Lee Krasner's correspondence spans over forty years, but the bulk of it ranges from 1970 to her death in 1984. Found here is correspondence with galleries and gallery owners that represented her, exhibited her work, or requested her work for potential exhibitions. Krasner was friends with many artists and art professionals and her personal correspondence includes many letters from artists such as Philip Johnson, Ray Eames, Cleve Gray, and Hans Namuth. She also corresponded with art historians and critics, curators, collectors, arts and social organizations, admirers, and family members. Additionally, this series includes fan mail, student inquiries, correspondence with journalists and publishers, requests for her to lecture, and business correspondence on the sale of her work. There are numerous letters and telegrams congratulating Krasner on exhibitions, such as the 1965 Whitechapel retrospective and extensive documentation of her 1958 commission to create a mural for Uris Brothers, Inc.
See Index for List of Notable Correspondents from Series 2.2
Arrangement note:
Letters are arranged chronologically and include both letters received by Krasner and handwritten or typed drafts sent by Krasner. Later in her life many of the drafts were written by her secretary.
Index: List of Notable Correspondents from Series 2.2:
List represents only a selection of correspondents.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery
American Federation of Arts
Appelhof, Ruth Ann
Asher, Elise
Australian National Gallery
Barron, Maida
Berkson, Bill
Collier, Oscar
Cooper Union
County of Nassau Office of Cultural Development
Diamonstein, Barbaralee
Dickler, Gerald
Eames, Ray
Englesmith, Tejas
Erskine, Halley
Forge, Andrew (Yale University)
Franklin Siden Gallery
Friedman, B. H.
Friedman, Sanford
Glaser, Bruce
Goodman, Naomi
Gray, Cleve
Gregory-Hood, Alex (Rowan Gallery)
Guggenheim Museum
Guild Hall
Holladay, Billie
Howard, Richard
Howell, Douglas Morse
Hubbard, E. W.
Janie C. Lee Gallery
Johnson, Philip
Landau, Ellen
Lauck, Anthony
Lloyd, Frank
Marlborogh Fine Art, Ltd.
Martha Jackson Gallery
Matter, Mercedes
McHenry, Barnabas (Barney)
Michael, Marjorie
Museum of Modern Art
Myers, John Bernard
Namuth, Hans
Nemser, Cindy
New York WPA Artists, Inc.
Nochlin, Linda
Novak, Barbara
O'Connor, Francis
Oppler, Ellen
Ossorio, Alfonso
Pace Gallery
Parrish Art Museum
Pavia, Philip
Pollock, Jay
Rago, Louise Elliott
Robert Miller Gallery
Robertson, Bryan
Rose, Barbara
Russell, Bertrand
Schilling, Marge
School of Visual Arts
Sidney Janis Gallery
Siegel, Adele
Smithsonian Institution
Spaeth, Elaine
Stasik, Andrew
Still, Clyfford
Stony Brook Foundation
Tate Gallery
Thaw, Eugene V.
Thayer, Jeanne
Valliere, James
Van Fossen, Ted
Whitechapel Art Gallery
Whitney, David
Whitney Museum of American Art
Wise, Howard
Collection Restrictions:
The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.
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:
Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, circa 1914-1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
An interview of Ron Nagle conducted 2003 July 8-9, by Bill Berkson, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, in San Francisco, California.
Nagle speaks of his childhood in San Francisco and growing up in the "Outer Mission"; his early creative influences, including his father who "could build anything," his mother, who ran a ceramics club in their basement, and his high school friend Steve Archer, who customized cars; making and selling jewelry while in high school; the Beat scene in San Francisco; teaching his high school friend Rick Gomez about jewelry in exchange for lessons in throwing clay on the wheel; attending San Francisco State University, initially as an English major then switching to art; learning about Peter Voulkos from Gomez; taking a summer course with Henry Takemoto at the Art Institute [now the California School of Fine Arts]; his "manic" interest in art magazines; studying with Charles McKee at San Francisco State; working as a studio assistant for Peter Voulkos at the University of California at Berkeley, after his graduate school application was rejected; making connections in the Los Angeles art scene through friend and sculptor Ed Bereal; the influence of Kenneth Price, James Melchert, Peter Voulkos, 16th and 17th century Japanese ceramics, popular culture, and painters such as Giorgio Morandi, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Josef Albers, Philip Guston, Billy Al Bengston, and others; his first show at the Dilexi Gallery, "Works in Clay by Six Artists," 1968; teaching for 42 years; the relation between music and "studio art"; playing the piano and his broad interest in music; his band Mystery Trend; creating sound effects for the film, "The Exorcist;" his use of color; exhibitions at Garth Clark Gallery and showing internationally; his use of porcelain in the early 1990s; the idea of craft vs. art; the meditative and playful qualities of working with clay; his references to male and female physiology in his work; and his process.
