Gene Davis papers, 1920-2000, bulk 1942-1990

Series contains biographical documents such as birth and death certificates, awards, biographical narratives by Gene Davis and others, CVs, and résumés. Also found are personal documents from Gene Davis's family and childhood, documentation related to his death and memorial service, and papers for the family pets. Juvenilia includes a childhood essay and drawing, and memorabilia includes performance programs from the 1930s, French currency from 1944, and a clipping annotated by his mother. Papers related to Davis's job as a White House correspondent include schedules, invitations, telephone directories, and documentation of President Truman's travels.

Documentation of Davis's death and memorials include programs and typescript of remarks made at the service, a sound recording of the service on one sound cassette, photocopies of published obituaries, and a photograph album created for the memorial.

Additional material related to Davis's years as a journalist is found in series 5, Writings and series 7, Photographs. Original copies of many of the published obituaries are found in series 6, Printed Material. Additional photographs from Davis's childhood and early years are found in series 7, Photographs.

Correspondence is mainly of a professional nature, and correspondents include gallery and museum curators, private art collectors, publishers, fellow artists, art educators, academics, and students. Letters document exhibitions, sales, book projects, teaching jobs, visits to studios, local art community events in the Washington, D.C. area, and other projects. A few early letters are found related to Davis's personal life and work as a journalist prior to 1955, but most correspondence is from after that date and pertains to his art career. Almost all letters are addressed to Gene Davis, but scattered letters, including letters of condolence from 1985, are addressed to Florence Davis. Significant correspondents include Gene Baro, Douglas Davis, Clement Greenberg, Gerald Nordland, William Seitz, Alma Thomas, and Donald Wall.

Series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Correspondents with more than two letters are filed in individual folders by name, with the remainder of correspondence filed in a general alphabetical file. Where drafts of outgoing letters were found with related incoming letters, they have been kept together, but most drafts of letters by Gene Davis, and some original letters sent to his wife Florence, are filed under his name. Correspondents may be filed under either corporate or personal name, and cross-references are provided in the folder listing where possible. Additional correspondence with museums and galleries is found in series 4, Business and Estate Records, in the gallery files, museum files, legal records, and estate of Gene Davis files.

Series contains interviews with Gene Davis in the form of sound recordings and transcripts. Many of the interviews were broadcast or published. Also found is a single lecture by Davis given in 1969 at the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, entitled "Contemporary Painting." The Rose, Wall, and Hopps interviews with Davis (1971 and 1973) were later edited and published in a monograph in 1975. Edited transcripts related to that publication are found with original transcripts in this series. The Squirru and Voice of America interviews, as well as the Davis lecture, are on 4 sound tape reels, and the Hopps interview is on 1 sound cassette.

Arrangement is chronological. Galley proofs from the Donald Wall publication are found in the Writings series.

Series contains business records related to Davis's art career, including records of artwork, prices, sales, contracts, financial and legal records, gallery and museum files, records related to the construction of Davis's home studio in 1970, and a few teaching records. In general, records from Davis's lifetime are found throughout the series and records created after Davis's death in 1985 are filed under Estate of Gene Davis. An exception is the Charles Cowles Gallery and Hokin Gallery files, which contain records of the estate inventory, sales, and loans. Records filed under Estate of Gene Davis mainly reflect Florence Davis's efforts to document the works of her husband, and to manage their exhibition, promotion, and sale after April 1985. Gallery files contain inventory lists, sales records, and some correspondence and span Davis's career. Museum files typically contain loan agreements, shipping records, insurance appraisals, records related to gifts and purchase of artwork, and invoices for artwork reproductions. Private sales include records of sales made directly by Davis to individual and corporate buyers, including his large-scale installation at Neiman Marcus in Boca Raton, Florida. Davis's exhibition (1983), which featured children's art juxtaposed with his own and curated by Washington Project for the Arts, is documented in a series of files for each of the five venues. The construction of Davis's home studio is documented with architectural drawings, correspondence, invoices, and 13 super 8 mm film reels shot by Davis.

Arrangement is alphabetical, with major headings grouping gallery, museum, and estate records. Additional material related to many of the transactions documented here, particularly related to sales and exhibitions, are found in series 2, Correspondence. Photographs of artwork and exhibitions are in series 7, Photographs.

