The papers of artists and educators Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo measure 19.6 linear feet and date from 1851 to 1986, with the bulk of the material dating from 1920s to the 1960s. Together, they traveled throughout Mexico and Latin America where they became involved in the social and art scenes. Hirsch and Rogo's artistic, teaching, and journalism careers are documented through biographical materials, correspondence, writings and notes, professional files, printed materials, photographs and motion picture films, and sketchbooks and other artwork.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of artists and educators Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo measure 19.6 linear feet and date from 1851 to 1986, with the bulk of the material dating from 1920s to the 1960s. Together, they traveled throughout Mexico and Latin America where they became involved in the social and art scenes. Hirsch and Rogo's artistic, teaching, and journalism careers are documented through biographical materials, correspondence, writings and notes, professional files, printed materials, photographs and motion picture films, and sketchbooks and other artwork.
Biographical materials include address lists, resumes and biographical sketches, identification cards, material relating to Hirsch's military service, and legal documents. Two sound recordings, one personal and another of Rogo on Spanish National Radio, are also found here.
Correspondence is both professional and personal. Professional correspondence concerns commissions, exhibitions, travel, and teaching. Notable correspondents include Josef Albers, Justus Bier, Downtown Gallery (Edith Halpert), Carlos Mérida, Lewis Mumford, Ben Shahn, and many others. Personal correspondence is largely between Hirsch and Rogo. Writings are found for both Hirsch and Rogo and include notebooks, diary fragments and transcripts, lectures, essays on art, articles, and notes. A manuscript by Hamilton Easter Field is also found and a writing by an unknown author.
Professional files document teaching positions, projects, commissions, memberships, and other professional activities undertaken by Hirsch and Rogo. They document Hirsch's teaching career at Bard College, Bennington College, and his mural work in South Carolina and Mississippi. Files concerning Rogo's work with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs are found here, as well as files documenting their professional and personal travel. These contain a wide variety of materials, such as correspondence, printed material, meeting minutes, photographs, and writings. Also found are scattered files relating to general areas of interest.
Hirsch's and Rogo's business records include contracts concerning Elsa Rogo's book agreements, records settling the estate of the Hirsch family in Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Germany, insurance records, a lease, price lists, and general receipts and invoices. Also found are personal art collection records including a sales agreement and a list of Latin American art owned by Hirsch and Rogo. Printed materials include books, brochures, clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs for Stefan Hirsch and others, issues of magazines and other periodicals, copies of published writings by Hirsch and Rogo, and a dismantled printed materials scrapbook.
Photographs are extensive and include personal photos of Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo, their family, friends, and colleagues. Numerous travel photos were taken by Rogo in her role as a journalist in Latin American and the United States. The bulk of the professional travel photos were taken in Mexico in the 1930s to the 1960s and show events, cities, and cultural activities. Also found are glass plate negatives, photographs of works of art, and sixteen reels of motion picture film taken in Mexico, Bard College, and Oqunquit, Maine.
Eighteen sketchbooks are largely unsigned but are likely by Stefan Hirsch. Additional artwork includes sketches and etchings by Hirsch, sketches by Elsa Rogo, and works by others including Raul Anquiano and Efren Villalobos.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 9 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1899-1986 (0.6 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1920s-1960s (3.2 linear feet; Boxes 1-4)
Series 3: Writings and Notes, circa 1920-1960s (1.2 linear feet: Boxes 4-5)
Series 4: Professional Files, 1912-1966 (2.8 linear feet; Boxes 6-8)
Series 5: Personal Business Records, 1927-1957 (0.5 linear feet; Boxes 8-9)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1851-1964 (2.9 linear feet; Boxes 9-12, 19)
Series 7: Photographs and Motion Picture Film, circa 1870-1960s (6.9 linear feet; Boxes 12-17, 20, FC 21-29)
Series 8: Sketchbooks, circa 1930s-circa 1940s (0.6 linear feet; Box 18)
Series 9: Artwork and Artifacts, 1916-1982 (0.5 linear feet; Boxes 18-19)
Biographical / Historical:
German-born Stefan Hirsch (1899-1964) was a painter and educator. Elsa Rogo (1901-1966) was married to Hirsch and was an artist, educator and journalist. They were active in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and Vermont, and traveled extensively throughout Mexico and Latin America where they documented local arts and crafts, village life, and befriended prominent Mexican artists.
Born in Nurnberg, Germany, Stefan Hirsch grew up in Europe and studied art at the University of Zurich. After settling in the United States in 1919, he took summer courses under Hamilton Easter Field in Ogunquit, Maine. Hirsch developed a Precisionist style combined with Social Realism but much of his work was difficult to restrict to one specific style. Hirsch was a founder and exhibitor at the avant-garde Salons of America which served as an alternative to the Society of Independent Artists. During the 1930s and 1940s, Hirsch participated in the U.S. government's Federal Art Project and painted murals in Aiken, South Carolina and Booneville, Mississippi. Hirsch began his teaching career in 1937 at Bennington College in Vermont, and later accepted a position at Bard College where he served as the chairman of the art department until he retired in 1961.
