Due to the small size of this collection the papers are arranged as one series.
John Button (1929-1982) was an American artist well known for his paintings of city-scapes and associated with New York School artists like Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, and Alex Katz. Born in San Francisco, California, Button attended the University of California, Berkeley and the California School of Fine Arts. In the early 1950s he moved to New York. He taught at the School of Visual Arts from 1965 until 1982. Button's work was included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and many others.
Gerald Langston Fabian (1924-2012) was a poet, actor, educator, and activist. He grew up in Montana, served in the Pacific with the Navy during World War II, and lived most of his life in San Francisco, California. He was a friend of painter, John Button.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
The John Button letters to Gerald L. Fabian were donated to the Archives of American Art by Gerald L. Fabian in 1990.
John Button letters to Gerald L. Fabian, 1950-1982. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The collection received a preliminary level of arrangement in 1991 by Jean Fitzgerald. It was minimally processed and a finding aid prepared by Rayna Andrews in 2018 with funding from Gerald and Bente Buck.
Also found in the Archives of American Art are the John Button papers, 1964-2004.
The John Button letters to Gerald L. Fabian measure 0.6 linear feet and date from 1950 to 1982. The collection consists primarily of correspondence from painter John Button to Gerald Fabian. Also included are letters from Fabian to Button, as well as printed material.
Letters included in this collection discuss Button's activities, friends, opinions of other artists, and work. Some letters are fragmentary. Included within the correspondence are scattered photographs, sketches, poems, and printed material. The printed material that appears at the end of the collection consists primarily of clippings, some with annotations, and may have once been enclosed in the letters.