A collection of approximately 28,000 glass plate negatives showing views of a variety of subjects.
Scope and Contents:
The major part of the collection, series 1-4, contains nearly 28,000 glass plates, including original stereoscopic negatives, interpositives, and both negative and positive non-stereoscopic plates used to produce lantern slides and paper prints. The photographs were taken all over the world. The majority are from the Underwood & Underwood active files, but plates from other publishers are also included. Series 5 is a small collection of paper stereographs. Series 6 contains 4 Underwood & Underwood descriptive sales catalogs and 1 H. C. White & Co. catalog (numbers on the Underwood plates correspond to the numbers on catalog captions). Series 7 is apparatus--four stereoscopes.
The approximately 28,000 glass plates in this collection have not been completely inspected at this point due to handling problems associated with asbestos contamination of the collection. A preliminary survey, however, indicated that the selections of images cover the full range of subject matter encompassed by the "Underwood Travel System." The subject matter is most easily comprehended by consulting one of the Underwood sales catalogs which accompany the collection. The catalog captions are arranged geographically, for the most part, and generally represent an organized "tour" which could be purchased as a boxed set, complete with maps and guide book, although individual images could be purchased separately. The catalogs indicate that the Underwood files were continually updated, for extensive modifications in some of the sets can be seen from edition to edition, and actual inspection of published stereographs shows that alternate views with identical Underwood catalog numbers were substituted from time to time, and that new subjects (with new catalog numbers) were sometimes introduced into the sets and old subjects were retired. There are glass plate negatives as well as positives in this collection. The positive images were probably interpositives used for the production of duplicate negatives. Some of the original stereo negatives were cut apart and the images transposed; they were then bound with an additional glass support (in many cases the tape has deteriorated). Half stereo positives also appear in the collection: these probably were intended for use in lantern slide production. Frequently a drawer of plates contains several incarnations of a single image, including the original negative, a copy negative, an interpositive, and a positive lantern slide. In other cases a drawer may contain only a single mode, e.g., original negatives, while corresponding positives and/or lantern slides appear in separate drawers.
A small quantity of the Underwood & Underwood plates are not from the Travel System, but represent humorous and genre subjects which were cataloged and marketed separately. The work of several other publishers, usually without Underwood catalog numbers, is also represented, including H. C. White, American Stereoscopic Company, and J. J. Killela.
The arrangement of the collection seems to reflect a combination of permanent reference storage as well as active use files. The apparent anomalies or inconsistencies probably indicate the pulling of plates from permanent files into temporary work files, and the collection may consist of a combination of permanent storage and temporary working files. As the drawers do not appear to have been renumbered according to any easily discernible pattern, they have become intermixed and rearranged in storage. The contents of each drawer usually have been found in good order, however, and the plates were nearly always arranged numerically,usually with the low numbers at the rear of the drawer and the highest number at the front. As the plates have been rehoused, the reverse numerical order has been corrected. When all the plates have been rehoused and inventoried, consideration will be given to general collection rearrangement and renumbering of the containers, either strictly in numerical order or topically and/or geographically with a numerical sequence within each group.
The collection is in good condition for the most part, although conservation attention will be required. There is a certain amount of emulsion peeling or frilling at the edges of some plates, but this is a condition to which emulsions on glass frequently are prone. A few plates, bound in a sandwich arrangement between cover glass and acetate facing the emulsion, have suffered severe damage, peeling, and image losses through the apparent ferrotyping and sticking of emulsion to the plastic, probably under conditions of high humidity at some stage. There is surprisingly little glass breakage within the collection.
Most of the stereoscopic negatives and many of the positives are defaced with a double "XI' scratched into the emulsion of either the left or right side, as described above in the historical note. Of particular interest and presumed rarity are cards found interfiled with plates in many of the drawers. These cards, filed by Underwood (i.e., catalog) numbers, bear printing'or production dates and notes, along with the unique, chronological accession numbers which the company assigned to each plate, regardless of the "active" number which it might eventually receive. A check mark on a card usually refers to a plate actually in the collection and with which the card is found physically associated; additional accession numbers without check marks listed on the cards possibly refer to variant views which were discarded or may in fact be in the Keystone Mast Collection (pending further research). For ease of handling and in the interest of conservation, the cards have been separated from the plates within each drawer and are arranged as a group at the rear, but can still be located easily. Frequently when a plate and/or its original envelope does not bear both the "active" and accession numbers, the missing number can be located on one of these cards.
Photographers represented include Herbert G. Ponting and Clarence W. White. A photographer and/or publisher named J. J. Killela is also represented.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in seven series. Series 1, 2, and 3 are each divided into negative and positive subseries. Plates are arranged numerically in groups based on geographical and subject content. Controlled at the series level in the finding aid and at the item level in a computer database.
