Works by Ripley
in "The heroine Paint": After Frankenthaler. edited by Katy Siegel. Gagosian Gallery, 2015.
Includes the first publication of Ripley's satirical verse play Beach at Amagansett and an insightful estimate by editor Katy Siegel of his role in the avant-garde art of the early 1950s.
in Art in America 1945-1970. edited by Jed Perl. Library of America, 2014.
Includes three poems by Ripley: "An Alphabetical Guide to Modern Art," "Alphabetical Guide No. 2," and "Acrostic for Jackson Pollock."
"An essential anthology of writings by the artists, critics and aesthetes who helped make New York the capital of art after World War II. Irony had not yet blanketed the land; instead, there was humor. As the poet Dwight Ripley observes, 'It dawned on me one day last summer / That Léger should have been a plumber.'" –Deborah Solomon, SFGate.com
Dwight Ripley: Travel Posters and Language Panels. Tibor de Nagy Gallery. 2012.
"a fine-grained and elusive artist" –Holland Cotter, The New York Times
"It's been 50 years since some of these drawings have been exhibited. The drawings are surreal, erudite and utterly delightful." –Leigh Anne Miller, Art in America
Portfolio: Dwight Ripley's Travel Posters. Esopus. 2008
"The most glorious, gorgeous drawings that I have seen in a long while." –Melissa Stern, New York Press
Works about Ripley
Tibor de Nagy Gallery Painters & Poets. Tibor de Nagy Gallery. 2011.
Illustrated catalogue of Tibor de Nagy Gallery's 60th anniversary exhibition describes Ripley's role in founding the gallery.
"gorgeously designed" –Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker
Unlikely Angel: Dwight Ripley and the New York School. Poets House. 2006.
Download checklist (525KB), with introduction, of the exhibition that revealed Ripley's facilitating influence on the New York School poets – and painters – who benefited from their association with the Tibor de Nagy Gallery ("a fairy tale of the mid-century avant-garde." –The New Yorker).
Both: A Portrait in Two Parts. by Douglas Crase. Pantheon, 2004.
"Crase's dual biography of botanists extraordinaire, Rupert Barneby and Dwight Ripley, provides proof of both men's artistic gifts, their behind-the-scenes bankrolling of much of the 1950s art scene, and the loving complexity of their fifty-year relationship." –Bruce Hainley, Artforum
"a superb biography" –Holland Cotter, The New York Times
Ripley bibliography
Download comprehensive, descriptive bibliography (345.6KB) of material by, about, or relating to Dwight Ripley.
Archival Resources
at the Beinecke Library
The bulk of the surviving Dwight Ripley papers and significant Rupert Barneby papers are in the Douglas Crase and Frank Polach papers at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT. The Ripley papers include appointment diaries, manuscripts, rare copies of his chapbooks Poems (1931) and Spring Catalogue (1952), letters to Barneby 1939-1941, his handwritten Record of species they collected in the U. S. and Mexico 1941-1965, and a set of his articles for the Quarterly Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society of Great Britain, 1942-1950, describing their plant-hunting expeditions in the western United States.
at the New York Botanical Garden
Biographically allusive letters addressed to Ripley during the early years of World War II by his gardener, E. Tester, and botanists Ingwersen, Sandwith, and Davis are in the Rupert Charles Barneby Records, Archives, LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.
Ripley's draft of his Etymological Dictionary of Vernacular Plant Names, unpublished but largely completed at his death, is the sole component of the Harry Dwight Dillon Ripley papers in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden.
The plans for the Ripley-Barneby greenhouse seen in Menken's film Glimpse of the Garden are in Folio E5110 of the Lord & Burnham Collection, also in the Mertz Library at the New York Botanical Garden.
Barneby's life and his contributions to systematic botany are represented in the Barneby Legume Catalog of the Starr Virtual Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden. The site offers downloadable scans of early letters addressed to Ripley by his gardener and fellow botanists, as well as downloadable maps that indicate how thoroughly he and Barneby canvassed the western United States and Mexico in their search for rare subalpine species.
at the Harry Ransom Center
Revealing letters from Ripley to Marie Menken and her husband, poet Willard Maas, are in the Willard Maas (1906-1971) collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas, in Austin.
at the Archives of American Art
The first ledger page of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, which documents Ripley's initial contributions, is among the Tibor de Nagy Gallery records at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Ripley's poem in Catalan addressed to Joan Miró, and Miró's drawing on hotel stationery addressed to Ripley, are in the Dwight Ripley papers relating to Joan Miró at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.