- unitid
-
{"value"=>"25771", "type"=>"local_mss"}
{"value"=>"*MGZMD 546", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"b22555587", "type"=>"local_b"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1950s-2016", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1950/2016"}
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"Marilyn Wood papers"}
- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"11 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"4.37 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear_feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"3,206 computer files", "unit"=>"computer_files"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"14.1 gigabytes", "unit"=>"gigabytes"}]}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">Jerome Robbins Dance Division</span>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"The Marilyn Wood papers, dating from the 1950s to 2016, consist of photographic materials, programs, notes, notebooks, journals, posters, fliers, interviews, press clippings, and video recordings created and collected by Wood over the course of her career as a dancer, choreographer, artistic director, and producer. The bulk of the papers detail Wood's work as the artistic director and choreographer of worldwide site-specific, festival-like performances that she called celebrations."}
- langmaterial
-
{"value"=>"English"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Wood, Marilyn, 1929-", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>Marilyn Wood (born in 1929 in Columbus, Ohio) was a dancer, choreographer, intermedia artist, artistic director, and producer, who spent her childhood in Puerto Rico. Her exposure to Puerto Rican culture influenced her future artistic career. After high school, Wood attended Oberlin College where she met and married Robert Wood, a musician. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in art history in 1950 and intended to pursue a career in the visual arts. After Oberlin College, Wood attended the Moholy-Nagy Bauhaus Institute of Design in Chicago, Illinois to study the visual arts. While at the Institute, she took a student improvisation dance class which inspired her to switch her vocational focus from the visual arts to dance. Wood spent the next two summers in Colorado taking dance classes from Hanya Holm.</p> <p>Wood moved to New York City and danced with the Alwin Nikolais Company from 1951 to 1957. During this time, Robert Wood got a job as a school teacher and created instructional workshops, sometimes called gatherings, to teach children and adults how to make instruments from scratch. In 1958, Marilyn Wood was invited by Merce Cunningham to join the, then titled, Merce Cunningham and Dance Company. She toured and performed with the company for five years, leaving the company in 1963.</p> <p>While teaching dance classes at her children's elementary school, Wood met Elaine Summers. Summers's movement approach, kinetic awareness, taught Wood to focus on the intent behind her dance choreography. Summers and Wood formed an improvisation group whose members included Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton. The group met for approximately two years. Around this time, Wood also took a San Francisco-based workshop run by Anna and Lawrence Halprin, a choreographer and architect respectively. During the workshop, participants were given a choreographic score and asked to \"go create theater in the city.\" The workshop inspired Wood to view city spaces as potential theater places and to continue to score choreography.</p> <p>One of Wood's first commissions was an exhibition called, <span class=\"title\">CitySenses</span>, at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Wood created ten site-specific choreography scores that visitors picked up at the exhibit and then went out into the city to perform. Visitors then returned to the museum to create art (i.e. record a song, write an essay, draw a picture, etc.) about their experience performing the score.</p> <p>In 1968, Wood created Marilyn Wood and the Celebration Group which consisted of dancers, musicians, visual artists, architects, and filmmakers. Wood collaborated with the Group to create site-specific performances, that Wood's friends called \"happenings,\" which were directed and choreographed by Wood.</p> <p>Wood's most famous performance took place in 1972 at the Seagram Building in New York City. Unlike her earlier commissions, Wood had complete artistic control of the project and called it a \"celebration\" (a term that she would use for all of her subsequent projects). The Seagram Building celebration featured thirty-five dancers, film projections, and original music. It utilized the building's thirty-eight-story façade, lobby, and plaza. The finale of the performance involved inviting the audience to dance on the plaza. The success of the Seagram celebration earned Wood an honorary membership in the American Institute of Architects and helped launch her career as an intermedia artistic director and choreographer. She received commissions to create celebration projects in cities around the United States as well as Australia, Europe, Southeast and Western Asia, and South America.</p> <p>A year after the Seagram Building celebration, Wood was commissioned to create a celebration project in Adelaide, Australia. Due to budget issues with the project, she decided to dissolve the Celebration Group. For the rest of her career, Wood created celebration projects in conjunction with local dancers, artists, musicians, architects, and lighting designers. The performances were always free and accessible to the public and often included audience participation.</p> <p>In 1987, Wood separated from Robert Wood and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she established the International Center for Celebration, or ICC. The ICC was a worldwide network of different types of artists who worked the environmental and cultural history of each performance site into each celebration project. Wood worked with the Center's artists to plan and perform each celebration project with local artists. Over the following years, the Center received multiple grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Wood was honored with the first NEH Creative Artist Fellowship. She used the fellowship's funds to spend a year in Japan studying community festivals.</p> <p>Wood died in 2016.</p>"}
