An interview of Jonathan Daniels conducted 1965 June 14, by Richard Doud, for the Archives of American Art. Daniels speaks of his association with the Farm Security Administration and his interactions with Roy Stryker.
Biographical / Historical:
Jonathan Daniels (1902-1981) was a writer, employed by the Farm Security Administration.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 26 min.
Provenance:
Conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Restrictions:
This interview is open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
United States -- Economic conditions -- 1918-1945 -- California -- San Francisco
United States -- Social conditions -- 1933-1945 -- California -- San Francisco
Date:
1936-1937
Scope and Contents:
Twenty volumes of the publication, CALIFORNIA ART RESEARCH, containing monographs on artists whose principal residence was San Francisco.
REEL NDA/Cal 1: Artists include Robert Aitken, Arthur Atkins, Albert Bierstadt, Ray Boynton, Anne Bremer, Henry J. Breuer, Giuseppe Cadenasso, Emil Carlsen, M. Earl Cummings, Rinaldo Cuneo, Charles Dickman, Maynard Dixon, Charles Grant, Armin Hansen, H. W. Hansen, Thomas Hill, Christian Jorgensen, Amedee Joullin, William Keith, Constance Macky, Xavier Martinez, Arthur Mathews, Francis McComas, Arthur C. Nahl, Charles C. Nahl, Hugo W. A. Nahl, Perham W. Nahl, Virgil T. Nahl, Ernest Peixotto, Charles R. Peters, Gottardo Piazzoni, Horatio Nelson Poole, Arthur Putnam, Joseph Raphael, Mary C. Richardson, Julian Rix, Charles D. Robinson, Toby Rosenthal, Will Sparks,Jules Tavernier, Douglas Tilden, Domenico Tojetti, Frank Van Sloun, Thaddeus Welch, Virgil Williams, Evelyn A. Withrow, and Theodore Wores.
REEL NDA/Cal 2: Artists include Rowena M. Abdy, Gertrude Albright, Hermann O. Albright, Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Matthew R. Barne s, Frank Bergman, Jane Berlandina, Ray Bethers, Beniamino Bufano, Margaret Bruton, Chee Chin, Ruth Cravath, Helen Forbes, Euphemia C. Fortune, William Gaw, Edith Hamlin, William Hesthal, Clark Hobart, Charles Howard, John G. Howard, John L. Howard, Robert Boardman Howard, Adaline Kent, Dong Kingman, Lucien Labaudt, Spencer Mackey, Jo Mora, Jose Moya del Pino, Chiura Obata, Otis Oldfield, Julius Pommer, George B. Post, Dorothy W. Puccinelli, Raimondo Puccinelli, Lee F. Randolph, Andree Rexroth, Matteo Sandona, Geneve R. Sargeant, Sergey J. Scherbakoff,Jacques Schnier, Yoshida Sekido, Joseph M. Sheridan,Ralph Stackpole, and Bernard Zakheim.
Biographical / Historical:
Publication of the Works Progress Administration; San Francisco, Calif. Sponsored by Dr. Walter Heil of the M.H. de Young Museum. Was originally a joint project of the WPA-Statistical projects division and the WPA-Federal Art Project in order to disseminate information about artists and art in the San Francisco region.
Publication, Distribution, Etc. (Imprint):
San Francisco, WPA Project 2874, 1936-1937.
Provenance:
Provenance unknown.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
Occupation:
Artists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
New Deal, 1933-1939 -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Federal aid to the arts -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Federal aid to the public welfare -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Art and state -- California -- San Francisco Search this
An interview of Merrell Gage conducted 1964 May 27, by Betty Hoag for the Archives of American Art.
Gage speaks of the origin of his interest in Abraham Lincoln; studying under Gutzon Borglum; the formation of the Public Works of Art Project art committee in 1932; how the committee functioned; and the effect of the Project on the community. He recalls Merle Armitage.
Biographical / Historical:
Sculptor; New York, Kansas, Connecticut, and Santa Monica, Calif.; d. 1981.
General:
An interview of Nick Brigante conducted by B. Hoag is also on this tape.
