Katharine Kuh papers
name: label: Creator
content: Kuh, Katharine
label: Names
content: Albright-Knox Art Gallery
label: Names
content: Art Institute of Chicago -- Faculty
label: Names
content: Biennale di Venezia
label: Names
content: Katharine Kuh Gallery (Chicago, Ill.)
label: Names
content: Adams, Ansel, 1902-1984
label: Names
content: Albers, Josef
label: Names
content: Albright, Ivan, 1897-1983
label: Names
content: Archipenko, Alexander, 1887-1964
label: Names
content: Arensberg, Louise S. (Louise Stevenson), 1879-1953
label: Names
content: Arensberg, Walter, 1878-1954
label: Names
content: Arp, Jean, 1887-1966
label: Names
content: Barnet, Will, 1911-
label: Names
content: Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 1902-1981
label: Names
content: Biddle, George, 1885-1973
label: Names
content: Breuer, Marcel, 1902-
label: Names
content: Calder, Alexander, 1898-1976
label: Names
content: Campoli, Cosmo
label: Names
content: Chagall, Marc, 1887-1985
label: Names
content: Chavez Morado, José, 1909-2002
label: Names
content: Chermayeff, Serge, 1900-
label: Names
content: Cornell, Joseph
label: Names
content: Cox, Richard
label: Names
content: Davis, Stuart, 1892-1964
label: Names
content: Day, Worden, 1916-1986
label: Names
content: De Kooning, Willem, 1904-1997
label: Names
content: Dickinson, Edwin Walter, 1891-1978
label: Names
content: Dubuffet, Jean, 1901-
label: Names
content: Duchamp, Marcel, 1887-1968
label: Names
content: Elizabeth, Queen of Great Britain, II, 1926-
label: Names
content: Ernst, Jimmy, 1920-1984
label: Names
content: Falkenstein, Claire, 1908-1997
label: Names
content: Feitelson, Lorser, 1898-1978
label: Names
content: Friendly, Fred W.
label: Names
content: Giacometti, Alberto, 1901-1966
label: Names
content: Golub, Leon, 1922-2004
label: Names
content: Goto, Joseph, 1920-
label: Names
content: Grabe, Klaus
label: Names
content: Graves, Robert, 1895-1985
label: Names
content: Guggenheim, Peggy, 1898-1979
label: Names
content: Guston, Philip, 1913-1980
label: Names
content: Hare, David, 1917-
label: Names
content: Hare, Denise Browne
label: Names
content: Hayter, Stanley William, 1901-1988
label: Names
content: Hirshhorn, Joseph
label: Names
content: Hofmann, Hans, 1880-1966
label: Names
content: Hélion, Jean, 1904-1987
label: Names
content: Inverarity, Robert Bruce, 1909-1999
label: Names
content: Johns, Jasper, 1930-
label: Names
content: Johnson, Philip, 1906-2005
label: Names
content: Johnson, Ray, 1927-
label: Names
content: Kandinsky, Wassily, 1866-1944
label: Names
content: Kepes, Gyorgy, 1906-2001
label: Names
content: Kepes, Juliet
label: Names
content: Klee, Paul, 1879-1940
label: Names
content: Kline, Franz, 1910-1962
label: Names
content: Knox, Seymour H., 1898-1990
label: Names
content: Le Corbusier, 1887-1965
label: Names
content: Lundeberg, Helen, 1908-1999
label: Names
content: Lye, Len, 1901-1980
label: Names
content: Léger, Fernand, 1881-1955
label: Names
content: Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 1886-1969
label: Names
content: Millier, Arthur, 1893-
label: Names
content: Moholy-Nagy, László, 1895-1946
label: Names
content: Motherwell, Robert
label: Names
content: Mérida, Carlos, 1891-1984
label: Names
content: Nutting, Muriel Leone Tyler, b. 1892
label: Names
content: Nutting, Myron Chester, 1890-1972
label: Names
content: O'Higgins, Pablo, 1904-
label: Names
content: Orozco, José Clemente, 1883-1949
label: Names
content: Ozbekhan, Hasan, 1921-2007
label: Names
content: Perkins, Frances
label: Names
content: Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973
label: Photographer
content: Pollack, Peter, 1909-1978
label: Names
content: Putnam, Wallace, 1899-1989
label: Names
content: Ray, Man, 1890-1976
label: Names
content: Rich, Daniel Catton, 1904-1976
label: Names
content: Rothko, Mark, 1903-1970
label: Names
content: Sandberg, Carl
label: Names
content: Seligmann, Kurt, 1900-1962
label: Names
content: Shackelford, Shelby
label: Names
content: Shahn, Ben, 1898-1969
label: Names
content: Spaeth, Otto, d. 1966
label: Names
content: Sterne, Hedda, 1916-
label: Names
content: Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing), 1900-1965
label: Names
content: Still, Clyfford, 1904-
label: Names
content: Tanning, Dorothea, 1910-2012
label: Names
content: Tobey, Mark
label: Names
content: Winston, Harry Lewis
label: Names
content: Woolf, Olga
label: Names
content: Young, Victor
topic: label: Occupation
content: Authors -- Illinois -- Chicago
label: Occupation
content: Art historians -- Illinois -- Chicago
label: Occupation
content: Art dealers -- Illinois -- Chicago
label: Occupation
content: Art critics -- Illinois -- Chicago
label: Occupation
content: Curators -- Illinois -- Chicago
label: Occupation
content: Art consultants -- Illinois -- Chicago
label: Topic
content: Art, Abstract -- United States
label: Topic
content: Art, American
label: Topic
content: Art, Modern -- 20th century -- United States
label: Topic
content: Women art dealers
label: Topic
content: Women art historians
label: Topic
content: Women museum curators
label: Topic
content: Women authors
label: Topic
content: Women art critics
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: The Katharine Kuh papers were donated in several installments from 1971 to 1989 by Katharine Kuh and in 1994 by her estate. Artwork was donated in 1995 by Kuh's former employer, the Art Institute of Chicago.
creator: label: Creator
content: Kuh, Katharine
setName: label: See more items in
content: Katharine Kuh papers
abstract: label: Summary
content: The papers of art historian, dealer, critic, and curator Katharine Kuh measure 12 linear feet and date from 1875-1994, with the bulk of the material dating from 1930-1994. The collection documents Kuh's career as a pioneer modernist art historian and as the first woman curator of European Art and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with family, friends and colleagues; personal business records; artwork by various artists; a travel journal; writings by Kuh and others; scrapbooks; printed material; photographs of Kuh and others; and audio recordings of Kuh's lectures and of Daniel Catton Rich reading poetry.
bioghist: label: Biographical Note
content: Katharine Kuh (1904-1994) worked primarily in the Chicago area as an modern art historian, dealer, critic, curator, writer, and consultant. She operated the Katharine Kuh Gallery from 1935-1943 and was the first woman curator of European and Art and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Katharine Kuh (née Woolf) was born on July 15, 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of the three daughters of Olga Weiner and Morris Woolf, a silk importer. In 1909, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois. While traveling with her family in Europe in 1914, Katharine contracted polio, causing her to spend the next decade in a body brace. During this time of restricted movement, she developed an interest in art history through the collecting of old master prints.

