The Rosa Esman Gallery and Tanglewood Press Inc. records measure 16.0 linear feet and date from circa 1922 to 2014, with the bulk of the records dating from 1972 to 1994. The records shed light on two businesses operated by Rosa Esman through administrative files, artist files, exhibition and event files, sales and financial records, printed material, photographic materials, and several objects.
Scope and Contents:
The Rosa Esman Gallery and Tanglewood Press Inc. records measure 16.0 linear feet and date from circa 1922 to 2014, with the bulk of the records dating from 1972 to 1994. The records shed light on two businesses operated by Rosa Esman through administrative files, artist files, exhibition and event files, sales and financial records, printed material, photographic materials, and several objects.
Administrative files contain correspondence files, printed material, and inventories; photos of the gallery, Rosa Esman, and others; a few gallery blueprints; and pins and magnets from a collaboration between the Esman Gallery and artists Roy Lichtenstein, Gustav Klutsis, Lazar "El" Lissitzky, and Sol LeWitt. Artist files consist of resumes and biographical summaries, correspondence, pricelists, exhibition material, press packets, photographic materials depicting artwork and artists, and more. Artists include Eileen Gray, Lev Nussberg, Pascal Verbena, Helen Frankenthaler, Alexander Rodchenko, Sol LeWitt, Peter Boynton, and Jan Muller. Exhibition and event files contain price lists, loan agreements, correspondence, printed materials, and photographic materials. Included in this series is one file for an exhibition held at Knoedler Gallery that was in collaboration with Rosa Esman after she had closed her gallery. Financial records consist of sales books, consignment records, receipts and invoices, ledgers, and some appraisals. Tanglewood Press Inc. files contain correspondence files, financial records, order forms and receipts, photographic materials, press packets, mailers, a certificate, and some exhibition materials. Printed material consists of some miscellaneous postcards, exhibition announcements and catalogs including a binder of exhibition announcements. Photographic material consists of photographs, slides, and negatives of artwork displayed at the gallery. There are also a number of CDs containing digital photographs.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as seven series.
Series 1: Administrative Files, 1973-2014 (Box 1-2, 16; 1.8 linear feet)
Series 2: Artist Files, 1920s, 1953-2011 (Box 2-8, 16; 5.7 linear feet)
Series 3: Exhibition and Event Files, 1971-2014 (Box 8-12, 16; 4.8 linear feet)
Series 4: Financial Records, 1965, 1977-2013 (Box 12-13, 16-17; 1.9 linear feet)
Series 5: Tanglewood Press Inc. Records, 1964-2003 (Box 13-15, 17; 1.0 linear feet)
Series 6: Printed Material, circa 1972-1994 (Box 2, 12, 17; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 7: Photographic Material, circa 1970s-2013 (Box 2, 7, 8, 12, 18; 0.4 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Rosa Esman Gallery was established in 1972 in New York, New York by Rosa Esman. The gallery exhibited mostly twentieth-century American and European art in various mediums and styles, including pop art, European outsider art, Dada, constructivism, architecture, interior design, and Russian artists from the early twentieth century. Tanglewood Press Inc. was an art publishing company founded by Esman, and published thirteen limited-edition portfolios by a number of artists from 1965 to 1991.
With encouragement from Doris Freedman and Hans Kleinschmidt, Esman established Tanglewood Press Inc. in 1965 as a publisher of artists' portfolios. The first publication, New York Ten (1965), included artwork by Tom Wesselmann, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Mon Levinson,
Robert Kulicke, Nicholas Krushenick, Helen Frankenthaler, Jim Dine, and Richard Anuszkiewicz. Later publications included artwork by Andy Warhol, Mary Bauermeister, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Motherwell, Sol LeWitt, Jim Dine, and many others. The portfolio, "Ten Landscapes-Roy Lichtenstein (1967), was published in collaboration with Abrams Original Editions. Esman was contracted to work at Abrams Original Editions for a short period of time in the late 1970s. Esman and her Tanglewood Press Inc. were featured in the exhibition, The Great American Pop Art Store: Multiples of the sixties (1997-2000), University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, California.
