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Collection Data
- Description
- Rouben Ter-Arutunian (1920-1992) was a scenic and costume designer best known for his long association with the New York City Ballet. The design portfolios are a comprehensive reflection of the artist's prolific forty-year career designing for theater, ballet, dance, opera, television, and motion picture productions. The portfolios are made up of materials mostly gathered together under a production's title and contain set and costume designs; set models; press material; photographs; design notes; technical drawings; business documentation; correspondence; and research and reference material.
- Names
- Ter-Arutunian, Rouben, 1920-1992 (Creator)
- Balanchine, George (Contributor)
- Kirstein, Lincoln, 1907-1996 (Contributor)
- Robbins, Jerome (Contributor)
- Ter-Arutunian, Rouben, 1920-1992 (Costume designer)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1920 - 1993
- Library locations
- Jerome Robbins Dance Division
- Shelf locator: (S)*MGZMD 148
- Topics
- Butler, John, 1920-1993
- Makarova, Natalia, 1940-
- Tetley, Glen
- Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
- Joffrey Ballet
- John Butler Dance Theatre
- Martha Graham Dance Company
- New York City Ballet
- New York City Opera
- Santa Fe Opera
- Ballet -- Stage-setting and scenery
- Costume design
- Festival of Two Worlds
- Opera -- Stage-setting and scenery
- Set designers
- Genres
- Dance programs
- Photographs
- Paintings
- Personal correspondence
- Portraits
- Promotional materials
- Sketchbooks
- Theater programs
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Rouben Ter-Arutunian was a scenic and costume designer for ballet, dance, opera, theater, film, and television productions. Ter-Arutunian was born July 20, 1920 in Tbilisi, Georgia of Armenian parentage. His parents immigrated to Paris during his early childhood, then to Berlin when he was seven years old. His mother, a homemaker, was described as being both artistic and adept at homemade crafts while his father was a cosmetics importer. Ter-Arutunian frequently made drawings as a child, particularly aware of people's clothing and dress.
In 1936, a teenaged Ter-Arutunian was significantly moved by viewing his first performance of the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo and he frequently revisited the theater for multiple viewings. The visual impact of the set designs eventually led Ter-Arutunian to study art and design at the Schule Reimann, a private art school in Berlin which he attended for two years. In art school, he studied drawing, painting, and life studies among other art classes from 1939 to 1941, but as the Nazi party rose to power in Germany, the school fell into decline as it was deemed "too modern."
In 1940, while designing for personal friends, he received his first professional commissions including costumes for the Staatsoper Berlin. Shortly thereafter in 1942, Ter-Arutunian designed for his first opera production after having a serendipitous meeting with a set designer from the Dresden Opera. He invited Ter-Arutunian to design the costumes for a production of The Bartered Bride in Dresden which then led him to design for Salome in 1944 at the Vienna State Opera.
After living in Paris for a brief time, Ter-Arutunian moved to New York City in 1951, and became an American citizen in 1957. His first commissions in America were for the jewelry company Harry Winston where he designed heavy, elaborate, and exotic designs. He was also commissioned to design window displays for department stores in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. Ter-Artunian was then hired by CBS, where he designed for numerous TV specials, most notably the scenery, costumes, and masks for Noah and the Flood, a work created by composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer George Balanchine that received its premiere in 1962. He eventually moved to NBC where he was art director for operas, theater works, and special entertainment programs.
Ter-Arutunian made his Broadway debut with designs for the musical New Girl in Town in 1957 starring Gwen Verdon. Among his other Broadway productions were Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?, Redhead, Advise and Consent, The Deputy, and The Lady From the Sea. He won the 1959 Tony Award for Best Costume Design for the musical Redhead, and was nominated for Tony Awards three times for Scenic Design and once more for Costume Design.
