Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive: Arts

Collection subjects include:

Fine Arts; Music; and Performing Arts

Charlene Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith worked as office manager for Owens-Corning Fiberglass in Salt Lake City, Utah, for 20 years, retiring in 1983. Arrowsmith was an avid quilter whose work was displayed in a juried show at the Springville Art Museum. She was also a dedicated artist, working in oil and watercolor. Arrowsmith was a plein air painter and many of her works depict the Midway and Wanship areas of Utah. Arrowsmith’s work was displayed at numerous art galleries, shows, and at the Utah State Fair and other competitive shows, and she was included in the 1999 book Artists of Utah.

Tandy Beal

Professional dancer from Utah, well known for several of her performances as well as founder of the Tandy Beal and Company, a dance company in Washington State.

Dorothy Bearnson

Undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Virginia 1941-42 and at the University of Utah where she earned her B.A. in 1943, and her M.A. in 1945. She has held a number of teaching positions at the University of Utah including: instructor of art 1962-72, associate professor of art 1972-77, and professor of art 1977-99. She is a respected ceramist and educator.

Leia Bell

Bell (b. 1977) grew up in Tennessee but moved to Utah, where she received her B.F.A. in printmaking in 2001. She creates most of her prints for Kilby Court, a live music venue in Salt Lake, although she has also done work for music venues elsewhere in the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom.

Marie Nelson Bennett

Musician and composer, obtaining degrees in music and composing from the University of Utah and Yale University.

Beverly Bithell

Dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher, holding jobs in Utah and New York between 1950 and 1980.

Dolores Chase

Dolores Chase obtained masters degrees in both English and Arts Administration in 1979. She opened the Dolores Chase Fine Art gallery in 1985 in downtown Salt Lake City. It closed in 2002. She is also known for being a Utah writer and for her many commentary essays written and produced on KUER FM90 for the program, Afternoon Edition.

Nancee Cortés

Nancee Cortés' dedication to the performing arts began as a young ballerina under the tutelage of Ivan Novikoff and Lillian Cushing and grew as she performed with such groups as The Robert Joffrey Ballet Company in New York City. While in New York, Cortés served as assistant choreographer to Robert Joffrey, as well as a teacher to several of his pupils. She also assisted Margaret Sande at Radio City Music Hall. Cortés was a director of the Connecticut Dance Academy, and in 1972 was appointed director of performing arts at the University of Southern California. In 1983, she began her employment with the University of Utah as consultant for the Department of Music. A year later, she became chair of the Department of Ballet. She served in that capacity for four years, then was made assistant dean for development at the College of Fine Arts. 

Ruth Draper Crockatt

Crockatt became the president of the League of Women Voters of Utah in 1967. In 1972 Crockatt was appointed Field Director for the Utah Association of Mental Health. She later worked as the Director for the Utah Arts 14 Council from 1974-1985 then became the Representative for the Western Region for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1985-1991.

Alene Dalton

Dalton became the "Story Princess" on KSL-TV in Salt Lake City.

Frances Darger

In 1942, as the men of the Utah Symphony Orchestra joined the armed forces, Frances auditioned for and won a seat in the orchestra. Two years later, she and her sisters moved to Hollywood to found a singing group, but they moved back to Utah after a year and she returned to playing in the orchestra. She graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in English.

Lee Deffebach

Deffebach is a painter known for her abstract expressionism and color field paintings.  This collection (1993, 2001-2005) consists of correspondence written over a period of years between Lee Deffebach and Utah artist and Highland High School art instructor, Patrick Eddington, and continuing until shortly before her death.

Maurine Dewsnup

Professor of music at the University of Utah from 1942-1974, an accompanist for the department of dance, and a composer.

Constance Luprille Dillon

Constance "Connie" Luprille Dillon was born 31 March, 1918 in Milo, Idaho, to Ivan Storer and Martha Ann Simmons. She moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1952. She first studied oils and then changed her focus to watercolor. She participated in workshops with Osral Allred, Harrison Groutage, Thomas Leek, and others. She also took classes from Zelda Bills, Nola Sullivan, Nancy Lund, and Norma Forsberg. Dillon has exhibited in several group shows and has awards for her work. She worked as a secretary for the Chamber of Commerce, the University of Utah Department of Education and other departments, and the Veteran's Administration Medical Center. She died on 6 September, 2005.

Annette R. Dinwoodey

An accomplished contralto, serenaded the departing troops in World War II, sang for KSL radio, with the Utah Symphony, and was also the artistic director of the Oratorio Society for many years.

Margaret R. Draper

Actress for television and radio from the late 1930s through the 1960s and her work as a disk jockey on WNEW-FM in the 1960s.

Isadora Duncan

Duncan (1878-1927) is renowned throughout the world for her techniques and philosophies about dancing. Duncan believed in free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts. She used free-flowing costumes, bare feet and loose hair to restore dancing to a new vitality. Duncan is also credited with inventing what later came to be known as Modern Dance. 

