The papers of New York-based painter, lithographer, art critic, and poet Fairfield Porter measure 9.3 linear feet and date from 1888 to 2001, with the bulk of material dating from 1924 to 1975. Papers document Porter's life and career through correspondence, writings, business records, printed materials, photographs, and artwork.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of New York-based painter, lithographer, art critic, and poet Fairfield Porter measure 9.3 linear feet and date from 1888 to 2001, with the bulk of material dating from 1924 to 1975. The collection includes a biographical chronology; certificates, awards, and diplomas; letters to Fairfield and Anne Porter; scattered outgoing correspondence; and reviews, essays, notes, poems, and translations written by Porter and others. Among the writings are poetry manuscripts written by several New York School Poets including Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch. Also found are gallery records, inventories and appraisals, financial records, exhibition catalogs, clippings, posters, and records of Anne Porter's efforts to place his collection and document and publish his work after his death. Photographs of Porter, his homes, and his family are also present, as well as sketchbooks, loose sketches, and drawings spanning his entire career.
Significant correspondence is present from the Porters' many poet friends, including Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, Ron Padgett, Kenward Elmslie, Barbara Guest, Carl Morse, David Shapiro, and others. Among the letters are poetry manuscripts by Koch, Morse, Schuyler, Padgett, and Shapiro. Some letters are actually written in verse, especially those from Kenneth Koch.
Artists with letters in the collection include Joe Brainard, Rudy Burkhardt, John Button, Lucien Day, Rackstraw Downes, Philip Evergood, Jane Frielicher, Arthur Giardelli, Leon Hartl, Alex Katz, Edward Laning, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, Richard Stankiewicz, Nicolas Vasilieff, among others. Other art world figures represented include John Bernard Myers, curator at the Tibor de Nagy gallery (New York), and Tom Hess, editor of ArtNews. Artwork found within the correspondence includes an illustrated letter from Ron Padgett and an original print on a holiday card by Edith Schloss.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into the following nine series. See the series descriptions below for more information about the content of each series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1916-1975 (Box 1 and 11; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1918-1996 (Boxes 1-2; 1.2 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings by Fairfield Porter, 1924-1975 (Box 2; 0.6)
Series 4: Writings by Others, 1888-1992 (Boxes 2-3; 0.7 linear feet)
Series 5: Personal Business Records, 1944-1996 (Boxes 3-4; 1 linear foot)
Series 6: Anne Porter's Posthumous Projects, 1980-1988 (Box 4; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 7: Printed Materials, 1934-2001 (Boxes 4-6 and 11; 1.5 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographs, circa 1880-1990 (Boxes 6 and 11; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 9: Artwork, 1918-1975 (Boxes 7-10 and 12-17; 2.2 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Fairfield Porter was born near Chicago in 1907, the fourth of five children of James and Ruth Furness Porter. His father was an architect, his mother a poet from a literary family, and Porter grew up in an environment where art and literature were highly valued. His father designed the family homes in Winnetka, Illinois and on Great Spruce Head Island, an island in Maine that he purchased for the family in 1912. Fairfield Porter spent summers there from the age of six, and views of the island, its structures, and neighboring towns were the subjects of many paintings.
Porter attended Harvard from 1924 to 1928, studying fine art with Arthur Pope and philosophy with Alfred North Whitehead. After graduating from Harvard, Porter moved to New York City and took studio classes at the Art Students League from 1928 until 1930, studying with Boardman Robinson and Thomas Hart Benton, and immersing himself in the art and radical politics of Greenwich Village. In the 1940s, he studied at Parson's School of Design with art restorer Jacques Maroger, adopting the Maroger recipe for an oil medium in his own painting.
To further his education as an artist, Porter traveled to Europe in 1931, where he spent time with expatriate art theorist Bernard Berenson and his circle. When he returned to New York, he allied himself with progressive, socialist organizations, and like many of his contemporaries, worked at creating socially relevant art. He did artwork for the John Reed Club, a communist group; taught drawing classes for Rebel Arts, a socialist arts organization; wrote for their magazine, Arise!; and created a mural for the Queens branch of the Socialist Party. Living in the Chicago area for several years in the 1930s, he illustrated chapbooks for the socialist poet John Wheelwright's Poems for a Dime and Poems for Two Bits series. Porter's financial contributions to the radical Chicago publication Living Marxism kept it afloat for several years.
