The papers of arts educator James A. McGrath measure 5.4 linear feet and date from 1950-2011. Included are McGrath's papers concerning his artist's residencies and workshops for the United States Information Agency (USIA) in the Yemen Republic, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of the Congo, 1990-1995. Also found are McGrath's papers concerning artist William Wiley. These papers date from Wiley's high school days and includes correspondence, writings, student files, printed materials, photographs, and artwork. Letters from Wiley to McGrath span several decades and provide details about his artwork, family, and travels.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of arts educator James A. McGrath measure 5.4 linear feet and date from 1950-2011. Included are McGrath's papers concerning his artist's residencies and workshops for the United States Information Agency (USIA) in the Yemen Republic, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of the Congo, 1990-1995. Also found are McGrath's papers concerning artist William Wiley. These papers date from Wiley's high school days and includes correspondence, writings, student files, printed materials, photographs, and artwork. Letters from Wiley to McGrath span several decades and provide details about his artwork, family, and travels.
James McGrath's papers regarding his artist's residencies and workshops are currently unprocessed.
Wiley's high school student files consist of exams and two Columbia High School yearbooks with contributions from Wiley. Correspondence includes mostly letters written from Wiley to McGrath, some of which are illustrated. There are also Christmas cards, postcards, prints and a wedding invitation and photograph of Wiley and his wife Mary. Wiley writes about his artwork, family, travels and his mother's death. There are also letters to McGrath from Wiley's first and second wives, Dorothy and Mary, his mother, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Tobey.
Printed materials include exhibition catalogs and announcements, news and magazine clippings, and the books Distraction, Lyrica and Almost Old/New Poems, all illustrated by Wiley.
Artwork by Wiley includes block prints, sketches and drawings, poems, paintings, prints and posters. Photographs are of Wiley's high school yearbook staff, art work and exhibitions, and a dinner honoring Wiley. There is a signed high school photograph of Wiley and a booklet of photographs of an exhibition of McGrath's art. There are also slides of artwork by Wiley, Bob Hudson and Bill Allan.
Arrangement:
The papers are arranged as 2 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: James A. McGrath Papers Concerning William T. Wiley (Box 1-3, OVs 4-6; 2.0 linear feet)
Series 2: Unprocessed James A. McGrath Papers, circa 1990-1995 (Boxes 7-9, OVs 10-12)
Biographical Note:
Arts educator James A. McGrath was a high school art teacher at Columbia High School in Richland, Washington where he taught William T. Wiley in the mid-1950s. They remained life-long friends. Later, McGrath worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe as Director of Arts, Professor of Painting, and Dean. In 1973 he became Director of Arts, Humanities and Culture in the Department of Defense and was stationed in Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines. He also worked for the United States Information Agency in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of the Congo. He continues to be active as an arts education specialist.
William T. Wiley (b. 1937)is a contemporary artist painting and teaching primarily in the San Francisco area. His artwork is associated with the Bay area Funk Movement. Wiley studied at the California School of Fine Arts and completed his MFA in 1962. One year later he joined the faculty of the UC Davis art department along with artists Robert Arneson and Roy DeForest. Wiley's students included Bruce Nauman and Deborah Butterfield.
Wiley's first solo exhibition was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1960, and he had works in the Venice Biennial (1980) and Whitney Biennial (1983), as well as major exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. His artwork is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others. Wiley was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2004 and, in 2009, the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented a retrospective exhibition of Wiley's career.
Related Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds several collections related to William T. Wiley including an oral history interview conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom, October 8-November 20, 1997 and the William T. Wiley illustrated journals on microfilm reel 910. The University of Washington also holds papers of James A. McGrath.
Separated Material:
Six Documenta catalogs, originally donated to AAA with the James A. McGrath Papers Concerning William T. Wiley, were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
Provenance:
The papers were donated by James A. McGrath in five accessions between 2010-2015. A drawing on tree bark was donated by William T. Wiley in 2016.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers 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:
Sculptors -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Painters -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Topic:
Performance artists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Illustrators -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Genre/Form:
Drawings
Poems
Prints
Postcards
Paintings
Sketches
Illustrated letters
Christmas cards
Photographs
Citation:
James A. McGrath papers, 1950-2011. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.) Search this
Extent:
7 Items ((on partial microfilm reel))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1895-1939
Scope and Contents:
Printed material regarding art in San Francisco, including: 2 exhibition catalogs, Temporary Catalog of the Department of Fine Arts, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915; and Frontiers of American Art, 1939, an exhibition at the M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, of works done for the Federal Art Project; a Guide to the Halls and Galleries of the Memorial Museum Purchased with Surplus Proceeds of the California Midwinter International Exposition by the Executive Committee, 1895; and clippings on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, 1915.
Biographical / Historical:
Staff member, M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, Calif.
Provenance:
Donated 1973 by Frank McConnell.
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.
Topic:
Art -- Exhibitions -- California -- San Francisco Search this
7.8 Cubic feet (consisting of 12 boxes and 9 oversized flat file folders.)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Maps
Photographs
Notes
Place:
Detroit (Mich.)
Turkey
Istanbul (Turkey)
Berlin (Germany)
Michigan
Date:
circa 1877-1947
Summary:
The Mehmet Aga-Oglu Papers, dating from approximately 1877-1947, measure 7.8 cubic feet and include writings and notes, photographs, and maps related to Dr. Aga-Oglu's work Corpus of Islamic Work, which was never published due to Dr. Aga-Oglu's death in 1949.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Mehmet Aga-Oglu measure 7.8 cubic feet and date from 1877 to approximately 1949. The papers largely relate to Aga-Oglu's research and writings for his unpublished work Corpus of Islamic Metalwork. The papers include manuscript drafts, research files, printed material, maps, and photographs.
The manuscript drafts include handwritten drafts, citations attached or written onto drafts, and revision notes for his unpublished manuscript. Content includes material related to metalliferous mines, precious and base metals, and traffic of metals in Islamic and non-Islamic countries, as well as unlabeled writings related to astrolabes and synthetic protective coatings for metals.
Research material represents a majority of the records, and consists of accumulated research notes, citation lists, and object sketches. Subjects of the research material are related to metallurgy, iconography, metals commonly used in metalwork, geology and mining, and histories of metalwork in ranging locations or eras.
Printed material contains published articles from periodicals, a bulletin from the Detroit Institute of Arts, catalogues of scholarly publications available for purchase, and reviews of Aga-Oglu's published works.
Graphic materials present in the collection include maps depicting areas such as the Middle East, the northern Arabian Peninsula, and Northern India during different eras, and hand traced maps with marked metalliferous mine locations; and a substantial number of photographs of objects and artworks.
Arrangement:
The Mehmet Aga-Oglu papers are arranged in five series.
Series 1: Manuscript Drafts
Series 2: Research Files
Series 3: Printed Material
Series 4: Maps
Series 5: Photographs
Biographical Note:
Dr. Mehmet Aga-Oglu was an Islamic art historian and professor born on August 4, 1896 at Erivan in Russia Caucasia.
In 1916, Dr. Aga-Oglu was awarded a Doctor of Letters in the history, philosophy, and languages of Islamic countries from the University of Moscow. Following his graduation, Dr. Aga-Oglu traveled through Turkistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Asia Minor studying Islamic art. Dr. Aga-Oglu returned to academia in 1921 at the University of Istanbul where he studied the history of Islam and the Ottoman Empire.
During his time as a student at the University of Istanbul, he traveled extensively to European universities as a part of his program of study. This included studying Near Eastern art and architecture under Dr. Ernst Herzfeld in Berlin; classical and early Christian archaeology and Western art at the University of Jena; and completing his art history studies in Vienna. Dr. Aga-Oglu was awarded a Ph.D in philosophy in 1926.
Dr. Aga-Oglu was appointed curator by the Department of the National Museum in Istanbul in 1927. In 1929, the city of Detroit recruited Dr. Aga-Oglu to build the Department of Near Eastern Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1933, he was appointed as Chair of the History of Islamic Art at the University of Michigan. He joined the university first as a Freer Fellow and Lecturer and then later became a professor.
Dr. Aga-Oglu's accomplishments during his tenure included representing the University and the Detroit Institute of the Arts at the Millennium Celebration of Firdausi and the Congress of Orientalists in Tehran in 1934; organizing an exhibition of Islamic art at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in 1937; founding and serving as editor of the periodical Ars Islamica; and serving as a Visiting Professor at the Summer Seminar of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Princeton University in 1935 and 1938.
Following his departure from the University of Michigan in 1938, Dr. Aga-Oglu primarily focused on research and writing. His publications include Persian Bookbindings of the Fifteenth Century, History of Islamic Art, and Safawid Rugs and Textiles. From 1948 to 1949, Dr. Aga-Oglu consulted for the Textile Museum in Washington D.C.
Beginning in 1940, Dr. Aga-Oglu planned, researched, and wrote drafts of his unpublished work Corpus of Islamic Metalwork. His project was intended to be a multi-volume work, but was not completed. Dr. Aga-Oglu died on July 4, 1949.
Provenance:
Donated by Dr. Kamer Aga-Oglu in 1959.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce and publish an item from the Archives is coordinated through the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery's Rights and Reproductions department. Please contact the Archives in order to initiate this process.
Mehmet Aga-Oglu Papers. FSA.A.10. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Dr. Kamer Aga-Oglu, 1959.
Sponsor:
Funding for partial processing of the collection was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF).
Correspondence is with Asian art scholars and collectors, museums, galleries, universities, and art dealers, and includes letters, cards, and postcards received, as well as several outgoing letters from Singer. Topics of conversation include loan requests and viewings of Singer's collection; Chinese art object consultations; notices of items of interest up for auction; ongoing discussions of the disposition of Singer's collection upon his death; and publication of and edits to his collection catalog project.
The following list is selective and represents about seventy-five percent of the individuals who corresponded with Paul Singer.
Bahr, Edna H.
Barnard, Noel (The Australian National University)
Beach, Milo C. (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery)
Bernat, Paul
Brinker, Helmut H. (Fogg Art Museum)
Brundage, Avery
Bulling, Anneliese Gutkind
Bunker, Emma C.
