A little insight into the happy accidents that befall a local history librarian
Local artist Martha Visser’t Hooft’s exhibition at the Burchfield Penny Art Museum was the inspiration for this blog post. I figured I would dig into what our collection has regarding her and her work in the hope of providing more biographical background or simply another avenue of exploration into the artist’s life in conjunction with the exhibit. While I did not want to regurgitate the outline of her life’s story – you could find this information at the exhibit – I did delve into Albert Michael’s biography of Visser’t Hooft to see if any little tidbit worth pursuing presented itself.
Robert J. Bertholf and Albert L. Michaels’ biography of and commentary on Martha Visser’t Hooft and her work. This was published in 1991 for her retrospective show held at the David Anderson Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY.
I became especially fascinated by the amount of traveling Visser’t Hooft did in her youth, in particular the adventures she went on with other Buffalonian women (each worth learning about in their own respect). She spent formative years with family in France, introducing herself to the wonderful and surreal culture of 1920s Paris, which would heavily influence her approach to both life and art. Upon return to the states, she grew somewhat bored with Buffalo (I learned that she did some drawings for the Buffalo Seminary school yearbook when she briefly attended, but, alas, our collection does not have that year’s edition), and decided to move to New York City in order to pursue the life of an artist. Before moving, she traveled to Taos to visit family and would form a lifelong connection with the city, eventually befriending the artist community there (Georgia O’Keefe, Frieda Lawrence, etc.). In New York City she roomed with a fellow Buffalonian, the writer Elizabeth Yates. And, in the late 1930s, “armed with Terry’s Guide to Mexico, a flask of Scotch and a 6 inch switchblade knife,” she took a trip throughout Mexico with fellow Buffalo socialite and artist Louisa Robins. While there, they met Diego Rivera, went on numerous nerve-racking excursions, and fell in love with contemporary Mexican art shown to them by the gallerist Inez Amor (which led to the curating of a Mexican art show held in Buffalo in May of 1940). After reading about all of these journeys, I started to conjure a post that revolved around not only Visser’t Hooft, but also famous women of Buffalo in general, traveling in the early 20th century, and art (maybe that blog is yet to come, but, for now, it has been subsumed).
Now, even though the rest of Visser’t Hooft’s life story is fascinating and I urge you to visit our collection and sift through Michael’s hard-to-find biography (which also contains a plethora of reproductions of the artist’s paintings), this is where the blog post detours and connects with its title. Because we do not have much in our collection regarding Visser’t Hooft beyond the biography mentioned, and because I had never heard of Elizabeth Yates until reading the biography, I decided to see if this thread of discovery could help add some substance to my blog post.
Elizabeth Yates, born and raised in Buffalo, moved to New York City when she came of age, would go on to become a Newberry medalist for her novel, Amos Fortune, and eventually published a three-volume memoir. Because almost none of her work dealt with Buffalo directly, the only thing we have of hers in our local history collection is the first volume of her memoir, as it details her life growing up in Buffalo. I pulled it off the shelf and was sad to see it ends right as she leaves for New York City. Down into the library’s stacks I went, hoping the second volume would recount her time spent living with Visser’t Hooft, giving my post a little pizazz beyond the mere biography to which I was being relegated. We have three copies of the second volume in the stacks and if I had grabbed either of the other two copies the same information would have been gleaned (indeed, there is a decent amount of writing devoted to Elizabeth’s time with Martha), but, I would not have serendipitously stumbled upon, well, what I happened to find written on the inside cover of the copy I did grab:
I have no idea how the book made its way into our collection, but it would be hard to argue that this isn’t a dedication to Martha Visser’t Hooft from the author herself! Suffice to say, the book will now be moved into our local history collection.
It was at this moment that the blog post completely unraveled and immediately came together. Going down the rabbit hole of a topic that utterly interests me, though not exactly substantive or connected to our collection enough to warrant a blog post, suddenly resolved itself with a new discovery for the local history collection, hidden away in our very own stacks! At the very least, this post demonstrates the joy of following different threads of interest and seeing if and how they might connect. I didn’t even mention that Martha Visser’t Hooft’s maiden name was Hamlin, and that we have one of her father’s scrapbooks in our collection. Or that, when I discovered Visser’t Hooft was named Woman of the Year by the Buffalo Philharmonic Committee in 1951, I was able to find the clipping of said announcement in one of our BPO scrapbooks. Each little happenstance feels like stumbling upon a lost historical treasure. Come on down and give us a visit, you might just stumble upon something too.
The Grosvenor Room: Genealogy, Local History, Maps, Music & Rare Books 