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Category Archives: Museums

Sunday morning coffee

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by Keith Muchowski in George Washington, Lusitania, Museums, Society of the Cincinnati

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Here is something one does not see every day. It is a circa 1790s medal of The Society of the Cincinnati. The Cincinnati was an organization founded by American officers of the Revolutionary War in the 1780s just as the conflict was winding down. The first owner of this would thus himself have fought in the war. The “original” Cincinnati, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, was a Roman statesman and military leader who gave up power so as not to become a martial dictator. It was in this same spirit that George Washington resigned his own commission in December 1783.

I took this image yesterday at the Yale Art Gallery. Francis Patrick Garvan and his wife Mabel gave the medal and 10,000 other objects from the Colonial and Early American periods to Yale in 1930 in celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary. It was the Garvan’s hope that these items be seen by as many people as possible, both via display in the Yale University Art Gallery itself and through loan to such institutions as Mount Vernon and elsewhere so that the items might, in the Garvan’s own words according to a 1938 Yale arts bulletin I discovered in JSTOR, “become a moving part in a great panorama of American Arts and Crafts.”

Searching for one’s Revolutionary War ancestors

31 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by Keith Muchowski in American Revolutionary War, Genealogy, Libraries, Memory, Museums, Washington, D.C.

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These genealogy pamphlets produced by the Daughters of the American Revolution are testament to the ethnic complexity of the American Revolution.

I went today as a tourist to the Daughters of the American Revolution headquarters in Washington. The museum and library are in Memorial Continental Hall, which are connected by a hallway to Constitution Hall, which I did not see. The museum is really something, as is the library. There were many things to see; among the things that struck me the most were these genealogy pamphlets about how to research one’s Revolutionary War ancestor by ethnicity. It’s a small reminder of how complicated the Revolutionary War period was. There are handouts for French, Jewish, Native American, and Spanish ancestry. And this is just touching the surface. The Dutch, for instance, are another category all their own. Then there are the Portuguese, and so on and so forth. New York City alone was a babel of languages and dialects.

I had a great talk with several young staffers during my excursion about the museum and its historical mission and memory. If you are ever in D.C. and are looking for something to see right near the mall, the DAR headquarters is not a bad choice.

 

“The poems surprised me.”

14 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Brooklyn, Interviews, Museums, Writing

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was I received an email last week from artist Robert Gould, who introduced himself and invited me out to see his current art exhibit, which he did in collaboration with poet Gerald Wagoner. Tis past Sunday I ventured out to the Gowanus, where I met Rob and Jerry. We had a great conversation. They sat down and answered some questions about their current installation.

The Strawfoot: Robert Gould, tell us about “On the Tides of Time.” What inspired the series?

Robert Gould: I am an artist who draws inspiration from historical events. Over the years I have created a body of work about the Battle of Brooklyn, and this year I was offered a month long residency at Gowanus Dredgers boathouse. The month of August was chosen because it marks the anniversary of the battle. As part of the residency I created an exhibit that includes my paintings and the poetry of my good friend Gerald Wagoner who shares my passion for history. His poems have a different approach to the passage of time and add his personal observations. He also came up with the title, “On the Tides of Time,” which he pulled from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

My painting series is a continuation of a piece I made a couple of years ago, “Maryland Willow of the Gowanus.” It includes the names of the Maryland soldiers written on willow leaves. I combined these leaves with a photograph I had taken of the Old Stone House using a primitive camera.

For this new series I expanded the theme by incorporating natural elements from the fields of battle. For example, the picture titled “Black Eyed Susan of the Gowanus” features actual river marsh grass with collaged paper black eyed Susan flowers (the Maryland state flower).

Who were the Maryland 400?

RG: The “Maryland 400” was a nickname the Maryland Militia earned during the Battle of Brooklyn. They were under the command of William Alexander also known as Lord Stirling, although his Scottish earldom was rejected by the House of Lords. They were one of General Washington’s most competent troops at the battle. They repeatedly counter-attacked and fought a delaying action to allow other militia troops to cross the difficult terrain of the Gowanus marsh lands thus saving a number of other units from capture and destruction.

The state of Maryland is meaningful to me because I was born there. I moved to NYC to attend college and have remained ever since. My family is originally from eastern Ohio. The first Robert Gould, in our family records, settled what was then the frontier of Ohio after his services in the War of 1812.

The Gowanus Dodgers Canoe Club Boathouse is an ideal venue for the exhibit. How does the site, being where it is, relate to the art works?

