─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams (1904-2000)
Virginia Best was 17 years old when she met 19-year-old Ansel Adams in 1921. The two shared a passion for the outdoors and for classical music. With a contralto voice that Ansel found beautiful, Virginia intended to become a singer, while he was planning to become a pianist.
It was Ansel's need for piano practice that led him to Virginia. Her father, Harry Best, owned a piano that Ansel would practice on while visiting Yosemite. Best owned a gift shop in Yosemite called Best's Studio. The store sold wood carvings, books, and Best's paintings of Yosemite.
After her mother died in 1920, Virginia kept house for her father. She and Ansel exchanged many affectionate letters during their long courtship. They became engaged once, but Ansel broke off the engagement. They were engaged again when Ansel visited Yosemite on December 31, 1927, for a New Year's Eve celebration. The wedding took place three days later, on January 2, 1928. Virginia wore a black dress, because it was the best one she owned, and there was no time to purchase a wedding gown. Ansel wore a coat and tie, knickers, and basketball shoes. The ceremony was nearly delayed because Ansel's best man lost the wedding ring. He had dropped it in the snow while attaching chains to the bridal getaway car. After much searching, he found the ring in enough time for the wedding to proceed as scheduled. It had been buried in the slush underneath the car.
Like Ansel, Virginia was an avid hiker. They were both members of the Sierra Club, and often went on Club-sponsored hikes. Virginia served on the Sierra Club's board of directors from 1931 to 1933, until her first child was born.
Virginia was expecting their first child in August 1933, while Ansel was one of the leaders of a month-long expedition to the Kings River region. Knowing the baby was due, Ansel left the hike a day early -- only to find out that little Michael had arrived two days before. Despite Ansel's absence, Virginia had a remarkably easy birth. She wrote, "I certainly didn't need an anesthetic. Dr. Dewey said it was one of the easiest first births he'd had. Once he said, 'You're entitled to holler,' but I didn't feel the inclination."
Two years later, Virginia gave birth to a daughter, again in her husband's absence. Ansel was on a photographic assignment in the Sierra Nevada when little Anne arrived one day before his return to their home.
After her father died in 1936, Virginia inherited the operation of Best's Studio. Because they wanted to sell only high-quality merchandise, Virginia and Ansel decided to produce some of it themselves. The National Park Service would not let the shop act as a publisher, so Virginia and Ansel formed a company along with three friends, which they called Five Associates. The company published high-quality photographic postcards and notecards, as well as serious picture books and guidebooks. Best's Studio even sold some 8-by-10 inch prints of Ansel's photographs of Yosemite.
In 1941 Virginia and Ansel wrote a children's book called Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley. Although the book was quite successful, Ansel was not pleased with the results, "The reproductions were terrible and the editor ruined the simplicity of Virginia's text by making it conventionally inane at every opportunity."
Virginia eventually turned Five Associates over to her daughter. Anne renamed the company Museum Graphics. She continued to print high-quality notecards and postcards featuring photographs by her father, as well as other photographers.
After having outlived Ansel by 16 years, Virginia Best Adams passed away at the age of 96 on January 29, 2000.
PBS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE COLLECTION
Copied from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ansel-virginia-best-adams-1904-2000/"
©1996–2021 WGBH Educational Foundation
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams; Ansel Adams' Widow
By JON THURBER
Feb. 7, 2000 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Yosemite was a constant touchstone in the life of Virginia Best Adams, the sometimes collaborator, sometimes publisher and overall steadying influence in the life of her husband, the late photographer Ansel Adams.
But her roots to Yosemite, the park her husband helped make famous in his classic photographs of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley, took hold much earlier and flourished far longer than the better-known Ansel's.
The quiet woman behind the famous photographer was born to San Franciscan parents who had married at the foot of Bridal Veil Falls in 1901, and she actually lived in the park for 68 years--from the time she was 6 months old until 1972, when she moved with her husband to the Monterey Bay area. Even beyond that, Yosemite remained "home" to her, and she returned there time and again to vote or attend the Bracebridge dinners at the Ahwahnee Hotel. She made her last visit about five years ago when she was 91.
For 36 years, Virginia Best Adams, who died Jan. 29 at her home in Carmel Highlands at the age of 96, ran what is now the Ansel Adams Gallery and in the process helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work.
Advertisement
That gallery, started by her father, Harry Cassie Best, a landscape painter, in 1902, is now operated by her son's family. It is the oldest concession in the national park system operated continually by the same family.
Growing up in Yosemite was a special time for Virginia Best, a girl who loved the outdoors, with plenty of chances available to explore the valley. But her early life was not without its hardships. Her mother died of tuberculosis when Virginia was just 16. As an only child, she took over running the household and began helping out in her father's studio, which by then had also become a gift shop selling curios and crafts.
A year later, a budding young pianist began stopping by the Best home, which had--in addition to the blond, blue-eyed Virginia--a Chickering upright piano. The young pianist's name was Ansel Adams.
Several years later they were married. Again the ceremony was in Yosemite, in her father's studio.
A strong figure in her own right, Virginia Best Adams was an active environmentalist and was the first woman to be elected to the board of the Sierra Club, a post she held from 1931-33. She was also credited with being one of the first to climb two peaks in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park.
After her father's death in 1936, Adams updated the inventory in the gallery and turned the emphasis toward photography. Instead of stocking cheap curios as remembrances of a Yosemite visit, the store began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from a more refined line of Indian arts, including rugs, pottery and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel Adams might travel to pursue his photography. At the same time, the popular gallery supported the growing family, which by then included son Michael and daughter Anne.
As a collaborator, Adams wrote the text for "Michael and Anne in the Yosemite Valley," a children's book describing a day in the life of her youngsters growing up in the High Sierra. Another book, "The Illustrated Guide to the Yosemite Valley," with her husband's photographs, was published in 1940 but was so popular that updated editions continued to surface into the 1960s.
In the 1950s, Virginia Best Adams' success with the gallery also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite." At that time she and her husband made their first foray into outside publishing, financing Edward Weston's "My Camera at Point Lobos," which while a critical success was a commercial failure. It proved to be the last book for Weston, whose ability to use a camera was becoming severely impaired by the onset of Parkinson's disease.
For the most part, however, Virginia Adams was content to be in the background. She was continually described by observers of the period as a gracious woman who was expert at both entertaining and making visitors welcome.
Camera shy and not generally at ease with reporters, she once summed up her contribution by saying simply "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going."
She is survived by her two children, Dr. Michael Adams of Fresno, and Anne Adams Helms of Stockton, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1984 at the age of 82.
