Woolfenden, William E. (William Edward), 1918-1995 Search this
Extent:
1 Sound tape reel (Sound recording, 7 in.)
52 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Sound tape reels
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
1966 Aug. 19
Scope and Contents:
An interview of James S. Holden conducted 1966 Aug. 19, by William E. Woolfenden, for the Archives of American Art.
Biographical / Historical:
James S. Holden resides in Grosse Pointe, Mich.
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.
Woolfenden, William E. (William Edward), 1918-1995 Search this
Extent:
65 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
1963 January 13
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Zoltan Sepeshy conducted by William E. Woolfenden on 1963 January 13 for the Archives of American Art.
Biographical / Historical:
Zoltan Sepeshy (1898-1974) was a painter.
General:
Originally recorded 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr., 4 min.
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.
An interview of Louis Bouché conducted on 1963 March 13, by William E. Woolfenden, for the Archives of American Art.
Bouché speaks of the Penguin Club, including Walt Kuhn's leadership, artists' balls, banquets and sketch classes; European artists at the Penguin Club including Jules Pascin, Albert Gleizes, and others; his association with the Daniel Gallery; his "lace curtain period"; his art education; teaching; working at Wanamaker's and the Folsom Gallery; Walter Arensberg's parties; and his father, Henri's career as a designer. Bouché recalls Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Wood Gaylor, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, John Quinn, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Louis Bouché (1896-1969) was a painter and teacher from New York, New York.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav file. Duration is 2 hr., 2 min.
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.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Genre/Form:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Burroughs, Clyde H. (Clyde Huntley), 1882-1973 Search this
Interviewer:
Woolfenden, William E. (William Edward), 1918-1995 Search this
Extent:
21 Pages (Transcript)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Pages
Sound recordings
Interviews
Date:
1961 June 1
Scope and Contents:
An interview of Clyde H. Burroughs conducted 1961 June 1, by William E. Woolfenden, for the Archives of American Art.
Biographical / Historical:
Clyde H. Burroughs (1882-1973) was an art administrator from Detroit, Michigan.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 34 min.
Sound quality is poor.
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:
Arts administrators -- Michigan -- Detroit -- Interviews Search this
An interview of William E. Woolfenden and Irving Burton conducted 1992 December 12, by Garnett McCoy for the Archives of American Art, concerning the development of the Archives of American Art.
Woolfenden speaks about E.P. Richardson and his intent in founding of the Archives of American Art; the earliest development and collecting activities; his role as assistant director and Richardson's role as director; receiving a Ford foundation grant and other early financial support; fundraising events; auctions; trustees; the founding of regional offices; early employees; forming an alliance with the Smithsonian Institution; and the impact of the AAA on American art history. Irving Burton discusses his involvement.
Biographical / Historical:
William E. Woolfenden (1918- 1995) was the director of the Archives of American Art from 1963-1983.
General:
Originally recorded on 1 sound cassette. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 35 min.
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:
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
Occupation:
Arts administrators -- Michigan -- Detroit -- Interviews Search this
An interview of William Woolfenden conducted 1983 March 17, by Ruth Gurin Bowman, for the Archives of American Art, in Pacific Palisades, California.
Biographical / Historical:
William E. Woolfenden (1918- 1995) was the director of the Archives of American Art from 1963-1983.
General:
Originally recorded on 2 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 4 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr., 1 min.
Provenance:
These interviews are 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 others.
Occupation:
Arts administrators -- Michigan -- Detroit -- Interviews Search this
Primarily photographs of works exhibited in Michigan Artist Craftsmen exhibits at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1950-1956, and Designer Craftsmen U.S.A. 1953 for which Woolfenden was a juror. Many of the photographs have labels identifying the museum holding the work, the artists' name, and year exhibiting. Some printed material, notecards and other documentation relating to the 1953 Designer Craftsmen exhibit are also found, primarily relating to the Michigan artists represented and the Michigan regional exhibitions. Also found are miscellaneous photographs, including one of Woolfenden with fellow judge Sarkis Sarkesian holding winning covers for the 4th annual Yearbook of the Newspaper Guild of Detroit, one of Woolfenden at a typewriter labeled Yearbook Staff 1940, and one of Woolfenden holding a bowl with a group of women identified as Museum and Television Party, 1949; twenty-four clippings are of articles by and about Woolfenden, circa 1938-1956 and his obituary, 1995; three illustrated letters from Detroit artist Cyril Miles to Woolfenden (ca. 1967); and a letter from Morris Graves, 1964, reflecting on meeting Woolfenden with Una Johnson, and "those days in St. Paul... wouldn't it be great sport if the three of us were sometime asked to 'do it again'."
Biographical / Historical:
William E. Woolfenden (1918- 1995) was the director of the Archives of American Art from 1963-1983.