RG: I agree it’s an ideal venue for this exhibit! It is located on the exact spot of the Battle of Brooklyn. I have included a painting by Alonzo Chapple, a 19thCentury American painter. His image of the battle from Brouwer Mill pond was within a hundred yards of the boathouse site. The interior of the boathouse space is also ideal because it has long, high, unfinished walls. Because my work uses natural materials the scale of the materials dictates the finished size of the paintings. For example “Hessian Bayonets” incorporates steel bayonets that I fabricated along with rubbings of real tree bark. The resulting painting ended up being 8×15 feet. Thus the scale of the works needs a larger forum than most local gallery spaces.

Is place a recurring theme in your work?

RG: Yes, place is a recurring theme. I strive to find novel ways to describe “place”. The various materials that I use to create the paintings become the subject matter. It is this curated use of materials that reference the place of the battle. I keep coming back to this quote from Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain taken from his dedcation speech to the 20th Maine Monument at Gettysburg in 1888:

“In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

Explain broadly the piece in the series. What materials did you use? What inspired them?

RG: I’ll include what I’ve written about each painting:

“Maryland Willow of the Gowanus” (2016)

I was inspired to create this work from a photograph that I saw in a book about the Old Stone House, called The Stone House of Gowanus by Georgia Fraser (1909). The house was the center of the fighting during the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Near the end of her book there is a photograph of a lone willow tree in the vacant lot where the house once stood. (pp.129) The author claimed that it is the same willow that is depicted in old paintings of the house. I am not so sure of that, however, I became fascinated by the idea of an old Willow tree that links us back to the times of 1776.  So my creative idea was to inscribe the names of the Maryland soldiers onto willow leaves. The leaves are then arranged in long hanging branches that represent the different fighting units that the soldiers were with. For example all the soldiers from the Second Company are represented by leaves on one branch that hangs down in the image.

“Elements of Gun Powder 75%, 15%, 10%” (2019)

Rock Salt, Charcoal, Paper Mache, Sulfur, Acrylic Paint, Marsh Grass.

A graphic representation of the ratio of the three elements that compose gunpowder (known today as black powder). Various armies used slightly different ratios of these essential elements to create explosive powder. This is the ratio of the British army: 75 % saltpeter or potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur.

In the painting, the different elements are displayed as horizontal bands. The thickness of the bands represents the ratio of that element as present in the British formulation. This is overlaid on marsh grass that has been sourced in Brooklyn. Marsh grass was plentiful in the Gowanus area during the time of the Battle of Long Island.

Black-Eyed Susan of the Gowanus (2019)

Marsh Grass, Acrylic House Paint, Powdered Pigment, Natural Dyes, Rock Salt, Iron Powder, Paper College, mounted on Paper Shopping Bags.

This painting references the Maryland state flower, the black-eyed Susan, and uses marsh grass as a form of requiem. The Gowanus area was a barrier for the retreating American army. It was the sacrifice and repeated attacks of the Maryland troops that allowed other American soldiers to retreat to the safety of downtown Brooklyn. The development of the Gowanus area has been built over the unknown graves of the Maryland soldiers.

Hessian Bayonets (2019)

Welded Steel, Canvas, Oil Stick, Acrylic House Paint, Powder Pigment, Iron Powder, Paper collage, Paper Shopping Bags Mounted on wood frame.

This painting has evolved from local folklore. Hessian soldiers were German mercenary, “solders for hire”.  They were used by the British army to supplement their own troops. During the Battle of Long Island Hessian troops acted as a diversion to deceive the American army into thinking the main British attack was happening in what today is known as Prospect Park. Meanwhile the true British attack was able to cut off and isolate the American troops facing the Hessians. The Americans, upon realizing this, fled towards what today is downtown Brooklyn. The Hessian troops, perhaps because of language barriers, or perhaps because of British propaganda, did not take prisoners. Instead they used bayonets mounted at the end of their muskets to kill any surrendering American solider they came across.

The painting was created using rubbings of actual tree trunks from the “Battle Pass” area of Prospect Park. Oil stick was used to transfer the bark pattern from the trees to the canvas strips. These strips of canvas were mounted to the substrate of paper shopping bags and hand forged steel bayonets were impaled into the tree bark.

Gun Powder Sky (2019)

Acrylic House paint, Powder pigment, Iron Powder, Rock Salt, Marsh Grass, Charcoal, Sulfur on Paper Shopping Bag.

This work references the painting “Battle of Long Island”by Alonzo Chappel (1828-1887)That painting depicts the retreat of the “Maryland 400” across Brouwer’s Mill Pond which was located across the canal from this site.

The title alludes to the great blinding noxious clouds of white smoke that were created by the burning gunpowder. Battles of this time in history were often hard to directly observe because of the tremendous volumes of thick smoke that were generated. Consequently, because the battle was totally obscured, generals of the time had a difficult time controlling the movements of their troops.