In a news release late last week announcing her death and the memorial service, which was held Friday, the Adams family noted that "if friends want to honor her memory, the cause closest to her heart was The Virginia Adams Master Class Fund at the Carmel Bach Festival (P.O. Box 575, Carmel, Calif. 93921)."
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams: The Woman Behind The Legend
Ansel Adams, Family, and Friends
Virginia Best and Ansel Adams met in Yosemite in 1921. It was during one of Ansel's first summers in the park, and as an enthusiastic young musician at the time, his time in the mountains posed a dilemma: where to practice his music?
If Ansel wanted to fulfill his dreams of becoming a concert pianist, taking a three-month hiatus every summer would not do. As fortune would have it, that summer Ansel was introduced to Harry Best, the owner of Best's Studio, who kindly allowed him to practice on his old Chickering square piano. Ansel Hall, the first naturalist of the National Park System, made the introduction, and his son Roger is still great friends with Michael and Jeanne Adams, Ansel Adams' son 100 years later.
Harry Best had a seventeen-year-old daughter named Virginia, who had a beautiful contralto voice and thought about planning a career as a classical singer. Ansel became enamored with more than just the Chickerin g piano when he began spending his time practicing in Virginia's company. In his autobiography Ansel recalls: "We found considerable mutual interests in music, in Yosemite, and it turned out, in each other."
Having spent most of summers of her childhood in Yosemite, Virginia knew the landscape well and shared her knowledge of its wonders with Ansel.
The two spent more and more time together, and shared a reverence for both the grandeur and delicacy of the natural world all around them. As Yosemite underwent the ever-growing commercialization we see to this day, Virginia and Ansel confided in one another their dismay for development at the cost of the degradation of their beloved wild spaces. Said Ansel, "From the first years of friendship, I felt a rightness about the two of us. We were comfortable together."
In the winter of 1927, Ansel arrived to celebrate the New Year of 1928 with Virginia. It was then, after six years off and on of courting, that Ansel officially proposed and Virginia accepted. The two had gone back and forth on their engagement; exchanging letters and visits all the while. Ansel wanted to be more sure of his career before an official wedding celebration, and thought they were too young to be taken seriously. On January 2, 1928, just three days after the proposal, they were married at Best's Studio in Yosemite Valley with family and close friends. Ansel recalled the night:
"Virginia did not have time to buy a wedding dress and so she wore her best dress, which happened to be black. With perhaps a trace of scorn for tradition, along with a coat and tie, I wore knickers and my trusty basketball shoes."
The events of the evening made for quite an adventurous wedding night.
First, while he was putting chains on Harry Best's Dodge—loaned as the honeymoon getaway car—best friend and best man Cedric Wright lost the ring Ansel's parents had entrusted to his care. He found it in the slush under the car just in time for the ceremony. Next, Virginia, Ansel, Cedric and friend Ernst Bacon headed out of Yosemite Valley towards Berkeley, when on their way they had a flat tire. The jack would not fit under the car so they had to uproot a nearby mailbox post to use as a lever. Wrote Ansel, "The tire was exchanged, the mailbox post set back in its hole, and we continued on to Berkeley, arriving at Cedric's unheated home at midnight. Our bed was a roll-away, but we were so weary that it made no difference to us that night."
After their marriage, Ansel's career—which had shifted to photography—began to take off.
It was through Virginia that Yosemite became a constant in his life, a place he eventually made famous through his photographs of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, Merced River. At the time, the only residents of Yosemite were expected to be employed there, making a livelihood, or the family members of those who were doing so. Thus, Ansel's rather constant presence was legitimate. It also afforded him opportunities of access in all times of day and night and all seasons—essential for really knowing a place.
Harry Best in front of Best's Studio in Yosemite National Park, which still stands today as The Ansel Adams Gallery
It was 1936 when Virginia's father suddenly passed. She inherited Best's Studio, and for 36 years, ran what is now The Ansel Adams Gallery.
In the process of running the family business, Virginia helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work. Virginia and Ansel wanted to sell high quality merchandise rather than stocking cheap curios as Yosemite souvenirs. It was through this new business model that the gallery began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from Southwestern jewelry, handcrafts, rugs and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel might travel to pursue his photography. Virginia accompanied Ansel on a good deal of his travels, especially traveling to the Southwest to establish lasting partnerships with Indian traders and artisans whose work she represented and sold.
Virginia's hard work supported both her growing family, which included son Michael and daughter Anne, and also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite."
She was also gracious, and with a knack for entertaining visitors and making them feel welcome, Virginia nurtured a community that surrounded The Ansel Adams Gallery. The studio was a fun hub of cultural activity in Yosemite Valley, bringing together mountaineer friends, artists, and musicians who were talented and loved to party together. Virginia and Ansel's children, Michael and Anne, would sometimes sneak down and sit out of view on the stairs and listen to music and happy friends late at night.
Life then was pretty slow. Virginia had some bells on the front door that alerted her that someone had entered the studio while she was at home upstairs.
She would give them 10 or 15 minutes to see what was there and then she'd go down and help them out. Jeanne Adams remembers their family at the dining room table having lunch and strangers coming up and through the house to use the bathroom. The space was friendly, simple, primitive, and invited people in as there were not many services available to the visitor at that time. One of the distinguishing features of Virginia and Ansel's life in Yosemite was their inclusiveness, that regardless of possible frictions between "company" and "government," Best's Studio and the hospital were always friendly and easy places to be and socialize.
For the most part, Virginia was content to be in the background. A bit camera shy and according to an article in the LA Times, "not generally at ease with reporters," she once summed up her contribution by saying simply, "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going." But Virginia did more than that—she nurtured a space with undeniable goodwill, one that still celebrates the arts and the environment in the heart of Yosemite, and which is enjoying its 117th year in operation.
Beyond The Ansel Adams Gallery, Virginia was an active environmentalist and served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1931-33 when her son Michael was born.
Then, Ansel ran for the board member seat and won and continued for decades. Virginia was also a Trustee of the Yosemite Natural History Association, and a mountaineer. She has been credited with making the first ascent by a woman of a route on Mt. Whitney in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park. It is with Virginia's guidance and roots in Yosemite, steadfast care for the family business, and lifetime support of Ansel's work that we have grown to know so well and love Yosemite National Park and the American West.
Copied from "www.anseladams.com/virginia-best-adams-wife-ansel-adams/"
Updated December 31, 2020
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams (1904-2000)
Virginia Best was 17 years old when she met 19-year-old Ansel Adams in 1921. The two shared a passion for the outdoors and for classical music. With a contralto voice that Ansel found beautiful, Virginia intended to become a singer, while he was planning to become a pianist.
