The papers of New York City photographer, conceptual artist, and musical composer Cosmos Sarchiapone measure 49.2 linear feet and 0.367 GB and date from circa 1860-2011, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1940-2011. The collection includes biographical material and personal business records; correspondence; extensive writings, including written and recorded music compositions; teaching files; printed material and published sound and video recordings; photographic material; artwork; artifacts; and unpublished sound recordings and born-digital material. Highlights of the collection are more than 40,000 photographic images documenting New York's avant-garde art scene of the 1970s, along with celebrity parties, concerts, exhibition openings and other occasions in the art, music, and theater world. Extensive and somewhat rare printed materials offer users a visual chronical of the downtown art world in the form of posters from the 1970s, including a number of Milton Glaser's, and hundreds of exhibition announcements, theater programs, and playbills.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of New York City photographer, conceptual artist, and musical composer Cosmos Sarchiapone measure 49.2 linear feet and 0.367 GB and date from circa 1860-2011, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1940-2011. The collection includes biographical material and personal business records; correspondence; extensive writings, including written and recorded music compositions; teaching files; printed material and published sound and video recordings; photographic material; artwork; artifacts; and unpublished sound recordings and born-digital material. Highlights of the collection are more than 40,000 photographic images documenting New York's avant-garde art scene of the 1970s, along with celebrity parties, concerts, exhibition openings and other occasions in the art, music, and theater world. Extensive and somewhat rare printed materials offer users a visual chronical of the downtown art world in the form of posters from the 1970s, including a number of Milton Glaser's, and hundreds of exhibition announcements, theater programs, and playbills.
Biographical material and personal business records include address books, calendars, legal paperwork, life documents, resumes, and other material. Correspondence is both personal and professional in nature. Personal correspondence is between Cosmos and friends, family, and pen pals. Professional correspondence is with curators, publishers, and estates and mostly concerns Cosmos's artwork, photographs, or objects he lent for exhibition or publication.
Writings include general writings and notes, including a book layout for a book never realized; fifteen notebooks containing Cosmos's writings about projects, dreams, and miscellany; music compositions in both written form and on sound recordings; and scattered writings by others, including manuscripts and theater scripts.
Teaching files document photography courses taught by Cosmos at the School of Visual Arts in 1974-1976, and the Parsons School of Design in 1980.
Printed materials and commercially published sound and video recordings in the collection are extensive and reflect Cosmos's unique interests and inspirations, and his tendency to save and collect material discarded or rejected by others. There are books and periodicals featuring Cosmos's work, annotated by Cosmos, or of special significance to Cosmos. There is also a list of books in Cosmos's library. Some of the periodicals concern Push Pin Studios and Milton Glaser. There is a large group of ephemera, such as announcements, catalogs, press releases, programs, playbills, posters, and assorted items covering several decades of New York exhibitions, events, concerts, and performances. There are posters for exhibitions, events, performances, film screenings, and concerts. Some of the clippings and other ephemera may have been removed from scrapbooks or other compilations, and some remain collated and mounted on mat board. Some of the printed materials may have been used by Cosmos as source materials.
Photographic material makes up a significant portion of the collection (14.5 linear feet), and illustrates the breadth of Cosmos's documentation of New York City, capturing the avant-garde art and theater worlds, the people and streets, self-portraits, and numerous other subjects. There are images of named people and people at parties, of exhibitions and performances, of New York City streets and buildings, of a more personal and family nature, of artwork, and of miscellaneous subjects. There are also collected photographs, some of which are vintage. There is a large group of unidentified and unsorted negatives, slides, and contact sheets. Where they existed, labeling and descriptive notes have been preserved with the unidentified materials.
Artwork is also quite extensive (10.5 linear feet) and found in a variety of genre, format, and media. There is also a small subseries of artwork by others. One group of artwork consists of titled or named art projects and series, often executed in the form of series that spanned decades. This group includes Cosmos's Reciprocal project that incorporated his photographic work. For this project, he would photograph notable figures, including John Cage, Robert Scull, and others, and ask them to photograph him. There are also several folders of Cosmos's work focusing on photographer Diane Arbus.