Biographical / Historical:
Ron Nagle (1939- ) is a cermacist of San Francisco, California. Bill Berkson (1939- ) is a poet.
General:
Originally recorded on 3 sound discs. Reformatted in 2010 as 11 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hrs., 27 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.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Musicians -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
Ceramicists -- California -- San Francisco -- Interviews Search this
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Bill Berkson, 2015 September 29-October 2. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Material gathered by Berkson in preparation for exhibitions on sculptors Ronald Bladen and Les Levine.
The Bladen material, compiled for a retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1991, includes: biographical material; an unpublished artists' statement, 1946; interviews of Bladen; material from the California School of Fine Art's archives, and the Whitney Museum of American Art; Bladen correspondence, 1931-1956; Berkson correspondence, 1990-1991; a painting checklist; writings by and about Bladen; photographs of Bladen's paintings and sculptures; exhibition announcements 1941-1983; and clippings and reviews, 1941-1987.
Files on Les Levine include photographs, slides, correspondence, articles, announcements, and clippings. Included are information on his media projects Subway Project (1989) and Diamond Mind.
Biographical / Historical:
Berkson is an art historian, curator; San Francisco, Calif. Bladen, a painter and sculptor, worked in San Francisco in the mid-1950s, and later moved to New York. Levine, a conceptual and video artist, and a curator, works in New York.
Related Materials:
Papers of Bill Berkson, 1960-1988, are also located at the University of Connecticut's Archives & Special Collections.
Provenance:
Donated 1991 and 1995 by Bill Berkson.
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:
Sculptors -- California -- San Francisco Search this
An interview of Bill Berkson conducted 2015 September 29-October 2, by Annette C. Leddy, for the Archives of American Art, at the Archives of American Art in New York, New York.
Berkson speaks of his friendships with second and third generation New York School artists and poets, changes in the art world from 1960 to the present, and the relationship between writing poetry and art criticism.
Biographical / Historical:
Bill Berkson (1939- ) is a poet and art critic in San Francisco, California and New York, New York. Annette Leddy is a collector for the Archives of American Art.
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.
Occupation:
Art critics -- California -- San Francisco -- Interviews Search this
Art critics -- 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 and born-digital records with no duplicate copies 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:
David S. Rubin papers, 1960-2017. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
The processing of this collection received Federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center.
Research material including interviews, writings, photographs of works of art and printed material regarding conceptual artist David Ireland for the book "Touching Time and Space: A Portrait of David Ireland" by Klausner. Interviews are with Ireland as well as Paule Anglim, Robert Atkins, Bill Berkson, Frances Hill Barlow, Agnes Bourne, Damon Brandt, Douglas Dunn, Gary Garrels, Jay Gorney, Ann Hatch, Barbara Ireland, Judy Ireland, Marsha Ireland, Shaugn Ireland, P. Koss, Leah Levy, Connie Lewallen, Phil Linhares, James Melchert, Jeannie Myers, Richard Pinegar, Jane Reed, Jock Reynolds, Robert Storr, Marcia Tanner, Mark Thompson, Alta Tingle, and Karen Tsujimoto. Most, but not all, are transcribed. Writings include drafts and notebooks. Printed material includes exhibition catalogs and newspaper clippings.
Biographical / Historical:
Betty Klausner: Art historian, San Francisco, Calif. David Ireland: Conceptual and installation artist, San Francisco, Calif. b. 1930
Provenance:
Donated 2007 by Betty Klausner.
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 historians -- California -- San Francisco Search this
