The Myron Bement Smith collection consists of two parts, the papers of Myron Bement Smith and his wife Katharine and the Islamic Archives. It contains substantial material about his field research in Italy in the 1920s and his years working on Islamic architecture in Iran in the 1930s. Letters describe the milieu in which he operated in Rochester NY and New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s; the Smiths' life in Iran from 1933 to 1937; and the extensive network of academic and social contacts that Myron and Katharine developed and maintained over his lifetime. The Islamic Archives was a project to which Smith devoted most of his professional life. It includes both original materials, such as his photographs and notes, and items acquired by him from other scholars or experts on Islamic art and architecture. Smith intended the Archives to serve as a resource for scholars interested in the architecture and art of the entire Islamic world although he also included some materials about non-Islamic architecture.
Scope and Contents:
The Myron Bement Smith Collection consists of two parts, the papers of Myron Bement Smith and his wife Katharine and the Islamic Archives. The papers include some biographic material about Myron but little about his wife. Information on his academic and professional experience is sketchy and his diaries and appointment books often contain only sporadic entries. The papers contain substantial material about his field research in Italy in the 1920s and his years working on Islamic architecture in Iran in the 1930s. Correspondence comprises the largest and most potentially useful part of the papers. Letters describe the milieu in which he operated in Rochester, NY and New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s; the Smiths' life in Iran from 1933 to 1937; and the extensive network of academic and social contacts that Myron and Katharine developed and maintained over his lifetime.
The Islamic Archives, formally entitled The Archive for Islamic Culture and Art, was a project to which Smith devoted most of his professional life. It includes both original materials, such as his photographs and notes, and items acquired by him from other scholars or experts on Islamic art and architecture. Most of the latter consists of photographs and slides. Smith intended the Archives to serve as a resource for scholars interested in the architecture and art of the entire Islamic world although he also included some materials about non-Islamic architecture. The core collection of the Archives consists of Smith's original photographs and architectural sketches of Iranian Islamic monuments made during his field research in the 1930s. He meticulously photographed the interior and exterior of monuments, including their decorative detail. Some of the photographic materials subsequently loaned, purchased, or donated to the Archives may enable scholars to document sites over time but in many cases the materials are poorly preserved or reproduced. A notable exception to this is the glassplate negatives and prints of 19th century Iranian photographer Antoin Sevruguin.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 2 major series with further subseries. A third series inventories the outsized and miscellaneous materials.
Series 1: Papers
Subseries 1.1: Biographic Materials
Subseries 1.2: Professional Experience
Subseries 1.3: Notebooks, Journals and Appointment Books
Subseries 1.4: Correspondence
Subseries 1.5: Published and Unpublished Materials
Subseries 1.6: Italy Research 1925, 1927-1928
Subseries 1.7: Iran Research 1933-1937
Subseries 1.8: Katharine Dennis Smith Papers and Correspondence
Series 2: The Islamic Archives
Subseries 2.1: Islamic Archives History, Collection Information
Subseries 2.2: Resource Materials Iran
Subseries 2.3: Resource Materials Other Islamic World and General
Subseries 2.4: Myron Bement Smith Architectural Sketches, Plans and Notes, Iran, 1933-1937
Subseries 2.5: Myron Bement Smith Iran Photographs, Notebooks and Negative Registers
Subseries 2.6: Country Photograph File
Subseries 2.7: Lantern Slide Collection
Subseries 2.8: Myron Bement Smith 35 mm Color Slides
Subseries 2.9: Country 35 mm Color Slide File
Subseries 2.10: Myron Bement Smith Negatives
Subseries 2.11: Country Photograph Negatives
Subseries 2.12: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs
Series 3: Outsize and Miscellaneous Items
Subseries 3.1: Map Case Drawers
Subseries 3.2: Rolled Items
Subseries 3.3 Items in Freezer
Subseries 3.4 Smithsonian Copy Negatives
Biographical Note:
Myron Bement Smith was born in Newark Valley, New York in 1897 and grew up in Rochester, New York. He died in Washington D.C. in 1970. He showed an early interest in drawing, and after graduation from high school, he worked as a draftsman for a Rochester architect. He served in the US Army Medical Corps in France during World War I and on return again worked as an architectural draftsman. He studied at Yale University from 1922 to 1926, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. During summer vacations, he worked as draftsman or designer for architectural firms in New York City. After graduation, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grant and spent two years in Italy doing research on northern Italian brick and stone work. He used photography as an tool for his research and published several well-illustrated articles. On return he joined an architectural firm in Philadelphia and in 1931 became a registered architect in New York. He enrolled in Harvard University graduate school in 1929 pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree.
