Archives of American Art Blog

Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art: A History through Letters

Catalog card for Cecilia Beaux, between 1907 and 1908. Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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.

Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia, Pa. letter to Caroline Stuyvesant Lapsley, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1902 Jan. 2. Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Mary Cassatt letter to Albert Dakin Gihon, ca. 1905. Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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.

An archivist’s work is never done!

The ten year journey to digitize the records of Jacques Seligmann & Co.

In 2001, a project team of archivists put the final touches on a published edition of the Finding Aid to the Records of the Jacques Seligmann & Co., 1904-1978. The project archivists were many: Barbara Aikens, Stephanie Ashley, Pat Craig, and Rosa Fernandez. Even more archivists and volunteers worked over a challenging three year period to preserve, arrange, and describe the 203 linear feet collection; some left along the way…some went running after only a week!

Project Archivist Stephanie Ashley

Funding for the project, however, remained stable thanks to the support of The Getty Foundation. At that time, the Seligmann gallery archive was the largest collection ever fully processed by the Archives.

Just two years later, the Archives made the finding aid one of the first available on its website. Since then, the collection has remained one of our most heavily used resources, particularly for provenance research.

The company’s clients included most of the major art collectors of the era, and the art that passed through its galleries often ended up in prominent American and European museums through the benefactors who acquired their collections through the gallery.

Page from the gallery’s ‘Price Quote Notebooks’ showing sales to Alfred Barr and the Museum of Modern Art between 1941 and 1945. Jacques Seligmann & Co. records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Now, a full ten years later, this collection represents yet another “first” for the Archives of American Art.

With the visionary support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art, we have digitized the collection in its entirety, and it is now fully accessible: all 203 linear feet and 330,749 digital files, making it the largest collection ever digitized by the Archives of American Art.

As project director for the initial processing and finding aid and the later digitization of the collection, nothing could be more rewarding than coming full circle and seeing this incredibly rich resource fully accessible to our researchers online.

So, stay in your P.J.s, grab a cup of coffee, and view the Records of Jacques Seligmann & Co in our virtual reading room!

Barbara Aikens is the Chief of Collections Processing at the Archives of American Art.

Artists of the Harlem Renaissance

Fully Digitized Collections Document African American Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century

In honor of Black History Month, the Archives of American Art is highlighting our rich collection of papers documenting African American art in the twentieth century, particularly the papers of artists who began their careers during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. All of the artists’ papers discussed in this blog post have been fully digitized and are available to researchers online.

Bal Noir de Paris, between 1925 and 1970. Palmer C. Hayden papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

William H. Johnson painting near the cathedral at Chartres, ca. 1927 / unidentified photographer. William H. Johnson papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Romare Bearden in Harlem, ca. 1950 / unidentified photographer. Romare Bearden papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Jacob Lawrence to Romare Bearden, 3 Apr. 1971. Romare Bearden papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The Negro mother and other dramatic recitations, 1931. Prentiss Taylor papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The papers of Palmer C. Hayden include 32 diaries, correspondence, photographs, and 47 sketchbooks documenting a period of nearly forty years. Hayden won first prize for “Distinguished Achievement among Negroes” at the Harmon Foundation’s first awards ceremony in 1926, and he used that award to continue his studies in Paris. When he returned to New York in 1932 he worked for the Treasury Relief Art Project and the Works Progress Administration. As indicated by his numerous sketchbooks, Hayden used Harlem and Paris as inspiration for his paintings of African American life.

Like Hayden, William H. Johnson studied painting in New York and France during the 1920s. While in France he had the opportunity to meet African American expatriate painter Henry Ossawa Tanner and was greatly impressed by his work.

The William H. Johnson papers include biographical material, exhibition catalogs, photographs, and scrapbooks which primarily document the period that he lived in Europe with his wife, Danish artist Holcha Krake, his work for the WPA as a painting teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center, and his career in New York during the 1940s.

Painter and muralist Charles Henry Alston was an active member of the Harlem art community as a director of the Harlem Art Workshop and as a founder of the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1950, he became the first African American instructor at the Art Students League.

