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Richards (Mary Caroline) papers
960036
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections
Title: Mary Caroline Richards papers
Creator:
James, Charity
Creator:
Kazanis, Barbara
Creator:
Higgins, Dick,
1938-1998
Creator:
Iozia, John
Creator:
Olson, Charles,
1910-1970
Creator:
Richards, Mary
Caroline
Creator:
Lane,
Mervin
Creator:
Supree,
Burton
Creator:
Robertson, Seonaid
M. (Seonaid Mairi)
Creator:
Tassencourt, Shirley
Creator:
Tudor, David,
1926-1996
Creator:
Barfield, Owen,
1898-1997
Creator:
Berensohn, Paulus
Creator:
Bilderback,
Carolyn
Creator:
Mac Low, Jackson
Creator:
Blum, Fred
H.
Creator:
Bongé, Lyle
Creator:
Boyd, John
M.
Creator:
Cage, John
Creator:
Cable, Herb
Creator:
Conner, Julia
Creator:
Charlip, Remy
Creator:
Duncan, Robert,
1919-1988
Creator:
Cunningham, Merce
Creator:
Forczek, Leszek,
1946-
Creator:
Fairbanks,
Jonathan L.
Creator:
Geiger,
Nicola
Creator:
Frances, Molly
Creator:
Harrison, Lou,
1917-2003
Creator:
Green,
Jesse
Creator:
Herlihy, James Leo
Identifier/Call Number: 960036
Physical Description:
120 Linear Feet
(228 boxes, 2 flatfiles)
Date (inclusive): 1898-2007, bulk
1942-1999
Date (bulk): 1942-1999
Abstract: Papers document
Richards's work as a scholar and teacher of English literature, her a poet, potter, and
translator, and finally her lectures, workshops, and writings in art education. The papers
emphasize the 1940s and 1950s, the period during which Richards taught at Black Mountain
College.
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Language of Material:
English .
Scope and Content of Collection
The papers of Mary Caroline Richards gather together a lifetime of work in several artistic
disciplines and touch upon many others. Richards's career saw a progression from scholarship
and teaching in English literature, to freelance work as a poet, potter, author, and
translator, to work in arts education through lectures and workshops. During this time she
established close relationships with a large number of people, as may be seen through her
correspondence, which is remarkable for its intimacy and warmth. Her correspondents include
representatives from virtually every artistic discipline and many of the major American art
movements of the 1950s through the 1980s.
The papers give special emphasis to the period during which Richards served on the faculty
of Black Mountain College in the 1940s and 1950s. Here began many of the associations which
connect her to the music and art worlds, through friendships with David Tudor, Lou Harrison
and John Cage in music, Merce Cunningham and Remy Charlip in dance, Charles Olson, Robert
Creeley, and Robert Duncan (loosely known as the "Black Mountain Poets") in literature, and
Lyle Bongé and Joe Fiore in the visual arts. Her involvement with theater began at Black
Mountain College with her translation of plays by Cocteau and Satie, and continued after her
departure when she became the first English translator of Artaud, acting on an interest
which began at Black Mountain.
Included in the collection are manuscripts, correspondence, diaries and notebooks, books,
photographs, slides, clippings, ephemera, posters, audio tapes, and artwork (including oil
paintings and drawings in pencil, ink, chalk and pastels).
Items counts are approximate.
The collection is arranged in nine series:
Series I: Black Mountain College and its critical reception, 1945-1999;
Series II: Correspondence, 1904-2007;
Series III: Writings, 1905-1999;
Series IV: Workshops, lectures and exhibitions, 1944-2005;
Series V: Clippings and Ephemera, 1951-2003;
Series VI: Diaries and notes, 1948-1999;
Series VII: Artwork, 1955-1998, undated;
Series VIII: Memorabilia, personal miscellany, 1898-2003.
