The papers of painter De Hirsh Margules measure 5.5 linear feet and date from 1888-2001, with the bulk dating from 1923-1965. The papers contain biographical material, and business and personal correspondence, including letters from Alfred Stiegliz, John Marin, Henry Miller, Max Schnitzler, Charles J. Connick, Louis M. Eilshemius, Alex King, and Myron Lechay. Also found are writings, printed material, scrapbooks, photographs, works of art and audio recordings documenting Margules' personal life and professional career.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of painter De Hirsh Margules measure 5.5 linear feet and date from 1888-2001, with the bulk dating from 1923-1965. The papers contain biographical material, and business and personal correspondence, including letters from Alfred Stiegliz, John Marin, Henry Miller, Max Schnitzler, Charles J. Connick, Louis M. Eilshemius, Alex King, and Myron Lechay. Also found are writings, printed material, scrapbooks, photographs, works of art and audio recordings documenting Margules' personal life and professional career.
Biographical material consists of Margules' curriculum vitae, address books, war ration books, press credentials, passports, naturalization documents, membership and social security cards, and memorial material on De Hirsh and Blanche Margules.
Correspondence of De Hirsh Margules covers both personal and business matters. Family correspondents include his wife Blanche London, her parents, De Hirsh's mother Rosa and his sister Sam. There is correspondence with Jean and Harrison Horblit, friends and business associates of the Margules, as well as correspondence with his girlfriend, Marieli Kailin Mandel. Other correspondents include Alfred Stieglitz, John Marin, Henry Miller, Max Schnitzler, Charles J. Connick, Louis M. Eilshemius, Alex King, Myron Lechay, and two letters from New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman. There are single letters from Sasha Kolin; New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay; Lawrence F. O'Brien, special assistant to President John F. Kennedy; Buckminster Fuller. This last letter was not addressed exclusively to Margules. Other personal correspondence includes letters, postcards and greeting cards from family members and friends. Other business correspondents include galleries and museums such as Babcock Galleries, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Niveau Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Ferargil Gallery, Feigl Gallery, Guggenheim Museum, Worcester Art Museum and Walker Art Center.
Writings consist mostly of poems by De Hirsh Margules, sometimes appearing in multiple draft forms, as well as a longer work titled "Mulberry Bend." Also included within the series are notebooks filled with poems and works of prose, the latter expounding upon his theories and ideas. Writings by other authors range from poetry to works of prose, criticism and biography, including A. Lincoln Gillespie, Jr., Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin, David Weber, Aaron Frankel, James Grady, Dick Higgins, and Esther Gilman, among others. There are three illustrated writings by Alfred Jensen. Audio recordings contain a sound tape reel of De Hirsh Margules reciting his poems Rainbow and Mulberry Bend.
Printed material includes newspaper and magazine clippings, press releases, exhibition announcements, catalogues and books. Scrapbooks include printed material, newspaper and magazine clippings, and exhibition announcements on the career of De Hirsh Margules. Also included are two scrapbooks by Blanche London Margules, representing newspaper clippings of her writing, among others.
Works of Art include an oil painting on wood and sketchbooks by Margules. Also included are six collages in a series by Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin titled "Eye Poems"; and text-based drawings/writings by A. Lincoln Gillespie, Jr.
Photographs, transparencies and slides include works of art by De Hirsh and Blanche London Margules. Also included are personal photographs of the Margules', their friends, family and students, and two folders of photographs of Marieli Kailin Mandel.
Arrangement:
The De Hirsh Margules papers are organized into 8 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1888-1978, undated (Box 1, 6; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1923-2000, undated (Box 1-3; 2.8 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1936-1965, undated (Box 4; 1.0 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1933-2001, undated (Box 5; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 5: Scrapbooks, 1922-1957, undated (Box 5, 7; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 6: Photographs, 1926-1992, undated (Box 5, 7; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 7: Works of Art, 1948, undated (Box 6, 7; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 8: Audio Recordings, undated (Box 6; 1 folder)
Biographical Note:
De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965) was a painter in New York, NY. Margules was born in Jasse, Romania and arrived in New York City at only ten months of age. His parents were in the Yiddish Theater; his father, Edouard was a playwright/director, and his mother, Rosa, was an actress. Margules received much of his art education outside of the conventional art institutional framework. Early on, he studied with Edwin Randby in Pennsylvania from 1917-1918, but it was really his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein, who encouraged Margules to pursue a career in the arts. From 1919-1921 he studied period architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design.
By 1922, Margules began working nights as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York, a job he would hold until 1942. However, he continued to study and paint during the day, this time working with Myron Lechay.