In 1932, Porter married Anne Channing, a poet from Boston, and they settled in New York. The Porters had five children, and their first son, born in 1934, suffered from a severe form of autism. In the next decade, they had two more sons, and spent three years in Porter's hometown of Winnetka, where he had his first solo exhibition of paintings. When they returned to New York in 1939, the Porters became friends with Edwin Denby, Rudy Burkhardt, and Elaine and Willem de Kooning. Porter became an earnest admirer of Willem de Kooning's artwork and was among the first to review and purchase it.
In 1949, the Porters moved to the small, seaside town of Southampton, New York. Their two daughters were born in 1950 and 1956. Like the family home on Great Spruce Head Island, Southampton became the setting of many of Porter's paintings. In fact, almost all of his mature paintings depict family homes, surrounding landscapes, family members, and friends. Porter was an individualistic painter who embraced figurative art in the late 1940s and 1950s, when abstract expressionism was the prevailing aesthetic trend. Porter once made a comment that his commitment to figurative painting was made just to spite art critic Clement Greenberg, a respected critic and ideologue who had championed abstract expressionism and denigrated realism as passé.
Porter established his reputation as a painter and as a writer in the 1950s. John Bernard Myers of the vanguard Tibor de Nagy gallery gave Porter his first New York exhibition in 1951 and represented him for the next twenty years. That same year Tom Hess, editor of ArtNews, hired Porter to write art features and reviews. Porter went on to contribute to ArtNews until 1967 and also became art editor for The Nation beginning in 1959, the same year his article on Willem de Kooning won the Longview Foundation Award in art criticism. As a critic, Porter visited countless galleries and studios, and he gained a reputation for writing about art with the understanding and vested interest of an artist, and with the same independence from fashionable ideas that he demonstrated in his artwork.
The 1950s and 1960s were prolific years for Porter's writing and art, and saw the development of his critical ideas and the maturation of his painting. Porter enjoyed an elder status among a circle of younger artists such as Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, and Alex Katz, and their many poet friends, now known as the New York School of Poetry: Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch, Barbara Guest, and others. Porter himself wrote poetry and was published in the 1950s, sometimes alongside poems by his wife, who had been publishing poetry since the 1930s (twice in the vanguard Chicago journal, Poetry). The Porters' correspondence is laced with poems they and their friends sent back and forth, often about and dedicated to each other.
Besides his annual exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy and later Hirschl and Adler Galleries, Porter exhibited regularly at the Whitney, and had one-man exhibitions at many museums including the Rhode Island School of Design (1959), The University of Alabama (1963), Cleveland Museum of Art (his first retrospective, 1966), Trinity College (1967), the Parrish Art Museum (1971), the Maryland Institute of Art (1973), and the 1968 Venice Biennale. He also had residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1964) and Amherst College (1969). Porter died in 1975 at age 68. A full-scale retrospective of his artwork was held at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston in 1983, and a study center and permanent home for his artwork was established at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton through a donation made by Anne Porter. A posthumous collection of his poems was published by Tibor de Nagy Editions in 1985, and a catalogue raisonnée, edited by Joan Ludman, was published in 2001.
This biography relies heavily on information found in Justin Spring's biography of Porter, Fairfield Porter: A Life in Art (Yale University Press, 2000).
Related Material:
The Archives of American Art holds an oral history of Fairfield Porter conducted by Paul Cummings in 1968.
Provenance:
The papers of Fairfield Porter were given to the Archives of American Art by the artist's wife, Anne Porter, in five separate accessions between 1977 and 1997.
Restrictions:
The bulk of this collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website. Use of material not digitized 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.
Occupation:
Art critics -- New York (State) -- Southampton Search this
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.
Occupation:
Art historians -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Topic:
Authors -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Curators -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Collection Rights:
Max Spoerri interview: Authorization to quote or reproduce for purposes of publication requires written permission from Max Spoerri. Contact Reference Services for more information.
