Dorothy Dehner papers, 1920-1987, bulk 1951-1987

Series consists of Dehner's personal and professional correspondence, comprised of mostly incoming letters but also some early drafts or copies of outgoing letters in addition to some enclosures such as loan agreements, shipping receipts, manuscripts, and printed material. Correspondents include museums, galleries, art dealers, curators, scholars, students, artists, writers, friends, and relatives. Correspondence largely documents Dehner's various personal and professional relationships, her efforts to promote and exhibit her artwork and to facilitate art historical research (on David Smith, herself, and other artists), and her various creative activities.

Personal correspondents include David Smith, Smith's sister, Catherine, and his mother, Golda; Smith's second wife, Jean Smith Pond, and his two daughters, Rebecca and Candida; Dehner's second husband, Ferdinand Mann and stepdaughter, Abby (Mann) Thernstrom; friends and fellow artists, Edgar and Lucille Corcos Levy, Herman Cherry, and Louise Nevelson; and her heart surgeon, Elliott Hurwitt, among others. Dehner often established friendships with individuals who started out corresponding on a professional basis (such as curators, dealers, and students), so personal correspondence can often be found interspersed with professional correspondence.

Professional correspondence typically relates to the loan, exhibition, and sale of Dehner's work and the Smith work that Dehner owned. Notable exhibitions documented include the 1950s traveling show of her watercolors and drawings, and group and solo shows including at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Storm King Art Center, and Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. Also documented are Dehner's dealings with Mildred Constantine and Marian Willard (of the Willard Gallery), among others. Correspondence with curators, scholars, and students relates to research inquiries primarily about Smith, but also about Dehner herself and other artists of her era, such as John Graham, Irene Rice Pereira, and Louise Nevelson. Professional correspondence also concerns the editing and publication of the foreword she wrote for the re-issue of John Graham's System and Dialectics of Art, and the publication of her poems in the journal Tracks; certain matters pertaining to David Smith's estate, such as the disposition of some items belonging to Dehner and the controversial alteration of the painted surfaces of certain Smith sculptures carried out by executor Clement Greenberg; donations of art works to various institutions, including Dehner's effort to raise funds from Jan Matulka's former students to purchase and donate one of his paintings to the Guggenheim Museum; and the donation of her papers to the Archives of American Art, and subsequent permissions to access and publish from them.

Correspondence is typically arranged in alphabetical order according to name of correspondent. Some files contain the letters of various individuals and are arranged according to subject (e.g. "Various, Condolence Letters"). Letters from a correspondent with an unknown surname are arranged in a file according to first name, and unidentified letters and fragments are arranged in files at the end of the series. Related material can be found amongst business and financial papers.

Series has been digitized in entirety.