Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Morgan, Barbara Brooks, 1900-1992
- Abstract:
- The collection includes 143 mounted photographs, 137 of which were taken by Barbara Morgan and 6 by her husband, Willard D. Morgan. The photographs include images of dancers, nature, Camp Treetops, a Southwest series, New York cityscapes, and a junkyard series.
- Extent:
- 3.2 Linear Feet (8 flat boxes)
- Language:
- Materials are in English.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Barbara Morgan Wight Gallery Collection (Collection 1872). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
The collection includes 143 mounted photos, 137 of which were taken by Barbara Morgan and 6 by her husband, Willard D. Morgan. These photos include photos of dancers, nature, various portraits, Camp Treetops (a children's camp featured in her book Summer's Children), a Southwest series, New York cityscapes, and a junkyard series. Examples of her experimental photomontages and photograms are also included, as are photos taken with the first Leica Model A camera by her and her husband.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Barbara Morgan was a twentieth century photographer best known for her photographs of dancers, photomontages, and light drawings. The University of California at Los Angeles Wight Gallery acquired this collection of Morgan photographs before becoming part of the Hammer Museum.
The Wight Art Gallery at University of California at Los Angeles originally opened in 1964 under the name UCLA Art Galleries and exhibited works on paper, paintings and sculpture. In 1974, the gallery is renamed to the Frederick S. Wight Art Galleries in honor of the former dean of the University of California at Los Angeles Art Department dean. Once the University of California at Los Angeles assumed control of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center in 1994, the operations of the Wight Gallery were moved there and the gallery was dissolved.
Barbara Brooks Morgan was born in Buffalo, Kansas on July 8, 1900, but grew up in Los Angeles, CA. She attended UCLA from 1919 to 1923 where she trained as a painter and later joined the art faculty (1925-30). Her shift away from painting and interest in the medium of photography grew out of meeting Edward Weston.
She married Willard D. Morgan and then relocated to New York in 1930. After the birth of her two sons, Douglas (1932) and Lloyd (1935), she began to concentrate on her photography career. An accomplished designer, author, artist, and photographer, she is best known for her photographs of American modern dancers, among them, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Pearl Primus, José Limón, and Charles Weidman. She contributed articles and reviews to various publications and published several books including, Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs (1941), Summer's Children: A Photographic Cycle of Life at Camp [Camp Treetops] (1951), and A Collection of Material about Barbara Morgan (1972), as well as having a photo in Family of Man (1955). She died August 18, 1992 in Scarsdale, NY.
- Processing information:
-
Processed by Sukey Garcetti in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT) with assistance from Kelley Wolfe Bachli, 2010.
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.
- Arrangement:
-
Arranged in the following series:
- Dance
- Portraits
- Nature
- Experimental photographs
- Auto junkyard series
- Camp Treetops
- Southwest series
- Packing labels
- Physical location:
- Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
- Terms of access:
-
Copyright to portions of this collection has been assigned to the UCLA Library Special Collections. The library can grant permission to publish for materials to which it holds the copyright. All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to Library Special Collections. Credit shall be given as follows: The Regents of the University of California on behalf of the UCLA Library Special Collections.
- Preferred citation:
-
[Identification of item], Barbara Morgan Wight Gallery Collection (Collection 1872). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Location of this collection:
-
A1713 Charles E. Young Research LibraryBox 951575Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
- Contact:
- (310) 825-4988