Stevenson, Beulah E. (Beulah Eisle), 1879-1965 Search this
Extent:
0.2 Linear feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1925-1966
Summary:
The scattered papers of painter and printmaker Beulah Stevenson measure 0.2 linear feet and date from 1925 to 1966. Found are biographical materials, correspondence, photographs, printed material, and two mixed media scrapbooks.
Scope and Contents:
The scattered papers of painter and printmaker Beulah Stevenson measure 0.2 linear feet and date from 1925 to 1966. Found are biographical materials, correspondence, photographs, printed material, and two mixed media scrapbooks.
Biographical / Historical:
Beulah E. Stevenson (1875-1965) was a painter and printmaker from Brookly, New York. She studied at the Art Students League, was a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, and was an active and prominent member of many local New York and national arts organizations, including the New York Society of Women Artists, the National Society of Women Artists, and the American Artists Congress. Stevenson's work was exhibited widely in the United States and internationally throughout her career.
Provenance:
Dorothy Paris donated the papers of Beulah Stevenson to the Archives of American Art in 1970. According to friend Miriam Eaton, Stevenson discarded most of her papers shortly before her death.
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.
Occupation:
Painters -- New York (State) -- Brooklyn Search this
Printmakers -- New York (State) -- Brooklyn Search this
The papers of Claudia DeMonte and Ed McGowin measure 7.2 linear feet and date between 1960 and 2018. The papers primarily document Claudia DeMonte's career as a painter, and to a lesser extent her husband's career, through correspondence with family, friends, colleagues, and art institutions; notebooks, poetry, and other writings; scrapbooks; curriculum vitas, awards and certificates, commissions, and other professional activity; exhibition announcements and catalogs, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and other printed material; sketchbooks and other artwork; personal photographs, portraits, of artwork, and other photographic material.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Claudia DeMonte and Ed McGowin measure 7.2 linear feet and date between 1960 and 2018. The papers primarily document Claudia DeMonte's career as a painter, and to a lesser extent her husband's career, through correspondence with family, friends, colleagues, and art institutions; notebooks, poetry, and other writings; scrapbooks; curriculum vitas, awards and certificates, commissions, and other professional activity; exhibition announcements and catalogs, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and other printed material; sketchbooks and other artwork; personal photographs, portraits, of artwork, and other photographic material.
Correspondence includes letters and postcards to and from family, friends, colleagues, and art institutions.
Writings includes a file of poetry written by DeMonte, manuscripts of books written by DeMonte, and a series of notebooks. Some of the notebooks are a combination of notes and sketches.
Scrapbooks consist of eight scrapbooks consisting of mixed material such as notes, photographs, sketches, and printed material.
Professional material consists of awards and certificates, a large number of calendars, commision work including an art project for the University of Northern Iowa completed by both DeMonte and McGowin, and a number of VHS and Betamax cassettes documenting DeMonte's career and interviews in connection with her Women of the World exhibition.
Printed material consists of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, exhibition announcements and catalogs, exhibition posters, and newsletters.
Artwork consists of a file of drawings and some sketchbooks.
Photographic material consists of photographs and slides of DeMonte, her artwork, and some of her exhibitions. There is also a file of photographs of DeMonte and McGowin at the White House with First Lady Laura Bush, and there are personal photographs of DeMonte and McGowin traveling and with family and friends.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into seven series.
Series 1: Correspondence, 1967-2013 (1.7 linear feet; Boxes 1-2)
Series 2: Writings, 1975-2013 (0.5 linear feet; Boxes 2-3)
Series 3: Scrapbooks, 1967-2009 (1.0 linear feet; Box 3, 9-10)
Series 4: Professional Activity Files, 1964-2013 (1.7 linear feet; Boxes 3-5, 9)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1960-2018 (1.9 linear feet; Boxes 5-7)
Series 6: Artwork, circa 1973 (0.1 linear feet; Box 7)
Series 7: Photographic Material, circa 1977-2010 (0.3 linear feet; Boxes 7-8)
Biographical / Historical:
Claudia DeMonte (1947- ) was born and raised in Astoria, New York City. She has more than 100 one-person shows and 600 group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Corcoran Museum, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Mississippi Museum, Tucson Museum, Flint Institute of Art, Museum of the Southwest, etc.
Her work is in numerous museum permanent collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Stamford Museum, Boca Raton Museum, and in major corporate collections such as those of Hyatt Regency Hotels, Exxon, Citibank and Siemens. Her public commissions have come from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Brooklyn Library System, Queens Supreme Court, Prudential Life Insurance, the State of New Mexico, and New York City School Construction Authority.
DeMonte is also the curator of "Women of the World: A Global Collection of Art." This traveling exhibition, with accompanying books, includes works of women from 177 countries dealing with the images of women.
DeMonte's work is heavily influenced by her travels to over 80 countries, her interest in the roles of women in contemporary society and Outsider Art, a collection compiled with her husband, artist Ed McGowin.
For 33 years, DeMonte has served on the faculty of the University of Maryland, where she was named Distinguished Scholar Teacher and Professor Emerita. In 2006, She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the College of Santa Fe.
DeMonte presently lives with her husband in New York City and Kent, Connecticut.
Ed McGowin (1938- ) was born in 1938 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and grew up in Mississippi and Alabama, receiving the M.A. from the University of Alabama. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.; the Baltimore Museum; and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, France. Since 1979, McGowin has executed major outdoor commissions for numerous public and private organizations, often collaborating with his wife, Claudia DeMonte.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview with Claudia DeMonte conducted by Liza Kirwin between February 13 and April 24, 1991; and the Ed McGowin papers, 1962-1998.
Provenance:
The Claudia DeMonte and Ed McGowin papers were donated in 1994 by Claudia DeMonte and in 2020 by Claudia DeMonte and Ed McGowin.
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:
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Mixed-media artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Claudia DeMonte and Ed McGowin papers, 1960-2018. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
The processing of this collection received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund, administered by the National Collections Program and the Smithsonian Collections Advisory Committee.
The papers of landscape painter and art instructor William Kienbusch measure 5.0 linear feet and date from 1915 to 2001, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1936 to 1980. The collection documents Kienbusch's life as an artist in New York City and Cranberry Island, Maine. Files include biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues; writings and notes; scattered printed material; photographs; and artwork, including 17 sketchbooks.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of landscape painter and art instructor William Kienbusch measure 5.0 linear feet and date from 1915 to 2001, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1936 to 1980. The collection documents Kienbusch's life as an artist in New York City and Cranberry Island, Maine. Files include biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues; writings and notes; scattered printed material; photographs; and artwork, including 17 sketchbooks.
Biographical materials include military records, identification and membership documents, guestbooks, and an album entitled "Book of Friendship" containing short notes written by friends for Kienbusch on the occasion of his 60th Birthday. Also of note is copy of the "In Memoriam" written for Kienbusch by Karl Schrag.
The bulk of the papers consist of family and general correspondence. Family correspondence includes letters from Kienbusch to his parents regarding school, summer camps, travel, and the army. General correspondence includes many letters he sent to his close friend, Stanley Clifford, as well as letters from friends and associates, such as Stuart Davis, Antionette Kraushaar, Walter Maitland, Henry Varnum Poor, Abraham Rattner, Karl Schrag, Reuben Tam, and others.
Writings and notes include scattered notes, lists, and draft writings, as well as three notebooks, including one on casein technique. Printed material includes several armed forces publications and maps from World War II, clippings, and press releases. Photographs are of William Kienbusch, including two snapshots of Kienbusch with friends Dorothy Andrews and Reuben Tam. Also found are numerous travel and nature photographs. Artwork includes drawings created by Kienbusch while on his military tour in Guam and seventeen sketchbooks containting drawings in pencil, ink, and pastel.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 6 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1915-1980 (Box 1; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1920-2001 (Box 1-3; 2.3 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings and Notes, circa 1940s-1970s (Box 3; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, circa 1937-1980 (Box 3; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 5: Photographs, circa 1920-1980s (Box 3-5; 1.3 linear feet)
Series 6: Artwork, circa 1930s-1970s (Box 5; 0.8 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
William Kienbusch (1914-1980) was a painter and art instructor in New York, NY, and Cranberry Island, Maine.
Kienbusch was born in New York City and attended boarding school at Hotchkiss Preparatory school, where he was taught painting by Robert Osborn. During the summers of 1934 and 1935, while attending Princeton University, he studied watercolor with Eliot O'Hara at Goose Rocks Beach, Maine. After graduating from Princeton in 1936, he attended the Art Students League, studied with Henry Varnum Poor at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and spent a year in Paris, studying at the Academie Colarossi. During this time he also had the opportunity to travel throughout Europe before the outbreak of World War II. He returned to New York City in the winter of 1938 and settled in Greenwich Village, at one point living above artist Stuart Davis.
Kienbusch spent the summers of 1940 and 1941 in Stonington, Maine. Here he found his true identity as an abstract expressionist landscape painter. During World War II he served in the Army, teaching camouflage design and making maps in Guam. When he returned to New York in 1946, he began painting in casein rather than oils or watercolor. In 1947 he joined Kraushaar Galleries, which would continue to be his dealer for the remainder of his career. From 1948 to 1969 he taught at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and spent summers in Maine. Kienbusch lost much of his artwork and personal papers in a 1969 fire at his New York studio apartment. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art among many others. After several years of poor health, Kienbusch died in 1980.
Related Material:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is the Walter Maitland correspondence with and about William Kienbusch, 1969-1981; the William Kienbusch letters to Francis and Sydney Hamabe, 1958-1977; the Thomas Barrett and Leni Mancuso papers relating to William Kienbusch, 1950-1980; and an oral history interview with William Kienbusch conducted by Forrest Selvig, November 1-7, 1968.
Separated Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds microfilm of material lent for microfilming (reel N70-22) including a scrapbook of clippings, exhibition catalogs, photographs of Kienbusch, letters, writings, and two journals describing his travels in Europe and Asia. Lent materials were returned to the lender and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
William Kienbusch lent materials for microfilming in 1970. Other papers were donated by his sisters, Millicent Kelly and Juliana Little, and his friend Stanley Clifford as co-executives of the Kienbusch estate from 1985-1991. Stanley Clifford donated additional materials in 2008 and 2010.
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:
Art teachers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Landscape painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The records of the Catherine Viviano Gallery measure 11.6 linear feet and date from 1930-1990, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1949-1978. Established in New York City in 1949, the gallery specialized in contemporary painting and sculpture primarily by American and European artists. The collection consists of artists' files; correspondence with artists, collectors, dealers, museum directors, curators, and publishers; business records; printed material; and photographs of artwork and artists. Also included are records relating to Catherine Viviano's activities as a private dealer and consultant after she closed the gallery in 1970.
Scope and Contents note:
The records of the Catherine Viviano Gallery measure 11.6 linear feet and date from 1930-1990, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1949-1978. Established in New York City in 1949, the gallery specialized in contemporary painting and sculpture primarily by American and European artists. The collection consists of artists' files; correspondence with artists, collectors, dealers, museum directors, curators, and publishers; business records; printed material; and photographs of artwork and artists. Also included are records relating to Catherine Viviano's activities as a private dealer and consultant after she closed the gallery in 1970.
Artists' files include biographical material; artists' statements; correspondence; sales and expense reports; lists and notes; guest lists; writings by others; receipts, invoices, and statements; printed material, including press releases, exhibition announcements, brochures, catalogues, clippings; and photographs of artwork and artists. Included are extensive files on Afro Basaldella, Renato Birolli, Robert Broderson, Anselmo Franesconi, Joseph Glasco, Manabu Mabe, César Manrique, Luciano Minguzzi, Ennio Morlotti, Bernard Perlin, Daniel Rice, and Bernard Rosenthal. There are also files on Jan Cox, Kay Sage, and Kazuo Wakabayashi.
Correspondence comprises the largest series in the collection and consists of general correspondence; correspondence with museums, galleries, and art-related institutions in the United States; and correspondence with museums, galleries, and art-related institutions abroad. Letters focus on routine business matters, e.g., appraisals and sales, acquisitions, and organizing exhibitions at the Catherine Viviano Gallery and other venues.
General correspondence includes letters between Catherine Viviano and artists and their family members. Among the correspondents are: Mary Callery, Bernard Chaet, Piero and Virginia Dorazio, Jean Dubuffet, Dallas Ernst, Karl Fortress, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Sage Goodwin, Morris Graves, José Guerrero, Earle Ludgin, Joan Miro, Alfonso Ossorio, Dorothea Tanning, Stuyvesant Van Veen, Adja Yunkers and his wife, Dore Ashton, among others. Also found is Viviano's correspondence with clients, many of whom were prominent collectors, e.g., Richard Brown Baker, Carl and Joan Fisher, Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, Joseph Hirschhorn, Marc Moyens, Vincent Price, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Nelson Rockefeller, Stanley Seeger, and Frederick and Dorothy Zimmerman. Of interest, are letters from Elizabeth Bishop inquiring about the purchase of a work of art from the gallery. Included are letters from art historians, museum directors, curators, representatives at other art-related institutions, and publishers including Walter Bareiss, Walter Barker, Dominque De Menil, Valentine Dudensing, William Eisendrath, S. Lane Faison, Emily Genauer, Bertram Goodhue, Erhard and Barbara Göpel, James Laughlin, Porter McCray, Abram Lerner, Doris Meltzer, Stephen Robson Miller, John Bernard Myers, Perry Rathbone, Belle Krasne Ribicoff, Meyer Shapiro, George Stout, and Curt Valentin.