After her recovery, Katharine Woolf attended Vassar College where one of her professors, Alfred Barr, encouraged her to study modern art. She graduated from Vassar in 1925 and received a master's degree in art history from the University of Chicago in 1929. Later that year, she moved to New York to pursue a Ph.D. in Renaissance and medieval art at New York University.

In 1930, Katharine Woolf returned to Chicago and married businessman George Kuh and began to teach art history courses in the suburbs of Chicago. After divorcing George Kuh in 1935, she opened the Katharine Kuh Gallery, the first gallery devoted to avant-garde art in Chicago. It was also the first gallery to exhibit photography and typographical design as art forms, and featured the work of Ansel Adams, Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, and Man Ray, among others. From 1938 to1940, Kuh was the Visiting Professor of Art at the University School of Fine Arts, San Miguel, Mexico.

After the Katharine Kuh Gallery closed in 1943, Kuh was hired by museum director Daniel Catton Rich to fill a position in public relations at the Art Institute of Chicago. During the following years, Kuh edited the museum's Quarterly publication, took charge of the museum's Gallery of Interpretive Art, and began a long term relationship with Rich. In 1946, Kuh was sent on a special mission for the U. S. Office of Indian Affairs to make a detailed study of Native American totemic carvings in Alaska.

In 1949, Kuh persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Walter Arensberg of Los Angeles to exhibit their collection of modern art, creating the first post-war exhibition of modern art in Chicago. She published her first book Art Has Many Faces in 1951, and in the following year, she began writing art criticism for The Saturday Review. In 1954, Kuh was appointed the first woman curator of European Art and Sculpture at the Art Institute. She assembled the American contribution for the Venice Biennale in 1956 and during these years, Kuh helped acquire many of the works of modern art currently in the museum's collection.

