The papers of New York video artist and painter Robert Wiegand measure 10.9 linear feet and 0.001 GB and date from 1953 to 1994. Found within the collection are biographical materials, correspondence, art project and exhibition files, printed abd digital materials, video art, photographs, and industrial and miscellaneous video recordings. About one-half of the collection is comprised of video recordings.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York video artist and painter Robert Wiegand measure 10.9 linear feet and 0.001 GB and date from 1953 to 1994. Found within the collection are biographical materials, correspondence, art project and exhibition files, printed and digital materials, video art, photographs, and industrial and miscellaneous video recordings. About one-half of the collection is comprised of video recordings.
Biographical materials include school yearbooks, video and paper documentation from his 1991 wedding, and photograph and video documentation of his funeral and memorial service in 1994. Also found are resumes and Wiegand's SoHo live/work artist permit from 1976.
Correspondence is comprised primarily of letters written by Wiegand, some in digital format, and a handful of letters received. Outgoing letters mainly concern Wiegand's video production work for hire and other personal financial matters. Letters received relate primarily to Wiegand's painting sales, and are from James McLeon, Vivian Browne, Susan Larson, Burt Chernow, and Alexandra Rose. Additional correspondence can be found in the project files.
Project files include documentation of the 1968 inagural "10 Downtown" exhibition, the City Walls mural project, a multimedia art work created through the Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) project called Changes, the products of the 1978 trip to India, including the video work Snapshots of an Indian Day, the "Madama Butterfly" video production produced by Wiegand, and the artist panel series ArtistsTalkonArt. The files contain a wide variety of documentation, such as correspondence, event flyers and press materials, photographs, slides, and videos.
Printed materials include exhibition and event announcements and catalogs, clippings and reviews, magazine publications, and published books that contain Wiegand's work. There is also one scrapbook compiled by Wiegand for his 5th One Man Show of Paintings at the Phoenix Gallery in New York City.
Video artworks created by Wiegand, often made in collaboration with his wife Ingrid, include Georges, Julie, Moran, Omar is El Uno, Nat, Walking (interstices), Face-Off, and How to tell an artist with Dr. Sheldon Cholst. Photographs include a combination of personal and professional photographs, although most of the materials are slides of artworks and events. Of note are slides from the "Bicentennial Banners" exhibition that Wiegand was invited to participate in and that was on display at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum in 1976.
The last series contains over 4 linear feet of all other video recordings and includes industry productions, independent projects, performance documentation, work samples, and works by others. Notable among these productions are documentation of Pamela Stockwell's reenactment of the Tomkins Square Park riots of 1988 and footage of performers Carolee Schneemann, Trisha Brown, Laura Foreman, and Leonard Horowitz, among others.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as seven series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1953-1994 (Boxes 1-2, 11; 1.5 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence and Letters, 1962-1990 (Box 2; .3 linear feet, ER01; 0.001 GB)
Series 3: Project Files, 1968-1992 (Boxes 2-3, 11; 1.1 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Materials, 1959-1990 (Boxes 3-4, 11; .7 linear feet)
Series 5: Video Art, 1970-1982 (Boxes 4-5; 1 linear feet)
Series 6: Photographs, 1953-1994 (Boxes 5-6; 1 linear feet)
Series 7: Other Video Recordings, 1968-1992 (Boxes 6-10; 4.7 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Robert Nelson Wiegand (1934-1994) was a painter and video artist who worked and lived in New York City. Robert Wiegand's interest in art extended well beyond the point of creation, and throughout his life he worked not only as painter, but also as a teacher, advocate, and documentarian of the arts in New York City.
Born in Long Island in 1934, Wiegand attended the State University of New York, College of Buffalo and received a degree in arts education. He returned to New York City and became active in the artist community in SoHo. He was one of the co-founders of the SoHo Artists Association, an artists' organization formed to advocate for legalizing artist loft live/work spaces in lower Manhattan in the 1960s.
Wiegand married his first wife Ingrid in 1964, and they collaborated on many creative endeavors. They adopted two children from India, Indira and Pratap (also known as Peter), and separated in 1990. He married painter Lynn Braswell in 1991.
