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ALBANY INSTITUTE of HISTORY and ART
Founded 1791
ALBANY 6, NEW YORK

LEDYARD COGSWELL, JR., President
PETER D. KIERNAN 1st Vice-President
HARRY ELDRIDGE, 2nd Vice-President
LAURENCE McKINNEY, Secretary
HERBERT A. JONES, Treasurer
J. D. HATCH, JR., Director

November 22, 1944

Dear Mr. Carlen:

We are planning in January of next year with our January Opening a large national survey of the outstanding Negro American painters and sculptors. For this the Phelps Stokes Fund and the Carnegie Corporation will each pay one-third of the costs for the catalog. In the list we have now completed are forty-five artists.

We have included Horace Pippin and Edward Loper, both of whom you have handled. Pippin may today be represented by a New York dealer, as we found a great many of his works there. We have addressed a letter, however, in your care and trust it will be forwarded.

Loper asked that we communicate with you. Would it be possible to include in the exhibit his Backyards which just won the Art Alliance Prize, and would you also make a selection for us of from three to five others from which we might choose one or two? We have asked the Pennsylvania Academy if they will lend us Pippin's John Brown. There was also a private collector in Philadelphia who purchased his Lilies. Do you know who this is and would you be willing to find if we can borrow it?

We have also one other request. Would you see that Pippin's pictures are shipped with those of Loper, and may we likewise ask Laura Wheeler Waring to bring her work to your gallery so they might also be included in that shipment? We would like to have the material here by the 9th of December.

We have written each artist asking them for a photograph of themselves and, if possible, of their work to include in the catalog, and we likewise need a biographical sketch of each artist. If you can help us