Guide to the Jane Haskell Papers and Photographs, 1958-2013
Arrangement
Repository
Heinz History Center
Title
Jane Haskell Papers and Photographs
Creator
Haskellm, Jane
Collection Number
MSS 1046
Extent
8.5 linear feet linear feet(6 boxes and one oversize folder)
Date
1958-2013
Abstract
Jane Haskell was an artist and educator recognized for her contributions to neon art and the arts community of Pittsburgh. Initially a painter and sculptor, Haskell was one of few prominent female artists in the city two decades before taking a pioneering role in neon and fiber optic art in the 1980s. Among her best known works are site-specific installations which merged light sources with painted surfaces and sculpture. Haskell's public art commissions include installations at the Steel Plaza subway station in Pittsburgh, Broward County Airport in Ft. Lauderdale, Logan Airport in Boston, Pittsburgh YMCA and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. She also served as an advisor and board member for numerous local art organizations and museums. Materials in the collection include correspondence, publicity, exhibition catalogs, artist statements, curriculum vitae, photographs, video, slides, and drawings.
Language
The material in this collection is in English.
Author
The guide to this collection was written by Carly Lough.
Jane Haskell was born Shirley Jane Zirinsky on November 24, 1923, in Cedarhurst, Long Island. She was the second child of Louis Isaac and Bertha (Birdie) Levy Zirinsky, native New Yorkers born to immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her brother Jerome Zirinsky (later Jerome Zirn) was born in 1916. Louis followed his father into the jewelry business, managing Zirinsky & Sons on Grant Street in New York until its decline during the Great Depression. He and Birdie later operated a suiting and coat shop in the 1930s. In the early 1940s, Jerome, Louis and Birdie worked for Republic Aviation in Farmingdale, Long Island. Louis returned to the jewelry trade around 1944.
Jane studied painting and design at Skidmore College with help from a loan from her maternal grandmother. After completing her degree in 1944, she moved to Manhattan and took a job designing windows and packaging for cosmetic industry pioneer Helena Rubinstein. She left the position after marrying Edward N. Haskell the following year. The couple lived in Manhattan before relocating to Riverdale, NY, where their first daughter Anne was born 1947. In 1949, Edward joined his brother Bud in purchasing a furniture company on Penn Avenue in Wilkinsburg. The family moved to an apartment in Shadyside shortly before the arrival of their second daughter Patricia in September 1949. The Haskells later rented a duplex in Squirrel Hill before commissioning architect Herbert Seigle to design their home at 142 Beechview Road.
Haskell deferred her career until after the birth of her third daughter, Judith, in 1953. Later that year she enrolled in a painting workshop led by artist Samuel Rosenberg at the Young Men & Women's Hebrew Association in Oakland. Haskell continued under the tutelage of Rosenberg for nearly ten years, developing relationships with fellow artists, including Elsie Kalstone and Lois Kaufmann, with whom she later shared studio space. After completing a master's degree in Fine Arts at the University of Pittsburgh in 1961, Haskell taught nineteenth and twentieth century art for ten years at Duquesne University, including a course she developed on women in art. She also continued to paint and sculpt, establishing what would become career-long affiliations with area art institutions, including the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Haskell's first solo exhibition was held in 1964 at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Experiments with color and form dominated Haskell's early works in oil and continued as she began to integrate new media into her work in the 1970s. Throughout her career, Haskell used themes such as windows, the cosmos and weather patterns to explore the changes and consequences of light. Light served as both muse and medium as she began incorporating fluorescent lamps, fiber optics and neon into individual sculpted works in the late 1970s. Haskell's 1979 exhibition of fiber optic and fluorescent works at the Pittsburgh Plan for Art led to an installation using neon in 1981.
In 1981's Paintings with Neon, Haskell altered the movement and scale of simple geometric canvases by edging them with concealed red and blue neon tubes. Never seeking to depart her identity as a painter, Haskell merged swaths of acrylic color with lit space even as she experimented with new materials. These earlier installations were two-dimensional explorations of color interactions. Fascinated by the capacity to influence the viewer's senses, she soon began working with light on a larger scale. By 1985, Haskell was using many media to alter whole environments: diffusing halogen, neon or fluorescent light through spaces occupied by painted surfaces and mounted sculpture. Using forms created from string, wood, metals, paper, Plexiglas and glass, Haskell continually sought to alter and diffuse light in ways that emulated its nuances of spirituality, nature, life, regeneration, space and time.
