An interview of Edith Halpert conducted 1962-1963, by Harlan Phillips, for the Archives of American Art.
Halpert speaks of her childhood in Russia and growing up in New York City; working at Bloomindale's, Macy's, Stern Brothers, and Cohen Goldman; her marriage to artist Sam Halpert, his health, and living in Paris in 1925; becoming an art student at the Academy of Design and feeling that Leon Kroll was an excellent art teacher until he began to correct her drawings; when George Bridgman thought she was ruining his class; the Lincoln Square Arcade, when she and Ernest Fiener and Robert Brackman would rent Conan's studio evenings and bring in instructors; how Newman Montross influenced her more than anybody about showing her art that she loved; burning all of her work because Kroll said she had no talent; receiving a painting from John Marin; her friendship and working relationship with Abby Rockefeller and other family members.
She recalls opening the Downtown Gallery, in Greenwich Village, in 1926; a brief history of modern art; many artists helping decorate the new Daylight Gallery in 1930 and the first show being called "Practical Manifestations of Art"; meeting Robert and Sonia Delaunay in France; when she refused to allow Ezra Pound to speak at one of the gallery lectures because of his anti-Semite remarks and William Carlos Williams and Ford Madox Ford argued with her over it; experiencing jealousy and professional attacks from other dealers; the successful "Pop" Hart show and book in 1929; the "Thirty-three Moderns" show in 1930 at the Grand Central Galleries; the Jules Pascin show in 1930; in America, most of the art buyers supporters of culture were women, until the WPA and World War II, when it became fashionable for men to be involved; Ambroise Vollard's advice on selling art; handling the frustrations of working in the art field; friendships with Stuart Davis,Charles Sheeler, and Ben Shahn; how artists work through dry periods in their creativity and the "Recurrent Image" show; a discussion on modern art galleries of New York City, such as Daniel, Knoedler, Ferargil, the New Gallery, 291, the Grand Central, Kraushaar, and Montross; her travels through Pennsylvania and Maine for good examples of folk art for the gallery; the "The Artist Looks at Music" show; the non-competitive spirit of the early modern American artists; of being saved financially in 1940 by selling a William Harnett painting to the Boston Museum and then renting new space for the gallery.
Also, Mitchell Siporin bringing Halpert and Edmund Gurry to Mitchell Field during World War II for a camouflage show and consequently Downtown Gallery artists and others were enlisted in the camouflage corps for the U.S. Air Force; Charles Sheeler and his wife find Halpert a house in Newtown, Conn.; her decision in 1933 to push folk art for acquisition by the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri; her great concern about what to do with her folk art literature collection; dismay and that no one writes about the history of folk art and those responsible for its creation and popularity; Louis Stern hiring her to organize a municipal exhibit in Atlantic City, N.J., with Donald Deskey designing the furniture and Holger Cahill managing the publicity; Joe Lillie helping her meet Fiorello La Guardia and Joe McGoldrick in 1934 about a municipal show in New York City, but it is moved to Radio City Music Hall through Nelson Rockefeller; the "Salons of America" show; wanting articles written about art for love rather than art for investment; working with Aline Saarinen on her book, "Proud Possessors;" letters from Stuart Davis, William Zorach and others that hurt her feelings; enjoying giving educational lectures and considering retirement because of ill health; the desire to write a book on the history of trade signs in folk art; feeling that the young artists are being ruined by too much support without working for it; planning to write a book entitled, "Unsung Heroes," about artists brave enough to experiment; organizing a show in Russia at her own expense; later representing the U.S. in art at the "American National Exposition"; the agitators and success of the exposition; Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe.
