Robert Franklin Gates papers, 1910-1988, bulk 1928-1988

Biographical material includes resumes, biographical accounts, award certificates, and Navy Department employment records which include letters, writings, floor plan drawings, and photographs concerning Gates's designs for three-dimensional photo-surfaced topography models during World War II. Also included are records of employment through a State Department Specialists Grant, address lists, teaching notes, writings about Gates, and a guest book signed by colleagues celebrating Gate's forty years at American University.

Letters are from the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Works Agency regarding commissions, and from various museums and galleries discussing exhibitions and other art-related activities. There are one or two letters each from colleagues Alice Acheson, Adelyn Breeskin, Charles Burchfield, Alida Conover, John Gernand, Duncan Phillips, Henry Varnum Poor, and Prentiss Taylor. Some letters are Christmas cards decorated with original block prints.

This series consists primarily of business transactions with the Jack Rasmussen Gallery in Washington, D.C. Also included are miscellaneous sales records and pay stubs from American University.

Artwork consists of scattered drawings by Gates, including images of Bauhaus style houses. There are also block prints by Joe Goethe and D. Neufeld.

Two scrapbooks contain clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs, and scattered letters documenting the beginning of Gates's career. One scrapbook has been disbound.

Printed material includes clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs, prospectuses for art exhibitions, press releases, calendars of events, booklets about color and lenses, brochures for art schools and books, and an unannotated calendar containing a reproduction of one of Gates's paintings.

Photographs are of Robert Gates, various family members, models, artwork, and exhibition installations. There are also two photograph albums and miscellaneous photographs documenting a 1936 voyage to the Virgin Islands commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department that include images of Gates and colleagues including Mitchell Jamieson, the ship Doris Hamlin, the crew, markets, a cock fight, miscellaneous buildings, town squares, and the countryside of the Virgin Islands.