Collection Information

Size: Transcript: 27 pages

Format: Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel. Reformatted in 2010 as 1 digital wav file. Duration is 1 hr., 1 min.

Summary: An interview of Philip C. Curtis conducted 1965 March 31, by Sylvia Loomis, for the Archives of American Art. Curtis speaks of his background and education at Yale Fine Arts School; working for the Federal Art Project as supervisor of the mural project; starting an art center for the Federal Art Project in North Carolina, and another one in Phoenix; supervising a crafts program in Iowa; returning to Arizona; the response of the people of the region to the Federal Art Project; the project's effect on art in the area; and his feelings about current trends in painting.

Biographical/Historical Note

Philip C. Curtis was a painter and an art administrator in Scottsdale, Arizona.

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 Philip C. Curtis, 1965 March 31. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.