The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Biographical materials include certificates, awards, and honorary degrees, membership information, personal and family photographs, a few sketches, and a transcript of an oral history Interview with E.P. Richardson conducted by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1982.
There are acquisitions files for the Richardsons' personal art collection that invoices, photographs, correspondence with galleries and collectors, appraisals, price lists, and artwork examination forms.
Correspondence is with colleagues, art dealers, collectors, museums and museum curators, foreign scholars, organizations, galleries, artists, art historians and critics, publishers, editors, librarians, friends, and family. Topics regard purchasing art for various collections, consultations about art and collecting including authentications and attributions, publishing, general art history, lectures, and personal matters, among other topics. There is correspondence with the Archives of American Art, Castano Galleries, Lawrence Fleischman, James Thomas Flexner, Alfred V. Frankenstein, George Croce, Walter Heil, Earl Krentzin, Wilmarth Lewis, Russel Lynes, John Francis McDermott, Philadelphia Museum of Art, J. Hall Pleasants, Anna Rutledge, Charles Sellers, Smithsonian Institution, Regina Soria, Victor Spark, William Stevens, Robert Vose, William Woolfenden, and many others. Scattered correspondence with artists is with Isabel Bishop, Louis Bouche, William Bostick, Eve Garrison, Edward Hopper, Irene Jungwirth, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Hughie Lee-Smith, Reginald Marsh, Gerald Mast, Georgia O'Keefe, Charles Sheeler, Walt Speck, and John Wedda, among many others. The greatest extent of correspondence is with Andrew Wyeth, Harold Cohn, and Frederick Simper. There is also personal correspondence with family and friends, and between E.P. and Constance Richardson.
E.P. Richardson's prominence as an art historian, writer, and expert on collecting is well documented through his prolific writings. Materials include drafts, notes, typescripts, and outlines for articles, exhibition catalog essays, and lectures. Also found are research files and publishing documentation for Richardson's books, including Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America (1948), Painting in America (1956), Charles Willson Peale and his World (1983), and American Romantic Painting (1944). There are also miscellaneous notes and four diaries. Two of the diaries comment on the social and cultural life of Detroit; the authenticity of paintings; Richardson's reflections on contemporary American painting, thoughts about museums, dealers, artists, and art historians (especially Wilhelm R. Valentiner); and travel.
Notebooks compiled by Richardson on a wide variety art-related topics cover nearly six decades. There are also numerous research files organized Richardson about individual artists and art history. And, the art collector files contain reference materials about art collectors and their collections including Lamont du Pont Copeland, Michael W. Freeman, Nelson Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Allen, and the Marquis de Somerlous. There are three index card file boxes containing bibliographic data on published books and articles.
Professional and committee files document Richardson's professional and consulting work for the Art Quarterly, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Collection of Fine Arts, the National Portrait Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the John D. Rockefeller III collection, Winterthur Museum, the White House, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Constance C. Richardson's papers include business and professional correspondence with various institutions, most extensively with the Macbeth Gallery. In addition, there is a smaller amount of personal correspondence, photographs and slides of her artworks, printed materials, two illustrated notebooks on her work, and miscellaneous notes. Also included is Constance's artist palette.
Biographical / Historical:
Art historian, museum director, and writer E. P. (Edgar Preston) Richardson (1902-1985) served as director of the Detroit Institute of Arts (1945-1962) and Winterthur Museum (1963-1966). He was also a board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1966-1977 and, in 1954, co-founded the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
E. P. Richardson was born in 1902 in Glens Falls, New York and died in Philadelphia in 1985. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1925 and studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for the three years following graduation. In 1930 he became educational secretary at the Detroit Institute of Arts, was quickly named assistant director in 1933, and served as director from 1945 to 1962. He left Detroit to take the position of director of the Winterthur Museum, where he remained until 1966.
Richardson married Constance Coleman in 1931. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1905, Constance Coleman Richardson was an award-winning and widely exhibited realist style painter of American landscapes. She gave up painting in the 1960s and died in 2002.
While at the Detroit Institute of Arts, E. P. Richardson co-founded the Archives of American Art with Lawrence Fleischman, and served as the Archives' first director. Richardson was also art advisor to John D. Rockefeller III for over ten years, editor of Art Quarterly from 1938 to 1967, and a member of various boards, including the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian Arts Commission, and the National Portrait Gallery. He authored numerous books including ones on artists Washington Allston and Charles Willson Peale, and The Way of Western Art: American Romantic Painting (1939), Painting in America: The Story of Four Hundred and Fifty Years (1956), A Short History of Painting in America (1963), and American Art, an Exhibition of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3d (1976).