As a painter, Wiegand's work was highly geometric and influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement. He exhibited paintings in one-man shows in New York City at the Phoenix Gallery and at the Levitan Gallery. In 1968, Wiegand participated in the first "10 Downtown" exhibition, where artists exhibited in their own studios in a move to overcome exclusive gallery representation practices. After painting a few exterior house murals, Wiegand co-founded City Walls, a New York City mural project that was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Through this project he became responsible for a handful of the murals in lower Manhattan. In 1968, Wiegand collaborated with Lloyed Kreutzer, a Bell Labs physicist specializing in lasers, to create the installation work Changes as part of Experiments In Art and Technology's (EAT) 1968 competition bringing together artists and engineers. It was then shown at Wiegand's studio in 1969. Wiegand was also one of the co-founders of ArtistsTalkOnArt, an artist run non-profit organization that continues to program weekly artist panel discussions in Soho, NY. It was co-founded in 1974 by Wiegand, Lori Antonacci, and Douglas Sheer, with Irving Sandler, Cynthia Navaretta, Bruce Barton and Corinne Robins joining the first board of directors in early 1975.
Wiegand became interested in video in the 1960s after using it as a documentary tool in the successful effort to legalize loft living in lower Manhattan. He then began creating video artworks, many of which were collaborations with his wife Ingrid. They received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1977 to produce a documentary on middle class life in India called Snapshots of an Indian Day. It was shown at The Kitchen and Anthology Film Archives before being acquired by the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY. In 1980, with the help of his students from the Global Village Intensive Video Workshop, Wiegand directed, shot, and edited the Brooklyn Opera Society's production Madama Butterfly at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and Tea House, and the production aired on WNYC-TV 13 as part of its Other Voices: New York series.
From 1971 to 1980, Wiegand ran his own commercial video company, Wiegand Video, where he produced corporate and industry training films. From 1980 to 1987, he worked as a project manager and producer for Square Twelve Productions, continuing to produce commercial work. His clients included the American Society for Mechanical Engineers and International Business Machines.
Wiegand also taught art and video production at the Staten Island Academy from 1961-1971, studio and television production at the New School for Social Research from 1980 to 1984, and field production at the Lehman College City University of NY. He also taught in the New York City C.E.T.A. program in media training and was a visiting media production instructor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Towards the end of his life, Wiegand changed careers and became a social worker. Robert Wiegand died in New York City in 1994, just after his 60th birthday.
Separated Materials:
Twenty sound cassettes of interviews and lectures were removed from the collection and returned to the organization that created them, ArtistsTalkOnArt. A few video cassettes are still found in the collection from that series.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by Lynn Braswell, Robert Wiegand's widow, in 1998 and 2000.
Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Video artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Video recordings
Citation:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Timothy Asch was an anthropologist and ethnographic film maker who devoted his professional life to using film as a recording and teaching medium. His papers cover the period from 1966 until his premature death in 1994 and reflect his active career in the field. A large portion of the files relates to his work among the Yanomami people of Venezuela and to his concern with bias in film making.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Timothy Asch document his career as an anthropologist, educator,
photographer and filmmaker through correspondence, photographs, research files
(articles and notes), and teaching materials (course information and lecture notes). The
files relating to Asch's film projects include articles, field notes, and reviews. The major
correspondents in this collection are Patsy Asch, Tom Beidelman, Napoleon Chagnon,
James Fox, Robert Gardner, Douglas Lewis, Peter Loizos, David & Olga Sapir, and
Minor White.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into the following 13 series:
Series 1) Correspondence (1953-1994)
Series 2) College and graduate School (1955-1965)
Series 3) Teaching materials (1964-1993)
Series 4) Film projects (1964-1991)
Series 5) Articles and reviews (1972-1994)
Series 6) Alpha-Subject (1955-1989)
Series 7) Conferences, film festivals, and film organizations (1963-1993)
Series 8) Grants (1962-1993)
Series 9) Other people's work (1952-1995)
Series 10) Personal and family (1951-1994)
Series 11) Photographs (1947-1991)
Series 12) Sound recordings (bulk 1960s-1970s)
Series 13) Note slips, rolodexes, and business cards (1987, undated)
Biographical note:
Asch studied photography at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. While serving in the United States Army in Japan from 1951-55 he spent his off-duty hours photographing rice production and household activities in remote Japanese villages. After his military service, he enrolled in Columbia University graduating in 1959 with an undergraduate degree in Anthropology. After graduation, he went to work at the Peabody Museum at Harvard as an assistant editor to John Marshall on the Kung Bushmen film project. In 1964, he received a Masters Degree in Anthropology from Boston University where he studied in the African Studies Progam and read Anthropology with T.O. Beidelman at Harvard. In 1968, Asch and Marshall founded Documentary Educational Resources, a film distribution company. Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon approached Asch in 1968 to film among the Yanomammmi people of Venezuela. This collaboration led to a major project resulting in over thirty films.