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:
Hans Hofmann papers, circa 1904-2011, bulk 1945-2000. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Glass plate negatives in this collection were digitized in 2019 with funding provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
Use of original material requires an appointment. Use of archival audiovisual recordigs with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice.
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:
Cleve Gray papers, 1933-2005. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview with Rosalyn Drexler conducted 2017 May 17 and June 2 by Christopher Lyon, for the Archives of American Art, at Garth Greenan Gallery in New York, New York.
Drexler discusses her childhood in the Bronx; her experiences studying dance and music; her higher education at Hunter College; attending films and the Yiddish Theater; meeting her husband Sherman Drexler; her time as a professional wrestler; her memories of traveling to the South and encountering Jim Crow segregation; she describes learning about art from Sherman Drexler and her joint exhibition with Sherman; her early work in sculpture; participating in Happenings with Jim Dine; joining Anita Reuben's gallery; her debut as a playwright; her experience writing "I am the Beautiful Stranger;" the changing public perception of her and being classified as an artist; her decision to become a painter and appropriating images for her work; the influence of S. J. Perelman on her plays; her play about Joseph Cornell and ballerina Allegra Kent, and interviewing Allegra Kent; her recent artwork and preparing for her 2017 show at Garth Greenan Gallery; her artwork from the 1980s and 1990s; her comedy writing and sense of humor. Drexler also recalls Chico Marx, Jack Newfield, Igor Youskevitch, Ivan Karp, Anita Reuben, Lucas Samaras, Richard Gilman, Al Carmines, Amiri Baraka, Barbara Ann Teer, Franz Kline, Elaine De Kooning, Bill de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Jack Kroll, Lawrence Alloway, Tom Hess, Barney Newman, Harold Rosenberg, Susan Sontag, Joe Hirshhorn, Henry Geldzahler, Donald Barthelme, Kornblee Gallery, Eva Hesse, Tom Doyle, William Klein, Marilyn Monroe, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Basquiat, Saturday Night Live, and Lenny Bruce, among others.
Biographical / Historical:
Rosalyn Drexler (1926- ) is a sculptor, playwright, and novelist in New York, New York. Christopher Lyon (1949- ) is a writer in Brooklyn, 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:
Authors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Playwrights -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of New York editor and art critic Thomas Hess measure 10.01 linear feet and date from 1939 to 1978. The collection includes biographical materials, correspondence, extensive writings and notes, artists and subject files that also include recorded conversations with artists and others, printed materials, photographic materials, and artwork.
There is a .01 linear foot unprocessed addition to this collection donated in 2022 that includes a six page typed manuscript, "Think, American Painting," undated, by Thomas Hess and the book American Realists and Magic Realists, The Museum of Modern Art, 1943, signed by Hess.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York editor and art critic Thomas Hess measure 10.01 linear feet and date from 1939 to 1978. The collection includes biographical materials, correspondence, extensive writings and notes, artists and subject files that also include recorded conversations with artists and others, printed materials, photographic materials, and artwork.
Biographical material includes a certificate, architectural plans, investment information, invoices, publisher and loan agreements, will for Paul Stamm, and resumes. Correspondence is with members of Hess' family including his wife and children, Philip Guston, Meyer Schapiro, David Smith, James Schuyler, Forrest Bess, Elaine de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Larry Rivers, Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, and others.
Writings and notes consist of manuscripts and drafts by Hess for Art News, Le Monde, Vogue, New York magazine, and other publications; Hess' senior essay and class notes; notes on Ingres, Italian artists, and travels abroad; notebooks on art and literature; and scattered writings by others.
Artists and subject files contain primarily photographs of artwork, artists, and colleaguesare mostly photographs of artwork, artists, and colleagues. Some of the files also contain printed materials, writings, notes, and other documentation. The file on Willem de Kooning includes a sound recording of a conversation between Hess, de Kooning, and Harold Rosenberg. There are also significant files on Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Carl Milles, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and the Mark Rothko Foundation Inc.
