Correspondence documents Wortz's appointments at California State University, Long Beach, and California State College, San Bernardino, as well as commissions for the publication Arts Magazine in the 1970s. Also documented are some of Wortz's professional activities outside of UCI, including serving on various advisory boards, commissions, and juries; lecturing and consulting work; and loans of her personal art collection.
Correspondence includes scattered letters and postcards from artists including Eleanor Antin, Christo and Jean Claude, John Coplans, David French, Craig Kauffman, Cork Marchesi, Jim Risser, Eve Sonneman, Hap Tivey, Marc Van Der Marck, and Elsa Warner; and historians and curators including Sandy Ballatore and Susan Larsen. One folder, which retains the original label, "Artist and Other Special Cards," includes multiple postcards from Lena Handschy and Martha Rosler, and mail art from Daniel Barber.
Also documented is a trip to Europe, primarily Paris and Milan, in 1978-1979, funded by a critic's grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, during which Wortz conducted research for a book on light and space, and visited the collection of Count Panza in Milan.
The series includes a sound cassette of an Ellen Lampert performance, and three sound cassettes of an unidentified symposium/panel discussion.
Arrangement:
General correspodence files in rough chronological order are followed by correspondence arranged by subject.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice.
Collection 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.
Collection Citation:
Melinda Wortz papers, 1958-1992. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Support for the processing of this collection was provided by the Smithsonian's Collections Care Pool Fund.