Correspondence with museums, galleries, and art-related institutions in the United States contains letters between Viviano and museum directors, curators, dealers, artists, and collectors pertaining to loans, shipping and delivery of artwork, appraisals and sales, and acquisitions. Files include substantive correspondence with the American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Federation of the Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, the Barnes Foundation, Bristol Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Bundy Art Gallery, Carnegie Institute, City Art Museum of St. Louis, Cleveland Museum of Art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Denver Art Museum, Des Moines Art Center, Detroit Institute of Arts, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Art Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Museum of Modern Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, University of Nebraska Art Galleries, University of Virginia, Mary Washington College, Wadsworth Atheneum, Walker Art Center, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Atkins Museum of the Fine Arts, World House Gallery, and Yale University Art Library.
Correspondence with museums, galleries, and art-related institutions abroad primarily concerns the lending of artwork for exhibitions, acquisition and sales; also included are letters requesting biographical information on artists. Letters between Catherine Viviano and representatives of Max Beckmann Gesellschaft Archiv and Galerie Gunther Franke contain provenance-related information on Beckmann's work.
Business records document the routine business operations of the gallery. Printed material includes an incomplete run of Catherine Viviano Gallery exhibition catalogues; invitations and announcements from other galleries and institutions; and miscellaneous printed material.
Photographs include three images of miscellaneous artwork used for art reference.
Arrangement note:
Records are generally arranged by material type and in chronological order thereafter. Artists' files and correspondence files are arranged in alphabetical order and materials within the folders are arranged chronologically
The collection is arranged as 5 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Artists' Files, 1945-1986 (Boxes 1-3; 3.5 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1939-1985 (Boxes 3-6; 5.5 linear feet)
Series 3: Business Records, 1949-1972 (Boxes 10-11; 1.0 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1930-1990 (Boxes 11-13; 1.6 linear feet)
Series 5: Photographs (1948-1954), undated (Box 14; 1 folder)
Biographical/Historical note:
Catherine Viviano (1889-1992) opened her gallery in 1949 on 42 East 57th Street in New York City. Specializing in contemporary American paintings and sculpture, the gallery featured younger American and European artists, e.g., Robert Broderson, Carlyle Brown, Jan Cox, Joseph Glasco, Peter Lanyon, Manabu Mabe, César Manrique, Bernard Perlin, Joseph Rollo, Bernard Rosenthal, and Kay Sage, among others. The gallery was also notable for introducing the work of Italian artists, who had been cut off from the American art scene during World War II, including Afro Basaldella and his brother Mirko Basaldella, Renato Birolli, Leonardo Cremonini, and Luciano Minguzzi.
Born in Italy in 1899 and raised in Chicago, Catherine Viviano came to New York in the early 1930's to work at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, where she remained for sixteen years before founding the Catherine Viviano Gallery.
In 1970, Catherine Viviano closed the gallery, though she continued to work from her home as an art dealer and consultant. She died of a stroke at the age of ninety-two in 1992.
Related Archival Materials note:
Among the other resources relating to Catherine Viviano Gallery in the Archives of American Art are the Kay Sage papers, 1925-circa 1985, bulk 1950-1965.
Provenance:
The Catherine Viviano Gallery records were donated in 2003 on behalf of Margaret Viviano, Catherine Viviano's sister, by her grandnephew, Peter C. Salerno, who had Power of Attorney for Margaret Viviano.
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.
The Zorach family papers measure 4.4 linear feet and consist of materials relating to the lives and careers of sculptor and painter William Zorach, his wife painter and weaver Marguerite, and their children, painter and multi-media artist Dahlov Ipcar and collector and art dealer Tessim Zorach. The bulk of the papers consists of letters to Tessim regarding his parent's artwork. Additional materials include scattered letters to William Zorach; writings and notes by William, Marguerite, and Tessim; a sketchbook and drawings by William; prints by Marguerite; Marguerite's scrapbook; printed materials; and photographs of the Zorach family and of William Zorach in his studio and at work.
Scope and Content Note:
The Zorach family papers measure 4.4 linear feet and consist of materials relating to the lives and careers of sculptor and painter William Zorach, his wife painter and weaver Marguerite, and their children, painter and multi-media artist Dahlov Ipcar and collector and art dealer Tessim Zorach. The bulk of the papers consists of letters to Tessim regarding his parent's artwork. Additional materials include scattered letters to William Zorach; writings and notes by William, Marguerite, and Tessim; a sketchbook and drawings by William; prints by Marguerite; Marguerite's scrapbook; printed materials; and photographs of the Zorach family and of William Zorach in his studio and at work.
The majority of correspondence is between Tessim Zorach and various museums and galleries concerning exhibitions and donations of his parents' works of art. There are scattered letters to William Zorach among the correspondence. Business records consist of materials relating to the Collection of the Zorach Children, including lists of works of art by the Zorach's, a file relating to an exhibition of Zorach artwork at the Brooklyn Museum, and photographs of works of art considered for donation.
Writings and Notes include a typescript of an article written by Marguerite Zorach, writings by William Zorach, a typescript of Young Poems by William and Marguerite, as well as articles written by others about the Zorachs. Artwork by Marguerite Zorach includes two prints and a tracing. Also found is one sketchbook, and additional drawings by William Zorach. There is one unsigned lithograph.
The majority of exhibition announcements, catalogs, and clippings concern William and Marguerite Zorach although there are two announcements for Dahlov Ipcar. There is one scrapbook of clippings about Marguerite.
The papers include photographs of Marguerite and William Zorach, their parents, baby photos of Tessim and Dahlov, family pictures of the Zorachs, and of Marguerite and William in their studios. There are several folders of William Zorach working in his studios and additional photos of him carving a relief sculpture and a sculpture for the Southwest Bank. Most of these photographs contain detailed annotations written by William Zorach about the work. There is one folder of photographs of William in France in 1910-1911, including one of Zorach in Roi Partridge's studio. There is one photograph of Zorach taken by Ansel Adams in Yosemite, a photo of Zorach working by Arnold Newman, and several taken by Imogen Cunnigham.
Other photographs are of works of art, most of which depict William's works.
Artifacts include Marguerite's batik tools and approximately fifty commercially made printing blocks.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 9 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Information, circa 1907-1969 (Box 1, 6; 3 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1922-1982 (Box 1-2; 1.75 linear feet)
Series 3: Business Records, 1967-1971, circa 1960s-1970s (Box 2-3; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 4: Writings and Notes, circa 1930s-1973, 1987 (Box 3; 8 folders)
Series 5: Artworks, 1900-circa 1920s (Box 3, 6; 12 folders)
Series 6: Scrapbooks, 1922-1953 (Box 3; 1 folder)
Series 7: Printed Material, 1912-1982 (Box 3; 0.25 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographs, 1908-1966 (Box 3-5; 1.0 linear feet)
Series 9: Artifacts, circa 1910s, circa 1950s (Box 4; 0.5 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
William Zorach (1887-1966) was a modernist painter and sculptor working primarily in New York city, along with his wife Marguerite (1887-1968) who worked as a fauvist painter, printmaker, and textile artist. Their children were painter Dahlov Ipcar (1917-) and art collector Tessim Zorach (1915-1995.)
Born in Lithuania, William Zorach immigrated to the United States where his family settled in Cleveland, Ohio. An early interest in art led to a printmaking apprenticeship. He then moved to New York City and enrolled in the National Academy of Design where he studied painting and drawing. In 1910, Zorach traveled to Paris to study and where he met his wife Marguerite Thompson at the La Palette art school. Marguerite grew up in Fresno, California and studied art at Stanford University. Both artists were heavily influenced by the fauvist and cubist art movements.
Returning to America, Marguerite and William married and both continued to create and experiment with varied media. Their paintings were featured in the 1913 New York City Armory Show and they are credited with being among the first artists to introduce European modernist styles to American modernism. The Zorachs were very close both as a couple and as working active artists.
In the 1920s, Marguerite began to experiment with textiles and created large, fine art tapestries and hooked rugs. Also, she used batik dying techniques on fabrics. William also expanded his genre by creating direct sculpture in 1918, which would become his primary medium.
In 1915, William and Marguerite started a family with their son, Tessim. Two years later, their daughter Dahlov was born. The Zorachs divided the year and lived in New York City, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. In 1923, the family bought a farm on Georgetown Island, Maine where they lived, worked, and entertained friends.
Dahlov and Tessim were exposed to art from an early age. Dahlov showed artistic promise as a child and her parents supported her creativity by allowing her to express herself without formal training. Dahlov pursued painting and later became an illustrator for children's books. Additionally, she wrote fantasy novels and short stories. Dahlov married Adolf Ipcar in 1936. Like the rest of his family, Tessim Zorach developed an interest of art and along with his wife Peggy, he amassed a large private collection of ancient to modern art.
William and Marguerite continued to sculpt and paint until their deaths in 1966 and 1968, respectively.
Together, Dahlov and Tessim established the Collection of the Zorach Children which coordinated donations of their parents' art to many museums throughout the United States and the world. The artwork of both artists is found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Delaware Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Farnsworth Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Philips Collection, and educational institutions such as Colby College, University of Vermont, Williams College, Bowdoin College, and the University of Virginia. In addition William has works associated with many public buildings, among them: Radio City Music Hall, New York City Municipal Court, the U.S. Post Office in Washington D.C. as well as Farleigh Dickinson University.
Related Material:
The Archives of American Art holds the Dahlov Ipcar papers, 1906-1997. Also found is one oral history interview with William Zorach conducted by by John D. Morse on April 2, 1959 and an oral history interview with Dahlov Ipcar conducted by Robert F. Brown on November 13, 1979.
The bulk of William Zorach's papers are held by the Library of Congress.
Separated Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming on reels NY59-1-NY59-4 and NY59-19. Loaned materials were returned to the lender and are now held by the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. This material is not described in the collection container inventory or finding aid.
Provenance:
William Zorach lent papers for microfilming to the Archives of American Art in 1959. Tessim Zorach donated materials between 1976-1987.
Restrictions:
Use of originals 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:
Art dealers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of New York video artist and painter Robert Wiegand measure 10.9 linear feet and 0.001 GB and date from 1953 to 1994. Found within the collection are biographical materials, correspondence, art project and exhibition files, printed abd digital materials, video art, photographs, and industrial and miscellaneous video recordings. About one-half of the collection is comprised of video recordings.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York video artist and painter Robert Wiegand measure 10.9 linear feet and 0.001 GB and date from 1953 to 1994. Found within the collection are biographical materials, correspondence, art project and exhibition files, printed and digital materials, video art, photographs, and industrial and miscellaneous video recordings. About one-half of the collection is comprised of video recordings.
Biographical materials include school yearbooks, video and paper documentation from his 1991 wedding, and photograph and video documentation of his funeral and memorial service in 1994. Also found are resumes and Wiegand's SoHo live/work artist permit from 1976.
Correspondence is comprised primarily of letters written by Wiegand, some in digital format, and a handful of letters received. Outgoing letters mainly concern Wiegand's video production work for hire and other personal financial matters. Letters received relate primarily to Wiegand's painting sales, and are from James McLeon, Vivian Browne, Susan Larson, Burt Chernow, and Alexandra Rose. Additional correspondence can be found in the project files.
Project files include documentation of the 1968 inagural "10 Downtown" exhibition, the City Walls mural project, a multimedia art work created through the Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) project called Changes, the products of the 1978 trip to India, including the video work Snapshots of an Indian Day, the "Madama Butterfly" video production produced by Wiegand, and the artist panel series ArtistsTalkonArt. The files contain a wide variety of documentation, such as correspondence, event flyers and press materials, photographs, slides, and videos.
Printed materials include exhibition and event announcements and catalogs, clippings and reviews, magazine publications, and published books that contain Wiegand's work. There is also one scrapbook compiled by Wiegand for his 5th One Man Show of Paintings at the Phoenix Gallery in New York City.
Video artworks created by Wiegand, often made in collaboration with his wife Ingrid, include Georges, Julie, Moran, Omar is El Uno, Nat, Walking (interstices), Face-Off, and How to tell an artist with Dr. Sheldon Cholst. Photographs include a combination of personal and professional photographs, although most of the materials are slides of artworks and events. Of note are slides from the "Bicentennial Banners" exhibition that Wiegand was invited to participate in and that was on display at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum in 1976.
The last series contains over 4 linear feet of all other video recordings and includes industry productions, independent projects, performance documentation, work samples, and works by others. Notable among these productions are documentation of Pamela Stockwell's reenactment of the Tomkins Square Park riots of 1988 and footage of performers Carolee Schneemann, Trisha Brown, Laura Foreman, and Leonard Horowitz, among others.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as seven series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1953-1994 (Boxes 1-2, 11; 1.5 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence and Letters, 1962-1990 (Box 2; .3 linear feet, ER01; 0.001 GB)
Series 3: Project Files, 1968-1992 (Boxes 2-3, 11; 1.1 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Materials, 1959-1990 (Boxes 3-4, 11; .7 linear feet)
Series 5: Video Art, 1970-1982 (Boxes 4-5; 1 linear feet)
Series 6: Photographs, 1953-1994 (Boxes 5-6; 1 linear feet)
Series 7: Other Video Recordings, 1968-1992 (Boxes 6-10; 4.7 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Robert Nelson Wiegand (1934-1994) was a painter and video artist who worked and lived in New York City. Robert Wiegand's interest in art extended well beyond the point of creation, and throughout his life he worked not only as painter, but also as a teacher, advocate, and documentarian of the arts in New York City.
Born in Long Island in 1934, Wiegand attended the State University of New York, College of Buffalo and received a degree in arts education. He returned to New York City and became active in the artist community in SoHo. He was one of the co-founders of the SoHo Artists Association, an artists' organization formed to advocate for legalizing artist loft live/work spaces in lower Manhattan in the 1960s.
Wiegand married his first wife Ingrid in 1964, and they collaborated on many creative endeavors. They adopted two children from India, Indira and Pratap (also known as Peter), and separated in 1990. He married painter Lynn Braswell in 1991.
