This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Collection 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.
Collection Citation:
Nell Blaine papers, 1879, 1940-1985. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Processing of this collection received Federal support from the Collections Care Initiative Fund, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative and the National Collections Program. Funding for the digitization of this collection was provided in part by the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Walton Family Foundation.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the American Women's History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the American Women's History Initiative Acquisitions Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative
The papers of photographer, painter, sculptor, and educator William Christenberry (1936-2016) measure 7.3 linear feet and 14.76 GB and date from circa 1917-2018, with the bulk of the records dating from 1960-2018. The collection sheds light on Christenberry's career through personal papers, gallery and museum files, professional files, personal business records, printed and digital material, photographs, artwork, and sound and video recordings about his work.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of photographer, painter, sculptor, and educator William Christenberry (1936-2016) measure 7.3 linear feet and 14.76 GB and date from circa 1917-2018, with the bulk of the records dating from 1960-2018. The collection sheds light on Christenberry's career through personal papers, gallery and museum files, professional files, personal business records, printed and digital material, photographs, artwork, and sound and video recordings about his work.
Personal papers include personal correspondence with friends and family and transcripts of interviews with Christenberry. Gallery and museum files mostly consist of correspondence, price lists, and records of exhibitions. Professional files shed light on Christenbery's relationship with various foundations, colleges and universities, his involvement in the renovation of the John A. Wilson Building in Washington, D.C., and his teaching tenure at the Corcoran College of Art and Design.
Personal business records document purchase of art supplies, and also include correspondence with collectors, sales records, permission forms, and papers concerning fellowships that Christenberry received. Printed materials include newspaper clippings and articles, solo and group exhibition material, and reproductions of Christenberry's work.
Photographs include several series of Christenberry's work and publicity photos of Christenberry. Artwork includes one sketchbook, and project sketches.
Recorded materials consist of sound, video, and digital recordings primarily of footage compiled during the creation of William A. Christenberry, Jr.: A Portrait (1997), produced by Stanley J. Staniski, and the making of The Place I know, Visions of the South (2003).
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as 8 series.
Series 1: Personal Papers, circa 1917, 1953-2016 (Box 1; .3 linear feet)
Series 2: Gallery and Museum Files, 1984-2017 (Box 1; .7 linear feet)
Series 3: Professional Files, 1979-2018 (Box 2; .5 linear feet, ER01; 0.263 GB)
Series 4: Personal Business Records, 1979-2017 (Box 2; .3 linear feet)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1947-2017 (Box 2-3, 8; 1.1 linear feet)
Series 6: Photographs, 1958-2012 (Box 3, 8; .4 linear feet, ER02-ER03; 0.275 GB)
Series 7: Artwork, 1965-2000 (Box 3, 8; 4 folders)
Series 8: Recorded Materials, 1980-2009 (Box 4-7; 4 linear feet, ER04-ER12; 14.23 GB)
Biographical / Historical:
Washington, D.C. photographer, painter, sculptor, and educator William Christenberry (1936-2016) was a pioneer in the use of color photography and is known for his images of west-central Alabama and his explorations of the psychology of place.
Originally from Hale County, Alabama, Christenberry had an interest in art and photography from an early age. He earned his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Alabama and, after graduating in 1959, joined the faculty at his alma mater. After a brief stint in New York where he met Walker Evans, Christenberry took a position as assistant professor of art at Memphis State University in 1962. While in Memphis, Christenberry began exploring color photography more thoroughly while also crafting his own unique style; he also organized a small happening in Memphis in 1965.
Christenberry and his wife moved to Washington D.C. in 1968 where he took a position at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. While living in D.C., Christenberry began photographiing buildings and hand-lettered signs, and photographed other structures and scenes during trips back to Hale County.
Christenberry held solo exhibitions of his work at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Philips Collection, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium, and many more; and participated in group exhibitions such as Visualizing the Blues: Images of the American South, 1962-2000 (2000) at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Picturing Modernity (2010) at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and Seeing Now: Photography Since 1960 (2011) at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Alabama in 1998, and several other notable awards for artistic merit. His work may be found in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Center for Creative Photography, Birmingham Museum of Art, and many others.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art are an oral history interview with William Christenberry conducted by Merry Foresta, March 3 and 31, 2010, and an oral history interview of William Christenberry conducted by Buck Pennington, January 17, 1983.
Provenance:
The collection was donated in 2019 by Sandra Christenberry, William Christenberry's widow.
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. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References 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.
