5.4 Linear feet ((partially microfilmed on 2 reels))
0.2 Linear feet (Addition)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1940-1979
Scope and Contents:
Correspondence, printed material, photographs; and "birthday books" containing drawings and writings by artists sent to Neuberger on his 50th and 75th birthdays.
REEL NSM 1: A "Birthday Book," 1953, for Neuberger containing drawings, sketches and written birthday greetings from 38 artists, compiled by Mrs. Neuberger. Contributors include Alexander Calder, Byron Browne, George Constant, Adolph Gottlieb, Jack Levine, Lyonel Feininger, Lee Gatch, Benjamin Kopman, Jonah Kinigstein, Karl Knaths, William Baziotes, Peter Hurd, Walter Quirt, Milton Avery, Ben Shahn, George L. K. Morris, Hans Moller, Guy Maccoy, Irene Rice Pereira, Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Darrel Austin, Philip Evergood, Saul Steinberg, Elliot Orr, and John Marin.
REEL 4588: A scrapbook containing illustrated birthday cards from artists sent to Neuberger on the occasion of his 75th birthday (1978). Included are cards from Nicolas Africano, Abe Ajay, John Baldessari, Romare Bearden, James Brooks, Les Levine, Judith Rothschild, Joan Snyder, and Alan Sonfist, and others.
UNMICROFILMED: Material relating to Neuberger's activities as an art collector, patron, and trustee consisting of: clippings, exhibiton catalogs and announcements; photographs; and correspondence with Leroy Lamis, Sidney Laufman, Paul David Magriel, Larry Rivers, Frank Roth, Jon Rudolf Schueler, Hudson Walker and Frederick Stallknecht Wight.
ADDITION: Correspondence with artists and other prominent people including: Edward Albee, Alexander Calder, Merce Cunningham, Lyonel Feininger, Henry Geldzahler, Henry Moore, Gerald Ford, Robert F. Kennedy, John V. Lindsay, George McGovern and Nelson Rockefeller. Also included are a letter from Mr. and Mrs. John Walker relating to their trip to Europe to return the "Mona Lisa" to the Louvre in 1963; printed material relating to Nelson Rockefeller; and four lists of art related papers remaining with Neuberger.
Biographical / Historical:
Art collector, patron; New York, N.Y. Born 1903. A collector of primarily American art. President of the American Federation of the Arts, 1958-1968; a trustee and member of Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art; honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; member of the executive committee of the Council of Friends, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and many other positions and memberships. A large part of his private art collection was donated to the Roy R. Neuberger Museum of the State University of New York College at Purchase.
Provenance:
"Birthday books" on reels NSM 1 and 4588 lent for microfilming 1963 and 1992 by Neuberger. He donated the unmicrofilmed material in 1975 and 1993.
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:
Art patrons -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Art patronage -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Artists and patrons -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The records of the Perls Galleries measure 79.6 linear feet and date from 1937 to 1997. Founded by Klaus Perls in 1937 and operating until 1997, the gallery dealt primarily in modern French art and the artwork of Alexander Calder. Found within the records are extensive correspondence (circa 44 linear feet) with artists, dealers, galleries, museums, and collectors; photographs and negatives of inventory and other artwork; exhibition files, scattered financial records; and exhibition catalogs and clippings.
Scope and Content Note:
The records of the Perls Galleries measure 79.6 linear feet and date from 1937 to 1997. Founded by Klaus Perls in 1937 and operating until 1997, the gallery dealt primarily in modern French art and the artwork of Alexander Calder. Found within the records are extensive correspondence (circa 44 linear feet) with artists, dealers, galleries, museums, and collectors; photographs and negatives of inventory and other artwork; exhibition files, scattered financial records; and exhibition catalogs and clippings.
Correspondence primarily discusses sales (and includes invoices), loans, and exhibitions, as well as more routine activities such as gallery maintenance, the printing of exhibition catalogs and letterhead, and the shipment, framing, or restoration of artwork. Many letters enclose photographs, negatives, or slides of artwork, and clippings. A few letters contain oversize architectural or engineering drawings, and a small handful of letters are illustrated.
Correspondents include artists such as Darrell Austin, Joan Mir, Pablo Picasso, and Karl Priebe; galleries such as the Corcoran Gallery, Fujikawa Galleries, Galerie Maeght, and the Pierre Matisse Gallery; museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art; collectors such as Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz, Adelaide de Mnil, Valentine Dudensing, and Henry Ford, II; and celebrity clients such as Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, Henry and Clare Booth Luce, and Barbra Streisand.
The records contain nearly thirty-two linear feet of photographs and negatives. Photographs are of artists and the inventory of the gallery's artwork. Additional photographs represent artwork either by artists not represented by the gallery or not included in the gallery's inventory. Most of the photographs are black and white. Over fifteen linear feet of negatives are of gallery stock. Photographs are also found in the exhibition files.
There is a relatively small amount of records relating to exhibitions, loans, and sales. Found are exhibition lists, schedules, invitations and announcements, photographs of exhibition installations, press releases, and records of loans to other institutions and galleries. Sales records include artist lists, inventory lists, invoices, pick up and delivery receipts, and price lists.