Halpert also recalls Juliana Force, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Buckminster Fuller, George Luks, Edsel Ford, Max Weber, Danny Diefenbacker, Hamilton Easter Field, Frank Stella, Glenn Coleman, Margaret Zorach, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Henry Mercer, Romany Marie, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Mellon, Charles Pollet, Alex Brook, Lunca Curass, Dorothy Lambert, Duncan Candler, Frank Rhen, Louis Rittman, Bea Goldsmith, Arthur Craven, Robert Frost, Philip Wittenberg, Caesar de Hoke, Richard deWolfe Brixey, Seymour Knox, Walt Kuhn, Elisabeth Luther Cary, Charles Locke, Duncan Fergusson, Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim, Bob Tannahill, David Thompson, Marsden Hartley, Erwin Barrie, Robert Laurent, Conger Goodyear, Henry McBride, Edward Hopper, Charles Daniel, William Merritt Chase, Charles Hopkinson, Thomas Hart Benton, Frank Crowninshield, Alfred Barr, Lord Duveen, Jacob Lawrence, John Marin Jr., Karl Zerbe, Franz Kline, Arthur Dove, Julian Levy, Jack Levine, Valentine Dudensing, Peggy Bacon, Stefan Hirsch, Gertrude Stein, Isamu Noguchi, Jasper Johns, Chaim Soutine, B. K. Saklatwalla; Fernand Leger, Pablo Picasso, Ben Shahn, Charles Demuth, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, Edward Steichen, Carl Sandburg, Clement Greenberg, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Edith Halpert (1900-1970) was an art dealer from New York, N.Y.
General:
Originally recorded on 7 tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 27 digital wav files. Duration is 32 hrs., 27 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art 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. The transcript was microfilmed in 1996.
Occupation:
Art dealers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of New York art collector Chester Dale measure 8.4 linear feet and date from circa 1883-2003. Dale amassed one of the world's most complete collections of nineteenth and twentieth century French art, was a collector of eighteenth century American portraitists, and a patron and collector of twentieth American artists including George Bellows and Mary Cassatt. The bulk of the collection dates from 1920 to 1970 and documents Dale's activities through biographical material, correspondence, memoirs and other writings, purchase, sales and estate records, printed material, scrapbooks, and photographs.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York art collector Chester Dale measure 8.4 linear feet and date from circa 1883-2003. Dale amassed one of the world's most complete collections of nineteenth and twentieth century French art, was a collector of eighteenth century American portraitists, and a patron and collector of twentieth American artists including George Bellows and Mary Cassatt. The bulk of the collection dates from 1920 to 1970 and documents Dale's activities through biographical material, correspondence, memoirs and other writings, purchase, sales and estate records, printed material, scrapbooks, and photographs.
Biographical material comprises brief genealogical and biographical notes on Dale's father's side of the family; four pieces of miscellaneous artwork; several certificates, membership cards, and programs; circa six unidentified dictaphone recordings; and a home movie of an unidentified social event.
Correspondence provides scattered documentation of Dale's activities as a collector and benefactor, including correspondence relating to gifts to various museums such as the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as posthumous gifts to the Allentown Art Museum and Amherst College. Also documented is Dale's election as president of the National Gallery of Art in 1955. There are several letters to and from Salvador and Gala Dali, copies of two letters from Diego Rivera, and letters from other friends and business associates, including historian Georges Salles. Over one third of the correspondence consists of condolence telegrams and letters sent to Mary Dale following Dale's death. Other correspondence documents Mary Dale's work as exhibition chairman for the Parrish Museum of Art, and includes letters from Andrew, Jamie, and Nicholas Wyeth.
Writings include typed drafts of Dale's memoirs which recall the beginning of his career in banking, and include stories of his early experiences in buying art. Dale credits the highly discerning and influential eye of his first wife, Maud Dale, for guiding him in his early selections, and his memoirs recall his unconventionally direct way of doing business with the Paris art dealers. Two travel diaries record a 1904 trip to Europe, and five trips to Europe and the Caribbean between 1949 and 1953. Writings by others include several essays on Dale by various authors, several essays on art by Maud Dale, and a typed draft of a manuscript on Dale's life by Neil MacNeil.
Extensive inventories, estate appraisals, and will disbursement records document the contents of the Chester Dale collection in Series 4. Also found here are receipts for specific purchases of works by Cezanne, Cassatt, Dali, Dufy, Picasso, and others.