It was Ansel's need for piano practice that led him to Virginia. Her father, Harry Best, owned a piano that Ansel would practice on while visiting Yosemite. Best owned a gift shop in Yosemite called Best's Studio. The store sold wood carvings, books, and Best's paintings of Yosemite.
After her mother died in 1920, Virginia kept house for her father. She and Ansel exchanged many affectionate letters during their long courtship. They became engaged once, but Ansel broke off the engagement. They were engaged again when Ansel visited Yosemite on December 31, 1927, for a New Year's Eve celebration. The wedding took place three days later, on January 2, 1928. Virginia wore a black dress, because it was the best one she owned, and there was no time to purchase a wedding gown. Ansel wore a coat and tie, knickers, and basketball shoes. The ceremony was nearly delayed because Ansel's best man lost the wedding ring. He had dropped it in the snow while attaching chains to the bridal getaway car. After much searching, he found the ring in enough time for the wedding to proceed as scheduled. It had been buried in the slush underneath the car.
Like Ansel, Virginia was an avid hiker. They were both members of the Sierra Club, and often went on Club-sponsored hikes. Virginia served on the Sierra Club's board of directors from 1931 to 1933, until her first child was born.
Virginia was expecting their first child in August 1933, while Ansel was one of the leaders of a month-long expedition to the Kings River region. Knowing the baby was due, Ansel left the hike a day early -- only to find out that little Michael had arrived two days before. Despite Ansel's absence, Virginia had a remarkably easy birth. She wrote, "I certainly didn't need an anesthetic. Dr. Dewey said it was one of the easiest first births he'd had. Once he said, 'You're entitled to holler,' but I didn't feel the inclination."
Two years later, Virginia gave birth to a daughter, again in her husband's absence. Ansel was on a photographic assignment in the Sierra Nevada when little Anne arrived one day before his return to their home.
After her father died in 1936, Virginia inherited the operation of Best's Studio. Because they wanted to sell only high-quality merchandise, Virginia and Ansel decided to produce some of it themselves. The National Park Service would not let the shop act as a publisher, so Virginia and Ansel formed a company along with three friends, which they called Five Associates. The company published high-quality photographic postcards and notecards, as well as serious picture books and guidebooks. Best's Studio even sold some 8-by-10 inch prints of Ansel's photographs of Yosemite.
In 1941 Virginia and Ansel wrote a children's book called Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley. Although the book was quite successful, Ansel was not pleased with the results, "The reproductions were terrible and the editor ruined the simplicity of Virginia's text by making it conventionally inane at every opportunity."
Virginia eventually turned Five Associates over to her daughter. Anne renamed the company Museum Graphics. She continued to print high-quality notecards and postcards featuring photographs by her father, as well as other photographers.
After having outlived Ansel by 16 years, Virginia Best Adams passed away at the age of 96 on January 29, 2000.
PBS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE COLLECTION
Copied from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ansel-virginia-best-adams-1904-2000/"
©1996–2021 WGBH Educational Foundation
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams; Ansel Adams' Widow
By JON THURBER
Feb. 7, 2000 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Yosemite was a constant touchstone in the life of Virginia Best Adams, the sometimes collaborator, sometimes publisher and overall steadying influence in the life of her husband, the late photographer Ansel Adams.
But her roots to Yosemite, the park her husband helped make famous in his classic photographs of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley, took hold much earlier and flourished far longer than the better-known Ansel's.
The quiet woman behind the famous photographer was born to San Franciscan parents who had married at the foot of Bridal Veil Falls in 1901, and she actually lived in the park for 68 years--from the time she was 6 months old until 1972, when she moved with her husband to the Monterey Bay area. Even beyond that, Yosemite remained "home" to her, and she returned there time and again to vote or attend the Bracebridge dinners at the Ahwahnee Hotel. She made her last visit about five years ago when she was 91.
For 36 years, Virginia Best Adams, who died Jan. 29 at her home in Carmel Highlands at the age of 96, ran what is now the Ansel Adams Gallery and in the process helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work.
Advertisement
That gallery, started by her father, Harry Cassie Best, a landscape painter, in 1902, is now operated by her son's family. It is the oldest concession in the national park system operated continually by the same family.
Growing up in Yosemite was a special time for Virginia Best, a girl who loved the outdoors, with plenty of chances available to explore the valley. But her early life was not without its hardships. Her mother died of tuberculosis when Virginia was just 16. As an only child, she took over running the household and began helping out in her father's studio, which by then had also become a gift shop selling curios and crafts.
A year later, a budding young pianist began stopping by the Best home, which had--in addition to the blond, blue-eyed Virginia--a Chickering upright piano. The young pianist's name was Ansel Adams.
Several years later they were married. Again the ceremony was in Yosemite, in her father's studio.
A strong figure in her own right, Virginia Best Adams was an active environmentalist and was the first woman to be elected to the board of the Sierra Club, a post she held from 1931-33. She was also credited with being one of the first to climb two peaks in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park.
After her father's death in 1936, Adams updated the inventory in the gallery and turned the emphasis toward photography. Instead of stocking cheap curios as remembrances of a Yosemite visit, the store began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from a more refined line of Indian arts, including rugs, pottery and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel Adams might travel to pursue his photography. At the same time, the popular gallery supported the growing family, which by then included son Michael and daughter Anne.
As a collaborator, Adams wrote the text for "Michael and Anne in the Yosemite Valley," a children's book describing a day in the life of her youngsters growing up in the High Sierra. Another book, "The Illustrated Guide to the Yosemite Valley," with her husband's photographs, was published in 1940 but was so popular that updated editions continued to surface into the 1960s.
In the 1950s, Virginia Best Adams' success with the gallery also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite." At that time she and her husband made their first foray into outside publishing, financing Edward Weston's "My Camera at Point Lobos," which while a critical success was a commercial failure. It proved to be the last book for Weston, whose ability to use a camera was becoming severely impaired by the onset of Parkinson's disease.
For the most part, however, Virginia Adams was content to be in the background. She was continually described by observers of the period as a gracious woman who was expert at both entertaining and making visitors welcome.
Camera shy and not generally at ease with reporters, she once summed up her contribution by saying simply "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going."
She is survived by her two children, Dr. Michael Adams of Fresno, and Anne Adams Helms of Stockton, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1984 at the age of 82.
