Paul Magriel correspondence, 1936-1963.

0.21 linear feet (1 box)

English

In English.

Gift of Paul Magriel, 1964.

Arranged alphabetically.

This material is open for research.

Dance historian, writer, and art collector Paul David Magriel was born in Riga, Latvia on March 12, 1906, to Israel and Fannie Mayer Magriel. The family immigrated to the United States in 1910 and settled in Massachusetts. Paul Magriel was educated at Williston Academy and Columbia University. In the 1930s he worked for Lincoln Kirstein as publicity and road manager for Kirstein's Ballet Caravan/Ballet Society, and through Kirstein was appointed the inaugural curator of the Dance Archives at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939. This appointment ended when Magriel was drafted into the United States Army during World War II, but Magriel remained closely associated with dance and other New York culture and arts communities. Magriel edited the periodical Dance Index, with Kirstein and Baird Hastings, and wrote several books on dance including The Bibliography of Dancing (H. W. Wilson, 1936), Nijinsky: an Illustrated Monograph (Henry Holt and Company, 1946), Pavlova: an Illustrated Monograph (Henry Holt and Company, 1947), and Isidora Duncan (Henry Holt and Company, 1947), as well as works on other subjects such as Art and the Soldier (Special Service, Keesler Field, 1943), The Bibliography of Boxing (New York Public Library, 1948), and The Memoirs of the Life of Daniel Mendoza (Batsford, 1951). Magriel married Christine Fairchild in 1941; they had two children, Paul and Nicholas. Magriel died of a heart attack in New York City in 1990.

Letters to Paul Magriel documenting his career in the arts, including his association with the Dance Archives of the Museum of Modern Art, the periodical Dance Index, and the Ballet Society, as well as his interests in boxing and as an art collector. The collection includes substantial files of letters from Lincoln Kirstein and Eugene Berman. Other correspondents include George Balanchine, Alfred Barr, Edwin Denby, Robert Edmond Jones, Julien Levy, Jacques Lipchitz, Dmitri Mitropoulos, George L. K. Morris, Budd Schulberg, James Thrall Soby, Gene Tunney, and Monroe Wheeler.

March 16, 2018

Paul Magriel Correspondence, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Paul Magriel Correspondence, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.