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Yellow Springs Institute for Contemporary Studies and the Arts.
Collection is open to the public. Library policy on photography and photocopying will apply. Advance notice may be required.
The Yellow Springs Institute (YSI) records consist primarily of administrative and financial papers, as well as photographs documenting the history and activities of the institute from its founding to its dissolution. Included are photographic prints, negatives, and some slides. There are also a number of oversized materials, such as a scrapbook signed by the resident artists, several posters of institute events, blueprints for the theater and lighting, and also for the conference center. Of particular note is the wooden sign that must have hung outside the institute. There is little correspondence documenting the everyday operation of the institute.
The Yellow Springs Institute (YSI) was an international residency program for artists and scholars that was located in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. Originally founded as the Yellow Springs Fellowship for the Arts in the mid-1970s, the organization had changed its name officially to the Yellow Springs Institute for Contemporary Studies and the Arts by 1983, but it was generally known by the shorter form of its name. John A. Clauser, an architect and scenic designer, was the founding director and ran the institute for its entire existence. YSI offered residency programs from one to three weeks between mid-May and October to both performingand visual artists, as well as workshop presenters. Those individuals or groups selected received room, board, and astipend to develop their unproduced works during the residency, culminating in a work-in-progress performance before an audience. In the late 1970s, the physical facilities were built, including a two-story performance structure with an amphitheatre. The Earthwork was an outdoor, experimental performance space. In 1990, a conference center complex was built. Notable programs included Six Saturdays: Explorations in Archetypal Themes in 1980; mythology scholar Joseph Campbell and poet RobertBly held workshops for this program; Ages Apart (1982), which examined cultural transformation and change, also with Robert Bly; and ACCIONES (1989), a project concerned with cultural realities and concerns of Latino interdisciplinary artists from the two Americas. Clauser sold the fifteen-acre site in 1997 after cuts in government funding made the work of the institute increasingly difficult to maintain. He unsuccessfully sought a new location for the institute in Philadelphia and spent the last few years of his life before his death in 2002 compiling an archive of the institute's activities.
View of the Kremlin, ca. 1790. NYPL Slavic and Baltic Collectionss.
One of 700,000 pictures in the NYPL Digital Gallery
