Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.) Search this
Extent:
1 Sound cassette
Container:
Item aaaoh010
Type:
Archival materials
Audio [31027000729877]
Sound cassettes
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
1986 February 13
Scope and Contents:
A panel discussion sponsored by the Archives of American Art at the Founders Luncheon and Museum Panel, held at the Beverly Hills Hotel, 1986 February 13. The participants were Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art; Earl A. Powell, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Robert Middlekauff, Director of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. Paul Karlstrom is moderator.
Moderator Paul Karlstrom introduces the topic and panelists; identifies differences between the three institutions, the appeal of blockbuster shows, and with references to an article by Mortibello of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, questions whether a museum can successfully balance scholarship and interpretation; the high cost of research and programming; and the shift to temporary exhibitions.
Koshalek discusses how MOCA continues to look for a balance as a new organization and their decision to start with temporary exhibits to build an audience and collection. Middlekauff discusses the Huntington as a research institution and its policy to not loan books and papers and the impact then on hosting only temporary exhibits, and the parallel to problems universities face in funding programming. Powell discusses the benefits of blockbuster exhibits, the need to integrate scholarship, and the problems in corporate sponsorships.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hrs., 3 min.
Funding note:
Funding for the digital preservation of this recording was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Funding for the digital preservation of these recordings was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
The papers of southern California contemporary art curator, critic, and historian Jules Langsner measure 4.4 linear feet and date from circa 1910s-1998, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1950-1967. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues; writings normal="1941"> travel, and works of art; and audio recordings of Langsner's lectures and eulogies given at his funeral.
Scope and Contents note:
The papers of southern California contemporary art curator, critic, and historian Jules Langsner measure 4.4 linear feet and date from circa 1910s-1998, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1950-1967. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues; writings by Langsner; exhibition files; printed materials; photographs of Langsner, others, travel, and works of art; and audio recordings of Langsner's lectures and eulogies given at his funeral.
Biographical materials consist of an address book and file, committee files, scattered financial statements, and documents related to the Ford Foundation and other foundations, teaching, and traveling.
The 0.9 linear feet of correspondence is of both a personal and professional nature. A significant portion of the correspondence is between Langsner and publications for which he wrote such as Art News, the New York Times, Meridian Books, Craft Horizons, Art International, and Art in America; galleries and museums where he lectured or curated exhibitions including the Art Institute of Chicago, California Water Color Society, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, and the Fine Arts Patrons of Newport Harbor; colleges and organizations where he taught or was involved with such as the Graham Foundation, University of Southern California, International Association of Art Critics, and Ford Foundation; and artists that he worked with or knew personally including Rico Lebrun, William Turnbull, Man & Julie Ray, Lorser Feitelson, Helen Lundeberg, Adelaide Fogg, and Clinton Adams.
Letters to June Harwood were written while Langsner was traveling in 1964 and 1965 and discuss his travels and their relationship which culminated in marriage in Italy in 1965.
Among the 2.8 linear feet of the writings of Jules Langsner are articles for Art News, Art in America, Art International, Arts & Architecture, Aware, Beverly Hills Times, Craft Horizons, Creative Crafts, Goya Revista De Arte, Yomiuri, and Zodiac. There are also essays, lectures, poems, drafts, notes, jottings of ideas, proposals and published and unpublished manuscripts. There are drafts and unpublished versions of "Painting in the Modern World", and numerous other essays on contemporary art. There are also extensive handwritten notes on his travels, Asian art, European art, and other subjects.
Exhibition files concern "Black and White" (1958), "California Hard-Edge Painting" (1964), the Man Ray Exhibition (1966), and the William Turnbull Exhibition (1966).
Printed materials include miscellaneous flyers, brochures, and news bulletins, and press releases.
Photographs are of people, places, works of art, and exhibitions. There are photographs of Jules Langsner, June Harwood, Philip Guston, Musa Guston, William Brice, Eddy Feldman, Rube Kadish, Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Frank Perls, and unidentified individual people and groups. Photographs of Langsner's travels are of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other locations. Photographs of exhibitions include California Art Club, "Black and White," "California Painters & Sculptors, 35 & Under," and unidentified exhibitions. Photographs of works of art are by William Turnbull, Jack Zajac, Walter Mix, Marion Aldrich, Roger Majorowicz, and Jasper Johns.
Audio recordings include four untranscribed 7" reel-to-reel audio recordings and one cassette tape. The reel-to-reel tapes are of two lectures by Langsner, You & Art/Berlin Party, and of eulogies given at Langsner's funeral by Clement Greenberg, Henry Seldis, Peter Selz, Richard Brown, Donald Brewer, Tom Leavitt, Lorser Feitelson, Sam Francis, June Wayne, Gifford Phillips, and others. The cassette tape is a copy of eulogies.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 7 series. Photographs are arranged by subject, otherwise each series is generally arranged chronologically.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1957-circa 1960s (Box 1; 9 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1948-1998 (Boxes 1-2; 0.9 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1934-circa 1960s (Boxes 2-4; 2.8 linear feet)
Series 4: Exhibition Files, 1919, circa 1958-1966 (Box 4; 4 folders)
Series 5: Printed Materials, circa 1960s (Box 5; 2 folders)
Series 6: Photographs, circa 1910s-1960s (Box 5; 0.25 linear feet)
Series 7: Audio Recordings, 1954-1967 (Box 5; 0.25 linear feet)
Biographical/Historical note:
Jules Langsner (1911-1967) worked primarily in the Los Angeles area as a contemporary art critic, historian, and curator. He curated several seminal exhibitions of contemporary art, including the 1959-1960 show "Four Abstract Classicists" featuring the work of Southern California artists Lorser Feitelson, Karl Benjamin, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin.
