Collection Information

Size: Transcript: 12 pages

Format: Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformated in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Duration is 36 min.

Summary: An interview of Elmer Bischoff conducted 1965 January 20, by Mary McChesney, for the Archives of American Art.

Bischoff speaks of his first involvement with the Federal Art Project, teaching ceramics at an art center in Sacramento; some of the accomplishments of the art center; the art community in Sacramento in the 1930s; the Federal Art Project's effect on the community, and on American art generally; public perception of the project; his opinions of government support for the arts; art in California and what the influences were on its development.

Biographical/Historical Note

Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991) was a painter and educator from San Francisco, California.

Provenance

This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Transcript: microfilm reel 3418 available at Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan.

Transcript: Patrons must use microfilm copy.

Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Elmer Bischoff, 1965 January 20. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.