Oral history interview with Margaret Babcock
odd: label: General
content: Originally recorded on 2 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 1 hr., 56 min.
label: General
content: Babcock's speech is impaired by a stroke and deafness. Sound quality is poor.
name: label: Interviewee
content: Babcock, Margaret Meras, 1907-
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
topic: label: Occupation
content: Curators -- Maine -- Camden
label: Topic
content: Women museum curators
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
creator: label: Interviewee
content: Babcock, Margaret Meras, 1907-
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Margaret Mera Babcock (1907- ) was a curator from Camden, Maine.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 2 Items (sound cassettes (total 120 min.), analog.)
label: Extent
content: 29 Pages (Transcript)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1998 July 21
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.babcoc98
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Pages
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Interviews
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
label: Genre/Form
content: Interviews
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: An interview with Margaret Babcock conducted 1998 July 21, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art, in Camden, Maine. The interview covers her family background up through the 1920s.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Babcock discusses being raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, where her father owned Daniel Chester French's former house; being a precocious student; attending Phillips Exeter Academy's June Ball with Francis Grover Cleveland, a grandson of the president (she recites a poem that commemorated her romantic thrill over the experience); attending Smith College where she concentrated in zoology but aspired to be a writer and teacher; devoting much time to modern dance; meeting, her freshman year, an Amherst College senior & pupil of Robert Frost, Ernest Robson (formerly Rosenblum) from Chicago; the snobbish economic and anti-semitic caste system at Smith; her parents divorce while at Smith, causing sudden financial problems, and becoming a scholarship student; Robson coming to Smith to see her during her junior year, and following her at the end of that year to Camden, Maine, where her grandmother Frye and her mother lived, and a secret camping trip to northern Maine and Provincetown; marrying Robson April 7, 1926 and graduating from Smith; Peter Blume, the poet Sidney Peak Crawford, and his dog "Little Peak" joined her and Robson on Lime Island, off Camden, summer of 1926; Blume staying behind and showing his "Maine Coast", which he had painted on the island, to her shocked mother and grandmother; supporting Blume financially.