Provenance:
Donated July 1980 by William E. Woolfenden.
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.
The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of art historian E. P. Richardson measure 28.7 linear feet and date from 1814-1996, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1921-1996. Within the papers are scattered biographical materials; acquisition files for Richardson's personal art collection; professional and personal correspondence with colleagues, art historians and critics, artists, museums, galleries, and dealers; numerous writings, including manuscripts and research files for his published books, articles, and lectures; general research notebooks and files compiled by Richardson on a wide variety of art-related topics and artists; professional and committee files; as well as a smaller amount of Constance C. Richardson's papers.
Biographical materials include certificates, awards, and honorary degrees, membership information, personal and family photographs, a few sketches, and a transcript of an oral history Interview with E.P. Richardson conducted by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1982.
There are acquisitions files for the Richardsons' personal art collection that invoices, photographs, correspondence with galleries and collectors, appraisals, price lists, and artwork examination forms.
Correspondence is with colleagues, art dealers, collectors, museums and museum curators, foreign scholars, organizations, galleries, artists, art historians and critics, publishers, editors, librarians, friends, and family. Topics regard purchasing art for various collections, consultations about art and collecting including authentications and attributions, publishing, general art history, lectures, and personal matters, among other topics. There is correspondence with the Archives of American Art, Castano Galleries, Lawrence Fleischman, James Thomas Flexner, Alfred V. Frankenstein, George Croce, Walter Heil, Earl Krentzin, Wilmarth Lewis, Russel Lynes, John Francis McDermott, Philadelphia Museum of Art, J. Hall Pleasants, Anna Rutledge, Charles Sellers, Smithsonian Institution, Regina Soria, Victor Spark, William Stevens, Robert Vose, William Woolfenden, and many others. Scattered correspondence with artists is with Isabel Bishop, Louis Bouche, William Bostick, Eve Garrison, Edward Hopper, Irene Jungwirth, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Hughie Lee-Smith, Reginald Marsh, Gerald Mast, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Walt Speck, and John Wedda, among many others. The greatest extent of correspondence is with Andrew Wyeth, Harold Cohn, and Frederick Simper. There is also personal correspondence with family and friends, and between E.P. and Constance Richardson.
E.P. Richardson's prominence as an art historian, writer, and expert on collecting is well documented through his prolific writings. Materials include drafts, notes, typescripts, and outlines for articles, exhibition catalog essays, and lectures. Also found are research files and publishing documentation for Richardson's books, including Washington Allston: A Study of the Romantic Artist in America (1948), Painting in America (1956), Charles Willson Peale and his World (1983), and American Romantic Painting (1944). There are also miscellaneous notes and four diaries. Two of the diaries comment on the social and cultural life of Detroit; the authenticity of paintings; Richardson's reflections on contemporary American painting, thoughts about museums, dealers, artists, and art historians (especially Wilhelm R. Valentiner); and travel.
Notebooks compiled by Richardson on a wide variety art-related topics cover nearly six decades. There are also numerous research files organized Richardson about individual artists and art history. And, the art collector files contain reference materials about art collectors and their collections including Lamont du Pont Copeland, Michael W. Freeman, Nelson Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Allen, and the Marquis de Somerlous. There are three index card file boxes containing bibliographic data on published books and articles.
Professional and committee files document Richardson's professional and consulting work for the Art Quarterly, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Collection of Fine Arts, the National Portrait Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the John D. Rockefeller III collection, Winterthur Museum, the White House, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Constance C. Richardson's papers include business and professional correspondence with various institutions, most extensively with the Macbeth Gallery. In addition, there is a smaller amount of personal correspondence, photographs and slides of her artworks, printed materials, two illustrated notebooks on her work, and miscellaneous notes. Also included is Constance's artist palette.
Biographical / Historical:
Art historian, museum director, and writer E. P. (Edgar Preston) Richardson (1902-1985) served as director of the Detroit Institute of Arts (1945-1962) and Winterthur Museum (1963-1966). He was also a board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1966-1977 and, in 1954, co-founded the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
E. P. Richardson was born in 1902 in Glens Falls, New York and died in Philadelphia in 1985. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1925 and studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for the three years following graduation. In 1930 he became educational secretary at the Detroit Institute of Arts, was quickly named assistant director in 1933, and served as director from 1945 to 1962. He left Detroit to take the position of director of the Winterthur Museum, where he remained until 1966.
Richardson married Constance Coleman in 1931. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1905, Constance Coleman Richardson was an award-winning and widely exhibited realist style painter of American landscapes. She gave up painting in the 1960s and died in 2002.
