Collecting area: Arts & literature

Thomas Weston Fels is an artist, author, art historian, writer, and curator. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, 1946, Fels spent his teenage years at The Putney School, a private boarding school in Southern Vermont. Upon completion, Fels enrolled in Amherst College, and after graduating in 1967, moved to the Montague Farm commune. 

Fels lived on the farm from 1969 to 1973, and was an integral member of the larger communard community, extending from the Wendell Farm and Johnson Pasture, to Packer Corners and the Tree Frog Farm. While there, Fels associated with prolific writers, artists and photographers of 1960s counterculture, such as Harvey Wasserman, Ray Mungo, Peter Simon, and others. 

Sometime after leaving the commune, Fels returned to school, attending Williams College. He graduated in 1984, earning a Masters in the History of Art. Following the completion of his degree, Fels was awarded multiple prestigious fellowships. In 1986, he became a Chester Dale Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while between 1998-1999, he was a Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library, California. His career has seen him employed by numerous museums across North America, ranging from the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art in California, the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum in Vermont, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Quebec. 

 Fels has organized many exhibitions throughout his career, some internationally. In California, Fels’ exhibition Carleton Watkins: Western Landscape and the Classical Vision was presented at the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art; while his exhibition Fire and Ice: Treasures from the Photograph Collection of Frederic Church at Olana, was shown at both the Dahesh Museum in New York, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

In addition to his curatorial duties, Fels’ work as a researcher and writer has led him to publish a variety of catalogs and companion pieces to his exhibitions alongside various articles and books. In 1989, he published O Say Can You See: American Photographs 1839-1939, and in 1994, he edited a single issue of Farm Notes, in some ways a successor to the Montague Commune’s Green Mountain Post (formerly New Babylon Times). In 2008, Fels published the memoir Farm Friends, reflecting on his life, the counterculture era, and his time on the Montague Commune. In the same year, Fels helped found the ‘Famous Long Ago Archive’ at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; collecting the personal papers of several members of the communard community. These collections contain articles, manuscripts, photos, posters, oral histories, and more. He continued to reflect on the Montague Farm, publishing Buying the Farm in 2012, providing an in-depth history of the commune, connecting with communards decades later, while chronicling the farm from its beginning in 1968 through the following thirty-five years of its existence. 

Since 2013, Fels has been showcasing his unique cyanotypes throughout the American Northeast, and by 2015 his art would take him to Europe and the United Kingdom. In 2016, his large, life-sized renderings were subject to sale at one of the world’s most renowned auction houses, Christie’s London. Beyond his photography and historical work, Fels can be found giving lectures throughout New England, or at his home in Southern Vermont. 

The Thomas W. Fels Montague Farm Collection reflects the work of the many friends he made while living on the Montague Farm. Their works make up the bulk of the collection, containing articles, manuscripts, publications, photographs, posters, and audio recordings. Of particular interest is the 25th Anniversary reunion of the Montague Commune. The 10-day celebration is memorialized through photos, audio recordings, and a publication. 

A wave of experimentation in communal living in New England reached a peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with dozens of communities spread across the landscape of western Massachusetts and Vermont. Nina Finestone joined the Johnson Pastures in Guilford , Vermont, in 1969, however after the main house there went up in flames on April 16, 1970, killing four people, she joined a number of its residents who moved to the nearby Montague Farm in Montague, Massachusetts. Nina married a fellow Montague farmer, Daniel Keller, and the couple moved to Wendell in 1980.

Providing exceptional visual documentation of life at Johnson Pasture, the Montague Farm, and Wendell Farm between 1969 and 1990, the Finestone collection is centered on the lives and family of Daniel and Nina Keller. All images were taken by Roy Finestone, Nina’s father, with a medium format camera using color transparency film.