William Christenberry Papers, circa 1917-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
The processing of this collection received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund, administered by the National Collections Program and the Smithsonian Collections Advisory Committee.
The collection documents S. Newman Darby's development of the sailboard, which became known as the windsurfer through sketches, mechanical drawings, plans, patent specifications, legal documents, photographs, correspondence, notebooks, clippings, periodicals, and an 8mm film.
Scope and Contents:
The S. Newman Darby Windsurfing Collection, 1946-1998, documents the body of Newman Darby's inventive output as well as the development of the windsurfing industry. It consists of sketches, mechanical drawings, plans, patent specifications, legal documents, photographs, correspondence, notebooks, clippings, periodicals, an 8mm film and a videocassette. The collection is particularly rich in the material related to the development of the sailboard, including Darby's personal memoirs. It contains U.S. and foreign patents related to windsurfing as well as records and reports related to Darby's testimony in litigation and the recognition of the priority of his invention. the collections research value lies in the documentation of the invention of the windsurfer and the industry and culture it spawned. It documents the processes of invention and marketing of new devices. It is evidence of the full range of S. Newman Darby's imagination, life and career.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into six series.
Series 1: Biographical materials, 1969-1982
Series 2: Inventions and designs, 1953-1990
Series 3: Darby Industries, 1982-1983
Series 4: History of windsurfing, 1944-1998
Series 5: Photographs, 1946-1997
Series 6: Audio-Visual materials, 1965-1997
Biographical / Historical:
S. Newman Darby is recognized as the first person in the United States to conceive of connecting a hand-held sail rig fastened with a universal joint to a floating platform for recreational use. He called it sail boarding in 1965, when he published his designs in Popular Science Monthly magazine. Although he and his brothers Ronald and Kenneth began manufacturing the boards through their company Darby Industries, they never applied for a patent.
S. Newman Darby (1928-2016) was born in West Pittston, Pennsylvania. He graduated from West Pittston High School in 1946. A sign painter and artist, like his father Sidney Darby, he studied drafting at the Pennsylvania State University extension school where he took chemistry, business, art, and photography courses for one year. His first invention, the Darby Dory, a folding rowboat dates from 1953. The sailboard developed out of Darby's experiments with a personal pontoon catamaran, each hull being big enough for one foot and designed to be operated with a hand-held sail and no rudder. By 1964 he had designed a universal joint that connected a mast to a flat bottom sailing scow. This board had a centerboard, tail fin and kite shaped free sail. Early tests were conducted on Trailwood Lake and the Susquehanna River, near West Pittston.
Today sail boarding is known as windsurfing. It adopted its name from Windsurfer International, a company Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake established on the basis of a patent granted to them in 1970 for a "wind-propelled apparatus." In all essential qualities, their claims duplicated Newman Darby's earlier work.
After Schweitzer bought out Drake's share in 1973, he energetically promoted the sport and licensed manufacturing rights to more than 20 companies around the world. Schweitzer forcefully prosecuted patent infringements he perceived among windsurfer manufacturers and he threatened to sue the 1984 Olympic Committee should it authorize a board produced by a manufacturer not licensed by Windsurfer International.
Although he was aware of the growth of the sport and the profits flowing into Windsurfer International through its licensing activities, Darby was unable to mount a legal challenge to Schweitzer. His priority in the invention of the sport was overlooked and almost forgotten.
In the late 1970's, Mistral, a Swiss manufacturer sued by Windsurfer International in Germany, located Darby and presented his "prior art" as a defense. In the early 1980's, courts in the United States were asked to rule on the validity of the Windsurfer International patent. Newman Darby's prior art was at the center of the controversies. The court voided Windsurfer's original patent and Schweitzer was forced to apply for a reissue based on severely limited claims. He lost the use of "windsurfer" as a trademark. Schweitzer retained the reissued patent through further challenges until it expired in 1987. The example of Newman Darby has become a textbook case of the importance of thorough searches for "prior art" for patent attorneys.
Following completion of the patent litigation Darby designed original sail rigs for Mistral in Europe and Horizon in the United States. In 1982 Newman entered into a new partnership with his brothers Ronald and Kenneth and formed NRK, Inc., to design and manufacture windsurfing boards, training devices and to produce written and video documentaries of his contributions to the history of the sport.
