Ursula Curd scrapbooks

Collection

Identifier: PPCI-MSS63

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

(2) scrapbooks of programs, photographs and other memorabilia collected by Curtis alum Ursula Guy Curd (Piano, '26) and her daughter, also a pianist, Ursula A. Curd.

Dates

Creation: 1924-1980

Creator

Curd, Ursula Guy, 1890-1988 (Person)

Conditions Governing Use

This item is protected under copyright and made available by the Rock Resource Center at the Curtis Institute of Music to all users for educational and research purposes. No further reproduction or distribution is permitted. To obtain rights for reproduction/distribution or if you are a copyright holder and would like to dispute Curtis's right to distribute, please contact the Rock Resource Center. NOTICE CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS: The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish reproductions. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement.

Biographical / Historical

Ursula Guy Curd (1890-1988) was one of 6 African American students to be admitted to the first class of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1924. A public school teacher at the time of her acceptance, Curd listed her reason for applying to the school as a "desire to teach music and too, I want to study it from sheer love of it." During her stay, she studied piano with George F. Boyle.

Curd performed and lectured extensively at large venues and small. She highlighted many American composers, including fellow Curtis alumni such as Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein, in her repertoire.

She taught her daughter Ursula A. Curd on piano who also performed in and around Philadelphia. The two were members of the Philadelphia Piano Ensemble, a group originally sponsored by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the first sorority established by African American college women.

Ursula was married to Kirksey Louis Curd, a 1912 graduate of Cornell University, and later a practicing physician at the Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia.