The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture records measure 35.42 linear feet and date from 1945 to 2013. The paper records of the school document the period from circa 1945 to 1977 and consist of administrative records, financial records, visiting artist files, faculty files, student files, and photographic material. Also included are motion picture films by Jack Eastman and Karl Fortess, dating from circa 1950 to 1968, showing the school's campus and faculty, staff, and students at work and leisure. A large portion of the collection consists of the Skowhegan Lecture Archives, a sound recording archive of lectures given by artists speaking at the school between 1952 and 2013.
Scope and Contents:
The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture records measure 35.42 linear feet and date from 1945 to 2013. The paper records of the school document the period from circa 1945 to 1977 and consist of administrative records, financial records, visiting artist files, faculty files, student files, and photographic material. Also included are motion picture films by Jack Eastman and Karl Fortess, dating from circa 1950 to 1968, showing the school's campus and faculty, staff, and students at work and leisure., artists, and students. A large portion of the collection consists of the Skowhegan Lecture Archives, a sound recording archive of lectures given by artists speaking at the school between 1952 and 2013.
Administrative records include files for the school's board, exhibitions and benefits, fundraising, government agencies, publicity, and other office files. Financial records consist of accounting procedure documents, bills paid, budgets, student drawing accounts, payroll, real estate expenses, and reports.
Files for visiting artists such as Philip Pearlstein, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and William Zorach contain correspondence, lecture notes and transcripts, and records regarding the broadcast of artists' lectures. Faculty files consist of correspondence, faculty lists, and other material for Isabel Bishop, Xavier Gonzalez, Sidney Simon, and other faculty members. Student files include alumni records, correspondence, recommendations and rejections, and scholarship material.
Photographs and negatives are of Janet Fish, Paul Rasika, Alice Neel, Bette Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Roy Lichtenstein, faculty and visiting artists, and students at events, lectures, social gatherings, and in class.
Motion picture films include silent, color footage of the school's campus, working faculty and students, and social activities. Footage includes both edited footage and outtakes (footage shot but not used in the edited piece), that form three distinct sets of films from three different periods: 16 mm films from the 1950s, 8 mm films from 1964-1965, and super 8 mm films from 1966-1968. Based on handwritten notes on the original film containers, Karl Fortess was the creator of the 16 mm films, and Jack Eastman was the creator of the 8 mm film. It is unclear who created the super 8 mm films, but some of the footage appears to have been shot by Willard Cummings.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 8 series.
Series 1: Administrative Records, 1945-1977 (Boxes 1-5, 12, OV 31; 5.0 linear feet)
Series 2: Financial Records, 1945-1967 (Boxes 5-8, 12, OV 31; 3.0 linear feet)
Series 3: Visiting Artists Files, 1948-1965 (Boxes 8; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 4: Faculty Files, 1946-1965 (Boxes 8-9; 0.4 linear feet)
Series 5: Student Files, 1946-1964 (Boxes 9-12; 2.0 linear feet)
Series 6: Photographic Materials, 1955-1977 (Boxes 11-12; 0.5 linear feet)
Series 7: Motion Picture Films, circa 1955-1970 (Box 11, film cans FC 13-30; 1.9 linear feet)
Series 8: Skowhegan Lecture Archives, 1952-2013
Biographical / Historical:
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (est. 1946) is an art school and artist residency in Skowhegan, Maine. Since the school's beginnings, it has attracted prominent visiting artists and faculty members such as Jacob Lawrence, Philip Pearlstein, Ben Shahn, Isabel Bishop, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.
The school was founded by Willard W. Cummings, Henry Varnum Poor, Sidney Simon, and Charles Cutler. While serving in Europe during World War II on The War Art Unit project, a project that sent artists to battle zones in order to record their impressions, they noticed that the European system of studying art allowed students intimate access to artists, their studios, and creative life. The Skowhegan School founders wanted to create a similar intimacy between students and artists in the U.S. After returning to the U.S., Cummings, Poor, Simon, and Cutler built an art program that included visiting artists and an artist lecture series that enabled students to interact with professional, well-established artists. In 1960, the school's administration was reorganized due to a fire that burned down the barn, which served as a fresco painting studio, and other nearby buildings. The reorganization introduced trustees and other facets of the administration that were needed to sustain the school's funding and operations.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds microfilm of material lent for microfilming on reels N68-27-N68-30, N68-78-N68-80, and N68-96-N68-97. Loaned materials were returned to the donor and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture records were lent to the Archives of American Art for microfilming in 1968. The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture via Willard Cummings and Jack Eastman donated portions of the lent material from 1968 to 1977. The lecture archive was donated between 2002 to 2014 via the Executive Director.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate copies requires advance notice.
