Barbara Lucile Maples Papers

Barbara Lucile Maples was born November 11, 1912, in Temple, Texas. Her parents were L.B. (Leslie Buford) Maples and Lucile Beatrice Hartrick Maples (from Belton and Temple, Texas). An artist and professor of art, Maples graduated from Temple High School in 1929 and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor in Belton, Texas in 1933 and a Master of Arts degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York in 1939. She did further study with Lawrence Barrett at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (in the Summers of 1943-1945) and Carlotta Corpron at Texas Women's University in Denton, Texas.

Maples taught at public schools in Temple and Fort Worth in the 1930s before joining the teaching staff of the Dallas Independent School District, where she taught elementary and secondary art from 1937-1964. She concurrently taught children's art classes at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts School from 1940-1954 and served as an art instructor at the Cimarroncita Camp for Girls in Ute Park, New Mexico from 1939-1949. From 1965-1978 she was Professor and Head of the Department of Art Education at Southern Methodist University. After retiring from the University in 1978, she served as administrator of the Greater Southwest Fine Arts Project for Limestone, Freestone, and Leon counties.

Maples had solo exhibitions of her paintings at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1941, 1944, and 1947. She also had solo shows at the Corpus Christi Museum Center (1939); the Public Library Art Museum in Beaumont, Texas; the Laguna Gloria Art Museum and the Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin (1941); and the Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio (1942). In 1990, an exhibition of Maples' and Carlotta Corpon's photographic abstractions was held at the Allen Street Gallery in Dallas. Maples' primary art mediums were watercolor and oil paintings, prints, photographs, and ceramics. In addition to her solo exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Maples participated in a total of 37 collaborative exhibitions at the DMFA from 1938-1964. Prints of her paintings have sold nationally, and her works have been reproduced in Arts and Activities magazine, October 1956 (or October 1958?) and Spring 1959.

Maples was named honorary members of Kappa Pi, the national art fraternity at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor in 1942 and the Delta Kappa Gamma Society, the national honors society in education at Southern Methodist University in 1946. The Bryan Adams High School Annual was dedicated to her in 1965. Maples was the recipient of several art awards in her lifetime, including the Titche Goettinger Award (1941), the Leslie Waggoner Award (1942), the Volk Award (1943), the Neiman-Marcus Award (1944 and 1947), the Rush Co. Award (1945), and the Longhorn Award (1948). From 1945-46, she was President of the Texas Printmakers, and Treasurer of the group from 1950-1965. She was Chairman of Ceramics for the Craft Guild of Dallas and Secretary of the Dallas Print and Drawing Society in 1958. She was also a member of the Dallas Museum of Art, American Association of University Women, Texas Art Education Association, National Art Education Association, Southern States Art League, and Dallas Art Education Association.

Maples passed away on March 11, 1999 at Mariner Health, a North Dallas nursing home, where she had been a resident for two years. She is buried in the Buford and Lucile Maples family plot in the Hillcrest Cemetery in Temple, Texas.

Maples' art and craft works are in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art (Return at Dusk and Nickie in a Net); the Longview Museum of Fine Arts; the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum; the Corpus Christi Art Foundation; South Texas Institute for the Arts in Corpus Christi; the Kansas City Public Library Visual Education Department; the Stanford University Collection; Well Library in Maryville, Missouri; the State University Collection in Pocattello, Idaho; and the State College Collection in Emporia, Kansas. Individual collectors of her work in Maples' lifetime included Stanley Marcus, John Douglas, Elizabeth Walmsley, and other Dallas area art patrons.