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Preferred Citation:
Leslie Cheek, Jr. College Papers, Special Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries
Leslie Cheek was born in Nashville, TN in 1908. He studied art at Harvard University and architecture at Yale and Columbia.
He headed the department of fine arts at the College of William and Mary 1937-39, where he was instrumental in getting an
honorary award given to Georgia O'Keeffe by the college in 1938 and Frank Lloyd Wright.
In 1939, he married Mary Tyler Freeman (1917- 2005), the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George Washington,
Douglas Southall Freeman. That same year he joined the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art as its director, where he found Adelyn
Breeskin (q.v.) of its prints department already assembling an outstanding collection. Cheek worked actively with various
Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist's projects. He resigned from the Museum in 1942 to join the army corps of engineers
in World War II.
After the war, he succeeded Thomas C. Colt, Jr as the second director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1948 (the museum
itself was founded in 1936). During his tenure at Virginia, he persuaded the General Assembly to finance the Museum as the
state's official art museum. In 1953, Cheek developed a "mobile art program" to bring exhibitions to more remote parts
of Virginia. The project, Artmobile I, was a success. In 1955, the Virginia Museum Theater opened to integrate the performing
arts with the gallery. He retired from the Museum in 1968. The following year the Cheeks began a mountaintop compound they
named Skylark on a former farm along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 1977, they donated it to Washington & Lee University which
is today that university's conference center. Cheek suffered a series of strokes at his home in Richmond and died in 1992.
His personal papers, 1981-1994, are held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and 1940-1983 by the Archives of American
Art, Washington, DC. The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN, the ancestral home of Cheek, is now
a public art museum, built upon the collection of the former Nashville Museum of Art.
This collection contains awards, publicity material, songs, articles, speeches, and photographs that once belonged to College
of William and Mary professor Leslie Cheek. The bulk of the material is from 1936 to 1938, and most of the material relates
to the various exhibits put on by the Department of Fine Arts. The photographs are from theatre productions, dances, and exhibits
at William and Mary.
Leslie Cheek, Jr. Papers (Mss. 98 C41); University Archives Photograph Collection (UA 8); University Archives Poster Collection
(UA 12); University Archives Oral History Collection (UA 43).
Cheek's personal papers, 1981-1994, are held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and 1940-1983 by the Archives of American
Art, Washington, DC. The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN, the ancestral home of Cheek, is now
a public art museum, built upon the collection of the former Nashville Museum of Art.
Photographs of productions with actors, props and stage.
Mixed Materials Box: 1 Folder: 35
Clippings, Notes, Correspondence, Brochures
1936-1938
Scope and Contents
Postcard of early Duke of Gloucester Street; program for the American Federation of Arts Convention, 1938; Museum News, 1937;
Department of Fine Arts Program, 1936-1937; photograph brochure of William & Mary; lecture notes; newspaper clippings of productions;
correspondence about Georgia O'Keefe visit and theatre building plans.
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