The Archives of American Art at 50

At the end of a long letter to his favorite ex-wife, Elinor, the painter John D. Graham (1881-1961) closed with a P.P.S.: "Letter writing is probably the most beautiful manifestation in human relations, in fact, it is its finest residue." (1) For the past fifty years the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art has been collecting, preserving, and making available to scholars the residue of art world relations in the form of letters, diaries, financial records, scrapbooks, sketchbooks, and other primary sources.

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Founded in Detroit in 1954 by the art historian Edgar P. Richardson (1902-1985), then director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Lawrence A. Fleischman (1925-1997), an art collector and businessman, the archives was initially conceived of as an agency devoted solely to microfilming records. However, it soon also became a repository for papers donated by individuals and groups who wanted them placed where they would be most effectively used.

The founders were true visionaries considering that fifty years ago there was no institution for the study of American art, few professors of American art history, and few monographs on American artists. The Archives of American Art has grown with the field of American art history and has greatly contributed to the available knowledge about art in the United States.

Today, at fifteen million items, the archives is the world's largest single source for the papers of American artists, art dealers, critics, collectors, and art societies. From its inception the archives has stuck to its goal of fostering research by using the best available archival practices and technology. The dissemination of collections on microfilm through interlibrary loan has given way to the speedy delivery of digitized documents online. The Terra Foundation for American Art recently gave the archives a $3.6 million grant for a five-year project to digitize a selection from the archives and make the material accessible, free of charge, on the archives' Web site (www.aaa.si.edu). By the end of the project 1.6 million files will be available online.

While the archives' holdings are vast, the individual documents offer an extraordinary sense of immediacy. They provide an intimate view of the artists' world--their family lives and friendships, passions and heartbreaks, business relations, travels, and artistic training.

Take for instance a letter from John Frazee (Pl. II), one of the country's earliest professional sculptors. In May 1834 he traveled from his home in New York City to Richmond, Virginia, to model a sculpture of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall (1801-1835). On the way, he wrote to his wife, Lydia, describing his first train trip, taken only a few months after the inaugural run of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, one of the first in the United States and by far the most successful during the 1830s and 1840s: "A few minutes and we were off like a shot, at the rate of 15 miles an hour." The sensation of "high speed train travel" was "at first quite disagreeable and for several miles I was chuck full of fears, fits, and starts!" Although Frazee made it to Richmond in one piece, he never got used to "the eternal and deafening roar" of the train's engine, which rang in his ears like a "continual thunder" and gave him a headache. (2)

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Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) wrote about painting Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893), the nineteenth president of the United States: "Mr. Hayes knew nothing of art." He posed once. "I never saw him in the same pose again. He wrote, took notes, stood up, swung his chair around. In short, I had to construct him as I would a little animal." (3) Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) had better luck photographing Greta Garbo (1905-1990). He noted that she "couldn't find evening dress/to get bare shoulders, she slipped off blouse--all noise stopped." (4)

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In the depths of the Great Depression the painter Stuart Davis (1892-1964) appealed to his dealer Edith Gregor Halpert (1900-1970):

I have every respect for the fact that your gallery is doing very little
business and that it is impossible for you to make any payments. However
if you can develop some dough it is a matter of the first importance to
me. (5)

There is also hard evidence that times were tough for Franz Kline (1910-1962). The archives has the pawn ticket he received when he hocked his binoculars in 1954 for fifteen dollars. (6)

When Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) took a Cezannesque turn, his dealer William Macbeth (1851-1917) did not approve.

Alas! I do not like the direction of your new work the least little bit.
It is such a departure from old time sound methods that I would not care
to exhibit it. I hope it is only an experiment. (7)

Sheeler replied: "Everyone who is sincerely trying to solve the enormous difficulties of artistic expression is an experimenter and remains so as long as he is 'artistically alive.'" (8)