A year following Daniel Catton Rich's 1958 resignation from the Art Institute of Chicago, Kuh also resigned and pursued a career in New York as an art collection advisor, most notably for the First National Bank of Chicago. In 1959, Kuh was made art critic for The Saturday Review, and she continued to publish books, including The Artist's Voice in 1962, Break-Up: The Core of Modern Art in 1965, and The Open Eye: In Pursuit of Art in 1971.

Katharine Kuh died on January 10, 1994 in New York City.
function: label: Function
content: Art festivals
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 12 Linear Feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1875-1994
label: Date
content: bulk 1930-1994
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.kuhkath
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Illustrated letters
label: Type
content: Resumes
label: Type
content: Travel diaries
label: Type
content: Minutes
label: Type
content: Calendars
label: Type
content: Visitors' books
label: Type
content: Photographs
label: Type
content: Paintings
label: Type
content: Awards
label: Type
content: Drawings
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Collages
label: Type
content: Scrapbooks
label: Type
content: Lithographs
label: Type
content: Prints
label: Type
content: Wills
label: Type
content: Watercolors
label: Type
content: Poetry
label: Type
content: Lecture notes
label: Type
content: Lectures
label: Type
content: Sales records
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged as 9 series. Undated correspondence, artwork, and photographs of individual artists are arranged alphabetically. Otherwise, each series is arranged chronologically.

Series 1: Biographical Material, 1945-1992 (Box 1; 16 folders)

Series 2: Correspondence, 1908-1994 (Boxes 1-5, 13-14, OV 15; 4.0 linear feet)

Series 3: Personal Business Records, 1941-1989 (Box 5; 19 folders)

Series 4: Artwork, 1931-1986 (Boxes 5, 13-14, OVs 15-23; 1.7 linear feet)

Series 5: Notes and Writings, 1914-1994 (Boxes 5-7; 1.7 linear feet)

Series 6: Scrapbooks, 1935-1953 (Box 7; 8 folders)

Series 7: Printed Material, 1916-1992 (Boxes 7-10, 13, OV 22; 3.0 linear feet)

Series 8: Photographs, 1875-1993 (Boxes 10-13; 1.2 linear feet)

Series 9: Audio Recordings, 1977 (Box 12; 1 folder)
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Individual accessions were minimally processed and microfilmed on reels 265, 267, 2225-2227, and 2288. Previously microfilmed and unmicrofilmed portions were merged, arranged, and described by Jean Fitzgerald in August 2008 with funding provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
altformavail: label: Alternative Forms Available
content: Portions of the collection are available on 35 mm microfilm reels 265, 267, 2225-2227, and 2288 at the Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan. Researchers should note that the arrangement of the material described in the container inventory does not reflect the arrangement of the collection on microfilm.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Illustrated letters
label: Genre/Form
content: Resumes
label: Genre/Form
content: Travel diaries
label: Genre/Form
content: Minutes
label: Genre/Form
content: Calendars
label: Genre/Form
content: Visitors' books
label: Genre/Form
content: Photographs
label: Genre/Form
content: Paintings
label: Genre/Form
content: Awards
label: Genre/Form
content: Drawings
label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
label: Genre/Form
content: Collages
label: Genre/Form
content: Scrapbooks
label: Genre/Form
content: Lithographs
label: Genre/Form
content: Prints
label: Genre/Form
content: Wills
label: Genre/Form
content: Watercolors
label: Genre/Form
content: Poetry
label: Genre/Form
content: Lecture notes
label: Genre/Form
content: Lectures
label: Genre/Form
content: Sales records
scopecontent: label: Scope and Content Note
content: The papers of art historian, dealer, critic, and curator Katharine Kuh measure 12 linear feet and date from 1875-1994, with the bulk of the material dating from 1930-1994. Found within the papers are biographical material; correspondence with family, friends and colleagues; personal business records; artwork by various artists; a travel journal; writings by Kuh and others; scrapbooks; printed material; photographs of Kuh and others; and audio recordings of Kuh's lectures and of Daniel Catton Rich reading poetry.

Biographical material consists of copies of Kuh's birth certificate, resumés, passports, award certificates, honorary diplomas, and address books listing information about several prominent artists and colleagues.

