The papers of art critic, curator, and educator April Kingsley and painter, sculptor, writer, and educator Budd Hopkins measure 11 feet and 0.209 Gigabytes, and date from circa 1945-2017. Kingsley's papers are comprised primarily of artist files for figures that April had a significant engagement with, project files, interviews with artists, subject file index cards, biographical materials, and miscellaneous correspondence. Hopkins' papers are comprised of biographical material, as well as correspondence with various prominent art world figures including Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell, Carl Andre, Howardena Pindell, and Robert Rosenblum. Hopkins' personal business records include correspondence and sale and consignment information. Also found are writings, printed material, including exhibition invitations and catalogs and press clippings, and photographic material depicting Hopkins and his artwork.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art critic, curator, and educator April Kingsley and painter, sculptor, writer, and educator Budd Hopkins measure 11 feet and 0.209 Gigabytes, and date from circa 1945-2017. Kingsley's papers are comprised primarily of artist files for figures that April had a significant engagement with, with contents ranging from correspondence to printed material, including invitations and catalogs and press clippings, as well as notes and manuscript material including reviews. Project files include various topics of interest and research for tentative and actualized exhibitions, as well as writing projects and committee work related to Kingsley's tenure at the American Craft Museum and the Kresge Museum at Michigan State University. Also found are recorded interviews with artists and other figures conducted by April Kingsley between the years of 1988 and 1990, most of which are affiliated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. The subject file index cards are comprised of various sets of notes and citations regarding themes, movements, and artists central to Kingsley's ongoing research throughout her career. Also included are various biographical materials and miscellaneous correspondence that comprise the personal papers subseries.
Hopkins' papers are comprised of biographical material including biographies and a chronology, correspondence with various prominent art world figures including Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell, Carl Andre, Howardena Pindell, and Robert Rosenblum. Personal business records include correspondence and sale and consignment information related to particular galleries, as well as records regarding the Long Point Gallery co-founded by Hopkins and twelve other artists on Cape Cod in 1977. His writings include manuscript material regarding one of Hopkins' titles on UFO abductions, as well as various typescripts for reviews and essays written by Hopkins, as well as one audio recording for a lecture regarding his essay "Modernism and the Collage Aesthetic." Printed material including exhibition invitations and catalogs and press clippings are also found. Photographic materials include images of Hopkins, exhibition installations, and artwork in various formats, such as photographic prints, negatives, slides, and transparencies.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged in two series:
Series 1: April Kingsley papers, circa 1960s-2017 (7.7 Linear Feet; Boxes 1-8, 0.209 Gigabytes; ER01)
Series 2: Budd Hopkins papers, circa 1945-2010 (3.3 Linear Feet; Boxes 7, 9-11)
Biographical / Historical:
April Kingsley (1941- ) is an art historian, critic, and curator living in Harwich, Massachusetts. Budd Hopkins (1931-2011) was an Abstract Expressionist artist and writer of both art criticism and UFO and abduction phenomena accounts, who lived primarily in New York City and Cape Cod.
Following a short-lived career as a nurse while married to her first husband, Kingsley completed a Masters of Fine Arts from New York University, and later a PhD in Art History from the City University Graduate Center. Kingsley studied in depth the Abstract Expressionist art movement, and also focused heavily on women artists and contemporary craft art. Kingsley held curatorial positions at a range of institutions including at The Museum of Modern Art, The American Craft Museum, and at the Pasadena Art Museum. She has written major monographs on numerous artists including Jean Miotte and Alice Dalton Bown, and contributed to the catalogs of more than 75 artists. Among her most notable publications are The Turning Point: The Abstract Expressionists and the Transformation of American Art (1992) and Emotional Impact: American Figurative Expressionism (2013). Kingsley and Hopkins were married from 1973-1991, and had one daughter, Grace Hopkins-Lisle. Kingsley currently resides in Harwich, Massachusetts with her husband Donald Spyke, who she married in 2005.
Born Elliott Budd Hopkins in 1931 in Wheeling West Virginia, Hopkins survived an early battle with polio as a toddler, following which a period of convalescence made an early engagement with drawing possible. He graduated from Oberlin College with an art history degree where he heard a lecture from a future mentor Robert Motherwell. After college Hopkins moved to New York City and became a fixture of the Abstract Expressionist circle, and by 1956 had his first solo show of paintings. In 1976 he earned a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979. His paintings, which range from gestural Abstract Expressionism to color plane geometric compositions are held in major museum collections ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the British Museum. In the 1980s Hopkins turned to making large scale sculptures evocative of ancient ritualist architecture, an addition to his well-known painting practice. Hopkins also published a number of reviews of the work of other artists which were very well received at the time. As much as his art career perhaps, Budd Hopkins is known for spreading the word about alien abduction in his popular books on the subject, following a UFO sighting he recounts in Cape Cod in 1964. While Hopkins does not claim to have been abducted he regularly held support groups for others to share their stories. He passed in 2011 in his home in New York City.