A group of artwork identified as "compilations" consist primarily of photocopies of compiled presentations of documents, photographs, fragments, writings, drawings, printed materials and ephemera, and bits and pieces of Cosmos's titled work. These compilations were prepared by Cosmos for individuals in the art world to whom he was close. The original compilations were then photocopied and presented to the intended receiver. The subseries of compilations contains both originals and photocopied versions that do not always correlate with one another. Also found among the artwork are drawings, illustrations, a few paintings, collages, and sketchbooks by Cosmos. Artwork by others includes an artist book, drawings, a sketchbook, and prints by Milton Glaser, Alex Hay, Douglas Huebler, Marvin Israel, Ray Johnson, Ellsworth Kelly, and Eve Sonneman.
Found within the collection are three dimensional artifacts, including eight cameras and other items Cosmos saved and collected to incorporate into his photographs.
There is a large series of unpublished sound recordings and born-digital material, some of which is clearly identified and labeled, and some of which is unidentified. When known, labeling has been incorporated into the folder titles in the container inventory. Users should note that sound recordings that were clearly identified and associated with other projects were arranged in context with those related materials.
Printed material (series 5), photographic material (series 6), and artwork (series 7), include many photocopies. Cosmos used the photocopy process to make copies of his work to share with others, and as a creative form of art in itself, experimenting with tonality, collage, and the degeneration of images from repeated copying. Photocopies were also made of articles, newspapers, and various source material and ephemera that he collected. Many photocopies have descriptive labeling on the back. For some photographs and projects, photocopies are the only form of documentation located in the collection.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as nine series
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material and Personal Business Records, circa 1949-2011 (1 linear foot; Box 1, 44, OV 49)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1940s-2011 (.7 linear feet; Box 1-2)
Series 3: Writings, circa 1947-2000s (4.2 linear feet; Box 2-6, 44, OV 50-51)
Series 4: Teaching Files, 1970s-1980s (1.9 linear feet; Box 6-8, 44, OV 52)
Series 5: Printed Material, Published Sound, Video Recordings, 1894-2000s (8.3 linear feet; Box 8-13, 44-45, OV 53-73, RD 105)
Series 6: Photographic Material, circa 1860-2000s, bulk 1970-2010 (14.5 linear feet; Box 14-26, 46-47, OV 74-80)
Series 7: Artwork, 1947-2000s (10.5 linear feet; Box 27-34, 47-48, OV 81-104)
Series 8: Artifacts, 1960s-2000s (1.5 linear feet; Box 34-35)
Series 9: Sound Recordings and Born-Digital Material, 1950s-2000s (6.6 linear feet; Box 36-43, 0.367 GB; ER01-ER02)
Biographical / Historical:
Cosmos Andrew Sarchiapone (1931-2011) was a documentary photographer, musical composer, and conceptual artist who worked in New York City.
Cosmos Andrew Sarchiapone was named Cosime Sarchiapone at birth, and was also known as Cosmos, Cosmos Savage, and Richard Savage. His parents, Lois and Aldo, had seven children, including twins Cosmos and Damian. Born in Manhattan, Cosmos graduated from the La Guardia High School of Music and Art in New York City in 1948 and from Syracuse University in 1958 with a concentration in music composition and studio art. After college, he studied musical composition with John Cage at the New School in 1961, art history with Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University from 1963-1965, illustration with Marvin Israel from 1966-1971, design with Milton Glaser from 1968-1973, and photography with Diane Arbus from 1970-1971. He taught photography at the School of Visual Arts from 1974-1976, and at Parsons School of Design in 1980. In the early 1970s, he led experimental theater workshops at Columbia-Barnard University.
Between 1968-1969, Cosmos worked with Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast at their Push Pin Studios, a graphic design and illustration studio.
