The Cleveland Museum of Art Archives opens two collections
Frances Prindle Taft Collection
Frances (Franny) Prindle Taft (1921-2017) was born in New Haven, Connecticut. She attended Vassar College where she majored in zoology, minored in art history, and was heavily involved in athletics. In 1942 she joined the Woman Accepted
for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES) and served until 1945. In 1943 she married Seth Chase Taft, a member of a prominent political family in Cincinnati, and grandson of President William Howard Taft. After World War II, she attended Yale Art School where
she earned a graduate degree in art history. The Taft family moved to Cleveland in early 1948 where she became involved in a number of organizations including the Cleveland Vassar Club, Karamu House, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Junior Council (later the
Women’s Council) and board of trustees, and the Cleveland Association of Phi Beta Kappa. Franny taught art history at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) from 1950 until 2012. The Tafts were known for their large collection of works by Cleveland School artists.
Franny had a particular interest in Pre-Columbian art, and traveled to Mesoamerica nineteen times between 1966 and 2000.
The finding aid for this collection is located at
https://archive.org/details/FrancesPrindleTaft. Digitized home movies, including vignettes of the Taft family and WAVES, is included in the digital archives at
http://digitalarchives.clevelandart.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p17142coll9.
Office of the Director: Sherman Emery Lee
Sherman Emery Lee (1918-2008) was born in Seattle but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He received both a bachelor's and master's degree from American University, majoring in history, in 1938 and 1939, respectively. He discovered his true
interest in Asian art while enrolled in summer courses at the University of Michigan in 1939. He met his wife, Ruth Ward, while at American University and they married in 1938. Lee earned his Ph.D. in art history from Western Reserve University Cleveland in
1941 and was curator of Far Eastern art and curator of decorative arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts from 1941-1946. He served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater from 1944-1946 and was an advisor to the Arts and Monuments Division of the Civil Information
and Education Section in Tokyo from 1946-1948. He worked for the Seattle Art Museum from 1948 until 1952 when he returned to Cleveland to become curator of Oriental Art. Lee served as the third director of the Cleveland Museum of Art from April 1, 1958 to
June 30, 1983, guiding the development of a collection of considerable renown. In total, he worked for the museum for thirty-two years, two as a student volunteer while receiving his doctorate, five as curator of Oriental art, and twenty-five as director and
chief curator of Oriental art.
Although this collection is now open for public use, records containing confidential information will continue to be restricted. The finding aid is located at
https://archive.org/details/shermanLee. Additional material on Dr. Lee can be found in the Sherman Emery and Ruth Ward Lee Family Papers
https://archive.org/details/ShermanandRuthLee
Leslie Cade
Director of Museum Archives
The Cleveland Museum of Art
11150 East Boulevard
Cleveland, Ohio 44106-1797
T 216-707-2492
F 216-421-0921
www.ClevelandArt.org