As a painter, Wiegand's work was highly geometric and influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement. He exhibited paintings in one-man shows in New York City at the Phoenix Gallery and at the Levitan Gallery. In 1968, Wiegand participated in the first "10 Downtown" exhibition, where artists exhibited in their own studios in a move to overcome exclusive gallery representation practices. After painting a few exterior house murals, Wiegand co-founded City Walls, a New York City mural project that was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Through this project he became responsible for a handful of the murals in lower Manhattan. In 1968, Wiegand collaborated with Lloyed Kreutzer, a Bell Labs physicist specializing in lasers, to create the installation work Changes as part of Experiments In Art and Technology's (EAT) 1968 competition bringing together artists and engineers. It was then shown at Wiegand's studio in 1969. Wiegand was also one of the co-founders of ArtistsTalkOnArt, an artist run non-profit organization that continues to program weekly artist panel discussions in Soho, NY. It was co-founded in 1974 by Wiegand, Lori Antonacci, and Douglas Sheer, with Irving Sandler, Cynthia Navaretta, Bruce Barton and Corinne Robins joining the first board of directors in early 1975.
Wiegand became interested in video in the 1960s after using it as a documentary tool in the successful effort to legalize loft living in lower Manhattan. He then began creating video artworks, many of which were collaborations with his wife Ingrid. They received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1977 to produce a documentary on middle class life in India called Snapshots of an Indian Day. It was shown at The Kitchen and Anthology Film Archives before being acquired by the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY. In 1980, with the help of his students from the Global Village Intensive Video Workshop, Wiegand directed, shot, and edited the Brooklyn Opera Society's production Madama Butterfly at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and Tea House, and the production aired on WNYC-TV 13 as part of its Other Voices: New York series.
From 1971 to 1980, Wiegand ran his own commercial video company, Wiegand Video, where he produced corporate and industry training films. From 1980 to 1987, he worked as a project manager and producer for Square Twelve Productions, continuing to produce commercial work. His clients included the American Society for Mechanical Engineers and International Business Machines.
Wiegand also taught art and video production at the Staten Island Academy from 1961-1971, studio and television production at the New School for Social Research from 1980 to 1984, and field production at the Lehman College City University of NY. He also taught in the New York City C.E.T.A. program in media training and was a visiting media production instructor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Towards the end of his life, Wiegand changed careers and became a social worker. Robert Wiegand died in New York City in 1994, just after his 60th birthday.
Separated Materials:
Twenty sound cassettes of interviews and lectures were removed from the collection and returned to the organization that created them, ArtistsTalkOnArt. A few video cassettes are still found in the collection from that series.
Provenance:
The collection was donated by Lynn Braswell, Robert Wiegand's widow, in 1998 and 2000.
Restrictions:
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The donor has retained all intellectual property rights, including copyright, that they may own.
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:
Video artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Video recordings
Citation:
Robert Wiegand papers and video art, 1953-1994. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by by a grant from the Mellon Foundation through the Council of Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
The papers of New York City abstract expressionist painter William Baziotes and his wife Ethel measure 6.3 linear feet and date from circa 1900-1992, bulk 1935-1980. The collection includes William Baziotes biographical material, correspondence, writings, printed material, and photographs. The papers of Ethel Baziotes consists of correspondence mostly dated after her husband's death regarding exhibitions of his work, along with limited biographical material and writings.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York City abstract expressionist painter William Baziotes and his wife Ethel measure 6.3 linear feet and date from circa 1900-1992, bulk 1935-1980. The collection includes William Baziotes biographical material, correspondence, writings, printed material, and photographs. The papers of Ethel Baziotes consists of correspondence mostly dated after her husband's death regarding exhibitions of his work, along with limited biographical material and writings.
Biographical material on William Baziotes consists of a bibliography, teaching files, a sound recording of an interview, membership cards, sales records, a sketchbook, and other miscellaneous material. There is one folder regarding Ethel Baziotes containing a few certificates and her college diploma.
Correspondence consists of letters to William and Ethel Baziotes. Notable correspondents include Lawrence Alloway, Alfred Barr, Andre Breton, Clement Greenberg, Peggy Guggenheim, David Hare, Jean Helion, Maria and Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and others. There are also letters from the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery regarding the sales of William Baziotes's artwork and letters written by William Baziotes to his brother Christos. Letters to Ethel Baziotes include condolence letters as well as letters from museum and galleries regarding exhibitions of her husband's work.
Writings include William Baziotes's notes on various subjects, a list of book titles, and a transcript for a speech. Writings by others include essays about William Baziotes and other subjects.
Printed materials consist of clippings, announcements, magazines, and many exhibition catalogs, mostly on group exhibitions which included artwork by William Baziotes.
Photographs are of William Baziotes, Ethel Baziotes, family and friends, their residence, and his artwork. There are a also photographs of Meir Bernstein, Samuel Kootz, Paul Bodin, Maria Motherwell, Pablo and Maya Picasso, Rudi Blesh, Nathan Halper, Ethel Schwabacher, Clyfford Still, and others.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 5 series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1933-1982 (Box 1; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1936-1988 (Boxes 1-2; 1 linear feet)
Series 3: Writings, circa 1950-1992 (Box 2; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1944-1992 (Boxes 2-7, 9; 4.1 linear feet)
Series 5: Photographs, circa 1900-1979, bulk 1940-circa 1963 (Boxes 7-9; 0.7 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
William Baziotes (1912-1963) was an abstract expressionist painter in New York City. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Baziotes moved to New York City in 1933, where he studied painting at the National Academy of Design, 1933-1936. He participated on the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project as a teacher, 1936-1938, and painted for the Easel Painting Project, 1938-1940.
In 1941 he married Ethel Copstein. He had his first one-man show at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery in 1944. The Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, Inc. held a solo show for Baziotes in 1946 and continued to exhibit his works until 1958.
Baziotes taught at Subjects of the Artist, 1948; the Brooklyn Museum Art School and New York University, 1949-1952; the People's Art Center at the Museum of Modern Art, 1950-1952; and Hunter College, 1952-1962. Baziotes died in 1963.
Provenance:
The William and Ethel Baziotes papers were donated by Ethel Baziotes, widow of William Baziotes, in several installments from 1969 to 1993.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center.
The papers of New York sculptor, painter, educator, and video artist, Benedict Tatti (1917-1993) measure 1.8 linear feet and date from 1936-2011, with the bulk of the collection dating from 1945-1993. Papers consist of biographical material, correspondence, project files, subject files, exhibition files, writings, notes, and lists, printed materials, and photographs. Exhibition files and printed material, such as catalogues and checklists provide an overview of Tatti's activities as a sculptor and video artist. Also, photographs of artwork are a rich source of provenance-related information on Tatti's sculptures.
Scope and Contents note:
The papers of New York sculptor, painter, educator, and video artist, Benedict Tatti (1917-1993) measure 1.8 linear feet and date from 1936-2011, with the bulk of the collection dating from 1945-1993. Papers consist of biographical material, correspondence, project files, subject files, exhibition files, writings, notes, and lists, printed materials, and photographs. Exhibition files and printed material, such as catalogues and checklists provide an overview of Tatti's activities as a sculptor and video artist. Also, photographs of artwork are a rich source of provenance-related information on Tatti's sculptures.
Biographical materials include curriculum vitae, Who's Who in American Art, memberships, and awards. Correspondence is primarily from colleagues, dealers, collectors, and representatives of museums, galleries, and arts organizations. There are a few outgoing letters from Benedict Tatti, including a handmade holiday card. Among the notable correspondents are Jane Canfield, Lloyd Goodrich, Louis Slobodkin, and William Zorach. Also found is a small portion of Adele Tatti's correspondence relating to her late husband's artwork.
Project files contain Tatti's commissions for Eutectic-Castolin Institute, Staten Island Community College, Statue of Liberty Restoration, and the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts; application proposals to Creative Artists Public Service program (CAPS); and the artist's invention of the rewind reel adapter. Subject files include Tatti's memberships and activities in professional associations, e.g., American Medallic Sculpture Association, American Numismatic Society, and Audubon Artists; Tatti's Artist-in-Residence proposals for the Television Lab, WNET 13; and his involvement in educational video presentations. Exhibition files consist of scattered materials on Tatti's shows at the Anthology Film Archives; Burr Galleries; Galerie Claude Bernard; The Kitchen, Mercer Arts Gallery; Northeast Harbor Gallery; and Roko Gallery.
Writings, notes, and lists include writings by Benedict Tatti; writings about Benedict Tatti, including a statement on the artist by Isamu Noguchi; and lists compiled by Adele Tatti relating to her late husband's work. Artwork contains Tatti's sketch of a sculpture for the Northeast Harbor Museum and sketches of medal designs. Printed material consists of announcements, brochures, invitations, exhibition catalogues and checklists, clippings, periodicals, newsletters, reproductions, other printed matter, and monographs. Photographs include black and white prints of portrait shots of Benedict Tatti, Tatti in his studio and with others, video equipment and Tatti's video art; also found are color photographs of Tatti's sculptures and design maquettes.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 9 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1936-1993 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1945-2008 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 3: Project Files, 1966-2005 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 4: Subject Files, circa 1950s-2008 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 5: Exhibition Files, 1945-1992 (Box 1; 0.1 linear feet)
Series 6: Writings, Notes, and Lists, circa 1940s-2009 (Box 1; 4 folders)
Series 7: Artwork, 1970-circa 1990s (Box 1; 3 folders)
Series 8: Printed Material, 1937-1976 (Boxes 1-2; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 9: Photographs (circa 1936-1970s), circa 1964-2010 (Box 3; 0.4 linear feet)
Biographical/Historical note:
Benedict Tatti (1917-1993) worked in New York as a sculptor, painter, educator, and video artist.
Born in New York in 1917, Tatti began his art education at Haaren High School. He continued his studies at the Roerich Museum with Louis Slobodkin, the Art Students League with William Zorach and Ossip Zadkine, and the Leonardo da Vinci School of Art under Attillio Piccirelli. Later in his career, he attended the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. During World War II, Tatti served in the United States Army Air Force, where he spent three years assigned to variety of projects. In 1948, Benedict Tatti married Adele Rosenberg in New York City.
Throughout his career, Tatti continuously experimented with various media. From 1952-1963, Tatti executed sculptural models of architectural and consumer products for the industrial designers, Raymond Loewy Associates; later he became a color consultant for the firm. In the 1960s, influenced by the Abstract Expressionists, Tatti turned from carving directly in wood and stone to creating assemblage sculptures, using bronze metal and other industrial materials. During this period, Tatti spent summers on Monhegan Island in Maine, where he developed his water coloring techniques. In 1963, Tatti was hired to teach sculpture at the High School of Art and Design in New York, a position that he held for fifteen years.
In the 1970s, Tatti, with no previous background in video work developed technology for video imaging. He became an associate member of the Kitchen at the Mercer Arts Center exhibiting his video sculptures along with other early innovators of this new art form. In 1975, he invented a rewind reel adapter device. Despite health problems, Tatti continued to work and exhibit into the 1980s. He assisted his brother, Alexander Tatti and his nephew, Steven Tatti on the restoration of the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island, which was completed in 1985.
Benedict Tatti received solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries in the United States and abroad, including the Burr Gallery, Claude Bernard Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, under the Artists for Victory Program, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Northeast Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Roko Gallery. Also, Tatti's work was regularly featured in annual exhibitions of several arts organizations: American Society of Contemporary Artists, Annual Avant Garde Festival, Audubon Artists, Brooklyn Society of Artists, and Painters and Sculptors Society of New Jersey. His awards included the National Soldier Art Competition at the National Gallery of Art (1945); Artist-in-Residence, National Center of Experiments TV, San Francisco, California, (1969); and the Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS), (1972). Tatti's artwork is in the permanent collections of the American Numismatic Society, Art Students League, Dumbarton Oaks, Monhegan Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.
Benedict Tatti died on July 30, 1993.
Provenance:
The Benedict Tatti papers were donated by Adele Tatti, widow of Benedict Tatti, in 2010.
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:
Video artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Topic:
Educators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Genre/Form:
Notes
Awards
Lists
Christmas cards
Photographs
Designs
Sketches
Citation:
Benedict Tatti, 1936-2011, bulk 1945-1993. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The papers of abstract expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and wife Lee Krasner measure 16.1 linear feet and date from circa 1914 to 1984, with the bulk of the material dating from 1942 to 1984. The collection documents their personal and professional lives, as well as the legacy of Jackson Pollock's work after his death. Found are biographical material, correspondence, writings by Krasner and others, research material, business and financial records, printed material, scrapbooks, artwork by others, photographs, interview transcripts, audio and video recordings, and motion picture film.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of abstract expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and wife Lee Krasner measure 16.1 linear feet and date from circa 1914 to 1984, with the bulk of the material dating from 1942 to 1984. The collection documents their personal and professional lives, as well as the legacy of Jackson Pollock's work after his death. Found are biographical material, correspondence, writings by Krasner and others, research material, business and financial records, printed material, scrapbooks, artwork by others, photographs, interview transcripts, audio and video recordings, and motion picture film.
The collection is divided into two series, the first of which focuses on Pollock and includes his scattered papers dating from circa 1914 to his death in 1956, as well as Krasner's papers dating from his death to 1984 about managing Pollock's legacy. This series includes biographical materials, including transcripts and audio recordings of an interview with William Wright in 1949; Pollock's and Krasner's correspondence with Thomas Hart Benton, Betty Parsons Gallery, Bill Davis, B. H. Friedman, Reginald Isaacs, Sidney Janis, Violet De Lazlo, Martha Jackson Gallery, Alfonso Ossorio, Tony Smith, and Clyfford Still, and with one another; Krasner's correspondence concerning Pollock's estate and artwork after his death; numerous writings about Pollock, including an original draft of Bryan Robertson's biography and an essay by Clement Greenberg.