Chronology
1950-1951 -- California School of Fine Arts and Apprenticeships with photographers Minor White, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams
1953-1954 -- Military Service in Korea
1959 -- B.S. in Anthropology Columbia University
1959-1962 -- Ethnographic film consultant, Harvard University's Peabody Museum
1964 -- M.A. in Anthropology Harvard University
1965-1966 -- Curriculum Consultant, Ethnographic studies and the Bushmen Social Studies Curriculum Project (initially Educational Services, Inc., later called Educational Development Center)
1966-1968 -- Lecturer in Anthropology and Theater Arts, Brandeis University
1966-1968 -- Anthropology Curriculum and Media Consultant to the Newton Public Schools
1967-1994 -- Co-Founder and Director of Documentary Educational Resources, Watertown, Massachusetts, a non-profit curriculum development corporation distributing educational media
1968-1970 -- Visiting Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, New York University
1969-1973 -- Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University
1973-1979 -- Research Fellow in Ethnographic film, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
1974-1976 -- Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
1975 -- Research Cinematographer, National Anthropological Film Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
1976-1981 -- Senior Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Institute of Advanced Studies, the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
1982 -- Visiting Research Scholar, Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
1983-1994 -- Director, Center for Visual Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California
Related Materials:
The Human Studies Film Archives holds 93,000 feet (43 hours) of original film footage and the accompanying sound as well as the edited films from the 1968 and 1971 film projects by Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon documenting the Yanomamo Indians of southern Venezuela and northern Brazil (between the Negro and Upper Orinoco rivers).
Provenance:
Donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Patsy Asch in 1996.
Correspondence is comprised primarily of letters written by Wiegand, and a handful of letters received. Outgoing letters are found in digital format and paper records assumed to correspond to the digital material.
Outgoing letters primarily concern job hunting and other personal financial matters, but other types of documents are scattered throughout the series such as television series pitches, lecture notes on artist talks, scripts for video works, draft resumes and bios, and cover letters for job applications. One folder contains correspondence written by Wiegand to his son's teachers.
Letters received include sixteen original letters containing feedback and inquiries about artworks. Letters are from James McLeon, Vivian Browne, Susan Larson, Burt Chernow, and Alexandra Rose, among others. Additional correspondence can be found in the project files. Personal cards consist of a handful of commercially produced greeting cards received by Wiegand. One postcard is from 1962, while the remaining are greeting cards that date to the early 1990s.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Series contains documentation of projects Robert Wiegand co-founded or co-produced. Each project contains a combination of press materials, event flyers, clippings, photographs, correspondence, and several projects also contain video documentation (9 VHS videocassettes and 2 U-Matic), including Snapshots for an Indian Day, Madama Butterfly, and ArtistsTalkOnArt.
Documents include oversized photographs of each of the 10 artists in the inaugural "10 Downtown" exhibition. City Walls documentation includes lists of the murals, clippings, business correspondence, and many photographs and slides taken of mural projects. Photographs notably include images of the buildings before the murals were painted, and some finished murals that no longer exist. Documentation of the Experiments in Art and Technology project by Wiegand and Lloyd Kreutzer called Changes (subtitled "an Image-Theater Environment") include postcards, publicity, and photographs. India materials include a project proposal, postcards, press clippings, a poster, and video for multiple projects that resulted from the Wiegand's trip to India in 1977, including Snapshots for an Indian Day, Indiamedia, and Indiawall. Video elements are found for Snapshots only. Wiegand's "Madama Butterfly" project is represented in this series by a video of the piece he produced for WNYC-TV.
ArtistsTalkOnArt is documented with committee lists, a grant proposal, and solicitation letters to artists, as well as videos of panels created and hosted by Wiegand, including Leonard Horowitz, Amy Ernst, Pat Passlof, Burt Hasen, and Philip Pavia. Also found are flyers, postcards, and videos documenting a benefit for the organization in 1989, with performers Carolee Schneemann, Laura Foreman, and Matthew Courtney among others. Additionally, a performance compilation video from 1990 features artists Akiva, Kevin Carter, Vernta Nemec, Dennis Downey, and Marther Weisman.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
1 Floppy disc (Includes printouts presumed to be from floppy disks, labeled ATOA)
Container:
Box 3, Folder 7
Type:
Archival materials
Floppy discs
Date:
1986 - 1987
Collection Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
Series contains video artworks created by Wiegand, often in collaboration with Ingrid Wiegand, found on three VHS videocassettes and nine U-matic videocassttes. In addition to video, other records in the series include an essay on video art written by Wiegand and a list of video artworks with descriptions. More writings on artworks can be found in the correspondence folders.