Sometime between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Cosmos began photographing New York City, capturing the art and theater worlds, the people and streets, self-portraits, and numerous other subjects. As a freelance photographer for New York magazine (founded by Milton Glaser) and other mass-market publications, Cosmos photographed Andy Warhol and his circle, Halloween parties at the Waldorf, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon convention, the Jesus Joy Jubilee at Carnegie Hall, the Beat Poets' reunion and private parties attended by Hollywood actors and directors, often capturing the overlapping worlds of art, movies and music. Cosmos's photographs have been published in numerous books and publications. His work was featured in several exhibitions in the 1970s, including shows at the Jamie Gallery, the Fine Arts Building, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. But he created the bulk of his work for himself and much of it remains unpublished.
Throughout the 1970s, Cosmos documented the avant-garde art scene in New York City. He captured performances at The Kitchen and La Mama, the offices of New York magazine and Push Pin Studios, Tom O'Horgan's Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, and much more. He photographed performances and installations at 112 Greene Street in SoHo, an interdisciplinary art space that nurtured the experiments of a number of now significant American artists, dancers and musicians, including Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, Suzanne Harris and Phillip Glass, all of whom were photographed by Cosmos. He also photographed numerous images of 112 Greene Street's sister space, Matta-Clark's FOOD, an artist-run eatery at the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets where exotic meals were offered up as both performance art and nourishment. Cosmos used his camera as a way to get close to artists he admired, including Diane Arbus, Milton Glaser, and Marvin Israel.
According to Milton Glaser, "Cosmos was a brilliant photographer who was never without a camera….He was always everywhere. In terms of documentation of that period, there was no one like him."
Cosmos often incorporated aspects of his photography into conceptual art pieces, including two serial works that Cosmos made from fragments of Diane Arbus' discarded photographs, transforming her iconic work. Many of Cosmos's conceptual art pieces often took the form of a series, and were continuously revisited. In Reciprocal, Cosmos photographed figures—including those he admired like John Cage, Meyer Schapiro, Robert Scull, and others—then asked each to photograph him. Many of Cosmos's art projects were based in photographic documentation of his "performances", as in Sheet Music, where he is seen tearing a white sheet outside Bloomingdale's during the 'white sale.' Cosmos's convictions about smoking, its hazards, and the nefarious actions of tobacco companies led to several related projects, among them, Photo Arrest, where Cosmos captured on camera people smoking illegally in hospitals, classrooms, grocery stores, and elevators.
Cosmos created scores for plays and dance performances, including Churchyard by the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1970, and numerous Off-Off Broadway theater productions in the 1960s. He wrote an opera, Vox Humana #3. The opera is about three heroines of history: Antigone, Joan of Arc, and Patty Hearst, and synthesizes a variety of media, including music composition, stage direction, and video (Patty Hearst in Chains), into a four hour performance that was staged at La Mama in 1976 and The Kitchen in 1977.
Cosmos lived at Westbeth Artists' Community from 1970-2011, but had largely withdrawn from the world by the 2000s. Cosmos Sarchiapone died in 2011.
Provenance:
Donated to the Archives of American Art in 2015 by Tom Sarchiapone, Cosmos Sarchiapone's brother, via Catherine Morris, curator and friend of Cosmos.
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.
Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate 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:
Composers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Conceptual artists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Photographers -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Papers relating to Alex Bradford's career as a composer of Gospel music. Included among the materials are playbills, published sheet music, music manuscripts, gospel song books, play scripts, newspaper clippings and articles, and one LP record.
Scope and Contents:
Collection documents the career of Alex Bradford as a composer of gospel music. Most of the materials relate to the musical production Your Arms Too Short to Box with God and include playbills and an LP. There are music manuscripts, published sheet music, and three Gospel song books of Bradford's music. In addition, there are playscripts for some of Bradford's other musical productions. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles document the importance of Bradford's creative work to the African American community. Lastly, playbills from the League of New York Theatres and Producers Antoinette Perry Award (Tony Awards) ceremonies are also found among the materials. The materials are arranged in chronological order.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into one series.
