Since we sent out a request for mail art, we’ve received 27 mail art submissions from five countries (Belgium, Canada, Spain, the United States and Uruguay) and nine US states (Arkansas, California, ...

The front and back of a 1929 postcard sent by Italian Futurist artist Giacomo Balla to his friend Fortunato Depero in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood (464 West 23rd Street). (via "Retrospections on ...

In the 1960s -- that fiery profusion of art and social change -- frustration with fine art's commercialization prompted a small group of artists to abandon the galleries in favor of a most unlikely ...

In conjunction with the Center for Book Arts exhibition "Mapping Correspondence: Mail Art in the 21st Century," avant-garde artist Martha Wilson discusses why mail can be art. Let's stick with this ...

Mail art began in the 1960s with Ray Johnson, who used the postal system to send collages, drawings, and notes as a form of artistic exchange. He founded the New York Correspondence School to ...

When the artist Ray Johnson sent a letter to Walter Hopps, former curator of the National Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum), requesting that he sit for a portrait, the ...

This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Researchers interested in accessing ...