Biographical material, extensive diaries, correspondence, notes, writings, business records, sketchbooks and drawings, project files, scrapbooks, printed materials, photographs and slides, motion picture film, and videotape relating to Weem's education and career as a sculptor. Also included are ca. 1 foot of papers of Weems' aunt, watercolorist Katharine Ward Lane (1862-1893), including letters, diaries, sketchbooks and photographs.
REEL 724: Biographical sketch, 1974; letters from Frederic Bartlett, George Demetrios, Walker Hancock, Leon Kroll, Lee Lawrie, Moissaye Marans, Adolph Alexander Weinman, and others; four sketchbooks, 1954-1965, containing pencil drawings of animals; a scrapbook of clippings, 1924-1941; and printed material.
UNMICROFILMED: Biographical material includes sketches and documents, and biographical information on Weems grandfather, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, and father, Gardiner Lane. Diaries (74 v.), 1906-1983, contain entries relating to art studies and her development as a sculptor; some include clippings and photographs. Correspondence, 1898-1989, includes letters from Gifford Beal, Margaret French Cresson, Charles Grafly, John Gregory, Walker Hancock, Malvina Hoffman, Anna Hyatt-Huntington, Paul Manship, Brenda Putnam, Gurdon Tarbox, and Adolph Weinman, discussing Weems' work and participation in various sculpture organizations. There are four notebooks on art history; recipes for clay and plaster; notes on patinas for bronze; lecture notes; lists of Weems' works and exhibitions; an exhibition guest book, 1931-1957; poems, 1933-1981; invoices and receipts, 1919-1981; copyright records, 1928-1978; and art work, including 15 v. of sketchbooks, 1913-1964, drawings and tracings of animal figures. and a copper printing plate mounted on a wood block.
Fourteen project files contain letters, drawings, photographs, and printed material on: an enlarging machine, the Saltus Medal for Merit, the frieze and Rhinoceros sculpture for the Biological Laboratories at Harvard, 1930-1942, including 7 reels of 16mm motion picture film (with script transferred to VHS), the Lotta Fountain, 1939-1974, Legion of Merit Medal, 1949-1952, War Department project, 1946, Goodwin Medal, 1949-1952, Wallace Goodrich Plaque, 1954, Hospital Teaching Clinic, 1955, Boston Museum of Science, 1964-1965, "Dolphins by the Sea" for the New England Aquarium, 1969-1979, Heredities Limited, 1971-1974, and the Museum School, 1977.
Included are two scrapbooks, one of clippings about the work of other artists and one containing poems, clippings of landscapes, animals, works by others, and autographed photographs of actresses Katharine Cornell and Anna May Wong and sculptor Brenda Putnam. Printed material includes clippings, 1911-1989; exhibition announcements and catalogs, 1922-1981; bulletins, programs, brochures on artists, organizations, Brookgreen Gardens, and supplies; reproductions of art works, and the books, Odds Were Against Me (1985, Weems autobiography, and Enrique Monjo (1955), inscribed by Mongo.
Photographs and slides, 1902-1988, are of Weems, family members, artists Charles Grafly, Walker Hancock, and Anna Hyatt-Huntington, Weems' house "The Chimneys," her studio, gardens, animals, works of art by Weems and others, exhibit installations, and views of New York City, Washington, D.C., Monticello, the University of Virginia, and Brookgreen Gardens. Nine albums, 1920-1980, contain photographs of an art class, Weems in her studio, her home, her friends, scenic views, and works of art. Videos and film include a videotape (5 min., U-matic) of an interview of Weems; a film, "From Clay to Bronze," showing the creation of Weems' sculpture "Dark Warrier" (transferred to VHS); motion picture film of the making of the sculpture "Rhinoceros" (transferred to digital betacam, VHS and DVD), and a home movie of a day at the beach, circa 1935.
The papers' of Weems' aunt, Katharine "Kitty" Ward Lane (d. 1893), include Lane's letters, 1898-1893, to her brother (Weems' father) and to other family members; a travel diary from Germany, 1886; notes; financial records, 1891-1892; 10 sketchbooks; printed material; and photographs, 1865-1893, of Lane, early views of Saranac Lake, and 9 views of the Columbia Exposition, 1893.