Four linear feet of correspondence offers excellent documentation of Kuh's interest in art history, her travels, her career at the Art Institute of Chicago, her work as a corporate art advisor, and as an author. There are letters from her mother Olga Woolf, friends, and colleagues. There is extensive correspondence with various staff members of the Art Institute of Chicago, the First National Bank of Chicago, and The Saturday Review. Also of interest are letters from artists and collectors, several of whom became life-long friends including Walter and Louise Arensberg, Cosmo Campoli, Serge Chermayeff, Richard Cox, Worden Day, Claire Falkenstein, Fred Friendly, Leon Golub, Joseph Goto, David Hare, Denise Brown Hare, Jean Hélion, Ray Johnson, Gyorgy and Juliet Kepes, Len Lye, Wallace Putnam, Kurt Seligmann, Shelby Shackelford, Hedda Sterne, and Clyfford Still. Many letters are illustrated with original artwork in various media.

There are also scattered letters from various artists and other prominent individuals including Josef Albers, George Biddle, Marcel Breuer, Joseph Cornell, Stuart Davis, Edwin Dickinson, Joseph Hirshhorn, Daniel Catton Rich, and Dorothea Tanning.

Personal business records include a list of artwork, Olga Woolf's will, inventories of Kuh's personal art collection, miscellaneous contracts and deeds of gift, receipts for the sale of artwork, files concerning business-related travel, and miscellaneous receipts.

Artwork in the collection represents a wide range of artist friends and media, such as drawings, watercolors, paintings, collages, and prints. Included are works by various artists including lithographs by David Hare and a watercolor set, Technics and Creativity, designed and autographed by Jasper Johns for the Museum of Modern Art, 1970.

Notes and writings include annotated engagement calendars, travel journals for Germany, a guest book for the Kuh Memorial gathering, and many writings and notes by Kuh for lectures and articles concerning art history topics. Of interest are minutes/notes from meetings for art festivals, conferences, and the "Conversations with Artists Program (1961). Also found are writings by others about Kuh and other art history topics. 

Six scrapbooks contain clippings that document the height of Kuh's career as a gallery director and museum curator. Scrapbook 6 contains clippings about Fernand Léger, the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1953.

Additional printed material includes clippings about Kuh and her interests, a comprehensive collection of clippings of Kuh's articles for The Saturday Review, exhibition announcements and catalogs, calendars of events, programs, brochures, books including Poems by Kuh as a child, and reproductions of artwork. Of particular interest are the early and exhibition catalogs from the Katharine Kuh Gallery, and rare catalogs for artists including Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Stanley William Hayter, Hans Hofmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Kline, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Pablo Picasso.

Photographs provide important documentation of the life and career of Katharine Kuh and are of Kuh, family members, friends, colleagues, events, residences, and artwork. Several of the photographs of Kuh were taken by Will Barnet and Marcel Breuer and there is a notable pair of photo booth portraits of Kuh and a young Ansel Adams. There are also group photographs showing Angelica Archipenko with Kuh; designer Klaus Grabe; painters José Chavez Morado and Pablo O'Higgins in San Miguel, Mexico; Kuh at the Venice Biennale with friends and colleagues including Peggy Guggenheim, Frances Perkins, Daniel Catton Rich, and Harry Winston; and "The Pre-Depressionists" including Lorser Feitelson, Robert Inverarity, Helen Lundeberg, Arthur Millier, Myron Chester Nutting, and Muriel Tyler Nutting.

Photographs of exhibition installations and openings include views of the Katharine Kuh Gallery; Fernand Léger, Man Ray, and László Moholy-Nagy at the Art Institute of Chicago; and Philip Guston, Jimmy Ernst, Seymour H. Knox, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Mark Rothko at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. There are also photographs depicting three men posing as Léger's "Three Musicians" and the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to the Art Institute of Chicago. There is a photograph by Peter Pollack of an elk skull used as a model by Georgia O'Keeffe.

Additional photographs of friends and colleagues include Ivan Albright, Alfred Barr, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Willem De Kooning, Edwin Dickinson, Marcel Duchamp, Claire Falkenstein, Alberto Giacometti, poet Robert Graves with Len Lye, Philip Johnson, Gyorgy and Juliet Kepes, Carlos Mérida, José Orozco, Hasan Ozbekhan, Pablo Picasso, Carl Sandberg, Ben Shahn, Otto Spaeth, Hedda Sterne, Adlai Stevenson, Clyfford Still, Mark Tobey, and composer Victor Young.

Photographs of artwork include totem poles in Alaska; work by various artists including Claire Falkenstein, Paul Klee, and Hedda Sterne; and work donated to the Guggenheim Museum.

Four audio recordings on cassette are of Katharine Kuh's lectures, including one about assembling corporate collections, and of Daniel Catton Rich reading his own poetry. There is also a recording of the Second Annual Dialogue between Broadcasters and Museum Educators.