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Rachael Laing
Grant Proposal
English 416
April 28, 2016
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Problem: Kurt Seligmann was an artist best known for his work within the 1930s
and 1940s surrealist movement. After his move from Paris to America prior to World War II he
became involved with the American occultist scene. Although research exists on Kurt Seligmann,
there are few resources available on his informational book The History of Magic. The book
offers a unique take on magic, from specific types to particular users, from a historical
perspective. The book is still in print, but chapters have been removed, making the original
version from 1948 the most important copy. It also has a counterpart of equally worthy research
value. The Mirror of Magic, printed the same year, appears to be almost identical to The History
of Magic. Because it is hard to find two copies in their original printing in the same place, and no
research online exists to offer an explanation, it is yet unknown as to why the same book was
published the same year under two different names. The main focus of this project will be to use
Seligmanns research and personal documents to better understand the occultist movement
during and after the Second World War, and to see how Seligmanns research and the publication
of his book affected the occult community.
The Solution: This project will be undertaken by one researcher and one extra hand that
is knowledgeable in coding. The research will be conducted mainly in two Universities. Cornell
University has a collection of Seligmanns art and has recently presented an exhibition on
Seligmanns interest in print art as well as the magical arts. The second, Yale University, holds a
collection of Seligmanns personal documents, as well as a few of the books from his substantial
personal collection of books on the topic of magic, in their archives. The final result of the
project will be a website by which viewers can read about the works that effected Seligmanns
art, and the books that Seligmann produced as a result of his own personal research in order to
provide a concept of occultists in the 20th century.
Funding Requirements: Most of the funding required will cover the travel expenses,
including gas and car rental. First to Cornell University and the exhibition on Seligmanns work
as a surrealist artist and occultist author. Then to the Orange County Citizens Foundation, which
was given control over Seligmanns estate in 1992 upon the death of his wife. The last part of the
trip will be to Yale University, which holds a large collection of Seligmanns personal
documents. Part of the budget will cover the computer software necessary to create a functional
website to best present the information being researched over the course of this project. Funding
will also go into housing the researchers and keeping them fed for the expected two months that
this project would take. For these reasons, I am asking for $3,022 for the project.
Expertise: I am able to carry out this proposal because I have a background in history,
which has covered topics in art, literature, and even magic in temporal context. My education
will serve to help bring these pieces together to create a better understanding of how magic was
understood on a historical level during the 1940s. Despite my abilities as a historian, a second
researcher will be necessary to help build a site, due to my lack of experience with the type of
technology necessary to best present this project.

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STATEMENT OF NEED
The purpose of developing this proposal is to not only understand a one person who
wrote a historical piece on magic, but to contextualize the piece within the context of a wider
movement happening in the 1940s. The project will help shed light on how magic was
understood in the mid-20th century, as well as what types of manuscripts on magic and history
were available to occultists such as Seligmann. These sources in turn will provide a deeper
understanding into the nature of what Seligmann wrote about, how magic was practiced over
time.
The beneficiaries of this project will be rather large. Historians interested in the ancient
texts examined by Seligmann, as well as those interested in occultism during and after the
Second World War, will perhaps benefit the most by using the information provided by this
finished project. Art historians as well who are interested in the surrealist artists will also benefit
in the knowledge of what Seligmanns art pieces were inspired by. By approaching this research
with the intent of branching outward from a micro-history, the outcome of the project will be the
gains of a much larger and intersectional understanding of art and the occult during and after
World War II. That being said, it has the potential to benefit historians focusing on multiple eras,
not just those studying one specific time period.
Although this project has a broad scope and would interest a range of people, it is not
necessarily urgent. All research materials are safely housed and well cared for. There is little
possibility that the resources will cease to exist in the near future, or that the repositories will
close any time soon. Despite the physical safety of Seligmanns artifacts, recent cultural interest
trends prove that this project would be of high interest to the world now. The recent exhibitions
show that there is a renewed interest in Seligmann in the art world, and would therefore be a

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project of interest beyond the historical community. Media trends also show that the public has
an interest in magic. In television, some of the most popular shows center around magic and
magical concepts, including the wildly popular Game of Thrones, Supernatural which has just
been renewed for its twelfth season, Salem, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Lucifer, Constantine, and
the Magicians. In literature, Harry Potter is perhaps the most popular young adult series of all
time, and has recently come back to the public eye with the announcement of the new film
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. So although the sources this project would seek to
understand are in no danger of disappearing, a project involving magic would be very timely.
While there have been exhibits on Seligmann that provide insight into his life, most of
these focus on his artwork. In 2015 a display at the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco showed
his life as an artist and a refugee, with only a small section on his interest in magic. The
Seligmann Center has information on his life as an artist, but focuses almost solely on this.
Cornell University has many of his rare books on the occult, but the exhibit is on art and magic,
not necessarily the importance of his place in a wider community. All of these have successfully
focused on aspects of Seligmann and his research. And while these parts fit the information these
repositories are attempting to present, they do not give a broader understanding of the effects of
Seligmanns research, or ignore parts of the artists life that added to his work on the occult. I
will be able to use the groundwork laid and add to them, providing a more thorough
understanding through a historians approach. I will seek to create a larger picture of a culture in
the mid-20th century. The project will be different from the others in that it will interest multiple
topics, and because the project will be so extensive it will add to our understanding of
Seligmann, 1940s occultism, and how the two affected each other.