Naomi Albrecht Darby, Newman's wife, sewed the first sails for the boards and participated in their testing and marketing. She documented Darby's inventions through the years in photographs and moving images. Over the years, Darby has worked on numerous inventions--most of them related to wind propulsion. Like many independent inventors, Newman Darby conceives of his ideas, executes all of the mechanical plans, builds his own prototypes and tests them. Darby continues to research improvements in windsurfing and to teach courses in boat building and design.
Related Materials:
An original sailboard, rig, mast and daggerboard from the same period are also housed in the Pennsylvania State Museum at Harrisburg.
Separated Materials:
The Division of Culture and the Arts (now Division of Cultural and Community Life) holds artifacts relating to S. Newman Darby and his invention of the windsurfer, including an original board, boom and mast, and sail dating from 1964. See accessions #1998.0086 and #1998.0323.
Provenance:
Most of the collection was donated to the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History by S. Newman Darby and his wife Naomi on February 3, 1998.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Chicago's Art-Related Archival Materials: A Terra Foundation Resource Search this
Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Kenneth Josephson, 2015 September 29-30. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
1 Linear foot ((partially microfilmed on 3 reels))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Scrapbooks
Video recordings
Date:
1941-1978
Scope and Contents:
Photographs of artists; letters; printed material; and a motion picture film.
REEL D284: Exhibition catalogs, 1941-1952, from the Valente Gallery, and clippings; a letter and a sketch from Henry Miller; and a scrapbook containing photographs by Valente of 41 artists, their art work and clippings. Photographs of artists include Boris Aronson, Milton Avery, Arbit Blatas, David Burliuk, Mario Carreño, Joseph DeMartini, Alexander Dobkin, Philip Evergood, Jose Ferrer, Adolph Gottlieb, Marion Greenwood, William Gropper, Chaim Gross, George Grosz, Robert Gwathmey, Lily Harmon, Marsden Hartley, Frederick Haucke, Frank Kleinholz, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ben Lassen,Sigmund Menkes, Jose Clemente Orozco, Abraham Rattner, Iver Rose, Sally Ryan, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Margaret Stark, Sabina Teichman, Anthony Toney, Nahum Tschacbasov, Abraham Walkowitz and Ben Wilson.
REEL 2802: A letter from the National Gallery of Art regarding Valente's film "Art Discovers America"; exhibition catalogs on and written by Valente; clippings; and 30 photographs by Valente of 20 artists.
REEL 3480: Two letters from Henry Miller, dated 1943 and 1945. The letters refer to a "watercolor pad and brushes", and Miller also thanks Valente for a portrait of Abe Rattner.
UNMICROFILMED: Photographs by Valente of artists, each accompanied with the artists' self-portrait. Included are Milton Avery, Arbit Blatas, David Burliuk, Mario Carreño, Alexander Dobkin, Philip Evergood, Chaim Gross, Lily Harmon, Frank Kleinholz, Ben Lassen, David Lax, Lawrence H. Lebduska, Jean Liberte, Jose Orozco, Harold Rome, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Margaret Stark, Sabina Teichman, Anthony Toney, Nahum Tschacbasov, Abraham Walkowitz, and Ben Wilson and 4 photographs of composer Eugene Ormandy which are on the back of the Blatas portraits.
UNMICROFILMED: "Art Discovers America" (MGM shorts), ca. 1945, a 16mm b&w, 400 ft. film regarding the "new public interest" in American art. The film traces the trend back to the exhibition of The Eight, and shows various artists at work, including John Sloan, Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, and Abraham Walkowitz. The film was produced by Regency Pictures. Valente was the photographer and co-director along with Hal Frater.
REEL 439-441 AND SCANNED Photos of artists, previously microfilmed under Photos of Artists I, have subsequently been scanned and returned to the Valente papers.
Biographical / Historical:
Photographer; New York City.
Provenance:
Material on reel D284 lent for microfilming by Valente, 1966; Mrs. Valente subsequently donated the scrapbook, 1979. Material on reels 2802, and 3480 donated by Mr. & Mrs. Valente, 1966 through 1979. Unmicrofilmed material donated by Harold Rome, 1988. An additional 35 photos of artists were donated by Valente ca. 1966, and microfilmed on reels 439-441 with AAA's Photographs of Artists Collection I; search under Valente for more information. Many of the photographs are duplicates.
Restrictions:
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.
Occupation:
Photographers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Art and photography -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Artists -- United States -- Photographs Search this
Portrait photography -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Genre/Form:
Scrapbooks
Video recordings
Sponsor:
Funding for the preservation of the motion picture film "Art Discovers America" provided by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Carrie Yamaoka, 2016 July 26-27. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