James Valliere extensive research files on Pollock for a never-published biography were given to Krasner and filed in Series 1. These include scattered correspondence with Lee Krasner, and Pollock's family and friends, including Charles Pollock, Thomas Hart Benton, and Robert Motherwell. There are also transcripts of interviews Valliere conducted with Pollock's friends and colleagues, including James Brooks, Dorothy Dehner, Clement Greenberg, Reuben Kadish, Lee Krasner, Charles Maddox, Mrs. Sanford McCoy, Daniel T. Miller, Robert Miller, and Tony Smith. The original audio reels and duplicates exist for many and are filed here. Additional interviews were conducted with Willem de Kooning, Alfonso Ossorio, and Burton Rouche, but not transcribed - these are filed in Series 1.10, Audio Recordings and Motion Picture Film.
Also found in Series 1 are scattered business records documenting Krasner's handling of Pollock's estate and legacy; printed materials relating to Pollock, including published biographies, exhibition catalogs, and clippings; two scrapbooks; and a sketchbook by an unidentified artist. Numerous photographs of Pollock include childhood and family photographs, photographs of Pollock in his studio by Hans Namuth, Rudy Burckhardt, and Herbert Matter, photographs of Pollock with Lee Krasner, and exhibition photographs. Audio recordings and motion film in Series 1 include a 1964 16mm film about Pollock (VHS copies are available) and reel-to-reel recordings of untranscribed interviews of Pollock's friends and colleagues by James Valliere, including interviews with Willem de Kooning and Alfonso Ossorio. Additional transcribed interviews are filed in subseries 1.4.
Lee Krasner's papers documenting her own career are arranged in Series 2 and date from 1927-1984. Biographical materials include resumes and awards, school documents, family documentation, and exhibition lists. Her correspondence with artist friends and art colleagues is extensive and includes many letters from artists such as Philip Johnson, Ray Eames, Cleve Gray, and Hans Namuth. She also maintained correspondence with many art historians and critics, curators, gallery owners, collectors, arts-related and social organizations, admirers, and family members.
There are thirteen transcripts of interviews with Krasner by Bruce Glaser, Barbara Cavaliere, Andrew Forge, Emily Wasserman, Barbara Rose, and others. The original audio recordings for these transcripts are filed in series 2.10, along with other audio recordings for which there are no transcripts, including interviews by John Gruen, Delores Holmes, Mercedes Matter, the Martha Dean Radio Show, NBC Today Show, and WQXR radio. There are also audio recordings of Krasner's lectures in series 2.10.
Krasner's papers also include writings and reminiscences by Krasner; writings about Krasner; printed materials such as exhibition catalogs and clippings; and one scrapbook containing clippings and photographs. Numerous photographs are of Krasner, including portrait photographs taken by Hans Namuth; of Krasner with Jackson Pollock and family and friends, and of her exhibitions and artwork.
Users should note that Pollock's and Krasner's papers contain similar types of material that often overlap in subject matter, especially among the correspondence and photographs.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into 2 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Jackson Pollock papers and Lee Krasner papers about Jackson Pollock, circa 1914-1984 (Box 1-7, 16, OV 18, FC 19-22; 7.4 linear feet)
Series 2: Lee Krasner papers, circa 1927-1984 (Box 7-15, 17; 8.6 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Jackson Pollock was born in 1912, in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest of five sons. His family moved several times during his childhood, finally settling in Los Angeles. In 1930 he joined his older brother, Charles, in New York City, and studied with Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York. Pollock worked during the 1930s for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. During 1936 he worked in artist David Alfaro Siqueiros's Experimental Workshop. In 1938 he began psychiatric treatment for alcoholism, and his artwork was greatly influenced by Jungian analysis and the exploration of unconscious symbolism.
In 1943 Pollock had his first one-man exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's New York gallery, Art of this Century, and continued to exhibit there over the next several years. A major turning point in Pollock's life and art was in 1945 when he married fellow artist Lee Krasner and moved to East Hampton, Long Island. There he developed his mature painting style, and became famous for his abstract pouring technique on large canvases. The height of his creativity spanned from 1947 to 1952, and his work was promoted by art critic Clement Greenberg. Along with other abstract expressionists including Hans Hofmann, Alfonso Ossorio, and Barnett Newman, he joined the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1947. He had his most successful one-man show in 1950 which was widely publicized and praised. This exhibition, combined with a 1949 feature article in LIFE magazine, made Pollock an American celebrity.
In 1952 Pollock moved his work to Sidney Janis Gallery and returned to earlier motifs in a search for new breakthroughs. The last few years of his life he suffered from mental and physical health problems, and in August, 1956 he died in a car accident. His wife, Lee Krasner, oversaw his estate and worked with many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, on Pollock retrospective exhibitions.
Lee Krasner was born Lenore Krassner in 1908 in Brooklyn, New York to Russian immigrant parents. In 1926 she was admitted to the Women's Art School of The Cooper Union, and in 1928 she attended the Art Students League. After graduating from The Cooper Union in 1929, she attended the National Academy of Design until 1932. After briefly attending City College and Greenwich House, she worked for the Public Works of Art Project and the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, and finally became an assistant in 1935 on the WPA Federal Art Project, Mural Division. From 1937 to 1940 she studied at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts and began exhibiting with the American Abstract Artists group.
In 1942 Krasner met Pollock as they were both preparing to exhibit work in the same show. Although they married and she became immersed in his career, she continued to exhibit her own work with other abstract artists and from 1946 to 1949 worked on the Little Image painting series. In 1953 she began working on collages, a medium she would come back to again later in her career. After Pollock's death her work was greatly influence by her sadness and anger, creating a visible evolution of her style.
For the rest of her career, Krasner consistently exhibited her work in both group and solo exhibitions. She had her first retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1965, and in 1966, she joined Marlborough Gallery, New York which represented Pollock's work as well. In the 1970s and early 1980s Krasner won many awards for her achievement in the visual arts, including the Augustus St. Gaudens Medal and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She returned to the medium of collage, and in 1976 joined the Pace Gallery, New York. In 1981 she joined the Robert Miller Gallery, New York. Lee Krasner continued creating art until her death in 1984.
Related Material:
Found in the Archives of American Art are the Charles Pollock Papers, 1902-1990, which includes correspondence, photographs, and other files relating to his brother, Jackson Pollock. Other resources in the Archives are oral history interviews with Lee Krasner, including a series of interviews conducted by Dorothy Seckler between 1964 and 1968, and interviews conducted by Barbara Rose in 1966 and Doloris Holmes in 1972.
Provenance:
The papers of Jackson Pollock were donated in 1983 by Lee Krasner through Eugene V. Thaw shortly before her death. Additional material about Pollock and the papers of Lee Krasner were donated in 1985 by Eugene V. Thaw, executor of Lee Krasner's estate.
Restrictions:
The collection has been digitized and is available online via AAA's website.
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.
This collection, which measures 7.9 linear feet and dates from 1851 to 1995 (bulk 1913-1995), documents the life and career of muralist, sculptor, and educator Reuben Kadish. The papers contain biographical material, letters, personal business records, an exhibition file, notes, writings, artwork, printed material, photographs, and artifacts.
Scope and Content Note:
The Reuben Kadish papers measure 7.9 linear feet and date from 1851 to 1995 with the bulk of the material dating from 1913 to 1995. The collection documents the life and career of muralist, sculptor, and educator Reuben Kadish and contains biographical material, letters, personal business records, an exhibition file, notes, writings, artwork, printed material, photographs, and artifacts.
Biographical material, 1938-1992, includes résumés and personal identification items. Letters are from friends and colleagues including Herman Cherry, Philip Guston, Hilaire Hiler, Jules Langsner, Urban Neininger, Charles Pollock, and Jackson Pollock. One letter from the Leonard Stark family contains a small photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe.
Personal business records, 1952-1995, consist of legal documents, including estate papers for Ida and Reuben Kadish, and financial records. The only specific exhibition file documents the 1990 exhibition Reuben Kadish: Works from 1930 to the Present at the New Jersey State Museum in 1990.
Notes include unbound notes on mural painting, printmaking, sculpture, and other art-related topics, and handwritten translations by William H. Thomson of thirty classic texts by Homer, Horace, and Demosthenes. Writings, 1975-1992, consist of an autobiographical manuscript by Kadish, and typescripts concerning Kadish and other art-related topics by other authors including Dore Ashton, Herman Cherry, Howard Conant, and Judd Tully.
Artwork, undated and 1981-1992, includes a hundred sketches and seventeen watercolors by Kadish, and a drawing for DIG (Archeology) by Barbara Kadish. Printed material relates primarily to exhibitions for Kadish and others but also includes a baseball program autographed by Darryl Strawberry. Photographs include prints of Kadish and other artists working on murals, and photographs picturing family and friends.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into ten series, based on type of material. Although acquired as a gift before the rest of the collection was loaned to the Archives of American Art in 1998, eight photographs are described in Series 9: Photographs, with those included in the 1998 loan.
Each series is arranged chronologically, except Series 2: Letters and Series 6: Writings, which are arranged alphabetically according to the surname of the writer.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1938-1992 (box 1, 3 folders)
Series 2: Letters, 1934-1995, undated (boxes 1-3, 2.5 linear ft.)
Series 3: Personal Business Records, 1952-1995 (boxes 3-4, 37 folders)
Series 4: Exhibition File, 1989-1991 (box 4, 1 folder)
Series 5: Notes, 1851-1853, 1937-1992, undated (boxes 4-5, 35 folders)
Series 6: Writings, 1963-1992, undated (box 5, 14 folders)
Series 7: Artwork, 1981-1992, undated (boxes 5, 10, 8 folders)
Series 8: Printed Material, 1934-1993, undated (boxes 5-7, 76 folders)
Series 9: Photographs, 1913-1992, undated (boxes 7-9, sol 10, 2.0 linear ft.)
Series 10: Artifacts, undated (box 9, 1 folder)
Biographical Note:
Reuben Kadish was born in Chicago on January 29, 1913. His father and mother were from Latvia and the Ukraine respectively.
In 1921, the family moved to East Los Angeles, California, where Kadish studied painting under Lorser Feitelson. During this time, he befriended Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, who attended the Manual Arts High School.
During a trip to New York City in 1930, Kadish was impressed with the modern art, especially the work of the Surrealists, which he saw there. Upon his return to Los Angeles the following year, Kadish attended the Otis Art School, the Stickney School of Art in Pasadena, and Los Angeles City College. He also shared a studio with Philip Guston.
In 1933, Kadish, Guston and Jules Langsner were apprenticed to Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their most notable work being the mural "Triumph of Good Over Evil", at the University of Morelia in Mexico. During the next three years, the three young artists collaborated on painting murals in California and Mexico. After another visit to New York, Kadish was invited to San Francisco by Bill Gaskin to head the art division of the WPA project there, a position he occupied until 1940.
From 1940, Kadish worked as a coppersmith and welder at the Bethlehem Steel Works in San Francisco until 1942, when he joined the Army as a member of the War Artist Unit, serving in India and Southeast Asia during World War II. In 1944, he rejoined his wife Barbara in the Bay Area, but they soon returned to New York City, where Kadish worked for Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17. In the summer of 1945, the Kadish painted with Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in a shared Long Island house on Slow's Point in Amagansett.
In 1946, the Kadishes moved to a dairy farm in Vernon, New Jersey, where they supported themselves by farming until 1957. A catastrophic fire in the studio destroyed most of Kadish's paintings in 1947, causing him to turn his interest to creating sculpture.
After teaching art and design at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art in 1957, Kadish taught sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1958-1959. In 1960, he began his thirty-year teaching career at Cooper Union, which ended only a few months before his death on September 20, 1992 in Manhattan.
Related Material:
Other resources relating to Reuben Kadish in the Archives of American Art include an oral history interview with Kadish, April 15, 1992.
Provenance:
The eight photographs on Reel 5660 were donated to the Archives of American Art in 1984 by Reuben Kadish. The other material on Reels 5655-5660 was lent for filming in 1998 by Morris and Ruth Kadish, brother and sister-in-law of Reuben Kadish, and executors of his estate, and subsequently donated to the Archives of American Art in 2002.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research. Use requires an appointment. Microfilmed portion must be consulted on microfilm.
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.
Topic:
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
The papers of abstract painter David Novros are dated 1963 to 2008, and measure 1.0 linear foot. Correspondence, records relating to the Liaunig Boat House commission (Middleburgh, NY), interview transcripts, printed material, and photographs document the painter's professional career.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of abstract painter David Novros are dated 1963 to 2008, and measure 1.0 linear foot. Correspondence, records relating to the Liaunig Boat House commission (Middleburgh, NY), interview transcripts, printed material, and photographs document the painter's professional career.
The vast majority of correspondence consists of incoming letters. The only reciprocal exchanges preserved are with art historian Charles Hope and the Menil Collection. Letters are from artists Rory McEwen, Paul Mogensen, and Ken Price; writers Frances Colpitt and Claudine Humblet; and from other colleagues and friends. The letters David Novros wrote to his family between 1963 and 1979 recount his travels and describe in some detail - many with accompanying illustrations and diagrams - work in progress, exhibitions, and commissions. Also preserved are copies of his letters to the Trustees of the Donald Judd Estate and Ranier Judd concerning the Marfa, Texas properties and projects, his Spring Street studio in New York City, and the Judd Foundation. Novros's letters to editors concern art-related articles that appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
Peter Liaunig's commission for a boat house with three fresco paintings in Middleburgh, New York, is documented by correspondence, plans, and designs. The "Boat House Diary, Middleburgh, NY," kept by Novros August 10-15, 2003, describes the process of painting the frescoes with the assistance of Jason, and notes materials and techniques used.
Interview transcripts are of Phong Bui's conversation with David Novros, published June 2008 in The Brooklyn Rail, and an unpublished interview Novros conducted with sculptor Robert Graham in 2008.