Mary Caroline ("M.C.") Richards, self-described "teacher, writer, lecturer, potter, poet,"
was born in 1916, and received her Ph.D. in English from the University of California at
Berkeley in 1942. She taught English both at Berkeley and at the University of Chicago
before joining the faculty of Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, a school
that had a formative role in postwar American art in 1945. She and her husband Bill Levi
became prominent members of the Black Mountain community; she in writing and literature, he
in philosophy and as rector from 1947 to 1948. In 1948 Richards and her students started the
Black Mountain Press which they used for literary publications and to print Richards's first
volume of poetry. That same year she met the composer John Cage, who had just joined the
summer faculty and who that summer produced Erik Satie's play
Le Piége
de Méduse
, performed by Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham, directed by
Arthur Penn, and translated by M.C. Richards. Richards served as chair of the faculty from
1949 to 1951, participating actively in the many conflicts between various factions in
administration and faculty. She was instrumental in bringing the poet Charles Olson to the
faculty in 1951. He served as rector from 1953 until the college closed in 1956.
After the summer session of 1951, Richards resigned and left for New York City with pianist
and Cage associate David Tudor. She returned to Black Mountain the subsequent summer to
participate in an event that came to be known as the first "happening," organized by John
Cage and also involving Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Olson, David Tudor, and Merce
Cunningham. During her time in New York City she translated, at Tudor's suggestion, Antonin
Artaud's
Le Théatre et son double, which was published by Grove
Press in 1958 to wide acclaim. In 1954 Richards, Tudor, and Cage, among other former Black
Mountain faculty, became a part of the Stony Point community in Rockland County, New York,
founded by the architect Paul Williams. In 1964, the same year she left Stony Point, her
book
Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person was published
by Wesleyan University Press, followed in 1973 by
The Crossing Point:
Nine Easter Letters on the Art of Education
and in 1980 by
Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America. These books reveal a very
personal view of the development of the individual through art and life and, combined with
her extensive teaching and lecturing throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, were widely
influential in the arts education and craft communities. Mary Caroline Richards died in 1999
in New York City.
Separated books were incorporated into the Getty Research Institute library general
collection, and may be found by searching for Mary Caroline Richards papers
Philip Curtis (with assistance from Kelly Nipper) arranged, processed and described the
collection from 1996 to June 1997. He completed the finding aid in June 1997. In 2012,
approximately 42 linear feet of additional materials were received from Richards's estate
and integrated into the archive by Laura Schroffel. These materials can be found in boxes
84-220. She also integrated oversize material that was formerly Series IX into the
appropriate topical series of the finding aid. In 2013, Natasha Hicks further processed
boxes 1-84. Two boxes of materials received from the estate in 2015 were incorporated into
the collection by Emmabeth Nanol in 2017. Two boxes (Box 82 use copies, Box 83 copy masters)
of reformatted copies of reel-to-reel audio tapes were withdrawn from the collection by
Daniel Powazek in 2024.
The collection was acquired in 1996. Additions to the archive were received in 2009 and
2015.
Mary Caroline Richards papers, 1898-2007, bulk 1942-1999, The Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles, Accession no. 960036.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa960036
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Reproductions
and Permissions
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Subjects and Indexing Terms
Color slides
Color photographs
Gelatin silver prints
Ephemera
Diaries
Toward wholeness
Pottery -- Study and teaching
Crossing point
Audiotapes
Self-realization
Philosophy
Poetry -- Study and teaching
Arts -- Study and teaching -- United States
Arts, American -- 20th century
Education -- Philosophy
Centering in poetry, pottery and the person
Dance -- Study and teaching
Paintings
Art -- Psychology
Anthroposophy
Drawings (visual works)
Photographs, Original
Sketchbooks
Steiner, Rudolf, 1861-1925
Richards, Mary Caroline
Black Mountain College (Black Mountain,
N.C.)
C.G. Jung Foundation for
Analytical Psychology
Olson, Charles, 1910-1970
Haystack Mountain School of
Crafts