In a news release late last week announcing her death and the memorial service, which was held Friday, the Adams family noted that "if friends want to honor her memory, the cause closest to her heart was The Virginia Adams Master Class Fund at the Carmel Bach Festival (P.O. Box 575, Carmel, Calif. 93921)."
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams: The Woman Behind The Legend
Ansel Adams, Family, and Friends
Virginia Best and Ansel Adams met in Yosemite in 1921. It was during one of Ansel's first summers in the park, and as an enthusiastic young musician at the time, his time in the mountains posed a dilemma: where to practice his music?
If Ansel wanted to fulfill his dreams of becoming a concert pianist, taking a three-month hiatus every summer would not do. As fortune would have it, that summer Ansel was introduced to Harry Best, the owner of Best's Studio, who kindly allowed him to practice on his old Chickering square piano. Ansel Hall, the first naturalist of the National Park System, made the introduction, and his son Roger is still great friends with Michael and Jeanne Adams, Ansel Adams' son 100 years later.
Harry Best had a seventeen-year-old daughter named Virginia, who had a beautiful contralto voice and thought about planning a career as a classical singer. Ansel became enamored with more than just the Chickerin g piano when he began spending his time practicing in Virginia's company. In his autobiography Ansel recalls: "We found considerable mutual interests in music, in Yosemite, and it turned out, in each other."
Having spent most of summers of her childhood in Yosemite, Virginia knew the landscape well and shared her knowledge of its wonders with Ansel.
The two spent more and more time together, and shared a reverence for both the grandeur and delicacy of the natural world all around them. As Yosemite underwent the ever-growing commercialization we see to this day, Virginia and Ansel confided in one another their dismay for development at the cost of the degradation of their beloved wild spaces. Said Ansel, "From the first years of friendship, I felt a rightness about the two of us. We were comfortable together."
In the winter of 1927, Ansel arrived to celebrate the New Year of 1928 with Virginia. It was then, after six years off and on of courting, that Ansel officially proposed and Virginia accepted. The two had gone back and forth on their engagement; exchanging letters and visits all the while. Ansel wanted to be more sure of his career before an official wedding celebration, and thought they were too young to be taken seriously. On January 2, 1928, just three days after the proposal, they were married at Best's Studio in Yosemite Valley with family and close friends. Ansel recalled the night:
"Virginia did not have time to buy a wedding dress and so she wore her best dress, which happened to be black. With perhaps a trace of scorn for tradition, along with a coat and tie, I wore knickers and my trusty basketball shoes."
The events of the evening made for quite an adventurous wedding night.
First, while he was putting chains on Harry Best's Dodge—loaned as the honeymoon getaway car—best friend and best man Cedric Wright lost the ring Ansel's parents had entrusted to his care. He found it in the slush under the car just in time for the ceremony. Next, Virginia, Ansel, Cedric and friend Ernst Bacon headed out of Yosemite Valley towards Berkeley, when on their way they had a flat tire. The jack would not fit under the car so they had to uproot a nearby mailbox post to use as a lever. Wrote Ansel, "The tire was exchanged, the mailbox post set back in its hole, and we continued on to Berkeley, arriving at Cedric's unheated home at midnight. Our bed was a roll-away, but we were so weary that it made no difference to us that night."
After their marriage, Ansel's career—which had shifted to photography—began to take off.
It was through Virginia that Yosemite became a constant in his life, a place he eventually made famous through his photographs of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, Merced River. At the time, the only residents of Yosemite were expected to be employed there, making a livelihood, or the family members of those who were doing so. Thus, Ansel's rather constant presence was legitimate. It also afforded him opportunities of access in all times of day and night and all seasons—essential for really knowing a place.
Harry Best in front of Best's Studio in Yosemite National Park, which still stands today as The Ansel Adams Gallery
It was 1936 when Virginia's father suddenly passed. She inherited Best's Studio, and for 36 years, ran what is now The Ansel Adams Gallery.
In the process of running the family business, Virginia helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work. Virginia and Ansel wanted to sell high quality merchandise rather than stocking cheap curios as Yosemite souvenirs. It was through this new business model that the gallery began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from Southwestern jewelry, handcrafts, rugs and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel might travel to pursue his photography. Virginia accompanied Ansel on a good deal of his travels, especially traveling to the Southwest to establish lasting partnerships with Indian traders and artisans whose work she represented and sold.
Virginia's hard work supported both her growing family, which included son Michael and daughter Anne, and also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite."
She was also gracious, and with a knack for entertaining visitors and making them feel welcome, Virginia nurtured a community that surrounded The Ansel Adams Gallery. The studio was a fun hub of cultural activity in Yosemite Valley, bringing together mountaineer friends, artists, and musicians who were talented and loved to party together. Virginia and Ansel's children, Michael and Anne, would sometimes sneak down and sit out of view on the stairs and listen to music and happy friends late at night.
Life then was pretty slow. Virginia had some bells on the front door that alerted her that someone had entered the studio while she was at home upstairs.
She would give them 10 or 15 minutes to see what was there and then she'd go down and help them out. Jeanne Adams remembers their family at the dining room table having lunch and strangers coming up and through the house to use the bathroom. The space was friendly, simple, primitive, and invited people in as there were not many services available to the visitor at that time. One of the distinguishing features of Virginia and Ansel's life in Yosemite was their inclusiveness, that regardless of possible frictions between "company" and "government," Best's Studio and the hospital were always friendly and easy places to be and socialize.
For the most part, Virginia was content to be in the background. A bit camera shy and according to an article in the LA Times, "not generally at ease with reporters," she once summed up her contribution by saying simply, "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going." But Virginia did more than that—she nurtured a space with undeniable goodwill, one that still celebrates the arts and the environment in the heart of Yosemite, and which is enjoying its 117th year in operation.
Beyond The Ansel Adams Gallery, Virginia was an active environmentalist and served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1931-33 when her son Michael was born.
Then, Ansel ran for the board member seat and won and continued for decades. Virginia was also a Trustee of the Yosemite Natural History Association, and a mountaineer. She has been credited with making the first ascent by a woman of a route on Mt. Whitney in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park. It is with Virginia's guidance and roots in Yosemite, steadfast care for the family business, and lifetime support of Ansel's work that we have grown to know so well and love Yosemite National Park and the American West.
Copied from "www.anseladams.com/virginia-best-adams-wife-ansel-adams/"
Updated December 31, 2020
─────────────────────────────────────────────
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams (1904-2000)
Virginia Best was 17 years old when she met 19-year-old Ansel Adams in 1921. The two shared a passion for the outdoors and for classical music. With a contralto voice that Ansel found beautiful, Virginia intended to become a singer, while he was planning to become a pianist.