Series 1, H. C. White glass plates
Series 2, American Stereoscpopic Co. glass plates
Series 3, Underwood & Underwood glass plates
Series 4, Broken glass plates
Series 5, Original company catalogs
Series 6, Paper stereographs
Series 7, stereoscopes (viewers)
Biographical / Historical:
Underwood & Underwood was established at Ottawa, Kansas, by the young brothers Elmer and Bert Underwood in 1882. They initially operated as distributors for eastern photographers' stereographs to new markets in the West. Their activities included door to door canvassing with views by Charles Bierstadt, J. F. Jarvis, and Littleton View Co.(1) Underwood & Underwood, Publishers, opened a branch office in Baltimore in 1887.(2)
Soon Underwood & Underwood and other large stereograph publishers began recruiting college students to work as salesmen during summer months (1890). Underwood and Underwood claimed that their organization alone sent out as many as 3,000 college students in one Summer [sic]. With the other ... big companies each employing more than 1,000, it is easy to understand how the countryside of the Nation literally swarmed with stereograph salesmen throughout the summer months! ... The competition between the salesmen themselves was likewise aggressive, with no holds barred. Many successful business and professional men of today relate with considerable pride that they got their start on their careers in this practical and very effective school of salesmanship.(3)
The company moved its main office from Ottawa, Kansas to New York City (1891),(4) and gradually began to publish its own stereographs. Bert Underwood finally took photography lessons from M. Abel in Mentone, France during the same year.(5) B. L. Singley, erstwhile salesman for the Underwood & Underwood and James M. Davis & Co. firms, in 1892 formed the Keystone View Company of Meadville, Pennsylvania, which was to become Underwood & Underwood's chief competitor and imitator.(6)
Underwood & Underwood entered the education market (1895) by producing packaged sets of 100 or more stereographs with descriptive texts.(7) From 1897 the firm employed full time staff photographers as well as free lancers. By 1901 the Underwoods were publishing 25,000 stereographs per day (i.e.,total number of cards). Increasing production levels led them to gain control of the Jarvis, Bierstadt, and William H. Rau photoprinting facilities in 1897 1898.(8)
The Keystone view Company created its own Educational Department in 1898. This division sustained the Keystone View Company past the period of the stereograph's popularity. In this year Underwood & Underwood reprinted Oliver Wendell Holmes's series on the stereograph and stereoscope which originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly between 1859 and 1863. This eighty page booklet included testimonials from eminent scholars on the value of the stereograph in education. The company had been test marketing what itlater called "The Underwood Travel System." This consisted of a boxed set of stereo views of a country or region, a guide book describing the significance of the places shown, and a map showing their location and the viewpoints from which the stereographs were taken. Captions on the backs of the stereographs were sometimes printed in six languages.(9) As stereographs began to be used in schools as visual aids, the firm promoted its Travel System with endorsements from prominent educators, citing the usage of the system by various schools and universities.(10)
The H. C. White Company, which had manufactured stereoscopes for several decades, entered the stereo publication field in 1899.(11) Much of its production seemed to imitate Underwood & Underwood cards, including typography and the color of mount stock. Underwood & Underwood expanded into news photography by 1910 and gradually decreased its stereographic work. Few new stereo negatives were added to the file after 1912 except for a flurry of activity during the early war years, 1914 1916. The total number of Underwood & Underwood "titles" in stereo were from 30,000 to 40,000 (there might be a substantially larger number of actual negatives, since the files frequently were updated with newer views for old catalog numbers).(12)
Underwood & Underwood sold a portion of its negative file to the educational division of Keystone View Company in 1912,(13) and between 1921 1923 conveyed to this competitor their remaining stereo stock (presumably both cards and negatives) and rights.(14) In addition to its involvement as a news photographic agency, the company eventually opened portrait studios which flourished during the World war II years. A former Smithsonian employee, Vince Connolly, worked for Underwood & Underwood, which competed with Harris & Ewing in general portrait work during that period: he did portraiture and other photography, but says he was unaware of his employer's earlier stereo publishing activities.
Underwood & Underwood donated approximately 6000 negatives to the Section of Photography of the Division of Graphic Arts (1964). These photographs are primarily 4" x 5", captioned glass plate and film negatives. The subjects are news events and theatrical, sports, and political subjects of the early 20th century. In a letter to the Smithsonian of March 25, 1966 (in accession number 270586), Mrs. John M. Stratton described another collection of Underwood & Underwood photographs, stating that her husband had been a partner in Underwood & Underwood Illustrations and owned Underwood & Underwood News Photos. In November of the same year Mr. and Mrs. Stratton donated this collection of glass plates by Underwood & Underwood and other publishers to the Division of Photographic History (then the Section of Photography of the Division of Graphic Arts) . This material consists of both negative and positive stereographic plates, as well as non stereoscopic plates, chiefly copies made from the stereographs, with some catalogs, stereoscopes, and other material. The donor estimated 12,900 plates, but in 1983 the Smithsonian Institution inventory yielded a total of approximately 28,000 plates.
The Keystone View Company's stereoscopic production continued much later than Underwood & Underwood's. It was not until 1939 when declining interest in stereography led the firm to discontinue stereograph production and enter the field of visual optometrics. The stereoscopic negative collection, including material obtained from Underwood & Underwood and other firms, was placed in storage in concrete vaults. The Mast family of Davenport, Iowa, eventually purchased the collection in 1963, and in 1977 donated the collection to the University of California for its California Museum of Photography in Riverside. The University took physical possession of this vast collection in 1979.(15)
Many of the Underwood & Underwood plates donated by the Strattons (which were transferred to the Archives Center in 1983), in effect have been cancelled by having diagonal lines (double "X" marks) scratched into the emulsion of either the left or right image of each stereo pair (never both sides). These cancellation marks do not appear on the Underwood & Underwood plates in the Keystone Mast Collection in Riverside. This leads to several theories: (a) that these cancellations were in fact the reason that the Smithsonian plates were not purchased by Keystone in either 1912 or 1921, since Keystone clearly intended to use the Underwood material for stereograph production and the defaced plates would be of no value to them for this purpose; or (b), as stereo collector John Waldsmith suggests, that the cancellations were part of an agreement between Underwood & Underwood and Keystone: Keystone may have asked Underwood & Underwood to cancel one side of each stereoscopic plate not being sold to Keystone so that Underwood & Underwood would no longer be able to compete with Keystone in the stereo market. The defaced plates, as well as other material which Keystone did not purchase, apparently remained in Underwood custody and eventually were acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Stratton. The cancellation marks in the Smithsonian's collection are the subject of further conjecture. Edward Earle at Riverside feels that, since Underwood & Underwood sought to abandonded stereograph production much earlier than Keystone's departure from the field in order to enter the non stereoscopic lantern slide market, the cancellation may have served to indicate which side of each sterescopic pair should be converted to lantern slide production use; the existence of the 4" x 5" copy negatives and positives from stereographs in this collection seem to corroborate this. The Underwood & Underwood conversion from stereograph to lantern slide materials seems to coincide with the ascendance of lantern slide projection as visual aids in schools. The company apparently modified the type of photographic product which they published at least partially in recognition of this new educational trend.
NOTES
1. edward W. Earle, ed., Points of View: The Stereograph in America A Cultural @ Visual 'g . E!Ltory, Rochester, F.Y., Th Studies Workshop ress, 1979, p. 60; William Culp Darrah, The World of Stereographs, Gettysburg, Pa., 1979, p. 46.
2. Tbid., p. 62.
3. George E. Hamilton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, His Pioneer SLtuereoscope and Later Industry, New York, New )men Society, 1949, p. 17, quoted in Points of 1=e w:, 6 4 . P.
4. Points of View., p. 66.
5. Darrah, p. 47.
6. points of View, p. 66.
7. Ibid., p. 68.
8. Darrah, p. 47.
9. Points of View, p. 70.
10. Howard S. Becker, "Steteographs: Local, National, and International Art Worlds," in Points of View, p. 95.
11. points of View, p. 72.
12. Darrah, p. 48.
13. Darrah, p. 48, quoted in Points of View, P. 82.
14. Darrah, p. 48.
15. Chris J. Kenney, introduction to "Perspective and the Past: The Keystone Mast Collection," CMP Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1982.
Related Materials:
California Museum of Photography, University of California--Riverside, Riverside, California 92521.
Underwood & Underwood stereographs in this collection and the Smithsonian Underwood & Underwood Collection originally were components of the same company file.