Rights:
Skowhegan Lecture Archives: Authorization to publish, quote or reproduce requires written permission from Skowhegan in addition to the copyright holders. A list of copyright holders is available at the Archives of American Art Washington, D.C. office. Transcripts may not be duplicated.
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.
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture records, 1945-2013. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection and digitization of the motion picture film was provided by the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
The papers of arts educator James A. McGrath measure 5.4 linear feet and date from 1950-2011. Included are McGrath's papers concerning his artist's residencies and workshops for the United States Information Agency (USIA) in the Yemen Republic, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of the Congo, 1990-1995. Also found are McGrath's papers concerning artist William Wiley. These papers date from Wiley's high school days and includes correspondence, writings, student files, printed materials, photographs, and artwork. Letters from Wiley to McGrath span several decades and provide details about his artwork, family, and travels.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of arts educator James A. McGrath measure 5.4 linear feet and date from 1950-2011. Included are McGrath's papers concerning his artist's residencies and workshops for the United States Information Agency (USIA) in the Yemen Republic, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of the Congo, 1990-1995. Also found are McGrath's papers concerning artist William Wiley. These papers date from Wiley's high school days and includes correspondence, writings, student files, printed materials, photographs, and artwork. Letters from Wiley to McGrath span several decades and provide details about his artwork, family, and travels.
James McGrath's papers regarding his artist's residencies and workshops are currently unprocessed.
Wiley's high school student files consist of exams and two Columbia High School yearbooks with contributions from Wiley. Correspondence includes mostly letters written from Wiley to McGrath, some of which are illustrated. There are also Christmas cards, postcards, prints and a wedding invitation and photograph of Wiley and his wife Mary. Wiley writes about his artwork, family, travels and his mother's death. There are also letters to McGrath from Wiley's first and second wives, Dorothy and Mary, his mother, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Tobey.
Printed materials include exhibition catalogs and announcements, news and magazine clippings, and the books Distraction, Lyrica and Almost Old/New Poems, all illustrated by Wiley.
Artwork by Wiley includes block prints, sketches and drawings, poems, paintings, prints and posters. Photographs are of Wiley's high school yearbook staff, art work and exhibitions, and a dinner honoring Wiley. There is a signed high school photograph of Wiley and a booklet of photographs of an exhibition of McGrath's art. There are also slides of artwork by Wiley, Bob Hudson and Bill Allan.
Arrangement:
The papers are arranged as 2 series.
Series 1: James A. McGrath Papers Concerning William T. Wiley (Box 1-3, OVs 4-6; 2.0 linear feet)
Series 2: Unprocessed James A. McGrath Papers, circa 1990-1995 (Boxes 7-9, OVs 10-12)
Biographical Note:
Arts educator James A. McGrath was a high school art teacher at Columbia High School in Richland, Washington where he taught William T. Wiley in the mid-1950s. They remained life-long friends. Later, McGrath worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe as Director of Arts, Professor of Painting, and Dean. In 1973 he became Director of Arts, Humanities and Culture in the Department of Defense and was stationed in Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Taiwan and the Philippines. He also worked for the United States Information Agency in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of the Congo. He continues to be active as an arts education specialist.
William T. Wiley (b. 1937)is a contemporary artist painting and teaching primarily in the San Francisco area. His artwork is associated with the Bay area Funk Movement. Wiley studied at the California School of Fine Arts and completed his MFA in 1962. One year later he joined the faculty of the UC Davis art department along with artists Robert Arneson and Roy DeForest. Wiley's students included Bruce Nauman and Deborah Butterfield.
Wiley's first solo exhibition was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1960, and he had works in the Venice Biennial (1980) and Whitney Biennial (1983), as well as major exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. His artwork is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among many others. Wiley was the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2004 and, in 2009, the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented a retrospective exhibition of Wiley's career.
Related Material:
The Archives of American Art also holds several collections related to William T. Wiley including an oral history interview conducted by Paul J. Karlstrom, October 8-November 20, 1997 and the William T. Wiley illustrated journals on microfilm reel 910. The University of Washington also holds papers of James A. McGrath.
Separated Material:
Six Documenta catalogs, originally donated to AAA with the James A. McGrath Papers Concerning William T. Wiley, were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
Provenance:
The papers were donated by James A. McGrath in five accessions between 2010-2015. A drawing on tree bark was donated by William T. Wiley in 2016.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The James A. McGrath papers are owned by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Literary rights as possessed by the donor have been dedicated to public use for research, study, and scholarship. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Topic:
Sculptors -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Performance artists -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Painters -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Illustrators -- California -- San Francisco Search this
Genre/Form:
Drawings
Poems
Prints
Postcards
Paintings
Sketches
Illustrated letters
Christmas cards
Photographs
Citation:
James A. McGrath papers, 1950-2011. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