While at the Detroit Institute of Arts, E. P. Richardson co-founded the Archives of American Art with Lawrence Fleischman, and served as the Archives' first director. Richardson was also art advisor to John D. Rockefeller III for over ten years, editor of Art Quarterly from 1938 to 1967, and a member of various boards, including the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian Arts Commission, and the National Portrait Gallery. He authored numerous books including ones on artists Washington Allston and Charles Willson Peale, and The Way of Western Art: American Romantic Painting (1939), Painting in America: The Story of Four Hundred and Fifty Years (1956), A Short History of Painting in America (1963), and American Art, an Exhibition of the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, 3d (1976).
Related Materials:
Related collections among the holdings of the Archives of American Art include an interview with E.P. Richardson dated February 6, 1978 conducted by Linda Downs; and several miscellaneous manuscripts that include an E.P. Richardson Letter to Rockwell Kent, June 15 1959; E.P. Richardson letters to Lawrence Arthur Fleischman, May 13, 1962 and August 22 1954; and a Yasuo Kunioshi letter to E.P. Richardson, July 25 1948.
Additional E.P. Richardson papers are found at the Detroit Institute of Arts and in the archives of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
Separated Materials:
The Archives of American Art also holds material lent for microfilming (reel D46) including E.P. Richardson's research material on Jeremiah P. Hardy. These materials are housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library and are not described in the collection container inventory.
Provenance:
Edith Wilkinson first donated a letter to E. P. Richardson from herself in 1957. E.P. Richardson donated papers to the Archives of American Art in 1958 and 1960 and lent materials for microfilming in 1961. Addition material was donated by Constance Richardson in 1985, and by Martha Fleischman in 2003.
Restrictions:
Use of original material requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. 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.
The papers of public relations consultant and journalist Emily Nathan measure 5.0 linear feet and date from circa 1943-1985. Included are files on clients, among them Towle Manufacturing and its gallery; the Smithsonian Institution, including the Archives of American Art, Radio Smithsonian and the National Portrait Gallery.
Interviews conducted by Nathan for Radio Smithsonian include New York, N.Y. cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg (1883-1970), 1970; art historian and writer Richard B. K. McLanathan, 1970; Director of the Archives of American Art William E. Woolfenden, 1970, Abram Lerner, Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, and art collector Joseph Hirshhorn, 1969. Also found is an interview of William Woolfenden May 6, 1983 upon his retirement as Director of the Archives of American Art.
Among the correspondence are letters to Georgia O'Keeffe regarding a pending oral history with the sculptors Dorothy Dehner and David Smith and a letter from museum administrator and lecturer Daniel Catton Rich expressing his pleasure at having met Jannis and Zoe Spyropoulous in Athens, Greece and describes the painting by Jannis that he purchased for the Worcester Art Museum. The majority of the photographs are of personalities long associated with the Archives of American Art. There are two photographs of Jasper Johns, and one each of Mark Rothko and Tony Smith, all taken by Hans Namuth, 1960.
Also found is a folder of material assembled by Nathan regarding Jose de Creeft's story, as told to Nathan, of his pet rooster, intended by Nathan to be submitted for publication under the title "Roosty Was My Friend." Included are an introduction by Nathan, providing biographical information on de Creeft; sample text for the story (2 pages) and an outline for the remainder (3 pages), 24 drawings by de Creeft illustrating the story; and a photograph of de Creeft with a wire sculpture of Roosty, 1957, taken by Budd studio.
Biographical / Historical:
Emily Nathan (1907-1999) was a journalist and public relations consultant specializing in arts and cultural heritage institutions.
Provenance:
Donated 1973-1988 by Emily Nathan and in 2000 by the Emily Nathan estate, via Edgar S. Nathan, III, executor. The letter to Nathan from Daniel Catton Rich was donated by Rich, 1977.
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.
Proceedings of the Archives of American Art's twenty-fifth anniversary dinner, held in Washington, D.C., November 8, 1979. Speakers include S. Dillon Ripley, Gilbert Kinney, W. E. Woolfenden and Eloise Spaeth.
General:
Originally recorded on reel-to-reel tape. Reformatted in 2010.
Funding note:
Funding for the digital preservation of this recording was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Collection Restrictions:
Use requires an appointment.
Sponsor:
Funding for the digital preservation of these recordings was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.
Wanamaker Gallery of Modern Decorative Art Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Louis Bouché, 1963 March 13. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews Search this
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with William E. Woolfenden and Irving Burton, 1992 December 12. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with William Woolfenden, 1983 March 17. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
No access restrictions Many of SIA's holdings are located off-site, and advance notice is recommended to consult a collection. Please email the SIA Reference Team at osiaref@si.edu
William E. (William Edward) Woolfenden. W.E. Woolfenden letter to James Valliere, 1963 July 19. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, circa 1914-1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
William E. (William Edward) Woolfenden. William E. Woolfenden, New York, N.Y. to Baruj Salinas, Barcelona, Spain, 1982 Sept. 28. Baruj Salinas papers, 1971-1996. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