Related Materials:
Related collections among the holdings of the Archives of American Art include an interview with E.P. Richardson dated February 6, 1978 conducted by Linda Downs; and several miscellaneous manuscripts that include an E.P. Richardson Letter to Rockwell Kent, June 15 1959; E.P. Richardson letters to Lawrence Arthur Fleischman, May 13, 1962 and August 22 1954; and a Yasuo Kunioshi letter to E.P. Richardson, July 25 1948.
Additional E.P. Richardson papers are found at the Detroit Institute of Arts and in the archives of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel D46) including E.P. Richardson's research material on Jeremiah P. Hardy. These materials are housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
Edith Wilkinson first donated a letter to E. P. Richardson from herself in 1957. E.P. Richardson donated papers to the Archives of American Art in 1958 and 1960 and lent materials for microfilming in 1961. Addition material was donated by Constance Richardson in 1985, and by Martha Fleischman in 2003.
Restrictions:
Use of original material requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact References Services for more information.
Rights:
The E.P. (Edgar Preston) and Constance Richardson papers are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
An interview of Diane Waldman conducted 2010 June 8-9, by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art's Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts project, at Waldman's home, in New York, N.Y.
Waldman speaks of her background; education and early career; her curatorial work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; relationships with artists; her exhibitions of works by Joseph Cornell, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Max Ernst, and others; her travels to India; her life after resigning from the Guggenheim Museum; Frank Lloyd Wright's building; the Guggenheim International; the museum profession dominated by men; writing detective stories; and other topics. She recalls Ed Fry, Thomas Hess, Thomas Kress, Thomas Messer, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Diane Waldman (1936- ) is an independent art history scholar in New York, N.Y. Judith Olch Richards (1947- ) is a former director of iCI in New York, N.Y.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 memory cards. Duration is 5 hr., 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 administrators.
Topic:
Art historians -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Authors -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Curators -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
The papers of art historian and Monuments Man S. Lane Faison measure 5.1 linear feet and date from 1922 to 1981, bulk from 1950-1976. Faison was an art history professor at Williams College, Massachusetts and, during World War II, he was a member of the Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. The collection includes scattered correspondence; writings; teaching files; subject files on exhibitions and projects; artists files; and printed materials. There are two folders of documents and photographs related to Faison's World War II work in the U.S. Art Looting Intelligence Unit.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art historian and Monuments Man S. Lane Faison measure 5.1 linear feet and date from 1922 to 1981, bulk from 1950-1976. Faison was an art history professor at Williams College, Massachusetts and, during World War II, he was a member of the Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. The collection includes scattered correspondence; writings; teaching files; subject files on exhibitions and projects; artists files; and printed materials. There are two folders of documents and photographs related to Faison's World War II work in the U.S. Art Looting Intelligence Unit.
Six folders of scattered correspondence relate to Faison's teaching, lectures, and writings.
Writings include bound student notebooks, lecture notes, typescript drafts, published articles, and material related to his book Handbook of the Collection: Williams College Museum of Art. Eighteen bound notebooks are filled with Faison's college class notes. There are typescript drafts of Faison's articles and speeches, as well as printed versions. Papers relating to Faison's book Handbook of the Collection: Williams College Museum of Art include several drafts, a correction copy, and a folder of illustrations to accompany the text.
Teaching files consist of course files containing miscellaneous notes for classes taught by Faison. The syllabi for classes he taught are filed separately.
Subject files are arranged into three groups: Monuments Men/ALIU files; projects and exhibitions files, and general research files. There are only two folders relating to Faison's World War II work in the ALIU. They contain photographs of looted artwork and documents about the controversial decision to ship recovered artwork to the U.S. for storage in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Projects and exhibitions files document Faison's curatorial work on the Oberlin Project (a traveling exhibition of college art) and the Carnegie International Exhibition, and other miscellaneous collaborative projects. Research files contain documents organized according to Faison's original folder headings and include miscellaneous images and clippings loosely grouped together by topic: architecture, advertising, housing, poster design, etc.
Artist files are Faison's documents on specific artists that mostly contain images of artwork, clippings and articles. Artist files were mostly used for teaching and reference.
Printed materials include news clippings, exhibition catalogs, press releases, reports and other miscellaneous materials.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in 6 series.
