Straight, Michael Whitney, 1916-2004
Author, Publisher, Art patron
Size: 13 Items
Summary: The photographs and letters relating to Mark Tobey murals consist of nine photographs (ca. 1933) of murals of dancers by Mark Tobey at the Dartington Hall dance center in Devonshire, England; one photograph each of Mark Tobey and dancer Paula Morel; and two letters (1988) from Mary Bride Nicholson, the archivist at Dartington Hall, and donor Michael Straight discussing the murals.
The donor, Michael Straight, grew up at Dartington Hall, Devonshire, England, an experimental community founded by his mother, Dorothy Whitney Straight and her second husband Leonard K. Elmhirst. The community included a progressive coeducational boarding school and a cluster of art centers. In the early 1930s, Straight's sister, Beatrice, returned from the Cornish School in Seattle, where she had studied drama, with Mark Tobey. He became an artist-in-residence and, around 1933, was commissioned to paint a series of murals in the Dartington dance center. In the following decade, the murals were damaged beyond repair and the walls were painted over.
The photographs and letters relating to Mark Tobey murals were donated to the Archives of American Art by Michael Straight, son of Dorothy Whitney Straight who was the founder of Dartington Hall. He found the photographs in the Dartington Hall archives.
English .
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