Shirley Smith papers

9.00 Linear Feet, 17.00 Boxes plus 1 oversize drawer.

The Shirley Smith Papers (1937-2011) include a wide array of varying fields and topics following the life and career of Shirley Smith. Growing up in rural Kansas and graduating from Kansas State College in 1951, Smith moved to New York City to begin her career as a model, then Broadway actress. In the early 1960s, Smith began to lose her hearing and focused her talents instead on an art career, which she continued for over 50 years. Much of her artwork hearkens back to Kansas roots, while other pieces are considered within the lyrical abstraction art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The collection includes 17 boxes and one folder stored in a flat drawer case comprising 9 linear feet. It is divided into 9 series: 1) Correspondence; 2) Early Life and Personal; 3) Acting Career; 4) Art Career; 5) Literary Works; 6) Photographs; 7) Printed Materials; 8) Digital Media, and; 9) Oversize. Series 1 (Box 1) contains correspondence from throughout Smith’s life and career. Some of the most notable correspondents include actors Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Yul Brenner, Lee Falk, and Alan Cranston. Other correspondents include Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Robert Dole, and Gordon Parks. This series also contains correspondence with art museums, regarding exhibitions of Smith’s work.
Series 2 (Box 2) contains personal documents chronicling Smith’s early life in rural Kansas (focused on high school), as well as her time at Kansas State College. Additionally, this section contains early resumes outlining Smith’s acting and modeling careers.
Series 3 (Box 2) contains playbills and clippings regarding Smith’s career in theater and on television from 1954 to 1960. Some of the most noted performances included her breakthrough role in Picnic (1954) and The Golden Fleecing (1960).
Series 4 (Box 3) contains not only influences and inspirations for Smith’s artwork, but programs and notices regarding exhibitions of her art from the 1970s on into the late 2000s. This series concludes with resumes of her work related to art, especially highlighting the achievement award she received from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1991.
Series 5 (Box 4 through 6) contains Ms. Smith’s literary works. Box 4 holds her early writings at Whitewater High School, as well as other personal writing including personal and written statements and notes regarding her art. Additionally, the box contains Smith’s incredibly intimate poetry (most written in the late 1950s to late 1970s). Box 5 and 6 contain multiple drafts of Smith’s memoirs (entitled I’m Off to Catch the Sunset) which are separated into sections. Drafts of the section entitled “The Undertaker’s Daughter,” are contained in box 6.
Series 6 (Boxes 7 through 9) contain photographs taken throughout Smith’s life.  Box 7 contains photographs from Smith’s early life in Whitewater, Kansas, and at Kansas State.  Following these are photographs from Smith’s modeling and acting career, including various headshots. Finally, photographs of Smith with her artwork and later in life complete box 7. Box 8 contains photographs of her art pieces, spanning nearly fifty years from the early 1960s to 2010. Finally, Box 9 contains art related to pigs (one of Smith’s most influential models for art).
Series 7 (Box 10) contains printed materials in three sections, “Musical Scores,” “Modeling Advertisements,” and “Art Exhibition Booklets.”
Series 8 (Box 11) includes digital media on 27 Disks of photographs and documents that span much of Smith’s career as an actress and, primarily, as an artist, as well as portions of an unpublished memoir, a DVD documentary called “A Pig’s Life,” and a retrospective DVD of photographs of Smith’s life and works.
Series 9 (Boxes 12 through 17 and one flat drawer case) include the largest pieces of the collection. Box 12 contains 32 personal appointment and address books and 13 contains a substantial collection of slides of photographs taken in Kansas, as well as slides of later “figurative painting” farm- animal art pieces (ca 1980-2000s). Box 14 contains transparencies and slides of photographs of Kansas landscapes, pigs, and other farm animals taken in the 1980s and 90s, along with slides of an earlier artwork, including Smith’s “Lyrical Abstraction” Collection (1969-1972). Box 15 includes larger modeling photographs, while 16 includes art-related media, including paint pallets and figure sketches. Box 17 includes items related to the  “Shirley Smith: A Retrospective” Exhibition at the Beach Museum of Art (1999), including a commemorative plaque, promotional pictures on foam core, pig photographs from the “I Love Pigs” installation, and an album of interviews with various individuals regarding pigs. Finally, the flat drawer case folder contains modeling advertisements for Helzberg Diamonds published in the Kansas City Star.

No access restriction:  All materials are open for research.

The researcher assumes full responsibility for observing all copyright, property, and libel laws as they apply.

• English

• Latin

It received accession number P2014.10.

Acqusition Source: Scott Smith, nephew
Acqusition Method: Donation
Acqusition Date: 20140101

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Information entered in Archon by Audrey Swartz, 2017.

Finding Aid Author: Haley Claxton
Processing Info: The collection was processed by student assistant and History major, Haley Claxton, in 2014
Publication Date: 2017-02-03