Printed material includes catalogs for auction sales annotated with sales prices and other purchase information; catalogs of Dale's collection; and exhibition catalogs and announcements for the Parrish Museum of Art during Mary Dale's tenure as exhibition chairman. Some of the catalogs include essays by Maud Dale. News clippings and magazine articles document press coverage of Dale's activities at home and abroad.
Scrapbooks contain additional printed material, primarily news clippings, documenting press coverage of Chester Dale's life from the 1920s until his death. One of the scrapbooks includes multiple photographs of Dale and others, including a photo of Frida Kahlo and Jose Orozco. An additional scrapbook of photographs and clippings documents Mary Dale's life before and after her marriage to Dale.
Photographs are of Dale, Mary Dale, Maud Dale, family, friends, and colleagues. There are photographs of Dale and Mary Dale with artists including George Braques, Salvador and Gala Dali, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and Jamie and Nicholas Wyeth; and friends and associates Renee and Claire Batigne, Veronica "Rocky" Cooper and Maria Cooper, Robert Sturgis Ingersoll, Edith Hamilton with Robert Frost, Neil MacNeil, Herbert Mayes, and Paul and Timothy Mellon. There are individual photos and three photograph albums of Dale's various residences and his collection, including photographs taken shortly before his death at his Plaza Hotel apartment showing some of his favorite pictures. Photographers include Rudolph Burkhardt, Irving Cantor, Ivan Dmitri, and Dmitri Kessel. There are also many photographs of exhibition openings and museum events, especially events at the National Gallery of Art, including the presentation of Dale's gift of Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper to the museum in 1956, and the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II of England's visit to the museum in 1957. Photographs also include photographs of artwork in Dale's collection.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as seven series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, circa 1897-circa 1960, 2003 (Boxes 1, 7-8; FC 20; 0.45 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1911-1984 (Box 1; 0.9 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, 1904-1963 (Boxes 2, 8; 0.55 linear feet)
Series 4: Chester Dale Collection, circa 1930-1968 (Boxes 2-3; 1 linear foot)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1925-circa 1972 (Boxes 3-4, 8, OV 9; 1.2 linear feet)
Series 6: Scrapbooks, circa 1920s-1963 (Box 4, BVs 10-14; 1.2 linear feet)
Series 7: Photographs, circa 1883-1972 (Boxes 4-6, 19, BVs 15-17, OV 18; 3.3 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
New York art patron and collector of French and American art Chester Dale (1883-1962), made his fortune as a banker who pioneered the sale of public utility securities. He began purchasing French paintings in the mid-1920s and retired from the investment security business in 1935 in order to focus full time on the acquisition of art.
Dale was encouraged to begin collecting art by his first wife, Maud Dale, who was an artist, a writer, and a former chairman of the Exhibition Committee of the Museum of French Art. With the benefit of his wife's knowledge, passion, and perception, Dale began to lay the foundation of his collection in 1926, and amassed circa seven hundred pictures within ten years. His collection is considered to be one of the most complete collections of nineteenth and twentieth century French art in the world, and includes some of the finest examples of works by Braque, Corot, Delacroix, Degas, Derain, Dufy, Leger, Matisse, and Renoir, as well as by artists representative of the French tradition in art including Modigliani, Picasso, Rivera, and Van Gogh.
Although primarily interested in French art, Dale also collected and encouraged American artists. He was a patron of George Bellows and Salvador Dali, and had his portrait painted by both artists. Dale presented the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art with their first Dali paintings, the latter being The Sacrament of the Last Supper. Dale also purchased works by Mary Cassatt, representative works by "the Eight," and examples of eighteenth century American portraitists John Smibert, Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Sully. In the early 1940s he visited Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico, and Rivera subsequently completed a portrait of Dale in 1945.