It was Ansel's need for piano practice that led him to Virginia. Her father, Harry Best, owned a piano that Ansel would practice on while visiting Yosemite. Best owned a gift shop in Yosemite called Best's Studio. The store sold wood carvings, books, and Best's paintings of Yosemite.
After her mother died in 1920, Virginia kept house for her father. She and Ansel exchanged many affectionate letters during their long courtship. They became engaged once, but Ansel broke off the engagement. They were engaged again when Ansel visited Yosemite on December 31, 1927, for a New Year's Eve celebration. The wedding took place three days later, on January 2, 1928. Virginia wore a black dress, because it was the best one she owned, and there was no time to purchase a wedding gown. Ansel wore a coat and tie, knickers, and basketball shoes. The ceremony was nearly delayed because Ansel's best man lost the wedding ring. He had dropped it in the snow while attaching chains to the bridal getaway car. After much searching, he found the ring in enough time for the wedding to proceed as scheduled. It had been buried in the slush underneath the car.
Like Ansel, Virginia was an avid hiker. They were both members of the Sierra Club, and often went on Club-sponsored hikes. Virginia served on the Sierra Club's board of directors from 1931 to 1933, until her first child was born.
Virginia was expecting their first child in August 1933, while Ansel was one of the leaders of a month-long expedition to the Kings River region. Knowing the baby was due, Ansel left the hike a day early -- only to find out that little Michael had arrived two days before. Despite Ansel's absence, Virginia had a remarkably easy birth. She wrote, "I certainly didn't need an anesthetic. Dr. Dewey said it was one of the easiest first births he'd had. Once he said, 'You're entitled to holler,' but I didn't feel the inclination."
Two years later, Virginia gave birth to a daughter, again in her husband's absence. Ansel was on a photographic assignment in the Sierra Nevada when little Anne arrived one day before his return to their home.
After her father died in 1936, Virginia inherited the operation of Best's Studio. Because they wanted to sell only high-quality merchandise, Virginia and Ansel decided to produce some of it themselves. The National Park Service would not let the shop act as a publisher, so Virginia and Ansel formed a company along with three friends, which they called Five Associates. The company published high-quality photographic postcards and notecards, as well as serious picture books and guidebooks. Best's Studio even sold some 8-by-10 inch prints of Ansel's photographs of Yosemite.
In 1941 Virginia and Ansel wrote a children's book called Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley. Although the book was quite successful, Ansel was not pleased with the results, "The reproductions were terrible and the editor ruined the simplicity of Virginia's text by making it conventionally inane at every opportunity."
Virginia eventually turned Five Associates over to her daughter. Anne renamed the company Museum Graphics. She continued to print high-quality notecards and postcards featuring photographs by her father, as well as other photographers.
After having outlived Ansel by 16 years, Virginia Best Adams passed away at the age of 96 on January 29, 2000.
PBS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE COLLECTION
Copied from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ansel-virginia-best-adams-1904-2000/"
©1996–2021 WGBH Educational Foundation
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams; Ansel Adams' Widow
By JON THURBER
Feb. 7, 2000 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Yosemite was a constant touchstone in the life of Virginia Best Adams, the sometimes collaborator, sometimes publisher and overall steadying influence in the life of her husband, the late photographer Ansel Adams.
But her roots to Yosemite, the park her husband helped make famous in his classic photographs of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley, took hold much earlier and flourished far longer than the better-known Ansel's.
The quiet woman behind the famous photographer was born to San Franciscan parents who had married at the foot of Bridal Veil Falls in 1901, and she actually lived in the park for 68 years--from the time she was 6 months old until 1972, when she moved with her husband to the Monterey Bay area. Even beyond that, Yosemite remained "home" to her, and she returned there time and again to vote or attend the Bracebridge dinners at the Ahwahnee Hotel. She made her last visit about five years ago when she was 91.
For 36 years, Virginia Best Adams, who died Jan. 29 at her home in Carmel Highlands at the age of 96, ran what is now the Ansel Adams Gallery and in the process helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work.
Advertisement
That gallery, started by her father, Harry Cassie Best, a landscape painter, in 1902, is now operated by her son's family. It is the oldest concession in the national park system operated continually by the same family.
Growing up in Yosemite was a special time for Virginia Best, a girl who loved the outdoors, with plenty of chances available to explore the valley. But her early life was not without its hardships. Her mother died of tuberculosis when Virginia was just 16. As an only child, she took over running the household and began helping out in her father's studio, which by then had also become a gift shop selling curios and crafts.
A year later, a budding young pianist began stopping by the Best home, which had--in addition to the blond, blue-eyed Virginia--a Chickering upright piano. The young pianist's name was Ansel Adams.
Several years later they were married. Again the ceremony was in Yosemite, in her father's studio.
A strong figure in her own right, Virginia Best Adams was an active environmentalist and was the first woman to be elected to the board of the Sierra Club, a post she held from 1931-33. She was also credited with being one of the first to climb two peaks in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park.
After her father's death in 1936, Adams updated the inventory in the gallery and turned the emphasis toward photography. Instead of stocking cheap curios as remembrances of a Yosemite visit, the store began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from a more refined line of Indian arts, including rugs, pottery and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel Adams might travel to pursue his photography. At the same time, the popular gallery supported the growing family, which by then included son Michael and daughter Anne.
As a collaborator, Adams wrote the text for "Michael and Anne in the Yosemite Valley," a children's book describing a day in the life of her youngsters growing up in the High Sierra. Another book, "The Illustrated Guide to the Yosemite Valley," with her husband's photographs, was published in 1940 but was so popular that updated editions continued to surface into the 1960s.
In the 1950s, Virginia Best Adams' success with the gallery also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite." At that time she and her husband made their first foray into outside publishing, financing Edward Weston's "My Camera at Point Lobos," which while a critical success was a commercial failure. It proved to be the last book for Weston, whose ability to use a camera was becoming severely impaired by the onset of Parkinson's disease.
For the most part, however, Virginia Adams was content to be in the background. She was continually described by observers of the period as a gracious woman who was expert at both entertaining and making visitors welcome.
Camera shy and not generally at ease with reporters, she once summed up her contribution by saying simply "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going."
She is survived by her two children, Dr. Michael Adams of Fresno, and Anne Adams Helms of Stockton, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1984 at the age of 82.
In a news release late last week announcing her death and the memorial service, which was held Friday, the Adams family noted that "if friends want to honor her memory, the cause closest to her heart was The Virginia Adams Master Class Fund at the Carmel Bach Festival (P.O. Box 575, Carmel, Calif. 93921)."