In 1927 Margules took a leave of absence from the City News Association to travel to Paris. He studied at the Musée du Louvre, and painted landscapes in Montmartre, Paris; Fontenay-près-Vézelay, Burgundy; and Tunis, Africa. In 1929 Margules returned to New York and met artist/dealer Alfred Stieglitz, who quickly became his most trusted friend and advisor. It was through Stieglitz that Margules was introduced to John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Rosenfeld, Stuart Davis and Jan Matulka. While Margules would benefit from his relations with all of these artists, it was John Marin who would become his most important mentor. He felt that Marin was the only one who could help him with the formal problems he was having with painting.
Margules lived most of his life in Greenwich Village and was a well-known member of the colorful and vivacious arts community. He was commonly recognized by his affable demeanor, but mostly it was his attire, particularly the dark blue beret that he was rarely seen without. To his friends he was known simply as "the Baron."
De Hirsh Margules has been called an abstract realist. He used saturated colors and bold textures in the construction of his abstract landscapes, but more specifically it was his interest in the concept of "time painting" or "time perspective" that propelled his work. It was through the physical rendering and representation of his subject matter that he explored the psychological concepts of time. From 1936-1937 Margules established "Another Place," an exhibition space set up in his New York City apartment at 43 West 8th Street. Over a two year period there were fourteen solo-exhibitions by Margules and other artists.
He taught painting in 1951 at Ball State College in Muncie, Indiana, and at the New York Equity Workshop in 1952. In 1951 Elaine de Kooning wrote a piece about his working methods in the December edition of Art News.
De Hirsh Margules died from a heart attack in 1965. He was 65 years old.
Provenance:
The papers were donated to the Archives in 2005 by Elita Agee.
Restrictions:
The De Hirsh Margules papers are open for research. Use 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.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Material is subject to Smithsonian Terms of Use. Should you wish to use NASM material in any medium, please submit an Application for Permission to Reproduce NASM Material, available at Permissions Requests.
Collection Citation:
Sally K. Ride Papers, Acc. 2014-0025, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
The papers of Robert King Harris and Inus Marie Harris, circa 1909-circa 1981, primarily document the work of amateur archaeologists and spouses Robert King Harris (1912-1981) and Inus Marie Harris (1912-2006) and their collaborators at sites located in Texas as well as other localities in the southern United States. The collection consists of field notes, site reports, data and analysis, manuscript drafts, publications, correspondence, genealogical material, illustrations and maps, photographic prints, negatives, slides, and sound recordings.
Scope and Contents:
The material of the collection relates to a large collection of archeological specimens which Harris began in 1924 and developed into a 100,000-piece amassment. The collection, ranging in time from the paleoIndigenous to the historic, in part represents Harris's own field work but also incorporates material of other workers. It includes material from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and Montana. It also includes pieces from Bolivia, Central America, Mexico, and Korea. The material is now among the holdings of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History (see Related Materials).
Correspondents include Robert Eugene Bell, Jay C. Blaine, Katy Caver, Claire C. Davison, Robert O. Fay, Dan L. Flores, Jon L. Gibson, Vance Haynes, Lawrence H. Head, Robert Fleming Heizer, Thomas R. Hester, Marsha F. Jackson, Jerome Jacobson, Dan Jank, William K. Jones, Morton B. King, Alex Dony Krieger, Truett Latimer, Robert K. Liu, John Ludwickson, William S. Marmaduke, Roger McVay, K. R. Morgan, Dan F. Morse, Hermes Nye, Dorris L. Olds, Gregory Perino, Stephen Schmidt, Dan Scurlock, S. Alan Skinner, Len Slesick, Robert Lloyd Stephenson, Byron Sudbury, Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Lonn W. Taylor, Ted Thygesen, Marvin E. Tong, Jr., Clarence H. Webb, Mildred Mott Wedel, Frank A. Weir, Fred Wendorf, James H. Word, and Don G. Wyckoff. The collection also includes some material about the family of Inus Marie Harris and their early days in Texas.
Please note that the collection contains images of human remains.
Please also note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Arrangement:
Collection is arranged into 13 series: (1) Biographical material, papers about the Harris collection, and personal material, 1963-1980; (2) correspondence, circa 1964 1979; (3) alphabetical subject file, 1963-1981, undated; (4) manuscripts (by Harris and other authors), circa 1960-1978, undated; (5) Texas archeological survey sheets in notebooks, undated; (6) loose survey sheets, 1936-1971, undated; (7) miscellaneous notes, undated; (8) sound recordings, 1975-1981; (9) printed and processed material, 1932-1981; (10) Clem family papers (concerning its early days in Texas), circa 1909-1976; (11) railroad material, 1919-1964; (12) cartographic material (archeological, historical, modern maps of Texas, maps of Texas counties (many annotated to show archeological sites), Texas geological maps, miscellaneous maps outside Texas, United States Geological Survey maps, United States Geological Survey and United States Army Corps of Engineer maps annotated to show archeological sites, maps of dams and reservoirs, aerial photographs of a section of Red River, 1915-1975, undated; and (13) photographs and illustrations, 1935-1981, undated.