Provenance:
Collection donated by June Stratton (Mrs. John M.) on December 19, 1966.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. The original glass plate is available for inspection if necessary in the Archives Center. A limited number of fragile glass negatives and positives in the collection can be viewed directly in the Archives Center by prior appointment. 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.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Bruce Conner, 1974 March 29. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
This series includes nine interview transcripts with Robert Smithson. Topics include his general philosophy on art; contemporary art in relation to its historical context; non-sites, earthworks, entropy, space, and structures; the relationship between artists and dealers, museums, and collectors; and his most influential works, including Spiral Jetty, Broken Circle, and Spiral Hill.
The Alan Kaprow and Rodger Katan transcript (1966) focuses on the relationship between museums and contemporary art. The transcript with Dennis Wheeler (1969-1970) consists of 4 taped, informal sessions discussing Smithson's general philosophy on art, non-sites, and specific projects. In the Paul Toner transcript (1970), Smithson discusses earthworks, mirror displacements, non-sites, and art's historical context. The Gregorie Muller transcript [1971] focuses on the background and construction of Broken Circle and Spiral Hill. The Art Institute of Chicago transcript (1971) records Smithson's question and answer session with the audience after a showing of his films Swamp and Spiral Jetty. In the Bruce Kurtz transcript (1972), Smithson informally discusses artists' relationships with dealers, museums, and collectors; gallery art's general separation from nature; capitalism's influence and intersection with art; and his 1966 airport projects.
The Stella Russell (1973) transcript focuses on Spiral Jetty, Broken Circle, and Spiral Hill. In the Alison Sky transcript (1973), Smithson discusses his thoughts on entropy, the act of building, and its intersection with the architectural and engineering mechanics of structure. In Smithson's transcript with two unidentified students (1973), he discusses modernism and the branching off of developing contemporary art; public sculpture; historical context, theory, linguistics, and humanism; and thoughts on his own writings. The transcript with Moira Roth (1973) focuses on Duchamp and conceptual art.
There is also a full transcript of the Andrew Dickson White Museum's Earth Art Symposium (1969) with the following participating artists: Mike Hiezer, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Neil Jenney, Gunther Uecker, Jan Dibbets, Richard Long, and Hans Haacke.
Arrangement note:
This series is arranged in chronological order by year of the interview.
Collection Restrictions:
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Researchers interested in accessing audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, holds the intellectual property rights, including copyright, to all materials created by Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt with the exception of the following items: two holiday cards found in box 11, folders 22-23. For these two items, copyright held by Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Requests for permission to reproduce should be submitted to ARS.
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 Smithson and Nancy Holt papers, 1905-1987. 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 and the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Researchers interested in accessing audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, holds the intellectual property rights, including copyright, to all materials created by Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt with the exception of the following items: two holiday cards found in box 11, folders 22-23. For these two items, copyright held by Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Requests for permission to reproduce should be submitted to ARS.
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 Smithson and Nancy Holt papers, 1905-1987. 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 and the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
An interview of Bruce Conner conducted 1974 March 29, by Paul Karlstrom and Serge Guilbaut, for the Archives of American Art, in San Francisco, California.
Interview of Bruce Conner, conducted by Paul Karlstrom and Serge Guilbaut for the Archives of American Art, in San Francisco, on March 29, 1974. Conner speaks of his education and move to San Francisco; the art scene in California in the 1960s; the development and theory behind much of his work; his early paintings and collages; his assemblages; the sculpture A Child [1959] and its showing at the de Young Museum in 1959-60; his interaction with Beat writers; about the coining of the words "beatnik" and "hippie" and subsequent commercial exploitation of the Beat generation; and his attitude towards political protest. He also recalls Michael McClure, Wallace Berman, Ed Kienholz, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Allen Ginsberg and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was a painter and filmmaker from San Francisco, California.
General:
Poor sound quality due to loud background noise.
Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav file. Duration is 1 hr., 26 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 others.
Restrictions:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
The Paul Ryan papers measure 19.7 linear feet and document Ryan's education and career as a pioneering video artist, theorist, writer, and educator. Records include school records, family papers, correspondence, writings, project files, video recordings, teaching files, printed materials, scattered photographs, and artwork by others. Organizational records are also found for the Earthscore Foundation, Earth Environmental Group, the Gaia Institute, and the Raindance Corporation, among others. The bulk of Ryan's professional work is documented in his writings and project files.
Scope and Contents:
The Paul Ryan papers measure 19.7 linear feet and document Ryan's education and career as a pioneering video artist, theorist, writer, and educator. Records include school records, family papers, correspondence, writings, project files, video recordings, teaching files, printed materials, scattered photographs, and artwork by others. Organizational records are also found for the Earthscore Foundation, Earth Environmental Group, the Gaia Institute, and the Raindance Corporation, among others. The bulk of Ryan's professional work is documented in his writings and project files.
Correspondence is mainly professional in nature, and spans Ryan's career. Correspondence between Ryan and family members is also found. Professional correspondence is found with Myrdene Anderson, Peter Berg of Planet Drum, Morris Berman, Avery Johnson, Marga Bijvoet, Thomas Berry, Lois Bianchi, David Dunn, Roberta Kevelson, Gerrit Lansing, Aldo Lira, Oliver Lowenstein, Chip Lord, Claude Ponsol, Jody Procter, Jodi Sibert, Phyllis Gershuny Segura, Michael Shamberg, and Marita Sturken. Corporate correspondence is found regarding job applications, manuscript submissions to publishers, and video submissions to museums and broadcasters.
Writings include mainly articles and notebooks by Ryan, but also drafts of books, lectures, poetry, short stories, a treatment for a television show, and writings by others in various genres. Most of Ryan's prose writing is theoretical in nature, although personal writings and notes from projects are also found. Articles include both published and unpublished writings, with some published multiple times under different titles. Over one hundred notebooks spanning forty years contain a variety of content including drafts of letters, articles, grant proposals, lectures, and other writings. Ryan's two major publications, Cybernetics of the Sacred and Video Mind, Earth Mind, are documented with drafts, contracts, correspondence with publishers, layout documents, and notes.
Organizational records include writings, correspondence, printed material, financial records, grant proposals, and other records concerning various organizations, collectives, and companies in which Ryan participated, mostly having to do with environmental advocacy, video production, or a combination of the two. Organizations with substantial records in this series include the Earth Environmental Group, the Earthscore Foundation, Environment '89 (and '90, '91, and '92), the Gaia Institute, and the Raindance Corporation, among others. Documentation is most comprehensive for The Earthscore Foundation, including by-laws, grant proposals, extensive writings, financial records, and printed materials.