In April 1930, Smith was appointed Secretary of the newly created American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology founded by Arthur Upham Pope and located in New York City. He had no prior academic or work experience in Islamic art or architecture, and his job entailed designing publications, arranging lectures, organizing exhibitions and fund raising. That summer he arranged an independent study course at Harvard University on Persian art and subsequently studied Persian language at Columbia University and attended graduate courses at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. His work and academic credentials enabled him to compete successfully for a research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1933 to study Iranian Islamic architecture.
Accompanied by his new bride Katharine Dennis, Smith left for Iran in 1933. They suffered a horrendous motor vehicle accident in Iraq en route and required a lengthy recuperation in Lebanon and Cyprus. The Smiths eventually arrived in Isfahan, Iran, where they established their "Expedition House," as Smith called it, in a rented faculty house at Stuart College. Smith's research consisted of meticulous photographic documentation of Islamic monuments and architectural sketches and drawings of many of them. He concentrated on the Isfahan area but also documented monuments elsewhere in Iran. Smith outfitted his station wagon as a combination camper and research vehicle in which he and his staff traveled widely. Katharine sometimes traveled with him but generally she remained in Isfahan managing the household and logistics for the "expedition." The Smiths left Iran in 1937.
Smith published several articles about Iran's Islamic monuments based on his field research and in 1947 completed his PhD thesis for The Johns Hopkins University on the vault in Persian architecture. His professional career from 1938 until his death in 1970 consisted of a series of temporary academic positions, contract work and government or academic sponsored lecture tours and photographic exhibits. He had a long lasting relationship with the Library of Congress where he served as an Honorary Consultant from 1938 to 1940 and again from 1948 to 1970; from 1943 to 1944 he was Chief of the Iranian Section at the Library. Despite his lack of published material, Smith was well-known among academic, government and private citizens who worked, traveled or were otherwise interested Iran and the Islamic world.
Smith developed an extensive network of professional and social contacts that dated from his early student days and increased markedly during his time at the Persian Institute and later in Iran. He kept in touch with them and they touted him to others who were interested in Iran or Islamic art and architecture. This network served him well in realizing his ambition of creating a resource for scholars that relied on photographs to document Islamic architecture. The Islamic Archives began with his own collection of photographs from his Iran research and grew to include all manner of photographic and other materials not only on the Islamic world but also other areas. Creating and managing the Archives became the main focus of Smith's professional life and career. In 1967 he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to revise his PhD thesis as a publishable manuscript but died before he could complete it.
Related Materials:
The Antoin Sevruguin Photgraphs
Ernst Herzfeld Papers
Lionel B. Bier Drawings
Lionel D. Bier and Carol Bier Photographs
Provenance:
Gift of Katherine Dennis Smith, transfered from National Anthropological Archives.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.
The Myron Bement Smith Collection, FSA A.04. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Katherine Dennis Smith.
2 Copies (Two copies: one bound and one loose., 29 x 22 cm.)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Copies
Reports
Photographs
Place:
China
Japan
Angkor Wat (Cambodia)
Date:
1915
Scope and Contents:
A report prepared by archaeologist and art historian Langdon Warner on his travels of 1913-1914 to investigate the founding of an American school of Chinese archaeology to be established in Beijing. Warner's travels included Europe, Japan, Korea, China and Indo-China. Warner spoke with scholars, administrators and officials, and travelled to museums and archaeological sites. Warner traveled with his wife. The report contains two parts; the first being a summary of his travels, and the second, a series of recommendations for the proposed school.