Biographical / Historical:
Alex Bradford was a musical and theater legend who served as a bridge between the gospel and secular worlds in music and performance. Bradford was responsible for the rise and popularity of the mass gospel choir. Alex Bradford was born in Bessemer, Alabama in the late 1920s during an era of racial segregation. A racially motivated altercation eventually led his mother to send him to New York. Before he left Alabama, Bradford performed on stage and sang in various children's choirs. Bradford was a talented and influential gospel singer, performer, song writer, and stage play author. Richard Becker, an accomplished music producer, worked with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Becker's first collaboration with Bradford resulted in their production of Black Nativity, based on a play by Langston Hughes. Commissioned to do a second stage musical, the two created Your Arms Too Short to Box With God, based on the Biblical book of Matthew. Your Arms was the first musical production fully funded at the Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. The musical made its debut on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre, on December 22, 1976. The original cast included Al Green, Patti LaBelle, and newcomer Jennifer Holliday.
Related Materials:
Materials in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Eugene D. Smallwood Gospel Music Collection NMAH.AC.0456
Martin and Morris Company Records NMAH.AC.0492
Wade in the Water Radio Series Collection NMAH.AC.0516
Program in African American Culture NMAH.AC.0408
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 36: Folios and Songbooks NMAH.AC.0300
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Series: Music NMAH.AC.0060
Duke Ellington Collection NMAH.AC.0301
Provenance:
Richard Becker donated the materials to the Archives Center, National Museum of American History in January 2001.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Reproduction restricted due to copyright or trademark.
Collection documents activist and educator Elaine Ostroff who advocated for improved access for people with disabilities in public places, co-founded the Adaptive Environments Center and who taught universal design in several institutions.
Scope and Contents:
The papers include correspondence, reports, photographs and slides, course-related materials, evaluations, printed publications, lectures and presentations, grant applications, conference materials, audiovisual materials and newspaper clippings documenting the career of Elaine Ostroff, an activist and educator of universal design.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into seven series. The arrangement follows Ms. Ostroff's original file order which for the most part has been retained.
Series 1: Personal/Biographical Materials, 1967-2008
Elaine Phillips Ostroff was born on February 27, 1933 and grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. She graduated from Durfee High School (1951), received a B.S. from Brandeis University (1955), was awarded a Radcilffe Fellowship (1970) and an Ed.M from Harvard University (1972). In 1978, Ostroff co-founded with Cora Beth Abel the Adaptive Environments Center (now the Institute for Human Centered Design (IHCD) to confront the barriers which prevent persons with disabilities and older people from fully participating in community life. In 1989, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, she developed the National Universal Design Education Project (UDEP) at Adaptive Environments. A national project, UDEP sought to incorporate universal design in professional curricula. Ostroff coined the term "user/expert" in 1995 to identify individuals whose personal experiences give them unique critical capacity to evaluate environments.
As an educator, Ostroff has been involved with the accessible environments effort on a national and international level since 1971. She was the former director of training for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health where she developed graduate programs and courses to sustain community based living for people with disabilities. In 1977, she was the United States representative to the United Nations meeting on the Rights of Children.
She convened the national seminar on Design for All People that provided the framework for the UDEP in 1982. In 1986, she developed the "Best of Accessible Boston," an awards program honoring the architects and owners of buildings that exemplified good as well as accessible design. Ostroff is internationally renowned for her role on the team that created the Principles of Universal Design. The Principles are taught to designers including architects, landscape architects, interior and product designers and their students and used in design, constructions and product development. In 2001, she was the senior editor of the "Universal Design Handbook" used as a textbook in educational settings. In 2004, she was the first American, and first woman, to receive the Misha Black Medal from the Royal College of Art. In 2006, the American Institute of Architects awarded her the Honorary AIA designation. Ostroff's experience emphasized creating educational programs for non-designers, facilitating their design advocacy as well as collaboration with design professionals. She has written and produced technical assistance materials on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that were used in the National Network for ADA Technical Assistance.
She married Earl Carlton Ostroff (1931-2006) in 1953. The couple had three children, Rebecca, Joshua, and Sam.
