Archives West Finding Aid

This series contains journal articles and monographs written or illustrated by Todd. It also contains a folder of material related to his publication Trading Eights. Five articles were published in Art & Academe: "The Liberal Education of Studio Artists in the Post-Modern Age", 1989; "The Ethical and Aesthetic Education of Artists in the 1990's", 1991; "Varieties of Modernism", 1993; "The Russian Avant-Garde: A Tale of the Cold War", 1996; and "Some Thoughts on Art at the Millennium", 1998. Todd published one article in The Montana Professor, "The Crisis of Modernism" in Last Best Place, 1995, "James Todd Retrospective: 1941-2002," Jan. 18 - Mar. 30, 2002, Art Museum of Missoula, and "The Wood Engravings of Jim Westergard" in The Private Library, Volume 8:2, Summer 2005.

In 2020, biographical information about Todd, which was published in the print and online versions of the international encyclopedia Allgemeines Kuenstler Lexikon (AKL), was added to this series.

The monographs, Here We Are: Engravings by Members of the Wood Engravers Network (1999), Messages from Montana (2004), Remembrances of a Great Falls Jazz Trumpeter - John Huber (2007), Hussman's Inc, (1917-1977) (2008), Pioneers of the Unseen (2011), Jazz Icons (2012), Trading Eights: the Faces of Jazz (2016), Looney Toones: World War II Drawings, 1941-1945, Interpretive Wood Cuts, 2000-2016 (2017), and Separations (2022) are considered part of the Todd collection but have been cataloged for and physically placed into Special Collections.

This series contains fifteen original works Todd contributed to the compilation of Last Best Place. The drawings feature fifteen notable people in Montana history: Chief Charlot, Andrew Garcia, J.J. Audubon, William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, Joseph K. Howard, Norman MacLean, Charles Russell, Richard Hugo, Joseph Welch, Dan Cushman, Myron Brinig, Ivan Dioq, Taylor Gordon, and Thomas McGuane. Other artwork includes prints of Hannah Hoech and Mulligan and Monk, 1994, featured in Wood Engraving: Here and Now, a program for the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition of The Society of Wood Engravers in 1995. The program also features biographical information for Todd and a statement of his beliefs about the importance of wood engraving. Todd's work, St. Petersburg, is featured in Wood Engraving: A Newsprint Edition, 2002. Todd discusses his visit to Russia in 1995 along with the inspiration for St. Petersburg.

This series contains Todd's fine arts presentation, Hitler: Artist as Dictator, given to the School of Visual Arts at the 13th Annual National Conference on Liberal Arts and Education of Artists, in New York City. Todd discusses the importance of art in Hitler's life and the stigma attached to art from the Nazi era. Included with the manuscript are eleven copies of Hitler's artwork spanning form 1910-1938. Also included is a manuscript outline of a book Todd considered writing but ultimately decided would take too much time away from his art.

This series contains audio and video of James Todd, including a video of Todd demonstrating his wood engraving and printing technique and two interviews with Todd.

This series contains material related to Todd's teaching of art history courses at the University of Montana, including audiocassettes of a 1999 course. Two folders of material are restricted because they contain student papers submitted to Todd.