Hale Woodruff papers

The papers of Hale A. Woodruff document Woodruff's life and career as an artist, educator, and art collector. The collection includes correspondence, invitations, writings by and about Woodruff, photographs, greeting cards with art by Woodruff, and collected items. Correspondence includes incoming and outgoing letters filed in chronological order, dated from 1927 to 1985. Posthumous letters are mostly from or to his wife, Theresa. A small portion of the correspondence is with Woodruff's family, and a significant portion is with fellow artists, educators, scholars, collectors, and admirers.

Principal correspondents include: Theresa Woodruff; Roy Woodruff; Gussie Woods (Woodruff's mother); Winifred L. Stoelting, who wrote a disseration about Wooruff; Mary Parks Washington, who served as Woodruff's west coast agent for sales; Leonard Kahan, art dealer who represented sales of Woodruff's African art collection; and Richard G. Braithwaite, principal of the Hale A. Woodruff School in Brooklyn, New York. Artists represented in the correspondence include: Charles H. Alston, Romare Bearden, Hans Bhalia, John Biggers, Robert Blackburn, Margaret Burroughs, William F. Colvin, Howard Consant, Arthur Coppedge, John M. Howard, Wilmer Jennings, Lois Mailou Jones, Samella Lewis, Juan Logan, Roland O'Neal, Carl Provder, Sue Jane Smock, and Vernon Winslow. Other correspondents include: Peg Alston (art dealer), Arthur D. Coar (chairman of the board, African Art Gallery Committee, Detroit Institute of Arts), Frederick J. Cummings (director, Detroit Institute of Arts), Margaret B. Cunningham (president, Black Dimensions in Art), Philippe De Montebello (director, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Murry N. DePillars (president, National Conference of Artists), Edmund Barry Gaither (director, Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists), Henri Ghent (art critic); Oakley N. Holmes Jr. (producer, Black Artists in America), Bertina Carter Hunter (member, New York Art Commission), Carl McCall (chairman, Harlem Art Collection Committee), Donna Mussenden (director, Gallery 62, the National Urban League), Lowery S. Sims (assistant curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art), Lawrence F. Sykes (curator of art, Rhode Island College), Cudmund Vigtel (director, Hugh Museum of Art, Atlanta), Ralph L. Wickiser (director of graduate programs in art and design, Pratt Institute); D. Kenneth Winebrenner (editor, School Arts magazine), and several persons associated with the Studio Museum in Harlem (Gylbert Coker, Courtney Callender, Mary Schmidt Campbell, and Richar V. Clarke). A later donation (1996) includes photocopied letters, dated 1978-1979, between artist Hale Woodruff and George A. Owens (president) and Ronald Schnell (professor of art and curator) of Tougaloo College concerning African artwork from Woodruff's collection, which he donated to Tougaloo in 1978. For more information on these letters, contact Research Services Division at 504-862-3222, or reference@amistadresearchcenter.org.

Non-correspondence dates from 1865-1985 and is generally arranged so that material generated by Woodruff precedes collected items. Materials relate to Woodruff's murals for the Golden State Mutal Life Insurance Company; Hunter College; the First World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966; Atlanta University; and Sigma Ph Phi Fraternity. The collection contains materials related to Woodruff's collection of African art, various African American artists, as well as materials related to Eskimo, Native American, and Oceanic art. Photographs document Woodruff's life and art, as well as other African American artists. Of note are greeting card designs by Woodruff, as well as Woodruff's notebook with sketches from a course he took under Diego Rivera.