Project files contain video recordings, production notes, photographs, proposals, correspondence, a computer program designed by Ryan, prints for exhibition, illustrations and designs, posters, circulars, contracts, and scripts. Many of the projects documented in this series relate to Ryan's many explorations of the use of video to monitor and interpret two seemingly different subjects, environmental change and human behavior in relationships, expressed through a ritual of interaction among three persons designed by Ryan and called "Threeing," or "Triadic Behavior." The most thoroughly documented projects in this series include "Nature in New York City," "New York City Eco-Channel for Sustainable Television (NEST)," Talking Wood (a publication that incorporated the project "Watershed Watch"), "Inventing Triadic Behavior" (also known as the "Triadic Tapes"), "Tethys"(with artist Bob Schuler), and "Video Wake for my Father," a performance for video that saw many iterations, including a private performance, a public performance, an edited video program, and a published script.
Video recordings are found for three projects, including "Nature in New York City," "Inventing Triadic Behavior," and a threeing workshop held at the Kitchen entitled "Video Variations on Holy Week." A printout of records in a videotape database kept by Ryan is found in this series, with a proposal for video preservation; the list of tapes includes those found in the collection as well as tapes not extant.
Teaching files include documentation of Ryan's work at Dalton School, Hudson School, the New School for Social Research, and Savannah College of Art and Design, and many other workshops and training programs Ryan taught. Included are grade books, correspondence, curricula, training materials, and reports. Two of his programs, the Black Rock Rangers at the Dalton School, and the Urban Conservation Corps Pilot Video Program involve the implementation of the Earthscore Notational System in school curricula.
Printed material includes books, newspaper clippings, conference programs and published proceedings, exhibition catalogs and announcements, film and video programs, flyers, periodicals, poetry publications, posters, and materials relating to the artist Al Robbins, which includes an obituary written by Ryan. Also found are publications of the Raindance Corporation, which include the book, Guerrilla Television (1971), and four issues of their magazine, Radical Software (1971-1972). Most of the printed material was either written by Paul Ryan, contains articles by Paul Ryan, or documents activities of Paul Ryan. Other materials found contain works by Ryan's associates and collaborators.
Artwork contains artists' books, doodles, illustrations, prints, and photographs by named and unnamed artists. None of the artwork in this series appears to be by Ryan. Notable is an artist's book entitled "Patterns" by Lida Zerella, which incorporates still images from Ryan's Triadic Tapes in a small album. Two illustrations are found by Claude Ponsot, who also illustrated many of Ryan's publications relating to Kleinform and threeing.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as 8 series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1931-2003 (0.8 linear feet; Boxes 1, 20)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1965-2007 (2 linear feet; Boxes 1-3)
Series 3: Writings, 1955-2001 (6.8 linear feet; Boxes 3-10, 20)
Series 4: Organizational Records, 1968-1996 (1.2 linear feet; Boxes 10-11, 20, OV 21)
Series 5: Project Files, 1968-2008 (6.5 linear feet; Boxes 11-17, 20, OV 21-22, 24, RD 26)
Series 6: Teaching Files, 1967-2008 (0.7 linear feet; Box 17)
Series 7: Printed Materials, 1968-2009 (1.6 linear feet; Boxes 18-20, OV 23, 25)
Series 8: Artwork, 1965-2003 (0.1 linear feet; Boxes 19-20, OV 22)
Biographical / Historical:
Paul Ryan was a pioneering video artist, writer, teacher, and theoretician based in New York City and the Hudson Valley of New York State. Born in 1943, Ryan spent his early adulthood as a seminarian and later a member of the Roman Catholic order of Passionist monks, which he left in 1965. He eventually received a B.A. from New York University. During the Vietnam War, Ryan received conscientious objector status and studied with Marshall McLuhan at Fordham University as alternative service. It was McLuhan's influence that led Ryan to begin to explore the possibilities of the medium of video.
In 1969, Ryan participated in the landmark exhibition "TV as a Creative Medium" curated by Howard Wise, which served to link the kinetic art movement of the 1960s with the emergent medium of video art. The first exhibition in the United States devoted to video, "TV as a Creative Medium" signaled radical changes and defined an emerging artistic movement. In 1969 Ryan co-founded the Raindance Corporation along with Ira Schneider, Michael Shamberg, David Cort, Beryl Korot, Phyllis Gershuny, and others. Raindance was an influential media collective that proposed radical theories and philosophies of video as an alternative form of cultural communication. Influenced by the communications theories of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, the collective produced tapes and writings that explored the relation of cybernetics, media, and ecology. From 1970-1974, Raindance published the seminal video journal Radical Software, which provided a network of communications for the fledgling alternative video movement. In 1971, Shamberg published Guerrilla Television, a summary of the group's principles and a blueprint for a decentralization of television through access to public and cable programming. The original Raindance collective dispersed in the mid-1970s; the nonprofit Raindance Foundation continued into the 1990s. Ryan's core writings from the Raindance era were gathered into his 1973 publication Birth and Death and Cybernation, republished in 1974 as Cybernetics of the Sacred.
Ryan's work to develop alternative uses of video technology continued long after his involvement with Raindance. He began to implement his theories about the use of video monitoring and feedback within dynamic systems with the work that came to be known as the Earthscore Notational System. With Steve Kolpan and Bob Schuler, he founded the Earthscore Foundation, through which he raised money for the exploration and development of this applied practice. Earthscore, based largely on the writings of philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce and Gregory Bateson's work on cybernetics, provided the theoretical and logical underpinnings of both the ecosystem documentation and interpretation process, and the triadic rituals of interpersonal behavior, that became the core of Ryan's work for much of his life. These ideas were implemented in a wide variety of projects such as eco-channel design, video scores specific to certain locations, threeing projects exploring interpersonal behavior with video and computer technology, and a curriculum for combining media production training with environmental education.
Ryan later worked with organizations such as Talking Wood, The Earth Environmental Group, and Environment '89, (re-named in later years Environment '90, '91, and '92) to implement Earthscore systems and prototypes. He co-founded The Gaia Institute, hosted at Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and co-directed it from 1985-1991. The Institute fostered dialogs between science, religion, and art through workshops, lectures, exhibitions and events. He was an artist-in-residence for Earth Environmental Group in 1988 via a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, and used the residency to carry out his video project "Nature in New York City," documenting city ecosystems and demonstrating how an eco-channel might work. Environment '89 organized a coordinated campaign for a cable channel devoted to the environment, the New York City Eco-channel for a Sustainable Tomorrow (NEST).