Biographical Note:
By vocation, Robert (R.) King Harris was a locomotive engineer who worked for the Texas Pacific Railroad Company. By avocation, he was an archeologist with a long-time scientific interest in the work. Harris first developed an interest in archeology as a young boy scout in his native Dallas, Texas. During the 1930s, he became a member of the Texas Archaeological and Paleontological Society and also began to meet informally with other amateur archeologists in Dallas. In 1940, he was one of the founders of the Dallas Archaeological Society and served that organization for many years as the editor of its publication "The Record." In 1939-1941, he was a curator at the Hall of State Museum of the Dallas Historical Society; and in 1966, after his retirement, he assumed duties as the curator of collections of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University. For many years, he was also an active participant with the series of Caddoan Conferences. In these activities and his archeological work, Harris worked closely with his wife, Inus Marie Harris. As an archeologist, Harris carried out many archeological surveys in Texas and nearby Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In 1941, under the sponsorship of the Dallas Archaeological Society, which he co-founded with INus Marie Harris, he was field foreman of an excavation of burial sites below White Rock Spillway in Dallas County and an excavation of another burial site at the Ragland site on the East Fork of the Trinity River. Again, in 1946, he was field foreman for the excavation of a house site at Bulter Hole site in Collin County, Texas. In 1948-1949, he assisted with the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Survey's work in Whitney, Lavon, and Garza-Little Elm reservoirs. In 1954, he joined Wilson W. Crook in test excavations at the Louis Obschner site near Seagoville and, in 1956, at the well-known Lewisville site in Denton County. He also participated in 1959 in excavations at the Branch site in Lavon Reservoir and, in 1960, directed excavations of a shelter at the Kyle site and the Pearson site in the Iron Bridge Reservoir. In 1962, he worked at the Gilbert site in Rains County, and in 1963, led a survey of Forney Reservoir. In 1965, he was involved in excavations at Glenn Hill site in the same reservoir. In the 1960s and 1970s, Harris also carried out studies of artifacts relating to French trade with Caddoan peoples. Harris was also interested in the travels of early explorers in northeastern Texas including Francisco de Soto and Benard de la Harpe.
Inus Marie Bell Harris (1912-2006) similarly was an avocational archaeologist along with her collaborator and husband, Robert King Harris. Together, Robert King and Inus Marie Harris co-founded the Dallas Archaeological Society along with other local archaeologists in 1936. Inus published several articles (both with Robert King Harris and alone) on topics relating to archaeology and material culture of Texas and its environs. She also contributed to a genaeological volume titled "The Clem Family: 1765-1976" (Falcon Printing Company, 1976). Inus Marie Harris died on April 10, 2006.
Related Materials:
The National Anthropological Archives holds MS 1998-28 Catalog of artifact photographs and descriptions from the R.K. Harris collections.
The Human Studies Film Archives holds the Robert King Harris films (HSFA.1992.07).
The National Museum of Natural History Department of Anthropology holds a collection of artifacts donated by Robert King Harris in accession 350434.
Southern Methodist University's Fondren Library holds the "The Record, Dallas Archeological Society" collection, which contains many publications written by Robert King Harris and Inus Marie Harris.
Provenance:
Received from Mrs. Inus Marie Harris in 1983.
Restrictions:
Access to the Robert King Harris and Inus Marie Harris papers requires an appointment.
Wilkinson, John L., Boxall, Alistair B. A., Kolpin, Dana W., Leung, Kenneth M. Y., Lai, Racliffe W. S., Galbán-Malagón, Cristóbal, Adell, Aiko D., Mondon, Julie, Metian, Marc, Marchant, Robert A., Bouzas-Monroy, Alejandra, Cuni-Sanchez, Aida, Coors, Anja, Carriquiriborde, Pedro, Rojo, Macarena, Gordon, Chris, Cara, Magdalena, Moermond, Monique, Luarte, Thais, Petrosyan, Vahagn, Perikhanyan, Yekaterina, Mahon, Clare S., McGurk, Christopher J., Hofmann, Thilo, Kormoker, Tapos et al. 2022. "Pharmaceutical pollution of the world's rivers." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119, (8). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2113947119.
