Use Restrictions

Permission to publish material from the John Barnes Performing Arts Collection must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.

Access Restrictions

Collection is open for research.

Preferred Citation

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: John Barnes Performing Arts Collection, Ms2016-005, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.

Acquisition Information

The John Barnes Performing Arts Collection was given to Special Collections prior to 2009.

Processing Information

The processing, arrangement, and description of the John Barnes Performing Arts Collection commenced in January 2016 and was completed in May 2016.

Biographical Information

John Hancock Barnes was born October 18, 1905 in Missouri and died on November 7, 1979 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was married to Margaret Seymour. Barnes held both a Bachelor of Philosophy and a Master of Education. He was the head of the English department at Fluvanna County High School in Palmyra, Virginia from 1945 to 1949. He was an English teacher at Lane High School in Charlottesville, VA from 1949 until the school shut down under the Stanley Plan in September 1958 to protest the U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding racial integration in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka . When the school reopened in February 1959, Barnes was the guidance director. He remained in that position until at least 1963. He passed away in 1979.

Scope and Content

The collection includes performing arts programs from around the world as well as scrapbooks and clippings about the theatre and movie industries. The programs cover a variety of genres including theatre, classical and popular music, opera, ballet, motion picture, and other genres such as horse ballet, ice skating, and circus. The programs come from numerous countries including the United Kingdom, Israel, Russia, Japan, and Poland with the majority being from the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States. The programs cover the late 1800s through the late 1900s with the majority of items from the 1940s through the 1960s. Many of the programs were paired with clippings of newspaper critics' reviews of the performances. The reviews have been digitized and are available upon request. See the Arrangement note for additional information on the contents of the collection.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged in ten series. For the most part, the series reflect the arrangement in which the collection was found in 2009. Please note: Many series overlap, i.e. there are theatre materials in series other than Series V.

Series I: Scrapbooks includes scrapbooks on a variety of theatre topics from the 1900s through the 1970s including articles on burlesque, Allied Entertainment, the Kansas City Theatre, Gloria Swanson, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, and the theatre industry in general. There are also scrapbooks containing theatrical programs from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Series II: Clippings consists of numerous magazine and journal articles from 1839 through 1966 about the theatre and entertainment industries that have been clipped and individually bound. Source publications for the clippings include: Popular Electricity , Munsey's Magazine , Atlantic Monthly , The Library Magazine , Harper's New Monthly Magazine , The Nineteenth Century , and more.

Series III: National Theatre (Washington, DC) includes performing arts programs from the National Theatre in Washington, DC. The series includes programs from the 1940s through the 1970s and opera programs from the mid-1940s. The majority of the series is theatrical programs which are grouped by time period and program design. There are two subseries: 1940s-1950s playbills, 1960s-1970s playbills.

Series IV: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts includes theatre, opera, ballet, kabuki, and concert programs. About half of the series is theatre programs covering the 1960s and 1970s. Programs for the other genres are all from the 1970s. The series has two subseries: theatre playbills and ballet programs.

Series V: Theatre includes a broad variety of theatrical programs from around the world including programs from Israel, Italy, Poland, France, and the United States. It also includes newsletters, advertising and subscription materials, and souvenir programs. There are seven subseries: George Bernard Shaw playbills, Chicago theatre playbills, Broadway playbills (further divided by era), Arena Stage playbills, The Virginia Players playbills, The Washington Theater Club playbills, and Souvenir programs. The remaining playbills are organized by venue. Items in this series are from the 1900s through the 1970s.

Series VI: Opera includes opera programs from the 1920s to the 1970s in English, French, and Italian. The programs are organized by opera company. Companies represented in the collection include: the English National Opera, Opera National de Belgique, the Dallas Civic Opera Company, The Oratorio Society of Charlottesville-Albemarle, the Virginia Opera Association, the Washington Grand Opera Association, and more.

Series VII: Ballet and Dance includes ballet and dance programs from the 1930s to 1980 in English, French, Polish, and Russian. The programs are organized by dance company. Companies represented in the collection include: Alvin Ailey City Center Dance Theater, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Bat-Dor Dance Company of Israel, Charlottesville Civic Ballet Company, The Bolshoi Ballet, Fairfax Ballet Company, National Ballet of Canada, New York City Ballet, State Order of Lenin Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, The National Ballet (United States of America), and more.

Series VIII: Music includes concert programs for ensemble performances, individual performers, music festivals, and music variety shows. The programs are from the 1920s through the early 1980s. There are programs from the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Musical Association of Richmond, The Community Concert Association (Charlottesville, Virginia), and more. There are three subseries: University of Virginia programs, Virginia Tech Union programs, and Large musical ensemble programs.

Series IX: Motion Pictures and Television includes film materials from the 1920s through the 1970s with the majority of the items from the early days of film in the 1920s and 1930s. The series includes promotional handouts, film festival notes, motion picture brochures, catalogs, and programs, and a subseries of materials from the British Film Institute in the 1950s and 1960s. This series includes items in English, German, and Hungarian.

Series X: Other Genres includes items about the entertainment industry in general, museum and library event programs, circus programs, cabaret programs, figure skating programs, and a dressage (horse dancing) program. Items in this series are from the 1930s through the 1970s and are in English, Russian, and French.

Separated Material

The following materials were removed from the collection and cataloged for the Special Collections Rare Book Collection:

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Charlottesville (Va.)
• Community theater
• Concert programs
• Local/Regional History and Appalachian South
• Theater programs