When Archives of American Art acting director Liza Kirwin invited me to be the guest curator of a show celebrating Jackson Pollock’s centenary, I jumped at the chance to dive into the original documents. The digitized collection is a fantastic resource, but there’s nothing like the real thing to take you into the artist’s world. One drawback, however: I live on eastern Long Island, and the documents are in Washington, DC, quite a curatorial commute. But by traveling via the Internet to the material online, I was able to make a preliminary selection, so I knew what I was looking for when I got to the Archives and hit the boxes.
One file that caught my eye is labeled “Fan Mail to Pollock.” In it is a letter from a woman named Helen K. Sellers of Charleston, SC, written on August 8, 1949. That was the publication date of the now–famous Life magazine article on Pollock, headlined, “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Mrs. Sellers wrote on behalf of her seven year–old son, Manning, who loved one of the paintings in the color spread, the long canvas identified as Number Nine. (It’s now called Summertime: Number 9A, 1948, and it’s in the Tate Modern in London.) Manning asked her to tell Pollock that he’d put it in his scrapbook, “the first painting that he has ever cut out,” and that he wanted Pollock to have his picture in exchange—not a painting, but a photograph of him with his cocker spaniel, Snafu. I’ll bet Pollock never had a more heartfelt and sincere tribute. He kept the letter and the photo, and there they were, 63 years later, in the Fan Mail file.
Well, Manning may have fallen in love with Number Nine, but I fell in love with Manning and Snafu. Not only did I want the documents in the show, but I thought that Manning would like to know about it. Again thanks to the Internet I was able to track him down in Florida. He was surprised to hear from me, and thrilled to learn that his fan letter has survived—although Snafu has long since gone to that great dog park in the sky.
“Memories Arrested in Space, a centennial tribute to Jackson Pollock from the Archives of American Art” will be on view from January 28–May 15 in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (8th and F Streets NW, Washington, D.C.). Admission is free.
[Dodge House 1916], 1965 / Esther McCoy and Robert Snyder. 16 mm : 1 film reel : sd., col. ; 16 mm. Esther McCoy papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
As a writer researching a writer I revere, working with the Esther McCoy papers is an incomparable experience: the more I learn, the better it gets. Best–known for her landmark book Five California Architects (1960), McCoy identified the distinctly West Coast roots of American modernist architecture. Among that book’s featured five was Irving J. Gill (1870–1936), a master of machine age efficiency, essential forms, and refined aesthetics. Although Gill’s designs boldly anticipated mid–century modernism, his reputation was sadly eclipsed within his own lifetime.
When McCoy started researching Gill’s architecture during the early 1950s, she sought out his unheralded buildings, interviewed his surviving colleagues and supporters, published articles about his work, and curated a retrospective of his work (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1958). Following the Irving Gill trail through the McCoy papers is a riveting and often heart–breaking saga. Throughout the 1960s, McCoy spearheaded a campaign to save Gill’s Walter L. Dodge House (1916)—the first truly modernist residence in the West, a stunning 6,500 square foot house on nearly three landscaped acres in the heart of West Hollywood. In 1939, the house and grounds were acquired by the city of Los Angeles through eminent domain and a municipal order set to build a school on the site. The school plan, however, was soon abandoned and the property shuffled between city and county agencies. For years, the house remained intact and was used as classrooms by a technical college: institutional–scale baking was taught in the kitchen and apprentice car mechanics practiced their trade on the grounds.
By 1963, the Los Angeles Board of Education declared the Dodge House “surplus” and the County Board of Supervisors re–zoned the area from R–1 to R–4, from single–family homes to apartment buildings. While the street underwent a radical condominium–ization, the Dodge House was slated for the wrecking ball. Unannounced, on a February morning in 1970, the entire property was demolished. A neighbor who witnessed the destruction reported: “I went out in the morning and when I came back two hours later the wrecking crew was there. They beat it and beat it and it wouldn’t go down. It was like an animal being beaten. They kept beating and beating and it finally cracked up. The trees didn’t want to go either but they beat them until by late afternoon everything was gone.” Gill believed that a “house should be simple, plain, and substantial as a boulder.” The Dodge House, with its serenely unadorned surfaces and eight inch thick reinforced concrete walls, was the fulfillment of that vision. Then, in a single day, it was gone forever.