Dale served as a trustee to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He made the first of a series of gifts to the National Gallery of Art when it opened in 1941. In 1955 he was elected president of the museum, by which time his collection occupied ten of its galleries. Dale bequeathed the bulk of his remaining collection to the National Gallery in his will. This final gift included eighty of his favorite pictures, which had been located in his Manhattan apartment at the Plaza Hotel up until his death.
A year after the death of Maud Dale in 1953, Dale married Mary Towar Bullard, whom he had employed as his secretary for twenty-five years. Mary Dale oversaw the disbursement of her husband's estate, following Dale's death from a heart attack in 1962.
Related Materials:
Holdings at the Archives of American Art also include the Chester Dale papers concerning George Bellows, 1919-1956, comprising correspondence, a photograph, and invoices relating to Chester Dale's relationship with George Bellows and Dale's interest in artwork by Bellows; and the Chester Dale eulogy, consisting of one 35 minute, 9 second sound tape reel of a eulogy delivered by an unidentified speaker.
Provenance:
The collection was donated in 1972 by Mary Dale, Chester Dale's second wife, and in 1985 by Mary Dale's estate.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D. C., Research Center. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate 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.
Chester Dale papers, circa 1883-2003, bulk 1920-1970. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of the Chester Dale papers is provided by The Walton Family Foundation. Funding for the reformatting of the 16mm film reel was provided by the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee.
The wasteland --The song of the old mother --Innisfree -- Coole and Ballylee --In memory of W.B Yeats --Still falls the rain --A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London --Fern Hill --Turfsacks --Refugees --Poem to my son (To Juan at the winter solstice) --If I told him (A completed portrait of Picasso) --Epistle to be left in the earth --What if a much of a which of a wind --Sweet spring is your --What are years --Missing dates --I think continually of those --Seascape --Teterlestai --Birches --After apple-picking --The seafarer --The idea of order at Key West --The groundhog-- Moeurs contemporaines --Love calls us to the things of this world.
Track Information:
101 Eliot, T.S.; The Wasteland / T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot.
201 Yeats, William Butler; The Song of the Old Mother / W.B. (William Butler) Yeats.
202 Yeats, William Butler; Innisfree / W.B. (William Butler) Yeats.
203 Yeats, William Butler; Coole and Ballylee / W.B. (William Butler) Yeats.
204 Auden, W.H.; In Memory of W.B. Yeats / W.H. Auden.
205 Sitwell,Edith; Still Falls the Rain / Edith, Dame Sitwell.
206 Thomas, Dylan; A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Chid in London / Dylan Thomas.
207 Thomas, Dylan; Fern Hill / Dylan Thomas.
208 Macniece, Louis; Turfstacks / Louis Macniece.
209 Macniece, Louis; Refugees / Louis Macniece.
210 Graves, Robert; Poem to my son (To Juan at the Winter Solstice) / Robert Graves.
301 Stein, Gertrude; If I Told Him (A Complete Portrait of Picasso / Gertrude Stein.
302 MacLeish, Archibald; Epistle to be Left in the Earth / Archibald MacLeish.
303 Cummings, E.E.; what if a much of a which of a wind / Ebenezer Edson Cummings.
304 Cummings, E.E.; "sweet spring is your / Ebenezer Edson Cummings.
305 Moore, Marianne; What are Years / Marianne Moore.
306 Empson, William; Missing Dates / William Empson.
307 Spender, Stephen; I Think Continually of Those / Stephen Spender.
308 Spender, Stephen; Seascape / Stephen Spender.
309 Aiken, Conrad; Tetelestai / Conrad Aiken.
401 Frost; Robert; Birches / Robert Frost.
402 Frost, Robert; After Apple-picking / Robert Frost.
403 Wiliams, William Carlos; The Seafarer / William Carlos Williams.
404 Stevens, Wallace; The Idea of Order at Key West / Wallace Stevens.
405 Eberhart, Richard; The Groundhog / Richard Eberhart.
406 Bishop, Elizabeth; Manuelzinho / Elizabeth Bishop.
407 Wilbur, Richard; Love Calls Us to the Things of This World / Richard Wilbur.
Local Numbers:
FW-ASCH-LP-2269
Caedmon.2006
Publication, Distribution, Etc. (Imprint):
New York Caedmon 1957
Date/Time and Place of an Event Note:
Recorded in: New York, United States.
