Finding Aid to the Mary Black Papers, 1960-1993

Mary Childs Black, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George Childs, was born June 7, 1922, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She received a B.A. degree from the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, located in Greensboro, in 1943, and her M. A. degree from George Washington University in 1952. Her master's thesis was entitled “The Theater in Colonial Maryland.” During World War II, she was a lieutenant, junior grade, in the WAVES. In 1947, Mary Childs married Richard Winthrop Black, the son of Colonel and Mrs. Roger D. Black. At the time, he was a naval architect. The Blacks had one daughter, Merrill Elizabeth Black.

Mary Black worked at Colonial Williamsburg from 1956 to 1964, serving as a research assistant in the Research Department (1956-1957), and then as Registrar (1957-1958), Curator (1958-1961), and Director and Curator of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (1961-1964). She was Director of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York (1964-1970), and then served as Curator of Painting, Sculpture and the Decorative Arts at the New-York Historical Society (1970-1982). From 1982 until her death, Mrs. Black was a consulting curator at the Museum of American Folk Art, a free lance writer, and an art historian. She also taught classes in American folk art for the University of Vermont and the City University of New York.

Mrs. Black was a noted specialist in the field of American folk painting. She worked very hard to identify early limners working in New York, New England, and Virginia from 1670 to 1745. She was successful in attributing bodies of works to specific painters in this period, including members of the Duyckinck family, John Heaton, Nehemiah Partridge, Pieter Vanderlyn, and John Watson.

Mrs. Black authored, co-authored, or wrote introductions for a number of books on American art and architecture. Titles include American Folk Painting; Old New York in Early Photographs; Erastus Salisbury Field, 1805-1900; New York's Gracie Mansion, a History of the Mayor's House; American Advertising Posters of the Nineteenth Century; What is American in American Art; Ammi Phillips, Portrait Painter, 1788-1865; American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts; Jewish Heritage in American Folk Art; and Simplicity, a Grace: Jacob Maentel in Indiana. She also wrote many articles, lectured widely in this country and England, and organized more than a hundred major exhibitions.

Mrs. Black served as a Historical Landmark Preservation Commissioner of the City of New York, was a member of the Museum Council of the New York State Council of the Arts, and was a member of the boards of Friends of Clermont and of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. She was a trustee or served on the advisory boards of the Historical Society of Early American Decoration, the Gracie Mansion Conservancy Art Committee, the McPhaerie-Warner House (Portsmouth, N.H.), the Municipal Art Society, the Museum of American Folk Art, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Portsmouth (N.H.) Advocates, the New York Branch of the Victorian Society, Westbeth Artist's Housing, and Strawbery Banke. Mrs. Black spent the last years of her life restoring Rockefeller Tavern in Germantown, New York, which she owned in partnership with a longtime friend.

Mary Black died in 1994.

The Mary Black Collection consists of 66 boxes, divided into several series. Boxes 1-26 contain correspondence and research notes on a variety of topics of interest to her and information about her professional career. Box 19 contains files relating to a seminar on patroon painting, held in New York in 1967. Files on the related subject of Upper Hudson Valley painters are found in boxes 20-21. And related to both those topics, Mary Black prepared materials for a book about early Dutch painters and Nehemiah Partridge. These materials are found in boxes 22-26. Copies and drafts of articles written by Mrs. Black are in boxes 27-28.

Mrs. Black collected many notes about and photographs of works by artists of the 17th - early 19th centuries. Those materials may be found in boxes 29-45, arranged in alphabetical order by artist's last name. Also included here are the notes she was organizing for a book about Nehemiah Partridge and his world.

Box 46 contains notes about the people in portraits, arranged by the sitters' names, not by names of the artists. Box 47 has photographs of portraits, some of which are arranged by place of residence of the sitter. Genealogical materials are found in boxes 48-49; most of this material is about the sitters, but some is about artists' families.

Boxes 50-57 hold index cards containing notes collected by Mary Black. They are in the same order in which they arrived at this repository.

Boxes 58-61 contain slides of paintings. Some are arranged by artist, some by subject. Box 62 contains duplicate slides; these have not been organized.

Box 63 has a 78rpm record from the Abby Aldrich Rockfeller Folk Art Collection. This was produced to accompany a filmstrip, which is not part of this collection. A typed copy of the script is also in this box.

Box 64 contains oversized materials: some photographs, some books written by Mary Black, and also a little correspondence.

Boxes 65-66 hold computer disks, audio tapes, and printouts of files on some of the computer disks. Most of these printouts duplicate materials found in the main part of this collection.

Account book from New York, 1741-1744: photographs of pages

1741-1744:

Box: 1: Folder: 1