Peter Wexler photographs and designs

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Collection Data

Description: Peter Wexler (b.1936-) is primarily a set and costume designer for theater, music, and television, as well as a producer, artistic director, lighting designer, photographer, and visual artist. This collection contains set designs, correspondence, and other materials related his production designs from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. Also included are materials for original projects on which he collaborated as a design consultant.
Names: Wexler, Peter, 1936- (Creator)
Dates / Origin: Date Created: 1957 - 1996
Library locations: Billy Rose Theatre Division; Shelf locator: *T-Vim 1998-044
Topics: Big Deal (Television program); Lifetime Medical Television (Television program); Spring Creek Festival (Music festival); Texas Festival of the Arts (Music festival); Costume designers; Set designers; Theater production and direction; Theaters -- Stage-setting and scenery; Painters; Stage lighting designers; Theaters stage-setting and scenery
Genres: Clippings; Correspondence; Costume design drawings; Contracts; Photographs; Posters; Set design drawings
Notes: Biographical/historical: Peter Wexler has had a prolific career as a designer of vast range, creating the scenic, costume, and lighting designs for several theatrical, television, opera, and music festival productions. He studied at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1958, and attended the Yale School of Drama. During the 1960s and 1970s, he actively exhibited his drawings and painting in numerous journals and magazines such as Theatre Crafts, Opera News, Theatre Design and Technology, as well as in galleries such as the Wright-Hepburn-Webster Gallery in New York City, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. It was also during this time that his designs for the stage brought him critical acclaim. His Broadway credits include Murderous Angels, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Camino Real, and In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Off-Broadway design work included Unfinished Stories and Candide at the Mark Taper Forum, The Web and the Rock at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and The Big Knife at the Seven Arts Playhouse. He founded his own production company, Peter Wexler, Inc., as a way to promote, design, plan and execute for a variety of theatrical events. With his company, Wexler worked as a Visual Consultant for such television productions as Lifetime Medical Television and The Big Deal. He also worked as a design consultant for Reebok River Stage and as Artistic Director for the Spring Creek and Texas Arts Festivals in the 1990's. During the 1960's and 1970's, Wexler designed sets for several opera productions, including Lizzie Borden for New York City Opera, Le Prophete, Les Troyens, and Un Ballo in Maschera for the Metropolitan Opera. His work for the New York Philharmonic includes interior designs for the Promenade Concerts and Rug Concerts at Avery Fisher Hall.; Content: The work represented in this collection includes Wexler's designs for Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, music, outdoor festivals, and television productions. The material consists of lighting plots and sections, theater ground plans, stage plans, photographs, slides, and costume designs. Production materials includes design processing papers, project proposals, photographs, scripts, memos, production notes, contracts and some correspondence relating to many productions. Photographs/Slides also contain slides of his early drawings and paintings that are examples of artwork Wexler has exhibited in galleries. No personal papers are included in this collection.
Physical Description: Extent: 41.25 linear feet (105 boxes)
Type of Resource: Text; Moving image
Identifiers: NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b16802357; MSS Unit ID: 21825; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): c2f59fe0-9bae-0139-dbcd-0242ac110002