Ryan spent his later years as a professor of media production and theory at Savannah College of Art and Design, and then at the New School for Social Research. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States, including "The Primitivism Show" in The Museum of Modern Art (1984), "The American Century Show" at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1999-2000), and the Venice Biennale (2002). He died in 2013.
Provenance:
The papers of Paul Ryan were donated to the Archives of American Art by Ryan in 2008.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers and archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice.
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:
Video artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Paul Ryan papers, 1931-2009. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered through the Council on Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
This collection contains the professional papers of Conrad M. Arensberg, anthropologist, university professor, and anthropological consultant. Included are correspondence; published and unpublished writings; research materials, including notes, correspondence, diaries, charts, drafts, interviews, research plans, reports, project proposals, and bibliographic cards; speeches; pamphlets; articles from newspapers and periodicals; course materials, including bibliographies, lecture notes, reading lists, assignments, exams, project proposals, and syllabi; curriculum vitae; date books; scholarly papers and publications of other scholars; and photographs.
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains the professional papers of Conrad M. Arensberg, anthropologist, university professor, and anthropological consultant. Included are correspondence; published and unpublished writings; research materials, including notes, correspondence, diaries, charts, drafts, interviews, research plans, reports, project proposals, and bibliographic cards; speeches; pamphlets; articles from newspapers and periodicals; course materials, including bibliographies, lecture notes, reading lists, assignments, exams, project proposals, and syllabi; curriculum vitae; date books; scholarly papers and publications of other scholars; and photographs.
The materials in this collection document Arensberg's career as a university professor, his relationships with colleagues across a spectrum of disciplines, and his contributions to the field of anthropology. As a respected member of the anthropological community, Arensberg received a voluminous amount of correspondence from his peers, who often included copies of their most recent papers. He kept many of these works, which, along with his annotations, can be found throughout the collection. It appears he used these papers in a variety of ways, including as resources for his classes or as reference materials. Arensberg's own work is reflected in his writings and research files. Arensberg's Ireland research, despite its importance to his career and to the field of anthropology as a whole, has a minimal presence in the collection. Located in Series 3. Research Files, the subseries containing Arensberg's Ireland material primarily consists of photocopies of his correspondence, field notes, and diaries during this time. His role as a professor, rather than as a researcher or writer, is the most well-represented in the collection. Arensberg formed lasting relationships with many of his students, as evidenced by his continued correspondence with many of them long after their years at Columbia.
Arrangement:
The collection is organized into 8 series:
Series 1) Correspondence, 1933-1994
Series 2) Writings, 1936-1983
Series 3) Research files, 1931-1984
Series 4) Professional activities, 1933-1990
Series 5) Teaching files, 1938-1983
Series 6) Biographical files, 1946-1997
Series 7) Subject files, 1934-1979
Series 8) Photographs, undated
Biographical Note:
Conrad M. Arensberg was born on September 12, 1910 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Academically inclined from a young age, he graduated first in his class at Shadyside Academy in Pittsburgh. His early success earned him admittance to Harvard College. Arensberg studied anthropology and graduated summa cum laude in 1931.
As a graduate student at Harvard University, Arensberg was asked to join a project being conducted in Ireland by Harvard's Anthropology Department. Alongside W. Lloyd Warner and Solon T. Kimball, Arensberg spent three years studying rural Irish life in County Clare. This research resulted in his doctoral dissertation, "A Study in Rural Life in Ireland as Determined by the Functions and Morphology of the Family," which was later published as The Irish Countryman in 1937. His work was groundbreaking in the field of anthropology, and his study of County Clare "became a model for other community studies... requiring that researchers study a target culture from the inside, making meticulous notes on everything they saw, heard or experienced." Arensberg reshaped the way that anthropologists approached fieldwork and opened doors for the study of modern industrial societies.
Arensberg had a long teaching career. He first became a university professor in 1938 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and remained a professor for the rest of his life, teaching at MIT, Brooklyn College, Barnard College, Columbia University, the University of Florida, and the University of Virginia. At Columbia, Arensberg worked alongside such notable anthropologists as Margaret Mead, Charles Wagley, and Marvin Harris.
Arensberg officially retired in 1979, but he continued to collaborate with his colleagues, counsel past students, and participate in professional associations until his death. He passed away on February 10, 1997 in Hazlet, New Jersey.
Curriculum Vitae—Amended Posthumously. Series 6. Biographical Files. Conrad M. Arensberg papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
Thomas, Robert McG. Jr. 1997. "Conrad Arensberg, 86, Dies; Hands-On Anthropologist." New York Times, February 16: 51.
Chronology
1910 September 12 -- Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1931 -- B.A. from Harvard College
1932-1934 -- Traveled to Ireland to study rural life in County Clare as part of the Harvard Irish Mission
1933-1936 -- Junior Fellow, The Society of Fellows, Harvard University
1933-1994 -- Member and Fellow, American Anthropological Association
1934 -- Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University
1937 -- Published The Irish Countryman, the result of his work in Ireland
1938-1940 -- Occasional consultant, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of American Ethnology
1938-1941 -- Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1940 -- Founded (with others) the Society for Applied Anthropology
1941-1946 -- Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Brooklyn College
1943-1946 -- Captain, Major, AUS, Military Intelligence Service
1946-1952 -- Associate Professor of Sociology, Chairman (until 1949) Department of Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University
1951-1952 -- Research Director, UNESCO, Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany
1951-1952 -- Editor, Point Four Manual, American Anthropological Association
1952-1953 -- Associate Professor of Anthropology, The Graduate Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University
1953-1970 -- Professor of Anthropology, Chairman (1956-1959), Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
1962-1978 -- Co-Director (with Alan Lomax) of Columbia University's Cross-Cultural Surveys of Social Structure and Expressive Behavior
1970-1979 -- Buttenwieser Professor of Human Relations, Columbia University
1979-1997 -- Buttenwieser Professor Emeritus of Human Relations, Columbia University
1980 -- President, American Anthropological Association
1991 -- First recipient, "Conrad M. Arensberg Award" of the Society for the Anthropology of Work
1997 February 10 -- Died in Hazlet, New Jersey
Related Materials:
Arensberg is listed as a correspondent in the following collections at the Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Archives: John Lawrence Angel papers; Papers of Carleton Stevens Coon; Ethel Cutler Freeman papers; Frederica de Laguna papers; Ruth Landes papers; William Duncan Strong papers.
For oral history interviews with Arensberg, see the following collections:
-The Smithsonian Institution's Human Studies Film Archives "Video Dialogues in Anthropology: Conrad Arensberg and Lambros Comitas, 1989." In this video oral history conducted by anthropologist Lambros Comitas, Arensberg comments on his training in anthropology, the individuals who were influential in his career, and the geographical areas where he conducted his fieldwork.