The artist has layered the ingredients of gun powder and local marsh grass. White paint covers and obscures that under-structure. The paint is layered in such a way so as to let the chemical reaction of iron and salt stain and penetrate the white painted surface. Rust and decay are modern components that allude to both the past and present environment of the Gowanus canal.

You and Gerald have visited many historic sites over the years. Which ones have meant the most to you?

RG: I will let Gerald speak more about that.

Any ideas for future projects you can tell us about?

RG: Nothing concrete yet, but I can see us doing something on Governor’s Island next summer during one of their art fairs.

Gowanus Canal, August 2019

The Strawfoot: Gerald Wagoner, you have lived in Brooklyn thirty-five year now. What does the borough mean to you?

Gerald Wagoner: I moved to New York because this is where the art is, and the artists are. I ended up in Brooklyn and have never regretted it. A few years ago I decided to express my creative urges in poetic form, and now Brooklyn is a hive of poets, so it is exciting to be part of the conversation.

What was your life like before moving to Brooklyn? Where did you grow up and how did it make you who you are today?

GW: I grew up in Eastern Oregon and in northern Montana on sixty miles east of Glacier National Park. In my poems Montana weather and people are joyless adversaries of mine in a magnificently grand landscape

The West, I think, made my language spare. I was a creative writing major at  the University of MT when the poet Richard Hugo was teaching. He left a lifelong impression on me, as did Richard Stankiewicz when I earned my Sculpture MFA at SUNY Albany.

As I brought up with Robert, the two of you have visited many historic sites. Which would you say have meant the most to you?

GW: I think maybe it was tracing Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg over South Mountain to Falling Waters where the army crossed the Potomac because on that trip we learned things that were totally new and perspective altering.

Your poetry complements Robert’s art works in the exhibit. Tell us about your poems.

GW: The poems surprised me. Which is always a good thing. I had taken pages of notes about the canal, and learned some new things about the Battle of Brooklyn, but it is rare for me to sit down at the table and sketch out three related, but distinct poems like I did one morning. The Gowanus Canal is tidal, so it comes in and goes out, and up and down giving it metaphorical qualities of time and change. The title Tides of Time is from a line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

I’ve known this canal for twenty-five years and things are changing, and I am lamenting that change partially because I’m older and decaying too. The only other thing I would add regarding my poems is that I revise relentlessly, and I aim for a fluid musicality that is suitable to the poem.

Where and when can people see “On the Tides of Time?”

GW: “On the Tides of Time,” at 165 2nd street in Brooklyn, is on view Saturdays and Sundays in from 1:00-5:00 in August and there will be a poetry reading Wednesday August 14 from 7:00-9:00 pm featuring 12 poets and myself reading original theme related poems.

Presidents Day 2019

18 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Alfred E. Smith, George Washington, George Washington's Mount Vernon, Museums

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I would love to have been able to visit Mount Vernon today but alas that was not feasible. I imagine they are having events today, and again this coming Friday on President Washington’s actual birthday. Inspired by yesterday’s post about Al Smith and his annual viewing of the retired firemen of Brooklyn, I’m leaving in a bit to visit the New York City Fire Museum in SOHO. Fire houses played a role in Washington and 4th of July observances from the time of the Early Republic until just a few recent decades ago. I’m up and out early because when I return I have to prepare for the week ahead, not least the laundry.

Enjoy your Presidents Day, everyone.

(image/Early twentieth century Edward Penfield poster via Library of Congress)

The presidents of Charles Addams

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Museums, Writing

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The first 37 presidents as drawn by New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams in 1972

This past August, almost six months ago now, a friend and I visited the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Upper Manhattan. Among other things, on display at the time was an exhibit of the works of cartoonist Charles Addams. The artist was the originator of The Addams Family, which he based on his real life family much in the way Matt Groening later based The Simpsons on his own family. I have no doubt that Groening knew the history of Addams’s work when starting out in the late 1980s, around the time Charles Addams died of a heart attack in 1988. Addams had begun working for the New Yorker in 1935 during what we know see was a golden age of magazine writing and drawing. His contemporaries include such figures as Rea Irvin, Norman Rockwell, and J. C. Leyendecker. The item that struck me the most that day at the Morris-Jamel house was this image we see here of the presidents, which Addams created for the June 3, 1972 New Yorker cover. This would have been the summer of the McGovern vs Nixon presidential race.

The photo is not the best because the drawing was behind a pane of glass. I told my friend on that hot August day that I would post this come late January on what would have been Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s birthday. FDR was born on this day in 1882. We see him here in the top row, fourth from the left, standing tall with his characteristic big grin.