Printed materials include a large number of clippings and an incomplete run of catalogs from Perls Galleries exhibitions between 1939 and 1980.
The collection also includes ten original pencil drawings from John Canaday's series entitled My Beautiful Girls and a reproduction of eight drawings from the same series
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 7 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1937-1995 (Boxes 1-44, OV 81-83; 43.6 linear feet)
Series 2: Negatives, circa 1937-1995 (Boxes 44-59; 15.7 linear feet)
Series 3: Photographs, circa 1937-1995 (Boxes 60-75, OV 84; 16.1 linear feet)
Series 4: Exhibition, Loan, and Sales Records, 1937-1995 (Boxes 76-78; 2.1 linear feet)
Series 5: Clippings Files, 1943-1989 (Box 78; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 6: Exhibition Catalogs, 1939-1980 (Boxes 78-79; 1.4 linear feet)
Series 7: Drawings by John Canaday, circa 1967-1972 (Box 80; 0.3 linear feet)
Historical Note:
Klaus Perls (b. 1912, d. 2008) formally opened Perls Galleries in New York in 1937, and ran it with his wife Amelia until its closing in 1997. The gallery dealt in contemporary French artists of the School of Paris, such as Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, but also acted as the primary representative of Alexander Calder beginning in 1954. In the 1970s Mr. Perls developed an interest in art from Benin and built an important collection of African sculpture, some of which was later donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Amelia Perls died in 2002, and Klaus Perls died in 2008.
Klaus Perls was born in 1912 in Berlin in a house Mies van der Rohe designed for his parents, who owned an art gallery specializing in Impressionists, post-Impressionists, Old Master paintings, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and African sculpture. Perls studied Art History in Hamburg and Munich but completed his PhD in Basel, Switzerland in 1933 after the Nazi government stopped awarding degrees to Jews. His dissertation covered the complete works of 15th-century French painter Jean Fouquet.
Before moving to New York in 1935, Perls worked for his mother, Kaethe Perls, in her Paris gallery that she opened in 1932 after splitting up with Klaus' father Hugo. He spent his first two years in New York selling paintings through other art dealers, primarily paintings shipped or recommended to him by his mother from Paris that were not selling well in the Depression-era French art market. These were primarily the work of Maurice Utrillo, Marie Laurencin, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck. In 1937 he formally established his own gallery, the Perls Galleries, on East 58th Street and continued to specialize in French and European contemporary art. Around the same time, his older brother Frank opened a gallery in Beverly Hills, California.
Klaus Perls was familiar with other New York dealers specializing in modern European art such as Valentine Dudensing and Pierre Matisse, but he tried to distinguish himself by catering to young collectors. When the war restricted the international art trade and his mother was forced to flee France during the Occupation, Perls began dealing in contemporary American artists such as Darrel Austin and Karl Priebe.
Perls married Amelia Blumenthal, fondly known as "Dolly," in 1940, and she became his business partner.
After the war, the international art market exploded, and the Perls made frequent buying trips to Europe. The Perls Galleries continued to sell primarily contemporary French art and gained an early reputation as a staunch defender of modern art by European artists such as Picasso, Modigliani, Braque, Lger, Soutine and Pascin. Perls prepared catalogues raisonns on Soutine and Pascin.
Klaus Perls was one of the founding members of the Art Dealer's Association, whose initial mission was to clean up the reputation of the art market following a series scandals involving fake antiquities that flourished in the 1960's. Perls was the Association's second president, after Pierre Matisse.
In 1954 Perls Galleries moved to 1016 Madison Avenue, a building that served as both gallery and home for the Perls. The same year Perls became Alexander Calder's dealer after the death of Calder's previous dealer, Curt Valentin. Perls explained his inclusion of Calder, a rare American among his stable of European artists, by saying that Calder's roots lay in France and that Calder bridged Europe and America the way Perls felt he did himself. In 1970, Calder designed the terrazzo sidewalk in front of the gallery and often resided in the Perls' home during long visits to New York City. Perls Galleries later handled Calder's estate and functioned as a quasi-archives of Calder's works, holding more than 7,000 negatives depicting Calder's art and preparing a Calder catalogue raisonn.
Klaus was named as a third-party defendant in the 1969 World War II looted art case Menzel v. List. When Erna Menzel sued Albert List for ownership of a Chagall painting confiscated from Menzel by the Nazis, List in turn sued Perls, who had sold him the painting in 1955, having purchased it himself from a Paris art dealer. The court awarded the Chagall painting to Menzel and ordered Perls to pay List the appreciated value of the painting.
Perls began building an important collection of African artwork and fell in love with art from Benin in the 1970's. In 1991 he donated more than 150 pieces of royal art from Benin to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Perls closed their gallery in 1997; Amelia Perls died in 2002, and Klaus Perls died in 2008.
Related Material:
Among the resources relating to the Perls Galleries in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview with Klaus Perls done by Mona Hadler on January 19, 1993.
Provenance:
The records were donated in 1997 by Douglas Mayhew, associate and legal representive of Klaus G. and Amelia B. Perls.
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.