Bush, George, President
Capon, Edmund (Victoria & Albert Museum)
Caro, Frank (C.T. Loo--gallery)
Chait, Ralph M.
Chang, Kwang-chih (Yale University)
Chase, Thomas W. (Freer Gallery of Art)
Cheung, Kwong-yue (The Australian National University)
Chow, Fang (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Chu, Jen-hsing (National Palace Museum)
Cleveland, Richard S. (The Saint Louis Art Museum)
Cox, Warren E.
Crawford, John M., Jr.
D'Argence, Ivon (M.H. de Young Memorial Museum)
Dohrenwend, Doris J. (The Royal Ontario Museum)
du Boulay, Anthony (Christie's, New York)
Eskenazi, J.E.
Fontein, Jan (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Fu, Marilyn (Princeton University)
Fu, Shen (Freer Gallery of Art)
Gettens, Rutherford J.
Getz, Joel
Gichner, Lawrence E.
Goepper, Roger (Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst)
Gray, Basil (British Museum)
Grisdale, Dick and Marjorie
Gyllensvard, Bo
Hathaway, Calvin S. (The Cooper Union)
Hayashi, Minao (Kyoto University)
Higuchi, T. (Kyoto University
Hippen, Will, Jr. (Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego)
Huber, Louisa G. Fitzgerald
Hsu, F. Richard (China Institute in America)
Kahane, Andrew
Keene, Manuel D.
Kelley, Clarence W. (The Dayton Art Institute)
Kimpel, Ben (Drew University)
Kuwayama, George (L.A. County Museum of Art)
Lally, James (Sotheby Park Bernet)
Lee, Sammy Yukuan (Oriental House, Ltd.)
Lee, Sherman E. (The Cleveland Museum of Art)
Levitan, Kit Carson Bennett
Little, Stephen (The Cleveland Museum of Art; Asian Art Musuem of San Francisco)
Loehr, Max (Fogg Art Museum)
Loekl, Greta Schreyer
Loh, Pichon P.Y. (Upsala College)
Maeda, Robert J. (Brandeis University)
Mackay, Colin J. D. (Sotheby's, London)
Marumoto, Shinichi (Kadansha Publishers)
Matsumoto, Helen L.
Mino, Yutaka
Mowry, Robert D. (The Asia Society)
Neill, Mary Gardner (Yale University Art Gallery)
Poor, Richard (University of Minnesota)
Proctor, Patty (Royal Ontario Museum)
Ravenal, Richard S. (Asian Gallery)
Rawson, Jessica (The British Museum)
Reynolds, Valrae (The Newark Museum)
Riddell, Sheila
Rockefeller, John D., 3rd
Rockefeller, Mrs. John D. (Blanchette)
Sackler, Arthur M.
Sackler, Jill
Sackler, Marietta Lutze
Scott, Hugh (U.S. Senate)
Schloss, Ezekiel
Shangraw, Clarence F. (Asian Art Museum of San Francisco)
Shen, Yusen
Sickman, Laurence (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)
Singer, Erwin
So, Jenny
Spelman, Ruth (C.W. Post Center)
Sullivan, Michael (Univ. Of Malaya in Singapore)
Swann, Peter C. (Museum of Eastern Art, Oxford)
Thote, Alain
Trousdale, William (U.S. National Museum)
Trubner, Henry (The Royal Ontario Museum)
Tsang, Shu-ping Teng (National Palace Museum)
Tsiang, Katherine R.
Tung, Tom Wu (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Umehara, Sueji
Vannotti, Franco
Veit, Willibald
Wardwell, Allen (The Asia Society)
Washburn, Gordon B. (The Asia Society)
Waterbury, Florance
Watson, William (Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, Univ. Of London)
Whitfield, Roderick (Princeton University)
Wilson, Marc F. (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)
Wu, Tung (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Ziebold, Thomas O. (Braddock Services Inc.)
Woodward, Hiram W., Jr. (The Walters Art Gallery)
Yuey, Joe
Arrangement:
The bulk of the files are arranged alphabetically by correspondent or corresponding institution. Numerous copies made after the receipt of the collection are of select letters and postcards and have not been further sorted.
Collection Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Collection Rights:
Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.
Collection Citation:
The Paul Singer Papers. FSA.A1991.01. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Smithsonian Institution Collections Care and Preservation Fund.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Use of archival audiovisual recordings and born-digital records with no duplicate copies requires advance notice.
Collection Citation:
Ed Clark papers, 1923-2017. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.
Brundage Symposium, 1966: Major correspondents include John Pope; subject matter: Opening of a new wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum for the Avery Brundage Collection of Asian Art was the reason for the symposium on the arts of Asia held in San...
Container:
Box 4 of 23
Type:
Archival materials
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 03-018, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Central Files
Chinese Art Exhibition, 1961: Correspondents include John Pope (Freer Gallery of Art), John Walker (National Gallery of Art), James Rorimer (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), Perry Rathbone (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), John Maxon (The Art Institute of...
Container:
Box 4 of 23
Type:
Archival materials
Collection Citation:
Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 03-018, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Central Files
