New Collections: Alana VanDerwerker Materials Related to Haystack Mountain School of Craft

This entry is part of an ongoing series highlighting new collections. The Archives of American Art collects primary source materials—original letters, writings, preliminary sketches, scrapbooks, photographs, financial records, and the like—that have significant research value for the study of art in the United States. The following essay was originally published in the Fall 2023 issue (vol. 62, no. 2) of the Archives of American Art Journal. More information about the journal can be found at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/aaa/current.

The two linear feet of source materials in this collection enabled the 2019 publication of Haystack at Liberty: From Insight to Mountain to Island by donor and author Alana VanDerwerker (1950– ). The book is the culmination of work VanDerwerker began in the late 1970s, when Francis Sumner Merritt, founding director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (est. 1950), asked her to assist him in documenting his life and contributions to arts education. As a painter, professional copy editor, and lifelong Maine resident, VanDerwerker was ideally suited for the work. She attended Haystack herself, both in 1975 at the current location in Deer Isle, Maine, and in 1976 at its temporary experimental site at Arcosanti, in central Arizona.

Gathered over decades, VanDerwerker’s research materials include cassette tapes and transcriptions of her interviews with leading artists and administrators such as William Brown, Jack Lenor Larsen, Emily Mason, and the architect of Haystack, Edward Larrabee Barnes. Correspondence between Merritt, his wife Priscilla Merritt, and VanDerwerker and her husband Gerritt spans decades. Three notebooks document her meetings with Haystack artists and associates, while original photographs Merritt gave to VanDerwerker, many annotated, document seminars and workshops in progress.

Photographs in the collection portray artists, such as Calvin Burnett, engaged in the primary formats that shaped Haystack’s program: seminars and medium-specific workshops. In one image from 1954, Burnett sits alongside four peers in front of an audience, most with their attention fixed on a speaking and gesturing Merritt at the opposite end of the table. Burnett is visible on the far right, head resting in hand. Another 1954 photograph depicts Burnett holding court himself, his forward-leaning body supported by an upright silkscreen. Together these images encapsulate one artist’s experience as both audience member and teacher, revealing the fluidity of roles at Haystack. In Burnett’s 1980–81 oral history (also at the Archives, along with his papers), he is prompted to address the perennial art-historical debate about art versus craft. “I never considered myself to be a craftsman,” he admitted. “See, the craftsmen call themselves artist craftsmen, the artist part being the person who makes the thing up, who makes that one-of-a-kind sort of thing. And I consider myself to do that as an artist, painter, draftsman, kind of thing.” Merritt’s snapshots from Haystack complicate Burnett’s words, as they show him actively participating in a community fundamentally defined by craft. 

This is just one example of how the VanDerwerker materials can further research in the field of craft, building on the strength the Archives has demonstrated in this area for decades. Because the records result from intentional research for publication, their careful assembly and thorough annotation also suggest that they will provide names, dates, and other details that may be missing from other collections.

Josh T. Franco is the head of collecting at the Archives of American Art.