Albert Murray’s Approach to Oral Art History: An Epistolary Exploration

Abstract

This text consists of an exchange of two letters each between Paul Devlin and Benji de la Piedra (preceded by a coauthored introduction) on the oral history interviews that cultural critic and novelist Albert Murray conducted for the Archives of American Art with Emma Amos, Charles Alston, Merton Simpson, and Hale Woodruff—all members of the Spiral Group of African American artists—in the autumn of 1968. Devlin and de la Piedra explore many aspects of the four expansive interviews, with de la Piedra focusing on how Murray’s approach as an interviewer can be understood as prefiguring disciplinary developments in the field of oral history and Devlin contextualizing the interviews in terms of Murray’s thought and biography.