Claire Copley Gallery records, 1968-2011, bulk 1973-1977, bulk 1973-1977

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Summary

Creators:
Claire Copley Gallery, Allen, Terry, 1943-, Copley, Claire, Buren, Daniel, Kosuth, Joseph, Asher, Michael, and Leavitt, William
Abstract:
The records of one of the first Los Angeles galleries to show the work of conceptual artists such as Terry Allen, Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, Joseph Kosuth, and William Leavitt. The collection includes artist files containing correspondence, ephemera, and comprehensive photographic documentation of each exhibition.
Extent:
9 Linear Feet (13 boxes, 1 flatfile folder)
Language:
Collection material is in English
Preferred citation:

Claire Copley Gallery papers, 1968-2011 (bulk 1973-1977), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2014.M.2

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2014m2

Background

Scope and content:

The collection, comprised of artist files, with a small amount of material relating to gallery management and accounting, offers a comprehensive view of the work of important conceptual artists in the first stage of their careers. The artist files often contain professional yet friendly correspondence with Claire Copley regarding details of exhibition installation and planning, theoretical discussions of the artwork, and personal news. Project proposals, sketches, clippings of reviews, and announcements are often present. There is comprehensive and expert photographic coverage of each exhibition, and of each artwork in a given installation, generally in three formats: black and white photographs, negatives, and slides, with the occasional color print. Clippings reveal the lack of understanding that the exhibitions met with, a highlight of which was a police action against a Daniel Buren exhibition that extended to the gallery exterior, an event for which there is also photo-documentation in the archive.

The work of artists who were not represented by the gallery but whose work comprised part of the gallery's inventory or simply part of the gallery's broader art context, such as Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, and Bruce Nauman, appears generally in slides in alphabetical sequence within the binders of slides and negatives; however, Louise Lawler, Gilbert & George, Schley and Adler, and Duane Zaloudek have mixed materials folders as well. Ken Feingold is the only artist who showed in the gallery who has no material in the archive.

Biographical / historical:

Claire Copley Gallery was one of the first Los Angeles art galleries to show some twenty artists now considered pioneers of Conceptual Art, whose works now form parts of major museum collections around the world.

The daughter of artist, dealer, and collector William Copley, Claire Copley founded her own gallery to showcase the work of emergent international artists of her generation, including Americans Michael Asher, Terry Allen, Joseph Kosuth, Allen Ruppersberg, and William Leavitt; Europeans Jan Dibbets, Bas Jan Ader, Ger Van Elk, and Daniel Buren; the Japanese artist On Kawara; and Argentine David Lamelas. The installations, done in collaboration with the artists, were innovative and elegant, as was the related ephemera. Though in operation for a relatively short duration, the gallery was a key venue in the formation of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s and 1970s, along with the galleries of Eugenia Butler, Rolf Nelson, Nick Wilder, and Riko Mizuno. It was one of three galleries profiled in the Pacific Standard Time exhibition at the Sam Francis Gallery of the Crossroads School in 2011 titled She Accepts the Proposition: Women Gallerists and the Redefinition of Art in Los Angeles, 1967-1978.

Acquisition information:
Acquired from Claire Copley in 2014.
Processing information:

Processed and cataloged by Annette Leddy in 2014.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in three series: Series I. Gallery artists, 1969-2010; Series II. Other artists, 1969-1981; Series III. Assorted, 1974-2011.

Physical location:
Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers.

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Preferred citation:

Claire Copley Gallery papers, 1968-2011 (bulk 1973-1977), The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2014.M.2

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2014m2

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
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