The Hatch-Billops Collection of Art Smith
name: label: Designer
content: Smith, Art, 1917-1982
label: Names
content: Duke Ellington Society
label: Artist
content: Billops, Camille, 1933-2019
label: Names
content: Boatwright, Ruth Ellington, 1915-2004
label: Names
content: Ellington, Duke, 1899-1974
label: Names
content: Primus, Pearl, (dancer), 1919-1994
topic: label: Topic
content: Jewelry -- Design
label: Topic
content: African American art
label: Topic
content: African American artisans
label: Topic
content: African American art -- Exhibitions
label: Topic
content: African American artists as teachers
label: Topic
content: American studio craft movement
creator: label: Designer
content: Smith, Art, 1917-1982
setName: label: See more items in
content: The Hatch-Billops Collection of Art Smith
abstract: label: Summary
content: Arthur (Art) Smith was one of the leading modernist studio jewelry artists of the mid-twentieth century. Between 1946 and 1977, Arthur Smith worked out of his store, ArtSmith Jewelry in Greenwich Village, New York City creating avant-garde designs for inclusion in large exhibitions, for clients, wholesalers, and commissions. During his life, Arthur's work was featured in numerous exhibitions across the United States. His legacy was also honored posthumously through additional exhibitions and projects, including the "Art Smith Project" and the "Arthur Smith: A Jeweler's Retrospective", exhibition curated by Camille Billops of the Hatch-Billops Collection, Inc. This archival collection contains biographical materials, photographs, original drawings and facsimiles of jewelry drawings and designs, exhibition materials and catalogues, correspondence, clippings, business papers, manuscripts, oral history interview transcripts, and copies of audio oral history interviews, documenting Arthur Smith's life and work, collected by the Hatch-Billops Collection. The materials in this collection provides insight into Arthur Smith's life, his work as a jewelry artist, and the preservation of his legacy.
bioghist: label: History of the Hatch-Billops Collection of Art Smith
content: Arthur (Art) George Smith was born in Santa Lucia, Cuba to Jamaican parents James and Mary Smith (née Williams) on October 28, 1917. Smith displayed a talent for fine arts while attending elementary school that that he further developed with a full scholarship to Cooper Union, a private college in New York focused on the study of fine Smiths, architecture, and engineering. While there, he explored a variety of art forms and later recalled being most interested in sculpture and decorative arts. He graduated in 1940. The same year, the New Deal work program, National Youth Administration (later Junior Achievement, Inc) allowed Smith to teach youth art courses at the Children's Aid Society in Harlem. There he met fellow jewelry designer, Winifred Mason (Chenet), who hired, trained, and mentored Smith at her shop located in Greenwich Village. 

In 1946, Smith was forced close his first shop in Little Italy due to racial discrimination and decided to move his shop back to Greenwich Village. There he briefly shared the shop, Craft House, with fellow artist and craftswoman Helen Cornélé Cuyjet. After parting ways, he renamed the store, Art Smith after himself. Employing and training up to four apprentices at a time from local art schools, Smith was able to produce large quantities of product. His prolific output allowed him to sell his work to national retail stores and boutiques in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. His retail clients included Bloomingdales and Milton Heffling's Inc.  

His diverse clientele was mostly independent, stylist women frequented his boutiques. He possessed strong Black client base that transversed multi-disciplinary Black arts scene including artists, writers, dancers, and musicians. Smith designed jewelry for the Pearl Primus Dance Company, Tally Beatty Dance Company, and Claude Marchant Dance Company. He also sold thousands of dollars-worth of jewelry to outlets such as the Afro-Arts Bazaar in Harlem. Some of his most notable clients included performer Etta Moten Barnett and nurse and educator Estelle Massey Osborn. 

By the 1950s, Smith's pieces were being featured in Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and The New Yorker. Both Jetand Opportunity (National Urban League) magazines published articles on his work. Two of his notable commissions include a brooch for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and cufflinks for Duke Ellington commissioned by his sister, Ruth. Smith, charter member of the Duke Ellington Society, designed the cufflinks with the first notes of his 1930 hit composition, "Mood Indigo." As the popularity of modern midcentury designs began to wane in the 1960s, there was still an interest in those designs created by Black artists. Smith began to be associated artists Charles Sebree and Camille Billops. Billops became a devoted friend to Smith and his last life partner Charles Russell. 

Camille Billops (1933-2019) was an African American artist, filmmaker, activist, archivist, educator, curator and collector of African American arts and culture.  As an educator, she taught art at Rutgers University, City College of the City University of New York (CCNY), and the U.S. Information Services of India. She was also affiliated the Indiana State University Black American Literature Forum journal. Her most notable work includes her film, Finding Christa, which focuses on how her personal life shaped work including her contributions to a book dedicated to Harlem photographer James Van Der Zee funerary series, The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978). Her husband, James (Jim) V. Hatch (1928-2020), a theatre historian and educator at the City College at the City University of New York (1965-1993), as well as serving as Fulbright lecturer at the Cinema Institute in Cairo, Egypt (1962-1965). Hatch published widely about African American theatre. 

The Hatch-Billops Collection, Inc. is now part of The Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives, at Emory University, originating in New York City in 1968. The Civil Rights Movement increased racial consciousness in the United States which spurred the discovery that there was limited published research on African American history, arts, and culture. As a result, the couple began collecting primary documentation from Black artists, performers, and writers. Many artists sent their materials for safekeeping. Hatch and Billops amassed a formidable research collection of artworks, photographic materials, plays, set designs, manuscripts, books, ephemera, clippings, and oral histories focused on Black arts and culture that they stored in their NYC home. 