-The National Anthropological Archives Manuscript (MS) 2009-15. May Mayko Ebihara conducted this oral history interview with Arensberg on March 7, 1984 as part of a larger oral history project with anthropologists.
For more concerning Arensberg's work with interaction theory, see the Frederick L.W. Richardson papers at the National Anthropological Archives. Richardson worked closely with Eliot Chapple and Conrad Arensberg on theories concerning human interaction.
For correspondence and other information related to Arensberg's Ireland research, see:
Solon Toothaker Kimball Papers, Special Collections, Teachers College, Columbia University; and Solon Toothaker Kimball Papers, The Newberry Library, Chicago.
Additional materials concerning Arensberg's research and personal life can be found among the papers of his wife, anthropologist Vivian "Kelly" Garrison. See the Vivian E. Garrison papers at the National Anthropological Archives.
Provenance:
These papers were donated to the National Anthropological Archives by Vivian E. Garrison Arensberg in 2011.
Restrictions:
The Conrad M. Arensberg papers are open for research.
Files containing Arensberg's students' grades have been restricted, as have his students' and colleagues' grant and fellowships applications. For preservation reasons, the computer disk containing digital correspondence files from Joel Halpern is restricted.
Access to the Conrad M. Arensberg papers requires an appointment.
Conrad M. Arensberg papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
The papers of Conrad M. Arensberg were processed with the assistance of a Wenner-Gren Foundation Historical Archives Program grant awarded to Vivian E. Garrison Arensberg.
Harold K. Schneider was an economic anthropologist specialized in Africa. He was trained at Northwestern University (Ph.D., 1953) and taught at Lawrence University (1953-1970) and Indiana University (1970-1987). The Schneider papers comprise mainly sets of documents relating to fieldwork in East Africa. The collection includes a few original fieldnotes, complete copies of expanded typscript versions of the notes, collations of data on subject categories, lexicons and other linguistic material, indexes, maps, and a few photographs. Also among the material are translations of German sources and copies of notes based on archival material, particularly material produced in colonial district offices. A small quantity of material concerning Africa generally reflects Schneider's broad interest in Africa and African pastoral economies.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Harold K. Schneider are primarily comprised of documents relating to his fieldwork in East Africa. One part concerns the Pokot (Suk), a pastoral people of Kenya, among whom Schnieder conducted fieldwork in 1951-1952 and about whom he wrote his dissertation. Another part concerns the Turu, a pastoral people of Tanzania, whom Schneider visited in 1959-1960.
The collection includes original fieldnotes, complete copies of expanded typescript versions of the notes, collations of data by subject categories, lexicons and other linguistic material, indexes, maps and a few photographs. Also among the materials are translations of German documents, copies of archival items, and notes from archival research, especially in records of colonial district offices. A small quantity of material concerning Africa in general reflects Schneider's broad interests in Africa and African pastoral economies. There are also a number of sound recordings, mainly recordings of Schneider's own lectures but also including a lecture by historian George Stocking.
There is also an alphabetical file based on personal names that includes correspondence, obituaries and publications. Notable contacts include William R. Bascom, G. Boulogne, John Bucklew, Stephan Borhegyi, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Father Delbert Ewing, Lloyd A. Fallers, George Fathauer, William N. Fenton, Daryll Forde, Meyer Fortes, H.A. Fosbrooke, Padraic Frucht, Alexander Galloway, James Gibbs, Maurice Godelier, J.R. Good, Melville J. Herskovits, Hubert H. Humphrey, Father Raymond F. Kelly, Edward E. LeClair, Jr., Alan P. Merriam, James Moody, Joseph G. Moore, Leonard Moss, Raoul Narroll, Maxine Nimitz, J. Peristiany, Nathan M. Pusey, Audry I. Richards, Chandler W. Rowe, Aidan W. Southall, Kathleen Stahl, Roy Swanson, Curtis W. Tarr, Sol Tax, and E.H. Winter.
Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 6 series:
1. Personal name file (includes correspondence); 2. Pokot Material; 3. Turu Material; 4. Other Materials (comprising draft manuscripts, conference papers, lecture notes and typescripts of Turu fieldnotes; 5. General Africa Materials; 6. Sound recordings.
Biographical Note:
Harold K. Schneider was an economic anthropologist who specialized in Africa. He began his undergraduate studies at Macalester College, attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (1946-48), then returned to Macalester to complete his degree, majoring in sociology with a minor in biology (B.A., 1949). He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University (where he studied with Melville Herskovits) in 1953. Following his fieldwork among the Pokot of Kenya, Scheider accepted a position as instructor of anthropology at Lawrence University (1953-1970). He conducted fieldwork among the Turu of Tanzania in 1959-60, from which he further developed his theories in economic anthropology. He served as the president of the Central States Anthropological Society (1965); as founding president of the Society for Economic Anthropology (1982-84); and as associate editor for American Ethnologist (1980-84). In 1970, he joined the faculty of Indiana University, where he remained until his death on May 2, 1987.
1925 -- Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, on August 24, 1925
To Ernest Schusky from Ernestine Friedl, January 2
From Carol Agocs, January 3
To Ernestine Friedl from Ernest L. Schusky, January 9
To Milton Alschuler from Ernest L. Schusky, January 14
From Gerald M. Britan, January 15
Handwritten address for James B. Christensen
Note from James B. Christensen with letter to Dr. Gus Carlson, January 16
Inter-office Memo from Jim Challis, January 17
From James Silverberg
Copy of letter to Ernest L. Schusky from James B. Christensen
From Phillips Stevens, Jr. January 21
From Len Moss n.d.
Copy of letter to John B. Cornell from James B. Christensen, January 23
To James Christensen from Ernest L. Schusky, January 24
From Gerald M. Britan, January 28
Abstract, Edward B. Kurjack—A Bird's Eye View Of Pre-Columbian Yucatan. 2 Pp.
Abstract, Ralph Dustin Cantral and Candice L. D'Louhy—A Satellite Perspective Of The Yucatan Peninsula
From David T. Vlcek, n.d.
From Richard S. Levy, n.d.
Symposium Proposal for 54th Annual Meeting
Anthropological Simulation Games: An Overview by David B. Rymph, 1 p.
Padres, Pueblos, Presidios and the People, by Richard Levy, 2 pp.
