Dear Colleagues,
The Harvard Art Museum Archives, a leading repository for materials
documenting the study of the development of art history and art
history education, announces a major gift of the papers of Alfonso
Ossorio and Ted Dragon. The collection, donated by the Ossorio
Foundation of Southampton, NY, consists of close to 50 linear feet of
personal and professional papers and represents a major research
collection that has been almost completely unexamined by scholars. It
includes resources that document Ossorio's life and the growth of his
career, as well as the work of his partner, dancer and artist Ted
Dragon. The gift enhances the Archives' collection of papers related
to the education and development of artists, art historians, curators,
and conservators throughout the 20th century.
Ossorio and Dragon's circle of friends included Jackson Pollock, Jean
Dubuffet, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson, and
Clyfford Still—artists who both influenced and were influenced by
Ossorio's work. In addition to personal correspondence, the collection
includes photographs, notebooks, financial records, and ephemera.
These materials shed light on Ossorio's youth and family, his
education at Harvard University, and the purchase and development of
the buildings and property at The Creeks, a sixty-acre estate designed
by Grosvenor Atterbury, in East Hampton, NY.
A leading member of the Abstract Impressionist movement, Alfonso
Ossorio was born in 1916 on the island of Luzon in Manila, the
Philippines He attended Harvard (class of 1938), where he studied with
Edward Waldo Forbes, Langdon Warner, and others. By 1959, he had begun
to develop his signature series of assemblages, which he dubbed
"congregations," a term likely coined because of his interest in, and
influence by, Christian imagery. Beginning with his first solo show at
the Wakefield Gallery, NY, in 1941, Ossorio's works have appeared in
countless exhibitions, and he organized exhibitions of the works of
others, including Dubuffet's collection of L'Art Brut in 1962 at the
Cordier & Warren Gallery, NY, as well as curating many shows at the
Executive House, NY, in the late 1950s. He was also a co-founder of
the Signa Gallery in East Hampton, NY.
The Ossorio Foundation was created in 1995 to insure that Alfonso
Ossorio's life-work will be interpreted, organized, and maintained in
a manner commensurate with its achievement. Today the Foundation
identifies museums and educational institutions nationwide that wish
to include Ossorio's work in their collections, arranges acquisitions,
and is in the planning stages for the establishment of a scholarship
program.
For more information, please contact:
Susan von Salis
Curator of archives
Harvard Art Museum Archives
617-384-7983
[log in to unmask]
------
Jane A. Callahan
Archivist/Records Manager
617-495-2384 fax 617-495-9936
Harvard Art Museum
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
www.harvardartmuseum.org
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