Writings include notes, articles, statements, essays, books, and research material by and about Gene Davis. Writings by Gene Davis include artist statements, magazine and newspaper articles about art, news stories written as a White House correspondent for Transradio Press Service, exhibition-related texts, notes, and a proposal for the site-specific "Grass Painting" at the Kennedy Center in 1974. Artist's statements were usually written for specific Davis exhibitions, and include a statement for the "Gene Davis Give-Away," a happening undertaken with Douglas Davis and Ed McGowin in 1969. Several of Davis's articles reflect specifically on the Washington, D.C. art scene. Most of the writings exist as typescripts. Photocopies of the published article are found for a few items.

Writings by others include articles and books about Gene Davis by various authors, and research notes by Percy North. Articles are filed by author. One of the books is a handwritten satire by Jim Lodge documenting the installation of a large work by Davis in a private office. Other books with records in this series are monographs on Davis; one by Donald Wall (1975) and another by Steven Naifeh (1982). Materials found for Wall's book include galley proofs for interviews of Davis conducted by Barbara Rose, Donald Wall, and Walter Hopps, and color proofs of the color plates. Materials found for the Naifeh book include an edited typescript of the text, black and white photographic prints of images from the book, and color transparencies and Chromalin prints of color plates. The photographs are heavily annotated with markup for print production, as well as some source information. Black and white photographs referred to as "reference prints" are photographs of Davis and others. The rest of the photographs and plates are of artworks.

Research notes by Percy North include photocopied published material with annotations by North, notes, a list of articles collected, and notes updating the bibliography and exhibition list for Naifeh's 1982 monograph.

Writings by Gene Davis are filed first, alphabetically by title, form, or subject, followed by writings by others, filed alphabetically by author. Where multiple drafts exist for a piece, the draft that appears to be closest to final is filed at the front of the folder. Published versions of many of the writings are found in series 6, Printed Materials. Original transcripts and one sound recording from the interviews contained in the 1975 Donald Wall book are found in series 2, Interviews and Lectures.

Series includes annual reports of museums, published arts-related calendars, auction catalogs, brochures from organizations with which Davis had some affiliation, exhibition announcements and invitations, exhibition catalogs, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, newsletters, posters, press releases, and other published material. Most exhibition announcements and catalogs are for Davis's solo exhibitions or group shoes in which his work was shown, although a few documents related to exhibitions of other artists are also found. A 1988 publication of proceedings from an Artists' Congress of the Coalition of Washington Artists is also found.

Photocopies are found of some printed material, most of which were assembled by Percy North in her bibliographic research on Davis after his death. When original copies of this material was not found in the collection, photocopies were integrated with other like materials during processing.

Series is arranged by type of material, and large groups such as catalogs and clippings are filed chronologically within each type. Drafts of many of the articles by or about Davis are found in series 5, Writings. Percy North's notes and annotated photocopies related to her bibliographic research are also found in series 5. Additional printed material is found in series 1, Biographical Materials, and series 4, Business and Estate Records.

Photographs include personal photographs of Gene and Florence Davis and their families, portraits of Gene Davis, photographs of Gene Davis with artworks and working in the studio, Davis' art classes and students, installations of site-specific works, conceptual and video works, exhibition openings, and photographs of artwork, both installed in exhibitions and individually photographed. Also found are three disassembled photograph albums with similar content. Photographic media include prints, contact sheets, negatives, Polaroid prints, slides, and transparencies. Scattered 4x5" Copy negatives appear to have been created for the catalog to the 1987 memorial exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and envelopes containing these negatives sometimes provide additional identifying information not on the original print.

Images of Gene Davis are scattered throughout the series, either alone or in groups, and other people pictured are not typically identified. Where people are identified on the original photographs, their names are included in the folder list below. Among those identified in photographs are Harry Truman, John L. Lewis, J. Edgar Hoover, Walter Hopps, Jacob Kainen, Ed McGowin, Douglas Davis, Jane Livingston, Joan Mondale, and Bob Woodward. Three photograph albums that were disassembled upon accession of the collection are filed at the beginning of the series. Many of the photographs in these albums are from groups of prints filed elsewhere in the series. Album photographs include portraits of Davis, childhood photographs, Davis working as a journalist and model early in life, snapshots from travels and social gatherings, Davis's Washington, D.C. home, Davis in his studio, art classes, installations of site-specific works, and artworks.

