Skip to main content
COLLECTION Identifier: SC 17

Records of the Howard Wise Gallery, 1954-1989

Overview

Personal and gallery correspondence, posters, advertisements, exhibition records created and collected by Howard Wise, art dealer, patron, and owner of galleries in Cleveland and New York City.

Dates

  • Creation: 1954-1989

Conditions on Access:

Access to most of the Records of the Howard Wise Gallery is unrestricted. Access to financial materials may be closed to research as noted in the finding aid.

Conditions on Use:

Copyright: The donor has transferred any copyright held in these papers to the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright in some papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns. Researchers must obtain the written permission of the holder(s) of copyright and the Harvard Art Museum Archives before publishing quotations from any material in the collection.

Copying: Papers may be copied in accordance with the Harvard Art Museums Archives' usual procedures.

Extent

25 linear feet (52 legal size Hollinger boxes, 1 half-sized legal Hollinger box, 1 card box, 1 folio box, oversized materials)

Scope and Contents

The Howard Wise Gallery records span from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, with the bulk of material between 1960 and 1971 when Howard WiseHoward Wise ran his New York gallery. The collection consists of personal and gallery correspondence, business records, exhibition catalogs, advertisements, artist contracts, newspaper clippings, photographs, slides, posters, and a small number of speeches and manuscripts for publication. Early items pertain to the Cleveland gallery which opened in 1957 and closed in 1961, while later material often relates to Electronic Arts Intermix, the video arts organization Wise founded after closing the New York gallery in 1971. Business records document the interpersonal and legal aspects of representing artists, day-to-day operations that involve showing, loaning, transferring and storing works, and the gifting of works to other museums and galleries.

There are materials on artists exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery throughout the collection. Series III. Gallery Artists exists in the order established by Wise, and contains most of the records on the artists he exhibited and represented. Series IV. Artist Reference Files contains the materials Wise collected on artists of interest to him, and is an accompanying series to the records contained in Series III. The collection also includes letters and clippings on political topics that were of interest to Wise, including his writings about art, personal and political interests, and later art activities as a resident of Cape Cod. Folder titles are attributed to Howard Wise unless otherwise noted through the use of brackets. Titles of original enclosing folders have been preserved followed by a colon and the title of the enclosed folder.

Additional Description

Biography:

Howard Earl Wise was born in Cleveland, Ohio on November 6, 1903, and was educated at Cleveland's University School and at the prestigious Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland. In the 1920s he studied art in Paris and later received a BA in History (1926) and International Law at Clare College, Cambridge University. Upon graduation he returned home to Cleveland to work for the family business, The Arco Company, which manufactured industrial paints and varnishes. After 25 years as president of The Arco Company, Wise sold the business, and in 1957 opened the Howard Wise Gallery of Present Day Painting and Sculpture in order to create a presence for modern art in Cleveland. Wise had limited success with the gallery in Cleveland and decided to open a second location in New York. In 1960, he established the Howard Wise Gallery on 50 W. 57th St. and permanently moved the gallery to that location in 1961, after closing the Cleveland gallery.

Wise started working in New York with Expressionist artists like Milton Resnick and George McNeil, but soon became interested in kinetic art, later moving into kinetic light sculpture and eventually video art. The first U.S. survey of kinetic art took place in his Manhattan gallery in early 1964 and was entitled “On the Move.” It featured works by Yaacov Agam, Julio Le Parc, Vassiliakis Takis, and others, and was followed later that year by an exhibition of the “Group Zero” collective including Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Günther Uecker. In 1967 he presented “Lights in Orbit,” an important survey of kinetic light sculpture that featured some of these same artists and others working in television and video art such as Earl Reiback, Thomas Tadlock, and Nam June Paik. Two years later Wise mounted his influential “TV as a Creative Medium” exhibition.

In 1971 Wise closed the gallery and founded the non-profit organization Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) to provide administrative and technical support to artists using video as a medium. Through his own personal interest and resources, Wise worked over many years as a dealer, gallery owner, and patron to assist artists and to further work in kinetic, light, and video art. Howard Wise married his first wife Jane Eiseman (born 1914) in 1933, and met his second wife Barbara (born 1929) in 1952. Wise had four children – two by his first marriage (Daniel and Jeremy) and two by his second (David and Juliet).

Howard Wise died in Wellfleet, MA on September 7, 1989. Barbara S. Wise, who continued on as president of the board of EAI and who donated these papers, died on March 23, 2011.

Series and Subseries in the Collection

The collection is arranged topically by series.
  1. Series I. Personal
  2. Series II. Business
  3. ___Subseries A: Howard Wise
  4. ___Subseries B: Gifts and Loans
  5. ___Subseries C: Financial Records
  6. ___Subseries D: Exhibition Records
  7. Series III. Gallery Artists
  8. Series IV. Artist Reference Files

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Barbara Wise donated the collection to the Harvard Art Museums in March 2007.

