Performing Arts
Performing Arts collections at RBML encompass theater, dance, documentary film, music, and associated business and critical worlds.
Collection Overview
The guiding principle of RBML’s performing arts collections was established by writer and educator Brander Matthews and his Dramatic Museum and Library, who set out to collect material that documented the business of the theater, rather than to simply collect texts. Major archival acquisitions document all aspects of the creative process and performance. For example, the Joseph Urban archive includes a wide range of materials specific to actual productions, from preliminary set designs to finished set models, photographs, and playbills. Material added to the theater holdings should inform the researcher about the living theater, such as printed texts marked as prompt copies.
The geographic focus is on collections with Columbia or New York City connections. In recent years, the collection has expanded to other behind the scenes aspects, such as performing arts criticism and technology and other performing arts including music, dance, and film.
Music collections mostly have either Columbia and/or New York City connections. Most are the papers of composers who either studied or taught at Columbia, such as Edward MacDowell, Jack Beeson, and H. Lawrence Freeman who founded his African American Grand Opera and music school in Harlem. With the acqusition of the Arthur Mitchell collection, RBML has begun to collect the history of dance in a way that speaks to other significant collection strengths, including Columbia’s ties to Harlem civic and cultural leadership. RBML collects documentary--as opposed to narrative--film. The pioneering Robert J. Flaherty (Nanook of the North) stands at the fore. Additional strengths are in film distribution and exhibition, focusing on independent and foreign film marketing, with collections such as Vogel and Talbot.
RBML holds the papers of a number of performing arts agents (Annie Laurie Williams and Constance Hope), philanthropists (Eleanor Robson Belmont and Andrew Carnegie) and critics (Andrew Sarris and Judith Crist). Finally, important collections relate to technology, especially the Earl Sponable papers with film, and the Edwin Armstrong papers with music. The Max Neuhaus papers show the development of his work as a pioneer of sound art.
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Arthur Mitchell Collection
Extensive documentation of the career of pioneering dancer and choreographer Arthur Mitchell and the formation of the Dance Theater of Harlem.
Sergei Prokofiev Archive
The Serge Prokofiev Archive was gathered by Prokofiev himself and by members of his family. The material includes high quality photocopies of the manuscript scores, correspondence, private and business records, the papers of Lina Prokofiev, including gathered materials for a planned biography of her husband, and those of Oleg Prokofiev, relating to his own work and to his father’s music, as well as the largest collection of published material on Prokofiev in the West.
Tennessee Williams Papers
A large collection of the American playwright’s correspondence, memoirs, and plays, with a strength in his later works.
Contact Us
Courtney Chartier
Director, Rare Book & Manuscript Library
- Rare Book & Manuscript Library