howard Cook (1978-1985), Theodore Cuno (1978-1984), Adolf Dehn (1967-1988), and Fritz Scholder (1975-1990). Also included are 13 general lithography files.
ADDITION: Correspondence with galleries, universities, and artist June Wayne (1975-1999); printed material; published memoirs; and manuscript drafts of articles and lectures.
Biographical / Historical:
Painter, printmaker, art administrator; Albuquerque, N.M., b. 1918; d. 2002
Provenance:
Donated 1990 and 1993 by Clinton Adams and in 2003 by Mary Adams, Clinton Adams' widow.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
An interview of Clinton Adams conducted 1995 August 2-3, by Paul Karlstrom, for the Archives of American Art, at his home, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Adams discusses his family background; involvement in Hollywood "industry"; teaching at University of California, Los Angeles; service during WWII; first contact with New York's Museum of Modern Art; his decision to return to California; teaching painting at UCLA from 1946-1954, and friends and colleagues at that time including Lorser Feitelson, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Lynton R. Kistler and Annita Delano; the difficult political situation at UCLA and the "modernist" conflicts; his views on modernist and conservative groups; Stanton Macdonald-Wright; Adams' own work; his relationship to the ideas and nature of modernism; the Sanity in Art group and other art groups in Los Angeles; his opinion on which artists should have been included in the exhibition/catalogue "Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists"; his observations on art historical constructs; the history of New Mexican art; the idea of regionalism; the mythology of Santa Fe, New Mexico.; Southwestern art; the Tamarind Lithography Workshop during its New Mexico phase, its background and changes after the move from Los Angeles to the University of New Mexico, his fifteen years as director, major artists involved, and his desire to publish overlooked artists. Adams recalls Fritz Scholder, John Altoon, Leonard Edmondson, Ynez Johnston, Vincent Price, Jules Langsner, and Rico Lebrun.
Biographical / Historical:
Clinton Adams (1918-2002) was a printmaker, painter, and art administrator of Los Angeles, California and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 16 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hrs., 28 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others. Funding for the transcription provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Arts administrators -- New Mexico -- Albuquerque -- Interviews Search this
Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold, 1880-1958 Search this
Extent:
23 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
1998 April 24
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Mary and Clinton Adams conducted 1998 April 24, by Paul Karlstrom, for the Archives of American Art, in the Adams' home, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Mary recalls the early years at the Getty as assistant to Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, being hired by him in 1954, her responsibilities, such as driving Valentiner to the Malibu ranch location, and the property at the time the museum was established. She described the difficulties Valentiner faced in setting up the museum, and his views of J. Paul Getty. Clinton Adams enters into the conversation late and discusses the art scene in Los Angeles, where, at the time, the Huntington Hartford was regarded as the best hope for a local museum.
Biographical / Historical:
Mary E. Adams (1920- ) is an art administrator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her husband, Clinton Adams is a printmaker, painter, and educator. Clinton Adams (1918-2002)
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hrs., 2 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators. Funding for the transcription of this interview provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
An interview of Clinton Adams conducted 1974 March 29, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of American Art.
Adams speaks of how he got involved with the Tamarind Lithography Workshop; how and why Tamarind came about; the lack of artists doing lithographs; the need for the artist to collaborate with the printmaker in order to make a good print; writing a book about the workshop; how in order to interest American Artists into making lithographs, there needs to be a market for it; how it was difficult collecting works of art for the University of New Mexico (UNM); the current art scene in Albuquerque; the arts programs at UNM; moving the workshop to UNM in order to make Tamarind a permanent institute and get more funding; and how more women are becoming printers. He recalls June Wayne, Lynton R. Kistler, Man Ray, Jean Charlow, Eugene Berman, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Garo Antreasian, Joe Funk, Romas Viesulas, Tatyana Grosman, Irwin Hollander, Ken Tyler, Julie Duristo, Bohuslav Horak, Kenneth Adams, John Sommers, and many others.
Biographical / Historical:
Clinton Adams (1918-2002) was a printmaker, painter, and art administrator from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 57 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Arts administrators -- New Mexico -- Albuquerque -- Interviews Search this
