FOCUS

Summary: Documents Burko's teaching, artistic, and professional organization activities and responsibilities. Materials include correspondence, contracts, ephemera, photographs, newspaper clippings, articles, notes, and promotional materials.

This series broadly covers Burko's career, with files on her education, panel appearances and lectures, competitions and artists' residencies, and activities with the Women's Caucus for Art, College Art Association, and Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts.

The first sub-series, Anderson Ranch, is comprised of documents pertaining to Burko's 1996 visiting instructorship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, including the teaching contract, course description, photographs from the workshop, and correspondence with the Anderson Ranch administration and Burko's students.

The Bellagio sub-series documents Burko's September 1993 Residence Fellowship at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy. Correspondence, photographs, and administrative documents related to her residency are included. Of particular interest is her residency report, included in the Bellagio-After file.

The third sub-series, College Art Association, consists of correspondence, speeches, and ephemera from Burko's work on the Distinguished Teacher of Art award committee of the College Art Association from 1987 to 1996.

The Competitions sub-series includes submission files with personal statements, correspondence, slide submission records, applications, price lists and other related materials from Burko's competition submissions between the years 2001 and 2007. The majority of competition submissions by Burko during this period are photographs; only one submission contains oil paintings. Of particular interest is the Philagrafika file, which includes two inkjet prints. The Arcadia University file contains an informative statement about her volcano series, and her interest in and philosophy of landscape painting.

Correspondence represents the largest sub-series in the SUBJECT FILES. In addition to correspondence, the sub-series also contains news clippings and articles by or about the correspondent, and ephemera such as invitations and schedules of conferences and symposia. Subjects include marketing with galleries and soliciting panelists for College Art Association panels. While based in Philadelphia, it is evident from her correspondence that Burko maintained ties with New York City artists and galleries. Of note is the Miriam Schapiro file, which shows a personal friendship between the artist and Burko. Other correspondence files with notable subjects include actor Alan Alda and his wife Arlene Alda, writer and novelist Alan Furst, who wrote an article about Burko's Giverny residency, and Lawrence Alloway, noted art critic, whose file contains an article critiquing Burko's mountain paintings.

Education is a small sub-series that includes junior high school and high school yearbooks, Burko's high school literary magazine, a copy of the Skidmore Skoop, various diplomas and her transcript from Skidmore College. Burko's early artwork is included in many of the publications.

The Giverny sub-series contains documents about Burko's 1989 Residency Fellowship at Monet's home at Giverny. The sub-series includes correspondence, official documentation of the residency, and Burko's notes during her stay. Her correspondence with Locks Gallery while at Giverny provides insight to Burko's thoughts and experiences during this period as does the correspondence with Frances Chaves of Reader's Digest, the residency's sponsoring organization.

The Jury-Art sub-series contains correspondence, invitations, and a CD of images related to competitions for which Burko served as a judge or juror from 1986 to 1987 and 2006 to 2008. This small sub-series includes documents concerning the Women's Caucus for Art-Miami Chapter exhibition in 1986, which Burko juried.

The Lectures sub-series includes correspondence, agreements, notes, speeches, and programs from events where Burko lectured from 1990 through 2006. Award presentations and acceptance speeches figure prominently in the sub-series, as well as lectures on Burko's experience as an artist and general art history topics such as impressionism. Of particular interest is the Skidmore College Alumni Association Distinguished Achievement Award speech, which Burko delivered in 1991, as well as the 2006 Earth Day Abington Talk, during which Burko joined New York Times global environment reporter Andrew Revkin and showed slides of her glacier images and travels throughout Iceland.

Panels and Talks is a larger sub-series containing correspondence with panel moderators and participants, notes and research for panel topics, and outlines, drafts, and revisions of Burko's statements at panel and conference appearances from 1973 to 1998. This sub-series documents Burko's consistent participation in annual College Art Association and Women's Caucus for Art conferences. Panel topics include contemporary issues in the visual arts, women's issues in the visual arts, landscapes, and the state of drawing and painting in American art.

The final sub-series, FOCUS, contains meeting minutes, notes, articles, reviews, and promotional material related to the inception and successful execution of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts ("FOCUS") in April and May of 1974. Of particular interest are the Steering Committee file, which contains meeting minutes and other materials relating to the planning of FOCUS, and the FOCUS self-published booklet that outlines the history and intention of the project with a complete list of FOCUS events, filed with Promotional Materials.