Notes and Writings

This series contains writings by Walt Kuhn, his family, and others, and notes relating to Kuhn's contacts, publications, artwork, and other activities. Types of material include index card files, address books, notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, clippings, correspondence, and photographs. Card Files containing the Kuhns' scrupulous notes about people make up the bulk of this series. The files were kept in three separate alphabetical files with overlapping dates. They contain contact information, anecdotal details about shared meals, cocktail parties, or excursions, and cross-references to correspondence. Attachments such as clippings, correspondence, photographs, exhibition catalogs, and social announcements are common. Photographs and artwork found among the cards have been removed to separate folders, including images of Alan Burroughs, Sadakichi Hartmann, and Patsy Santo, and watercolor drawings by Lewis Barrington and Jean Oberlé. The original arrangement of the card file is idiosyncratic. Notes on Artwork include a list of Kuhn's artwork which sold at the auction of John Quinn's art collection in February 1927; many lists of artwork compiled for exhibition, shipping, and inventory; and detailed descriptions of early artwork written by Kuhn. Walt Kuhn's Notes and Notebooks include travel notes from Europe, the Western United States, and Maine, with a few sketches. Vera Kuhn's travel writings recount family trips to Nova Scotia from 1909 to 1912, and a trip to Europe in 1925. Miscellaneous Personal Notes range from shopping lists and recipes to more significant notes such as those about he disposition of artwork after Kuhn's death. Collection Notes are notes about the family papers written on envelopes. The items once contained by the envelopes were separated from their contents during initial processing and are now filed throughout the Walt Kuhn Family Papers. Other writings include manuscripts and visual materials from lectures given by Kuhn and Alfred Barr in 1934 about modern art collecting. Two articles about Kuhn published in Collier's in the 1940s are also filed here, along with related correspondence including letters from actress Dorothy Stickney, writer H.L.Mencken, and a number of Kuhn's former models. Photographs taken for the Collier's articles are filed with Photographs and Scrapbooks. Miscellaneous Writings by Walt Kuhn include an autobiographical essay and writings on modern art and artists. Kuhn's writings from the period of his final illness and hospitalization are also filed here. Writings about Kuhn include manuscripts by Alan Burroughs, Jeanne Robert Foster, Blanche Matthias, and Frank E. Washburn Freund. Also included are typewritten copies of published essays about Kuhn's work. Additional writings by Walt Kuhn are in Armory Show Records, Kit Kat Club and Penguin Club Records, and Other Projects. Significant writing about his artwork and techniques can also be found in his outgoing correspondence.