Box and Folder Locations

  1. Box 1: 1-19
  2. Box 2: 20-45
  3. Box 3: 46-60
  4. Box 4: 61-71
  5. Box 5: 72-100
  6. Box 6: 101-119
  7. Box 7: 120-137
  8. Box 8: 138-144
  9. Box 9 (1/2 box): 145-147 [includes restricted financial documents]
  10. Box 10: 148-161
  11. Box 11: 162-176
  12. Box 12: 177-189
  13. Box 13: 190-200
  14. Box 14: 201-216
  15. Box 15: 217-236
  16. Box 16: 237-257
  17. Box 17: 258-267
  18. Box 18: 268-286
  19. Box 19: 287-304
  20. Box 20: 305-319
  21. Box 21: 320-336
  22. Box 22: 337-348
  23. Box 23: 349-364
  24. Box 24: 365-375
  25. Box 25: 376-387 [includes restricted financial documents]
  26. Box 26: 388-400
  27. Box 27: 401-409
  28. Box 28: 410-422
  29. Box 29: 423-440
  30. Box 30: 441-470
  31. Box 31 (index card box): 471
  32. Box 32: 472-499
  33. Box 33: 500-519
  34. Box 34: 520-550
  35. Box 35: 551-569
  36. Box 36: 570
  37. Box 37: 571
  38. Box 38 (folio box): 572-577
  39. Box 39: 578-595
  40. Box 40: 596-623
  41. Box 41: 624-648
  42. Box 42: 649-670
  43. Box 43: 671-687
  44. Box 44: 688-706
  45. Box 45: 707-730
  46. Box 46: 731-751
  47. Box 47: 752-772
  48. Box 48: 773-790
  49. Box 49: 791-807
  50. Box 50: 808-828
  51. Box 51: 829-846
  52. Box 52: 847-870
  53. Box 53: 871-892
  54. Box 54: 893-912
  55. Box 55: 913-935

General note

Names
  1. Wise, Howard
  2. Howard Wise Gallery
  3. Electronic Arts Intermix (Organization)
  4. Agam, Yaacov, 1928-
  5. Apple, Billy
  6. Haacke, Hans
  7. Le Parc, Julio
  8. Lye, Len
  9. Mack, Heinz, 1931-
  10. Matisse, Paul
  11. McNeil, George, 1908-1995
  12. Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, 1895-1946
  13. Moorman, Charlotte
  14. Ortman, George
  15. Paik, Nam June, 1932-2006
  16. Palatnik, Abraham, 1928-
  17. Piene, Otto, 1928-2014
  18. Pritikin, Nathan
  19. Reiback, Earl M., 1931-2006
  20. Resnick, Milton
  21. Takis
  22. Tsai, Wen-Ying
  23. Uecker, Günther
  24. Von Wiegand, Charmion

General note

Subjects
  1. Art galleries, Commercial – New York (State) – New York – Catalogs
  2. Art galleries, Commercial – New York (State) – New York – Exhibitions
  3. Art galleries, Commercial – New York (State) – New York – History
  4. Wise, Howard – Art Collections – Exhibitions
  5. Kinetic Art

General note

Form/Genre Terms
  1. Correspondence
  2. Exhibition Catalogs
  3. Business Records
  4. Contracts
  5. Receipts
  6. Clippings
  7. Photographs
  8. Slides
  9. Posters
  10. Speeches
  11. Manuscripts (for publication)

Remediation Note

The finding aid was revised in 2023 to include the full names of individuals previously only identified by their husband’s name. Those revisions took place in folder titles. Archivist-supplied names are indicated in brackets. For questions about revisions, please contact the Harvard Art Museums Archives at am_reference@harvard.edu.

Processing Information

The collection was partially processed in 2011 by Peter Laurence. The collection was fully processed in 2015 by Jill Morton with assistance from Megan Creamer and Megan Schwenke. The finding aid was encoded in 2016 by Megan Schwenke.
Link to catalog

Related Names

Administrative Information

Title
Records of the Howard Wise Gallery (SC 17), 1954-1989: A Guide
Author
Harvard Art Museums Archives
Language of description
eng
EAD ID
art00037

Repository Details

Repository Details

Part of the Harvard Art Museums Archives Repository

https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/teaching-and-research/research-centers/harvard-art-museums-archives

The Harvard Art Museums Archives is the official repository for institutional records and historical documents in all formats relating to the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 1895 to the present. Its collections include papers of individuals and groups associated with the museums' history, including records of past exhibitions, architectural plans, photographs, scrapbooks, and memorabilia, as well as correspondence with collectors, gallery owners, museum professionals, and artists throughout the twentieth century. Its holdings also document the formation of the museums' collections and its mission as a teaching institution.

Contact:
32 Quincy Street
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
617-495-2384

Powered by ArchivesSpace
© 2020 President and Fellows of Harvard College
Accessibility Privacy Harmful Language Statement
Report a Problem Help