Among McCoy’s papers, I came across a print of the 1965 film she’d written and produced as part of her campaign to save the Dodge House. Directed by Robert Snyder (1916-2004), an Academy Award–winning documentarian and son–in–law of Buckminster Fuller, this film—like the house itself—was almost lost. The Snyder collection at the Motion Picture Academy holds just one print, a silent, reversal master that can’t be screened. Baylis Glascock, the young filmmaker who served as the project’s camera man/editor/general factotum, didn’t own a copy and had reached various dead ends while searching for one. McCoy’s personal copy, a 16 mm reel inside a splitting cardboard box held together by a desiccated rubber band, had been in archival storage for more than 20 years; and I had no way of knowing what shape that print was in, when it was last projected, or whether it had been damaged over time by ordinary household indignities—spilled coffee, dust bunnies, or ashes from stray cigarettes. When I expressed my concerns to Megan McShea, the Archives of American Art’s audiovisual archivist, she took McCoy’s Dodge House film under her remarkably sympathetic and tech–savvy wing.
With a grant from the Women in Film Preservation Fund, Megan ingeniously facilitated the restoration of this important film. In the autumn of 2011, I presented the new, beautifully restored print twice: at the R.M Schindler House (1922) on Kings Road in West Hollywood, a block away from where the Dodge House once stood, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during their annual film preservation program. Each time, the audience reaction was tremendously moving: people were astonished by Gill’s design, McCoy’s awareness and dedication, and Glascock’s tender view of a now vanished place. In the Dodge House, Gill had tinted the plaster walls to capture changing shadows and daylight. His windows and porches framed garden views, mosaic–tiled fountains, and distant mountain vistas. The house’s cabinetry conveyed a Shaker simplicity; the Honduran mahogany glowed as warm as amber. As architectural historian Robert Winter, a dear friend and colleague of McCoy’s lamented recently, recalling the demolition: “If only they had warned us. I remember Esther called and said, ‘if we’d known, we could have at least taken out the banisters and saved them.’ ”
In McCoy’s script for the Dodge House film, the final lines are strong and poignant: “We prize the distant past,” she observed. “But if the immediate past is ripped away there will be no distant past for the future. Our heritage is diminished. And there is a hole in the fabric of history.” Hearing those words, I’m reminded once again of my gratitude to the Archives of American Art and how I much I treasure McCoy’s life and work.
Writer Susan Morgan is a contributing editor at Aperture and East of Borneo. Her research into the life and work of Esther McCoy has received support from the Graham Foundation for the Advancement of Art and Architecture, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, and the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. She is editor of the forthcoming anthologyPiecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Readerand, with Kimberli Meyer, co-curator ofSympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design(MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House), closing January 29, 2012. Morgan lives in Los Angeles.
I learned about the history of art in a dark class room, straining to hear the professor’s voice over the hum of slide projectors. I’ll admit that given the circumstances, I occasionally nodded off. But I can’t complain, because the great thing about art is that it’s relatively easy on the eyes, especially during the holiday season. Art is a respite from the visual bombardment of your neighbor’s attempt to outdo Clark Griswold’s light display, the onslaught of wacky holiday sweaters in department stores, and even the sting of mace in your eyes from a less than festive shopper.
Strolling through a museum is always a welcome activity, but I find it even more exciting to stumble upon a handmade holiday card while conducting research at the Archives of American Art. Within hundreds of collections are imaginative holiday cards that express the artistic idioms of their creators. Many artists found inspiration from the history of art for their annual holiday cards. With these cards as my evidence, I present a history of art that you won’t find in stuffy classrooms: *
During the Romanesque and Byzantine periods, depictions of the Virgin and Child were hardly flattering. Don Baum, a key figure of the Chicago Imagist movement, was especially drawn to these inimitable Christian icons. For his holiday collage to fellow Chicago artists, Kathleen Blackshear and Ethel Spears, he enlivened a clipping of the dour looking duo by sketching them in a cozy nest. At least Baum’s composition explains why the Baby Jesus appears to be hanging onto his mother for dear life.
The Archangel Michael was the Leonardo DiCaprio of the Renaissance period because angels flocked to him. The only difference is that today’s angels are of the Victoria’s Secret variety. In a holiday card to installation artist David Ireland, Heidi Everhart digitally plucked angels from Renaissance paintings to create her own composition. At the center of the card is Jan van Eyck’s inimitable portrayal of the Archangel Michael in his magnum opus, The Ghent Altarpiece.
