SUBJECT FILES, 1920-1985

Documents Grant's work at the Roerich Museum (1921-1937) and matters arising from this work. Document types include correspondence, reports, newspaper and magazine clippings, notes, fragmentary diary pages, programs, invitations, itineraries, press releases, financial documents, unpublished manuscripts, speeches, pamphlets, broadsides and resolutions.

Subjects include Grant's trip to India to meet Nicholas Roerich in 1928; her trips to Latin America in 1929 and 1930 under the auspices of the museum; her work as editor at the Roerich Museum Press; Henry A. Wallace's connection with Roerich and Grant; Roerich's botanical expedition (1934-1935); and the dispute over ownership of the Roerich Museum building, including Grant's later account.

Of particular interest are Grant's reports on her trips to Latin America, speeches about her experiences, programs of art exhibitions, and correspondence with important figures she met there such as Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral and Argentinian theosophist, socialist and feminist Victoria Gucovsky. Also of interest is documentation of the 1930 exhibition of Brazilian paintings, and other Latin American programming at the Roerich Museum.

Also of interest is material related to Grant's advocacy of the Roerich Pact (1931-1935); including documentation of fund-raising, letter-writing and publicity campaigns, as well as the three international conferences promoting the pact, and its ratification.

Of particular interest is documentation of the botanical expedition of 1934-1935, including a list of seeds Roerich sent back to the Department of Agriculture; and photocopies and photostats of correspondence from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, documenting Wallace's initial interest in Roerich and support of the botanical expedition, and his later disillusionment and attempts to distance himself from the Roerichs. Some of the photocopies are duplicates of originals in this series. This material was assembled and indexed in 1976-1978, when professor Theodore A. Wilson of the University of Kansas consulted Grant about a possible biography of Wallace.