Historical Note:
The Universal Design Movement is an international effort advocating design for disabled persons to enjoy access, independence, and convenience. It also is known as design-for-all, accessible design, inclusive design, and human-centered design. It is applied to buildings, consumer products, packaging, appliances, tools, and devices. It can aid persons with mobility, visual, hearing, cognitive, developmental, neurological, and other disabilities.
The Universal Design movement has its roots in the disability rights movement, in the post-World War II era. Previously and especially before the First World War people with disabilities were members of a small minority and persons with severe handicaps tended to have short lifespans. The world wars caused a huge influx of disabled veterans into the population. Advances in medicine and drugs and better sanitation enabled increased lifespans resulting in a higher population of older and disabled people. Awareness of the problems and limitations experienced by people with disabilities has increased.
The "Barrier-Free" movement in the 1950s was born of the demands by veterans and their advocates to participate equally in educational and employment opportunities enjoyed by the non-disabled population. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s influenced the rising Disability Rights Movement. Legislative changes in the 1960s and 1970s prohibited discrimination against persons with disabilities and mandated access to some, though not all, public spaces, public transit, and places of public accommodation.
The progression from the Barrier-Free movement to the Universal Design movement was aided by several pieces of national legislation and activism on the part of numerous organizations. The Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 required buildings designed, built, altered, or leased with federal funds to be made accessible. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was the first civil rights law for disabled people. It prohibited discrimination against people with handicapping conditions, but again, only applied to institutions or groups receiving federal funding. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 required educational institutions to provide a free education to handicapped children. The Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 expanded the requirements of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 to include disabled people. This applied to both public and private properties. The biggest change came in 1990 with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This broad and sweeping legislation raised public consciousness about disability rights as a civil rights issue. It prohibited discrimination in employment, access to public accommodations, services, programs, public transit, and telecommunications. The law mandated the removal of physical barriers and the development of non-discriminatory policies.
The Universal Design Movement sought to integrate people with disabilities into the mainstream, and to promote inclusion by reducing the physical and social barriers that exist between people with disabilities. As planners, builders and architects struggled to meet the demands of the ADA, they realized that segregated accommodations were costly, unattractive, and unfair. They also realized that improvements in the built environment not only that benefitted people with disabilities, they benefitted all users. According to the Center for Universal Design, "Recognition that many such features could be commonly provided and thus less expensive, unlabeled, attractive, and highly marketable, laid the foundation for the universal design movement."
Against this background, Ostroff's own special interest was improving the environment for people with developmental disabilities. She initially worked with teachers in the Department of Mental Retardation (State of Massachusetts) to help them transform their classrooms into more engaging and supportive environments for young children with disabilities. She was inspired by Gunnar Dybwad (1909-2001), a prominent international international advocate who fought for community living and the de-institutionalization of people with developmental disabilities and Raymond Lifchez (1932-), professor of architecture and city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. She also worked closely with, and learned from, Ron Mace (1941-1998), FAIA, the architect who powered the accessibility movement through his personal experience of disability along with his architectural training and experience.
Related Materials:
The Universal Design News is a quarterly publication that Ostroff edited from 2000-2012 and wrote column on international design education. A full run of the newsletter is available the wesbite for Universal Designers and Consultants, Inc.
Materials at the Archives Center:
Target Stores Collection of Fashion Advertising Using Disabled Models (AC0436)
Accessible Snowboard Collection (NMAH.AC.0747)
Disability Reference Collection (NMAH.AC.1319)
Safko International, Inc. Records (NMAH.AC.0911)
Harriet Green Kopp Papers (NMAH.AC.1130)
Provenance:
Donated to the Archives Center by Elaine Ostroff in 2015.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Reference copies for audio and moving images materials do not exist. Use of these materials requires special arrangement. Gloves must be worn when handling unprotected photographs and negatives.
Social Security numbers and other personally identifiable information has been rendered unreadable and redacted. Researchers may use the photocopies in the collection. The remainder of the collection has no restrictions.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
