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January 31, 1962

Beatrice Wood
c/o U. S. Information Service
Bahawalpur House
Sikandra Road
New Delhi, India

Dear Beatrice:

After a great, long silence I got desperate and called Dr. Anna maria Pope at the Smithsonian and put the matter to her--did she or did she not consider having you and me in a joint show. She replied that she had been ill and so had not replied to my letter but was most enthusiastic about the idea. She certainly felt this could be a banner show. I agree with her that ceramics is enhanced by a softening background of textiles and similarly textiles are helped by a focal point, such as a beautiful pot, allied with it. I think we could do a really beautiful show. I know Mrs. Pope packages these traveling shows beautifully. I've had several requests for museum shows recently for this spring and have declined and said there would be a traveling show coming along maybe within the year.

It would take about a year to get the show put together. I think the Smithsonian works that far ahead. Dr. Pope has had marvelous shows from abroad, and her shows usually get "bookings" all over the country, starting either at the Smithsonian or the Metropolitan, and going to all the important museums.

Anna Maria's advice to you is to ship your things back to California, that she would come out and talk with you there, and the show might event have its debut on the West Coast, since we are two WEst Coast girls. That would be rather exciting. I don't want you to feel that I'm urging you to turn down Mrs. Webb, but I think she got interested when she knew that you and I were even planning something and would probably want to have it in her museum too. However, it must be on the downstairs floor with the whole museum given over to it--no little upstairs mezzanine room!