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams: The Woman Behind The Legend
Ansel Adams, Family, and Friends
Virginia Best and Ansel Adams met in Yosemite in 1921. It was during one of Ansel's first summers in the park, and as an enthusiastic young musician at the time, his time in the mountains posed a dilemma: where to practice his music?
If Ansel wanted to fulfill his dreams of becoming a concert pianist, taking a three-month hiatus every summer would not do. As fortune would have it, that summer Ansel was introduced to Harry Best, the owner of Best's Studio, who kindly allowed him to practice on his old Chickering square piano. Ansel Hall, the first naturalist of the National Park System, made the introduction, and his son Roger is still great friends with Michael and Jeanne Adams, Ansel Adams' son 100 years later.
Harry Best had a seventeen-year-old daughter named Virginia, who had a beautiful contralto voice and thought about planning a career as a classical singer. Ansel became enamored with more than just the Chickerin g piano when he began spending his time practicing in Virginia's company. In his autobiography Ansel recalls: "We found considerable mutual interests in music, in Yosemite, and it turned out, in each other."
Having spent most of summers of her childhood in Yosemite, Virginia knew the landscape well and shared her knowledge of its wonders with Ansel.
The two spent more and more time together, and shared a reverence for both the grandeur and delicacy of the natural world all around them. As Yosemite underwent the ever-growing commercialization we see to this day, Virginia and Ansel confided in one another their dismay for development at the cost of the degradation of their beloved wild spaces. Said Ansel, "From the first years of friendship, I felt a rightness about the two of us. We were comfortable together."
In the winter of 1927, Ansel arrived to celebrate the New Year of 1928 with Virginia. It was then, after six years off and on of courting, that Ansel officially proposed and Virginia accepted. The two had gone back and forth on their engagement; exchanging letters and visits all the while. Ansel wanted to be more sure of his career before an official wedding celebration, and thought they were too young to be taken seriously. On January 2, 1928, just three days after the proposal, they were married at Best's Studio in Yosemite Valley with family and close friends. Ansel recalled the night:
"Virginia did not have time to buy a wedding dress and so she wore her best dress, which happened to be black. With perhaps a trace of scorn for tradition, along with a coat and tie, I wore knickers and my trusty basketball shoes."
The events of the evening made for quite an adventurous wedding night.
First, while he was putting chains on Harry Best's Dodge—loaned as the honeymoon getaway car—best friend and best man Cedric Wright lost the ring Ansel's parents had entrusted to his care. He found it in the slush under the car just in time for the ceremony. Next, Virginia, Ansel, Cedric and friend Ernst Bacon headed out of Yosemite Valley towards Berkeley, when on their way they had a flat tire. The jack would not fit under the car so they had to uproot a nearby mailbox post to use as a lever. Wrote Ansel, "The tire was exchanged, the mailbox post set back in its hole, and we continued on to Berkeley, arriving at Cedric's unheated home at midnight. Our bed was a roll-away, but we were so weary that it made no difference to us that night."
After their marriage, Ansel's career—which had shifted to photography—began to take off.
It was through Virginia that Yosemite became a constant in his life, a place he eventually made famous through his photographs of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, Merced River. At the time, the only residents of Yosemite were expected to be employed there, making a livelihood, or the family members of those who were doing so. Thus, Ansel's rather constant presence was legitimate. It also afforded him opportunities of access in all times of day and night and all seasons—essential for really knowing a place.
Harry Best in front of Best's Studio in Yosemite National Park, which still stands today as The Ansel Adams Gallery
It was 1936 when Virginia's father suddenly passed. She inherited Best's Studio, and for 36 years, ran what is now The Ansel Adams Gallery.
In the process of running the family business, Virginia helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work. Virginia and Ansel wanted to sell high quality merchandise rather than stocking cheap curios as Yosemite souvenirs. It was through this new business model that the gallery began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from Southwestern jewelry, handcrafts, rugs and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel might travel to pursue his photography. Virginia accompanied Ansel on a good deal of his travels, especially traveling to the Southwest to establish lasting partnerships with Indian traders and artisans whose work she represented and sold.
Virginia's hard work supported both her growing family, which included son Michael and daughter Anne, and also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite."
She was also gracious, and with a knack for entertaining visitors and making them feel welcome, Virginia nurtured a community that surrounded The Ansel Adams Gallery. The studio was a fun hub of cultural activity in Yosemite Valley, bringing together mountaineer friends, artists, and musicians who were talented and loved to party together. Virginia and Ansel's children, Michael and Anne, would sometimes sneak down and sit out of view on the stairs and listen to music and happy friends late at night.
Life then was pretty slow. Virginia had some bells on the front door that alerted her that someone had entered the studio while she was at home upstairs.
She would give them 10 or 15 minutes to see what was there and then she'd go down and help them out. Jeanne Adams remembers their family at the dining room table having lunch and strangers coming up and through the house to use the bathroom. The space was friendly, simple, primitive, and invited people in as there were not many services available to the visitor at that time. One of the distinguishing features of Virginia and Ansel's life in Yosemite was their inclusiveness, that regardless of possible frictions between "company" and "government," Best's Studio and the hospital were always friendly and easy places to be and socialize.
For the most part, Virginia was content to be in the background. A bit camera shy and according to an article in the LA Times, "not generally at ease with reporters," she once summed up her contribution by saying simply, "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going." But Virginia did more than that—she nurtured a space with undeniable goodwill, one that still celebrates the arts and the environment in the heart of Yosemite, and which is enjoying its 117th year in operation.
Beyond The Ansel Adams Gallery, Virginia was an active environmentalist and served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1931-33 when her son Michael was born.
Then, Ansel ran for the board member seat and won and continued for decades. Virginia was also a Trustee of the Yosemite Natural History Association, and a mountaineer. She has been credited with making the first ascent by a woman of a route on Mt. Whitney in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park. It is with Virginia's guidance and roots in Yosemite, steadfast care for the family business, and lifetime support of Ansel's work that we have grown to know so well and love Yosemite National Park and the American West.
Copied from "www.anseladams.com/virginia-best-adams-wife-ansel-adams/"
Updated December 31, 2020
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams (1904-2000)
Virginia Best was 17 years old when she met 19-year-old Ansel Adams in 1921. The two shared a passion for the outdoors and for classical music. With a contralto voice that Ansel found beautiful, Virginia intended to become a singer, while he was planning to become a pianist.
It was Ansel's need for piano practice that led him to Virginia. Her father, Harry Best, owned a piano that Ansel would practice on while visiting Yosemite. Best owned a gift shop in Yosemite called Best's Studio. The store sold wood carvings, books, and Best's paintings of Yosemite.
