Raid the Archive: Edwin Way Teale and New Works
In Fall 2022, my fellow graduate students undertook a semester-long research project on Edwin Way Teale, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American naturalist who settled down in Connecticut, about 16 miles away from the UConn campus. Between countless visits to the Archive & Special Collections, Trail Wood, and the Benton Museum, we curated a show from the Edwin Way Teale Papers and created new works in response to our findings.
The images seen here are photographs I made of some of the works from the archive that sparked our interest and entry points into our research.
Who is Edwin Way Teale?
Edwin Way Teale was a prominent American naturalist, photographer, and writer who helped bridge the gap between the conservation and ecological movements of the 20th century.
Edwin Alfred Teale was born in 1899 in Joliet, Illinois, and died in 1980 in Hampton, Connecticut. Personally, he lived the charmed life of an affable local nature writer who worked closely with his beloved wife Nellie at their old New England farmstead. Professionally, he was a forceful national advocate for respecting Nature, especially its power to teach us how to live. In 1945, he published a scathing critique of the insecticide DDT that helped inform Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, whose 1962 publication marked America’s turning point toward greater environmental awareness. Teale nurtured Carson’s talent for sixteen years between 1949 and her death in 1964. In 1966 he became the first American to win the Pulitzer Prize for nature writing.
During the autumn of 1980, Edwin and Nellie donated their voluminous Archive to the University of Connecticut. Today, these materials are housed within the Dodd Center. Preserved for posterity are: published books, articles, reviews; records of scientific societies; correspondence with key environmental leaders; voluminous private journals; and various awards, medals, and honorary degrees, including a record of his election as a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This Archive chronicles his life as a key founder of American environmentalism.
In 1921, Teale discovered a lifelong role model in the writings of Henry David Thoreau. In 1941, he quit his salaried day job as a magazine staff writer in New York City to become a full-time writer. In 1959, he relocated from the crowded suburbs of Long Island to the wooded highlands of eastern Connecticut, where he built a writing retreat modeled after Thoreau’s famous experiment at Walden Pond.
By working independently from the 1940s through the 1970s, Teale was able to ignore the widening schism between the sciences and the humanities, and the narrowing and hardening of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) disciplines.
—Robert M. Thorson
Exhibition Introduction
Raid the Archive is an exhibition drawn from the Edwin Way Teale Papers preserved by Archives & Special Collections, University of Connecticut Libraries, with new works by participants in Art 5383, Special Topics in Studio Art. Teale (1899-1980) was an American naturalist, photographer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. During the fall of 2022, MFA graduate students in Studio Art, guided by Professor Janet Pritchard, undertook a semester-long project to curate an exhibition from this collection augmented by visits to his home, Trail Wood, in Hampton, now a Connecticut Audubon Sanctuary. Each artist created new work responding to curiosity, research, and discoveries. This course reimagined the Raid the Icebox exhibition from the RISD Museum in 1969–70, in which RISD staff invited Andy Warhol to curate a show from their collection and make new work in response. This exhibition begins the 25th-anniversary celebration of the Teale Lecture series at UConn.
We began our work by reading Teale’s book A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm (1974). Students were asked to find points of entry through their curiosity into the archive of a man they may not have engaged otherwise, requiring a suspension of preconceptions. With lives diverse and far removed from his, we started with questions about how one can converse across time, gender, race, nationality, and affinities. We followed our curiosities, looking for points of entry across divides of sharp difference. We gained experience using a finding aid, disciplined ourselves to sit in the reading room wading through boxes, seeking sparks of connection, learning the ropes of research management, and interfacing with individuals across departments and institutions. All the while, the pressure of producing results was ready to hand. We persevered and stepped outside our echo chambers, finding connections that we present here.
During our research, themes emerged as we noticed threads of commonality and interest. We title these threads Connections, Family, and Process and Pattern. The exhibition’s wall labels expand our understanding of an interest in the themes; newly-created work and curated collection items speak to our interests most directly. Teale was a man on a mission. In his journals and diaries, we found a life marked by discipline and curiosity—a man of substantial accomplishments who is a source of inspiration. He had a deep interest in the natural world, a love of writing, and of family. Teale’s connections with ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson and marine biologist Rachel Carson, to name two, are well documented and were of significant consequence for the mid-20th century development of the conservation movement. Teale’s passions structured his life. While we cannot see ourselves in his shoes, we admire his dedication and drive. Through our encounters with Teale, we are enriched as creative individuals, and our strategies for making art are expanded.