Series 1: Correspondence, 1949-1979 (0.1 linear feet; Box 1, 6 folders)
Series 2: Writings, 1928-1979 (1.7 linear feet; Box 1-2, 7)
Series 3: Teaching Files, 1935-1976 (0.7 linear feet; Box 2-3)
Series 4: Subject Files, 1923-1981 (0.6 linear feet; Box 3, 7)
Series 5: Artist Files, 1922-1976 (1.5 linear feet; Box 3-5, 7)
Series 6: Printed Materials, circa 1935-1980 (0.5 linear feet; Box 6-7)
Biographical / Historical:
Samson Lane Faison Jr. (1907-2006) was an art history professor at Williams College and director of the Williams College Museum of Art, Massachusetts. During World War II, Faison served in the Art Looting Investigation Unit of the Office of Strategic Services, an intelligence unit related to the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Division of the U.S. Army.
Samson Lane Faison Jr. was born in Washington, D.C. on November 16, 1907 to Samson Lane Faison Sr., a brigadier general in the United States Army, and Eleanor Sowers Faison. Faison graduated from Williams College in 1929, completed his M.A. at Harvard University in 1930, and a M.F.A. from Princeton in 1932. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching at Yale as an associate professor of art. In 1935, Faison married Virginia Gordon Weed (d. 1997) and they had four sons: Gordon, George, Christopher and Samson. Faison joined the Williams College faculty in 1936 and became head of the art department in 1940.
During World War II, Faison initially served as an instructor in U.S. Naval Air Force. From 1945-1946, however, Faison was a member of the Office of Strategic Services' Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) responsible for investigating and interrogating Nazis and art dealers who were involved in the systematic looting of fine arts and antiquities across Europe. The ALIU investigated Karl Haberstock, Hitler's primary dealer and Hermann Voss, director of Hitler's Führermuseum in Linz, Austria where Hitler planned to house and display plundered art. Faison was the primary author of the report on the Führermuseum and also interrogated Göring's curator Walter Andreas Hofer. The ALIU issued twelve Detailed Interrogation Reports on Nazi looting activities which were used at the Nuremburg Trials.
During the recovery efforts, the U.S. government decided to ship 202 paintings that had been stolen by the Nazis from several Berlin museums in Germany (notably the Kaiser Friedrich Museum now known as the Bode Museum) to the U.S. for safekeeping at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The government argued that the storage conditions in Germany were poor. Twenty-five of the Monuments Men signed a petition, known as the Wiesbaden Manifesto, against moving the paintings out of Germany. The Berlin Paintings were transported to the U.S. anyway and went on display at the National Gallery of Art before being put in storage. Faison was one of ninety-five American art historians who signed a second resolution in protest, demanding the immediate return of the paintings. The artwork, however, was not returned until 1948.
After the war, Faison resumed his professorship and his position as art department chair at Williams College and became director of the Williams College Museum of Art in 1948. In 1950, Faison returned to Germany as the last Director of the Munich Central Collecting Point, one of several recovered artwork repositories in Europe established by the U.S. State Department for inventory, research, and repatriation. Faison's orders were to close down the Munich Collecting Point, which took nine months.
Faison continued to teach at Williams until his retirement. Faison and two of his colleagues, William H. Pierson Jr. and Whitney S. Stoddard, were the three art history professors at Williams College nicknamed the "Holy Trinity," due to their reputation for launching the careers of their students to stratospheric heights. Several of their students went on to become directors at prestigious museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Art Institute of Chicago. The New York Times created the moniker "Williams Mafia" in reference to the Williams alumni that were taught by the "Holy Trinity" and whom went on to become prominent members of the art world.
Faison was made a Chevalier of French Legion of Honor in 1952. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 1960-1961 and Williams college awarded him a Doctor of Letters in 1971. He stepped down from his position as art department chair in 1969, and retired from his position as the director of the Williams College Museum of Art in 1976. Faison died in Williamstown, MA in 2006 at the age of 98.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds an oral history interview of S. Lane Faison conducted on December 14, 1981 by Robert F. Brown for the Archives of American Art's oral history program.
Provenance:
The S. Lane Faison papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by S. Lane Faison, Jr. in 4 installments from 1978 to 1982.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The S. Lane Faison papers are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study, and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
An interview with Robert Pincus-Witten, conducted 2016 March 23-24, by Francis M. Naumann for the Archives of American Art at Pincus-Witten's home in New York, New York.
Biographical / Historical:
Robert Pincus-Witten (1935-2018) was a professor of art history emeritus at CUNY in New York, New York. Interviewer Francis M. Naumann (1948- ) is an art historian and art dealer in Yorktown Heights, New York.
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.
Cornwall (England : County) -- Description and Travel
Europe -- description and travel
Date:
2011 April 22-24
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Moira Roth conducted 2011 April 22- 24, by Sue Heinemann, for the Archives of American Art's Elizabeth Murray Oral History Project, at Roth's home, in Berkeley, California.
