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Abby Weed Grey Papers

Call Number

MC.151

Date

1922-1978, inclusive

Creator

Grey, Abby Weed, 1902-1983

Extent

29.75 Linear Feet in 32 manuscript boxes, 6 flat boxes, and 5 record cartons.

Language of Materials

Materials in the collection are primarily in English, with some publications in other languages.

Abstract

The Abby Weed Grey Papers span the years 1922-1978, with the bulk of the material covering the period 1960-1974. The papers document Grey's world travels, published and unpublished works, and her collection and curation of art.

Biography of Abby Weed Grey

Abby Weed Grey, the oldest of four children, was born on October 23, 1902, to Paul Charles Weed and Emily Weed in St. Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in St. Paul, attending both elementary and high school there. In 1920, Grey headed off east where she attended Vassar College, a private all women's college in Poughkeepsie, New York. After graduating in 1924, Grey spent the next few years traveling abroad with a college roommate to Riga, Latvia, and Paris, France. Following her return from Paris in 1926, Grey started teaching fifth grade in a private school for girls in Kansas City. It was at this time that she met Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Edwards Grey. In 1928 she became engaged and a year later married Benjamin Grey. In 1947 they purchased their first home, the family cabin in Deer Lake, Minnesota. They moved between Minnesota and Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1956 Ben died of cancer in St. Paul, Minnesota.

After Ben's death, Abby moved back to St. Paul, Minnesota. Before leaving she established the annual Benjamin Edwards Grey Memorial Lecture in poetry as part of the Summer Writers' Conference at the University of Utah.

In 1960, after being widowed for four years, Abby Grey took her first trip around the world with a group of thirteen women to Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, and Israel. During her trip, Grey met with local artists and collected contemporary art to be shown in the United States.

One year later Grey established The Ben & Abby Grey Foundation, Inc., founded for the encouragement of art through the assembling of international collections of art for cultural exchange programs. Also in 1961 she founded the "Minnesota Art Portfolio" exhibit (MAP) as an opportunity for artists to see original works by their Western counterparts. She met with Malcolm Lein, the director of the St. Paul Art Center, and selected Minnesota artists' works to bring on a trip to Spain, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and Iran. Through the United States Information Service (USIS) and the People-to-People Program, the exhibit traveled throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean for two years. During her trip to Iran with MAP, Abby met Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti of St. Luke's Church while attending Anglican services.

In 1961, Abby Grey met Iranian artist-sculptor Parviz Tanavoli. The following year the Grey Foundation provided him a grant for six months as a visiting artist at the Minneapolis School of Art. He remained as a sculptor/instructor on staff for the following two years. In June 1964 Tanavoli returned to Iran with the gift of a bronze foundry for the University of Tehran given by the Grey Foundation.

Throughout the rest of the 1960s and early 1970s Grey initiated many projects. These included "Fourteen Contemporary Iranians" (1962-65), which toured American cities, as did "Turkish Art Today" (1966-70), which also traveled to Tehran, Iran. Communication through Art, comprised of three exhibitions of American work, opened simultaneously in 1964 in Istanbul, Tehran, and Lahore and traveled for five years in the eastern Mediterranean, Asia, and eastern Africa. This program, which complemented the goals of USIS, was accompanied by books and catalogues representing the American art scene. Grey also sponsored the American section of the India Triennial of Contemporary World Art in 1968. Two years later she co-sponsored it with New York's Museum of Modern Art. In 1972, "One World Through Art," an exhibition of 1,001 works from Grey's collection, was shown at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds.

As Grey's collection grew, she sought a place to exhibit her collection and share it with other people. At first, Grey looked for a home for her art in her own locality. The University of Minnesota was ruled out because the gallery space available was inconvenient and the school administrators would have run the gallery. Grey also looked at her alma mater, Vassar College, but finally chose New York University, because it gave her the flexibility that she wanted. Also, since her collection was a unique, New York City seemed the ideal place to house it. The Ben and Abby Grey Foundation, founded for the encouragement of art, donated one million dollars to NYU and in the spring of 1975, the Grey Art Gallery and Study Center was completed.

Four years later, Grey again donated money to NYU for an art history study center that was built on the third floor of main building. In addition to the Gallery and Study Center, Grey provided the funds to renovate the NYU undergraduate art history classrooms, auditorium and faculty offices.

By 1979, Abby Grey had made nine trips to Asia and had collected over 600 artworks from artists in Egypt, Greece, Iran, India, Japan, Turkey, Pakistan, and her hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.

On June 2, 1983, Abby Weed Grey died of cancer in St. Paul at the age of 80 years.

