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.
Recordings of an interdisciplinary conference co-sponsored by Humanities West and the Archives of American Art, held in San Francisco, California, 1985 March 29-31, at the Asian Art Museum. The participants speak about the environment for the arts in Los Angeles during the 1940s. They include: architectural historian Reyner Banham, actor Claudia Barr, columnist Digby Diehl, art historian Susan Ehrlich, writer William Fadiman, actor Hal Haswell, coordinator Paul Karlstrom, professor Edward Kaufmann, actor Douglas Leach, choreographer Bella Lewitzky, architectural historian Esther McCoy, music historian Michael Meyer, dancer Iris Pell, film critic Robert Rosen, historian Kevin Starr, and music historians Leonard Stein and Michael Steinberg.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound cassettes.
Provenance:
Donated 1985 by Humanities West.
Collection Restrictions:
Use requires an appointment.
Topic:
Art, Modern -- 20th century -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Arts -- California -- Los Angeles -- History Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Sponsor:
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.
Art -- Collectors and collecting -- California -- Los Angeles Search this
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
2012 Jan. 30-April 16
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Eli Broad conducted 2012 Jan. 30 and April 16, by Avis Berman, for the Archives of American Art and the Center for the History of Collecting in America at the Frick Art Reference Library of The Frick Collection, at the Frick Collection and at Broad's home in New York, N.Y.
Biographical / Historical:
Interviewee Eli Broad (1933-2021) was an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the founder of the Broad Art Foundation in Los Angeles, Calif. Interviewer Avis Berman (1949- ) is an art historian and author in New York, N.Y.
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:
The transcript and recording are open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for this interview was provided by Barbara Fleischman.
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
The Lucinda H. Gedeon research materials on Charles W. White measure 1.4 linear feet and date from 1940 to 1997, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1980 to 1981. This research material was compiled for a catalogue raisonné at UCLA and includes correspondence with collectors and institutions; a card file catalogue of works by Charles White; photographs and negatives; printed material; transcripts of interviews; bibliographic information; and writings.
Scope and Contents:
The Lucinda H. Gedeon research materials on Charles W. White measure 1.4 linear feet and date from 1940 to 1997, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1980 to 1981. This research material was compiled for a catalogue raisonné at UCLA and includes correspondence with collectors and institutions regarding Charles White works in their collections; a card file catalogue of works by White; photographs and negatives of works by White; printed material including exhibition materials and magazine and newspaper clippings; transcripts of interviews with White and other individuals; bibliographic information; and writings about White.
Arrangement:
Due to the small size of this collection, the papers are arranged in one series.
Series 1: Lucinda H. Gedeon Research Material on Charles W. White, 1940-1997, bulk 1980-1981 (Boxes1-2; 1.4 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Lucinda H. Gedeon is a retired art historian in Vero Beach, Florida. Previously the director of the Neuberger Museum at the State University of New York, Purchase, and later of the Vero Beach Museum of Art, Gedeon earned both a master's degree and a doctorate at UCLA. She completed her master's thesis on the work of Charles White.
Charles W. White (1918-1979) was an African American painter. White was born in Chicago and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. He worked as an artist for the Works Progress Administration and later taught first at Dillard University, then at Otis Art Institute from 1965 until his death in 1979.
White exhibited widely and his work is held at a number of institutions. He was elected to the National Academy of design in 1972.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art are the Charles W. White papers, circa 1930-1982, and an oral history interview with Charles W. White conducted by Betty Hoag, March 9, 1965.
Provenance:
The Lucinda H. Gedeon research materials on Charles W. White were donated to the Archives of American Art by Lucinda H. Gedeon in 2007.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945 -- California
United States -- Social conditions -- 1933-1945 -- California
Citation:
The WPA Federal art project : its contribution to the American people / by Fanny Bowles Vanderkooi, 1940 May. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