- custodhist
-
{"value"=>"<p>The donor, Marilyn Wood, signed a deed of gift with NYPL in 2013, and died in 2016 before donating the collection. Leslie Wood, Marilyn Wood's daughter, shipped the collection to NYPL in 2019.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Marilyn Wood papers, dating from the 1950s to 2016, chronicle her professional life as a dancer, choreographer, producer, and artistic director of celebration projects. The collection contains mostly slides, negatives, digitized color prints, and ephemera from Marilyn Wood's celebration projects and Robert Wood's musical instrument workshops. Through newspaper clippings, event programs, and photographic material, the papers thoroughly record Marilyn Wood's worldwide celebration projects from 1969 until the 1990s. The collection also holds some photographs from Wood's movement workshops, and features some transcribed speeches and photographs from conferences where Wood spoke about her celebration projects. Present are Wood's notebooks and journals that disclose her interest in astrology and yogic teachings; interviews where Wood talks about specific celebrations and her career; and video footage of Wood's Seagram Building celebration project.</p> <p>The Happenings and Celebration Performances grouping dates from 1969 to 2014, and is made up of photographs, programs, fliers, newspaper clippings, correspondence, posters, and contracts created in the course of producing Wood's happenings and celebration projects. The group contains some choreographer scores and slides from Wood's pre-Seagram Building happenings. The celebration project files include mainly photographs and contracts, although some project files also contain programs, posters, and newspaper clippings. Wood's seminal work, <span class=\"title\">Celebrations in City Places: The Seagram Building and Its Plaza</span>, is minutely detailed via video recording, photographic materials, fliers, newspaper clippings, interviews, and Wood's correspondence and contracts. The group is filed chronologically by event date.</p> <p>The Workshops and Teaching Events grouping spans from the 1970s to 2014, and describes the movement and musical instrument workshops conducted by Marilyn Wood and Robert Wood, respectively. Most of the photographic materials that depict the musical instrument workshops were shot and created by Robert Wood. The group also includes slides of an instrument exhibition; photographs of Wood teaching at Downtown Community School; and photographs of the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women. The group is filed alphabetically by workshop or event title.</p> <p>The Dance Companies and Personal Files grouping dates from the 1950s to 2016, and constitutes largely notes, notebooks, journals, interviews, newspaper clippings, and photographs from Marilyn Wood's professional and personal life. The group holds multiple drafts of Wood's biography and resume which reveal the evolution of her thoughts about her career as a dancer, choreographer, producer, and artistic director. There are some fliers and correspondence about Wood's work as the artistic director of Marilyn Wood and the Celebration Group and the International Center for Celebration. Included are a small number of candid photographs of Wood's family and posters from Wood's research on community festivals. Of note are photographs of Wood dancing during the nascent years of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company; an oral history interview with Wood conducted in 2008; and various choreographer scores created by Wood. The group is filed alphabetically by topic, dance company, or material type.</p>"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>The collection is arranged in the following three groupings: Happenings and Celebration Performances; Workshops and Teaching Events; and Dance Companies and Personal Files.</p>"}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Donated by Marilyn Wood in 2019.</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by <span class=\"name\">Amy Lau</span> in <span class=\"date\">2021</span>.</p>"}
- accessrestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>Inquiries regarding audio and moving image materials in the collection may be directed to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division (dance@nypl.org). Audio and moving image materials will be subject to preservation assessment and migration prior to access.</p>"}
- date_start
-
1950
- keydate
-
1950
- date_end
-
2016
- date_inclusive_start
-
1950
- date_inclusive_end
-
2016
- extent_statement
-
4.37 linear feet (11 boxes); 14.1 gigabytes (3,206 computer files)
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"Marilyn Wood papers, *MGZMD 546. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts"}