The success of her foray into neon art prompted her first major public art commission. Rivers of Light, an installation at Steel Plaza subway station in downtown Pittsburgh, was designed to imitate reflected flowing light from Pittsburgh's rivers using neon and Plexiglas blocks. Haskell continued using neon to create large-scale environments of light and color, receiving commissions from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh YMCA, Logan Airport in Boston, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Broward County Airport in Ft. Lauderdale.
Haskell was especially prolific in the years surrounding her husband's death in 1988, completing numerous exhibitions and commissions in greater Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Wisconsin, Los Angeles and New York. In January of that year she opened Constructions with Light at A.I.R., a cooperative gallery for women artists in Manhattan. She described that commitment in a 1994 NCJW oral history as, "a wonderful way of not allowing myself to dwell on my past, but to be able to have something to look forward to and go on with my life." Haskell continued her affiliation with A.I.R. into the nineties, completing two other solo exhibitions there in 1990 and 1992.
Although Haskell continued to create neon, fluorescent and fiber optic installations for the next twenty years, she continually experimented with new media. The advent of digital photography afforded Haskell further means of exploring light and space. Haskell's photography was often inspired by her travels, including many summer months spent in Martha's Vineyard, where she was able to engage the natural forms, light and colors of the coastline. She later began fabricating blown glass orbs suffused with colored light and produced several series of digital drawings using Photoshop. When Haskell was named Pittsburgh Center for the Arts' Artist of the Year in 2006, her exhibition highlighted a career of curiosity. The show included photographic works as well as installations of light, paintings, sculpture and blown glass.
Haskell was an omnipresent figure in the Pittsburgh arts community, frequently attending openings and shows in support of other artists and curators. In addition to serving on the board of directors for the Carnegie Museum of Art, Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Society of Sculptors, Haskell maintained an active interest in young artists and arts education. Haskell lectured often at Duquesne University and area museums, and she served as a trustee and substitute teacher at Winchester-Thurston school. She was named "Citizen of the Year" by the Squirrel Hill Urban Coalition in 2003. The Haskells were members of Rodef Shalom congregation.
Jane Haskell died at her home in Pittsburgh of breast cancer on May 28, 2013, at the age of 89. The impact of her career and creative output on the Pittsburgh arts community inspired multiple posthumous exhibitions, including retrospectives at the American Jewish Museum and Carnegie Museum of Art. Many of her works can be found in the permanent collections of numerous museums, universities, corporate and private collectors, including Skidmore College, Carnegie Museum of Art, Amherst College, Milwaukee Art Museum and the Westmoreland County Museum of American Art.
Scope and Content Notes
The Jane Haskell Papers and Photographs are housed in six boxes and one oversize folder. Materials are arranged in six series with denominations for Exhibited Works, Commissioned Works, Professional Affiliations, Publicity, Documented Works and the Haskell Family.
The collection pertains to Haskell's career as an artist, educator, philanthropist and volunteer. A small number of Haskell family photographs are also included. The bulk of the material consists of records of Haskell's exhibitions and public commissions during the last thirty years of her career. Images of her earlier work are also present, however, including photographs of her first solo exhibition in 1964. Records include correspondence; show announcements and exhibition catalogs; loan receipts and contracts; publicity; artist statements and curriculum vitae; site research and commission proposals; and photographs, negatives, video, slides and drawings of Haskell's artwork.
Digitized copies of video in series V are available.
Conditions Governing Access
None.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Jane Haskell on April 9, 1998.
Gift of Jane Haskell on February 7, 2004.
Gift of Jane Haskell Estate on March 12, 2014.
Preferred Citation
Jane Haskell Papers and Photographs, 1958-2013, MSS 1046, Rauh Jewish Archives, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center
Part of this collection has been previously cited as: Jane Haskell Papers, MFF 3000.
General
Part of this collection has been previously cited as: Jane Haskell Papers, MFF 3000.
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Carly Lough between November 2014 and January 2015.
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights reside with the Senator John Heinz History Center. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives of the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Related Materials
Edward N. Haskell Papers and Photographs, MSS 1049
Jane Haskell, Master Visual Artist Oral Histories, Accession 1996.0292
Separated Materials
8 rolls of sketches and artwork were transferred to the museum collection in 2014.
An oversize 1958 article from the Oakmont Advance-Leader relating to Haskell, Inc. was separated to the Edward N. Haskell Papers and Photographs, MSS 1049, from Accession 2014.0040.
The Life and Art of Ruth Osborne Caldwell, 2010, was transferred to the print collection in 2015.
Subjects
Corporate Names
Skidmore College
Rodef Shalom Congregation
Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
Three Rivers Arts Festival (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