Printed materials include brochures and flyers, clippings, magazines and newspapers, press releases, travel memorabilia, and a printed scarf. Photographs are of of Hess, his wife Audrey, other family members, works of art, travel, Larry Rivers and Ad Reinhardt, and other artists and colleagues. Artwork includes drawings, paintings, collages, cartoons, and holiday cards made by Hess and his children, along with artwork by others including Audrey and Lawrence Campbell, Ad Reinhardt, and unidentified artists.
There is a .01 linear foot unprocessed addition to this collection donated in 2022 that includes a six page typed manuscript, "Think, American Painting," undated, by Thomas Hess and the book American Realists and Magic Realists, The Museum of Modern Art, 1943, signed by Hess.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 8 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1945-1977 (0.3 linear feet; Box 1, OV 15)
Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1945-1978 (1.0 linear feet; Box 1-2, OV 11)
Series 3: Writings and Notes, circa 1940-1978 (2.5 linear feet; Box 2-5, OV 12)
Series 4: Artists and Subject Files, circa 1946-1978 (4.5 linear feet; Box 5-9, OVs 13, 15-16)
Series 5: Printed Materials, 1943-1978 (0.5 linear feet; Box 9, OV 11)
Series 6: Photographic Materials, 1949-circa 1960s (0.8 linear feet; Box 9-10, OV14)
Series 7: Artwork, 1939-1978 (0.4 linear feet; Box 10, OV 11)
Series 8: Unprocessed Addition, 1943 and undated (0.01 linear feet; Folder 17)
Biographical / Historical:
Thomas B. Hess (1920-1978) was an editor, art critic, and curator who worked in New York City. He was on the staff at Art News for 26 years (1946-72). Starting as an editorial associate, he was named managing editor in 1948, then executive editor in 1954; he assumed the top editorial post in 1965 upon the death of long-time editor Alfred Frankfurter. In his critical writing from the late 1940s on, he was an influential supporter of the Abstract Expressionists. He wrote widely on other topics as well. In 1972 he left Art News after an ownership change. He then became the art critic for New York magazine (1972-78), a large-circulation weekly reaching a much larger public. (He was also, in the late '60s, a correspondent for the French daily newspaper Le Monde.)
Over the years he undertook several major curatorial projects including traveling retrospectives for Willem de Kooning (1968-69) and Barnett Newman (1971), which he organized for the Museum of Modern Art. His "New York School Painting and Sculpture" appeared at the New York State Museum in Albany in 1977. Both MoMA exhibitions were accompanied by comprehensive monograph/catalogues: Willem de Kooning (1968) and Barnett Newman (1971). Hess's other books include Abstract Painting: Background and American Phase (1951, Viking); Willem de Kooning (1959, Braziller); De Kooning, Recent Paintings (1967, Walker & Co.); Barnett Newman (1969, Walker & Co.); De Kooning: Drawings (1972, New York Graphic); and The Art Comics and Satires of Ad Reinhardt (1975, De Luca Editore, Rome).
Hess became consultative chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of 20th-Century Art a few months before his death from a heart attack in July 1978, age 57. Already under way were a Clyfford Still retrospective and a smaller show of recent paintings and sculptures by Ellsworth Kelly. Both exhibitions, completed by Philippe de Montebello (the Met's then new director) and Lowery S. Sims (the Met's then acting 20th-century curator) respectively, took place the year after Hess's death.
Thomas Hess was born in Rye, New York, to Gabriel Lorie Hess, a lawyer, and Helen Baer. He attended school in the United States and Switzerland. He continued his education at Yale University majoring in French 17th-century art history and literature. After graduating in 1942, Hess worked for a short period at the Museum of Modern Art under Alfred H. Barr and Dorothy Miller, before entering World War II as a pilot. In 1944 he married Audrey Stern with whom he had three children, William, Philip, and Anne Helen.
Separated Materials:
Materials on legacy microfilm reel 5028 related to Barnett Newman are photocopies. The originals are located at the Barnett New Foundation in New York City.