Ter-Arutunian is best known for his twenty-seven years long career working with the New York City Ballet. At the behest of Lincoln Kirstein, he was commissioned to create scenery for a double bill of Bluebeard's Castle and L'heure Espagnole at the New York City Opera in 1952. His collaboration with Kirstein led him to work with ballet choreographer George Balanchine. Ter-Arutunian became most famous for the set design and lighting for Balanchine's The Nutcracker with costumes by Barbara Karinska, which are still used today. Among the many other ballets he designed were Seven Deadly Sins, Swan Lake, Souvenir, Harlequinade, Coppélia, Union Jack, Robert Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze, Ballet Imperial, and Mozartiana.
Aside from ballet, Ter-Arutunian also worked extensively with modern choreographers in the mid-twentieth century. He designed sets and costumes for Martha Graham's Visionary Recital in 1961 and Glen Tetley's Pierrot Lunaire (1962), Sargasso (1965) and Ricercare (1966), among other productions.
Ter-Arutunian worked for many other operatic organizations which included San Francisco Opera, Hamburg State Opera, La Scala in Milan, Opéra-Comique in Paris, and the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He also designed for American Ballet Theatre, Harkness Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, and Paul Taylor Dance Company.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Ter-Arutunian's costume and set designs were exhibited in galleries, museums, and libraries. Ter-Arutunian died at the age of 72 on October 17, 1992, in New York City.
- Content: The Rouben Ter-Arutunian design portfolios are a comprehensive reflection of the artist's prolific forty-year career designing for theater, ballet, dance, opera, television, and motion picture productions around the world. The collection is made up predominantly of two-dimensional artwork, but also includes three-dimensional objects. The portfolios were assembled by Ter-Arutunian and remain as he envisioned them with all manners of different, but related, materials mostly gathered together under a production's title. Ter-Arutunian's proliferant artistic output is epitomized by the sheer volume of his collection that includes approximately 7,000 designs of scenery, costumes, and artwork, with over 1,000 designs for New York City Ballet productions. In addition, for most productions, there are complete technical drawings and stage plans, notes, photographs, programs, reviews, posters, and models.
There are also examples of Ter-Artunian's earliest work produced in Berlin and Paris, prior to his immigration to the United States in 1951, and illustrates his diverse career as a designer for advertising, jewelry, opera, dance, and theater. Ter-Arutunian's most enduring client was New York City Ballet for which he designed sets and costumes for some of George Balanchine's most significant ballets particularly The Nutcracker. The collection also includes designs from his decades-long collaborations with many directors, choreographers, performing artists, and composers including Tony Richardson, Gian Carlo Menotti, Glen Tetley, Robert Joffrey, Marlene Dietrich, Hans Werner Henze, and Igor Stravinsky.
Ter-Arutunian was also known for his unconventional use of common craft and household materials to articulate his creative vision in his set designs and models. He regularly used colorful and textural materials such as paper doilies, wooden dowels, metallic paper, cardboard, balsa wood, string, cellophane tape, and tissue paper. These visual elements can be found throughout the entire collection of portfolios particulary the set models, model pieces, and drop designs.
The portfolios were arranged by Ter-Arutunian into broad categories of the performing arts: drama, musicals, opera (including individual companies), television, motion pictures, dance (including individual choreographers and companies, with a large portion devoted to New York City Ballet), individual cities (Berlin, Paris, New York), and some personal and school work.
The collection is arranged into ten Series that are arranged alphabetically by production title or subject. Design elements for individual titles sometimes appear in more than one portfolio as the designer would repurpose designs for later productions.
Each design portfolio contains a wide breadth of material that consists of (but is not limited to) preliminary set sketches; scenic designs; costume designs and fabric swatches; set models and pieces; press and advertising material; photographs; production and design notes; technical drawings and stage plans; business documentation; correspondence; and research and reference material. Select productions also hold costumes and fully realized set props used in past productions.
The dimensions for set models and other 3-D objects are measured length by width by height.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 68.22 linear feet (186 boxes, 120 oversize folders)
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Still image
- Identifiers
- Other local Identifier: (S)*MGZMD 148
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b22733237
- MSS Unit ID: 19868
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): ddee1df0-0592-013d-d78b-0242ac110004
