In early August, a message popped up on my Facebook from my old graduate school friend, Nicole: “Hi Angela, I am writing to you with a weird question.”
Nicole LaBouff’s Art Quest
Nicole LaBouff is a Curator in the Department of Costumes and Textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Currently, she is building the museum’s collection of artifacts from Los Angeles-based, mid-century interior designer Maria Kipp. LaBouff had been on the hunt for one of Kipp’s rare representational pieces, a large, approximately 3-foot by 3-foot textile wall sculpture resembling a sunburst. As it turned out, there was one available on e-Bay from a seller located in Moundsville, but it was listed for local pickup only. That’s where I came in.
A Small Favor Leads to an Art Adventure
“Would you be open to … picking up this piece of art from this person and then passing it over to an art packer?” she asked.
I had never heard of Maria Kipp, but, eager to help a friend, I responded: “Sure!” A quick Google search revealed that Kipp was a renowned textile designer who ran her own company, Maria Kipp Handweaves, in Los Angeles from 1931 until 1977. Born in Germany in 1900, she was the first woman to attend and graduate from Bavaria’s Staatliche Hohere Faschshule fur Textilindustrie (State Higher Technical School for the Textile Industry). Shortly thereafter, Kipp immigrated from Germany amid post-WWI economic upheaval and settled in Los Angeles with her husband, Ernst Haeckel.
The Remarkable Career of Maria Kipp
Kipp enjoyed a remarkable career for a woman business owner in the pre-WWII era. She counted Walt Disney and film actress Claudette Colbert amongst her celebrity clients. She partnered with African American architect Paul Revere Williams to design some of Los Angeles’s most iconic hotels and homes, including Frank Sinatra’s personal residence in Palm Springs and the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She designed the drapes for L.A.’s City Hall and upholstery for Air Force One. Kipp even embraced equitable business practices when it was uncommon to do so, preferring the term “co-worker” to “employee” and proactively hiring members of the immigrant and LGBT communities.
Wheeling’s Unexpected Role in Art History
Learning about Kipp only made me more excited to see her work in person. After a bit of back and forth, the seller dropped the sculpture off at my office at West Virginia Northern Community College in downtown Wheeling. I was in the middle of a meeting with my Academic Affairs team when he arrived, so they were treated to the first glimpse of this stunning work of craftsmanship. Viewed up close, the piece reveals a finely carved wooden face surrounded by delicately woven stripes of brown, yellow, and off-white fabric. My colleagues continued to have the opportunity to enjoy this work of 1960s modernist design as it sat on display on my office table for the next few weeks.
The Alien Connection Behind the Maria Kipp Piece
In conversation later, LaBouff alluded to the possibility that the piece may not represent a sunburst at all. Her research into Kipp’s personal papers revealed that the artist experienced a lifetime of supernatural encounters, some that even respond to the nonhuman entities many now call “Grey” aliens. The face at the center of the piece—with large, almond-shaped eyes and pointed, narrow chin—corresponds with Kipp’s sketches and descriptions of these encounters, which extend back to circa 1913. LaBouff was therefore delighted to discover that this piece would be making its way through the hometown of the renowned artist, author, and ufologist, Budd Hopkins.
Wheeling’s UFO Connection
Hopkins’s memoir Art, Life, and UFOs, well worth the read, chronicles his childhood growing up in Wheeling, his career as an abstract expressionist painter, his belief in alien abduction, and his humanist philosophy.
Shipping the Artwork to LACMA
In the end, LACMA representatives worked with me to ship the piece from none other than the UPS store on Washington Ave. When I walked through the door with the larger artwork in hand, two young employees greeted me with wide eyes. They eagerly googled Maria Kipp and marveled that they had a museum artifact in their midst. With the LACMA procurement team on speaker phone, we worked out a plan to create a special box for the work and then ship it off to California. The piece shipped the next day and arrived at LACMA’s storage facility in near-mint condition a few days later.
A Cosmic Connection Through Art
Although the artwork no longer resides in the Ohio Valley, it is fittingly back in Los Angeles where it originated. The experience allowed Nicole and me to reconnect with one another around a shared love of art, history, and our respective communities, the whole encounter representing the kind of cosmic synchronicity both Hopkins and Kipp would surely appreciate.
Seeking More Information About the Artwork’s Provenance
LaBouff continues to seek information on the provenance of the work, as the seller was not the original owner. If you have any information on the local origins of this piece, feel free to reach out to the author at angelashawk@gmail.com
