Hildreth Meière papers, 1901-2011, bulk 1911-1960

Travel notes and printed material include notes about travel destinations, which may have been made to carry out talks illustrated by the slides and films in this series. Printed materials include brochures, clippings, itineraries, and maps from Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, India, Indonesia, the Soviet Union, and Thailand.

Slides in this series were taken during travels by Hildreth Meière and her daughter Louise Meière Dunn from the 1940s through the 1950s. Architecture, murals, and mosaics are highly represented in the images, and some landscape, local scenes, and personal photos are also found. Approximately one-half of the slides are from a lengthy trip Meière refers to in her writings as the "Grand Tour," which began in Australia and New Zealand, and continued to Bali, Indonesia; Bangkok, Thailand; India; Sub-Saharan Africa; Italy; Great Britain; and France. While in England, they witnessed the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Other trips represented in travel slides include Mexico and Guatemala in 1946, South America in 1947, Italy in 1949-1950, Scandinavia in 1951, Middle Eastern countries referred to as the "Holy Land" trip in 1954, and Belgium in 1958, specifically to see the Belgian Fair of that year. Also found are a large set of slides of Italian Mosaics filed with slides from Italy. These and other identified sets appear to have been assembled for slide talks given by Louise and Hildreth Meière.

There are no identifications on the slides themselves. Some sets of slides correspond to slide lists of subjects depicted but there are no comprehensive lists of subjects. Handwritten notes with general information about locations and artworks depicted are also found with some sets of slides, and may have been used in travel talks given by Hildreth and/or Louise Meière Dunn.

Series contains 81 motion picture films shot by Hildreth Meiere while traveling between 1933 and 1958. Many of the same trips are represented in the footage as are shown in the slides in the collection, including the 1946 trip to Mexico and Guatemala, the 1947 trip to South America (Columbia, Ecuador, Peru), the 1949-1950 trip to Europe (France, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Italy), the 1951 trip to Scandinavia (Finland, Norway, Sweden), the 1952-1953 "Grand Tour" (Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand, Ceylon, India, Rhodesia, Congo, South Africa, Italy, England, Scotland, Ireland, and France), the 1954 "Holy Land" trip (Egypt, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey), and the 1958 trip to Belgium.

Unique to this series is documentation of earlier trips to Turkey (1933), Germany (1934), Europe (1936, Germany, Poland, Russia), and two shipboard films made on the S.S. America (1940) and on an Odyssey cruise (1938), which retraced the steps of Homer's .