Born Julius Harold Langsner in New York City on May 5, 1911, his family moved to Ontario, California in 1922. The family lived on a farm and opened the Paradise Health Resort which was run by Langsner's father, chiropractor Isadore Langsner, and was popular in Jewish and intellectual circles. In Ontario, Langsner became friends with three of the Pollack family sons, Jackson, Frank, and Sanford, as well as Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, Leonard Stark, and Don Brown as a teenager. Guston, Kadish, and Jackson Pollock were later mentored by Lorser Feitelston which helped to foster in Langsner an interest in avant-garde painting.
Langsner went on to study philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the early 1940s, Langsner married and had a son, Drew Langsner. He divorced in 1946. In 1944, he enlisted in the United States Army and served as a psychiatric social worker and psychologist during World War II in the United States.
Art & Architecture magazine was the first to publish Langsner's art criticism in 1948. Throughout the 1950s and 60s his work was published widely in Art & Architecture as well as Art News, Art in America, Craft Horizons, Beverly Hills Times, Zodiac, and others. Langsner wrote extensively about art history in both published and unpublished manuscripts, including Painting in the Modern World which he worked on until his death. Additionally, he taught art history classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and University of Southern California and lectured for a variety of organizations and occasions.
Langsner curated several influential exhibitions in southern California, including the "Four Abstract Classicists" exhibition for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1959 and in whose catalog he and Peter Selz coined the term "Hard-Edge painting." He curated the first full-scale retrospective of Man Ray in the United States at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1966.
Langsner received a grant from the Ford Foundation in 1964 that allowed him to travel throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Europe for a year studying regional art and architecture. He wrote notes on his travels and corresponded frequently with June Harwood, a Hard-Edge painter, whom he married in Italy in 1965.
Jules Langsner died unexpectedly of a heart attack on September 29, 1967, in Los Angeles.
Related Archival Materials note:
The papers of Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg at the Archives of American Art contain a significant amount of writings by Jules Langsner, including exhibition catalog essays.
Papers of Jules Langsner, 1941-1967, are also located at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Provenance:
The Jules Langsner papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in several installments from 1973-1996, and in 2004 by June Harwood Langsner, widow of Jules Langsner. Notes for a lecture given at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966 and 39 pieces of correspondence were donated in 1982 by the University of California Art Library, Los Angeles, via Librarian Virginia Steele.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers 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 -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Art historians -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Research material on painters Clyfford Still (1904-1980) and Sam Francis (1923-1994), including correspondence, photographs, notes, and unpublished drafts of manuscripts.
The Still material includes detailed notes from various interviews with Still (none of which were tape recorded); correspondence between Freeman and Still; and photocopies of letters from Still to Alfonso Ossorio, Mark Tobey and others, which Freeman obtained from Still; copies of letters from Still to Betty Parsons; an interview with Claire Falkenstein on the subject of Still's paintings; texts by other authors, some annotated by Still; and photographs of Still and his paintings .
Sam Francis material includes several files of research notes and approximately 375 photographs of Francis and his paintings.
Draft manuscripts include Clyfford Still: A Critical Study (1963, 200 pages), Clyfford Still: A Study (1968, 212 pages), and Sam Francis: Ideas and Paintings (1969, 212 pages). Freeman did not have any of these writings published. The manuscript on Sam Francis coincided with the publication of another book on Francis by Peter Selz, and the manuscript on Still was blocked when Still rescinded his permission to quote and to use illustrations of material which he controlled.
ADDITION: Biographical information on Sam Francis and postscript.
Biographical / Historical:
Writer, art historian; Beverly Hills, Calif.
Related Materials:
Papers of Betty Freeman, 1965-2008, are also located at the Mandeville Special Collections Library.
An interview of Herbert Palmer conducted 2004 Dec. 6 and 22, by Susan Ehrlich, for the Archives of American Art, in West Hollywood, Calif.
