American art. Notes and exam questions, 1918-1921

In addition to his architectural and writing projects, Kimball earned a living as a teacher. By the time he came to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he had taught at five universities, including positions as department head. Even as museum director, Kimball managed to fit in a summer session at the University of California in Berkeley in 1940. In this series, most of the correspondence pertains to Kimball's various administrative duties and occasional struggles of working in an academic environment. Files of lecture outlines and notes document the courses he taught and his approach to each topic. Various course assignments, exam questions, and student records are also included.

Kimball's first full-time position as an instructor in architecture came in 1912 at the University of Illinois. Based on the correspondence, his 1913 marriage to Marie Goebel may have contributed to his brief tenure at Urbana-Champaign. Marrying the daughter of a faculty member was in conflict with a supposedly abolished university rule banning the hiring of relatives. That same year Kimball left Illinois for the University of Michigan, where he taught and earned his doctoral degree. Kimball served first as an instructor in architecture and later in fine arts. Once again the correspondence suggests tension mounting, this time between Kimball and Emil Lorch, a professor of architecture, over Kimball's appointment and possible reappointment by Harvard University as a traveling Sachs Fellow. Kimball's later correspondence with Professor Richard Cross and others of the Fine Arts department contrasts the earlier conflicts, documenting the more routine issues of teaching and departmental administration. With his next position beginning in 1919 at the University of Virginia, Kimball's responsibilities greatly increased as he oversaw the establishment of the McIntire School of Fine Arts and taught as a professor of art and architecture. Both roles are documented in this series. Also included here are two files pertaining to Kimball's summer session in 1921 at the University of Chicago, for which he taught two classes in American and Renaissance Art. Resigning from the University of Virginia in 1923, Kimball went next to New York University, where he was appointed head of the Department of Fine Arts and Morse Professor of the Literature of the Arts of Design. Apparently prior to his acceptance of the NYU position, Kimball drew up the pros and cons of teaching positions at UVa, NYU and Princeton. That comparative chart is filed here with his correspondence. Although no lecture notes are included with the NYU documentation, Kimball, in a June 25, 1925 memorandum written at the time of his resignation, refers to his lectures on the History of Art and of Decoration, and to the 118 lectures he was scheduled to give as Morse Professor at the National Academy of Design. In October 1932, Kimball returned to NYU to give two lectures and two months later was appointed lecturer for the following academic year. That documentation is included in the "Lectures" subseries of the "Writings and Research" series. Documentation of the history of art and the history of architecture courses he taught during the 1940 summer session at the University of California, Berkeley, is also included here.

Throughout his teaching career, Kimball apparently revised and reused previous lecture notes. Those files containing such mixed papers are identified by lecture topic, rather than institution, and conclude the series. Also within this group of topical folders are lectures that cannot be clearly identified with any particular university, as well as general reference materials.