Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Usage Restrictions

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

• Artists--United States--History--20th century.
• Heaney, Seamus.
• Pearson, Henry, 1914- .

• Henry Pearson Collection, Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Henry (Hank) Charles Pearson was born in Kinston, N.C., on 8 October 1914. His parents were A. Louis and Estelle Pearson. Pearson was graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1935. He received an M.F.A. degree from Yale University in 1938. He worked as a stage scene designer, 1937-1942; served in the United States Army, 1942-1948, and the United States Air Force, 1948-1953. When he was discharged from the miltary in 1953, Pearson went to New York to study at the Art Students League.

Pearson's works in acrylic, oil, and water color have been exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States and are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, N.C.

Pearson has taught at the New School for Social Research and served as a general critic for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

The papers of artist Henry Pearson include correspondence, materials documenting Pearson's career and education, photographs, and other items. Correspondence includes postcards sent by Pearson to his mother and other family members, including Minora P. Howard (Mrs. Louis N. Howard), Stanley W. Pearson, Marta Pearson, and Phylis Bagan, and to friends, including Mr. and Mrs. Karl E. Gay, George Wingate, Mrs. J. Worth McAlister, Dorothy Croissant, Loraine Stevens, and Jane Logemann. Postcards to Karl Gay, 1960s-1979, constitute a running account of Pearson's life during those years. Also included is Pearson's correspondence with Seamus Heaney (mostly photocopies of letters from Pearson to Heaney). Letters from Heaney to Pearson may be found in the Henry Pearson Collection, Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Materials documenting Pearson's career and education include announcements of art exhibitions; exhibition catalogs; clippings; articles by or about Pearson; school notebooks; a scrapbook documenting Pearson's work as technical director and scene designer at the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C., 1940-1941; and photographs of Pearson and of his work.

Items separated include photographs (P-3911), oversize drawings (OP-3911), and an oversize volume (S-3911).