Thomas Weston Fels (AC 1967) Papers

Requests for permission to publish material from the Thomas Weston Fels Papers should be directed to the Archives and Special Collections. It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights. Published material in the collection may be subject to copyright restrictions.

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Biographical Note

Thomas Weston Fels (AC 1967) is an art historian, curator and writer specializing in American culture, photography and art. Born in Baltimore, MD in 1946, Fels attended The Putney School in Vermont before enrolling at Amherst College. He was part of a group of Amherst College alumni and others who established and lived on a communal farm in Montague, Massachusetts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He attended the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, earning his MA in 1984. Since 2005, Fels' research and writing has focused on the era of the 1960s, including the founding of the Famous Long Ago archives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Fels resides in southern Vermont, and is active in arts programming locally and beyond.

Thomas Weston Fels has worked as consultant and curator to a number of museums, including the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum at the Southern Vermont Arts Center. In 1986 he was named a Chester Dale Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1998-1999, he was a Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library in California. Among the numerous exhibitions he has organized are presentations of the work of the photographers Eadweard Muybridge, and A. J. Russell. His exhibition Carleton Watkins: Western Landscape and the Classical Vision was presented at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1990. Fire and Ice: Treasures from the Photograph Collection of Frederic Church at Olana, was shown at the Dahesh Museum, in New York, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Its companion volume, published by Cornell University Press in 2002, was nominated for numerous awards. Fels is the author of many other catalogs and articles, including O Say Can You See: American Photographs 1839-1939 (MIT Press and the Berkshire Museum, 1989), Watkins to Weston: 101 Years of California Photography, 1849-1950 (Roberts Rinehart Publishers and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1992), Sotheby's Guide to Photographs (H. Holt, 1998), and Farm Friends (RSI Press, 2008). He has given public lectures at the Boston Athenaeum, the Addison Gallery, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

See Appendix A for a list of Fels' exhibitions, projects, and publications.

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Thomas Weston Fels Papers document the professional activities of Thomas Weston Fels (AC 1967), including research, writing, correspondence, and exhibition planning documents and notes from throughout his professional education and career as a curator and writer. Also included are materials relating to Fels' book Farm Friends: From the late sixties to the west seventies and beyond, which chronicles his life on a communal farm in Montague, Massachusetts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and follows the lives and activities of selected farm members.

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Organization of the Collection

This collection is organized into four series:

• CURATORIAL PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS [1987-2006]
• ARTS AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS [1981-2006]
• WRITINGS AND RESEARCH [1983-2008]
• BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL [1980-1995]

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Series 1: PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS [1987-2006]

Series 1 contains notes, research, correspondence, architectural sketches, and press releases relating to Fels' work as curator of art exhibitions and projects, including proposals and completed projects and programs.

Materials are arranged by project and chronologically within each.

Series 2: ARTS AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS [1981-2006]

Series 2 contains material relating to Fels' career working for arts and cultural organizations, both as an independent consultant and as institutional staff. Included are documents pertaining to his administrative posts at institutions including the Bennington Cultural and Arts Council, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Elm Street Arts, Park-McCullough House Association, Southern Vermont Arts Center, Vermont Arts Exchange, and the Williams College Museum of Art. Documentation of Fels' work related to mounting exhibitions is found in Series 1. This series is organized according to the employing institutions.

Series 3: WRITINGS AND RESEARCH [1983-2008]

Series 3 contains research notes, correspondence and draft text related to Fels' published and unpublished articles and books, including Farm Friends: From the late sixties to the west seventies and beyond. Writing and research related to exhibition catalogues are included in Series 1.

Series 4: BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS [1980-1995]

Series 4 contains material specific to Fels' graduate studies in the History of Art at Williams College, and subsequent fellowship and employment activities.

Appendix A: Exhibitions, projects and publications list

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