Abstract: An Ethnic Community In Transition by Mary C. Sengstock
Abstract: An Urban Polish American Community In The 1970's by Paul Wrobel
Abstract: Change In An Inner-City Neighborhood by David W. Hartman & Bryan Thompson
Abstract: A Preliminary Typology Of Ethnic Community Development In The Detroit Metropolitan Area by Carol Agocs
Letter to CSAS Members, March 12 and papers to be given at April 1975 meeting, 2 pp.
Abstract: Urban Neighborhood Formation, Stability And Change In The 1970's
Notice of Annual Meeting April 1975
Abstract: The Relevance Of Local Ethnography For The Formulation Of Economic Development Policy by Gerald Britan
Abstract: Population Growth And Agricultural Innovation by Peggy Barlett
Notice of December 1975 Meeting
Abstract: Towards A Better Relation Between Theory Building And Practice In Anthropology by Christopher Boehm
Abstract: "Agricultural Development" In Rural Belize by Michael Chibnik
Abstract: Where Have All The Witches Gone? By Twig Johnson
From James B. Christensen, January 30
From James B. Christensen re: April Meeting, January 30, 3 pp.
Program for 1975 Meeting and abstracts, 13 pp.
From Dena Lieberman, January 30
From C. P. Morris, January 31
From Barry L. Isaac, February 2
Handwritten note on call from Robert Merrill, February 5
From Francis X. Grollig, February 5
From Juvenal Casaverde, February 7
To James B. Christensen from John B. Cornell, February 14
To Dr. Schusky from Elsa Louise Vorwerk, February 11
To Gus and Barry, February 12
AES Program, February 13, 5 pp.
From Bob Merrill, February 13
Copy of letter to Arden R. King from James B. Christensen, February 14
Brochure from Sheraton-Chicago Hotel
Copy of letter to Robert S. Merrill from James B. Christensen, February 20, 2 pp.
Card from Mary Jane Schneider, February, 1975
From Phillips Stevens, Jr., February 24
To Board Members from Ernest L. Schusky, March 5
From Brett Williams, March 5
To James B. Christensen, March 5
From James B. Christensen, March 6
To Barry L. Isaac from Steve Cassells, March 8
2 handwritten papers re: meeting rooms
From John S. Wozniak, March 10
From Phillips Stevens, Jr. March 11
To CSAS Anthropologist, March 12
From Della A. Prather, March 12
From Milla Ohel [sp] March 14
From James B. Christensen, March 14
From Heather Lechtman, March 15
From Brenda Johns, March 16
From Barry, March 17
From Gail D. Loeb, March 17
To Dr. Phillips Stevens, March 18
Memo from Carl J. Clausen, March 18
Hand written notes, 5 pp.
From Daniel E. Moerman, March 18
Abstract: Hot, Cold, Bitter, Sweet And Hungry by Daniel E. Moerman
Card from Sandra Deem, March 18
From Kim Dammers, March 24 with envelope
From George C. Klein, March 24
From Phillips Stevens, Jr., April 8
From Michael A. Salter, April 10
Reservation card Detroit Heritage Hotel
To Exec. Committee from Ernie Schusky, April 21
Abbreviated Vitae of Nominees for 1975
Student Prize Paper Contest flyer
Membership Form
Preliminary Program April 1975
Sheraton-Chicago meeting folder
From Medical Tribune, April 11
Copy from James B. Christensen, April 24
Expenditures for CSAS April 1975
Some Comments on the Budget, related expenses for meeting, 6 pp.
Cecily Hoffius business card and letter from Sheraton
To Gustav Carlson from James B. Christensen, April 21
To Dr. Christensen from Woodrow W. Clark, Jr. , March 31
To Woodrow W. Clark, Jr. from James B. Christensen, April 8
From Bernice A. Kaplan, May 5
To Bernice Kaplan, May 15
From Jean Barabas, April 30
From Dr. Phillips, April 28
To Dr. Phillips Stevens, Jr., May 1
Bill for programs, May 2
To Barry Isaac, May 15
From Ernest L. Schusky, May 23
From Barry Isaac, May 24
To Ernest L. Schusky from John B. Cornell, June 12
From Ernie Schusky, September 11
From Barry L. Isaac, November 5, 6 pp.
Collection Restrictions:
Materials relating to CSAS award applicants and selected correspondence from 1976-77 are restricted until 10 years after the death of the correspondents. Computer disks are restricted due to preservation concerns.
Access to the Central States Anthropological Society records requires an appointment.
The papers of art historian and writer Peter Howard Selz measure 31.5 linear feet and 0.696 GB and date from 1929 to 2018, with the bulk of the materials from 1950 to 2005. The papers document Selz's long career via correspondence, writings, professional files, project files, membership and association records, artists' research files, exhibition files, personal business records, printed and digital materials, and nine scrapbooks.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art historian and writer Peter Howard Selz measure 31.5 linear feet and 0.696 GB and date from 1929 to 2018, with the bulk of the materials from 1950 to 2005. The papers document Selz's long career via correspondence, writings, professional files, project files, membership and association records, artists' research files, exhibition files, personal business records, printed and digital materials, and scrapbooks.
Correspondence is with colleagues, artists, museums, and galleries concerning a wide variety of topics, including exhibitions and publications. The bulk of the correspondence consists of alphabetical files (two linear feet) that includes correspondence with artists. Notable correspondents include Pol Bury, Alexander Calder, Gordon Onslow Ford, Alberto Giacometti, Morris Graves, Philip Guston, Dimitri Hadzi, Jacques Lipchitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Jean Tinguely, and others. Eight additional files of chronological correspondence is with curators, arts organizations, and publishers. Additional correspondence is found in the professional files, project files, membership files, artists' research files, and exhibition files.
The bulk of the writings series is comprised of files related to Selz's books and includes typescript drafts and galleys, printed and digital material, correspondence, and publishing contracts. Files are found for Art in Our Times, Art of Engagement, Beyond the Mainstream, and Theories of Modern Art. Other writings consist of drafts of articles, essays, notes, and lectures by Selz. Also included are writings by others, including materials related to Paul Karlstrom's biography of Selz.
Professional files document curatorial and teaching positions at the Chicago Institute of Design, Pomona College, University of California, Berkeley, and the Museum of Modern Art. The series includes contracts, recommendations, syllabi, and correspondence.
Project files document Selz's professional work on specific art projects, panels, and symposiums. There is extensive documentation of Selz's work as project director of Christo's Running Fence, as well as other environmental art work projects by Christo, the Berkeley Art Project, Disney Art Project, "Funk Art" symposium, and the "Art and Politics in the 20th Century" symposium. Project files contain a wide variety of materials, such as correspondence, printed material, financial records, reports, photographs, and other documents. There are 2 tape reels, 1 VHS, and 1 sound cassette.
