Artists

The third series contains materials concerning various artists who corresponded with Winthrop or whose work Winthrop purchased. Like Series II, the arrangement parallels the arrangement created by the 1970s processors; that is, the papers are alphabetized in order by the artists’ last names. The only exception to this order are folders 128-130 which contain papers that were not subdivided into folders describing a single artist; folder 132 which contains the notes and transcriptions provided by the Fogg Museum curator Agnes Mongan; and folder 230 which contains various papers about sculpture.

One major re-arrangement, however, was the condensing of the artists’ nationalities, which had previously been subdivided, into one alphabetized list. Either Winthrop or previous processors divided all of the artists by their nationality (American, British, Dutch, French, Flemish, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Swiss) before alphabetizing them. Now they are all alphabetized as one unit, but the nationalities are written in brackets on each folder to reference the previous order. A few of the artists have several folders dedicated to them, and the subdivision of content between folders varies between each of them.

Most of the folders contain typed pages listing the artwork owned by Winthrop. Along with the title of the art and the artist, the papers also include some or all of the following descriptors: the medium, the dealer involved, excerpts from pertinent dealer correspondence, the date purchased, the size of the artwork, an explanation of the content of the artwork, the Harvard Art Museums’s accession number for the artwork, and the price of the artwork. Some folders also contain additional materials such as further paperwork generated by Harvard, copies of entire letters, original letters, articles, and exhibition information. All of the documents are located within archival folders.