Esman held a drawings exhibition of artwork borrowed from the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1972 in a space she rented for Tanglewood Press Inc.; she credited this as the beginning of Rosa Esman Gallery. Esman continued exhibiting in that location for the next several years, including a solo show of folded drawings by Sol LeWitt and Modern Master Drawings: Avery, Stuart Davis, De Kooning, Hoffman, Motherwell (1973). Esman moved her operation in 1975 to a building in midtown near the galleries of Tibor de Nagy and Virginia Zabriskie. Artists and printmakers shown at Esman Gallery during 1970s include Christo, Bill Fares, Tom Noskowski, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, Hannah Tierney, and Eileen Gray. In 1979, Esman began an exhibition series of Russian avant-garde art, The Russian Revolution in Art, 1-5 (1979-1983), featuring artwork by Kasmir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, and many others of the Russian avant-garde. Esman moved the gallery to SoHo in 1980. In the 1980s, Esman began showing European outsider artists Pascal Verbena and Henry Darger and held a group exhibition of outsider artists in 1986, Outsiders: Art Beyond the Norm. Other exhibitions in the 1980s included Art by Architects (1980), Architecture by Artists (1981), Curator's Choice: A Tribute to Dorothy Miller (1982). Later exhibitions featured artists Joseph Zito, Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaya, Eric Snell, and Carl Goldhagen; and group shows of Dada art, twentieth-century photography, and constructivism. After closing Rosa Esman Gallery in 1992, Esman entered a partnership at Ubu Gallery with Adam Boxer and Alfred Jarry.
Rosa Mencher Esman was born in New York, New York in 1927. She studied government at Smith College in Northhampton, Massachusetts. She went abroad to Europe her junior year, visiting museums in Geneva, Florence, and Paris. After college, she worked several jobs including a position in the art book department of Harper and Brothers and as an office administrator for Rene d'Harnocourt at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1957, she and a friend opened Tanglewood Gallery in Stockbridge, Massachusettes, showing artwork by artist-friends, utilizing the Museum of Modern Art lending service, and borrowing from the Downtown Gallery. The Tanglewood Gallery exhibited artists Milton Avery, Karl Schrag, Tom Wesselman, Alexander Calder, George Morrison, Robert Indiana, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Mervin Jules, and George L. K. Morris, among others. The gallery operated until circa 1960.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview with Rosa Esman conducted by James McElhinney, June 9-16, 2009.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by Rosa Esman in 2003 and 2014 and in 2023 by the Esate of Rosa Esman via Abigail Esman, co-executor.
Restrictions:
Two folders comprised of Rosa Esman Gallery legal files, 1989-1991, in Box 15 are access restricted. Contact Reference Services for more information. 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 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.
Rosa Esman Gallery and Tanglewood Press Inc records, circa 1922-2014. 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.
An interview of Ingrid Hutton conducted 1993 March 4, by Rose-Carol Washton Long for the Archives of American Art.
Hutton discusses her and her husband Leonard's origins in Germany and their emigrations to the United States, she in 1960 and he in 1934. She explains how her husband's career as an interior decorator led him to open the Leonard Hutton Gallery and how she became involved with it. Hutton talks of their focus on German expressionism and Russian constructivism, including a discussion of public interest in the movements and patronage trends. She mentions her plans to show contemporary Russian art in the future.
Biographical / Historical:
Ingrid Hutton is an art dealer and part of the Leonard Hutton Galleries in New York, N.Y. Leonard Hutton Galleries changed its name in 1969 to Hutton-Hutschnecker Gallery, and back again to Leonard Hutton Galleries in 1971.
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. Funding for this interview was provided by the Art Dealers Association.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Art dealers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Secession : it's a better world : Russischer Aktionismus und sein Kontext = Russian Actionism and its context / curated by Joseph Backstein & Johanna Kandl ; Alexander Brener ... [et al.]
Journey into non-objectivity : the graphic work of Kazimir Malevich and other members of the Russian avant-garde : [catalogue of an exhibition held at] Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, January 18-February 24, 1980
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Ingrid Hutton, 1993 March 4. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Ivan Vasilievich Kliun : sketchbook circa 1916-1922 : April-May, 1983 / introduction by Paul K. Kovesdy ; Ivan Kliun by John E. Bowlt ; biographical outline by Jane Rankin-Reid