Joyce Orlob Evans

In 1954, Evans served as vice-chairman of the Salt Lake County Polio Board, heading the annual Polio Ball and volunteer program for administering the Salk Vaccine. As a member of the Junior League, Joyce was a script writer, producer and director for their educational puppet shows and children’s programs.  Evans was also a member of the American Society of Composers, authors and publishers and won ASCAP awards for compiling the American Bicentennial activity booklet and for the BYU movie “Pioneers in Petticoats”. Two of her original Christmas songs were published in the December, 1973 issue of the Ensign magazine. She sang with the Oratorio society of Utah for 49 years, and the Utah Symphony Chorus for 14 years. She co-authored the program notes for the All-Women’s Legacy Concert held in Symphony Hall and wrote the script for the Pioneer Memorial Theater Gala. She taught creative writing at Ensign School.

In 1962, Evans was called to serve on the Young Women’s General Board of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She co-authored “Century of Sisterhood”, a history of the Young Women Organization from its founding in 1869 to 1969.

Blanche Faddis 

Faddis worked as a costume assistant at the University of Utah Department of Theatre. 

[Faddis is the woman sitting.] 

Fine Arts Club 

Organized in September 1923 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The purpose of the club, as deemed by its constitution created in 1924, was the study of history and the appreciation of fine arts beginning with the first civilization.

Norma Reynolds Dalby Freestone

Professor of music and dance at the University of Utah and Sarah Lawrence College. She worked with several dance companies in the United States and England.

Ruth Harwood 

Artist and poet, attended the University of Utah and Berkeley. Romantic/naturalist artist and poet. She was an accomplished and published poet, that she turned into lectures about her art-spiritual pilgrimage, a series of design compositions on the universal spiritual pilgrimage of man. Daughter of prominent Paris-trained Utah artist James Taylor Harwood and artist Harriet Richards Harwood.

Ruth Harwood

Phyllis Anne Haskell

Haskell was born in 1940 in Pasadena, California to Eldon Hoff and Le-ora Phyllis Archer Haskell. She studied ballet from the age of three. She attended the University of Arizona for her BA, where she shifted from ballet to modern dance. After graduating in 1962, Haskell danced professionally in New York City before pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Utah, which she obtained in 1970. While at the University of Utah, Haskell joined the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. In 1979, she returned to teaching dance at the University of Hawaii, and in 1987 she returned to the University of Utah as the chair of modern dance. In 1997, Haskell began serving as the dean of the University of Utah’s College of Fine Arts, and between 2000 and 2005 she served as Associate Vice President for the Arts at the university. Haskell retired in 2005, but established the Phyllis A. Haskell Endowed Scholarship Fund in the Department of Modern Dance.

Elizabeth R. Hayes

A dancer, choreographer for more than 40 dances, and director of more than 35 dance concerts, lectures, demonstrations, and other dance productions during her career. She was also a dance instructor and teacher.

Julie Jensen

Ph.D. in Theatre, is a playwright and became the resident playwright for the Salt Lake Acting Company towards the end of her career.

Genevieve Lawrence

Lawrence was a owner of Lugen Galleries, art collector, member of the Utah State Fair Board of Art and Music, president of the Utah Women Artists Exhibition.

Florence Jepperson Madsen

Florence was raised in a prominent family of artists and musicians in Provo. Florence held a career as a contralto soloist on the east coast prior to teaching at Brigham Young University (BYU); Franklin sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and studied voice under Florence. Both held advanced degrees in Music from the New England Conservatory of Music as well as from BYU, including the honorary title of Emeritus which they each were awarded after over 40 years of teaching at the institution.

Ann H. Matthews

Graduated from the University of Utah and taught dance and art at elementary through college levels. She was a prolific artist and shared her talents by painting portraits of family, friends, landscapes and still-life paintings, some of which were made into cards and are sold commercially.

Melba Goff Matthews

Melba Goff Matthews performed with various dance groups while studying at the University of Utah. After her graduation she was hired as a Physical Education teacher at Bennion Jr. High School and later Murray High School.

Blanche Kendall McKey

Blanche Kendall Thomas McKey was born on 30 June 1879 in Salt Lake City, Utah.  She graduated from the University of Utah in 1900 with a normal certificate, and in the following year, left for New York with her older sister Kate. There, Blanche took private acting lessons. A few months later, she auditioned for Klaw and Erlanger, a prestigious New York agency, and was placed under contract. Blanche taught drama at Weber State after her husband's death from 1918-1923. She then attended the University of Utah and received her degree in 1924. She received her M.A. degree four years later. She died in 1973.

Nancy Melich

Reporter and theater critic for the Salt Lake Tribune for thirty years. She was also a founding member of the Sundance Playwrights Laboratory and Utah Arts Festival. She was the vice-chair on the executive committee of the American Theatre Critics Association.

Marsha Ballif Midgley

Midgley was the lead in the theatre department's production of Saint Joan in 1953 and had a university theatrical career.