Provenance:
This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Restrictions:
This interview is open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Topic:
Sculptors -- United States -- Interviews Search this
The papers of Holger Cahill (1887-1960) date from 1910 to 1993, with the bulk of the material dating from 1910-1960, and measure 15.8 linear feet. The collection offers researchers fairly comprehensive documentation of Cahill's directorship of the Works Progress/Projects Administration's (WPA) Federal Art Project (FAP) in addition to series documenting his work as a writer and art critic. Material includes correspondence, reports, artist files, scrapbooks, printed material, and photographs.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of Holger Cahill (1887-1960) date from 1910 to 1993, bulk 1910-1960, and measure 15.8 linear feet. The collection offers researchers fairly comprehensive documentation of Cahill's directorship of the FAP in addition to series documenting his work as a writer and art critic. FAP records include national and state administrative reports, records of community art centers, photographic documentation of state activities, artist files, divisional records about teaching, crafts, murals, and poster work, files concerning the Index of American Design, scrapbooks, and printed material.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into nine series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material and Personal Papers, 1931-1988 (Box 1; 19 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence Files, 1922-1979, 1993 (Boxes 1-2; 1.5 linear ft.)
Series 3: Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, 1934-1970 (Boxes 2-14, 18, MMs009; 10.75 linear ft.)
Series 4: Writings, Lectures and Speeches, 1916-1960 (Boxes 14-15, 18; 1.0 linear ft.)
Series 5: Minutes of Meetings and Panel Discussions, Non-FAP, 1939-1947 (Box 15; 5 folders)
Series 6: Notes and Research Material, 1935-1970 (Boxes 15-16; 0.25 linear ft.)
Series 7: Artwork, undated (Boxes 16, 18; 2 folders)
Series 8: Printed Material, 1910-1985 (Boxes 16-17; 1.8 linear ft.)
Series 9: Photographs, circa 1917-1960 (Box 17; 6 folders)
Biographical Note:
Holger Cahill was born Sveinn Kristjan Bjarnarson in Iceland in a small valley near the Arctic Circle, on January 13, 1887. His parents, Bjorn Jonson and Vigdis Bjarnadottir, immigrated to the United States from Iceland sometime later in the 1880s. In 1904, his father deserted the family, forcing Sveinn to be separated from his mother and sister to work on a farm in North Dakota. He ran away and wandered from job to job until settling in an orphanage in western Canada, where he attended school and became a voracious reader.
As a young man, he worked at many different jobs and attended night school. While working on a freighter, he visited Hong Kong, beginning his life-long interest in the Orient. Returning to New York City, he eventually became a newspaper reporter, continued his studies at New York University, and changed his name to Edgar Holger Cahill. In 1919 he married Katherine Gridley of Detroit. Their daughter, Jane Ann, was born in 1922, but the couple divorced in 1927.
Cahill met John Sloan circa 1920, and they shared a residence. Cahill also wrote publicity (until 1928) for the Society of Independent Artists, through which he made many friends in the arts. From 1922 to 1931, he worked under John Cotton Dana at the Newark Museum, where he received his basic experience in museum work, organizing the first large exhibitions of folk art.
From 1932 to 1935, he was the director of exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art. In 1935, Cahill was appointed director of the Works Progress/Projects Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project (FAP), until its end in June 1943. In 1938, Cahill organized a countrywide exhibition "American Art Today" for the New York World's Fair. He also married MoMa curator Dorothy Canning Miller in that year.
Profane Earth, Cahill's first novel, was published in 1927, followed by monographs on Pop Hart and Max Weber, miscellaneous short stories, and a biography of Frederick Townsend Ward, entitled A Yankee Adventurer: The Story of Ward and the Taiping Rebellion. Following the end of the Federal Art Project, Cahill wrote two novels, Look South to the Polar Star (1947) and The Shadow of My Hand (1956).
Holger Cahill died in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in July 1960.
Provenance:
The Holger Cahill papers were donated to the Archives of American Art through a series of gifts by Cahill's widow, Dorothy C. Miller, between 1964 and 1995.
Restrictions:
The microfilm of this collection has been digitized and is available online via the Archives of American Art website.
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.