Roth discusses her childhood and family background; her "unconventional" mother attending the London School of Economics; her "romantic childhood" growing up in Cornwall, England; her family's move to Letchworth for her to attend St. Christopher, a Montessori school; taking in evacuees from London during the Battle of Britain in 1940; childhood colored with European culture, Jewish culture, and music; at 17 moving from England to Washington, D.C., to live with her Irish father who was working for the International Monetary Fund; her early "passion for travelling"; moving to New York City in 1952; meeting John Cage; her autobiographical writings; travels in Europe; studies at the University of Vienna and the London School of Economics; deciding to be a psychiatric social worker; majoring in sociology with a minor in art history; attending graduate school in art history; her interest in Duchamp; doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley; interviewing artists; her marriage to Bill Roth; teaching; early publications; performances at the Woman's Building in the late 1970s; editing the book "The Amazing Decade: Women & Performance Art in America, 1970-1980" (1983); traveling with Faith Ringgold; friendships with Linda Nochlin, May Stevens, Lucy Lippard and others; experimental theater; her interest in Noh theater; the Women's Caucus for Art at CAA; The Poor Farm contemporary art space; living in the Bay Area; "rethinking feminism in terms of Asian-American Women"; globalism; the fictional character she created, Rachel Marker; and other topics. She recalls Joyce Kozloff, Miriam Schapiro, Judy Chicago, Judy Baca, Claudia Bernardi, Eleanor Antin, Margo Machida, Mary Jane Jacob, Annika Marie, Whitney Chadwick, Suzanne Lacy, Allan Kaprow, Peter Selz, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Moira Roth (1933- ) is an art historian and writer in Berkeley, California.
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.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
An interview with Douglas Crimp, conducted 2017 January 3-4, by Alex Fialho, for the Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project, at Crimp's home in New York, New York.
Crimp speaks of growing up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; his athleticism in water skiing and ice skating; sibling rivalry as a child; seeing art for the first time at the Seattle World Fair; being closeted and conflicted as a young gay man in 1950s Idaho; attending Tulane University in New Orleans and the culture shock he experienced there; his first year in Tulane's rigorous architecture program and ultimately changing his major to art history; the pageantry of Mardi Gras parades and the gay society he explored; writing an undergraduate paper analyzing Marcel Duchamp's "The Large Glass"; deciding to go to New York City; finding his voice as an art critic while beginning his career at Art News and Art International; his extensive analysis of Joan Jonas; attending Firehouse dances sponsored by Gay Activist Alliance and coming into his sexuality; being a patient of esteemed doctor Dr. Dan William; first learning of the AIDS crisis and epidemic through a New York Times article in 1981 describing a gay cancer; receiving an NEA art critic grant and spending a year in Germany from 1985-86; returning to find friends and acquaintances sick with HIV/AIDS or having died from it; the Dia Conversations; his role as editor of October and bringing queerness and AIDS to the forefront; joining ACT UP; the genesis of October's AIDS double issue in 1987-1988 and its success; how the journal issue changed the course of his career and steered him to teach gay studies and further his work with AIDS activism; the inner workings of ACT UP meetings; the sense of community ACT UP provided and the empowerment everyone felt; noting a sense of personal and professional urgency during the crisis; the timeline of his AIDS writings; his reaction to seeing the AIDS quilt for the first time at the March on Washington; writing to a wide, non-academic audience; his 1988 course at Rutgers University on AIDS video; his complex relationships with Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson; the poor coverage of the AIDS epidemic in the media and how it informed his writing; the understanding of the need for safe sex practices and writing "How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic;" teaching courses on AIDS at the University of Rochester and how his teaching interest evolved into queer theory and studies; evaluating Warhol's work with a queer lens; writing about his experience with queer life in New York City in the 1970s to counter the condescending conservative narrative; his current writing projects and interests; experience in demonstrations held by ACT UP; and the tremendous communal support he felt during his seroconversion. Crimp also recalls Marilynne Summers (Robinson), Bernard Lemann, Marimar Benetiz, Ida Kohlmeyer, Lynn Emory, Diane Waldman, Betsy Baker, Lucinda Hawkins, Christian Belaygue, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rosalind Krauss, Joan Copjec, Gregg Bordowitz, Terri Cafaro, Rene Santos, Craig Owens, Fernando Torm, Bill Olander, Richard Elovich, Daniel Wolfe, Hector Caicedo, Lynne Cooke, and Zoe Leonard.
Biographical / Historical:
Douglas Crimp (1944- 2019) was a professor and art critic in New York, New York. Alex Fialho (1989- ) is a curator and arts writer who is the Programs Director for Visual AIDS in New York, New York.
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.
Occupation:
Educators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