Provenance:
The Thomas Hess papers were donated in multiple increments from 1985 to 1987 by Hess' children, Anne Helen, William, and Philip Hess, except for a file on Barnett Newman donated by Newman's widow, who presumably had borrowed it from Hess. In 2014, additional correspondence, writings, photographs, printed material, and cartoons, including some by Ad Reinhardt, were donated by Elizabeth Wolff, Hess' sister. A small addition was donated in 2022 by Anne Hess, Thomas Hess' daughter.
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.
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.
Occupation:
Art critics -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
An interview of Fairfield Porter conducted 1968 June 6, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of American Art.
Porter speaks of his family background and Harvard education; the Art Students League; his involvement with Marxism and his work as an art critic for "Art News" and "The Nation". He discusses his portrait commissions, his choice of subject matter, theories of realism versus abstraction and drawing versus color, and the role of the unconscious and the accidental in his art. He recalls Thomas Hart Benton, Jacques Maroger, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Walter Auerbach, Thomas B. Hess, Clement Greenberg, and Alex Katz.
Biographical / Historical:
Fairfield Porter (1907-1975) was a painter and critic from Southampton, N.Y.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 3 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hr., 24 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 others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Art critics -- New York (State) -- Interviews Search this
Topic:
Painting, Modern -- 20th century -- New York (State) Search this
An interview of Milton Resnick conducted 1988 July 13-Oct. 11, by Cynthia Nadelman, for the Archives of American Art. Resnick speaks of his life in Russia, New York, and Paris, his views on light and dark in painting; the development of his two paintings, NIGHT and DAY; his watercolors; his distrust of ideas; the influence of Soutine and Monet on him. He recalls Willem and Elaine de Kooning, the Club, Harold Rosenberg, Thomas B. Hess, Pat Passlof, Hans Hofmann, Lionel Abel, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Milton Resnick (1917-2004) is a painter from New York, N.Y.
General:
Originally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 46 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are part of the Archives' 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 others.
Papers related to Tuchman's co-authoring with Emile de Antonio the book Painters Painting: A History of American Modernism in the Words of Those Who Created It (Abbeville Press, 1984). The book was based on uncut transcripts and the film script from de Antonio's 1972 film Painters Painting, inspired by the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970, curated by Henry Geldzahler. Included are correspondence; transcripts of interviews conducted by de Antonio of painters, critics, curators, and collectors; notes; drafts of the book; and a subject card file.
Interviewees include: Josef Albers, Leo Castelli, Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Henry Geldzahler, Clement Greenberg, Thomas Hess, Jasper Johns, Philip Johnson, Hilton Kramer, Philip Leider, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Philip Pavia, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, William Rubin, Ethel and Robert Scull, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol.
Biographical / Historical:
Tuchman is an author and editor; Los Angeles, Calif.
Provenance:
Donated 1994 by Mitch Tuchman.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Art critics -- United States -- Interviews Search this
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. One letter from Paul Jenkins to Norman Bluhm, circa 1966, is ACCESS RESTRICTED; use requires written permission. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Collection Rights:
Entire (except oversize watercolors): Authorization to quote or reproduce for the purposes of publication requires written permission from Suzanne or Paul Jenkins, c/o Imago Terrae. Contact Reference Services for more information.
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:
Paul Jenkins papers, circa 1915-2010. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Fairfield Porter, 1968 June 6. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Painting, Modern -- 20th century -- New York (State) Search this
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Tibor de Nagy, 1976 March 29. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Art galleries, Commercial -- Economic aspects Search this
Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts Project Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Diane Waldman, 2010 June 8-9. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Authors -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Curators -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
An interview of Tibor de Nagy conducted 1976 March 29, by Paul Cummings, for the Archives of American Art. de Nagy disusses his family and educational background; his partnership with John Myers; exhibitions by Carl Andre, Helen Frankenthaler, Jane Freilicher, Grace Hartigan, Constantino Nivola, and Larry Rivers at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery; the gallery's clientele including Leo Castelli, Frank O'Hara, Alex Bates, Thomas Hess, and others. De Nagy also speaks of his relationship with museum curators and changes in the art market during the 1950s.
Biographical / Historical:
Tibor de Nagy (1908-1993) was an art dealer from New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 56 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' 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 others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Art dealers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Art galleries, Commercial -- Economic aspects Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
