Fred S. Boyko Family Collection

This collection contains photocopies of documentation of portraitist Fred S. Boyko’s life in Vienna, immigration to the United States, and life in New York, particularly his education and career as a portraitist. Included are school certificates, documents pertaining to his emigration and naturalization, and applications, correspondence, exhibit booklets, and clippings regarding his career as a portraitist. Also included are items pertaining to members of Fred S. Boyko’s family, particularly articles about the work of his brother Hugo Boyko, an ecologist who worked to develop methods of salt water irrigation in the Negev desert in Israel.

Documents from Boyko’s life in Vienna focus primarily on his education. Included are certificates from the K. K. Staats-Realschule im I. Bezirke Wiens, Technische Hochschule Wien, and Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, as well as documents regarding Boyko’s apprenticeship with architecture firms in Vienna. Items pertaining to Boyko’s 1939 emigration from Vienna to New York include his passport, contracts and invoices for the transportation of belongings from Vienna to New York, and passenger list of the S.S. Normandie, which includes the Boyko family. Additional items include Boyko’s birth certificate and marriage contract between Boyko and Helene Waltuch.

Also included are documents from Fred S. Boyko’s life in New York, including his 1942 applications to use photographic equipment, which were submitted to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as well as the responses he received, and postcards from the United States and New York departments of naturalization regarding applications for various immigration documents. Also included is an obituary for Fred S. Boyko, sympathy card sent to his wife, and proposal for his headstone.

Documents pertaining to Fred S. Boyko’s career as a portraitist include curricula vitae, correspondence and press release concerning his portrait of Mary Martin, announcement of his re-engagement as a teacher at the Roerich Academy of Arts, a letter regarding a prize of the Painters and Sculptors Society of New Jersey, exhibit booklets, and clippings about exhibits of Boyko’s portraits.

The collection also contains articles and clippings pertaining to the work of Fred S. Boyko’s brother Hugo Boyko and Hugo’s wife Elizabeth in developing methods of salt water irrigation in Israel. Also included is a list of the charter members of the World Academy of Art and Science, which includes Hugo Boyko.

Also included are documents pertaining to Fred S. Boyko’s family, particularly his parents and siblings, including a newspaper article about the family’s accomplishments, marriage certificate of Fred S. Boyko’s parents Aron Bojko and Karoline Hirschberger, and photograph of his brother Rudolph Boyko and invitation to Rudolph’s 90th birthday party.