Printed material about or mentioning David Novros consists of articles and reviews, exhibition announcements and posters. Items written by Novros are a review of Jackson Pollock and two poems.
Photographs are of David Novros with his family and friends. There are also views of the Novros family's home in Van Nuys, California, and Indian-painted rocks at Sears Point, Arizona that influenced Novros' art.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 5 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1963-2008 (Boxes 1-2; 0.4 linear ft.)
Series 2: Liaunig Boat House, 1998-2004 (Box 2, OV3; 0.2 linear ft.)
Series 3: Interview Transcripts, 2008 (Box 2; 0.1 linear ft.)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1966-2008 (Box 2, OV 4; 0.2 linear ft.)
Series 5: Photographs, 1976-1999 (Box 2; 0.1 linear ft.)
Biographical Note:
David Novros (1941-) is an abstract painter in New York, NY.
Abstract painter David Novros was born in Los Angeles in 1941 and lived with his family in Van Nuys, California. His father, Lester Novros, was an artist whose interest in movement eventually led him to the Walt Disney Company, where he worked on animation projects. In 1941 he established his own production company, Graphic Films, and began teaching in the Cinema Department of the University of Southern California. Both David and his brother Paul were enamored with film; David turned to painting, but Paul followed in their father's line of work and became an award-winning film producer.
David entered the University of Southern California and studied painting with James Jervaisee. He made a few student films and sometimes worked with his father, but before long he turned to painting. During the summer of 1961, Novros attended courses at Yale and met Chuck Close, Brice Marden, and Vija Celmins.
After earning a B.F.A. in 1963, Novros completed his Army Reserve obligations and travelled in Europe. He moved to New York City in 1964 and met many Minimalist artists. Over the next several years, Novros's rectangular paintings gave way to multi-panel paintings and then to shaped panels. From the late 1960s through the 1970s, Novros developed a reputation as a geometric abstractionist. He showed at Park Place Gallery and had a solo exhibition at Virginia Dwan Gallery (Los Angeles) in 1966; the next year, his work was again presented at Park Place Gallery and at the Virginia Dwan Gallery (New York). Several solo exhibitions followed at Klaus Kertess's influential Bykert Gallery, as well as at other venues.
Novros participated in important exhibitions of abstraction, among them "Systemic Painting" (Guggenheim Museum, 1966), "Color and Structure" (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1971), and "Abstract-Geometry-Painting: Selected Geometric Abstract Painting in America since 1945" (Albright-Knox Gallery, 1989). In 1970, he was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.
In the 1970s, Novros turned to fresco painting, and his eventual decision to focus on murals effectively removed him from the commercial gallery scene. One of his earliest commissions was a fresco painted in 1970 for the second floor of Donald Judd's studio/home. Other commissions include: Solar Triptych, a radial triptych that opens and closes throughout the day, for the lobby of Union Station, Newark, NJ (1984); a fresco in the Old Court House, Miami (1984); a painted-glass and copper fresco in the Gross Building, Winslow, Arizona (1994-1996); and the Liaunig Boat House with fresco paintings, Middleburgh, NY (1996-2003). A number of museums in the United States and Europe include Novros's work in their permanent collections, among them: Menil Collection, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum Liaunig (Austria), and Daimler contemporary (Berlin).
Mr. Novros lives and works in New York City.
Related Material:
An oral history interview with David Novros was conducted by Michael Brennan for the Archives of American Art in 2008.
Provenance:
Gift of David Novros, 2009
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.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of painter Alexander Brook measure 4.3 linear feet and date from 1900-1982. Found within the papers are biographical material; personal and professional correspondence; writings; personal business records; printed material; scrapbooks; artwork; and photographs of Brook, his family and friends, and his work.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of painter Alexander Brook measure 4.3 linear feet and date from 1900-1982. Found within the papers are biographical material; personal and professional correspondence; writings; personal business records; printed material; scrapbooks; artwork; and photographs of Brook, his family and friends, and his work.
Biographical materials include an address book, award certificates, curriculum vitae, marriage and divorce documents, passports, biographical information on Brook's wife, Gina Knee Brook, and 4 interview transcripts.
Correspondence is primarily with Brook's family, friends, fellow artists, and business associates discussing personal relationships, teaching opportunities, art sales, and exhibitions. Included in this series are letters to Brook's second wife, Gina Knee Brook. Additional correspondents include Brook's children, Belinda and Sandy (Alexander) Brook, Peggy Bacon, artists Niles Spencer and George Biddle, and writer Haniel Long.
Writings by Brook consist of reminiscences, 6 essays, a lecture, a memorium to Catherine Brett, 6 short stories, 2 notebooks, and miscellaneous notes. Writings by others consist of a notebook by Mrs. Beeton containing humorous recipes, an essay, 2 memoirs, poetry, and a short story from unknown authors.
Personal business records include sales invoices, tax returns noting income from sales of artwork, and receipts for various art supplies.
Printed material includes brochures, chapbooks, clippings, city guides, exhibition announcements and catalogs, periodicals, and miscellaneous printed material.
There are two scrapbooks, a clippings scrapbook titled Unstruggling Artist, and an untitled scrapbook containing clippings and interspersed with correspondence, catalogs, and photographs.
Artwork consists of ink, pencil, and pen sketches; etchings and 2 etching plates; mixed media illustrations; and watercolors by unknown artists. There are also 9 sketchbooks, most likely by Alexander Brook, and a drawing by Miguel Covarrubius.
Photographs are of people, exhibition installations, and works of art. These include childhood photos of Alexander Brook and Gina Knee Brook, photos of the Brooks together in Savannah, Georgia and Sag Harbor, Long Island, as well as photos of Alexander Brook with friends, an artist model, at home, and in various studios. There are also photos of Peggy Bacon, Louis Bouché, Niles Spencer, and Jackson Pollock. Exhibition installations include a show at the Carnegie Institution and unidentified one man shows.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 8 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1907-1979 (14 folders; Box 1)
Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1930-1975 (0.6 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 3: Writings, circa 1921-1975 (0.5 linear feet; Box 1-2)
Series 4: Personal Business Records, circa 1931-1982 (0.3 linear feet; Box 2)
Series 5: Printed Material, 1918-1982 (1.4 linear feet; Box 2-3)
Series 6: Scrapbooks, circa 1935-1975 (0.4 linear feet; Box 3, 5)
Series 7: Artwork, circa 1935-1975 (0.4 linear feet; Box 4)
Series 8: Photographs, circa 1900-1980 (0.6 linear feet; Box 4)
Biographical / Historical:
Alexander Brook (1898-1980) was a painter and art instructor who lived and worked in Woodstock, Sag Harbor, and New York City, New York, and Savannah, Georgia.
Brook was born in Brooklyn, New York to Russian immigrants Eudoxia Gelescu and Onufri Brook. After contracting polio at the age of twelve, he remained bed-ridden for a year and his formal schooling was suspended. At this time, he began to show an interest in art and began receiving his first lessons in painting. In 1914, he enrolled in the Art Students League where he won scholarships and cultivated friendships with other art students, including Louis Bouché, Niles Spencer, and Peggy Bacon, whom he married in 1920.
Brook and Bacon's two children, Belinda and Alexander Bacon Brook, were born in 1920 and 1922, and the couple divided their time between a summer house in Woodstock and a series of apartments in New York City. Their circle of artist friends included the Bouchés, Niles Spencer, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Andrew Dasburg, and many of the other artists who lived and worked in Woodstock. Brook and Bacon continued to produce art, with Brook focusing on his painting, and Bacon publishing her illustrations and prints in nationally syndicated magazines.
In the 1920s, Brook also wrote articles for The Arts and caught the attention of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. She invited him to promote and organize exhibits for her Whitney Studio Club, and from 1923 to 1927, he worked as assistant director of the Club, which was later to become the Whitney Museum of Art. By the late 1920s, Brook's realist paintings of landscapes, still lifes, and posed figures of women were gaining wide recognition and he was given his first retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, at the age of thirty-one. In the early 1930s, within the span of three years, Brook exhibited one man shows at the ACA, Valentine, Charles Daniel, and Downtown Galleries in New York City, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931.
In 1938, Brook moved to Savannah, Georgia and began visiting and painting realist scenes based on visits to the city's oldest black neighborhoods. When Brook's marriage with Bacon ended in 1940, he continued to live in Savannah with his second wife, Libby Berger. After his second marriage ended, he returned to New York in 1942 to teach at the Art Students League and, during World War II, served as a correspondent and artist for the Army based out of Panama.
In 1944, Brook returned to Savannah with his third wife, the artist Gina Knee Brook. Through the mid-1940s, Brook continued to exhibit his works, primarily through the Rehn Gallery, contributed articles and essays to art journals, and was commissioned to paint two covers for the Saturday Evening Post. In 1948, the Brooks purchased and moved to their last home in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Believing realist work was no longer well received in critical and contemporary art circles, Brook slowly retreated from the art world, exhibiting his last solo show at Knoedler Galleries in 1952, and retiring from painting in 1966. Brook died on February 26, 1980.
Related Materials:
The Archives of American Art holds an oral history interview with Alexander Brook conducted by Paul Cummings, July 7-8, 1977. There is also substantial correspondence from Alexander Brook in the Peggy Bacon papers.
Separated Materials:
The photocopied typescript, "Myself and Others," was microfilmed upon receipt and is available on reel 3928.
Provenance:
The bulk of the papers were donated in several accretions by his Brook's wife, Gina Knee Brook, from 1981 to 1982. In 1982, she loaned a scrapbook for microfilming, which was later donated to the archives by Brook's son, Sandy Brook, in 1994. In 1985 and 1986, the Whitney Museum and Eloise Spaeth each donated a copy of Brook's typescript "Myself and Others."
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference 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.
The papers of sculptor, painter, and author Robert Smithson and sculptor, filmmaker, and earthworks artist Nancy Holt measure 18.9 linear feet and date from 1905 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from 1952 to 1987. Also included is Smithson's personal library of books, vinyl records, and magazine, measuring 48.4 linear feet. The papers consist of Smithson's biographical material; business and personal correspondence, much of it with artists; interview transcripts; extensive writings and project files; financial records; printed material; a scrapbook of clippings; holiday cards with original prints and sketches; photographic material; and artifacts. Also found are project files related to Nancy Holt's motion picture film Pine Barrens and her seminal environmental work of art Sun Tunnels, including a video documentary about Sun Tunnels.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of sculptor, painter, and author Robert Smithson and sculptor, filmmaker, and earthworks artist Nancy Holt measure 18.9 linear feet and date from 1905 to 1987, with the bulk of the material dating from 1952 to 1987. Also included is Smithson's personal library of books, vinyl records, and magazine, measuring 48.4 linear feet. The papers consist of Smithson's biographical material; business and personal correspondence, much of it with artists; interview transcripts; extensive writings and project files; financial records; printed material; a scrapbook of clippings; holiday cards with original prints and sketches; photographic material; and artifacts. Also found are project files related to Nancy Holt's film Pine Barrens and her seminal environmental work of art Sun Tunnels, including a video documentary about Sun Tunnels.
Biographical material includes Robert Smithson's curriculum vitae, personal identification and medical documents, eight engagement/day planners Smithson and Holt maintained from 1966 to 1973, and Smithson's funeral register.
Correspondence is primarily with Smithson's family, friends, fellow artists, and business associates discussing personal relationships, proposed art projects, and exhibitions. Correspondents of note include Carl Andre, the Dwan Gallery (Virginia Dwan), Dan Graham, Will Insley, Ray Johnson, Gyorgy Kepes, Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard, and Dennis Wheeler. There is also substantial correspondence received by Holt upon Smithson's death in 1973, and between Holt and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art regarding Smithson's retrospective exhibition in 1982.
There are nine interview transcripts with Smithson discussing his works and his general philosophy on art, and one transcript of the Andrew Dickson White Museum's Earth Art Symposium (1969) featuring the following artists: Mike Hiezer, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Neil Jenney, Gunther Uecker, Jan Dibbets, Richard Long, and Hans Haacke.
Writings are substantial and include 73 drafts of published and unpublished essays by Smithson on art, artists, and works in progress. The series also includes poems by Smithson, six notebooks containing notes and sketches by Smithson, and drafts of writings sent to Smithson and Holt by friends and colleagues, including Carl Andre, Terry Atkinson, Dan Flavin, Dan Graham, and Jack Thibeau.
Project files contain correspondence, project instructions, diagrams and sketches, research materials, photographic material, and maps related to over 50 of Smithson's artworks. These include concepts, proposed projects, sculptures, non-sites, and earthwork projects, including Spiral Jetty, Broken Circle, and Spiral Hill.
Personal business records include gallery related loan arrangements and receipts for miscellaneous art supplies. Financial records include tax forms and preparation documents, including cancelled checks, receipts, statements, and related correspondence.
Printed materials include books, clippings, and periodicals related to Smithson, either containing writings or sketches by him, or containing articles reviewing his work. There are also exhibition announcements and catalogs of Smithson's group and solo shows from 1959 to 1985.
The scrapbook contains clippings of Smithson's published articles from 1966 to 1973 with annotated shorthand notes.
Artwork consists of Christmas cards collaged by Smithson, and sketches by Smithson and Leo Valledor.
Photographic materials include prints and negatives of Smithson with friends, promotional Hollywood movie stills, and original prints and copyprints of other artists' artwork.
Artifacts consist of a paper bag silkscreened with a Campbell's soup can (Warhol), promotional buttons (N.E. Thing Co.), various organic materials, and two art kits.
Nancy Holt's papers consist of correspondence, a grant application, printed materials, and project files and audio visual material related to her motion picture film Pine Barrens (1975) and her seminal environmental work of art Sun Tunnels (1975).
