The Museum of Contemporary Art Interviews measure 8 linear feet and contain video interviews with 35 artists, curators, and an art collector, conducted by the staff of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago between 1979 and 1986, on 107 U-Matic videocassettes.
Scope and Contents:
The Museum of Contemporary Art Interviews measure 8 linear feet and contain video interviews with 35 artists, curators, and an art collector, conducted by the staff of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago between 1979 and 1986, on 107 U-Matic videocassettes.
The first set of interviews are with contemporary artists who had solo exhibitions at the museum between 1979 and 1985, including Chuck Close, Roger Brown, Eric Fischl, Peter and Ritzi Jacobi, Steve Keister, Sol Le Witt, and collector Dennis Adrian, whose Chicago art collection was exhibited in 1982. The remainder of the series contains four sets of interviews and other footage relating to exhibitions and programming, including the 1979 exhibition Wall Painting - Ryman, Hafif, Pozzi, Jackson, Yasuda; the 1981 exhibition Kick out the jams: Detroit's Cass Corridor 1963-1977; and the 1983 exhibition and educational program Eleven Chicago Artists, created with Chicago's N.A.M.E. gallery, which traveled to area high schools featuring short video documentaries about each artist that were created from the footage on the tapes in this collection. The last set includes interviews with architects Dirk Lohan and George Danforth and historian Franz Schulze, created for the 1986 program "Mies van der Rohe Remembered," celebrating the centennial of the architect's birth.
Arrangement:
Collection is arranged as one series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Interviews with Artists, Collectors, and Curators (Boxes 1-8)
Biographical / Historical:
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago was founded in 1967 with Jan van der Marck as its first Director. The period from 1979 to 1986, represented in the videorecordings in this collection, was a period of physical expansion for the Museum, as well as a period when audiovisual components of artworks and exhibition design were increasingly incorporated into exhibitions and other programming. In 1979, a physical expansion of the museum begun in 1977 was unveiled with the opening of four new galleries, signaling an increased capacity for showing local and emerging contemporary artists and engaging the community.
The museum's education department began using video to create a rich record of solo and group exhibitions mounted at the museum, and created short video programs to reach out to new audiences. For their 1979 Wall Paintings exhibition, artists were interviewed while making their work in the museum, creating a visual record of the ephemeral works on display and the process of their creation. Video interviews with Detroit artists were created in preparation for a 1981 exhibition showing contemporary artists in the Cass Corridor community of that city. In 1983, Museum staff collaborated with Chicago's N.A.M.E. gallery to create the traveling exhibition Eleven Chicago Artists, which combined artwork with video documentaries showing artists at work and talking about their creative process. The exhibition traveled to city and suburban schools around Chicago. And on the centenary of the birth of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1986, interviews were conducted with Mies' grandson, Dirk Lohan, also an architect, as well as architectural historians George Danforth and Franz Schulze.
Provenance:
Donated 1986 by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
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 access copy requires advance notice. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
Authorization to quote or reproduce for the purposes of publication requires written permission from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois. 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.
Topic:
Artists -- United States -- Interviews Search this
Art -- Collectors and collecting -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Museum of Contemporary Art interviews, 1979-1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered through the Council on Library and Information Resources' Hidden Collections grant program.
An interview with Franz Schulze conducted 2015 October 19-21, by Lanny Silverman, for the Archives of American Art's Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project, at Schulze's home in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Schulze speaks of his early life near Pittsburgh, PA; studying at the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; working for Raymond Loewy after World War II; teaching at Purdue University and Lake Forest College; the artists he admires, including Lucien Freud, Masaccio, John Singleton Copley, Rembrandt, Georges Braque, and Max Beckmann; moving from primarily painting to writing and teaching; writing arts criticism in Chicago versus in New York; developing the terms Monster Roster and Chicago Imagists; writing a biography of Mies van der Rohe; the development of the artists' groups The Hairy Who and Momentum; the lack of interest in Abstract Expressionism in Chicago; Chicago arts publications, including The New Art Examiner; how he got interested in writing about architecture; his opinions on newer Chicago artists; the development of Art Brut; his interest in portraiture; and his love of music, especially Bach; Schulze also recalls Mies van der Rohe, Raymond Loewy, Leon Golub, Seymour Rosofsky, Alan Frumkin, John Canaday, Paul Carroll; Peter Selz; Kathleen Blackshear; Katherine Kuh; Vera Klement, Martin Hurtig, Larry Solomon, Alan Artner, Nancy Spero, Blair Kamin, Dennis Adrian, H.C. Westermann, Jim Nutt, Evelyn Statsinger, Studs Terkel, Don Baum, Phyllis Kind, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Franz Schulze (1927-2019 ) was an art historian, art critic, and educator in Lake Forest, Illinois. Lanny Silverman (1947- ) is a curator at the Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Restrictions:
The transcript and recording are open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Occupation:
Art historians -- Illinois -- Interviews Search this
An interview with Dennis Adrian conducted 2015 October 8-9, by Lanny Silverman, for the Archives of American Art's Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project, at Adrian's home in Seaside, Oregon.
