Philadelphia Museum of Art: 1989-1990, 1915-1999

Philip Berman was a prolific writer of letters. He did not type, but dictated. Beginning in 1987, when his secretary, Janet Heffner, started using a computer for correspondence, many letters were saved on disks, and not on paper. In 1999, when Lehigh University began the project of arranging the collection, Mrs. Heffner took on the arduous task of printing out the various files of correspondence on acid-free paper, while she still had access to computers old enough to do the job. The result is a record of great value to the researcher.

The letters have been kept in the subject categories in which they were stored, and in general the categories have been kept in the order in which they were received at Lehigh University. Within each category the order in which the letters were printed has been retained; this order is usually, but not always, chronological. The titles of the categories are mostly taken from the labels provided by Mrs. Heffner.

Besides the texts of letters, the printouts occasionally include texts of speeches, and lists of artwork. The printouts occupy all the folders from Box 1, folder 1 through Box 4, folder 7. Box 4 folder 8 contains a few copies of faxes from October of 1997; these were not printed out from disks, but were received separately.

Voluminous though this correspondence is, the researcher should be warned that it is only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the rest of the Berman Collection, interfiled with related papers, are countless other letters by Philip Berman and Muriel Berman, preserved as carbon copies or photocopies or faxed originals. Subseries A of Series 1 is therefore no more than a valuable sample of the Bermans' vast output of letters relating to the great variety of their projects and interests.