Leon Polk Smith papers, 1921-1997

Biographical material includes official affidavits, certificates, passports, expense receipts, and a travel expense notebook. A curriculum vitae, family history, and medical records are also included in the series.

This series has been scanned in its entirety.

Correspondence is predominantly in the form of business letters and personal letters received from family and friends. This includes correspondence between Smith and his life companion, Robert Jamieson; art critics Arthur C. Danto, Claudine Humblet, and David Galloway; and artists Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt) and Ray Johnson.

The bulk of the business correspondence relates to Smith's various gallery and museum exhibitions, loans, and sales. Outgoing correspondence, photographs, slides, and instructions on the installation of exhibitions have been chronologically interfiled within the correspondents' files. There is extensive correspondence between Smith and the Brooklyn Museum, Butler Institute of American Art, Di Laurenti Gallery, Edition and Galerie Hoffmann, Galerie Denise Rene, Meyers/Bloom Gallery, Washburn Gallery, and the Wilhelm-Hack Museum. The business subseries also includes correspondence between Smith and his alma mater, East Central University, formerly known as Oklahoma State University.

The bulk of this series has been scanned. Slides of artwork filed with Meyers/Bloom Gallery have not been scanned. The series is arranged as 2 subseries:

• Subseries 2.1: Business, 1943-1996
• Subseries 2.2: Personal, 1939-1997

Interviews consist of six typewritten transcripts of interviews conducted with Smith from 1950 to 1993 by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, D'Arcy Hayman, and William Jeffett, among others, over the course of Smith's professional career. The series also includes a 1995 video interview of museum director Robert T. Buck discussing the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition of Leon Polk Smith for the television program National Arts, and a 1965 interview transcript with gallery owner Lucile Horsley.

This series has been scanned in its entirety. The video interview recording has been digitized for research access and is available at the Archives of American Art offices.

Writings include sixteen published and unpublished scholarly essays on Smith by Lawrence Alloway, Ted Castle, Arthur C. Danto, Carter Ratcliff, and Joseph R. Wolin, among others. The series also includes notes and a brief artist's statement by Smith regarding the pros and cons of modern art galleries.

This series has been scanned in its entirety.

Financial records is comprised of the 1978-1989 federal income tax filings and routine tax preparation and payment receipts for the corporate entity Leon Polk Smith, Inc. Smith's personal filing records from 1987-1989 are also included in this series.

This series has not been scanned.

Printed material consists of two books, including the Brooklyn Museum's monograph Leon Polk Smith: American Painter, newspaper clippings reviewing Smith's work, and exhibition announcements and catalogs of Smith's museum and gallery shows from 1941 to 1997.

The bulk of this series has been scanned. In most cases, only the cover, title page, and individual relevant pages have been scanned from published materials.

The scrapbook consists of newspaper clippings documenting Smith's years as an educator and artist in Oklahoma in the 1930s and 1940s.

This series has been scanned in its entirety.

Photographic material includes black and white photographs of Smith and his acquaintances circa 1920-1960, and a representative selection of black and white photographs and color slides of Smith's artwork from 1939 to 1960.

Original photographs have been scanned. Photographs and slides of artwork have not been scanned.