Georges is a video about Georges Noel and his relationship to video and audio feedback. Julie is a video dance work featuring dancer Julie Finch, two cameras, and a switcher. Tom Lillard stars in Moran, where both the acting and the video dissolve together while performing a segment of Samuel Beckett's novel, Molloy. Omar is El Uno features five audio tracks that are expressive of the layered construction of soundtracks for video. Nat explores the single room occupancy hotel of a resident at the end of his life. In Walking (interstices), Ingrid Wiegand layers three realities of daily life with her camera. And Face-Off features both Robert and Ingrid Wiegand in a two-channel work which seeks to simultaneously explain video signals and the nature of relationships. Lastly, How to Tell An Artist provides Dr. Sheldon Cholst with a platform for expressing his views on the subject from the perspective of a Psychiatrist. Chameleon Compilation is a clip reel including most of these works that was shown at the Chameleon Club in NYC in 1988.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Collection Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
The Estelle Ellis Papers include material dating from the 1940s to 2004, with the majority of materials dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. Client files (including correspondence, presentations, proposals, and marketing materials) comprise the bulk of the collection. Photographic negatives, slides, and photographs from advertising campaigns and interviews with Ellis on audio and VHS cassette are also present. Ellis's personal research files on advertising and marketing, including magazine and newspaper tear sheets, are included.
Of note to researchers with interest in teen magazines will be Ellis's early work on Design for Living, a short-lived publication and precursor to Seventeen, produced by Popular Science Publishing Corporation.
Among the distinctive materials in the collection are promotional items developed for Seventeen and Charm magazines. Designed to be informative and eye-catching, these materials used creative techniques to highlight the uniquely female qualities and concerns of the magazines' readers. In one instance, price guides were "handwritten" in the form of a shopping list on a paper bag. In another example, press releases were tied in ribbons like a bundle of love letters. For students of marketing and design, as well as for historians interested in women's history and consumer culture, materials such as these will be a valuable resource.
The Estelle Ellis Papers are arranged in three series: Client Files, 1941-1994, Business Materials, 1953-2004, undated and Research Files, 1950s-2004. The original order of the materials has been retained where possible, although some reorganization has been conducted within aggregates to facilitate research.
Series 1, Client Files, 1941-1994, are arranged alphabetically by business name. Subsidiaries are listed separately from their owner. For instance, work completed for The Broadway, a Carter Hawley Hale-owned department store, is listed separately from its parent company. Where needed, sub-groups have been created and are organized by type of material or project. Materials are further organized by date. Some of the client materials were originally organized by Ellis and her late husband into seventeen oversized scrapbooks. These have been disassembled for ease of organization and access. A photocopy of each scrapbook was made to preserve a record of the original arrangement of the materials and for ready reference.
Series 2, Business Materials, 1953-2004, undated, is divided into five sub-series: Business Image, Incorporated Slides; Speeches and Articles; Greeting Cards; Awards; and Audio-Visual Materials. The slides were kept in their original order when transferred from the slide boxes to the sleeves. Of note are slides of Helmut Newton's photographs for the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche advertising campaign. (The work of prominent photographers Robert Frank and Duane Michals are represented in the materials for American Girl and Sportempos.) Speeches and articles written by Estelle Ellis span 1953 to 1994. Materials are included in this subseries based upon the original order of the collection, scope of the project, or content of the speech. Time topical greeting cards that were sent by Business Image, Inc., to clients comprise subseries 2.3. A single award from 1962 comprises Subseries 2.4. Audiovisual materials, including recorded interviews and research material, is the final subseries and is arranged by format and then date. The 1994 oral history interview by Tom Wiener on behalf of the Archives Center deals primarily with Ellis's early publishing career. The 2007 interview by historian Lu Ann Jones covers that period and later developments, including Ellis's family life. Jones's transcript of that interview is appended to this finding aid.
For more than fifty years, Estelle Ellis has advised American businesses about the changing face of American society: its demographics, its social structures, its values. She has helped these institutions understand social change and address the needs and interests of their diverse customers, audiences, and constituencies. Her work has spanned a period of significant social and economic change affecting women's lives and expectations. These shifts are apparent in her pioneering work for Seventeen, Charm, Glamour, and House & Garden magazines and with corporate clients including the Kimberley-Clark Corporation, Evan-Picone, and the Carter Hawley Hale group of department stores.
