Celebrating 175: Romaine Brooks, Manuscript, A War Interlude, circa 1940s

About the Project

Join the Archives of American Art and the Smithsonian Transcription Center throughout the next year as we celebrate the Smithsonian's 175th birthday! Explore the lives and worlds of 175 different US art world figures on their birthdays, one for each year since the Smithsonian's founding in 1846. Who was born on this day? In 1874, Romaine Brooks.

Born Beatrice Romaine Goddard on May 1, 1874, Romaine Brooks (1874-1970) is known for her monochrome portraits. After an unstable and abusive childhood, Brooks became independently wealthy in 1902 and set up a painting studio in Italy, where she began to move in avant-garde art circles, and later in London and Paris. She often painted women wearing men's dress in grayscale, which gave the paintings an androgynous look, a style she wore in her own life. One of her best-known works, "The Amazon," is a portrait of Natalie Barney, her partner of over 50 years. Brooks had largely stopped working as an artist by 1935, and soon sunk into obscurity. She spent the rest of her life in self-imposed isolation in Italy, refusing even to see Barney. Help us transcribe correspondence, the manuscript of her unpublished memoir, and a manuscript of her experiences in Italy during World War II to illuminate her life. You can explore the rest of the fully digitized Romaine Brooks papers on the Archives of American Art website!

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Completed!

Project Progress (details)

150 pages completed

Difficulty

2 out of 5

(details)

About Project Difficulty

Level 1 - BEGINNER

Content: all typed
Language: English
Format: letters, diaries, flyers, pamphlets, and one-page documents
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 2

Content: mostly typed, handwritten in print, or otherwise very clearly written/readable
Language: English
Format: memorabilia, advertisements, image captions, telegrams, diaries, letters, notes
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: none required

Level 3 - INTERMEDIATE

Content: typed and handwritten materials in cursive or print
Language: English
Format: newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, letters/diaries/notes that may include annotations or margin notes
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: experience reading cursive writing may be useful

Level 4

Content: handwritten materials, primarily in cursive or somewhat difficult to read (predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries) , audio recordings that are relatively easy to hear/decipher, and scientific materials
Language: English and/or other languages that use Roman script but may require the use of diacritics (French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.)
Format: audio recordings, letters, diaries, notes and other written materials, projects with templated fields and special instructions
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: some knowledge of non-English Roman-character/script languages and diacritics may be useful, as well as experience reading cursive handwriting. A general knowledge or familiarity with scientific terminology.

Level 5 - ADVANCED

Content: handwritten materials in cursive (from the 19th century or earlier) or in a non-Roman script language, audio recordings that are difficult to hear or are not in English, specialty materials/projects such as numismatics projects and the Project Phaedra notebooks
Language: foreign languages that use non-Roman characters (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Greek/Cyrillic, Native American and Indigenous languages, etc.) and English
Format: audio recordings, columned data/tables, manuscripts, letters, diaries, notes, currency sheets, coins
Subject Area Expertise/Special Skills: knowledge of a specific language and access to a keyboard with the characters in that language may be required for certain projects. Experience reading cursive handwriting and familiarity with 19th century (or prior) handwriting and conventions/abbreviations may be useful, as well as knowledge of scientific terminology, astrophysics data, or linguistics.

Contributing
members

150

Total
pages

Complete