The Dale Archive of Therapeutic Artistic Endeavor

The oldest collection held by TAMMONATAOA, the Dayle Archive was collected by Beebee Dayle during her tenure as the caretaker of the St. Christina League Craft and Trade Store. The St. Christina resale store supported the ladies of the Texas State School, providing them spending money and improving the school’s facilities, and much of their work was sold there. At times Beebee would encourage her ladies to use art as a spiritual and therapeutic discipline.  Most of these therapy works were too personal, too abstract, or too frightening to sell to the ladies and gentlemen of Austin circa 1930.

Many of these pieces went to the patients’ families, but a small number became the core of Beebee Dayle’s collection of therapeutic art, which, over the years, the Museum expanded with visits to local auctions, estate sales, and the Bergstrom Sanitary Landfill.

An old building like Dayle House picks up quirks and oddities, and there are rumors that the Archive of Therapeutic Artistic Endeavor has its own private haunt. Is this true? We don’t know! But the winding trails of dust and creaking boards are more likely the fault of our jumpy cleaning and maintenance staff, who no longer service this room after the Museum’s acquisition of “Uncle With Boy.”