Ellis was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 12, 1919. She graduated from Hunter College in 1940, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and a minor in Journalism. Her publishing career began at Popular Science magazine, which published three issues of Design for Living in 1942, before abandoning the new venture due to war-time paper shortages. Design for Living was aimed at "high school girls and the home economics teacher," and signaled the direction of Ellis' future career. Ellis also worked for Walter Annenberg's Click magazine (Triangle Publications), assembling an impressive portfolio of articles.
In 1943, Editor-in-Chief Helen Valentine hired Ellis to help launch a new publication that she had conceived. Seventeen was the first magazine to identify young girls as an economically viable market. Ellis combined her strong sense of design and advertising with emerging techniques in marketing to awaken her advertisers to this viable consumer demographic. To personalize the research data, she created "Teena," a fictional character who spoke for her age group and symbolized the typical Seventeenreader.
Helen Valentine and Art Director Cipe Pineles became mentors in Ellis's life and work. Following the success of Seventeen, the trio was asked by its publisher, Street and Smith, to revitalize Charm and to gear it towards a new segment of female consumers. This decision re-established the focus of the magazine on the growing working woman market. To persuade advertisers to address this group, Ellis distilled market research into a series of publications titled "Interview." The "Interview" and "Teena" reports commissioned by Ellis were among the first market research studies to establish teenage girls and working women as distinct and economically powerful markets. During the period from 1950 to 1957, Charm increased in circulation and importance to the business and advertising communities. After a business merger with Newhouse Magazines, Charm was incorporated into Glamour magazine, and Ellis resigned to create her own firm, Business Image, Incorporated.
The list of Ellis's clients outside of publishing is equally long and impressive. Ellis's work for the Kimberly-Clark Corporation in the late 1960s and early 1970s is of particular note. In addition to recommending new products for the firm, she guided the development of its Life Cycle Center, a resource for women of all ages-from menstruation to menopause-headed by a professional education director. Ellis joined the Board of Phillips-Van Heusen and produced its innovative publication, We the People of PVH. Evan-Picone, Yves Saint-Laurent Fragrances, Scoville, AT&T, and the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company also were Business Image, Inc. clients.
For some thirty years, beginning in the mid-1960s, Ellis provided a wide range of professional services for New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). She created the successful FIT fundraising campaign/event "One Person Makes a Difference," which raised money for student scholarships. She created programs to build the school's enrollment and its financial support. Ellis's work also promoted awareness of the global fashion influence of New York and FIT.
Beginning in the 1990s Ellis concentrated on writing. She combined her experience in publishing with her personal interests to co-author three books: At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live With and Care for Their Libraries (Southern Books, 1995), At Home with Art: How Art Lovers Live With and Care for Their Treasures (Potter, 1999), and The Booklover's Repair Kit: First Aid for Home Libraries (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000). Most recently, Ellis co-authored Cipe Pineles: Two Remembrances (RIT, Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2005), about her mentor and friend.
Ellis was married for fifty years to Samuel I. Rubenstein, now deceased. Rubenstein was critical in the development of Business Image, Incorporated, and partnered with her in the firm for twenty-five of its forty-five years. She has two children, Ellis Marc Rubenstein, currently President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences, and Nora Jane Rubenstein, Ph.D., a writer, ethnographer, and president of her Vermont-based Place/Space Associates. Ellis died on July 12, 2012.
Provenance:
This collection was donated by Estelle Ellis in 1991, 2000, and 2004.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but negatives in Box 62 are stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Genre/Form:
Advertising
Citation:
Estelle Ellis Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
The correspondence in this series relates to Asch's academic career, family, and film projects. The major correspondents are Patsy Asch, Tom Beidelman, Napoleon Chagnon, James Fox, Robert Gardner, Douglas Lewis, Peter Loizos, David and Olga Sapir, and Minor White, as well as the institutions at which he taught (The Australian National University, Brandeis University, and the University of Southern California). This series is not exclusive as there is correspondence in other series. All attachments such as articles, envelopes, pamphlets, photographs, etc. were kept with the appropriate letters.
Arrangement:
This series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent's last name or institution name. The letters
are in chronological order within the folders except for those in alphabetical files (i.e.
Letter A, Letter B). Letters with no last name are arranged chronologically. Unidentified
letters (i.e. no last name or date) are located in the Miscellaneous Correspondence files.
Collection Citation:
Timothy Asch papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Use of original papers requires an appointment. Use of audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy 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:
Peter Hopkins papers, 1823-2001, bulk 1935-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy 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:
Maryette Charlton papers, circa 1890-2013. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by Smithsonian Institution Collections Care and Preservation Fund
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D. C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
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.