Biographical / Historical:
Sculptor; Boston, Mass. Died 1989. Specialized in animal sculpture. Studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under Charles Grafly, Anna Hyatt-Huntington, George Demetrios, and Brenda Putnam. She married F. Carrington Weems in 1947. Named after her aunt, watercolor painter Katharine Ward Lane, who died in 1893.
Provenance:
Material on reel 724 lent for microfilming by Weems, 1974. The four sketchbooks on reel 724 were subsequently donated in 1989. Unmicrofilmed papers were donated 1975 and 1982 by Weems, and in 1989 by her estate. Eighteen diaries (1961-1965, 1967-1976 [1969 not included], 1978, and 1981-1983) and an apppointment book for 1966 donated by the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, 1991.
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.
Occupation:
Animal sculptors -- Massachusetts -- Boston Search this
This microfilm collection of the papers of African American painter, sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, and educator John Woodrow Wilson contains biographical material such as autobiographical notes, school records, personal documents, and a bibliography; personal and business correspondence, undated and 1938-1993; files on the New York City Board of Education, 1959-1965, regarding his teaching; and project files, including Wilson's submission for the competition for a Frederick Douglass statue, Eternal Presence, Father and Child Reading, and Wilson's monuments and bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. Correspondents represented include the Albany Institute of History and Art, Atlanta University, Carnegie Institute, Ebony, David Porter of the G Place Gallery, the Institute of Modern Art, Alain Locke, Gloria May, the Museum of Modern Art, Frederick G. Rice, and Hale Woodruff.
Also included in the collection are files on exhibitions; notebooks, 1958-1960; lesson plans, 1959, 1963; notes, writings, and lectures, circa 1945-1993; transcripts of interviews of Wilson and related correspondence, 1978-1987; legal material, 1978; financial records 1944-1991, including a notebook of sales and expenses 1945-1950; photographs, 1940-1990, of Wilson, his work, sculpture, and exhibition installations; a scrapbook, 1939-1967; artwork, including sketchbooks, 1970-1992, life studies completed as a student, 1939-1947, and miscellaneous art work, 1939-1992; and printed material, 1939-1993, including exhibition catalogs, illustrated books and book jackets, and ephemera. The collection also includes a copy of a sound recording of an interview of Wilson conducted by Alan Trachtenberg, circa 1979 (untranscribed).
Biographical / Historical:
John Woodrow Wilson (1922-2015) was an African American painter, sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, and educator in Boston, Massachusetts. Wilson studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under Ture Bengtz and Karl Zerbe, graduating in 1945. He lived in Paris through the MFA fellowship and studied with modern artist Fernand Leger. He then attended Tufts University, graduating in 1947. Wilson received a John Hay Whitney fellowship and lived in Mexico for five years with his wife, Julie Kowtich. After his return from Mexico in 1956, Wilson made artwork for Chicago labor unions and taught in New York City before returning to teach at Boston University in 1964. During his career, Wilson won competitions to execute statues of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the city of Buffalo, New York and for the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming 1993 by John W. Wilson, except for the 1979 sound recording which he lent for copying.
Restrictions:
Microfilm portion must be consulted on microfilm. Use of untranscribed interview requires an appointment.
An interview of Dana Chandler conducted 1993 March 11-May 5, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Chandler remembers his childhood in the Black community of Roxbury, Massachussets, with numerous siblings, pugnacious, hard-drinking longshoreman father, and mother who was the linchpin of the family; precocity as a reader and child artist; attendance at Saturday morning children's art classes at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and at Boston Educational High School where needed discipline was instilled in him by its all-white faculty; and as an assistant at school after graduation (1959-61).