Throughout her life, as a patron to the arts, Grey served on The Minnesota Society of Fine Arts (the governing body of the Minnesota Institute of Arts) Board of Trustees from 1967-73 and on the Minneapolis College of Art and Design's Board of Overseers from 1964 until her death. She established Abby Weed Grey scholarships at the College as well. At the Walker Art Center she endowed the Grey Fellowship in Museum Studies. At Hamline University she helped sponsor symposia in Near Eastern Studies and has been a benefactor to St. Catherine's College and the St. Paul Academy-Summit School. She was a member of The Women's Club of Minneapolis and The Cosmopolitan Club of New York.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged in series and subseries determined before the collection arrived at the University Archives.

The series and subseries arrangement of the collection is as follows:

  1. Book Copy
  2. Unpublished Works
  3. AWG Notebooks, 1945-1978
  4. Travel Diaries, 1960-1973
  5. Artist Files
  6. Index Cards, 1947-1978
  7. Misc. Activities and Memorabilia, 1959-1975
  8. Correspondence
  9. Tanavoli, Parviz
  10. Grey Gallery and Study Center NYU
  11. The University of Minnesota
  12. The Grey Foundation
  13. Scrapbooks
  14. The Grey Foundation Exhibitions 1961-1972
  15. Oversized materials
  16. Multimedia
  17. Abby Weed Grey Photographs

Scope and Contents

The Abby Weed Grey Papers span the years 1922-1978, with the bulk of the material covering the period 1960-1974. These papers illustrate Grey's world travels and her interest in art. Documentation is most extensive pertaining to the writing of her autobiography entitled "The Picture is the Window, The Window is the Picture: An Autobiographical Journey". They also provide information on the Iranian artist-sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and Grey's gift to New York University to fund the Grey Art Gallery and Study Center. The collection also contains some material related to her earlier life.

Materials in Series I - XV include published and unpublished materials of Abby Weed Grey's writing; information on international artists; correspondence between Grey and artists, in particular Parviz Tanavoli; catalogs, publicity and clippings pertaining to exhibitions; and scrapbooks and oversized materials. Materials in Series XVI include magnetic audio tapes and film reels of varying sizes. Materials in Series XVII include photos of works of art in her collection and exhibitions, personal photos, and snapshots taken traveling abroad. The contents of each series and subseries are described in more detail in the series-level scope and content notes.

Access Restrictions

The paper and photographic materials in this collection are open for use without restrictions. The collection also contains audiovisual materials that have not been digitized. Please contact the University Archives if you wish to access these materials.

Use Restrictions

There may be some restrictions on the use of the collection. For more information, contact: New York University Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form: Identification of item, date (if known); Abby Weed Grey Papers; MC 151; box number; folder number; New York University Archives, New York University Libraries.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The papers of Abby Weed Grey were transferred from the Grey Study Center Library of New York University to the University Archives in the Spring of 1998.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements note

Due to the fragile nature of the original materials, digital surrogates must be used when viewing the audiovisual materials in the collection.

Related Material at the New York University Archives

Portrait and Biographical Files in the New York University Archives

New York University Photograph Collection, NYU Buildings, Grey Gallery and Study Center

"Abby Weed Grey," page from the Grey Art Gallery web site: http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/information/Abby_Weed_Grey/body_abby_weed_grey.html

The following reference materials: Grey, Abby Weed. The Picture is the Window, The Window is the Picture: An Autobiographical Journey. New York: New York University Press, 1983. One World Through Art: A Selection of 1001 Works of Art from the Ben and Abby Grey Foundation. St. Paul, Minn.: Ben and Abby Grey Foundation, 1972.

Collection processed by

Amy Surak. Additional processing by Aleksandr Gelfand.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 17:50:50 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Description is in English

Processing Information note

Further processing of the Abby Weed Grey Papers was conducted in January-May 2016 for preservation purposes. The papers in the collection were shifted from letter size folders stored in Paige cartons to legal size folders stored in manuscript boxes. Audiovisual materials not previously inspected and rehoused by Preservation also received that treatment. All of this work resulted in a renumbering of the boxes and folders in the collection. However, the collection's existing arrangement was preserved, except in the case of notes originally housed with audiovisual recordings, which were moved to Box 28.

Some metadata cleanup was also conducted during this process. Misspellings were corrected, audiovisual format information was supplied or updated, and information regarding the dates of materials was supplied where available. Date information was also reconfigured to reflect DACS 2.0 requirements.

Additional metadata cleanup was conducted in November 2017.

Revisions to this Guide

November 2017, October 2018: Container list and extent updated by John Zarrillo
July 2019: Updated by Kelly Haydon to reflect the addition of accessible film scans
February 2022: Updated by Lyric Evans-Hunter to reflect digitization of video materials
March 2022: Updated by Rachel Mahre to revise laudatory language in the Biographical / Historical Note.

Edition of this Guide

This version was derived from grey02KS.xml

Repository

New York University Archives
New York University Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012