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 14 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1905-1974 (Box 1; 14 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1959-1987 (Boxes 1-2, OV 21; 1.7 linear feet)
Series 3: Interview Transcripts, 1966-1973 (Box 2; 11 folders)
Series 4: Writings, 1959-1975 (Boxes 2-3; 1.1 linear feet)
Series 5: Project Files, circa 1950s-1982 (Boxes 4-5, Boxes 17-18, OV 20, OV 22-26, OV 36, RD 28-30, RD 32-35; 6.5 linear feet)
Series 6: Personal Business Records, circa 1967-1970s (Box 5; 4 folders)
Series 7: Financial Records, 1962-1972 (Box 6-7; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 8: Printed Material, 1955-1985 (Boxes 7-11, Box 18, RD 31; 5.6 linear feet)
Series 9: Scrapbook, 1966-1973 (Box 11, Box 16; 0.3 linear feet)
Series 10: Artwork, circa 1950s-1970s (Box 11; 4 folders)
Series 11: Photographs, circa 1950s-1970s (Box 11, Box 18; 5 folders)
Series 12: Artifacts, circa 1950s-1970s (Box 11, Box 14, OV 19; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 13: Nancy Holt Papers, circa 1960s-1980s (Box 12-13, 15, OV 27, FC 37-38; 1.9 linear feet)
Series 14: Robert Smithson Personal Library (Boxes 39-87; 48.4 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Robert Smithson (1938-1973) was a sculptor, painter, author, and lecturer who was known as a pioneer of land and earthworks art, based primarily in New York City. Nancy Holt (1938-2014) was a land artist, conceptual artist, and filmmaker. Smithson and Holt were married from 1963 until Smithson's death in 1973.
Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Smithson expressed an early interest in art, enrolling in classes at the Brooklyn Museum School and the Art Student's League in New York while still attending high school. Smithson's early works were primarily paintings, drawings, and collages. In 1959, he exhibited his first solo show of paintings at the Artists' Gallery in New York and had his first solo international show in Rome with the Galleria George Lester in 1961.
During the early to mid-1960s, Smithson was perhaps better known as a writer and art critic, writing numerous essays and reviews for Arts Magazine and Artforum. He became affiliated with artists who were identified with the minimalist movement, such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Nancy Holt, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris and others. In 1963, Smithson married sculptor and filmmaker Nancy Holt and a year later started to create his first sculptural works. In 1966, Smithson joined the Dwan Gallery, whose owner Virginia Dwan was an enthusiastic supporter of his work.
Smithson's interest in land art began in the late 1960s while exploring industrial and quarry sites and observing the movement of earth and rocks. This resulted in a series of sculptures called "non-sites" consisting of earth and rocks collected from a specific site and installed in gallery space, often combined with photographs, maps, mirrors, or found materials. In September 1968, Smithson published the essay "A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects" in Artforum that promoted the work of the first wave of land art artists. Soon thereafter, he began creating his own large scale land art and earthworks.
From 1967 to 1973, Smithson's productivity was constant as he wrote, lectured, and participated in several solo and group shows a year, both at home and abroad. He explored narrative art as essay in "The Monuments of Passaic" and fully committed to his idea of visiting sites and using them as the basis for creating non-sites, Non-Site, Pine Barrens, (1968); incorporated and documented the use of mirrors at sites in Mirror Displacement, Cayuga Salt Mine Project (1968-1969); and created his first site-specific works through liquid pours of mud, asphalt, and concrete, including Asphalt Rundown (1969). In 1969, he also completed his first earth pour at Kent State University with his project Partially Buried Woodshed. Later that year, he created the sculptural artwork for which he is best known, Spiral Jetty (1969) on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. This was the first of his pieces to require the acquisition of land rights and earthmoving equipment, and would be followed two years later by Broken Circle and Spiral Hill in 1971.
On July 20, 1973, while surveying sites in Texas for the proposed Amarillo Ramp, Smithson died in a plane crash at the age of 35. Despite his early death, Smithson's writings and artwork had a major impact on many contemporary artists.
Nancy Holt began her career as a photographer and video artist. Today, Holt is most widely known for her large-scale environmental works, Sun Tunnels and Dark Star Park. Holt has also made a number of films and videos since the late 1960s, including Mono Lake (1968), East Coast, West Coast (1969), and Swamp (1971) in collaboration with her late husband Robert Smithson. Points of View: Clocktower (1974) features conversations between Lucy Lippard and Richard Serra, Liza Bear and Klaus Kertess, Carl Andre and Ruth Kligman and Bruce Brice and Tina Girouard. In 1978, she produced a film about her seminal work Sun Tunnels.
Related Material:
The Archives also holds several collections related to Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt, including an oral history interview with Robert Smithson conducted by Paul Cummings in 1972; an interview with Robert Smithson conducted by Tony Robbin in 1968; Robert Smithson letters to George B. Lester, 1960-1963; an oral history interviews with Nancy Holt conducted by Scott Gutterman in 1992 and Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz in 1993; and the Nancy Holt Estate records, circa 1960-2001.
Provenance:
The papers of Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt were donated by Nancy Holt in several accretions between 1986 and 2011.
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 audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, holds the intellectual property rights, including copyright, to all materials created by Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt with the exception of the following items: two holiday cards found in box 11, folders 22-23. For these two items, copyright held by Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Requests for permission to reproduce should be submitted to ARS.
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:
Conceptual artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt papers, 1905-1987. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
The papers of sculptor and educator Anne Arnold measure 8.5 linear feet and date from circa 1925 to 2015. The papers document Arnold's career in New York City and Montville, Maine, where she had a house and barn with her husband the painter Ernest Briggs. The collection includes biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, artists, schools and galleries; writings by Anne Arnold and others; financial records in the form of the sales of artwork and records relating to income and expenses; teaching files, mostly for Brooklyn College where she taught; printed materials including scrapbooks, clippings, and magazines; audiovisual material in the form of videocassettes or various artist panels and talks; and photographs of Anne Arnold and her work, friends and family, and reference photographs of animals.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of sculptor and educator Anne Arnold measure 8.5 linear feet and date from circa 1925 to 2015. The papers document Arnold's career in New York City and Monteville, Maine, where she had a house and barn with her husband the painter Ernest Briggs. The collection includes biographical material; correspondence with family, friends, artists, schools and galleries; writings by Anne Arnold and others; financial records in the form of the sales of artwork and records relating to income and expenses; teaching files, mostly for Brooklyn College where she taught; printed materials including scrapbooks, clippings, and magazines; audiovisual material in the form of videocassettes or various artist panels and talks; and photographs of Anne Arnold and her work, friends and family, and reference photographs of animals.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged as 7 series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1925-2014 (0.5 linear feet; Boxes 1, 10)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1902, 1937-2014 (1.7 linear feet; Boxes 1-3)
Series 3: Writings, circa 1964-2010 (0.2 linear feet; Box 3)
Series 4: Financial Records, 1967-2006 (0.2 linear feet; Box 3)
Series 5: Teaching Files, circa 1970-2009 (0.4 linear feet; Box 3)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1958-2015 (3.9 linear feet; Boxes 3-7, 10)
Series 7: Photographs, circa 1930-circa 2014 (1.6 linear feet; Boxes 7-10)
Biographical / Historical:
Anne Arnold (1925-2014) was a sculptor and educator in New York, N.Y. and Montville, Maine. Arnold was born and raised in Massachusetts, attended the University of New Hampshire for college, received her master's degree from Ohio State University, then studied art at the Art Students League in New York City from 1949 to 1953. Arnold married the painter Ernest Briggs in 1960 and the two bought a house in Montville, Maine the following year.
Arnold taught sculpture at Brooklyn College from 1971 to roughly 1991 and was a member of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture's Board of Governors for twenty years or so starting in 1981. She also taught at Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and Geneseo College.
While Arnold created some paintings and drawings, the bulk of her work consists of sculptures of animals. She made sculptures of people, as well as domesticated creatures such as cats, dogs, pigs, and cows, often using her pets as models. She also included more exotic members of the animal kingdom such as elephants, rhinos, giraffes, various birds, and even a cheetah. Arnold's knack for capturing the personalities of the animals she portrayed led to expressive and eye-catching sculptures for which she became renowned and exhibited widely. She passed away in her New York City studio in 2014.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art are the papers of Ernest Briggs.
Provenance:
The Anne Arnold papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in 2015 by the Anne Arnold Estate, via the executors, Robert Brooks and Janice Kasper.
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 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:
Educators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Sculptors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of painter Joan Semmel measure 5.9 linear feet and span the dates of 1949-2013 with the bulk of the material dated circa 1960s-2013. The papers reflect her career and activities as a painter, writer, feminist, and educator through biographical materials, correspondence, interviews, writings, project files, teaching files, printed material, and photographic materials.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of painter Joan Semmel measure 5.9 linear feet and span the dates of 1949-2013 with the bulk of the material dated circa 1960s-2013. The papers reflect her career and activities as a painter, writer, feminist and educator through biographical materials, correspondence, interviews, writings, project files, teaching files, printed material, and photographic materials.
Among the biographical materials are awards, educational records,and audiovisual recordings about Joan Semmel and her work.
Professional correspondence concerns exhibitions, publication permissions, panel discussions, symposia, and visiting artist and summer school appointments. Also included are letters of recommendation for colleagues and students. A scattering of personal letters are from novelist David Markson and José Antonio, both of whom had personal relationships with Semmel. There are also a few letters from friends of a purely social nature and a few letters concerning routine personal affairs.
There are two interviews with Joan Semmel on video recordings, one was conducted for a television broadcast and the other is unidentified.
Writings by Semmel include the manuscript, illustrations, research material, and letters relating to her unpublished book about women's erotic art. Also found are articles, artist's statements, and notes for talks about her work. The writings about Semmel consist of several student papers.
Project files relate to two exhibitions curated by Semmel, Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content (1977) at The Brooklyn Museum of Art School and Private Worlds (2000). One file is related to a project in which Semmel was involved to document the role and status of women in the arts.
Scattered teaching files concern a course about contemporary women artists developed and taught by Semmel for the women's studies program at Rutgers University, circa 1978. Also documented are summer programs at Skowhegan and Sommerakademie in Austria where Semmel served as an instructor.
Binders (now unbound) of printed materials were compiled by Semmel consisting of exhibition catalogs and announcements for solo and group shows, reviews, posters, and miscellaneous printed matter.
Photographs of people include Joan Semmel, friends and colleagues. Among the individuals pictured are: writer David Markson, painter John Hardy, José Antonio Nieto; and feminist artists: Judy Bernstein, Mary Beth Edelson, Eunice Golden, Nancy Grossman, Harmony Hammond, Miriam Schapiro, Sylvia Sleigh, and May Stevens. There are slides, photographs, color photocopies and digital images of Semmel's paintings. Of particular interest are photographs, photocopies of photographs, and digital images that served as source material for paintings, including portrait commissions.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged in 8 seres:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1949-2013 (Box 1; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1973-2013 (Boxes 1-2; 1.2 linear feet)
Series 3: Interviews, circa 1970s-1986 (Box 2; 0.2 linear feet)
Series 4: Writings, 1970s-2009 (Box 3; 0.7 linear feet)
Series 5: Project Files, 1972-2000 (Box 3; 3 folders)
Series 6: Teaching Files, 1970s-2000 (Box 3; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 7: Printed Material, circa 1960s-2013 (Boxes 4-6, OV 8; 2.2 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographic Materials, circa 1965-2013 (Boxes 6-7; 0.6 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
Joan Semmel (1932- ) is an abstract painter working in New York City and Easthampton, N. Y. Semmel's work explores erotic themes and the female body. She taught painting at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University from 1978-2000.
Born in New York City in 1932, Joan Semmel studied at the Cooper Union, the Art Students League of New York, and received her BFA in 1963 and MFA in 1972 from Pratt Institute. Semmel moved to Spain in 1963 and exhibited her abstract expressionist work in galleries and museums there before returning to New York in 1970.
Upon Semmel's return to New York, she became involved in the feminist art movement. One of the original Guerrilla Girls, Semmel was involved with several feminist activist art groups devoted to gender equality in the art world. Semmel spent years researching a book about women's erotic art. At the same time, her painting style shifted to incorporate more figurative imagery and she began working on series that explored the themes of the female body, desire, and aging. Each series consisted of 10-30 paintings, produced over several years, among them First and Second Erotic Series, Self Images, Portraits, Figure in Landscape, Gymnasium, Locker Room, Overlays, and Mannequins.
In addition to her teaching career at Rutgers University as a tenured Professor of Painting, Semmel taught briefly at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, Skowhegan, and the Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Germany. Over the years she served as a visiting artist, critic, and lecturer at many colleges, and participated in numerous symposia, panel discussions and conferences. She has received several grants and awards including Macdowell Colony and Yaddo residencies.
Semmel has exhibited widely and prolifically in the United States, Spain, the Netherlands, and South America, in addition to curating two exhibitions, Contemporary Women: Consciousness and Content (1977) at The Brooklyn Museum of Art School and Private Worlds - Art in General (2000). Her work is represented in the permanent collections of many museums including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Chrysler Museum, Guild Hall, Museum of Women in the Arts, Parrish Art Museum, and Vassar College Museum.
Joan Semmel continues to live and work in New York City and Easthampton, NY.
Provenance:
Donated by Joan Semmel in 2014.
Restrictions:
Use of original material requires an appointment. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access 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.
Occupation:
Authors -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Educators -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The papers of social realist painter, photographer, printmaker, and teacher Ben Shahn (1898-1969) measure 25.1 linear feet and date from 1879-1990, with the bulk of the material dating from 1933-1970. The bulk of the collection consists of over 14 linear feet of incoming letters from artists, writers, colleagues, publishers, art organizations, galleries, and universities and colleges. Also found are biographical materials, project and source files, printed material, artwork by Shahn and others, photographs taken of and by Shahn, interview transcripts, sound recordings of interviews and a motion picture film.
