Judson, Sylvia Shaw (1897-1978) Collection, 1915-1998 (bulk 1940-1998)

              Judson, Sylvia Shaw Collection, 1902-2013 (bulk 1940-1998 ) Inventory prepared by Staff of the Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2011 Text tagged in EAD by Valerie Higgins November 2011 Finding aid written in English Sylvia Shaw Judson, 1902-2013 (bulk 1940-1998) 2009.5 2.5 linear feet ( 5 boxes ) and flatfile materials Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, The Art Institute of Chicago 111 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60603-6110 (312) 443-7292 rbarchives@artic.edu http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/rbarchives/rbarchives.html Sylvia Shaw Judson, daughter of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, was a prominent sculptor who specialized in garden sculpture. The collection contains photographs and slides of Judson and her work, materials pertaining to exhibitions of Judson's work, drawings by Judson, Judson's sketchbooks, Judson's lecture notes, written and printed material, woodblocks, and negatives. Haskins, Sylvia Shaw Judson, 1897-1978 Photographs , slides , correspondence , holograph papers , typescript papers , printed material , drawings , woodblocks , and negatives . The collection is housed in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries' on-site stacks. English . Portions of this collection are restricted; wherever possible, surrogate copies are provided for patron use, as noted in the series listings. The remainder of the collection may be used by qualified readers in the Reading Room of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute of Chicago. Collections maintained on-site are available for patron use without prior arrangement or appointment. Collections maintained in off-site storage will be retrieved with advance notification; please consult the Archivist for the current retrieval schedule. For further information, patrons are requested to consult http://www.artic.edu/aic/access/access.html SERIES I: PHOTOGRAPHS. Organized into the following subseries: Portraits, Sculptures by Judson, Exhibitions of Judson's Work, Miscellaneous. SERIES II: SLIDES. Organized into the following subseries: Portraits; Sculptures by Judson; Lecture Slides; Travel and Teaching in Cairo, 1963; Miscellaneous. SERIES III: CORRESPONDENCE. SERIES IV: EXHIBITIONS. Organized into the following subseries: Art Institute of Chicago, July 28 to October 2, 1938; Sonnenschein Gallery, Lake Forest College, November 12 to December 1, 1998; Planning for a Retrospective Exhibition of Judson's Work. SERIES V: BOOKS. Materials related to publications by or about Judson. SERIES VI: SKETCHBOOKS. Organized into the following subseries: Books; Material Removed from Books. SERIES VII: WRITINGS. Divided into two subseries: Works by Judson and Other. Contains lecture notes. SERIES VIII: PRINTED MATERIALS. Organized into the following subseries: Related to Judson; Unrelated to Judson. SERIES IX: PERSONAL PAPERS. Mostly biographical information. SERIES X: REALIA. Contains terra cotta plaque and woodblocks. SERIES XI: NEGATIVES. Contains miscellaneous negatives. Sylvia Shaw Judson Collection 1915-1998 (bulk 1940-1998), Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago. About half the collection consists of photographs and slides. These photographs and slides mostly show Judson and her work, but the collection also includes some slides of sculptures by other artists that Judson used in her lectures. Most of the materials documenting exhibitions pertain to the 1998 exhibition at Lake Forest College and the efforts of Alice Judson Hayes to plan a retrospective exhibition of her mother's work. The materials assembled by Hayes include lists of Judson's works and information on the original and current owners of many of her sculptures. Materials documenting Judson's book For Gardens and Other Places consist of dust jackets from the book and drawings used to illustrate the book. Judson's sketchbooks contain a mixture of drawings and notes, many of them made during Judson's travels. The collection also contains a few pages of lecture notes by Judson, some written material related to Judson, woodblocks, and negatives of a few of the photographs. Sylvia Shaw Judson was born on June 30, 1897 in Chicago, Illinois to Howard Van Doren Shaw, an architect, and Frances Shaw, a poet. Judson spent a large portion of her childhood at Ragdale, the family summer home in Lake Forest, Illinois, and she later indicated that the Arts and Crafts style home had a significant impact on her art. She attended the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago from 1906 to 1910 and the University School for Girls in Chicago from 1911 to 1913. She attended Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut from 1914 to 1915. At the age of sixteen, Judson had already selected her profession, writing in the Westover School magazine in 1914 that she wanted to be a "lady sculptor" specializing in garden sculptures. She spent a summer apprenticing at the studio of sculptor Anna Hyatt, a well-known sculptor of animals, in Annisquam, Massachusetts in 1915. From 1915 to 1918, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied under Albin Polasek. Her formal studies were interrupted in 1917 when she and her father took an extended trip to China and Japan, an experience that Judson wrote had a strong influence on her subsequent sculptures of animals. After completing her studies at the School of the Art Institute, Judson established a studio in New York City in 1919. In 1920, she moved to Paris, where she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Antoine Bourdelle until 1921. She returned to Chicago and married Clay Judson, an attorney, in 1921. They had two children: Alice (later Alice Judson Hayes) in 1922 and Clay, Jr. in 1926. Judson opened a studio in Chicago and began working professionally as a sculptor in 1922. She followed the intentions she had professed in 1914, specializing in garden sculpture and primarily creating sculptures of animals and human figures, many of them children. In 1942, Judson moved permanently to her family home of Ragdale and established a studio there. Judson designed her most famous sculpture, Bird Girl , in 1936 for a commission by Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Ryerson, Jr. of Chicago. Six castings of this statue were made, and it became famous when a photograph of a casting in Savannah, Georgia was used on the cover of the popular 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil . Some of her other well-known sculptures include Gardener , commissioned in 1929 and purchased for a garden at the White House in 1965, and a monument to the Quaker martyr Mary Dyer in Boston, Massachusetts commissioned in 1957. The Roman Bronze Company of Corona, New York cast most of Judson's works, but she had her large works Monument to Mary Dyer and Stations of the Cross cast in bronze in Florence, Italy. Judson's work was featured in numerous exhibitions during her lifetime. In 1938, Judson had a one-person show at the Art Institute of Chicago that later traveled around the country. She also had one person shows at the Arden Gallery in New York City (1940), the Illinois State Museum in Springfield (1948), the Chicago Public Library (1957), and the Sculpture Center in New York City (1957). She won several awards for her work, including the Art Institute of Chicago's Logan Prize (1929) and Clyde Carr Prize (1947), and the Purchase Prize at the Philadelphia Museum's International Sculpture Show (1949). She received an honorary PhD from Lake Forest College in 1952. In 1949, Judson joined the Society of Friends. The tension between her Quaker faith, whose adherents generally viewed the visual arts with distrust, and her identity as an artist prompted her to publish her first book, The Quiet Eye: A Way of Looking at Pictures , in 1954. This book, which contains images of artwork by a variety of artists and little text, features works that Judson believed displayed Quaker ideals. Her second book, For Gardens and Other Places: The Sculpture of Sylvia Shaw Judson , was published in 1967 and chronicles her own career with numerous images of her work. In addition to working as a sculptor, Judson also served as president of the Chicago Public School Art Society from 1948 to 1950 and vice-president of the Art Institute of Chicago's Woman's Board from 1953 to 1954. In 1963, Judson taught sculpture for several months at the American University of Cairo. Judson's husband died in 1960, and she married Sidney G. Haskins in 1963. She moved with her new husband to a Quaker retirement community in Pennsylvania in 1971, but returned to Ragdale in the summers. She died at Ragdale on August 31, 1978. This collection and other related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs: Haskins, Sylvia Shaw Judson, 1897-1978 Outdoor sculpture--United States. Sculptors--United States. Sculpture, American--20th century. Women sculptors--United States. 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