Biographical / Historical:
Langdon Warner was an archaeologist and historian of Asian art in the first half of the 20th century. He was born on August 1, 1881 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and educated at Harvard University, which he graduated from in 1903. Between acting in various positions at museums across the country, most notably the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Harvard Fogg Museum of Art, he travelled extensively in Asia. Including an 1913-14 trip sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution to explore the possibility of founding an American School of Chinese Archaeology in Beijing. Accompanied by his wife, their journey included visits to Europe, Japan, Korea, China, and Indochina. He spoke with scholars, administrators, and officials, and travelled to museums and archaeological sites. He compiled a two-part report: a summary of his travels and a series of recommendations for the proposed school.
During World War II, Warner taught a course on Japanese language, culture, and history to Civil Affairs Officers and acted as a Special Consultant for the U.S. Army's Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program, the so-called "Monuments Men." He created the Official List of Monuments for Japan, China, Korea, and Thailand. Warner spent the summer of 1946 working as an Expert Consultant to the Arts and Monuments Division of the Civil Information and Education Section under the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Upon his return to Massachusetts, he resumed working at the Fogg Museum of Art until his retirement in 1950. During his career, he wrote numerous books on Asian art such as The Enduring Art of Japan, The Long Old Road in China, and Japanese Sculpture of the Tempyo Period: Masterpieces of the Eighth Century. Warner died on June 9, 1955 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was posthumously awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasures by the Japanese government for his efforts to preserve Japanese art and monuments during and after the war.
Local Numbers:
FSA A1994.07
Other Archival Materials:
Landon Warner Papers, circa late 18th century-1987 (bulk 1900-1959). Houghton Library, Harvard University
Langdon Warner Photograph Collection, 1903-1950. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Langdon Warner Records, 1916-1929 (bulk 1917-1923). Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives.
Rumpf, Friedrich Karl Georg, 1888-1949 Search this
Extent:
3 Notebooks (3 notebooks and loose notes. Notebooks are very worn and many pages are likely not in their original order. Notebook 3 is without covers)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Notebooks
Place:
Japan
Berlin (Germany)
Date:
circa 1914-1930s
Scope and Contents:
Three undated notebooks by artist and educator Friedrich Karl Georg (Fritz) Rumpf (1888-1949). With multiple notes in German and Japanese, and drawings in pencil, ink and wash made during his travels and research in Japan. The notebooks also contain many loose paper scraps and letters, including a draft letter addressed to Felix Tikotin.
Arrangement:
Arranged by notebook, thereafter loose material.
Biographical / Historical:
Friedrich (Fritz) Karl Georg Rumpf the Younger was the son of the Potsdam painter Fritz Rumpf (1856-1927). He grew up in Potsdam and at 15 studied Japanese from a Japanese officer who attended the military school in Potsdam. After graduating from middle school, he studied at the Royal School of Arts in Berlin. He moved to Japan in 1908, where he studied woodblock printing under Igami Bonkotsu (1875-1933) and was active in the literary society "Pan no Kai." From 1910 he continued his studies in Berlin under the artist Emil Orlik. At the beginning of World War I he was sent to China as a military officer and was taken prisoner following the surrender of Qingdao to the Japanese in 1914. He was a prisoner of war in Oita and Narashino until 1920. In 1931 under Asian art historian Otto Kümmel, he produced a dissertation on the Ise monogatari woodblock print edition of 1608. Rumpf traveled extensively in Japan throughout his career. In 1927-1928 he accompanied the art collector Felix Tikotin (1893-1986) in Japan.
Local Numbers:
FSA A2015.22
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.
Genre/Form:
Notebooks
Citation:
Fritz Rumpf Notebooks, FSA A2015.22. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
