Allen Staley

17 boxes. This collection has not yet been catalogued but a boxlist is available. (Ref APGS)

The archive comprises material created and collected by Staley from his time as an undergraduate to the end of his life. The majority of the material relates to the books he authored and the exhibitions he curated on the Pre-Raphaelite movement and other artists of the Victorian period, including in particular G.F. Watts and the eighteenth century artist Benjamin West. It also includes lecture files; opinion files; early academic research and Staley’s unpublished memoir. Most notably, the archive includes extensive correspondence with a wide network of colleagues revealing much about the exchange of scholarship between the US and the UK and the perception of British Art outside the British Isles. The archive includes: correspondence; photographs; research notes; newspaper and auction catalogue cuttings; and an unpublished memoir.

Allen Percival Green Staley (1935–2023) was an art historian, academic, educator and author. Specialising in Victorian art, he was a key figure in the revival of interest in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He taught art history at Columbia University for over thirty years, retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2000. He published widely, producing seminal texts on the Pre-Raphaelites and Benjamin West.