Lincoln Kirstein papers

1951-1999

Lincoln Edward Kirstein (1907-1996) was born on May 4, 1907 in Rochester, New York and educated at Harvard College (A.B. 1929, A.M. 1930). In 1934, he co-founded the School of American Ballet with George Balanchine and Edward M.M. Warburg. He also participated in the founding and/or direction of the American Ballet Company in 1935, Ballet Caravan 1936-1941, and the Ballet Society in 1946, and he became general director of the succeeding company, New York City Ballet, in 1948. Kirstein married Fidelma Cadmus, sister of artist Paul Cadmus, in 1941 and served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945. His career included work with visual artists and writers on various projects, and his dance-related publications include: Dance Index; books on Michel Fokine, Vaslav Nijinsky, and the New York City Ballet; a history of theatrical dance; and writing assistance to Romola Nijinsky on a biography of her husband. He retired from New York City Ballet and School of American Ballet in 1989. The recipient of many distinguished awards, Lincoln Kirstein died on January 5, 1996.

Robert Harris Chapman (1919-2000) graduated from Princeton University in 1941. He returned to Princeton as an instructor in the Department of English in 1946, after serving in the U.S. Navy as a Lieutenant in naval intelligence in Europe and North Africa. In 1948, Chapman accepted a position in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught until 1950. That year, he accepted a position at Harvard University, where he taught English for almost four decades. Chapman was also named the first director of the Harvard's Loeb Drama Center in 1960, upon the recommendation of Harvard alumnus Lincoln Kirstein. He retired from Harvard in 1989 and moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Robert Harris Chapman died in 2000, at the age of 81.

Alexander Jensen Yow worked as a conservator at the Morgan Library in New York from the 1950s to the 1970s, and he established his own practice in semi-retirement after leaving his post at the Morgan. He was often referred to as "Jens" or "Jen" by his friends. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection holds a photographic portrait of Yow by George Platt Lynes, ca. 1948. Biographical information about Yow is relatively scarce.