Swain School of Design Records in the UMass Dartmouth Library Archives and Special Collections

The College of Visual and Performing Arts transferred the Swain School of Design archives to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library Archives and Special Collections in 2000, when preparations were being made to move the Purchase Street campus to the Star Store in downtown New Bedford.

The archives consist of the minutes of the Board of Trustees, 1879-1988, treasurer’s records, reports to the Board by the school’s directors, 1889-1988, the files of the last Swain directors, a full run of the school’s course catalogs, scrapbooks, gallery notices and some posters, dating from 1966 through the early 1980s. We do NOT have more than a handful of photographs, and no yearbooks, student work or curricular materials other than what is published in the catalogs.

The collection is currently in the process of being catalogued. We will soon have a finding aid with full collection contents listed, posted on this web site as a PDF file.