General:
Twenty-five poems, read by the authors, including T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Robert Graves, Gertrude Stein, E.E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, Stephen Spender, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound and others.
Restrictions:
Restrictions on access. No duplication allowed listening and viewing for research purposes only.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
Walk in the mud--Head under--The thing--Win, lose or draw--Girls--Big surprise--Pretty cute--Five O'clock--Bed--Rain and gone--What am I--My bath--My hiccups
Local Numbers:
FW-ASCH-10RR-3326
General:
Folkways 9733
CDR copy--A narrative reading by Lesley Frost of poems by Robert Frost.
Restrictions:
Restrictions on access. No duplication allowed listening and viewing for research purposes only.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
Collection Citation:
Moses and Frances Asch Collection, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.
Restrictions on access. No duplication allowed listening and viewing for research purposes only.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
Photographs taken by Wood including persons prominent in the New York City social, literary, and theatrical fields. Other subjects include architecture, landscapes, still life, dunes, military, and theater in the United States and other countries.
Scope and Contents:
Photographs, in both print and negative form, by Richard Carver Wood, including architectural photographs; art photographs, including landscapes and still life's; portrait and family photographs; photographs of persons prominent in the New York City social, literary, and theatrical fields. Many of these were taken at theater critic Alexander Woollcott's property at Lake Bomoseen in Vermont, and include Dorothy Parker, Vivien Leigh, Ethel Barrymore, and numerous others. Materials were maintained in the three series that Wood created: Series 1, People, Series 2, Places and Series 3, Subjects. The materials in each series are arranged in alphabetical order by Wood's folder titles.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into three series.
Series 1: People, 1935-1960, undated
Series 2: Places, 1939-1978, undated
Series 3: Subjects, 1941, undated
Biographical / Historical:
Richard Carver Wood was born in 1902 in Binghamton, New York to Frank Hoyt and Eva Wood. He studied at Hamilton College then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1922-1929 where he graduated with a degree in architecture. In the 1930s, Wood struggled to find work in his field and turned his attention to photography. His adopted father, a professor at Hamilton College, put him in contact with a former student, Alexander Woollcott, by then a theater critic with The New Yorker. It was through Woollcott that Wood met many of the famous people he photographed, many on Woollcott's Lake Bomoseen, Vermont, property, though Wood also photographed places, buildings, and subjects like the Perkins School for the Blind.
When America became involved in World War II, Wood was stationed in Hawaii as part of the Army Signal Corps. It was there that he turned to film, and after the end of World War II he worked first with a small dental company for a few years, and then began freelancing. His film work culminated with the 1954 Academy Award winning documentary The Unconquered, a biography of his one-time photography subject Helen Keller.
It was around the time of the Keller documentary that Wood again found work as an architect with an East Hampton firm. He would remain in architecture from then on, rarely taking photographs. Wood died on November 23, 1989 at the age of eighty-seven years old.
Provenance:
Donated by Wood's daughter, Patsy Asch, to the Archives Center in 2007.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is 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.
1 Item (Color-dye gelatin on film, 2-1/4" x 2-1/4")
Container:
Box 169, Sheet 46
Type:
Archival materials
Color slides
Chromogenic processes
Date:
undated
Local Numbers:
AC0145-0000001 (AC scan no.)
Collection Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but a portion of the collection is 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.
A small number of letters and photographs are restricted until the year 2031. Identification list in box.
Collection 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.
Files related to Washington, D.C. art activities; photographs; scrapbook; and guestbook.
