Superior-raised artist's legacy makes it to the Smithsonian
May 15—SUPERIOR — An artist with ties to Superior has found his way into the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
Alex Yaworski's documents are among more than 20 million documents preserved for research through the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art.
The information includes Yaworski's biographical information, printed materials, handmade cards, sketches, and subject and organizational files; photographs of Yaworski and others; photographs and transparencies of works of art; writings and notes by and about Yaworski; personal and professional correspondence; and some digital files, including a video showing two short painting demonstrations by Yaworski.
The Archives of the American Art is a research center that provides access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America. Founded in Detroit in 1954 by Edgar P. Richardson, then-director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Lawrence A. Fleishman, a Detroit executive and young collector, as a microfilm repository. The mission expanded to collecting and preserving original material. In 1970, the Archives joined the Smithsonian Institute.
"We were founded on the belief that the public needs free and open access to this material, and that's what we are all about," said Susan Cary, registrar and collections manager for the Archives of American Art.
Yaworski was born in Odessa in the Russian Federation, now Ukraine, in 1907, and emigrated to Superior as a young child with his family. He grew up in Superior, and the city's waterfront shipyards, freight yards and grain elevators inspired many of his paintings. He left Superior in 1927 to attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where he lived for more than 60 years as a commercial illustrator and fine artist working with watercolor, Gouache, Casein and acrylic to create his paintings, which were exhibited regionally and nationally. Yaworski moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1991. He died there on March 27, 1997.
Since 2017, his son, Don Yaworski, said he has been working to keep his father's legacy alive. In 2021, he donated four of his father's paintings to the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, and
last year he donated three paintings to the Douglas County Historical Society.
"Now he has a presence in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian," Don Yaworski said, adding "it's huge."
Don Yaworski donated his father's papers to the Archives in March, but it was a plan in the making for more than a decade.
"In 2011, a woman named Mary Savig contacted me and asked my permission to use a holiday card, a silkscreened holiday card that he had done, that was in a collection at the Smithsonian," the younger Yaworski said. "She had done a book called 'Handmade Holiday Cards from 20th Century Artists.'"
A silkscreen card Alex Yaworski created was already in the Archives as part of the Ralph Fabri collection.
During Don Yaworski's correspondence with Savig, she asked if he would be willing to donate his father's papers to the Archives.
However, after that inquiry, he said Savig kind of fell off the radar. It was only later that he learned Savig had been name curator at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
So last year, Don Yaworski said he reached out to the Archives of American Art to find out if they would be interested in his father's papers. After some delays and a minor health emergency prevented him from traveling to Washington D.C., he said Cary sent him FedEx labels to send the collection.
"I just think he was an amazing artist, and he deserves the recognition," Don Yaworski said of his father. "That's just something I've been determined to do, and it's been a pleasure."
The collection includes many magazine and newspaper clippings including many from the Duluth News Tribune and Superior Telegram going back to the 1950s.
"A lot of that included the other brothers who also painted," Don Yaworski said of his uncles, Nic and Tony. "Uncle Tony taught art at Superior High School."
Cary said preserving artists' records can help look at various movements in art over time and protect them from being lost forever.
The Archives of American Arts collections covers the past 200 years and include letters, diaries, scrapbooks, manuscripts, photographs, films and audiovisual recordings of those involved in the arts.
"It's a record of our culture," Cary said. For information, visit