Adrian speaks of growing up in Astoria; traveling to Chicago and New York; Cannon Beach; aging and getting older; his origins; curators and curating; visual sensibilities; the Portland Public Library; opera; his parents, grandparents, and family; Finnish sensibility and humor; Portland Art Museum and classes for children; curator as voyeur; credit and accomplishments; hands on experiences; Artforum; art history; attending University of Chicago; homosexuality and coming out; looted European masterworks; Botticelli; exposure to real art; connoisseurship; collectors and collecting; a Robert Louis Stevenson letter; violin making; growing into yourself; Chicago; war; New York University; Frumkin Gallery; New York; the art world; Madison Art Center; Akron Art Museum; friendship and role models; Art Institute of Chicago; meeting Mies van der Rohe; meeting idols; education; Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Monster Roster; traveling; Chicago art politics; writing and critics; Eurocentric curators; Chicago as an undervalued city; Dog Day Afternoon; discovering art; New York sightings; and experiences running into artists. Adrian also recalls Roger Brown, Ruth Horwich, Gilda Buchbinder, Don Baum, Sherman Lee, Victor Carlson, Peter Voulkos, Lawrence Alloway, Rhona Hoffman, Allan Frumkin, June Leaf, Leon Golub, Jeremy Anderson, Robert Barnes, Tom Garver, Bruce Conner, Natasha Nicholson, H. C. Westermann, Franz Schulze, Bertha Harris Wiles, Muriel Newman, Aaron James Spire, Lillian Florsheim, John Maxon, Greg Knight, P.B. Maryan, Philip Pearlstein, Sylvia Sleigh, Nancy Spero, Irving Petlin, John Coplans, Alan Artner, Alice Shaddle, Phyllis Kind, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell, Tilda Swinton, Leo Castelli, Philip Guston, Dubuffet, Pussy Pepke, Bumpy Rogers, Barbara Rossi, Christina Ramberg, Philip Hanson, Miyoko Ito, Mark Jackson, Rolf Achilles, and Vito Acconci.
Biographical / Historical:
Dennis Adrian (1937- ) is an art critic, educator, and curator in Chicago, Illinois. Lanny Silverman (1947- ) is a curator at the Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Occupation:
Art critics -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
An interview of Harold Haydon conducted 1988 Oct. 10, by Franz Schulze, for the Archives of American Art.
Haydon speaks of his education at the Art Institute of Chicago; the art scene and the gallery scene in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s; some of the important art critics in Chicago during those years; the Artists Union; the WPA; artists he was acquainted with; art criticism; his own art work, especially murals; the post-World War II art scene; Artists Equity Association; Midway Studios, which he was director of; Haydon's exhibitions and writings; influences on him. He recalls Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
Biographical / Historical:
Harold Haydon (1909-1994) was an art critic and painter from Chicago, Ill.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
Occupation:
Art critics -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
The papers of painter and educator Vera Klement measure 3.3 linear feet and 1.36 GB and date from 1950 to circa 2016. The papers include scattered correspondence with Franz Schulze and others, writings and notes including digital copies of a memoir, an interview, and a film, personal business records, printed and digital material, fourteen sketchbooks and other works of art, and photographs, including a photo of the MacDowell Colony in 1957.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of painter and educator Vera Klement measure 3.3 linear feet and 1.36 GB and date from 1950 to circa 2016. The papers include scattered correspondence with Franz Schulze and others, writings and notes including digital copies of a memoir, an interview, and a film, personal business records, printed and digital material, fourteen sketchbooks and other works of art, and photographs, including a photo of the MacDowell Colony in 1957.
Of note is Blunt Edge, an unpublished memoir by Klement in born-digital format; a born-digital recording of an oral history by Linda Kramer and Sandra Binion (2010); a born-digital copy of a film entitled Vera Klement: Blunt Edge, by Wonjung Bae; a bound volume, Disorder and Early Sorrow: a Meditation on War and Death in Homage to Picasso's Guernica 1937, by Vera Klement; and a poetry project compiled by Klement entitled Born of Silence.
Arrangement:
Due to its small size the collection is arranged as one series.
Biographical / Historical:
Vera Klement (1929-) is a painter and educator in Chicago, Illinois. She is a founding member of "The FIVE."
Vera Klement was born in Danzig, Germany (now Gdańsk, Poland). She came to the United States in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime and settled in New York City. Klement studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, graduating in 1950. After moving to Chicago in 1965, she taught at the University of Chicago from 1969 to 1995 and is a Professor Emerita. She became a founding member of "The FIVE," a group of artists, who protested what they saw as a regionalist bent in Chicago art during the early 1970s.
Klement continues to live and work in Chicago, Illinois.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art are two oral history interviews with Vera Klement conducted for the Archives of American Art's Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project. The interviews were conducted by Lanny Silverman, 2015 June 12 and 14, and by Jason Stieber, 2016 May 25.
Provenance:
Vera Klement donated her papers to the Archives of American Art in several installments in 1986, 2004, and 2017.
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 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.
Vera Klement papers, 1950-circa 2016. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Processing of this collection received federal support from the Collections Care Initiative Fund, administered by the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative and the National Collections Program
Franz Schulze. Interview with Franz Schulze about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1986 April 28 through 29. Museum of Contemporary Art interviews, 1979-1986. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Harold Haydon, 1988 Oct. 10. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Chicago's Art-Related Archival Materials: A Terra Foundation Resource Search this
Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Franz Schulze, 2015 October 19-21. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
