NEW YORK.-The Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art will end its yearlong 50th anniversary celebration by honoring Board Chair Barbara G. Fleischman and the legacy of her husband Lawrence Fleischman, co-founder of the Archives of American Art, at its annual benefit gala on Tuesday, October 18 in New York City. The Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History will also be presented to Helen A. Cooper.

The Archives of American Art is pleased to honor Barbara Fleischman and the late Lawrence Fleischman for their joint commitment to and generous patronage of the Archives of American Art and the art world. Recognizing the need for American art scholarship, Lawrence Fleischman co-founded the Archives in 1954, establishing it as a central repository for the papers of American artists, scholars, collectors and dealers. Since his death in 1997, his wife Barbara has continued his legacy at the Archives by serving two terms as president; she currently serves as board chair.

The Archives is also delighted to present Helen A. Cooper with the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History. A distinguished scholar and curator, Cooper is presently the Holcombe T. Green curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she has served since 1979. She is a member of the White House Preservation Committee and a recipient of the Yale University Frances Blanchard prize and numerous research awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. and the Robert Lehman Foundation.

Fall Exhibition: Fifty Documents from the First Fifty Years, 1954-2004 - In conjunction with the October benefit gala the Archives of American Art New York Regional Gallery will offer a fall exhibition “54 50: Fifty Documents from the First Fifty Years of the Archives of American Art, 1954-2004.” This exhibition features documents from every year since the Archives’ inception. Each object, culled from over 4,500 collections (roughly totaling 16 million items), was selected for its significance to the art world, as well as its relevance to the time in which it was made.

Collections in the Archives vary greatly, including letters and diaries of artists and collectors, photographs of artworld figures and events, and oral history interviews. Highlights from the exhibition include a letter from Lee Krasner to Jackson Pollock (1956), a photograph of Alexander Calder’s studio “mailbox” (1963), Robert Smithson’s draft writing on the earthwork, “Spiral Jetty” (1970) and a memorandum from Christo regarding “The Gates” (1980). This free exhibition is open to the public from Oct 18 through Jan. 27, 2006, Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The gallery is located on the lobby level of the UBS building, 1285 Avenue of the Americas between 51st and 52nd streets. Through the generosity of its friends and members, the Archives has served as an indispensable art historical resource for thousands of scholars, collectors, critics, dealers and artists and continues to inform countless dissertations, publications and exhibitions. For more information about the Archives of American Art, visit the Web site at www.aaa.si.edu.