Loose photographs comprise the remainder of the series and include personal photographs and art-related photographs. Personal photographs include portraits of Gene Davis and Florence Coulson Davis, family photographs, and snapshots taken over a period of twenty years showing the Davis's with family and friends at home and traveling abroad. Portraits and snapshots are followed by several sets of photographs showing art classes, art students, and models for classes presumably taught by Davis. Other art-related photographs include openings for Gene Davis exhibitions, visits to other museum and gallery exhibitions, installations of Davis's site-specific works, and photographs of the 1969 "Giveaway" event. Snapshots of Davis's studio, some with Davis pictured and some without, are also found.

Photographs of artwork include prints, slides, transparencies, and Polaroid prints of drawings, paintings, and video art by Davis, shot individually and also shown installed in specific exhibitions. Prints are typically identified by title and date and sometimes collection, and some prints contain information about their creation or reproduction. Also found are exhibition views of installed works spanning Davis' career. Photographs of artwork and exhibition views are black and white prints unless otherwise indicated in the folder list. Among the exhibition views are four videocassettes (VHS) of the 1987 retrospective at the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art.

Snapshots are grouped in sets of photographs that were shot or processed at the same time wherever possible. Some of these sets include scattered individual shots not relating to the general subject matter named in the folder heading. Where photographs with similar content or from the same group of photographs have been divided between the albums and loose photographs, similar folder headings are used in both locations. Negatives are filed with corresponding prints wherever possible as well, but not all negatives have been matched to their prints in the series arrangement. Where negatives are known to have no corresponding prints in the collection, it is noted in the folder list.

Photographs documenting Davis's storage facility from 1985, presumably taken for estate assessment purposes, are filed with the Business and Estate Records. Photographs used in Steven Naifeh's monograph on Davis are filed with drafts of the book's manuscript in series 5, Writings. Photographs reproduced in a memorial photo album are filed with series 1, Biographical Material. Moving images containing footage of students and art classes are found in series 8, Artwork.

Artwork includes a wide variety of material, including conceptual art, photographs, drawings, and moving images. Conceptual works include "The Artist's Fingerprints Except for One which belongs to someone else," created by Davis, and documentation of the 1969 "Giveaway," a collaboration between Davis, Ed McGowin, and Douglas Davis. Records related to the "Giveaway" include printed artist statements from Douglas Davis, Ed McGowin, and Gene Davis, and photocopied correspondence and notes documenting the event. Artworks by others include a conceptual writing piece by Juan Downey, and documentation of a happening by Wendy Stern, which includes witnessing "Air Displacement," a happening performed by Gene Davis in 1970.

Sketches appear to be ideas for stripe paintings, some with detailed notes written by Davis. Art photographs include a range of compositional experiments and appear to have been taken by Davis. Drawings are mainly informal drawings of Davis made by others. A Handmade sign reading "Allan Kapprow [sic] Happening" is also found.

Moving images include both film and video, with two finished works and 13 super 8 film reels which appear to be Davis's initial experiments with the medium. "Patricia" is a black and white 16mm film of a closely composed face of a woman changing facial expressions. Unlike the super 8 films, "Patricia" has an identifying title frame and appears to be a finished work. "Video Puzzle" documents a happening in a gallery in 1971 and may be the only surviving video from Davis's period of experimentation with video art.

The super 8 films contain a variety of content. Four of the reels contain static, rhythmic compositions of Davis's stripe paintings. Two of the reels indicate they were made in a class setting and contain compositions of interior lighting and close ups of faces. Another two reels are labeled "Masks, Corcoran," and contain static shots of Davis and others posing with handmade masks. Four additional reels contain street footage of kids in a park, young people gathered outside, Davis's dogs, and the exterior of his Pennsylvania Avenue studio.

Still images from additional video art by Davis videos are found in series 7, Photographs. Additional information about the Giveaway event is found in series 3, Correspondence, series 5, Writings, and series 7, Photographs. Additional moving images are found in series 1, Biographical Materials, series 4, Business and Estate Records, and series 7, Photographs.