Palmer discusses his family background and childhood in New York City; early exposure to art exhibitions; music appreciation; attending New York University; taking classes with Winhold Reiss, Meyer Shapiro, Richard Offner, and Heinrich Wolfflin; his master's thesis on Paul Cezanne's paintings of Mount Saint Victoire; moving to California; learning to fly; meeting Lillian, his wife; founding Feigen-Palmer Gallery with Richard Feigen; other galleries in the area, including Irving Blum, David Stuart, Felix Landau, Charles Garabedian, and Joan Ankrum; Monday Night Art Walks; John Cage and David Tudor performance pieces; the many artists he's exhibited; Andy Warhol's "The Kiss"; 1968 split with Richard Feigen to become the Herbert Palmer Gallery; the theft of a Picasso sculpture in Dec. 1981 and the ensuing legal case, which involved numerous galleries and collectors; his longstanding friendships with Gordon Onslow Ford, Lee Mullican, and Wolfgang Paalen; membership to the Art Dealers Association of California; and his enjoyment of discovering art, old and new. Palmer also recalls Henriette Riess, Harold Stevenson, Lucienne Bloch, Bridget Riley, Vasa Mihich, Maillol, Red Grooms, Norman Bluhm, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Herbert Palmer (1915-2006) owned the Herbert Palmer Gallery of West Hollywood, Calif. Interviewer Susan Ehrlich is an art historian from Beverly Hills, Calif.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 mini discs. Reformatted in 2010 as 15 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hr., 35 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.
1 Item (Sound recording, master: 6 sound discs (5 hrs. and 20 min.) : digital ; 2 5/8 in)
104 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
2004 Nov. 17-24
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Patricia Faure conducted 2004 Nov. 17-24, by Susan Ehrlich, for the Archives of American Art, in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Faure spoke about her early childhood in Wisconsin and the family's move to California; attending Hollywood High and meeting young stars; modeling; working for Vincent Price on Saturday's during high school; moving to New York for her modeling career; her first husband Philip Peyton; classes at the New School of Social Research, New York; meeting Joseph Cornell; her return to Los Angeles in the early 1950s; Riko Mizuno and other galleries in operation before she opened Asher-Faure;photography; her marriage to Jacques Faure and living in France; her daughter Zazu, born 1965; working for Nick Wilder, and the numerous artists and actors she met through his gallery; opening Asher-Faure with Betty Asher; the growth of galleries and art museums in Southern California; collectors; art writers, including Christopher Knight, Suzanne Muchnic, David Pagel, Leah Ollman, and Holly Meyers; her shows that combine a New York gallery and an artist from that gallery, for example the André Emmerich Gallery and Franz Kline or Philip Guston; the other businesses in Bergamont Station; her enjoyment of putting up a show; dogs bringing their owners into her gallery space; the independence of the art market from the stock market; and how she has profited in many ways from this journey. Faure also recalls Man Ray, Rico Lebrun, Frank Sinatra, Larry Rivers, Ed Moses, Billy Al Bengston, John Altoon, Sam Francis, Irving Blum, Peggy Moffit, Bill Claxton, Felix Landau, Everett Ellin, Maurice Tuchman, Rona Pondick, Jo Baer, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Patricia Faure (1928-2008) was a gallery owner from Los Angeles, Calif. Interviewer Susan Ehrlich: Art historian, Beverly Hills, Calif.
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 of Marnie Weber, conducted 2016 February 10, by by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, for the Archives of American Art at Weber's studio in Los Angeles, California.
Weber discusses growing up in Connecticut and being raised by her parents Evelyn and Charles D. Weber, who was an important art historian and expert in Chinese bronzes; her happy family life in Connecticut with her brother and friends; the family's subsequent residences in California, Hawaii and Asia as a result of Mr. Weber's different teaching positions; her time at high school in Manhattan Beach, California, and her burgeoning interest in theatrical and glam rock; the beginnings of her work with art in high school and her subsequent enrollment as an art student at USC and UCLA; her life as one of the few artists in downtown Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s; her time in the rock band Party Boys, their manager Jack Marquette, his club Anti-Club, and their performances and recordings in L.A. and time spent in London. Weber also describes the influences of Alexis Smith, George Herms and Chris Burden as art teachers, especially the influence of Ms. Smith as a woman artist and as an artist who works in collage; her early character-based performances in Los Angeles hotels; her character-based musical performances in art galleries and the use of collage work and theater in these shows; her time working as a gallery coordinator with Anne Ayres at Otis Art Institute; her work creating films and videos and use of large animal characters; her marriage to the artist Jim Shaw and the raising of their daughter Colette Weber Shaw; their friendships with Mike Kelley and other artists in Los Angeles; the formation of the theatrical rock band Spirit Girls, and their live performances and appearances in her films; her exploration of witches as characters in her two films Night of Forevermore and Day of Forevermore, the latter being a feature-length film shot primarily at Zorthian Ranch in Altadena, California; and the impact of the death of Mr. Kelley on her and Mr. Shaw and the subsequent work they did for Mr. Kelley's foundation. Weber also recalls Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, Donald Dunham, Gillean McLeod, Marc Kreisel, Michèle Lamy, Richard Newton, Rosamund Felsen, Patrick Painter as well as Paul McCarthy, Jacci Den Hartog, Bruce Licher, Rick Owens, Dani Tull, Tanya Haden, and Tamara Sussman, among others.
Biographical / Historical:
Marnie Weber (1959- ) is an installation artist, photographer, and musician in Los Angeles, California. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp is an art critic and writer from Beverly Hills, 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.
Occupation:
Musicians -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Photographers -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