Alston’s small collection, the Charles Henry Alston papers, primarily documents his later career as an artist and educator and includes letters from Harlem Renaissance figures and personal friends Romare Bearden, Byron Brown, Jacob Lawrence, Hale Woodruff, and Dr. Louis T. Wright.

Jacob Lawrence was a student of Charles Alston at the Harlem Art Worshop, and gained early success as a painter of African American history. Edith Halpert exhibited “The Migration Series” at her Downtown Gallery in 1941 establishing Lawrence as the first African American artist to exhibit in a top New York gallery.

The Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight papers include extensive correspondence with friends, artists, students, art schools, galleries, museums, as well as writings by Lawrence, news clippings, exhibition catalogs, and photographs.

Romare Bearden grew up in Harlem, surrounded by the cultural explosion of the 1920s. During the 1930s he studied art, worked as a cartoonist, and was a member of the Harlem Artists Guild. Until his retirement in 1969, Bearden worked as a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at night and on weekends.

In 1964, Bearden became the first art director of the newly established Harlem Cultural Council, and served as an active spokesman and writer on artistic and social issues. The Romare Bearden papers include numerous letters referring to African American art movements of the 1960s and 1970, writings by Bearden, photographs, drawings, and printed material.

Also available online is the digitized microfilm of the Prentiss Taylor papers. During his time in New York, Taylor developed close friendships with poet Langston Hughes and writer Carl Van Vechten. While working as a lithographer and printmaker, he collaborated with Hughes in the formation of the Golden Stair Press to produce publications reflecting the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Prentiss Taylor papers contain extensive subject/correspondence files, which include correspondence with Hughes and Van Vechten, as well as numerous photographs of notable Harlem Renaissance figures, many taken by Van Vechten.

Erin Corley is a processing archivist at the Archives of American Art

Explore Further:

• Blog post on Romare Bearden's Map of Paris
  
• Oral History interview with Charles Henry Alston, 1968 Oct. 19
  
• Oral history interview with Jacob Lawrence, 1968 Oct. 26
  
• Oral history interview with Romare Bearden, 1968 June 29
• Archives of American Art Collections by Topic - African American
  

100th Digitized Collection Online!

The Hiram Powers papers have become the 100th fully digitized collection available to researchers online as part of the Terra Foundation for American Art Digitization Project.

Hiram Powers with sculpture bust of the Roman goddess Proserpine, ca. 1861. Hiram Powers Papers, 1819-1953, Hiram Powers papers, 1819-1953, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Andrew Jackson letter to Hiram Powers, December 7, 1835, Hiram Powers Papers, 1819-1953, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

American sculptor Hiram Powers (1805-1873) was born in Woodstock, Vermont, and lived and worked briefly in Washington, D.C. and Boston, before settling permanently with his family in Florence, Italy.

Powers is known for his portrait busts of prominent American politicians, including Andrew Jackson, and his idealized neo-classical sculptures, most notably the Greek Slave. He and his family were active members of the intellectual community of American and English émigrés, and his studio was also a frequent stop on tourists’ visits to Florence.

This historically rich collection contains 10 linear feet of correspondence between Powers and family, friends, and business associates from 1819 to 1883.

Included are fragile but invaluable copies of Powers’ outgoing letters, which were created by a process of placing moistened paper in a press. Besides details of his studio work and business dealings, his letters often discuss his views on aesthetics, American politics, slavery, the Civil War, and Spiritualism.

Other treasures in this collection include Powers’ studio notebook documenting his work from 1841 to 1845; poetry written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Quincy Adams, and others in praise of his sculpture; and 267 cartes de visite and cabinet card portraits of artists, performers, politicians, writers, scientists, and other public figures, many of whom were friends with the Powers family. Some of these photographs were taken by his son, Longworth Powers, who had a private photography studio in Florence.

Erin Corley is a processing archivist at the Archives of American Art.

Notes on the short film “Art Discovers America”

“Art Discovers America” is a patriotic World War II-era educational film about American artists made by the artist and collector Alfredo Valente, an Italian immigrant. In the 1930s, with profits from his photography business, Valente began to collect paintings by artists he considered to be American masters. The filmmaker’s personal relationships with the artists portrayed in the film—including Raphael Soyer, John Sloan, Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, and Abraham Walkowitz—are reflected in the staged footage he shot of them working in their studios or en plein air.