Chandler talks about his awareness of budding civil rights movement; his attendance (1962-67) at Massachusetts College of Art while supporting his new, young family and working for the Jamaica Plain Area Planning Action Council which was funded by the federal Model Cities program; his first exhibitions (1967), in a liberal local church and a black businessmen's club; the exhibition (1969) "Twelve Black Artists from Boston," at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; and his involvement, along with Harold Tovish and Michael Mazur, in the group, Artists Against the War.
He recalls his initiation of the exhibition, "Afro-American Artists/New York and Boston," at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1970, for which he was given no credit; his position as an unpaid cultural commentator for a Black newspaper and radio station; his politically-charged paintings and prints from the late 1960s onward; his meetings with senior Black artists, such as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett Mora, and Benny Andrews; and his steady espousal of confrontation.
Chandler discusses teaching at Simmons College, Boston, 1971 to present; his creation in 1974 of the African-American Master Artists-in-Residence Program (AMARP), Northeastern University, Boston, and his direction of it until 1993, when he was relieved of the position by the University.
Chandler discusses his exhibition at Northeastern University in 1976, "If the Shoe Fits, Hear It!" under the name Akin Duro, and its evidence of the respect in which he was held; the loss of much of his work in a studio fire; and his current large-scale graphic work.
Biographical / Historical:
Dana Chandler (1941- ) is an African American painter, printmaker, and educator from Boston, Massachussets.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 8 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 51 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 administrators. Funding for the transcription of this interview provided by the Newland Foundation.
Society of Independent Artists (New York, N.Y.) Search this
Extent:
179 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
1979 January 16-1980 October 22
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Allan Rohan Crite conducted 1979 January 16-1980 October 22, by Robert F. Brown for the Archives of American Art. Also participating in the interview is Crite's assistant, Susan Thompson.
Crite describes his family background and his youth in Boston. He gives great detail about his childhood interest in art and the art classes he took as a child, sharing drawings he did then with the interviewer. He remembers his art education at the Museum of Fine Arts School and involvement with the Society of Independent Artists. Crite discusses his ideas about the Episcopal church, his religious beliefs, and his interest in the liturgy and spirituals in his artwork. He recounts his engagement in the Navy, participation in the WPA, and work with the Rambusch Company. Crite describes paintings he did of street life in Black communities of Boston in the 1930s, a series of portraits, and paintings he did to illustrate spirituals and the Episcopal liturgy. He speaks about race relations and explains his motivations for an educational project in progress entitled, "The Cultural Heritage of the United States: a Rediscovery," promoting a multicultural view of American history. The last segment of the interview includes Susan Thompson, a fabric artist and close friend collaborating with Crite on projects mostly of a religious nature, including vestments and altar cloths.
Biographical / Historical:
Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007) was a painter and illustrator from Boston, Massachusetts.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 7 digital wav files. Duration is 7 hr., 8 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' 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.
An interview of John Woodrow Wilson conducted 1993 March-1994 August, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Wilson discusses his childhood as a member of a family of middle class blacks from British Guiana (now Guyana); his father's grave disappointments in the face of racial discrimination; his parents' push for their children to succeed; early urge to read and draw; encouragement by School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston students who taught at the Roxbury Boys Club; his secondary education; and friends.
He talks about his education at the MFA School, Boston, and comments on such teachers as Ture Bengtz and Karl Zerbe and compares their exacting methods with those of Fernand Leger, his teacher in Paris.
His work of the 1940s prior to going to Paris; the importance of early awards and sales received while still a student at the MFA School; the excitement of sharing a studio with fellow students, Francesco Carbone and Leo Prince; and encouragement to stay in school during WW II with the promise of a European study fellowship after the war.
The great impact of his years in Paris (1948-49); the lack of racial prejudice; the liberating effect of Leger's teaching; his awe of the work of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca during a trip to Italy; and the deep impression made on him by seeing tribal art in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris.
Continued discussion of Leger; his teaching methods; and influences on his work.
