Museum Fund, 1927-1930, undated

In a special meeting convened September 13, 1927, the Executive Committee authorized the New York firm of John Price Jones Corporation to proceed with its fund-raising and publicity proposal submitted the previous month. This initiative was promoted as the first Museum Fund campaign. Through the campaign, the museum sought to raise $1.5 million for the new museum building and to create good will and general public interest in the Museum. The John Price Jones Corporation oversaw the second Museum Fund campaign, which ran from March 1929 through June 1930. Publicity and fundraising were again the goals, including funding specifically for the purchase of the Edmund Foulc Collection, which was described the "most outstanding group of works of art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance available anywhere in the world" at that time. This subseries documents both campaigns primarily through correspondence and reports. The main correspondents are John Price Jones Corporation personnel who worked at the Museum during the campaigns; namely, D. Kenneth Rose, who served as director of the Museum Fund, W. R. Hauslaib, the assistant fund director, and A. J. Wilde, the publicity director. The reports submitted by the New York firm before and after each campaign detail the various programs and projects, which included advertising, radio talks, elaborate pamphlets, direct mail drives and the recruitment of various museum committees and prominent individuals to raise funds. Also included here is a scrapbook containing the numerous materials produced on behalf of the Museum Fund. Documentation includes brochures, invitations, specially-printed newsclippings, additional copies of the previously-noted pamphlets, as well as Museum Fund letterhead, forms and reply cards. Schedules of the radio talks promoting the Museum, reports, and a "how-to" paper on soliciting special prospects are also included. The "Fiske Kimball Records" contain additional documentation of the Museum Fund in the "Fundraising and early publicity" subseries of the "Development and public relations" series.