Mary Muir

She earned a BA and MA in History at the McCune School of Music and the University of Utah, where she taught Art History until her retirement. An active member of the community, she served as the President of the Utah Symphony Guild, and was the first woman member of the Symphony's Board of Directors, as well as an influential founder of the Bountiful Art Center. She dedicated much of her life to researching Utah artist LeConte Stewart, and became one of the foremost authorities on him and his work.

Helen O'Connell

Popular singer from the 1930s to the 1990s. She sang with various famous bands and individuals, including Jimmy Richards’ nine-piece orchestra, Larry Funk and his Band of a Thousand Melodies, Jimmy Dorsy, and Bob Eberly. She also toured with Kay Star, and Rosemary Cloony.

Barbara Richards

Barbara Richards was a self-taught photographer whose photographs have been exhibited and published. Her first teaching assignments were for the School of Journalism at the University of Utah. Later, she was hired to teach photography in the Graduate School of Architecture and remained there for 25 years until retirement, as Professor Emeritus. More than 4,000 students completed one of her classes, Photographic Seeing. In 1988, she taught the University's first-ever televised course on Channel Nine.

Shirley Ririe

She attended the University of Utah, then furthered her studies in dance in New York. She married Rhees Ririe in 1951 and soon after accepted a position to teach at Brigham Young University. Shirley later accepted a position at the University of Utah and met Joan Woodbury. They started a small company, called Choreodancers, which later became the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Founded by Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury in 1964. Both professors at the University of Utah, Ririe and Woodbury joined forces to create a professional dance company, conducting several residencies every year. They have toured the United States and are internationally known as well. The company's activities include formal and informal performances, lecture-demonstrations, workshops, and classes in dance for actors, stage production, and theater lighting. These activities are for all age groups with special attention to educating children about the dance world.

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Linda Sarver

Sarver studied costume design and was a resident costume designer for the Pioneer Theatre Company, she also worked in scenography and dramaturgy.

Marilyn Scharine

Scharine taught theatre through the Division of Continuing Education at the University of Utah and in 1986 became an adjunct in Speech and Theatre at Westminster College. In 1992-93 she taught conversational English at the University of Gdansk, Poland.

In 1981 she began hosting Our Arts (later ArtSpeak) on KRCL-FM Community Radio. In 1998 Marilyn Scharine received KRCL's "Stephen Holbrook Vision Quest Award". For many she chaired the Arts Division of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and was to take over as President of the Academy in 2002.

Nonie N. Sorensen

Sorensen directs the Nonie Sorensen Musical Productions, a "musical reader's theater enhanced with choreography and minimum costume and props based on historical figures," in Ivins, Utah. She has been commissioned by the Utah Symphony, several businesses, and family groups to create musical productions and portray historical figures through music.

Wanda Clayton Thomas

Thomas was a teacher of speech and theater for over thirty years. Although the greater part of those years were spent at the University of Utah, her influences and contributions are international. She began her teaching career in Sacramento, California, taught in Utah, and later in Guam. Aside from teaching, Thomas performed in many theatrical productions and was dubbed by Lila Eccles Brimhall, a well-known Utah actress, as "the best actress in Utah."

Wanda Clayton Thomas

Madge Tomsic collection on Ruth Harwood

Collection is composed of material relating to Ruth Harwood (1896-1959), a Utah poet and artist who became best known for her works that described and symbolized the striving of the human soul.

Ruth Harwood

Utah Quilt Heritage Project

The Utah Quilt Guild was organized in 1977 to promote preservation of the art of quilt making. In order to preserve the history of quilts in Utah, the guild held a series of "documentation days," where volunteers throughout the state photographed and documented quilts. Some of the information gathered has been published in Gathered in Time: Utah Quilts and Their Makers, Settlement to 1950 (University of Utah Press, 1997).

Glenn Walker Wallace

Glenn Walker Wallace (1898-1988) was a prominent musician and dancer, co-founded the Utah Symphony (1939) and Ballet West (1962) and served terms as president for both institutions. She received the honor of Grand Cross Dame of the Knightly Order of St. Brigitte in 1967 and was inducted into the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem in 1970, among other honors.

Ina Claire Wallace

Prominent actress during the 1900s. She began acting at age 13, and appeared on Broadway, and in Hollywood movies.

Julia Farnsworth Lund Wassmer

Wassmer (1911-1996)  had a long involvement in the Utah art community. She became State Art Director and devoted herself full time to art in Utah, developing beautification projects for public facilities, which provided work for artists struggling through the Depression. In 1937 Wassmer moved to New York City where she became a staff member of the Permanent Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Crafts at the Rockefeller Center. 

Joan Woodbury

Studied at the University of Wisconsin, receiving her B.S. and M.S. degrees in dance. She taught dance there until becoming a professor at the University of Utah. She and Shirley Ririe co-founded the company Choreodancers, later known as the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.

  • Last Updated: Apr 15, 2025 1:55 PM
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