The film was made independently and distributed by MGM, and within a year had it been bought by the Loews studio and made into a longer educational film called “Grandpa Called It Art” (1944). Although the Archives of American Art does not have a copy of the later film, the title suggests it may not have retained the same passionate admiration of the artists that characterizes Valente’s film.

This print came to the Archives of American Art in the Alfredo Valente papers, 1941-1978, and the film’s subsequent fate suggests that few prints of Valente’s film were probably ever made or seen. The Archives received funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve it in 2009, resulting in the video you see here. Unfortunately, irregular frame intervals in the original print result in some distortion of the picture and sound of the projected film, but even still, Valente’s enthusiasm for his subject, and his rare access to his artist friends, comes through.

Megan McShea is the Audiovisual Archivist at the Archives of American Art.

Digitization Diary: Speaking of American Art

Oral histories are a cornerstone of the the collections at the Archives of American Art. Our Oral History Program, which began in 1958, now includes over 2,000 interviews, 79 of which were conducted last year alone! Late in 2009, the Archives received a Save America’s Treasures matching grant to help us continue the preservation and digitization of our entire oral history collection. We are very excited about this major undertaking, in which over 1,000 interviews will be digitized.

Yellow copies of removal notices stick up out of the folders in the box. This is an alert to staff that the originals are no longer located here.

The oral history collection is at risk from deterioration, damage, and format obsolescence. The media on which most interviews were conducted are reaching the end of their lifespans. We are seeing degradation of the reel-to-reel audio tapes, some of which have vinegar syndrome or mold. Even some of the MiniDiscs we recorded a few years ago are unable to be played.

Digitization is key to preserving sound media, and the Archives has used the recommendations from Sound Directions at the University of Indiana and Harvard University for sound file quality specifications, and the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative for metadata specifications.

The Lawrence Kupferman interview reel is prepared for shipment. The reel and the white copy of the removal notice are placed into an archival folder.

The back of the Kupferman interview reel box. This information will be captured through scanning upon its return to the Archives after digitization.

This is a great jumping off point for me to show the process for how I prepare a typical oral history tape for digitization. We are using an outside vendor, Safe Sound Archive in Philadelphia, PA, for the digitization of our materials.

My first step is to complete a removal notice for the original material. This notice tells someone that the item they are looking for has been removed from the storage box, the reason why, and lets them know where they can now find it. Two copies of the removal notice are made: a yellow copy replaces the interview tape(s) in the storage box; a white copy stays with the original item when it is sent to the vendor, is returned to us, and is sent to offsite storage.

Step two is to place the reel(s) and removal notices into an archival folder for the remainder of its journey. The folder is labeled with the name of the interviewee(s), the date(s) of the interview, and the number of original pieces found in in the folder.

It is fairly common for the reel boxes to have important information written on them, as seen with the Kupferman interview pictured here. When the reel is returned to us, the box will be scanned, preserving this information for whoever may need it.

The third step is to pack the materials carefully in boxes to ship for digitization.

In addition to the tapes, the vendor receives a spreadsheet that lists the interviews included in the shipment, along with lots of metadata (data about data) for the sound engineers. But this process, and more information about the captured metadata and returned sound files, I will have to save for another post!

Jennifer Snyder works with oral history interviews at the Archives American Art. When she is not sending interviews out for digitization, she is writing about extraordinary examples of facial hair for this blog. All photos in this post by Jennifer Snyder, 2010.

New Old Oral History Interviews

Esther McCoy, ca. 1944. From the Esther McCoy papers, 1896-1989. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Recently I reviewed a list of interview transcripts added to the Archives’ website over the past several months, and was glad to see that we are making progress toward our goal of getting all of our Oral History Program transcripts online.

The mix of interviews includes a cross section of artists, art historians, critics, curators, and administrators going back to 1962, fairly typical of the interviews conducted since the Program began in 1958.

Highlights include a long and detailed 1987 Interview with Esther McCoy.  McCoy is best remembered for her pioneering work as an architectural historian, critic, and proponent of Southern California modern architecture of the early to mid-twentieth century.

To read transcripts of any of the 737 interviews currently online, visit the Oral History Interviews section of our website.