Joyce Cadoo In The Archive

We talk a lot about identifying the unidentified in the archive. So we thought we would show you an example.

This etching is in the Chester Himes papers at Amistad Research Center in New Orleans [fig. 1].

When we first learned about this etching we only knew its title. The finding aid gives that –“Dawn and the City”– but states that it is “by an unidentified artist” [fig. 2].

A finding aid is an index to what’s in a collection. Figure 2 shows this portion of the Chester Himes papers finding aid. You can see a lot of names here (James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Nikki Giovanni), but when the name is unidentified, the person is invisible.

We have been interested in Joyce Cadoo for some time. She is not very visible when you do a Google search. But we know the Nasher Museum has a piece by her in its collection – and the title is “Dawn and the City” [fig. 3].

That made us wonder if the Amistad etching was also by Cadoo – especially because there are letters from Cadoo to Himes in the same papers. And as you can see – it is the same!

When we were able to see the piece itself – it became even more obvious. You can see Cadoo’s signature and date [fig. 4]. And – she inscribed the artwork “To my pal Chester, Joyce” !! We were excited, and so were the archivists at Amistad.

And yet, it’s a very difficult and complicated effort to alter a finding aid.

That’s exactly what Plain Sight Archive’s tool is designed to do – be an overlay to archives to help make visible what is there but currently obscured. Our tool also connects pieces across location, showing how much more there is to see if you can connect the dots.

We first noticed Joyce Cadoo in a book of prints by Black artists that Ruth Waddy compiled in the 1960s [fig. 5]. Her vibrant “Decline and Fall” stands out – and yet we could find very little about her [fig. 6].

Digging in newspapers provided us the only image we have of Cadoo so far [fig. 7]. She completed two Masters degrees at UC Berkeley in the 1950s and is shown here with colleagues at an exhibition.

Further clippings show that Cadoo also had success designing jewelry. A Women’s Wear Daily article from 1957 praises Cadoo’s “fresh” and “feminine” pieces [fig. 8]. A 1973 article in Harper’s Bazaar notes that Cadoo “is known throughout the jewelry world for her versatile talent” [fig. 9].

As you can see from the overview of exhibitions listed on Cadoo’s cv – kindly shared with us by Corinne Jennings of Kenkeleba House and the Wilmer Jennings Gallery – Cadoo’s arts career becomes much less publicly active after 1960 [fig. 10].

We know she was the primary caregiver for her elderly mother for many years. In letters she talks about the recession in the 1970s negatively impacting her jewelry business, and she discusses depression. In a letter to the Himeses she says: “Kept on waiting for something good to happen so could write you a happy letter – no such luck” [fig. 11].

Joyce Cadoo dedicated a lot of her time and energy to ensuring her brother’s legacy. Emil Cadoo (1922-2002) was a photographer who moved to Paris in the 60s where as a queer Black man, he – like others before him – found more freedom [fig. 12]. Joyce gifted a number of Emil’s photographs to the Getty Museum.

Sadly, her own legacy remains too obscured.