In an effort to develop more primary documentation, Hatch and Billops received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to conduct oral history interviews with Black performers, artists and scholars. Billops also photographed the works of Black artists featured in museum exhibitions and galleries. Both projects included documentation of Art Smith and his partner Charles Russell. Billops and Hatch also published Artist and Influence, a journal featuring the transcripts of the interviews, panel discussions and forums featuring Black artists and performers. 

After Art's death in 1982, Billops working in collaboration with Art's family, friends, and former clients, began "The Art Smith Project", to document his legacy: life, artworks, and jewelry designs. Working alongside partner Charles Russell and gallery owner Mark McDonald, Billops launched various exhibitions dedicated Smith's legacy including "Structure and Ornament: American Modernist Jewelry 1940-1960," at the FIFTY/50 Gallery in 1984 and in "Intimate Sculpture: Art Smith and His Contemporaries," at McDonald's Gansevoort Gallery in 1998.  The jewelry featured in FIFTY/50 Gallery was purchased by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in 1993. The museum used the collection to create the traveling exhibition and a book on mid-century jewelry design titled, Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry 1940-1960, by Toni Greenbaum. The exhibit utilized photographs of Smith's jewelry from the Hatch-Billops Collection.
label: Biographical / Historical
content: Art Smith Exhibitions

February – April 1948  -- Modern Jewelry under Fifty Dollars, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

November 28, 1954 – January 15, 1955 -- Good Design, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH

March 10 – April 10, 1955  -- Design in Metal, Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, IA

November 20 –December 30, 1960  -- Eight New York Craftsmen, Staten Island Museum Staten Island, NY

September 12 – October 12,1969  -- The Jewelry of Art Smith, The Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York, NY

October 3, 1969 – September 3, 1972 -- Objects: USA, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts New York, NY

November 6 – December 5, 1971  -- Jewellery '71—an exhibition of contemporary jewellery, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Late 1971 – early 1972 -- Handcrafted, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Harlem, NY

December 1st – 20th, 1974 -- The Haystack Encounter, The Gallery of Art at Morgan State College, Baltimore, MD

June 1979  -- Brookfield Craft Center 25th Anniversary Exhibit, Brookfield Craft Center, Inc., Brookfield, CT

February 1 – March 4, 1990  -- Arthur Smith: A Jeweler's Retrospective, The Jamaica Arts Center, Jamaica-Queens, NY

December 1997 – January 10, 1998  -- Art Smith and His Contemporaries: Modernist Jewelry, 1940-1965, Gansevoort Gallery, New York, NY

1998 -- Stop Asking/We Exist: 25 African American Craft Artists, curated The Society for Contemporary Crafts, Pittsburgh, PA

2003 -- Vital Forms: American Art & Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960 Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY

2008 -- From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY

2010 -- Craft Revolution: The American Studio Movement, 1945-1970, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 7.3 Cubic feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1930-2018
label: Date
content: bulk 1947-1998
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAAHC.A2022.64
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The collection is arranged into five series: 

Series 1: Biographical Materials, circa 1930-1982

Series 2: Jewelry Designs and Work Activities, circa 1936-1982

             Subseries 2.1: Business Records, 1936-1982
             
Subseries 2.2: Exhibitions, 1947-1981

Subseries 2.3: Designs and Drawings, circa 1940-1981

Series 3: Photographs, circa 1930-2014	

Series 4: "The Art Smith Project" and Retrospective Exhibition, circa 1953-1998

Series 5: Legacy and Posthumous Exhibits, circa 1930s-2018
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: This collection and finding aid were produced in association with History Associated, Inc. (HAI) represented by archivist Laura Bell. NMAAHC representatives include archivist Ja-Zette Marshburn, curator Dr. Joanne Hyppolite, curatorial intern Nina Elaine Pulley, museum specialist Julia Hirsch and processing archivist Earnest Lucious.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The Hatch-Billops Collection of Art Smith (circa 1930-2016, bulk dates: 1947-1998) documents the life, career, and legacy of Arthur (Art) George Smith (1917-1982), a prominent Black, gay modernist studio jeweler of the 20th century. The collection extensively documents Arthur Smith's jewelry designs and drawings and includes both original sketches and facsimiles of his designs for individual pieces. This archive was created by the Hatch-Billops Collection, Inc. as Camille Billops collected materials and documented the artwork of Arthur Smith. It documents the project administration and exhibition planning efforts of Camille Billops and collaborators between 1986 and 1990 for the Art Smith Project, an extensive oral history project that documented Arthur Smith's life and work through interviews with friends, family, and others. Additionally, the collection contains a large number of photographs showing ArtSmith Jewelry worn by collectors and models, collected and created for Billops' curated 1990 exhibition at the Jamaica Arts Center in New York City entitled, Arthur Smith: A Jeweler's Retrospective. Photographs present in this archive also include those collected from Arthur's business and advertising efforts, and also include materials documenting his personal life. The collection also highlights the work of Camille Billops, James Hatch, and Charles Russell throughout the 1970s-2000s as they preserved Arthur's legacy through several large museum and gallery exhibitions.

The bulk of the collection comprises originals and facsimiles of Arthur's jewelry drawings and designs, photographs of his jewelry used for advertising and exhibitions, his exhibition planning materials, and business papers documenting Arthur's life as an artist and his New York store. Additionally, the collection contains documentation of Arthur's health, personal interests, and relationships, as well as the friendship between Camille Billops and Charles Russell after Arthur's death. The collection documents the lasting legacy of Arthur's artwork in the form of posthumous exhibitions materials, drafts of Charles Russell's book, Art as Adornment: The Life and Work of Arthur George Smith, and plans and research materials used for Camille Billops' uncompleted "Art Smith Book."