The Jerry Bywaters Collection on Art of the Southwest consists of catalogues, clippings, correspondence, photographs, slides, mural studies, and works of art on paper amassed by SMU professor and Dallas Museum of Fine Arts director Jerry Bywaters. He began collecting in the late 1920s and continued to do so during his career as an artist, critic, curator, museum director, and teacher. Professor Bywaters donated this material to SMU at intervals from 1980 until his death in 1989. This collection also includes an ongoing oral history project. In addition to the Bywaters Collection, this area also houses collections of similar materials documenting the careers of other artists in the region, such as Charles Bowling, Otis and Velma Davis Dozier, E. G. Eisenlohr, Mary Doyle, DeForrest Judd, William Lester, Everett Spruce, and Octavio Medellin and Janet Turner.
The Henry Potter Collection consists of several hundred shop sketches, accompanying invoices from Potter Metal Studio in Dallas. Recently reopended by Potter's nephew, this firm fashioned lighting fixtures, furniture and other items, primarily oin iron, for North Texas businesses, institutions, churches, and private residences from the 1930s through the 1960s. These clients included the Dallas Little Theatre, SMU, Highland Park Shopping
Village, Highland Park United Methodist Church, and Highland Park Presbyterian Church. Executed on onionskin paper, many of the drawings are in extremely fragile condition and will
require extensive conservation.
The Bywaters Wing also houses materials pertaining to music and the performing arts. The Mary McCord/Edyth Renshaw Collection is named for two long-time SMU professors of theater and documents theater, film, and dance. Its holdings emphasize the performing arts in
Texas and the Southwest, including papers of the Dallas Little Theatre and SMU's Arden Club. The Greer Garson Collection consists o