Collections Acquired 



Among the most important collections acquired in 1997 is the 

 Klaus Perls Gallery collection. The Perls Gallery, founded in 

 1935 by Klaus G. Perls, handled modern masters such as 

 Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Georges Rouault, 

 Marc Chagall, and Maurice de Vlaminck. The history of the 

 Perls Gallery is part of the history of the reception of modern 

 art in America. The Perlses were Europeans who brought old- 

 world authority and skill to the selling of modern art. The 

 gallery closed in 1997. Its records contain correspondence 

 ( I 93) _I 997) w ith artists, dealers, museums, and collectors; 

 photographs (1935— ca. 1977) of artists' work handled by the 

 gallery; installarion views (1948— 1969) of gallery exhibitions; 

 and photographs of installations at other galleries and 

 museums. Also included are negatives of works of art for 

 gallery artists, including a large collection of negatives of 

 works by Alexander Calder and a card index file to the nega- 

 tives. There are also artists' files for artists not represented by 

 the gallery. Other aspects of the collection include exhibition 

 catalogs (ca. 1935— 1985) and clippings and publicity files 

 (ca. 1935— 1997). These are the complete records of rhe gallery 

 covering its entire history. The acquisition of the Perls Gal- 

 lery papers is a major addition to the Archives' substantial 

 body of dealers' papers and will greatly foster research in the 

 field of modern American collecting. 



Also acquired in 1997 were the papers of Tornas Ybarra- 

 Frausto, a scholar and chair of the Smithsonian Council and of 

 the Latino Oversight Committee. His papers, comprising 

 20,000 items, consist of correspondence, photographs, and 

 rare printed material gathered for his research on Latino 

 artists. These papers constitute a major addition to the hold- 

 ings already documented in the Archives' publication, The 

 Papers of Latino and Latin American Artists (1996), and will be 

 the subject of a separate finding aid to be published in 1998 

 by the Archives. Dr. Ybarra-Frausto's book, Arte Chicano: A 

 Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Chicano Art. 1965-1981 

 (1985), coauthored with Shifra Goldman, is the best source for 

 bibliographic information on Chicano artists. These impor- 

 tant papers have already been the inspiration for a display in 

 commemoration of Hispanic Heritage Month entitled "Tomas 

 Ybarra-Frausto and the Chicano Art Movement, 1965-1997" 

 in the NMAA/NPG Library. An augmented version of the dis- 

 play will open in the Archives' New York Regional Office 

 Gallery space in 1998. 



Other important collections in FY 1997 include additions 

 to the Abraham Walkowitz papers (1880— 1965), which aug- 

 mented documents already in the collection. These included 

 exhibition announcements, catalogs, and magazines contain- 

 ing articles about the artist donated by Howard Schulman, 

 cousin of the artist. The Archives also acquired the papers of 

 superrealist sculptor Duane Hanson (1925-1996), known for 

 his lifelike, life-size figures of molded polyester resin and 

 fiberglass of everyday people. The papers consist of material 

 dating from 1969 to 1989, including thousands of letters from 

 artists, dealers, curators, collectors, and fans; newspaper clip- 



pings and other printed material; financial records; and con- 

 tracts and miscellany. 



Publications 



Reading Records: A Researcher's Guide to the Archives of American 

 Art by Garnett McCoy, Curator Emeritus, was published in 

 FY 1997. The 120-page publication, lavishly illustrated with 

 numerous black-and-white illustrations and twelve color 

 plates, provides a comprehensive overview of the Archives' col- 

 lections engagingly written by the Archives' longume Journal 

 editor. The monograph is a marvelous introduction to the 

 variety of documentation in the collections, including the let- 

 ters, diaries, account books, and rare catalogs of obscure ex- 

 hibitions so dear to researchers and other serious students of 

 American art. 



Another important publication in FY 1997 was Paris: A 

 Guide to Archival Sources for American Art History by Susan 

 Grant, Coordinator of the Archives' Paris Survey Project. This 

 monograph was a result of more than five years' research con- 

 ducted by Ms. Grant that was underwritten by a grant from 

 the Florence Gould Foundation, a supporter of cooperative 

 French-American ventures. Until now, scholars have had no 

 central reference work to help them locate the many original 

 documents on American artists to be found in Parisian 

 archives. This material, though plentiful and of considerable 

 interest, remains inaccessible simply because it has not been 

 systematically identified. The objective, now realized, of the 

 Archives' Paris Survey Project, has been to redress this situa- 

 tion and make the records and papers of American artists in 

 Paris known to researchers throughout the wotld. 



A Finding Aid to the Walter Pack Papers by Nancy Malloy, 

 Archives Reference Specialist in the New York Research Cen- 

 ter, and Cathenne Stover, Archivist in the Washington 

 Processing Center, is the tesult of a long-term project and 

 provides researchers with a comptehensive detailed descrip- 

 tion of the papers of one of the pivotal figures in American art 

 circles in the first half of the twentieth century. Walter Pach 

 (1883—1958) was a painter, etcher, journalist, author, critic, ex- 

 hibition organizer, dealer, and catalyst for an outstanding 

 variety of projects over a lifetime devoted to art. Best known 

 for his organization of the European section of the 1913 

 Armory Show, together with Arthur B. Davies and Walt 

 Kuhn, Pach was a consistent champion of such Americans as 

 Copley, Eakins, and Maurice Prendergast. The Walter Pach 

 papers were acquired in 1988 with major support from The 

 Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston, Texas. Researchers will 

 find a wealth of unpublished materials embracing an enor- 

 mous number of artists, critics, dealers, and collectors. 



Fund-Raising 



FY 1997 saw the donation of the largest single grant ever 

 awarded to the Archives in its forty-three-year history. The 

 Brown Foundation, Inc., made a $500,000 matching chal- 

 lenge grant to establish the William E. Woolfenden Endow- 



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