National Museum of American History (U.S.). Division of Musical History Search this
Extent:
18 Cubic feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Field notes
Audiotapes
Posters
Reports
Correspondence
Photographs
Place:
Appalachian Region
North Carolina
Virginia
Vermont
Date:
1964-1977
Summary:
The J. Scott Odell folk music collection (1945-2016, inclusive) contains AV recordings, photographs, correspondence, writings, and other materials relating to Odell's career at the Smithsonian as a musical instrument conservator and researcher of American music traditions. The collection largely consists of materials relating to Odell's research trips (often combined with personal visits) throughout the Eastern United States. Research strengths of the collection include the history of the Appalachian dulcimer and banjo, the Smithsonian Folkways project "Black Banjo Songsters," musician and poet Burt Porter, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.
Scope/Contents note:
The J. Scott Odell Folk Music Collection, which includes materials dating from 1945-2016, documents the research, professional work, and personal relations of J. Scott Odell (b. 1935). Odell worked at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) as a musical instrument conservator and traveled throughout the Eastern United States documenting a variety of musical instruments and traditions. The collection reflects his research trips and other travels; the development of exhibits and performance of music and dance at the Smithsonian; and the relationships Odell developed with the musicians, craftspeople, informants, and other people he worked with throughout his career.
Research strengths of this collection include notes, photographs, and recordings from Odell's fieldwork; extensive documentation of Odell's work on the Smithsonian Folkways project Black Banjo Songsters, in collaboration with folklorist Cecelia Conway; and materials pertaining to the Bread and Puppet Theater (based in Glover, Vermont). Significant places documented include southwest Virginia (Galax), nearby North Carolina (Shelton-Laurel), the surrounding tri-state area, and Vermont (Glover). Significant individuals represented in the collection include Odell, Burt Porter, Ralph Rinzler, and other well-known musicians. The most prominent instrument information in the collection relates to the banjo and the Appalachian dulcimer, although the American fiddle tradition and other instruments are also represented. Materials include photographs (negatives and prints), field notes, trip reports, correspondence, slides, writings, and AV materials. This collection may also be of interest to researchers of AV history and evolution. The wide variety of formats found in the collection maps the development of popular recording media. The collection includes open-reel tapes, Hi-8 tapes, DATs, mini-DV tapes, Betacam and Betacam SP tapes, VHS and SVHS tapes, cassettes, optical discs, mini-discs, and Zip discs.
This collection was initially established in 2008, when it was transferred from Archives Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) to the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives & Collections (RRFAC), Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH). (NMAH Archives Center had received the collection from the Division of Musical History.) Since 2008, the collection has been significantly expanded, more than doubling in size between 2008 and 2016. (These additional materials can be found in Series 8, Accruals.) With these deposits, the scope of the collection expanded beyond Odell's Appalachian dulcimer research and instrument conservator duties to include his banjo research, travels, relationships with musicians (particularly Burt Porter), and involvement with the Bread and Puppet Theater.
Arrangement note:
The collection is arranged in eight series as follows: (1) Correspondence, 1963-1978; (2) Folk Instruments Research; (3) Collected Publications and Ephemera; (4) Collecting Trips; (5) Publications; (6) Sound Recordings; (7) Oversize Materials; and (8) Accruals. Within each series and subseries, folders are arranged thematically, alphabetically, and/or chronologically.
Series 1-7 reflect the order of the original transfer from the Archives Center, National Museum of American History. Series 8 (Accruals) encompasses several deposits made by Scott Odell of additional materials between 2011 and 2017. Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives staff, in collaboration with Odell, imposed order upon Series 8.
Researchers should note that, when performing research in Series 8 (Accruals), they might need to consult multiple boxes, even when working within a single subseries where the intellectual arrangement in the finding aid does not always align with the physical arrangement of the materials. This separation between the intellectual and physical arrangement is due in part to the order in which RRFAC received each deposit, the format of the materials (i.e., papers vs. photographs vs. AV items), and earlier digitization efforts.
Biographical/Historical note:
Jay Scott Odell (b. 1935) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Adalberta Lavoie Odell and Jay Geddes Odell. The family moved frequently throughout his childhood, resulting in Odell having lived at fourteen different addresses and attending seven different schools by the time he graduated high school in 1953. When the family settled in Mamaroneck, New York, in 1950, Odell met poet Peter Kane Dufault, and musician and poet Burt Porter, two figures who would go on to strongly influence his personal and professional development. It was on the advice of Dufault, for example, that Odell apprenticed with harpsichord-maker William Dowd after college.
Odell attended Middlebury College where he met his future wife, Dorothy "Dottie" Hiebert. After graduating in 1957, Hiebert moved to France and Odell took a position on the boat of Dutch writer Jan DeHartog before joining Hiebert to travel Europe. By 1959, they had returned to the United States (Boston, Massachusetts) and married. It was at this point in their lives that they became active in the peace movement and the early Folk Revival. Odell's relationship with Burt Porter continued, and he developed contacts with other musicians including Peter and Polly Gott, Tom "Tom Banjo" Azarian, Mike Seeger, and Tracy Schwartz. The Odells also became involved with the Bread and Puppet Theater group, founded by Peter and Elka Schumann, which established its primary location in Glover, Vermont, near Porter's property.