Student Curators Mahsa Attaran ’25, Amira Brown ’25, Monica Hamilton ’25, Hanieh Kashani ’25, Anna Schwartz ’25, Noah S. Thompson ’24, and Professor Janet Pritchard.
Rediscovering Teale; video from the exhibition opening by Trail Wood’s caretakers Laura and Paul Tedeschi
When exploring the Edwin Way Teale Papers, I was deeply compelled by Teale’s immaculate and concentrated attention to detail in his writings and photographs. With permission from Archives & Special Collections, I used Edwin’s Brownie Bullet, a promotional copy of the Brownie Holiday Camera produced by Kodak between 1957 and 1967, to photograph Trail Wood, the Teale’s property in Hampton, Connecticut. The inspiration for the images' locations comes from A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, Teale’s book about his life at Trail Wood with his wife, Nellie, which contains his careful observations of the landscape. With a background in digital photography, this is my first exploration of analog processes, and it marks a turning point in my artistic process.
The Edwin Way Teale Papers wouldn’t be the legacy it is today if it weren’t for his wife, Nellie Donovan Teale. Nellie was an integral part of Edwin’s life, not only as his partner on “the longest journey of all” but as his primary editor, organizer, and record keeper. The archive has been preserved due to her dedication. When Edwin passed away in 1980, Nellie donated the majority of his archive to the University of Connecticut, followed by the rest of the collection after Nellie’s death in 1993.
In 1925, Edwin and Nellie welcomed their only child, David Allan Teale, while visiting family in Illinois. David was a Boy Scout and amateur photographer, documenting his friends, family, and environment. When David was nineteen, he was drafted to serve in World War II, and in 1945 was declared missing in action. His parents spent the next year trying to figure out what became of him before learning he had been killed during a reconnaissance mission in Germany.
David’s death was a catalyst for Edwin and Nellie. They processed their grief by traveling across the country, an activity which continued for years and led to the writing of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Wandering Through Winter (1965). They honored David’s memory by founding the David Teale Memorial for Children with Disabilities and establishing a summer camp scholarship for his former Boy Scout Troop 197. Edwin and Nellie began searching for a new sanctuary, sold their house in Baldwin, and found their new home at Trail Wood in 1959. There, they immersed themselves in the natural world they loved so much and held the memory of their son with them always.
Written by Monica Hamilton and Noah Thompson
UConn Today (article)
MFA Students Draw Inspiration from the Past to Create in the Present
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the following individuals, without whom this would not have been possible. Judith Thorpe, Art & Art History MFA Program Director, for supporting this crazy idea from the get-go. Kristin Eshelman, Melissa Watterworth Batt, and Melica Stinnett of Archives & Special Collections for your enthusiasm, generosity, guidance, and patience. Amanda Douberley, Kerry Smith, Nancy Stula, and Rachel Zilinski of the William Benton Museum of Art for bringing the show to life. Professors Alison Paul and Jeanne Ciravolo, for sharing your experiences as artist-curators. Gregory Anderson, Kathleen Segerson, and Michael Willig, Co-Chairs of the Teale Organizing Committee, for suggesting “let’s have a show” and providing financial support with an assist from Lisa Gorman. Robert Thorson for his biography of Teale. Daniel Buttrey for his technical expertise and enthusiasm. Laura and Paul Tedeschi, Caretakers of Trail Wood Sanctuary, and Sarah Heminway, Director of Northeast Corner, Connecticut Audubon Society. This course was more than an academic exercise; the exhibition is the capstone of our journey, but reverberations will ripple beyond this experience.
We would be remiss in exhibiting our research on Edwin Way Teale not to acknowledge that the Benton Museum, The University of Connecticut, and Trail Wood Sanctuary stand on Nipmuc and Mohegan ancestral land. Edwin and Nellie were keen observers and stewards of their home. Their sensitivity to the energy of previous inhabitants marks their stewardship. We ask you to consider your place; in this world, on this land, and what it means to be a part of nature.
