George Woodman

October is American Archives Month and we are celebrating by looking at some of the tools of the trade used by George Woodman and Betty Woodman in our collection.

In 1999, The Ohio Review—a long-running literary journal published by the English Department at Ohio University—included a portfolio of thirteen photographs and an accompanying essay by George Woodman, appearing among pages of poetry, prose and fiction.

Sixty years ago, before they had traveled much of the world together, the Woodman family visited the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

As the Woodman Family Foundation’s Collections Researcher, I spend a good amount of my working hours digging around libraries and special collections scattered throughout New York City. I believe the artists of the Woodman Family Foundation were equally as inspired by this bustling and beautiful metropolis as I am.

This group exhibition of personal, expressive landscapes features works that merge abstraction and representation, depicting threshold spaces and hybridized forms where the observed and the imaginative meet.

Hello! I’m Layaan Roufai, the Woodman Family Foundation’s Library and Archives Intern. As I perused the many publications filled with works by the Woodmans, I found myself particularly interested in the art of George Woodman.

Happy 71st anniversary to Betty Woodman and George Woodman, who were married on this day in 1953.

As the solstice today marks the official beginning of summer, we are reminded of the Woodmans’ extensive travels around the world and their months immersed in global artistic influences.

Happy birthday to George Woodman—lover of color, pattern, and setting the stage—who was born on this day in 1932 in Concord, New Hampshire.

Around 1952, a young George Woodman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, penned his devotion on a USPS customs form: “Little box with littler box inside” and “1 engagement ring of Navajo silver with turquoises.” The precious 4-ounce package was destined for the hands of Elizabeth Abrahams (later to be known as Betty Woodman) across the ocean in Fiesole, Italy, where she had been living and working for the past year.

Over the course of a year from 1965-66, the Woodman family lived and worked in Italy, just outside of Florence. During that time, Betty and George became close friends with the artists and then-couple Nancy Graves and Richard Serra, who, like Betty, was there for the year on a Fulbright-Hays scholarship. They spent many hours together around the table, sharing meals, funny hats and conversations about art.

Our archival intern Erin Moss, who is in her second year at the Pratt School of Information earning her MLIS, has been processing George Woodman's extensive slide collection this semester. The slide collection consists of thousands of 35mm or medium format slides from the 1950s through the early 2000s documenting both George's work and personal life. Erin has been struck by the experience of discovering an artist through their own archival materials.