Scope and Contents note:
The papers of social realist painter, photographer, illustrator, printmaker, and teacher Ben Shahn (1898-1969) measure 25.1 linear feet and date from 1879-1990, with the bulk of the material dating from 1933-1970. The bulk of the collection consists of over 14 linear feet of incoming letters from artists, writers, colleagues, publishers, art organizations, galleries, and universities and colleges. Also found are biographical materials, project and source files, printed material, artwork by Shahn and others, photographs taken of and by Shahn, interview transcripts, sound recordings of interviews and a motion picture film.
Biographical material and family records include a 1924 passport for Shahn and his first wife, Tillie, biographical sketches of Shahn, and award certificates received by him.
Letters are primarily written to Shahn from family members, artists, writers, colleagues, publishers, art organizations, galleries, and universities and colleges. Notable correspondents include Leonard Baskin, Alexander Calder, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Joseph Hirsch, Leo Lionni, John Bartlow Martin, George and Marian Nakashima, Clifford Odets, Charles Olson, Robert Osborn, Diego Rivera, Jerome Robbins, Selden Rodman, James Thrall Soby, Raphael Soyer, and William Carlos Williams. A small number of scattered letters from Shahn can also be found throughout the series.
Project files document approximately twenty-one of Shahn's commissions, including murals for the community center at Jersey Homesteads, the Bronx Central Annex Post Office, the Social Security Building in Washington D.C. , and the William E. Grady Vocational High School. The files also document his involvement in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Roosevelt, in addition to projects for schools, temples and private homes.
Financial and legal records include consignment records, loan agreements, royalty statements and receipts for artwork sold.
Notes and writings are by Shahn and others including Alan Dugan, W. H. Ferry, Theodore Gusten, and John Bartlow Martin. They include lists of artwork, many of which are annotated.
Artwork includes a sketchbook and several unbound sketches and lettering by Shahn, in addition to drawings and prints by others including Shahn's children, Mario Casetta and Stefan Martin.
Source files contain printed material and photographs relating to topics depicted by Shahn in his artwork such as children, dams, farming, houses, industry, mines and miners, slums, war and workers. These files also contain scattered photographic prints by FSA and OWI photographers including Shahn, Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Marion Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and John Vachon.
Printed material includes news clippings covering Shahn and his career as well as subjects of interest to Shahn. Also found are exhibition catalogs and announcements for exhibitions for Shahn and others, and reproductions of Shahn's artwork including publications illustrated by him.
Photographs are of Shahn, his family and friends and colleagues including Alexander Calder, Jerome Robbins, Charles Sheeler, David Smith and William Zorach. Also included are photographs taken by Shahn of New York City and for the FSA in the 1930s, as well as photographs of artwork by Shahn. Photographs by others include one photo each by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein.
The collection also contains transcripts of eight radio, television and motion picture interviews of Shahn and a reel of 16mm motion picture film from the BBC-TV program "Monitor," in addition to sound recordings of interviews of Shahn by Tony Schwartz and Arlene Francis. Artifacts include a Christmas greeting in the form of a sock.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged as 12 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical and Family Records, 1879-1984 (Box 1, OV 36; 0.2 linear ft.)
Series 2: Letters, 1929-1990 (Boxes 1-25, 35, 43, OVs 36-38; 14.5 linear ft.)
Series 3: Project Files, 1933-1975 (Boxes 25-26; OVs 36-37; 1.03 linear ft.)
Series 4: Financial and Legal Records, 1934-1988 (Boxes 26-27, 35; 0.81 linear ft.)
Series 5: Notes and Writings, circa 1933-1988 (Boxes 27-28, 43; 1.72 linear ft.)
Series 6: Artwork, circa 1930s-1965 (Boxes 28, 35; 11 folders)
Series 7: Source Files, circa 1900s-1960s (Boxes 28-30, 35; 1.81 linear ft.)
Series 8: Printed Material, 1912-1988 (Boxes 30-33, 35, OV 39; 3.22 linear ft.)
Series 9: Photographs, circa 1900-1969 (Boxes 33-35; 0.86 linear ft.)
Series 10: Interview Transcripts, 1943-1968 (Box 34; 0.25 linear ft.)
Series 11: Audio and Video Recordings, 1959-1968 (Box 34; 0.25 linear ft.)
Series 12: Artifacts, circa 1930s-circa 1960s (Box 34; 2 items)
Biographical/Historical note:
Ben Shahn (1898-1969) was a social realist painter, muralist, printmaker, photographer, illustrator, and educator who worked primarily in Brooklyn, New York and New Jersey. He was most active in the 1930s through the 1950s and worked on several federally funded arts projects, including the Farm Security Administration's photographic documentation project of rural America during the Depression.
Ben Shahn was born in Kovno, Lithuania and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1906 where he settled in Brooklyn, and later Roosevelt, New Jersey, after becoming a naturalized citizen in 1918.
Following an apprenticeship as a lithographer from 1913-1917, Shahn studied at New York University, the City College of New York, and the National Academy of Design from 1919-1922. He married Tillie Goldstein in 1922 and they had two children, Judith and Ezra.
Two years after Shahn's first solo exhibition at the Downtown Gallery in 1930, his Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, a series of 23 gouaches about the Sacco and Vanzetti trial of the 1920s, was exhibited at the Downtown Gallery to critical and public acclaim. The exhibition marked the beginning of Shahn's reputation as one of the most important social realist painters in America. Shahn's commitment to social and political justice found a natural outlet in mural painting when, in 1933, he was hired to assist Diego Rivera on the labor and industry mural Man at the Crossroads, for New York City's Rockefeller Center. The mural was destroyed amid controversy in 1933 before it was completed, but Shahn had learned much about the art of fresco painting during the project and was inspired by the potential of the mural as a unique art form for presenting life's struggles and stories to a large public audience. Between 1933 and 1937 Shahn worked on various murals for other buildings, including New York's Central Park Casino (circa 1934) and Riker's Island Prison (1934), none of which saw completion. In 1937, however, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) commissioned Shahn to execute a mural for the Community Center in the town of Jersey Homesteads, later Roosevelt, New Jersey, which Shahn completed in 1938. Shahn settled in Jersey Homesteads the following year and remained there for the rest of his life. Other important mural commissions followed for the Bronx Central Post office (1939) and the Social Security Building in Washington DC (1942).
One of Shahn's assistants on the Jersey Homesteads mural was Bernarda Bryson, whom he had met in 1933 when she came to New York to interview Rivera about the Rockefeller Center mural controversy for an Ohio newspaper. Shahn and Bryson became lifetime companions and had three children, Susanna, Jonathan and Abigail, although they did not marry until shortly before Shahn's death in 1969. Shahn and Tillie Goldstein were divorced in 1944.
Shahn had enrolled with the federal Public Works of Art Project in 1934, and between 1935 and 1938 he and Bryson travelled across country as Shahn photographed poverty-stricken areas and documented rural life for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Resettlement Agency. Shahn's interest in photography developed in the early 1930s when, encouraged by his friendship with Walker Evans, he began photographing street scenes and people in New York City. He later used the images as the basis for many of his prints and paintings.
In 1942 Shahn began working for the Office of War Information (OWI) and was instructed to produce posters and pamphlets explaining to citizens the necessities of wartime, such as the need for secrecy and food rationing. Ultimately, only two of Shahn's posters were ever used; the rest were rejected as being too harsh for their intended audience. Shahn later worked for the Congress of Industrial Organization Political Action Committee (CIO-PAC), producing posters for the 1944 campaign to re-elect Roosevelt, who he believed in deeply. He was promoted to director of the CIO's Graphic Arts Division for the 1946 congressional campaign following Roosevelt's death, but that job ended when the election went poorly for the Democratic party.
Shahn returned increasingly to painting and a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1947. He also became more active in academia as an accomplished writer, teacher and lecturer. He received honorary doctorates from Princeton University and Harvard University, and become the Charles Eliot Norton professor at Harvard in 1956. Shahn's Norton lectures were collected and published as the influential The Shape of Content in 1957. He also began to work as a commercial artist for a variety of companies and publications including CBS, Time, Harper's, and the Container Corporation of America. Shahn believed, however, that the artist's ideas and integrity must always be reflected in his commercial art. He refused to compromise on this point and was very selective in his choice of commercial commissions. Shahn illustrated many books and articles, designed sets for stage productions such as New York Export: Opus Jazz, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, and designed mural mosaics for synagogues, universities and private homes.
Since the 1930s Shahn had been represented by Edith Halpert at the Downtown Gallery, but his relationship with her was always contentious on the subject of payments Shahn received for commercial work, and became increasingly so as his income from such sources increased. Finally, in 1968, Shahn wrote to Halpert telling her that after ten years of "an accumulation of ill-feeling, discomfort and recrimination between us" he felt compelled to end their dealer-artist relationship.
By the time of Shahn's break with Halpert his health had begun to fail. He died of a heart attack following surgery in a New York City hospital on March 14, 1969.
Related Archival Materials note:
The Archives of American Art holds four oral history interviews with Ben Shahn: 1964 Apr. 14 interview conducted by Richard K. Doud for the Archives of American Art New Deal and the Arts Project in which Shahn speaks of his travels and work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the American image as portrayed by FSA; 1965 Jan. 17 interview; 1965 Oct. 3. interview conducted by Harlan Phillips for the Archives of American Art New Deal and the Arts Project; and 1968 Sept. 27 interview conducted by Forrest Selvig. Most of these interviews have transcripts available online.
The Archives also holds the Bernarda Bryson Shahn papers, circa 1947-2005, and two oral history interviews with Bernarda Bryson Shahn: 1983 Apr. 29 and 1995 July 3.
Separated Materials note:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel N70-6) including addresses and essays by Shahn, seven royalty statements, and three letters from publishers. Many of the writings found on this reel were included in subsequent donations. All other lent material was returned to the lender and is not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
The Ben Shahn papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in several installments between 1967-1991 by Shahn's widow, Bernarda Bryson Shahn who also lent materials for microfilming in 1969. Jean Shahn, Ben Shahn's daughter-in-law and estate representative, donated additional material in 2018 and 2021.
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 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.
The papers of New York artist Philip Pearlstein measure 31.8 linear feet and 16.68 GB and date from circa 1940 to 2008. The collection is comprised of biographical material, correspondence, interviews and transcripts, writing projects and lectures, personal business records, printed material, three scrapbooks, photographs and moving images, documentary production material, digital records, sound and video recordings, and motion picture film that documents Pearlstein's career as a painter and educator.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York artist Philip Pearlstein measure 31.8 linear feet and 16.68 GB and date from circa 1940 to 2008. The collection is comprised of biographical material, correspondence, interviews and transcripts, writing projects and lectures, personal business records, printed material, three scrapbooks, photographs and moving images, documentary production material, digital records, sound and video recordings, and motion picture film that documents Pearlstein's career as a painter and educator.
Biographical material includes appointment books, several awards, annotated calendars, a catalogue raisonné working list, identification card, membership files, resumes, and one sound recording. Correspondence is with Will Barnet, Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downes, Richard Haas, Jack Levine, Robert Storr, John Updike, Leland Wallin, Jerome Witkin, family, galleries and museums, students, colleagues, artists, arts organizations, and includes a digital recording.
Also found are sound recordings and transcripts of interviews with Pearlstein by Vivian Tsao, Michael Blaine, Sanford Sivitz Shaman, David McCarthy, and broadcast stations WRFM and WBAI. Writing projects and lectures by Pearlstein consist of student work, numerous articles and essays, sound and video recordings of lectures and speeches, letters, memorials, miscellaneous manuscripts and notes, and a U.S. and U.S.S.R. Workshop Exchange project proposal. Writings by others about Pearlstein are by W.J. Kelly, Alexander Dückers, Richard Field, John Ward, Jerome Viola, Robert Storr, and David Yezzi.
Personal business records contain agreements, consignment and loan documents, donations, financial material, exhibition files, insurance and inventories, recommendations written by Pearlstein, reproduction permissions, digital recordings, and teaching files for various institutions. Art reproductions, clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs for exhibitions of artwork by Pearlstein and others, magazines and journals, newsletters, postcards, and publicity files that include one digital recording are in printed materials.
Two scrapbooks are of Egyptian and Roman architecture and objects accompanied by notes and a small amount of sketches, and one scrapbook is printed material regarding Pearlstein's work and exhibitions. Artwork is by Jean Hampleman, Fernando Tamburini, and unidentified artists. Photographs and moving images that include video recordings and motion picture film of Pearlstein in the studio, portraits, and candids; personal photographs of family, travel, and classmates including Andy Warhol and Dorothy Cantor; artist's models; events and exhibitions; and works of art.
Completed and unedited video and sound recordings, computer graphics footage, soundtrack material, and administrative records for the 1985 documentary video production Philip Pearlstein Draws the Artist's Model are also in this collection.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 10 series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1964-2008 (0.8 linear feet; Boxes 1, 36, OV42)
Series 2: Correspondence, circa 1955-2008 (8.5 linear Feet; Boxes 1-10, OVs 42-43, 0.168 GB; ER01)
Series 3: Interviews and Transcripts, 1957-2003 (0.5 linear Feet; Box 10)
Series 4: Writing Projects and Lectures, circa 1945-2008 (2.5 linear Feet; Boxes 10-13, 37-38, 8.26 GB: ER02-ER13)
Series 5: Personal Business Records, 1955-2007 (1 linear Feet; Boxes 13-14, 3.77 GB: ER14-ER15)
Series 6: Printed Materials, 1946-2008 (3.0 linear Feet; Boxes 14-21, 36, OVs 42-43)
Series 7: Scrapbooks, circa 1953-1970s (0.4 linear Feet; Box 22)
Series 8: Artwork, undated, 1967-2004 (0.2 linear Feet; Box 22, OV 42)
Series 9: Photographs and Moving Images, 1940s-2008 (3.3 linear Feet; Boxes 22, 37, 39-41, 4.18 GB; ER16-ER18)
Series 10: Philip Pearlstein Draws the Artist's Model, Documentary Production Material, 1983-1991 (8.5 linear Feet; Boxes 23-30, SAV 31-35)
Biographical / Historical:
Philip Pearlstein (1924- ) is a painter and educator based in New York, N.Y.
Pearlstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he attended classes at the Carnegie Museum of Art as a child. While still in high school, his paintings were reproduced in Life magazine after winning Scholastic magazine's high school art competition. After graduating from high school Pearlstein enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology's (CIT) art school, but left after a year to serve in the Army during World War II. He gained knowledge of printing, drafting, and sign painting while stationed in Florida and Italy. After the war he returned to CIT as a student and became art editor of the engineering school's Carnegie Technical magazine. During this time Pearlstein met his wife, Dorothy Cantor, and became close friends with Andy Warhol, both classmates at CIT. Pearlstein moved to New York City with Warhol after receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1949. In 1955, he completed his thesis on Francis Picabia and received a Master of Arts in art history from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.
As Pearlstein's career evolved, he became known for his realistic nudes and landscapes. Many of Pearlstein's paintings were inspired by his travels to the western United States, Peru, Egypt, and to Italy as a 1958 Fulbright Grant recipient. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, and he has worked closely with the Tanager and Alan Frumkin Galleries in New York. In addition to his painting career, Pearlstein was an instructor at Pratt Institute from 1959 to 1963 and at Brooklyn College from 1963 to 1988. He is also a member of the National Academy of Design and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, serving as president from 2003 to 2006.
Pearlstein continues to work and live in New York, N.Y.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview with Philip Pearlstein conducted by Paul Cumming, June 8 to August 10, 1972.
Provenance:
The papers were donated in multiple installments by Philip Pearlstein from 1975 to 2009.
Restrictions:
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.
Rights:
Audio visual material "Philip Pearlstein Draws the Artists' Model": Authorization to quote or reproduce for purposese of publication requires written permission from Pearlstein or his heirs. Contact Reference Services for more information.
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:
Art teachers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
The Macbeth Gallery records provide almost complete coverage of the gallery's operations from its inception in 1892 to its closing in 1953. Through extensive correspondence files, financial and inventory records, printed material, scrapbooks, reference and research material, and photographs of artists and works of art, the records document all aspects of the gallery's activities, charting William Macbeth's initial intention to lease his store "for the permanent exhibition and sale of American pictures" through over sixty years of success as a major New York firm devoted to American art. The collection measures 131.6 linear feet and dates from 1838 to 1968 with the bulk of the material dating from 1892 to 1953.
Scope and Content Note:
The Macbeth Gallery records provide almost complete coverage of the gallery's operations from its inception in 1892 to its closing in 1953. The records document all aspects of the gallery's activities, charting William Macbeth's initial intention to lease his store "for the permanent exhibition and sale of American pictures" through over sixty years of success as a major New York firm devoted to American art. The collection measures 131.6 linear feet and dates from 1838 to 1968 with the bulk of the material dating from 1892 to 1953.
The gallery's correspondence files form the core of the collection and illuminate most aspects of American art history: the creation and sale of works of art, the development of reputations, the rise of museums and art societies, change and resistance to change in the art market, and the evolution of taste. Ninety-five feet of correspondence house substantial and informative letters from dozens of important American painters and sculptors, including older artists and younger contemporaries of the gallery in its later years. There are also letters from collectors, curators, other galleries, and critics.
The financial files found in the collection offer insight into the changing economic climate in which the gallery operated. They include information ranging from the details of individual sales and the market for individual artists, to consignment activities and artist commissions, to overviews of annual sales. This information is augmented by the firm's inventory records and the photographs of artwork with their accompanying records of paintings sold. The inventory records provide details of all works of art handled by the gallery, both sold and unsold, and the buyers who purchased them; the photographs of artwork include images of artwork sold with accompanying sales information.
The highlight of the gallery's printed material is the publication Art Notes. Although published only until 1930, Art Notes provides an excellent and detailed view of the gallery's exhibition schedule and the relationship of the gallery owners with many of the artists whose work they handled. It was a house organ that also provided a running commentary on events in the art world. The gallery's 19 fragile scrapbooks, maintained throughout the firm's history, provide further coverage of activities through exhibition catalogs and related news clippings. Printed material from other sources provides a frame of reference for activities in the art world from the mid-19th to the mid-20th-centuries and includes an almost complete run of the rare and important pre-Civil War art publication The Crayon.
Reference files record the interest which the gallery owners took in the work of early portrait painters and in later artists such as George Inness and Winslow Homer. Together with the immense volume of correspondence with buyers and sellers of paintings by the great portraitists and the Hudson River School found in the gallery's correspondence files, these records are still useful sources of information today and underscore the deep interest that the Macbeths and Robert McIntyre took in 18th and 19th-century American art.
The photographs of artists found here are a treasure trove of images of some of the major figures of the 19th and 20th-centuries. There are photographs of artists such as Chester Beach, Emil Carlsen, Charles Melville Dewey, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, George Inness, Maurice Prendergast, and Julian Alden Weir, many of them original prints and the majority of them autographed.
With the exception of the "The Eight" and a few of their contemporaries, an important aspect of art history, the modernist movement, is generally represented in the Macbeth Gallery records only in a negative form as the three successive proprietors of the gallery showed very little interest in this area. Nevertheless, the collection is a highly significant source of information on many of the major and minor figures in American art in the period after 1890.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into eight series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1838-1968 (Box 1-95, 163-164, OV 165; 96.2 linear feet)
Series 2: Financial and Shipping Records, 1892-1956 (Box 96-110; 11.8 linear feet)
Series 3: Inventory Records, 1892-circa 1957 (Box 111-113; 3.0 linear feet)
Series 4: Printed Material, 1838-1963 (Box 114-119, 162; 5.0 linear feet)
Series 5: Scrapbooks, 1892-1952 (Box 120-130; 3.3 linear feet)
Series 6: Reference Files, 1839-1959 (Box 131-132; 0.6 linear feet)
Series 7: Miscellaneous Files, 1912-1956 (Box 133-134; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 8: Photographs, circa 1880-circa 1968 (Box 135-161; 12.1 linear feet)
Historical Note:
The Macbeth Gallery was established in 1892 by William Macbeth, a Scotch-Irish immigrant who had spent ten years with the print dealer Frederick Keppel before he opened his doors to the art-buying public at 237 Fifth Avenue in New York. Despite the prevailing interest in foreign art at that time, particularly in that of the Barbizon and Dutch schools, Macbeth was determined to dedicate his gallery to "the permanent exhibition and sale of American pictures, both in oil and water colors."
Although some of the gallery's earliest exhibitions were of work by European artists, the business soon became the only gallery in continuous operation that kept American art permanently on display. In the January 1917 issue of Art Notes, Macbeth recounts those early days remembering that "The opening of my gallery......was a rash venture under the existing conditions, and disaster was freely predicted." Nevertheless, he struggled through the financial crisis of 1893 and persisted with his devotion to American art; slowly the market for his pictures grew more amenable.
Macbeth moved to more spacious quarters at 450 Fifth Avenue in 1906 and two years later undertook what was to become the major event in the gallery's early history: the 1908 exhibition of "The Eight," featuring work by Arthur B. Davies, Willam J. Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan. "The Eight" were an unlikely combination of social realists, visionaries and impressionists eager to challenge the dominating influence of the National Academy. The exhibition received an immense amount of publicity and instantly entered into art history as a successful assault on tradition.
Despite the splash that the exhibition made and its implications for the future of American art, nothing that the gallery did subsequently indicated that Macbeth intended to capitalize on its significance. It is true that Macbeth supported many artists later considered leaders in American art when the public would pay no attention to them because of their modernist tendencies; Arthur B. Davies, Paul Dougherty, Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, and F. Ballard Williams all held their first exhibitions at his gallery. Nevertheless, neither Macbeth nor the gallery's two successive proprietors, Robert G. McIntyre (William's nephew) and Robert Macbeth (William's son), who joined the gallery in 1903 and 1906 respectively, ever developed a true interest in modern art. The November 1930 issue of Art Notes summarizes their collective disdain for modernism, stating: "We believe that, by and large, modern art is amusing. We are heretical enough to believe that much of it was started for the amusement of its creators and that no one was more surprised than they when it was taken seriously by a certain audience to whom the bizarre and the unintelligible always makes an appeal." So while the Macbeths and McIntyre cetainly championed American artists and insisted they deserved as much recognition as the Europeans, their deepest and most abiding interest was undoubtedly the established artists of the 18th and 19th-centuries and those of the early 20th-century who continued in a more conservative style. Artists such as Emil Carlsen, Charles Harold Davis, Frederick C. Frieseke, Robert Henri, Winslow Homer, Chauncey F. Ryder, Abbot Handerson Thayer, J. Francis Murphy, A. H. Wyant were the gallery's bread and butter.
When William Macbeth died in 1917 Robert Macbeth took up the reins with the assistance of Robert G. McIntyre . Although they incorporated the business as William Macbeth, Inc., in 1918 the gallery continued to be known, as it always would be, simply as Macbeth Gallery. Macbeth and McIntyre continued to show work in the same vein as the elder Macbeth. They concentrated primarily on oil paintings at this time, having found by the 1920s that "oils are all that our gallery owners will buy," though they also exhibited an occasional group of watercolors and pastels in addition to bronzes and other sculpture by contemporary American artists such as Chester Beach and Janet Scudder.
Of the early American painters the Macbeths and McIntyre were particularly interested in colonial portraits and miniatures, especially those painted by prominent artists in the latter part of the eighteenth century such as John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully and John Trumbull. In its early years the gallery also handled the work of a few prominent American etchers including Frank W. Benson, Emil Fuchs, Daniel Garber, Childe Hassam and Chauncey F. Ryder. The print department was generally discontinued, however, in the late 1930s although the gallery continued to show prints by contemporaries such as Stow Wengenroth.
In 1924 relative prosperity allowed the gallery to move uptown to 15 East Fifty-seventh Street. When the 1930s brought new financial hardship for the gallery Macbeth and McIntyre took a variety of approaches to boosting sales. In 1930 they decided to hold only group exhibitions throughout the season to the exclusion of one-man shows, and also held some special exhibitions of paintings priced at a hundred dollars each in the hope that they could tempt those "willing to take advantage of a rare chance to secure representative examples of good art at a most attractive price." A move to smaller quarters at 15 East Fifty-seventh Street in 1935 was made with the intention of concentrating their efforts on the work of fewer contemporary artists, while continuing to handle the work of the older Americans they had long supported.
When Macbeth died suddenly and unexpectedly in August 1940 following an operation for appendicitis, McIntyre continued to run the gallery with the assistance of Hazel Lewis. During the 1940s McIntyre and Lewis showed primarily contemporary art in a wide range of media including oil, watercolor, pastel, drawing and sculpture, while continuing, as always, to show the occasional group of 19th-century Americans. The great success of the gallery's later years was undeniably Andrew Wyeth whose first exhibition, held at Macbeth Gallery in 1937, resulted in the sale of all twenty-two paintings cataloged.
Although subsequent Wyeth exhibitions were also successful, McIntyre struggled financially throughout the 1940s and periodically considered liquidating the company. Although "vitally interested" in contemporary art by people such as Robert Brackman, Jay Connaway, Carl Gaertner, James Lechay, Herbert Meyer and Ogden M. Pleissner he found that, for the most part, it did not pay. McIntyre continued operations until 1953 when he decided that doing so for profit was not only a financial burden but also ran contrary to his desire to spend more time devoted to his first love, early American art. When the lease expired on 11 East Fifty-seventh Street in April 1953 McIntyre did not renew it. After closing the gallery's doors he sold art from his New York apartment and from his home in Dorset, Vermont. He officially dissolved William Macbeth, Inc., in 1957.
The history of the Macbeth Gallery is a long and distinguished one with each successive proprietor making a significant contribution to art in America. William Macbeth helped establish an audience and a market for American art when few were willing to give it serious consideration. Robert Macbeth continued to cement the gallery's reputation as one of the leading firms in New York and was instrumental in organizing the American Art Dealers Association. Robert G. McIntyre claimed in a letter to Lloyd Goodrich, dated 22 June 1945, that the thing of which he was most proud was "the share I have had in the formation of the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art, at Andover, Massacusetts." McIntyre was widely respected in the art community as a dealer, as an adviser to curators, and as a scholar whose research and book on Martin Johnson Heade helped "rediscover" an important American artist. One of his most significant and lasting contributions to the history of art in America, however, was undoubtedly his gift of the gallery's historical records to the Archives of American Art.
Related Material:
Among the holdings of the Archives of American are a small collection of scattered Robert McIntyre's papers and 9 items of William Macbeth's papers. Macbeth Gallery exhibition catalogs are also available in the American Art Exhibition Catalog collection and the Brooklyn Museum Records, both loaned and microfilmed collections.
An extensive collection of Macbeth Gallery exhibition catalogs are also held by the Frick Art Reference Library and the Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Provenance:
The bulk of the Macbeth Gallery records were donated and microfilmed in several installments between 1955 and 1966 by Robert G. McIntyre and Estate. Additional Macbeth Gallery printed material was donated by Phoebe C. and William Macbeth II, grandchildren of William Macbeth, in 1974.
Restrictions:
Use of 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.
Macbeth Gallery records, 1838-1968, bulk 1892 to 1953. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Getty Grant Program. Digitization of the scrapbooks was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution Women's Committee. Correspondence, financial and shipping records, inventory records, and printed material were digitized with funding provided by the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Walton Family Foundation.