Odell is particularly notable for his work in musical instrument conservation at the Smithsonian Institution and his involvement in the development of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. In 1963, following his harpsichord apprenticeship with William Dowd, Odell was hired by the Smithsonian as a musical instrument conservator. Under Cynthia Hoover and C. Malcolm Watkins, he established a restoration workshop for musical instruments at the National Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History. Over the course of his career, Odell served not only as a conservator but also as head of a technical laboratory and, eventually, as the first director of conservation at the National Museum of American History.
Odell was a key figure in the shifting philosophy of the musical instrument department regarding its collections and acquisition practices. With Hoover, Odell helped establish and facilitate a concert series with the mission of "[taking] the instruments out of their cases and [letting] them sing" – a major innovation in museum programming. Odell's commitment to bringing music history and traditions to life manifested in the expansion of the Smithsonian concert series, his relationship with Ralph Rinzler, and his early involvement with the Festival of American Folklife, now the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Although his professional training was in working with historical keyboard instruments, Odell's lifelong interest in traditional and regional music had a significant impact on his career. Between 1964 and 1977, when Odell was head of the laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution's Division of Musical Instruments, he undertook a series of collecting trips throughout the Eastern United States to expand the Division's collection of traditional American instruments.
In 1964, Odell and Porter attended the Annual Galax Old Time Fiddlers Convention. Following this initial trip, Hoover and Watkins supported Odell's efforts to, in addition to acquiring objects for the collection, research and record the cultural contexts of those instruments. Over the course of these trips, Odell built personal relationships with many of the musicians and craftspeople with whom he worked, including the Melton-Russell family, Tommy Jarrell, and Fred Cockerham.
Odell retired in 1993, but continued contract work at the Smithsonian. Working for the National Museum of American History, he assisted with the care and description of the Museum's banjo collection, as well as the acquisition of the Grimes and Jeffries dulcimer collection. He has also maintained associations with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In 1998, Odell co-produced a record through Smithsonian Folkways with folklorist Cecelia Conway titled "Black Banjo Songsters," which focused on the African American banjo tradition and featured many of the artists with whom Odell had built relationships.
Shared Stewardship of Collections:
The Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage acknowledges and respects the right of artists, performers, Folklife Festival participants, community-based scholars, and knowledge-keepers to collaboratively steward representations of themselves and their intangible cultural heritage in media produced, curated, and distributed by the Center. Making this collection accessible to the public is an ongoing process grounded in the Center's commitment to connecting living people and cultures to the materials this collection represents. To view the Center's full shared stewardship policy, which defines our protocols for addressing collections-related inquiries and concerns, please visit https://doi.org/10.25573/data.21771155.
Related Materials note:
Materials relating to Odell's career at the Smithsonian can also be found in the Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA), particularly in the records of the NMAH Musical History Division.
Materials relating to the Bread and Puppet Theater can also be found in the archives of the Bread and Puppet Theater (via the Internet Archive); the University of Vermont; and the University of California, Davis.
Restrictions:
Access to the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections is by appointment only. Visit our website for more information on scheduling a visit or making a digitization request. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records or audiovisual recordings in this collection must use access copies.
Rights:
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our website to learn more about submitting a request. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections make no guarantees concerning copyright or other intellectual property restrictions. Other usage conditions may apply; please see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for more information.
The collection consists of the Safe Water Book, loose filters, and a Tasita, a filter holder that connects two bottles together, created by chemist and inventor, Theresa Dankovich.
Arrangement:
Collection is unarranged.
Biographical / Historical:
Dankovich created the Safe Water Book, a book of silver-nanoparticle filter papers that kill disease and bacteria. The paper filters are called Folia Filters. The filters are used in conjunction with the Tasita, a plastic filter that holds the paper and connects two bottles together. The filters come in the form of Safe Water Books. Each book contains 26 filters and one book provides a year of safe drinking water. Dankovich holds a B.S. in fiber science from Cornell, an M.S. in agricultural and environmental chemistry from the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D in chemistry from McGill University. She is the Chief Technology officer and Chairwoman of Folia Water, a company she founded in 2015.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Theresa Dankovich, 2016.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
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.
Amalia Mesa-Bains. Detail of Amalia Mesa-Bains's Corn Rain Altar at C. N. Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis, 1984. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto research material on Chicano art, 1965-2004. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The Jeremy Stone Gallery records measure 10.4 linear feet and date from 1970 to 2005, with the bulk of the records dating from 1979 to 1996. The records shed light on the gallery's operations through administrative records, artist files, and printed material. Also present in the collection are scant personal and professional papers documenting Jeremy Stone's career before opening the gallery in 1982 and after closing it in 1991.
