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Barton Family Collection

 Collection
Identifier: MC-100

Scope and Contents

This collection contains the materials created by Nancy in the course of her life's work as a textile artist. The first series, Artworks, consists of images of most of Nancy's major works of art. The second series, Alphabetical Art Files, contains her correspondence with dealers, museums, collectors, and providers of raw materials for her work. The collection also contains private correspondence with family and friends, samples of the wool and other material she worked with, cassette tapes of poetry which she listened to in her Boothbay art studio, watercolors, pastels, exhibition catalogs, and journals and diaries.

Dates

  • Creation: 1958-1992

Nancy Hemenway biography

Nancy Hemenway was born in 1920 in Boothbay Harbor, Maine and attended school in Foxboro, Massachusetts. She graduated from Wheaton College in 1941 before attending the Graduate School of Music at Harvard University. She married Robert D. Barton in 1942. Because Robert had a career in foregin service, the couple spent the early years of their marriage traveling the world, living in Uruguay, Argentina, and Spain until they moved back to the United States in 1957, settling in Bronxville, New York. Nancy Hemenway studied art while abroad and so she began attending the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University in 1961, completing a master of arts degree in Spanish lyric poetry in 1966. Nancy and Robert moved to La Paz, Bolivia before moving to Guadalajara, Mexico in 1968. The couple returned to the United States in 1972, spending winters in Washington, D.C. and summers in Maine. During this time, Hemenway's style developed. She traveled, lectured, and exhibited in Madagascar, Swaziland, Bostswana, Lesotho, Benin, and the Republic of South Africa from 1979 to 1980 as a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship to Africa. In 1983, Wheaton College awarded Hemenway an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree.

Extent

15 Cubic Feet (35 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Custodial History

Gift of the Barton Family Foundation, separate gift of Rick Barton (his papers).

Status
In Progress
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the Marion B. Gebbie Archives and Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Wheaton College
26 East Main Street
Norton Massachusetts 02766