Membership and association records document Selz's involvement with or membership in various art councils, trustee boards, such as the College Art Association, Art in Chicago Advisory Committee, Bay Area Rapid Transit (B.A.R.T.) Art Council, and the San Francisco Crafts and Folk Art Museum Advisory Board, among others. Materials include meeting minutes, bulletins, correspondence, and memoranda.
Artists' Research Files consist of a wide variety of research materials Selz compiled about artists for lectures, writings, projects, exhibitions, etc. Files vary and may include original and photocopied correspondence, photographic material, resumes, printed and digital material, and writings. There is also 1 sound cassette. Files are found for Bedri Baykam, Max Beckmann, Fletcher Benton, Ciel Bergman, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Bruce Conner, Jean Dubuffet, Lyonel Feininger, Leon Golub, Dimitri Hadzi, Rico Lebrun, Harold Paris, Irving Petlin, among many others.
Exhibition files include catalogs, reviews, clippings, writings, correspondence, and other material documenting exhibitions organized by Selz. Limited materials are found for the MOMA Art Nouveau exhibition. More extensive documentation is found for Seven Decades of Modern Art, 1895-1965, The Joint Show (1967), The American Presidency in Political Cartoons (1976), American Modern Art Between the Two World Wars (1979), German Realism in the Twenties: Artist As Social Critic (1980), Twelve Artists from the German Democratic Republic (1989), a Richard Lindner Retrospective (1996), Spaces of Nature (1999), Color and Fire: Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, 1950-2000 (2000), and a Nathan Oliviera Retrospective (2002), among others. Some of the materials are in digital format.
Personal business records are related to the Mark Rothko estate and Kate Rothko's legal case against Marlborough Gallery, Inc. Also included in this series are Peter Selz's school transcripts, bequests, royalty statements, house designs, and other material.
Printed materials include clippings, prints of articles written by Peter Selz, exhibition announcements and invitations, and photocopies of artwork images.
There are nine disbound scrapbooks dating from the 1940s up through 2012 containing clippings, exhibition announcements, and photographs of art events, Selz, and artists. This series also includes materials from the 2018 addition that may have previously been compiled in binders.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as 10 series. When possible the original order of Peter Selz was maintained. However, multiple accessions were merged and integrated.
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1942-2013 (2.3 linear feet; Box 1-3, Box 37)
Series 2: Writings, 1942- circa 2014 (8.3 linear feet; Box 3-10, OV 32, Box 37, 0.035 GB; ER01, ER12)
Series 3: Professional Files, 1949-2012 (1 linear feet; Box 11, Box 37)
Series 4: Project Files, 1962-2015 (2.8 linear feet; Box 12-14, OV 33, Box 37)
Series 5: Membership and Association Records, 1958-2014 (1.1 linear feet; Box 14-15, Box 37)
Series 6: Artists' Research Files, 1955-2014 (7.9 linear feet; Box 15-22, OV 34-35, 0.520 GB; ER02-ER08)
Series 7: Exhibition Files, 1959-2014 (5.2 linear feet; Box 23-27, Box 38, 0.093 GB; ER09-ER11)
Series 8: Personal Business Records, 1929-2014 (1.2 linear feet; Box 28-29, OV 36, Box 38)
Series 9: Printed Material, 1957-2014 (0.3 linear feet; Box 29, Box 38)
Series 10: Scrapbooks, 1947-2018 (1.4 linear feet, Box 29-31, Box 38)
Biographical / Historical:
Peter Howard Selz (1919-2019) was a pioneering historian of modern art, professor, and writer who taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-1988 and founded and directed the Berkeley Art Museum from 1965-1973.
Selz was born in 1919 in Munich, Germany to Eugene Selz and Edith Drey Selz. In 1936, the family fled Nazi Germany and immigrated to the United States. Selz attended Columbia University from 1937 to 1938 and became a naturalized citizen in 1942. During World War II, Selz served in the U.S. Army in the Office of Strategic Services. He married writer Thalia Cheronis in 1948 but they later divorced in 1965; he married several times afterwards.
After the war, Selz attended and taught at the University of Chicago where he received a Ph. D. in German Expressionism. He spent a year in Paris, 1949-1950, at the Sorbonne and École du Louvre on a Fulbright grant. He received a second Fulbright grant in 1953 to study at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Belgium. From 1953-1955, Selz also taught at the Chicago Institute of Design.
In 1955 Peter Selz accepted a position to chair the art history department at Pomona College in Claremont and relocated to California for a few years. He also became director of the college's art gallery.
In 1958 Selz moved to New York City to become curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art and was there through the transformative mid-1960s. While at MOMA, he organized several significant exhibitions of modern art, including the 1960 Jean Tinguely "Homage to New York," a sculpture that destroyed itself (and started a fire) in the sculpture garden of the museum; New Images of Man (1959), the Art Nouveau show (1960), and the Art of Assemblage (1961). He also launched important retrospectives, including the first Rodin retrospective in the United States and a comprehensive exhibition of Alberto Giacometti's work in 1965.
In 1965, Peter Selz returned to California to become the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley, a position he held until 1973. He organized exhibitions of Funk, film, and ceramicists like Peter Voulkos and Robert Arneson. Peter Selz later became project director for Christo's "Running Fence", the 24.5-mile long fabric fence over the Marin County hills in 1976. He also served concurrently as a professor of art history at UC until retiring in 1988.
Peter Selz was a member of the College Art Association's board of directors for two terms, 1958-1964 and 1966-1971. Selz is a prolific writer, and the author or co-author of numerous books, exhibition catalogs, and articles. Notable books include German Expressionist Painting (1957), Art in a Turbulent Era (1965), Art in Our Times (1981), and Sam Francis (1975).
In 1988 Peter Selz was named emeritus professor at University of California, Berkeley. In 1993 he was on the acquisitions committee of the Museums of Fine Arts, San Francisco. In 2012, Selz curated The Painted Word exhibition. Selz died in 2019 in Albany, California.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds oral history interviews of Peter Selz conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom on July 28, 1982, October 12, 1982, and November 3, 1999.
Provenance:
The Peter Howard Selz papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by Peter Selz in multiple installments from 1976 through 2014. Additional papers were donated in 2018 by Gabrielle Selz, Peter Selz's daughter.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Washington, D.C. Research Center. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate copies requires advance notice.
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.
Peter Howard Selz papers, 1929-2018, bulk 1950-2005. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the 2014 processing of this collection was provided by the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Funding for the processing of the 2018 addition was provided by Gerald and Bente Buck.
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.
