Gates, Margaret Casey, b. 1903 d. 1989

Margaret Casey Gates papers, 1933-1988

1.0 linear ft.

Correspondence, writings, sketchbooks, photographs, and printed material document Gates' work as a painter, her New Deal art projects, the Phillips Memorial Gallery and its art school, where her husband Robert Franklin Gates was a teacher, and the Washington, D.C. arts scene.

Correspondence includes letters to Gates from Robert Franklin Gates, Alfred Stieglitz, C. Law Watkins (director of the Phillips Gallery Art School), Alice Garrett, Karl Knaths, Prentiss Taylor, and others; a letter to C. Law Watkins from Judy [Julian] Lee Rayford, 1934, about Rayford's work on the Federal Art Project; contract and correspondence concerning Gates' post office mural, Mebane, North Carolina, commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts, 1940; and carbon copies of letters to the editor of the Washington Star and Washington Post concerning coverage of Society of Washington Artists exhibitions, 1946 and 1948.

Also included are a price list of paintings, 1948; draft writings by the Gates'; photographs of them; photographs, notes, and printed material about their trip to the Virgin Islands in 1936 when the U.S. Government commissioned Robert to paint a series of watercolors of St. Thomas; two undated sketchbooks by Robert and seven by Margaret, containing sketches of Maine, Virginia, West Virginia, the Virgin Islands, Colorado, Utah, and elsewhere, 1934-1965; an undated sketch of Robert by Karl Knaths; and printed material, including clippings on the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Robert Franklin Gates and other Washington artists, brochures of the Phillips Gallery Art School, 1943-1945, and exhibition catalogs and announcements.

Donated 1994 by Margaret Casey Gates estate via Joyce Svedberg, executrix.

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