During the Renaissance period, cherub models unionized for better working conditions. As a result, painters like Raphael had to provide breaks for the winged models of his masterpiece, Sistine Madonna. While on break, the cherubs let loose by smoking cigarettes and drinking wine. Chicago artist Julia Thecla painted these off–duty cherubs on her holiday card to Kathleen Blackshear and Ethel Spears.
During the Impressionist period, sculptor Auguste Rodin earned acclaim for his work, The Thinker. According to the history books, this work depicts a philosopher deep in thought. But as artist Ralph Fabri reveals in his holiday etching, Rodin really based his work on a ponderous Santa Claus.
Van Gogh’s vivid painting of his bedroom at Arles is one of the finest examples of Expressionism. Indeed, the room was so disconcerting to its contemporary audience that when Santa Claus entered in 1888 to deliver Van Gogh’s gift—a pair of ear muffs—he temporarily lost his balance and had to sit down. Cuban American painter Arturo Rodriguez portrayed this little told story on his holiday postcard to Miami journalist Helen Kohen.
Primarily known for his provocative Cubist paintings, Picasso also earned critical acclaim for his Blue and Rose Periods. Art historians have recently discovered paintings from Picasso’s less known Prude Period in which he censored many of his prior masterpieces. For the holidays of 1960, sculptor Louise Nevelson sent poets Elise Asher and Stanley Kunitz her own interpretation of Picasso’s Prude Period.
How might artists illustrate art of the twenty–first century? Time will tell. Let’s just hope Damien Hirst stays away from Rudolph. Happy holidays from the Archives of American Art!
Mary Savig is an Archives Specialist in the curatorial department. Her book, Season’s Greetings: Handmade Holiday Cards by 20th Century Artists will be published by Smithsonian Books in 2012.
In November 2007, I was assigned the task of processing the Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art records with funding provided by The Brown Foundation. In 2010, funding to digitize parts of the collection became available from the Terra Foundation Center for Digital Collections at the Archives of American Art. So for this past year, significant portions of the collection, specifically the Exhibitions and International Series (Series 3 and 4) and the correspondence of the first two directors, John Beatty and Homer Saint–Gaudens, have been digitized. Now, a mere four years from that November 2007 start date, I'm happy to announce that the collection is completed and open for researcher use.
Dating from 1886–1962 and measuring 264 linear feet, this collection is a complete record of the museum’s work, starting with the planning of the first loan exhibition in 1885 and ending with the cancellation of the International at the start of World War II in 1940.
As with many organizations, the Carnegie Museum of Art retired their “active” correspondence and records every two years and kept general correspondence separate from their International and Exhibitions related correspondence. While they kept meticulous card catalogs that tracked all incoming correspondence, because the records were broken into two year groupings, anyone looking to track down all of the correspondence related to a specific artist or exhibition spent an awful lot of time figuring out the system and pulling a lot of boxes. If they were interested in records dating pre–1907, they were really in for an adventure as letters were item/group level coded in a system that evolved from year to year. Cecilia Beaux, a popular artist and friend to both early Carnegie directors, had correspondence filed in 24 separate record storage boxes. While this does not include any of her letters in the Exhibitions or International Series, researchers can now come into the reading room, request one box, and peruse five folders worth of her correspondence to and from the Carnegie. It’s kind of a beautiful thing.
Over the course of 45 years worth of correspondence, one gets a feel for the staff of the Carnegie, particularly the directors. John Beatty comes across as a dedicated director, sending out reams of correspondence to artists and keeping the ship running. It’s almost unfair to compare, but in reading the letters, Homer Saint–Gaudens comes across as the witty, friendly, and popular fraternity brother who loves to tell jokes and write long cogent letters. There’s also no end to the drama and office gossip, such as the assistant director who may or may not have absconded with a “black book,” the commissioned painting of Andrew Carnegie that led to a flurry of memos regarding its questionable quality, and the many opinions expressed by artists regarding the success or failure of purchases, exhibitions, and the International (case in point, see jury objections in Box 219, Folder 11 in the International Series). And this doesn’t even begin to touch the voluminous letters of confidence exchanged between Saint–Gaudens and his European scouting representatives, Guillaume Lerolle, Charlotte Weidler, Margaret Palmer, Ilario Neri, and Arnold Palmer, some of which are available through his correspondence (see Box 125, Folder 27 in the Correspondence Series).
