LSUS acquires Menasco Studios Photograph Collection
04/25/05

The LSUS Archives and Special Collections has acquired the Menasco Studios Photograph Collection, according to Dr. Laura McLemore, curator and archivist at the LSUS Noel Memorial Library. The collection consists of thousands of negatives and photographic prints representing the life’s work of Robert Menasco, who was a prominent local portrait photographer.

Menasco Studios opened in September 1943 on the second and third floors of the old Commercial National Bank Building at the corner of Milam and Market Streets in downtown Shreveport. For fifty years, Menasco photographed some of Shreveport’s most notable personalities, as well as sites all around Louisiana documenting the state’s progress, and he pioneered in photographing high school football games.

The Menasco Studios Collection is the gift of his widow and artistic partner, Aloyese Menasco Seyburn, of Spring, Texas. The acquisition was made possible through the efforts of well-known local photographers Thurman C. Smith and Scot Smith, and the LSUS Alumni Association, which was instrumental in conceptualizing the donation and moving the collection to Noel Memorial Library.

Over the coming months, Archives staff will clean, inventory, preserve, and index the collection. Once processing is completed, Archives and Special Collections will open the collection to researchers with a formal display.