The collection documents Nancy Leitch’s life as a student, artist, and art instructor.

SERIES I. Biographical (1932-1995) contains materials related to the personal life of Nancy Leitch. Among the materials represented here are diaries and notebooks, correspondence, coursework, and clippings. Leitch’s experience at Cranbrook is documented within the Education sub-series. Her years at Cranbrook left a deep impression on her and she often reflected in her writings on her time at the school during WWII and the impact her instructors, Carl Milles and Maija Grotell, left upon her life. The notebooks and writings within this series provide detailed and personal descriptions of life at Cranbrook Academy of Art during those years.

SERIES II. Professional (1930-1993) contains materials relating to Nancy Leitch’s career as a professional artist and art teacher. Two sub-series, Correspondence and Longwood, contain correspondence directly relating to her professional work and materials from her long tenure at Longwood College. Other materials in this series include clippings, commission details, exhibition inventories, announcements, programs, and resumes.

SERIES III. Research (n.d.) contains materials collected by Nancy Leitch from her childhood up through the late eighties and includes various clippings, photocopies, sketches, notebooks, writings, publications, and ephemera primarily relating to her interests in art and wildlife. Leitch drew on these collected materials for developing ideas for her own artwork, commissions and lectures. She accumulated a large amount of clippings over the years and it was necessary to weed the collection to obtain a representative sample of the clippings. Many of the sketchbooks within this series have notes and drawings left by Leitch in between the pages. These items were left in place within the notebooks in order to maintain their context. Several headings originally designated by Leitch have been used in the Horses sub-series and are written in quotations.

SERIES IV. Images (1952-1958, n.d.) contains albums, photographs and slides pertain to Nancy Leitch’s personal life, Cranbrook, artwork, and animals. Although many of the materials in the albums and scrapbooks have notes and/or correspondence on the back, the albums were left intact in order to illustrate Leitch’s unique arrangement of the materials.

SERIES V. Oversized (1915-1935) contains matted photographs and drawings in addition to clippings and a scrapbook.

SERIES VI. Realia (n.d.) contains some original sculptural works by Leitch in wood, metal, and plaster.