Collection Information

Size: Transcript: 18 p.

Format: Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 1 digital wav file. Duration is 56 min. Sound quality is poor. Date of interview based on other interviews conducted by Doud for the New Deal and the Arts Oral History Project.

Summary: An interview of Henri Marceau conducted circa 1963, by Richard Doud, for the Archives of American Art.

Marceau discusses his education in architecture; teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, becoming curator of the Johnson collection and its movement to the Philadelphia Museum of Art; his museum career; Federal art projects; the WPA under Mary Curran and the problems she had with the Artists' Union; Albert Barnes' role in the controversy; and the reaction of the public and press.

Biographical/Historical Note

Henri Marceau (1896-1969) was an art administrator and art historian in Philadelphia, Pa.

Provenance

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.

Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Henri Marceau, circa 1963. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.