the oral history program

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The Smithsonian Institution The Oral History Program Author(s): Paul Cummings Source: Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1978), p. 26 Published by: The Smithsonian Institution Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1557415 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The Smithsonian Institution is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Archives of American Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.79.191 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:45:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: The Oral History Program

The Smithsonian Institution

The Oral History ProgramAuthor(s): Paul CummingsSource: Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1978), p. 26Published by: The Smithsonian InstitutionStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1557415 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Smithsonian Institution is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Archives ofAmerican Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.191 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:45:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: The Oral History Program

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Bena Frank Mayer Ralph Mayer A. Hyatt Mayor Edward Melcarth Doris Meltzer William Meyerowitz Jeanne Miles Barse Miller Richard K. Miller Myron Nutting Phoenix Gallery Gottardo Piazzoni Poindexter Gallery Ethel B. Rabin Louisa Robbins Onorio Ruotolo Antonio Salemme Emilio Sanchez Charles Seliger Jacques Seligmann & Co. Morris Shulman Bernard Simon Nell Sinton Mitchel Siporin Russel and Xanthus Smith Wolfgang Stechow Allen Townsend Terrell Julius Tobias David Tolerton Paul Travis Joyce Treiman Ruth Vodicka Abel Warshawsky Herman J. Wechsler Paul and Mary Wescher Anita Weschler Ulfert Wilke Earle B. Winslow Hale A. Woodruff Clifford Young During the same period microfilms of papers of the following persons or orga- nizations were distributed to all branch offices of the Archives. Paolo Abbate Alexander Calder Joseph Comell Deborah Goldsmith Ethel Weiner Guttman Blanche Phillips Howard John Langley Howard William Morris Hunt Henry G. Keller Kootz Gallery Irene Rice Pereira Fairfield Porter George Godfrey Thorp Hanny VanderVelde John W. Venable Cady Wells

The Oral

History Program Paul Cummings Two interviews were produced in the

New York office during the second quar- ter of this year. Peter Stroud, the English- born abstract painter, a resident here since 1963, speaks of the influence that American art, particularly that of Charles Biederman's during the time Stroud lived in England, has had upon his work. It was at the suggestion of Lawrence Alloway that Stroud went to teach at Bennington College. This Interview, like those with the pop artists, provides a comprehen- sive view of the 1960s. Stroud comments on his military career during World War II and his writing, teaching, and working methods. His lively anecdotes about the London and New York art worlds of the past two decades highlight the interview.

The man to whom a certain segment of recent American art is indebted is Leonard Bocour, the paint manufacturer. It was the saturated color and liquid na- ture of his paints that helped Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, among others, to develop their mature styles. In his interview Bocour describes his art student days and how they lead him into the paint manufacturing business. Vi- gnettes of many artists are recounted during the course of the discussion.

The New York office has received a group of recently transcribed interviews, conducted through the Detroit office, with the following people: Vernon Bob- bitt, Morris Brose, Joy Hakanson Colby, Walter B. Ford, Lee Hoffman, Richard Jerzy, Joseph Kinnebrew, Allan Leepa, Walter McBride, Thomas McClure, Wil- liam McVey, Gordon Orear, Rudy Poz- zati, William Rauhauser, Charles Saw- yer, Ray Scott, Dr. Ernst Scheyer, Emil Weddige, and Robert Wilbert. Transcripts of interviews conducted through the New York office with the following indi- viduals are available: Stephen Antona- kos, Christo, Bruce Conner, Robert Dash, Jean Lipman, Salvatore Scarpitta, and George Sugarman.

Regional Office

Reports Boston

Robert Brown The New England center has established a program to microfilm important art records in the collections of manuscript repositories other than the Archives. For the first time, the information contained in these original documents will be widely available to researchers and schol- ars everywhere. The first collection filmed, in collaboration with Donald Gallup of the Beinecke Rare Book and

Manuscript Library, Yale University, was a group of manuscripts of poems and essays by Marsden Hartley, including many variant and heavily annotated ver- sions. The terms of access to and avail- ability of the microfilms were carefully defined by the Archives and Yale, as they will be for succeeding filming projects. Notice of the filming program will be reported in the Joumal, the Checklist, and various other Smithsonian Institu- tion publications.

Descendants of "the American Cruikshank," David Claypool Johnston, the Philadelphia and Boston caricaturist and illustrator, loaned a large number of the artists' sketches and family mem- orabilia for microfilming. Johnston's sketches of landscape and picturesque ruins indicate and interest in romantic as well as satiric themes. His papers also include letters to him from his son, Thomas Murphy Johnston, a pupil of William Morris Hunt's, some of which discuss a crayon portrait of Abraham Lincoln that Thomas was making during the presidential campaign of 1860.

A scrapbook devoted to William L. Lathrop, a prominent Philadelphia painter at the tum of the century and a founder of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania, was recently microfilmed. Newspaper clippings document both Lathrop's career and his death at sea in the hurricane of 1938.

A collection of family correspond- ence, sketchbooks, and photographs of the early 20th-century etcher Ernest Haskell was prepared for filming this quarter. Letters from Haskell discuss family matters and describe at length his quest for suitable landscape subjects in New York State, California, and Maine.

Two additional groups of family let- ters and photographs of the painter and Armory Show organizer, Walt Kuhn, have been given to the Archives. The earliest items are photographs of the artist in the 1890s, as a pupil of William Merritt Chase, and in California at the tum of the century. A number of letters to his wife during Kuhn's last years center on his never-to-be-realized plan to write a book like those of Giorgio Vasari and Eugene Delacroix.

Jay Connaway, after study at the Herron Art School, Indianapolis, and in Brittany, painted at Monhegan Island, Maine, and, from the late 1940s on, in Vermont. A large group of oil studies, with their sure grasp of structure, move- ment, and mood, shows him working in the tradition he admired, that of Winslow Homer, James Dougherty, and Frederick Waugh. The studies have been donated to the Archives along with notes, taken by students during Connaway's lectures, and records of sales made to private col- lectors and through the artist's New York galleries. These items, which were kept

This content downloaded from 185.44.79.191 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:45:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions