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THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM
17985 Pacific Coast Highway - Malibu, California 90265
Telephone (213)459-2306

8 May 1978

Mrs Germain Seligman
875 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10021

Dear Mrs Seligman

I was very glad to receive your letter of April 23. I did not realize that you had spoken to the Archives of American Art already about your files, but as I have worked with them before and know a number of their staff quite well (I am on the advisory board for the section in this part of the country) I think that we can easily avoid any conflict. Indeed I have already mentioned to them this matter and I hope to set up a kind of arrangement whereby we can mutually facilitate each other's needs in respect to archival material of this nature. Eventually we expect to house the Archives of American Art for the Southwest in our new facilities.

The part of most interest to us is the photographic collection. I am not certain whether you also have negatives, but, as I recall, you do. Perhaps we could best begin by making a rough count of the photographs (avoiding, if possible, counting duplicates). If reproductions are included, it would also be desirable to break down the figures in order to know how many of each kind there are as reproductions are not basically very valuable to us.

Having such a figure, you could then, if you choose, give me some idea of what you think the value of the collection should be. Normally when we buy such archives (we have bought two others this month) we pay about $1.00 per photograph. If the negatives are included, this would change things, but we are primarily interested in a set of prints.