In 1930, Hirsch married Elsa Rogo. Together, they traveled throughout Mexico and Latin America where they became involved in the social and art scenes. They befriended prominent Mexican artists like Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros. As a journalist, Rogo documented Mexican life, events, and art extensively through photographs. Rogo also served in the U.S. Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, established in 1940 to promote cultural diplomacy and solidarity primarily in Latin America. In Taxaco, Mexico, she taught art to school children. Her book, Walls and Volcanos: The Creative Impulse of the Mexican People, was published in 1937.
Stefan Hirsch died in 1964. Elsa Rogo died in 1966.
Provenance:
Portions of the Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo papers were donated in 1996 by the Elsa Rogo estate, via Sylvia Siskin, executrix. Additions were donated 2002, 2014, and 2019 by professor James Oles, Art Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts on behalf of Sylvia Siskin.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment. Use of archival audiovisual recordings with no duplicate access copy requires advance notice. Original film reels and archival negative copies are stored off-site and are closed to researchers.
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.
Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo papers, 1851-1986, bulk 1920s-1960s. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund. Funding for the preservation of the Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo home movies shot in Mexico was provided by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Glass plate negatives in this collection were digitized in 2019 with funding provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
The Institute of Social Anthropology was an autonomous unit of the Smithsonian Institution which existed from 1942-1952. The objectives of the Institute of Social Anthropology were to work in cooperation with the institutions in certain Latin American republics which had requested assistance in anthropological work; the Institute of Social Anthropology had two main objectives:
1) Training of personnel in the concepts and techniques of anthropology;
2) Acquisition of a body of scientific information concerning the basic rural populations that is fundamental to any program affecting Latin Americans as well as to science and education.
The research provided an understanding of the manner of living, agricultural systems in relation to environmental factors, economic life, crafts and industries, food habits, health status, social organization, religion, language, literacy, and basic attitudes and interests of the people. From a scientific point of view, these studies revealed the most recent changes and the factors making for change in cultures that in many instances can be traced back more than 2,000 years through archaeology and post-conquest written history. From a practical point of view, the findings were indispensable to any action programs, both governmental and private, concerned with matters of health, education, soil erosion, commercial development, colonization, marketing, and so on.
Scope and Contents:
These documents reflect the correspondence and other office records of the Institute of Social Anthropology of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Included are annual reports, correspondence, memoranda, printed material, and financial records that cover the period of the Institute's existence 1942-1952. The majority of the material relates to the office files of the Institute and its correspondence with its social scientists in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru.
Also included are documents that relate to the Institute of Social Anthropology and its relations with the State Department. There is also correspondence concerning the ISA and Acta American, Bollingen Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, National Indian Institute, Pan American Institute of Geography and History, Rockefeller Foundation, UNESO, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Inter-American Society of Anthropology and Geography, Escuela Nacional de Anthropología e Historia, Instituto Nacional de Anthropología e Historia, Escola Livre de Sociología e Política, Instituto de Anthropología Social.
Historical Note:
The Institute of Social Anthropology was established under the directorship of Julian H. Steward on September 8, 1943, as an autonomous unit of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Its purpose was to set up cooperative Institutes of Social Anthropology for scientific research and training in certain Latin American countries, each working under the guidance of the Smithsonian Institution. This program was carried out under the auspices of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation in Latin American of the U.S. Department of State, and was financed by funds transferred from the State Department to the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Steward directed the Institution of Social Anthropology until September, 1946, when he was succeeded by George M. Foster, who continued as director until the Institute was abolished in 1952.
At its outset, the ISA staff consisted of eight social scientists (four social anthropologists, two cultural geographers, a linguist, and a sociologist) stationed in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru (for a short time in 1950 a station was established in Guatemala, but it was discontinued the same year for lack of funds). Their duties consisted in instructing local students (in collaboration with Latin American universities and other institutions) in social science research techniques through classroom, laboratory, and field situations, and in assisting with publication projects. In 1948, the budget was cut to allow for only six scientists. The ISA continued in this capacity until 1949, when the Inter-departmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation was abolished, and it was placed under the Division of International Exchange of Persons, another State Department Committee. The ISA did not form an organic part of this new program, and the State Department decided to terminate its support as of December 31, 1951.
Following this time, the ISA integrated its activities with the Institute of Inter-American Affairs. In the spring of 1952, the IIAA requested that all ISA personnel who so desired be permanently incorporated into the IIAA organization. This terminated the activities of the Institute of Social Anthropology as such
Related Materials:
Other material in the National Anthropological Archives that relates to the Institute of Social Anthropology can be found among the correspondence files of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1907-1950, consisting of fifty linear feet files in one continuous alphabet in ninety seven boxes.
Restrictions:
The Institute of Social Anthropology records are open for research.
Access to the Institute of Social Anthropology records requires an appointment.