Noted critic of music, literature, and the arts, as well as a writer and an active member of the Communist Party U.S.A. Includes letters to and from Mr. Finkelstein; original manuscripts of reviews, articles, essays, and books; legal documents, educational, military, and personal records, financial papers, contracts, photographs, and lecture and course notes.

Founded in 1974, the U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association was among the first American organizations devoted to fostering people-to-people diplomacy between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. The vision of veteran civil rights activist Unita Blackwell, the USCPFA sponsored speakers, seminars, and cultural exchanges, and in the 1970s, was among the first groups to organize tours from the United States to the People’s Republic.

The 449 color slides (35 mm.) that comprise the U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association collection document one of the group’s early tours, undertaken at the height of the agitation over the Gang of Four. Beyond simple touristic scenes, the collection depicts a state-sponsored version of everyday life in China during the early post-Mao era.

2 Holyoke St., Flywheel's original location circa 2000

In the spring of 1998, two western Massachusetts-based musicians/artists, Cindy Bow and Helen Harrison founded the Valley Arts and Music Alliance (VAMA), a grassroots collective of artists who worked collaboratively to produce free, all-ages shows and art happenings that reflected their own creative visions which operated in opposition to those of the established music industry. VAMA attracted like-minded people, most of whom were already doing similar things in their own homes, churches, dorm basements, record stores, VFW halls, and other non-traditional venues. Together, the group produced over two-dozen shows at The Fridge Art Gallery and other spaces in downtown Amherst, MA and elsewhere. In December of 1998, a friend, supporter, artist, and local lawyer, Stevan Bartone, located a space in Easthampton – a long-vacant cabinet store owned by a local Palestinian-born doctor named Shawki Kanazi located at 2 Holyoke St. that would serve as a home for VAMA.

As word of the space spread, several people joined the fledgling group and VAMA morphed into Flywheel. After a flurry of renovations to the space led by local artist and carpenter Bruce Todd and his dog Mashie, Flywheel opened its doors in March of 1999 with a day-long celebration of music, poetry, comedy, and visual art. For the next eight years, a stable of local bookers, volunteers, supporters, musicians, and artists facilitated a wealth of community-building artistic moments in this unassuming storefront in Easthampton, which at the time was a post-industrial city shaping its artistic future. In 2007, at the invitation of local developer and arts supporter, Will Bundy, Flywheel left 2 Holyoke St. for a larger space in Easthampton’s historic Old Town Hall at 43 Main St. Bundy formed a non-profit, City Space, to manage the building in which Flywheel was a tenant. Flywheel reopened in 2010 after three years of major renovations. In December 2020 Flywheel left Old Town Hall and has continued to program events at unconventional spaces around Western Mass.

The Flywheel collection documents its history from its inception as VAMA in 1998, to its transformation into Flywheel in 1999 and through its continued operation in the early to mid 2000s. These records document the construction and operation of Flywheel’s space at 2 Holyoke Street through photographs, correspondence, meeting minutes, digital files, and financial records. In addition, Flywheel and VAMA’s programming is reflected through vast amounts of promotional materials such as show flyers, posters, monthly schedules, correspondence, contracts, signage, artwork, and audiovisual materials. These items illustrate the rise of the do-it-yourself (D.I.Y.) music scene in Easthampton and Western Massachusetts as well as the national/international underground music community of the late 20th/early 21st century. Established, or soon to be established, “indie” artists such as Versus, Kim Gordon, Lightning Bolt, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, The Gossip, Pernice Brothers, Dresden Dolls, Pansy Division, High Rise, Bright Eyes, and thousands of experimental artists, filmmakers, and musicians in a variety of genres/mediums from noise, electronic and jazz to hardcore, folk, and punk are represented in printed calendars and flyers. As a volunteer-run, consensus-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization with no paid employees, Flywheel’s success depended on small-scale fundraising efforts, volunteers, and community support. This structure is well documented through meeting minutes, fundraising appeals, a website, internal correspondence, signage, and collaboratively-produced guidebooks. In addition to organizational records, there is a large collection of fanzines and underground publications that constituted Flywheel’s “infoshop”. This collection of over 3,500 publications, which makes up the bulk of the collection, was built over the course of 20 years through donations by volunteers and supporters, show goers, zine makers, and by being listed in Slingshot, the Berkeley, CA anarchist newspaper.