In this collection, correspondence highlights include the autobiographical recounting of George de Forest Brush’s time among the Shoshone and Arapaho, Thomas Eakin’s perfectly penned letter describing his Portrait of Professor Henry Rowland, and Mary Cassatt’s radical call to arms encouraging the rejection of the artist jury system.
Visit our reading room to check out the files for over 3900 artists, dealers, collectors, museum directors, and critics in the Correspondence Series or research the internal memos and correspondence of the Carnegie’s Department of Fine Arts staff. Or, click over to the materials that are currently available online, the letters and planning documents related to 185 group and one–man shows in the Exhibitions Series and the complete records of the Carnegie International, including artist ballots, invitations, and planning documents in the International Series. It’s a terrific collection full of real gems, many of them ready to be used and discovered for the first time.
Judy Ng is a processing archivist at the Archives of American Art.
I think you are the bee’s knees. We’ve never met, but you taught art history at my alma mater, Oberlin College, for almost 40 years. I became an art history major there after you retired and it seemed like every corner I turned, I ran into something you had contributed to the institution. Hanging in the college’s art museum was your portrait painted by Alice Neel (I hope you liked it—there’s something about it that makes you look like a real mensch).
I used to walk past Claes Oldenburg’s Giant Three-Way Plug, the sculpture you commissioned, on my way to the art library, and I visited the Frank Lloyd Wright house you restored and donated to the college. But most importantly, I have to thank you for founding the Art Rental program. As a grubby college student it meant so much that you’d trust me and my fellow undergrads to keep original works by Picasso, Chagall, Warhol, and many other hugely significant artists in our dorm rooms, and charge us no more than $5 a piece to do it.
So, after all this, when I started working at the Archives of American Art, I naturally felt a little starstruck when I realized that we have your papers! Looking through them has been fascinating. I knew you were active in the art world, but I didn’t realize how close you were with so many different artists. I think it’s so neat that Roy Lichtenstein sent you the original source materials for two of his paintings. And what’s this about you giving a hippopotamus figurine to William Wegman? I’d love to know the inside joke behind that one!
Anyway, I heard that it would have been your 101st birthday this Friday, so I just wanted to say: happy birthday and thank you again for being so great.
Wishing you all the best,
Bettina Smith
Bettina Smith is the librarian for digital projects at the Archives and a long–time fan of Ellen Johnson.
Laumeier Sculpture Park, October 2011. Photo: Julie Schweitzer.
The Way, October 2011. Photo: Julie Schweitzer.
A young would-be climber, October, 2011. Photo: Julie Schweitzer.
Growing up in St. Louis, my favorite sculpture to visit at Laumeier Sculpture Park was Alexander Liberman’sThe Way. Its monumental size and color thrilled me. When I was little, I must have thought the oil drums looked like giant toys, or else I was reminded of a jungle gym, because I was always trying to climb the sculpture despite clearly posted instructions not to. In high school, my friends and I would sometimes picnic near the sculpture, both because we liked it and because it was the most easily identifiable rendezvous point: “We’ll be at the giant red one. See you there.” (Also because we still liked to try to climb it.)
After moving away from St. Louis, I hadn’t given the sculpture park much thought until I started processing the André Emmerich Gallery records here at the Archives—I am currently in the final year of a three year project to fully process the collection. André Emmerich represented Alexander Liberman in the United States, exhibited his paintings in the gallery, and installed some of his sculptures in Emmerich’s private sculpture park in upstate New York.
While sorting through photographs in the gallery’s records, I stumbled across two snapshots of Liberman’s The Way, which made me nostalgic for home. The gallery’s inventory card for the sculpture is not very informative, but a couple of clippings from 1980 describe how the now iconic work was initially considered by critics to be a piece of junk in a junkyard. The critics were only partly right. The sculpture is composed of eighteen salvaged steel oil tanks painted cadmium red. It took Liberman’s crew eight trips to move the tanks to St. Louis from his studio in Connecticut, and it took four weeks to install the artwork in an area of the park now called “Way Field.” The Way measures 65 feet tall, 102 feet wide, and 100 feet deep, and it weighs an impressive 55 tons.
During a recent trip to St. Louis, I took my family to visit The Way and can affirm that it looks nothing like junk at all. It is still towering and beautiful, and it has just benefited from conservation efforts that included a power wash, prime, and fresh coat of red paint, just in time for the St. Louis Cardinals’ 11 th World Series win! Unfortunately the shiny red sculpture still poses a temptation for young would–be climbers.
