Scope and Contents

The records of Seattle's avant-garde Linda Farris Gallery measure 13.4 linear feet and date from 1969-1995. The bulk of the records consist of artists' and exhibition files. Also found are gallery business correspondence, administrative files, event files, reference files, records of sales, scattered legal files, the personal papers of gallery owner Linda Farris, and printed materials. Business correspondence is with galleries, dealers, publishers, museums, and other businesses. Administrative files are varied and include advertising and promotion materials, exhibition schedules, mailing lists, guest books, a scrapbook, and gallery history.

Artists' files are found for many contemporary American artists that interested Linda Farris or were represented by the gallery. The contents of each file vary but many include photographs and slides, writings, correspondence, and printed materials. Files for Lynda Barry, Grisha Brusking, Charles Clough, Ronnie Landfield, Charles Luce, Michael Lucerno, Sherry Markovitz, Louise Nevelson, Barbara Noah, and Beverly Pepper are particularly rich. Exhibition files are for Linda Farris Gallery exhibitions and include printed materials, correspondence, loan and consignment agreements, and photographs.

Event files cover anniversary celebrations, lectures, panel discussions, and receptions. There are 17 sound cassette recordings of "Art Now" lectures and "Focus" panel discussions. Scattered reference files contain collected materials on subjects of interest to the gallery. There are scattered financial, sales, and legal files. Sales records cover 1970-1979.

Linda Farris' personal papers contain printed materials about her and the gallery and other materials concerning her professional and curatorial work outside of the gallery. There is also a transcript of an oral history with Farris and a news interview.

Printed materials include published books and magazines, clippings and exhibition catalogs and announcements.

Photographs are scattered throughout adminstrative files, exhibition files, event files, and Linda Farris' personal papers.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged as 8 series.

Biographical / Historical

The Linda Farris Gallery was Seattle's leading venue for contemporary art during its twenty-five years of operation.

Linda Farris opened Gallery East in Bellevue in 1970, and a year later moved to Pioneer Square in Seattle, changing the name to Linda Farris Gallery in 1973. The gallery continued to present contemporary art there until closing in December 1995. Art dealer Linda Farris began representing a group of promising artists, all graduates of the University of Washington. Greg Kucera of the Greg Kucera Gallery noted in an article for the Seattle Weekly, "Their work could be loosely seen as a movement, complete with aesthetic interrelationships, convenient marriages, an unintelligible manifesto in the form of Dennis Evans' quirky pronouncements…" From the same article he states, "Her avant-garde gallery changed forever the nature of being an art dealer in Seattle." It was among the three or four most influential galleries in the Pacific Northwest.

The gallery held exhibitions of many nationally known contemporary artists, including Sam Francis, Louise Nevelson, and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as Northwest artists Jeffrey Bishop, Dennis Evans, Sherry Markovitz, Nancy Mee, Norie Sato, and Patti Warashina. The latter group started with the gallery and remained loyal at the time of its closing in 1995.

Art dealer, collector and free-lance curator Linda B. Farris (1944-2005), a native of San Francisco and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (1966), was an active participant in and style setter for the Seattle art world for the twenty-five years she was in business. As a member of the art community she actively supported the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Pilchuck Glass School, and Seattle Art Museum's Contemporary Art Council, and served on the boards of directors of Henry Art Gallery and Factory Visual Arts. Farris curated "Eight Seattle Artists" in 1981 for the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art and "Self Portraits" in 1983 for the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. She also led the movement to keep Henry Moore's "Vertebrae" from leaving Seattle, and instituted a series of talks, panel discussions, performances, and tours in her gallery, and in and around Seattle.

This note draws heavily on the Archives of American Art's West Coast Regional Collector Paul Karlstrom's collection description written upon acquisition of the papers.

Related Materials

An oral history interview with Linda Farris conducted in 1975 by Sally Swenson, is located in the University of Washington University Libraries Digital Collections.