Sylvester Jerry

The Gallery seeks early artwork by Sylvester Jerry. If you can help, please contact us at: info@GalleryofWisconsinArt.com

BORN: 1904 in Woodville, WI

DIED: June 14, 1990 in Racine, WI

Mr. Jerry, a Milwaukee Wisconsin native, graduated from the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee in 1926. He moved to New York and enrolled in the Art Students League, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton, Max Weber and Boardman Robinson. His art style belonged to the 1930s` and 1940s` regionalist movement of Benton. Wood. and Curry.

From 1932 to 1936, he was director of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Kalamazoo, Mich. From 1936 to 1941, he was director of the Michigan WPA Federal Arts and Crafts Project ***

In 1941 he was hired to direct the Wustum Museum, housed in the former home of Charles and Jennie Wustum, which was bequeathed to the city by Mrs. Wustum. He was brought to Racine to start the museum at a time when few cities the size of Racine had art galleries, much less museums.

After he retired in 1978, he became director emeritus and the museum did a 60-year retrospective of his work and that of some of his proteges.

*** There is an oral interview here with Sylvester Jerry conducted 1965 June 11, by Harlan Phillips, for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Jerry speaks of his first association with the WPA Federal Art Project (FAP), working as an FAP administrator in Detroit; working at finding locations for the artworks; the FAP's role in the development of furniture design, etc, etc.

*** (The interview is conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.)

Photo Credit: Photograph courtesy of Racine Art Museum