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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Born in 1900 in the town of Basel, Switzerland to Gustav and Helene Seligmann,
Kurt studied at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva. In his late 20s he moved to
Paris, where he became entrenched in the Surrealist scene and the people that made the
movement so popular. In 1935 he met and married Arlette Paraf, to whom he later
dedicated his book. At the outbreak of war in 1939, Seligmann moved to New York, where
he continued to exhibit his Surrealist pieces, and was able to use his status as an artist to
help his fellow European artists emigrate away from the dangers of an entire continent at
war. During his time in New York he gained an immense interest in the occult. Seligmann
slowly grew his personal library of rare books on magic history, a library that ended up
being over 220 books. In 1948 he published the result of his research. While trying to get
his foot in the door in this new group of magic enthusiasts, he made more connections with
people who shared his fascinations, and he was able to become more active in the
community. Seligmann was known to sometimes hold demonstrations in his art studio,
where he would draw magic circles on the floor and using props to recreate ceremonies for
show.
The goal of this project is to gain insight into Seligmanns place within the occultist
community active in the 1940s. We know that occultism played a large role in Seligmanns art
process after he came to New York and began studying magical history on a serious level.
However, we do not know exactly how much it affected his life, how much it affected his
friendships with the people that he brought across to America during the war, or the extent to
which he was active and accepted within the occult community. The outcome of this research

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project will be a definitive answer to these and the questions posed earlier in this grant, as well as
an interactive website that quantifies the knowledge gained.
The method by which my partner and I will achieve this goal will involve travelling to
specific places that house information about Kurt Seligmann. First to Cornell University to see
their recent exhibit on Seligmann, which focuses both on his art and on his beliefs, and to talk
with the curator that created the exhibit. This part of the trip should take about a month. The next
place that the team will be travelling to for research with be Orange County Citizens Foundation.
This foundation was bequeathed many of Seligmanns belongings upon the death of his wife. It
contains many of his personal items, including many of the books from his large personal library
on magic. The foundation also holds his estate, and it would be worth the time to see personally
the places where Seligmann worked and studied in order to better understand his state of mind.
This should take no more than one or two days. The last place that we will be working at will be
the Yale University Archives. There hold many of Seligmanns personal documents, including
letters to other artists. I am also anticipating this to take about a month, altogether two months.
The summer months would be the best time for this research trip due to scheduling with classes.
These repositories will have scanners that we can use to copy any documents that we may
need for later research, but computers are a technology that we will have to spend money on.
Making sure that our software is constantly up to date will be vital, since we will have little time
for anything to go wrong with our computers, on which most of our work will be compiled.
The number of staff will be two, myself and another researcher. This other researcher
must be qualified to do archival research, and also qualified to build intuitive websites. I am not
qualified to do this, which is why another researcher will be absolutely crucial both to cut
down the amount of research time and to be able to produce the project that if being proposed.

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The end result of this project will be our research hosted in the public domain for anyone to use
without having to travel. We are doing the travel and research so no one else has to. This
researcher will be paid so that they can experience every part of the trip as well. It would be too
hard to travel with a larger group of researchers, and this project relies heavily on travel.
Pieces of this project that will require evaluation over the course of this project will be
expenses, to make sure that the grant money is being used effectively and efficiently. Time
management will also require an evaluation to be certain that each part of the project will be
finished in a timely manner and that the finished project will be ready to be shown to the
academic world within the correct amount of time. Source evaluation, so that neither researcher
is analyzing sources that are not conducive to the project. Self evaluation will be mandatory, and
will require the researchers to think about how they handle the physical sources, analyze the
information taken from these sources, and will have the finished product ready within the
timeframe specified by this grant proposal.

THE BUDGET

Item

Description

Cost

Head Researcher Salary

Project Supervision

$ 660

Other Researcher

Research and Website Design

$ 660

Plane to Cornell University

Lowest Price Plane

$ 450

Housing near Cornell

For one Month

$ 500

Car Rental to Orange County

Citizens Foundation
Hotel near Orange County
Citizens Foundation
Car Rental to Yale University

For two Days

$ 100

For one Night

$ 90

For one Day

$ 50

Housing near Yale

For one Month

$ 600

Computer Software

To Stay up-to-date

$ 100

Food

For two Months

$ 1,000

Total

$ 3022

CONCLUSION
The money provided by this grant would go to an excellent project, covering a wide
range of topics. It would give two researchers the ability to delve into a topic that has the
potential to really interest the public. This project would be an interesting resource for people
interested in very specific pieces of history, but also in understanding the wider ramifications of
this knowledge.
If the project is funded and finished, the researchers may apply for a second grant.
Approaching this project as a microhistory and following the story of one person, while it can
provide great insight into a wider culture, may not give the full scope of the historical knowledge
that could be gleaned by studying multiple subjects. Were the researchers to go on with this
project, they would be able to look into every aspect of occultism in the mid-20th century,
broadening their project by a large amount.