Special Collections and Archives Finding Aids
Scope and Content Note
An integral part of Binghamton University's Max Reinhardt Archives, the Losch Collection consists of incoming and outgoing correspondence as well as legal documents, banking records, personal memorabilia, diaries, engagement books, press clippings, photographic portraits, and publicity photos. This part of the Collection is assembled in 40 standard archival boxes comprising 18 linear feet of material. In addition, the Losch Collection also includes a large number of loose sketches, sketchbooks, and personal memorabilia contained in eleven flat metal map cabinet drawers. A final set of items in the Collection includes approximately 300 of her oil paintings, many dealing with autobiographical themes. The Collection loosely spans the years 1907-1975. The major portion, however, represents materials accumulated by Miss Losch during the many years she lived and worked in America, roughly from the 1930s to the time of her death in 1975. The bulk of this material pertains to her post-dancing career, when she was active as a painter, model and socialite, although numerous photographic studies document her dancing and film career as well.
The Losch Collection is arranged in five separate series according to the different types of materials. The two largest series deal with incoming and outgoing personal correspondence with family and friends. Correspondents include European and American artistic, literary, theatrical, and social personages, some well known in their day. The arrangement is alphabetical for incoming correspondence and topical for outgoing correspondence. Newspaper clippings regarding Tilly's career as dancer, actress, painter, model and socialite from the 1920s on form a separate series, also arranged topically. These arrangements reflect no particular evolution in Miss Losch's interests. A fourth series contains primarily photographic portraits and is arranged alphabetically by photographer and production. Finally, a large number of working sketches, sketchbooks and finished paintings as well as assorted memorabilia in no particular order or sequence round out the Collection. These latter materials are stored in eleven flat metal map cabinet drawers. The paintings, being of varying sizes and shapes, are stored separately.
The Losch Collection represents a valuable resource for both practitioners and historians of twentieth-century arts and culture. As an important figure in the world of classical and modern dance, Miss Losch's flamboyant career illustrates many aspects of the large-scale intellectual and cultural migration from Europe to American from the 1920s to the 1940s. While her earlier dancing career is closely associated with Max Reinhardt's theatrical enterprises, she also adapted successfully to the new world of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Miss Losch's biography and career reflect the successes and tribulations that European émigrés faced in America as well as the process of cultural transmission and the enrichment they brought to American artistic life.