His first teaching position at the MFA School; his involvement in civil rights in Boston; his gregariousness and the use of his studio as a meeting place for artists and political activists; his involvement with socialism in Boston and New York; and working in a socialist children's camp. He remembers meeting Paul Robeson, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and Bob Blackburn, who was then setting up his printmaking atelier in New York; marriage to a fellow socialist (June 1950); move to Mexico on a fellowship to study with Jose Orozco on the advice of Leger, only to find that Orozco had died; terrors of travel as an interracial couple through the U.S.; and different racial attitudes in Mexico and the U.S.
Living in Mexico (1950-56) and anecdotes of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera; his wife's meeting with Frieda Kahlo and seeing her collection of folk art; their free and cosmopolitan, if impoverished, life in Mexico; his work in a printmaking atelier and on the production of frescoes, and a lengthy aside about his brilliant brother, Freddie, who because he was black was not allowed to pursue his first love, geology, for many years.
Continued discussion of his experiences in Mexico; the dreary year (1957) he spent doing commercial art for a meatpackers' union in Chicago, a city he disliked; his move to New York in 1958, taking on commercial work to support his family, and teaching anatomy at the Pratt Institute.
Teaching art at a junior high school in the Bronx, and his gaining respect of students through special projects; teaching drawing at Boston University (1965-86), his approach to teaching including his demanding standards, the seriousness of the students, his opposing rigid attendance and grading rules, and colleagues, such as David Aronson who had created the School, Reed Kay, Jack Kramer, Sidney Hurwitz, and the University president, John Silber.
Working with the black arts entrepreneur, Elma Lewis, in setting up a visual arts program for the Boston black community (late 1960s-1970s), including the selection of a curator, Edmund Barry Gaither, a young art historian, who eventually established a museum of African-American art; his participation in various black art exhibitions, despite his belief that art should be seen regardless of the ethnic origins of artists; his move toward sculpture, beginning in the early 1960s, as a medium most expressive of black persons, culminating in the 1980s in a series of colossal heads and a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the U.S. Capitol (1985-86); and why he makes art and will so long as he is able.
Biographical / Historical:
John Wilson (1922- ) is an African American painter, sculptor, illustrator, printmaker, and educator from Boston, Massachusetts. Full name John Woodrow Wilson.
General:
Originally recorded on 11 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 22 digital wav files. Duration is 16 hr., 2 min.
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 administrators. Funding for the transcription and microfilming of the interview provided by the Newland Foundation.
Northeastern University (Boston, Mass.) Search this
Extent:
0.9 Linear feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1968-1993
Summary:
The papers of painter and educator Dana Chandler (1941-) date from 1968-1993 and measure 0.9 linear feet. The papers consist of biographical material, correspondence, printed material, professional records, and reproductions of works of art, and relate primarily to Chandler's founding of the African American Master Artists in Residency Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern University.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of painter and educator Dana Chandler (1941-) date from 1968-1993 and measure 0.9 linear feet. The papers consist of biographical material, correspondence, printed material, professional records, and reproductions of works of art, and relate primarily to Chandler's founding of the African American Master Artists in Residency Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern University.
Arrangement:
Due to the small size of this collection the papers are arranged as one series.
Biographical / Historical:
Dana Chandler (1941-), also known as Akin Duro, is an African American painter, printmaker, and educator in Boston, Massachusetts. Chandler is an activist known for his work with the Black integrationist movement in Boston, and Professor Emeritus at Simmons College. Chandler founded the African American Master Artists in Residency Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern University.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an interview of Dana Chandler conducted 1993 March 11-May 5, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art
Provenance:
Donated 1993 by Dana Chandler.
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.
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.
Authorization to publish, quote or reproduce requires written permission of Dana Chandler. Contact Reference Services for more information.
An interview of Calvin Burnett conducted 1980 June 13-1981 January 6, by Robert Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
Burnett speaks of his education at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; freelancing in commercial art; his career as a Black artist; teaching methods; recent paintings; and his civil rights activities.
Biographical / Historical:
Calvin Burnett (1921-2007) was a graphic artist, illustrator, painter, and designer from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Full name Calvin W. Burnett.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 4 digital wav files. Duration is 4 hr., 19 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are 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.
Occupation:
Painters -- Massachusetts -- Cambridge Search this