Julie Schweitzer is a processing archivist at the Archives of American Art. The André Emmerich Gallery Records are currently closed to the public during processing. The Archives of American Art expects to open the André Emmerich Gallery Records to researchers in the summer of 2012.
Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.
In episode 2 of “I Found it in the Archives,” Processing Archivist, Jayna Hanson, shares her creepiest finds from the William Seitz papers.
Jayna Hanson is a processing archivist at the Archives of American Art and an aspiring royal.
Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.
Although the Archives of American Art fits the category of manuscript repository, the definition does not limit our holdings to handwritten documents. Published materials, while not always rare, are often found among the collections. Art periodicals find their way to the Archives in papers of artists, critics, editors, writers, art historians, administrators, and illustrators, occasionally in complete runs.
Arts administrator Mildred Baker, although best known for her work with Holger Cahill on federal art projects, donated her set of nine issues of Playboy: a portfolio of art and satire that ran from 1919 to 1924. They feature many original hand–pulled woodcuts and linocuts contributed by George Biddle, Jerome Blum, James Chapin, Adolf Dehn, William Gropper, Alfred Maurer, Boardman Robinson, John Storrs, F. Vollaton, Max Weber, and Marguerite and William Zorach. Ezra Pound, Dorothy Parker, and Robert C. Benchley are among the many well known literary contributors.
As a champion of art photography, critic Elizabeth McCausland passed on to the Archives several volumes of Camera Work, a photography periodical edited by Alfred Stieglitz published in New York between 1903 and 1917. These were combined with scattered issues received by other donors to result in holdings of thirty–three issues out of the fifty published.
The Archives also holds a number of important published materials reflecting politically turbulent times. More than one half of the
William Gropper papers consist of publications featuring his illustrations, including New Masses, Liberator, and Der Hammer. And, issues of Art Front, published from 1934 to 1937 by the Artists’ Union, containing illustrations, articles, and cartoons by numerous artists, are found in multiple collections held by the Archives. A nearly complete run was also donated by Dewey Albinson, a WPA administrator from Minnesota.
In the past, given the non–unique status of publications, it was not an uncommon practice to separate published materials from their original collection during archival processing. In some cases they were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and, in others, they remained uncataloged. A project to identify and catalog these publications remaining at the Archives is currently underway, supported by a grant from the Smithsonian’s Collection Information System fund, established by an Act of Congress in 1998 to support the development and enhancement of Library, Archives, and Museums online catalogs and websites. Issues of little magazines from the 1920s such as Broom, Rhythm, The Dial, along with dozens of other periodicals, exhibition catalogs, brochures, bulletins, and books dating from 1790 through 1945 will soon be described, and in some cases, digitized.
Karen Weiss is the Information Resources Manager at the Archives of American Art.
Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.
Curator of Manuscripts, Liza Kirwin continues her exploration of the relationship between artist William T. Wiley, and his high school art teacher James McGrath in this episode of “I Found it in the Archives.” In 1956 Wiley was editor of the Columbian, his high school yearbook, and McGrath served as faculty advisor. The Archives of American Art holds McGrath’s copy, which Wiley signed demonstrating his fondness for his early mentor.
Liza Kirwin, who is currently Acting Director, has served as an archives technician, a regional collector, and the curator of manuscripts at the Archives of American Art. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park and manages the Archives’ exhibition, acquisition, and oral history programs. She is the author of numerous articles and books about the Archives’ holdings. Her most recent publication, Lists: To–dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), is also a traveling exhibition, most recently at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.
In this episode of “I Found it in the Archives,” Curator of Manuscripts, Liza Kirwin explores the relationship between artist William T. Wiley and his high school art teacher, James McGrath, through the lens of this highly inventive yearbook. Wiley was on the yearbook staff, and McGrath was the faculty advisor for the 1955 Columbian, at Columbia High School in Richland, Washington.
Liza Kirwin, who is currently Acting Director, has served as an archives technician, a regional collector, and the curator of manuscripts at the Archives of American Art. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park and manages the Archives’ exhibition, acquisition, and oral history programs. She is the author of numerous articles and books about the Archives’ holdings. Her most recent publication, Lists: To–dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), is also a traveling exhibition, most recently at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