After her mother died in 1920, Virginia kept house for her father. She and Ansel exchanged many affectionate letters during their long courtship. They became engaged once, but Ansel broke off the engagement. They were engaged again when Ansel visited Yosemite on December 31, 1927, for a New Year's Eve celebration. The wedding took place three days later, on January 2, 1928. Virginia wore a black dress, because it was the best one she owned, and there was no time to purchase a wedding gown. Ansel wore a coat and tie, knickers, and basketball shoes. The ceremony was nearly delayed because Ansel's best man lost the wedding ring. He had dropped it in the snow while attaching chains to the bridal getaway car. After much searching, he found the ring in enough time for the wedding to proceed as scheduled. It had been buried in the slush underneath the car.
Like Ansel, Virginia was an avid hiker. They were both members of the Sierra Club, and often went on Club-sponsored hikes. Virginia served on the Sierra Club's board of directors from 1931 to 1933, until her first child was born.
Virginia was expecting their first child in August 1933, while Ansel was one of the leaders of a month-long expedition to the Kings River region. Knowing the baby was due, Ansel left the hike a day early -- only to find out that little Michael had arrived two days before. Despite Ansel's absence, Virginia had a remarkably easy birth. She wrote, "I certainly didn't need an anesthetic. Dr. Dewey said it was one of the easiest first births he'd had. Once he said, 'You're entitled to holler,' but I didn't feel the inclination."
Two years later, Virginia gave birth to a daughter, again in her husband's absence. Ansel was on a photographic assignment in the Sierra Nevada when little Anne arrived one day before his return to their home.
After her father died in 1936, Virginia inherited the operation of Best's Studio. Because they wanted to sell only high-quality merchandise, Virginia and Ansel decided to produce some of it themselves. The National Park Service would not let the shop act as a publisher, so Virginia and Ansel formed a company along with three friends, which they called Five Associates. The company published high-quality photographic postcards and notecards, as well as serious picture books and guidebooks. Best's Studio even sold some 8-by-10 inch prints of Ansel's photographs of Yosemite.
In 1941 Virginia and Ansel wrote a children's book called Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley. Although the book was quite successful, Ansel was not pleased with the results, "The reproductions were terrible and the editor ruined the simplicity of Virginia's text by making it conventionally inane at every opportunity."
Virginia eventually turned Five Associates over to her daughter. Anne renamed the company Museum Graphics. She continued to print high-quality notecards and postcards featuring photographs by her father, as well as other photographers.
After having outlived Ansel by 16 years, Virginia Best Adams passed away at the age of 96 on January 29, 2000.
PBS AMERICAN EXPERIENCE COLLECTION
Copied from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/ansel-virginia-best-adams-1904-2000/"
©1996–2021 WGBH Educational Foundation
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams; Ansel Adams' Widow
By JON THURBER
Feb. 7, 2000 12 AM PT
TIMES STAFF WRITER
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Yosemite was a constant touchstone in the life of Virginia Best Adams, the sometimes collaborator, sometimes publisher and overall steadying influence in the life of her husband, the late photographer Ansel Adams.
But her roots to Yosemite, the park her husband helped make famous in his classic photographs of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley, took hold much earlier and flourished far longer than the better-known Ansel's.
The quiet woman behind the famous photographer was born to San Franciscan parents who had married at the foot of Bridal Veil Falls in 1901, and she actually lived in the park for 68 years--from the time she was 6 months old until 1972, when she moved with her husband to the Monterey Bay area. Even beyond that, Yosemite remained "home" to her, and she returned there time and again to vote or attend the Bracebridge dinners at the Ahwahnee Hotel. She made her last visit about five years ago when she was 91.
For 36 years, Virginia Best Adams, who died Jan. 29 at her home in Carmel Highlands at the age of 96, ran what is now the Ansel Adams Gallery and in the process helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work.
Advertisement
That gallery, started by her father, Harry Cassie Best, a landscape painter, in 1902, is now operated by her son's family. It is the oldest concession in the national park system operated continually by the same family.
Growing up in Yosemite was a special time for Virginia Best, a girl who loved the outdoors, with plenty of chances available to explore the valley. But her early life was not without its hardships. Her mother died of tuberculosis when Virginia was just 16. As an only child, she took over running the household and began helping out in her father's studio, which by then had also become a gift shop selling curios and crafts.
A year later, a budding young pianist began stopping by the Best home, which had--in addition to the blond, blue-eyed Virginia--a Chickering upright piano. The young pianist's name was Ansel Adams.
Several years later they were married. Again the ceremony was in Yosemite, in her father's studio.
A strong figure in her own right, Virginia Best Adams was an active environmentalist and was the first woman to be elected to the board of the Sierra Club, a post she held from 1931-33. She was also credited with being one of the first to climb two peaks in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park.
After her father's death in 1936, Adams updated the inventory in the gallery and turned the emphasis toward photography. Instead of stocking cheap curios as remembrances of a Yosemite visit, the store began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from a more refined line of Indian arts, including rugs, pottery and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel Adams might travel to pursue his photography. At the same time, the popular gallery supported the growing family, which by then included son Michael and daughter Anne.
As a collaborator, Adams wrote the text for "Michael and Anne in the Yosemite Valley," a children's book describing a day in the life of her youngsters growing up in the High Sierra. Another book, "The Illustrated Guide to the Yosemite Valley," with her husband's photographs, was published in 1940 but was so popular that updated editions continued to surface into the 1960s.
In the 1950s, Virginia Best Adams' success with the gallery also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite." At that time she and her husband made their first foray into outside publishing, financing Edward Weston's "My Camera at Point Lobos," which while a critical success was a commercial failure. It proved to be the last book for Weston, whose ability to use a camera was becoming severely impaired by the onset of Parkinson's disease.
For the most part, however, Virginia Adams was content to be in the background. She was continually described by observers of the period as a gracious woman who was expert at both entertaining and making visitors welcome.
Camera shy and not generally at ease with reporters, she once summed up her contribution by saying simply "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going."
She is survived by her two children, Dr. Michael Adams of Fresno, and Anne Adams Helms of Stockton, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1984 at the age of 82.
In a news release late last week announcing her death and the memorial service, which was held Friday, the Adams family noted that "if friends want to honor her memory, the cause closest to her heart was The Virginia Adams Master Class Fund at the Carmel Bach Festival (P.O. Box 575, Carmel, Calif. 93921)."
