Overview
Papers of American performance artist, cabaret singer, and drag artist Joey Arias.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1970-2018
Creator
- Arias, Joey, 1955- (Person)
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research.
This collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
61 linear feet (63 boxes, 3 folders, 3 framed/oversize items)124.1 Gigabytes (2 mini disks)
Collection includes manuscripts, business records, ephemera (fliers, handbills, etc.), photographs, posters, original artwork, and audiovisual media.
Biographical / Historical
Joey Arias, born Joseph Arias in 1955 in Fayetteville (N.C.), is an artist based in New York City, best known for work as a performance artist, cabaret singer, and drag artist but also known as a published author, comedian, stage persona and cult-movie star. Arriving in New York in 1976, he become a "chanteuse" and part of Andy Warhol’s circle. Arias eventually got a job at the Fiorucci designer clothing store where he became friends with alternative musician Klaus Nomi, singing backup and designing sets and costumes; they appeared together in 1979 on Saturday Night Live as backup to David Bowie. Upon Nomi's death in 1983, Arias became executor to the Klaus Nomi (Sperber) estate.
Arrangement
Collection is arranged into the following series: Audiovisual; Production materials and business records; Correspondence; Flyers, handbills, and ephemera; Financial records; Artwork and posters (oversized); Notebooks; Photographs; Press and publications; and Posters.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository, b
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2019MT-108. Purchased, with the Klaus Nomi papers, from Carl Johan Kugelberg, Boo-Hooray LLC, with funds from the Herman Dunlop Smith Bequest, the Robert Gould Shaw Fund, and the Douglas Roby Fund.
Processing Information
Processed by Magee Lawhorn, Betts Coup, and Melanie Wisner, 2019.
Creator
- Arias, Joey, 1955- (Person)
- Title
- Arias, Joey, 1955-. Joey Arias papers, circa 1970-2018 (MS Thr 1915): Guide
- Status
- completed
- Date
- 2019 March 25
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou03122
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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