Elinor Evans Academic and Professional Papers

Collection

Identifier: MS 0700

Staff Only

Finding aid note: Stored off-site at the Library Service Center. Please request this material via woodson@rice.edu or call 713-348-2586.

Scope and Contents

The collection consists of materials from Elinor Evans' career at Rice University and materials documenting her personal work, including works exhibited at the Moody Gallery. The collection includes paintings, sketches, collages, woven and tapestry work, photographs and slides, correspondence, and awards.

Dates

Creation: 1950s-2016

Conditions Governing Access

Stored off-site at the Library Service Center. Please request this material via woodson@rice.edu or call 713-348-2586.

Access Restrictions

This material is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish from the Elinor Evans Academic and Personal Papers must be obtained from the Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library.

Biographical / Historical

Elinor Evans (1914-2016) was born in Kansas and grew up on an Oklahoma ranch, where she counted her grandfather as her earliest teacher in appreciating and appraising nature and the seasons: “He taught me to see.” She carried on his legacy, instructing generations of students at Yale, Rice, and other venues. An alumna of Oklahoma State University, she earned an MFA at Yale before joining the Rice School of Architecture in 1964 to teach design. She retired as a professor emerita in 1985, but continued teaching, lecturing, and creating art the rest of her life. Although most of her exhibitions focused on her leaf collages, she was equally renowned as a weaver and for her creative use of many types of found, homely, simple materials, which she also encouraged her students to use. She was honored many times for superior teaching and for her artistic endeavors; the School of Architecture established an endowment fund in her name in 2014.

Extent

57 Linear Feet (50 boxes )

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Immediate Source of Acquisition

These materials were donated by the Elinor Evans estate via Russ Pittman, and Betty Moody (via Danny Samuels and In Shik Lee) in 2016. An addendum was donated by Danny Samuels in 2022.