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Virginia Best Adams: The Woman Behind The Legend
Ansel Adams, Family, and Friends
Virginia Best and Ansel Adams met in Yosemite in 1921. It was during one of Ansel's first summers in the park, and as an enthusiastic young musician at the time, his time in the mountains posed a dilemma: where to practice his music?
If Ansel wanted to fulfill his dreams of becoming a concert pianist, taking a three-month hiatus every summer would not do. As fortune would have it, that summer Ansel was introduced to Harry Best, the owner of Best's Studio, who kindly allowed him to practice on his old Chickering square piano. Ansel Hall, the first naturalist of the National Park System, made the introduction, and his son Roger is still great friends with Michael and Jeanne Adams, Ansel Adams' son 100 years later.
Harry Best had a seventeen-year-old daughter named Virginia, who had a beautiful contralto voice and thought about planning a career as a classical singer. Ansel became enamored with more than just the Chickerin g piano when he began spending his time practicing in Virginia's company. In his autobiography Ansel recalls: "We found considerable mutual interests in music, in Yosemite, and it turned out, in each other."
Having spent most of summers of her childhood in Yosemite, Virginia knew the landscape well and shared her knowledge of its wonders with Ansel.
The two spent more and more time together, and shared a reverence for both the grandeur and delicacy of the natural world all around them. As Yosemite underwent the ever-growing commercialization we see to this day, Virginia and Ansel confided in one another their dismay for development at the cost of the degradation of their beloved wild spaces. Said Ansel, "From the first years of friendship, I felt a rightness about the two of us. We were comfortable together."
In the winter of 1927, Ansel arrived to celebrate the New Year of 1928 with Virginia. It was then, after six years off and on of courting, that Ansel officially proposed and Virginia accepted. The two had gone back and forth on their engagement; exchanging letters and visits all the while. Ansel wanted to be more sure of his career before an official wedding celebration, and thought they were too young to be taken seriously. On January 2, 1928, just three days after the proposal, they were married at Best's Studio in Yosemite Valley with family and close friends. Ansel recalled the night:
"Virginia did not have time to buy a wedding dress and so she wore her best dress, which happened to be black. With perhaps a trace of scorn for tradition, along with a coat and tie, I wore knickers and my trusty basketball shoes."
The events of the evening made for quite an adventurous wedding night.
First, while he was putting chains on Harry Best's Dodge—loaned as the honeymoon getaway car—best friend and best man Cedric Wright lost the ring Ansel's parents had entrusted to his care. He found it in the slush under the car just in time for the ceremony. Next, Virginia, Ansel, Cedric and friend Ernst Bacon headed out of Yosemite Valley towards Berkeley, when on their way they had a flat tire. The jack would not fit under the car so they had to uproot a nearby mailbox post to use as a lever. Wrote Ansel, "The tire was exchanged, the mailbox post set back in its hole, and we continued on to Berkeley, arriving at Cedric's unheated home at midnight. Our bed was a roll-away, but we were so weary that it made no difference to us that night."
After their marriage, Ansel's career—which had shifted to photography—began to take off.
It was through Virginia that Yosemite became a constant in his life, a place he eventually made famous through his photographs of Half Dome, Yosemite Valley, Merced River. At the time, the only residents of Yosemite were expected to be employed there, making a livelihood, or the family members of those who were doing so. Thus, Ansel's rather constant presence was legitimate. It also afforded him opportunities of access in all times of day and night and all seasons—essential for really knowing a place.
Harry Best in front of Best's Studio in Yosemite National Park, which still stands today as The Ansel Adams Gallery
It was 1936 when Virginia's father suddenly passed. She inherited Best's Studio, and for 36 years, ran what is now The Ansel Adams Gallery.
In the process of running the family business, Virginia helped give her husband the wherewithal for him to do his photographic work. Virginia and Ansel wanted to sell high quality merchandise rather than stocking cheap curios as Yosemite souvenirs. It was through this new business model that the gallery began selling a series of Ansel Adams photographs called "special edition prints." Sales of these prints, as well as profits from Southwestern jewelry, handcrafts, rugs and ceramics, provided a steady income so that Ansel might travel to pursue his photography. Virginia accompanied Ansel on a good deal of his travels, especially traveling to the Southwest to establish lasting partnerships with Indian traders and artisans whose work she represented and sold.
Virginia's hard work supported both her growing family, which included son Michael and daughter Anne, and also financed the publication of two of her husband's books, "My Camera in the National Park," and "My Camera in Yosemite."
She was also gracious, and with a knack for entertaining visitors and making them feel welcome, Virginia nurtured a community that surrounded The Ansel Adams Gallery. The studio was a fun hub of cultural activity in Yosemite Valley, bringing together mountaineer friends, artists, and musicians who were talented and loved to party together. Virginia and Ansel's children, Michael and Anne, would sometimes sneak down and sit out of view on the stairs and listen to music and happy friends late at night.
Life then was pretty slow. Virginia had some bells on the front door that alerted her that someone had entered the studio while she was at home upstairs.
She would give them 10 or 15 minutes to see what was there and then she'd go down and help them out. Jeanne Adams remembers their family at the dining room table having lunch and strangers coming up and through the house to use the bathroom. The space was friendly, simple, primitive, and invited people in as there were not many services available to the visitor at that time. One of the distinguishing features of Virginia and Ansel's life in Yosemite was their inclusiveness, that regardless of possible frictions between "company" and "government," Best's Studio and the hospital were always friendly and easy places to be and socialize.
For the most part, Virginia was content to be in the background. A bit camera shy and according to an article in the LA Times, "not generally at ease with reporters," she once summed up her contribution by saying simply, "I guess I'm the one who just tried to keep things going." But Virginia did more than that—she nurtured a space with undeniable goodwill, one that still celebrates the arts and the environment in the heart of Yosemite, and which is enjoying its 117th year in operation.
Beyond The Ansel Adams Gallery, Virginia was an active environmentalist and served on the board of directors of the Sierra Club from 1931-33 when her son Michael was born.
Then, Ansel ran for the board member seat and won and continued for decades. Virginia was also a Trustee of the Yosemite Natural History Association, and a mountaineer. She has been credited with making the first ascent by a woman of a route on Mt. Whitney in the Kaweah area in what is now Sequoia National Park. It is with Virginia's guidance and roots in Yosemite, steadfast care for the family business, and lifetime support of Ansel's work that we have grown to know so well and love Yosemite National Park and the American West.
Copied from "www.anseladams.com/virginia-best-adams-wife-ansel-adams/"
Updated December 31, 2020
─────────────────────────────────────────────
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Explore more
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
