Lowery Stokes Sims papers, 1967-2019

Collection Information

Size: 34 Linear feet

Summary: The papers of African American art historian, curator and arts administrator, Lowery Stokes Sims, measure 34.0 linear feet and date from 1967 to 2019. The collection documents Sims's career, and her work towards the inclusion of women artists and artists of color into the mainstream art world. The collection comprises biographical materials, datebooks, correspondence, writings, notebooks, exhibition files, professional files that include Sims's files from the Studio Museum in Harlem, Metropolitan Museum of Art records, research files, files on Robert Colescott, printed materials, photographic materials, and unidentified audiovisual and born-digital materials.

Biographical/Historical Note

Lowery Stokes Sims (1949-) is an African American art historian, curator, and arts administrator. Sims began her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 where she became the museum's first African American curator. She left the Met in 1999 for the Studio Museum in Harlem where she served as Executive Director, President, and then Adjunct Curator of the Permanent Collection from 2000 to 2007. From 2007 to 2015, she was curator for the Museum of Art and Design.

Provenance

The collection was donated in 2019 by Lowery Stokes Sims as part of the Archives' African American Collecting Initiative funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Related Materials

Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview of Lowery Stokes Sims conducted on July 15 and 22, 2010 by Judith Olch Richards, for the Archives of American Art's Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts project, at Sims' home, in New York, N.Y.

Language Note

English .