Founded by Betsy Siggins in 2009, Folk New England is an organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and interpreting the cultural legacy of folk music in all its forms, with an emphasis on New England’s contribution.

The Ephemera Collection consists of dozens of posters, fliers, calendars, and other promotional materials for musical acts collected by Folk New England. Concentrated in the years of the folk revival in the late 1950s to late 1960s, many of the posters were sent to Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass.

Founded by Betsy Siggins in 2009, Folk New England’s mission is to document, preserve, interpret and present the ongoing cultural legacy of folk music in all its forms, with emphasis on New England’s contribution to the enrichment of North American life. The organization continues a dialogue between New England’s distinct folk music heritage and its future, through the establishment of a regional folk music archive, robust collections development and access, multi-disciplinary outreach and education, and engaging entertainment programs for the public.

The Folk New England collections document the folk music scene, broadly construed, with an emphasis on the folk revival of the late 1950s and 1960s to the present. Although the performers and music are central, the growing array of collections also documents producers, venues, photographers, and others involved in the scene.

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Foresty and lumbering have been substantial sectors of the Massachusetts economy for more than 300 years. This collection includes photographs of forests throughout New England and New York, lumbering and related occupations, tools of forestry, and distinguished foresters. Together these images capture the history and traditions of forestry and lumbering in Massachusetts from mill work to Christmas trees.

An East German actor, writer, and film director, and an insightful analyst of German culture and film history, Jörg Foth was born in Berlin on Oct. 31, 1949. After completing military service and working briefly in television, Foth entered the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen „Konrad Wolf“ in Postdam, graduating in 1977. During his long ascent through the East German film system, he worked as an assistant director at the DEFA Studio and in GDR television and collaborated with Ulrich Weiss and others. His directorial debut came in 1984 with the children’s film Das Eismeer Ruft, however it was another six years before he was permitted to direct his second film, Biologie!, the only DEFA feature ever to deal with environmental issues. A few months after he was promoted to Director, the East German political system collapsed and the DEFA studios were closed. Foth has since worked as a freelance director and writer for both film and television.

The Foth collection provides unique insight into East German cinema; the diverse career of a noted writer, director, and actor; and more generally, the shifting artistic environment during the last years of the DDR. Along with writing and research materials from many of Foth’s films, the collection includes a range of writing, ephemera, and on topics ranging from film theory, the theater, and literature to Marx, Stalin, and Lenin.

The poet and essayist Robert Francis settled in Amherst, Mass., in 1926, three years after his graduation from Harvard, and created a literary life that stretched for the better part of half a century. An associate of Robert Frost and friend of many other writers, Francis occasionally worked as a teacher or lecturer, including a brief stint on the faculty at Mount Holyoke College, but he sustained himself largely through his writing, living simply in “Fort Juniper,” a cottage he built on Market Hill Road in North Amherst. A recipient of the Shelley Award (1939) and the Academy of American Poets award for distinguished poetic achievement (1984), Francis was a poet in residence at both Tufts (1955) and Harvard (1960) Universities. He died in Amherst in July 1987.

The Francis Papers contains both manuscript and printed materials, drafts and finished words, documenting the illustrious career of the poet. Of particular note is Francis’s correspondence with other writers, publishing houses, and readers, notably Paul Theroux. Also contains personal photographs and Francis family records and a small number of audio recordings of Francis reading his poetry. Letters from Francis to Regina Codey, 1936-1978, can be found in MS 314 along with two typescript poems by Francis.

Listen to interviews with Francis on "Poems to a Listener", 1977-1978