Sawyer's papers document the range of his professional activities as well as his post-retirement projects. The collection spans the years of 1930, when Sawyer was curator at Phillips Academy, to 1997, almost twenty-five years after his retirement from the University of Michigan. Sawyer's correspondence, speeches, and research compose much of the collection; there are also photographs, course descriptions, and committee meeting minutes.
The collection is arranged into the following series: University of Michigan, Organizational Affiliations, Personal, Germanic Architecture, and Photographs.
Charles Henry Sawyer was born in Andover, Massachusetts on October 20, 1906, the son of James Cowan and Mary Pepperell Frost Sawyer. In 1929 he earned his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University. He then attended Harvard Law School (1929-1930) and the Harvard School of Fine Arts (1930-1932).
From 1930 to 1940, Sawyer was the curator of the Addison Gallery of American Art at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He was also an art instructor and chairman of the Art Department at Phillips Academy. In 1934, Sawyer married Katherine ("Kitty") Clay (1908-1998).
Sawyer was the director of the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1940 to 1947. He was also associated with the Worcester Museum School and served as an adjunct professor of fine arts at Clark University in Worcester.
During World War II, Sawyer served in the US Army's Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Division (1943-1945). He also worked in the Office of Strategic Services' Section on German Art Looting (Fall 1944) and as Assistant Secretary on the Roberts Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (June 1945-February 1946).
From 1947 to 1956, Sawyer was dean of the School of Fine Arts (subsequently renamed the School of Architecture and Design) and director of the Division of the Arts at Yale University. He was also professor of history of art, and, from 1947 to 1953, master of Timothy Dwight College at Yale. During those years he received honorary degrees from Amherst College (LHD, 1950), Clark University (LHD, 1953), and the University of New Hampshire (DFA, 1952).
Sawyer left Yale in 1957 to become director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art and professor of art and art history. In 1963, Sawyer founded the Museum Practice Program, a Rackham School of Graduate Studies program with close ties to the Museum of Art. He retired as director in 1972 and as a professor in 1975.
Throughout his career and into his retirement, Sawyer was involved with many committees, advisory councils, and associations in the field of art. Among the organizations that Sawyer worked with are the American Association of Museums, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Ft. Worth, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the College Art Association, the Committee on Art Education, the Committee on Government and Art, the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, Ford Foundation, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, the Museum Publisher's Association, the National Collection of Fine Arts Commission, the New England Museum Director's Council, and the Notre Dame Advisory Council.
Sawyer independently researched German and Dutch architecture in the United States during the 1980s and into the 1990s. In 1984, he wrote an unpublished book Germanic Communities in Texas: Their Domestic Architecture, 1840-1900.
