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.
Summary:
Biographical material; correspondence, including letters from artists, galleries, museum officials, universities and others, and copies of letters from Tovish to his family, editors, students, and others; manuscripts for lectures; art school course assignments; project files; exhibition announcements and catalogs, 1942-1993 and price lists and checklists for exhibitions, 1974-1986; clippings of reviews, interviews and editorials, 1942-1991; 5 photographs of Tovish and his sculpture; and a small amount of material compiled by Tovish on other artists, such as Rodin; and terms of agreement for commission of a sculpted portrait of Washington University professor, Carl Cori.
REEL 5281: Fourteen photographs and eleven notes and letters between Tovish his wife, Mariana Pineda. Photographs show Tovish at ages 16, 20, 24; Tovish in Paris; Pineda in Paris, Utah and Hawaii, with Nina Tovish, with Harold Tovish, and Pineda immediately after her death. Letters and note cards are mostly personal, reflecting their family life, birthdays, and anniversaries.
Citation:
Harold Tovish papers, [ca. 1942-1995]. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Additional Forms:
35mm microfilm reel 5281 available at Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan.
Location of Originals:
Reel 5281: Originals returned to Harold Tovish after microfilming.
Tovish was born in the Bronx to a poor Jewish immigrant family. As a result of his family becoming destitute after Tovish's father's death ca. 1929, he spent most of his childhood at the Hebrew Orphan asylum in Manhattan, where he studied sculpture under Andrew Berger. He worked on various WPA projects in the 1920s, studied sculpture with Oronzio Mandarelli at Columbia University (1940-1943), fought in Europe during WWII, and studied art in Paris under the GI Bill. Tovish married fellow student Marianna Packard Pineda in the late 1940s. After his noted teaching career began at the University of Minnesota (1951-1954), he again studied in Europe, and moved to Boston to teach at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1957. He served as one of the first Fellows at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, and later taught at Boston University (1971-1983). He exhibited widely, became active in anti-Vietnam War activities, and in the Boston Visual Artists Union.
Language Note:
Undetermined .
Provenance:
Donated in 1997 and 1998 by Harold Tovish, except for 14 photographs and 11 items of correspondence between Tovish and Pineda which he lent for microfilming in 1997.
Location Note:
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 750 9th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
