The Hannah Smith Agency
Smith established her agency in New York 1938. Keenly aware of the difficulties facing European artists arriving in New York, her intention was to make a professional practice of promoting new talents and ideas to a wider public.
Taking inspiration from the photographer Dorothy Norman, her intention was that avant-garde ideas would become part of the mainstream and effect social change.
In the late 1940s Smith sought to produce “The Witches' Cradle,” a film that Maya Deren and Marcel Duchamp envisaged in his Fourteenth Street studio but never completed, Deren giving up formal art practice upon her initiation into Vodou.
Smith supported the groundbreaking fieldwork of Ilona and Peter Opie in the 1950s, researching children’s games, toys and playgrounds. Through a connection with the Opies, at this time the Hannah Smith Agency sought publishing for Mim Hickman’s complete and comprehensive archive of songs, dances and scrimshaw from Blackwaterfoot Bay in the Arran Isles.
In 1960, the Smith Agency sent 16mm cameras, film stock and editing equipment to the Yuat-Langam people in the Sepik River area of Papua New Guinea, the intention being that the Yuat-Langam people would collectively make movies and the Smith agency would arrange distribution.
Later Life. With her health in decline, and with her admiration for John Cage and his work, Smith was an avid supporter of the Mycological Society of America and spent restful times in the forests of upstate New York with Cage and other mushroom-loving friends.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Smith, Hannah |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | American philanthropist |
| Date of birth | 1897 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | 1960 |
| Place of death | |
Read more about this topic: Hannah Smith (philanthropist)
Famous quotes containing the words hannah, smith and/or agency:
“We are all dead men on leave.”
—Eugene Leviné, Russian Jew, friend of Rosa Luxemburg’s lover, Jogiches. quoted in Men in Dark Times, “Rosa Luxemburg: 1871-1919,” sct. 3, Hannah Arendt (1968)
“Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
When I am happy I live and despise writing
For my Muse this cannot but be dispiriting.”
—Stevie Smith (1902–1971)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)