Found matches for "oral history" in 54 collections.

Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was a writer, promoter of African-American artists during the Harlem Renaissance, patron of the arts, and photographer. After he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1930, he entered upon a career as a reporter for newspapers that included The American in Chicago and within a few years The New York Times. At the latter he served as an overseas correspondent in Paris and subsequently as an assistant to the music critic Richard Aldrich in New York City. Van Vechten moved to New York City in 1906 with his first wife Anna Elizabeth Snyder, a teacher. After his divorce in 1912, Van Vechten met and married the stage actress Fania Marinoff. Marinoff made her stage debut at the age of eight in a stock company, and eventually developed a successful stage career. Van Vechten's novels include The Blind-Bow Boy, Interpreters and Interpretations, Nigger Heaven, Peter Whiffle, Tiger By the Tail, and The Tattooed Countess. Van Vechten promoted the careers of many authors' works by writing introductions to their monographs. In his second successful career as a photographer, he had the opportunity to photograph, and to have himself photographed, with many literary figures, stage and screen stars and others. Papers reflect Van Vechten's social life and professional career as a writer, photographer and patron of the arts; they also document Van Vechten's literary and artistic circle of friends and colleagues. An avid collector, Van Vechten retained the letters of prominent individuals who corresponded with him including Ralph Barton, James Branch Cabell, Arthur Davidson Ficke, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Donald Gallup, Langston Hughes, Edward Jablonski, Klaus Jonas, James Weldon Johnson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Bruce Kellner, Saul Mauriber, H. L. Mencken, Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Florine Stettheimer, and Henrietta Stettheimer. Papers are also rich in Van Vechten's photographs of prominent individuals, and in 19th century photographs of his family in Iowa. Multiple editions of Van Vechten's monographs and the monographs of others add to the diversity of the papers. Many of the monographs have been autographed by the author. less

Holger Cahill (born Sveinn Kristjan Bjarnarson in Iceland) was an American novelist, curator of important art exhibitions at the Newark Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, folklorist, and national director of the Federal Arts Project, 1935-1943. The papers chiefly document Cahill's career as a novelist during the 1940s and 1950s. They consist of general correspondence with writers, artists, publishers and others. There is also family correspondence, 1907-1983, between Cahill and his sister Anna Johnson, his mother Vigdis Bjarnsdottir, and his second wife Dorothy Canning Miller, who was a long-time colleague at the Museum of Modern Art. In this series there is also correspondence of extraordinary interest between Anna Johnson and Dorothy Canning Miller which contains information about Cahill's birth, name and age, which is fundamentally different from the official biography. Also included are manuscript drafts of his novels, short stories, and articles; story ideas and notes; research notes; poetry and playscripts; writings by others, including Josephine Herbst and Robert A. Andrews; photographs of Cahill, members of his family and friends; and biographical material, interviews, miscellaneous clippings, and some annotated books and magazines. less

Gran Fury was an artists' collective devoted to AIDS activism through agitprop art. Named after the Plymouth automobile favored by the New York City police department, Gran Fury drew its membership from the ranks of ACT UP/NY (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York).The collection contains examples of Gran Fury's works in the form of posters, stickers, fliers, printed ads, billboards and bus signs, as well as photograph and slide reproductions. Included also are a small amount of correspondence, textual accompaniments for artwork, copies of publications in which Gran Fury's works appeared, a sound recording of a Gran Fury press conference, and a videotaped interview with group members. less