Scope and Contents:
The Jeremy Stone Gallery records measure 10.4 linear feet and date from 1970 to 2005, with the bulk of the records dating from 1979 to 1996. The records shed light on the gallery's operations through administrative records, artist files, and printed material. Also present in the collection are scant personal and professional papers documenting Jeremy Stone's career before opening the gallery in 1982 and after closing it in 1991.
Administrative files mainly consist of correspondence between the Jeremy Stone Gallery and other museums and galleries regarding exhibitions, artists, and artwork; between the gallery and artists; and between the gallery and art-collecting individuals and corporations. Also present in this series are some exhibition files and financial records. Artist files include correspondence, newspaper clippings, exhibition records, resumes, price lists, artwork images, mailing lists, collector lists, and inventories. Printed material includes exhibition reviews, announcements, and press releases. Some negatives and photographs of artwork, as well as snapshots from events, are also present.
Jeremy Stone's personal and professional papers document her practice as a private art dealer and expert in appraisals and acquisitions. Most of the artists she handled were initially represented by the Jeremy Stone Gallery, including Sylvia Lark, Barbara Pierce, Kyung Sun Cho, Richard Sheehan, and Pia Stern. Files include correspondence, sales records, price lists, images of artwork, and some printed material. Also found in this series is material related to Stone's guest curatorship at the Sunne Savage Gallery for its exhibition, 30 Years of Box Constructions (1979); and articles written by and about Jeremy Stone.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as four series.
Series 1: Administrative Records, 1982-1991 (Box 1-3; 2.5 linear feet)
Series 2: Artist Files,1970-2003, bulk 1982-1991 (Box 3-9; 6 linear feet)
Series 3: Printed Material, 1982-1991 (Box 9-10; .5 linear feet)
Series 4: Jeremy Stone Personal and Professional Papers, 1979-2005 (Box 10-11; 1.4 linear feet)
Biographical / Historical:
The Jeremy Stone Gallery was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1982 by Jeremy Stone.
The daughter of New York art dealer, gallerist, and collector Alan Stone, Stone became involved in the art world working part-time in her father's gallery during high school and college. After graduating, Stone held internships and positions as a researcher, guest curator, and consultant for projects at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Richard L. Nelson Gallery at the University of California, Davis. In 1979, Stone curated her first exhibition, 30 Years of Box Constructions, at the Sunne Savage Gallery. Stone opened the Jeremy Stone gallery shortly after moving to San Francisco in 1981. She exhibited modern and contemporary art by emerging and mid-career American artists. Artists include Sylvia Lark, Marshall Crossman, Susan Hauptman, Guy Diehl, Stanley Goldstein, and many more. Stone curated and mounted over 80 exhibitions until the gallery closed its doors in 1991. Stone subsequently worked as an art consultant, curating exhibitions and supporting attorneys with legal cases concerning art and artists' works. She currently serves on the faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Provenance:
The collection was donated in 2016 by Jeremy Stone, founder of the gallery.
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.
Art galleries, Commercial -- California -- San Francisco
Citation:
Jeremy Stone Gallery records, 1970-2005. 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.
Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America Search this
Type:
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Katherine Westphal, 2002 September 3-7. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
An interview of Katherine Westphal conducted 2002 September 3-7, by Carole Austin, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.
This interview took place in Berkeley, California. Westphal speaks of drawing every day; her rewarding education experience teaching at University of California, Davis' Applied Behavioral Sciences Department; her college encounters; the World Crafts Conference in Vienna in 1980; the significance of her travels in her artwork, including trips to Egypt, Hawaii, Wyoming, and Indonesia among others; her fascination with different types of art; the non-functional aspect of her artwork; the lack of necessity to sell artwork due to her job teaching, and the personal nature of her work not driven by a "craft market"; working for the textile industry; working with agent Frederick Karoly in New York; the considerable collection Daphne Farago has made of both Katherine's and her husband, Ed Rossbach's, artwork; her working environment; her storage condo; her most precious possession, her dogs; remodeling her Berkeley home and installing a glass elevator; the artist community at UC Davis and Fiberworks before it became a school; people she took workshops with at Fiberworks; a chronology of her work from the 1960s to present day; her and Ed's retirement in 1979 and their subsequent trip to Bali; her relationship with the home health care industry when Ed became sick; her development of baskets; her love of color; her artist in residency at Rhode Island School of Design in 1980, learning to work on the Jacquard loom; her very personal collection of postcards, which she created while on trips; her dog stories; several of the shows she has been in, including "Objects: USA" and "American Crafts at the Vatican"; the commission she completed for a hotel in Tokyo; and her copy machines and the various technological advances made during her career. Westphal also recalls Gyöngy Laky, Chere Lai Mah, Pat Hickman, Greg Lynn, Helen and Tio Giambruni, Jack Lenor Larsen and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Katherine Westphal (1919-2018) is a fiber artist in Berkeley, California. Carole Austin is an interviewer, curator, and writer in Orinda, California.
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:
This transcript is open for research. Contact Reference Services for more information.