Provenance:
The bulk of April Kingsley and Budd Hopkins papers was donated in 2018 by Grace Hopkins, their daughter. Portions of the Budd Hopkins papers were donated by Budd Hopkins between 1980 and 1983.
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 born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this
collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
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:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Art critics -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of painter and art historian Tony Vevers measure 3.4 linear feet and date from 1947 to 2008, with the bulk of materials dating from 1960 to 1999. The collection concerns his career as a painter and teacher and his research and writings about the history of art in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Found within the papers are correspondence, writings, subject files, printed material, and photographs.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of painter and art historian Tony Vevers measure 3.4 linear feet and date from 1947 to 2008, with the bulk of materials dating from 1960 to 1999. The collection concerns his career as a painter and teacher and his research and writings about the history of art in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Found within the papers are correspondence, writings, subject files, printed material, and photographs.
The collection as a whole—and especially Vevers's writings and subject files–focuses on the Provincetown art community, its history and significance. Vevers's writings include many lectures prepared for classes he taught at Purdue University and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, catalog essays, and notes. There are notes and research materials about artists Houghton Cranford Smith, E. Ambrose Webster, Edwin Dickinson, and Lucy and William L'Engle, and subject files about the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Long Point Gallery, and other galleries in the area, as well as a file of Provincetown-related obituaries and eulogies for Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, and Jack Tworkov, with Vevers's eulogies for Tworkov and Myron Stout.
Printed materials consist mainly of clippings, exhibition catalogs and announcements relating to Vevers and his art interests. Artwork consists of a small print and watercolor, probably by Vevers, as well as a pen-and-ink portrait by an unidentified artist.
Photographs are mainly of artwork by Vevers. The two images of Vevers show him as a young boy and in 1984 at work in his studio. There are several photographs of exhibition installations at the Sun Gallery in Provincetown, 1958-1959, identified artists are: Yvonne Andersen, Dominic Falcone, Red Grooms, Taro and Gwen Yamamoto.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged in 7 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1962-2000 (Box 1; 1 folder)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1950s-2006 (Box 1; 0.1 linear foot)
Series 3: Writings, 1947-2008 (Boxes 1-2; 1.9 linear feet)
Series 4: Subject Files, 1954-2006 (Boxes 2-3; 0.7 linear foot)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1960s-2008 (Boxes 3-4; 0.7 linear foot)
Series 6: Artwork, circa 1950s-circa 2005 (Box 4; 2 folders)
Series 7: Photographs, circa 1950s-1984 (Box 4; 0.1 linear foot)
Biographical / Historical:
Painter and art historian, Tony Vevers (1926-2008) and his artist wife Elspeth Halvorsen (b. 1929) lived and worked in Provincetown, Massachusetts, as year-round or summer residents from 1955 to 2006. From 1964 to 1988, Vevers taught art and art history at Purdue University in Indiana. An active participant in the Provincetown art community, he was also an historian of the Provincetown art scene.
Vevers was born in London, England and immigrated to the United States in 1940, graduating from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut and Yale University. Following college he studied in Florence, Italy, and with Hans Hofmann in New York City, where he met his wife Elspeth Halvorsen. The couple had two daughters, one of whom, Tabitha is also an artist.
Vevers, active in the Abstract Expressionist movement, had several one-man exhibitions and participated in over one hundred group exhibitions. His works are in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, the Delgardo Museum in New Orleans and many universities, corporate, and private collections in the United States and abroad.
Tony Vevers died in Chatham, Massachusetts on March 2, 2008 following complications from pneumonia.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Arts are two oral history interviews with Tony Vevers, one conducted by Dorothy Seckler 1965 September 9, the second conducted by Robert F. Brown in 1998 July 9 and August 25.
Provenance:
The papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in 2013 by Elspeth Halvorsen-Vevers the widow of Vevers.
Restrictions:
Use of original materials requires an appointment.
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:
Painters -- Massachusetts -- Provincetown Search this
