Patterson, Frederick D. (Frederick Douglass), 1901-1988 Search this
Collection Creator:
Patterson, Frederick D. (Frederick Douglass), 1901-1988 Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Date:
1936-1937
Scope and Contents:
Space Southern Trip, 1936-1937, Harmon Foundation written on back on photograph.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of the materials requires an appointment. Please contact the archivist to make an appointment: ACMarchives@si.edu.
Collection Rights:
The Frederick Douglass Patterson papers are the physical property of the Anacostia Community Museum. Literary and copyright belong to the author/creator or their legal heirs and assigns. Rights to work produced during the normal course of Museum business resides with the Anacostia Community Museum. For further information, and to obtain permission to publish or reproduce, contact the Museum Archives.
The papers of African American painter and educator Allan Randall Freelon, who was based in Pennsylvania, measure 4.4 linear feet and date from 1830 to 2018. The collection contains biographical material, including appointment books and family history material; correspondence; writings; material related to professional activities, including exhibitions and school visits; personal business records, including estate records; printed material; scrapbooks; photographic material; and artwork and artifacts.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of African American painter and educator Allan Randall Freelon, who was based in Pennsylvania, measure 4.4 linear feet and date from 1830 to 2018. The collection contains biographical material, including appointment books and family history material; correspondence; writings; material related to professional activities, including exhibitions and school visits; personal business records, including estate records; printed material; scrapbooks; photographic material; and artwork and artifacts.
Biographical material include address lists, certificates, appointment books, and family history material.
Correspondence includes a mixture of personal and professional correspondence with families, friends, galleries, museusm, and and Philadelphia area schools.
Writings consist of Freelon's MFA thesis, notes and notecards. There is also a fair amount of writings by others, such as essays, poems, reports, and even a travel diary from 1879-1880 by someone with the initials "I. J. G."
Materials related to professional activities include exhibition, project, and committee files. There are also assorted materials related to Freelon's work as the Art Director for Philadelphia public schools.
Also included are personal business records, which contain estate records (which includes a audiovisual recording), auction records, condition reports, inventories, property records, and sale records.
Printed material consists of clippings, magazines, newsletters, and exhibition catalogs and announcements.
There are three scrapbooks, which primarily contains a mixture of photographic material, correspondence, and printed material.
Photographic materials include slides, photographs, and negatives of Freelon, his paintings, studio, friends and family, and various other location.
Artwork and artifacts include sketchbooks, sketches, and one souvenir spoon from the Sesqui-Centennial Exposition of 1926.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as nine series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1919, circa 1938-2001 (Box 1; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1878-2010 (Box 1; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1879-1880, 1922-1959 (Box 1; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 4: Professional Activities, circa 1935-1957, 2000-2005 (Box 1; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 5: Personal Business Records, 1856-1957, 1995-2018 (Boxes 1-2, OV 6; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1849-2015 (Box 2, Box 4; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 7: Scrapbooks, 1923-1960 (Box 2, Boxes 4-5; 0.7 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographic Material, circa 1880-circa 2006 (Boxes 2-3, Box 5, OV 6, MGP 6, Box 7; 1.6 linear feet)
Series 9: Artwork and Artifacts, circa 1912-circa 1960 (Box 3; 0.2 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Allan Randall Freelon Sr. (1895-1960) was painter and educator in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania known for his impressionist paintings.
Freelon studied at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), the University of Pennsylvania, and the Tyler School of Art of Temple University. He also spent summers studying painting with Hugh Breckenridge in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
His work was included in exhibitions at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, traveling exhibitions with the William E. Harmon Foundation, the Albright-Knox Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the Howard University Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was also one of seven Black artists included in the exhibition Art Commentary on Lynching, organized by the NAACP.
Freelon married Marie Cuyjet in 1918 and they had one son Allan Randall Freelon Jr. Freelon and Cuyjet eventually divorced and Freelon married Mary Kouzmanoff.
Freelon taught art in the Philadelphia public school system and in 1921 was appointed as assistant director of art education. In 1939 he was named the special assistant to the director of art in the Philadelphia public schools. Freelon also taught painting at Windy Crest, his studio in Telford, Pennsylvania, where he passed away in 1960.
Provenance:
The Allan Randall Freelon papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in 2019 by Nnenna and Maya Freelon as part of the Archives' African American Collecting Initiative funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Nnenna is the widow of Phil Freelon, Allan Randall Freelon's grandson. Maya Freelon is Nnenna and Phil's daughter.
Restrictions:
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Access to nitrate negatives is restricted. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact Reference Services for more information.
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:
Painters -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia Search this
Educators -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia Search this
Allan Randall Freelon papers, 1830-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Henry Luce Foundation. Funding for the digitization of this collection was provided in part by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.