REELS 2424-2425: Scrapbook on Comès' sitters Leonie Adams, Elizabeth Bishop, Katherine Garrison Chapin, Martin D' Arcy, Walter de la Mare, Denis Devlin, Richard Eberhart, Robert Frost, Caroline Gordon, Ralph Hodgson, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Robert Lowell, Katherine Anne Porter, Ezra Pound, St. John Perse, Sir John Rothenstein, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Mark Van Doren, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Cornelius Weygandt and Anne Goodwin Winslow, containing letters, clippings, book reviews, photos of sitters and Comès' portraits. Also included are photos of Comès and printed material relating to her.
REEL 2424, frames 3-243: A guest book, containing signatures, comments, sketches, photographs, clippings, and letters from artists, poets, writers, and other guests of Comès, including Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost, Leon Masson, Katherine Anne Porter, Sir John Rothenstein and Sir William Rothenstein, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and others. Also included are photographs of Comès and her family.
UNMICROFILMED: Artist, dealer, institution, and subject files containing letters, exhibition catalogs and announcements, clippings, photographs, and other printed materials relating to Washington, D.C. art activities. Included are: files on artists Caroline Van Hook Bean, Ruby Grady, Jacob Kainen, Frank Wright, and others; files on the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Foundry, the Studio Gallery, and other galleries; subject files on the Art Barn, the D.C. chapter of the Artists Equity Association including membership lists and address labels, 1970-1972, the Art in the Embassies Program, the Conference on Artists and Taxes, 1977, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Federal Government and the art, including material on bills and hearings, 1973-1977, the Washington art community, women and the arts, art materials hazards, includes published works by Joy Luke Turner, and crafts.
Also included are a paper "Government Sponsorship of the Arts under the WPA and Ceta," by Martha Malles, 1978; clippings, with reviews by John Canady and others; photographs, undated and 1971-1973, of Marcella Comès, Art Barn happenings, including 45 slides, 1974, and Artists Equity Association, Washington chapter, exhibitions; a published reference directory of Washington art, WASHINGTON TODAY, 1967; and one 16mm amateur film circa 1974.
Biographical / Historical:
Portrait painter, photographer; Washington, D.C. b. 1905. d. July 6, 2000. Married name Mrs. Randolph Winslow. Trained at the Carnegie School of Fine Arts and privately in Europe. Comès played an active part in the local D.C. art community; as a member of the Women's Commission of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, president of the D.C. chapter of Artists Equity Association, 1969-1971, and as the national vice-president, 1971-1973. Comès was the ex-officio portraitist to the Poetry Chair at the Library of Congress.
Provenance:
Lent and donated 1982 by Marcella Comes.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Scurlock, George H. (Hardison), 1919-2005 Search this
Extent:
1 Item (Silver gelatin on cellulose acetate film sheet, 3-1/4" x 4-1/4".)
Container:
Box 75
Culture:
African Americans -- Washington (D.C.) Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Photographs
Place:
Washington (D.C.) -- African Americans
Date:
[ca. 1950-1963]
Scope and Contents:
Prof. Sterling Brown, Dr. James Nabrit, and Poet Robert Frost sitting in a row. Dr. Nabrit is shaking hands with Frost. No edge imprint, no ink on negative, no Scurlock number.
Subseries Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Gloves must be worn when handling unprotected photographs and negatives. Special arrangements required to view negatives due to cold storage. Using negatives requires a three hour waiting period. Contact the Archives Center at 202-633-3270.
Subseries Rights:
When the Museum purchased the collection from the Estate of Robert S. Scurlock, it obtained all rights, including copyright. The earliest photographs in the collection are in the public domain because their term of copyright has expired. The Archives Center will control copyright and the use of the collection for reproduction purposes, which will be handled in accordance with its standard reproduction policy guidelines. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Photographs -- Black-and-white negatives -- Acetate film
Subseries Citation:
Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
The collection was acquired with assistance from the Eugene Meyer Foundation. Elihu and Susan Rose and the Save America's Treasures program, provided funds to stabilize, organize, store, and create digital surrogates of some of the negatives. Processing and encoding funded by a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources.