Yosemite and the Civil War

30 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), Museums, National Park Service

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Albert Bierstadt began “Valley of the Yosemite” in 1863 and completed the small painting, less than 1′ x 2′, in early 1864. That spring it sold at the New York Sanitary Fair for $1600. In June Congress and Lincoln granted Yosemite and Big Tree Grove to California and Frederick Law Olmsted studied the area for the state over the next year. The painting today is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act on this date in 1864. This legislation deeded Yosemite and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the state of California. It is interesting to note that Congress wrote and President Lincoln signed the measure in late June 1864, just days after the Overland Campaign in which so many men had been killed or wounded in ghastly ways. Even with the war far from decided people were looking ahead.

I tell the story a little bit in my book. The painting we see here was begun by Albert Bierstadt in 1863 and finished in 1864. While out west Bierstadt was also writing to his good friend John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary, back in Washington about the scenic beauty of California. It is not difficult to imagine Hay describing all this to his boss in the White House. As it happened, another man from back east was in California in 1863: Frederick Law Olmsted. He had resigned his position as secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission in September to take a job running a mine in Mariposa. Olmsted was burned out from his work with the Sanitary Commission and got as far away as he could by going out west. Soon after Lincoln signed the Yosemite legislation, Frederick Law Olmsted found himself part of a commission whose job it was to survey Yosemite and the Big Tree Grove and create for California officials a plan the state might use to make these protected parklands. Olmsted and his colleagues went about their task and submitted a report in August 1865. California officials ultimately tabled Olmsted’s report, deeming his provisions too expensive.

As for the painting we see above, it quickly ended up in New York City just after Albert Bierstadt completed it in early 1864. That spring officials of the Sanitary Commission sold the art work during the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair. The fair, like others held in various locales, raised funds for the Sanitary Commission to do its work tending the needs of soldiers out in the field. Albert Bierstadt’s “Valley of the Yosemite” sold for $1600, the highest sum for any artwork on sale for charity at the New York Sanitary Fair.

(image/Museum of Fine Arts Boston)

A walk past the Newark Paramount

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Memory, Museums, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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I am having my Sunday coffee and listening to Yusuf Lateef. With the semester in its final few days, it’s going to be a working Sunday. I have already sent a few emails and will tie up various loose ends over the course of the day. Yesterday a friend and I braved the rain and crossed the river to visit the Newark Museum of Art. I had not been there in 6-7 years and can say that officials there have been doing great work maintaining what has always been an outstanding cultural institution. If you live in New York City and are ever looking for a place to visit, I can attest that the Newark Museum is very easy to get to. Top it off with lunch or dinner in The Ironbound, as we did, and you’ve had a good day.

Paramount Theater, Newark, New Jersey

I took this photo of the Newark Paramount theater on the way to the museum. Some readers may know of the old Paramount Theater in Midtown Manhattan that they tore down decades ago. The reason there was “another” Paramount in Newark is because the movie studios owned their own theaters until losing a major antitrust case in 1948, after which Paramount and others had to divest themselves of their movie houses. As you can see, the Newark Paramount now stands empty. If my memory serves, the last time I was in the vicinity this was a storefront in which Rastafarians were selling oils and incense. Some rudimentary internet searching informs me that this opened as a vaudeville theater in 1886. To put that in perspective, that was the year after Ulysses S. Grant died.

The space in Newark came under new management and was expanded in 1916. Expansion in this period makes sense; in 1916 with the Great War raging in Europe there was a great deal of activity in Essex County, New Jersey. The docks were teeming and it makes sense that there would be entertainment options such as this. During and immediately after the First World War this would have meant live stage entertainment, and starting in the late 1920s moving pictures.

Last night on the train home I sent this photo to a friend who was born in the early 1960s and lived in this area until the mid-70s, when his family moved to a Sunbelt State. This led to a philosophical discussion over text messaging about loss and memory. My friend mentioned how this all seemed like eons in the past. The Newark Paramount closed as a movie theater in April 1986–itself now a lifetime ago–and while my friend in all likelihood never saw a film there, it is a good bet his mother and father did in their own early years.

I have a yen for these old theaters, having in the 1990s worked for a large chain bookstore based in old art deco move house that in the 2010s because a Trader Joe’s. The race seems to be on to save the Newark Paramount. A society cannot let things lie literally in ruins just for the sake of holding on to the past, but hopefully some vestige of this old treasure can be incorporated into Newark’s future as things continue to move forward. We’ll see how things develop, no pun intended.

 

A new museum for a new era

30 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), Museums, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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I have been working on the draft of Incorporating New York for much of these past several weeks. I am now in December 1868. The book ends in 1878. I thought I would share the document you see above, which was sent on 30 December 1868, 149 years ago today. The letter was written by a number of New Yorkers to the commissioners of Central Park seeking permission to place what would become The American Museum of Natural History within the grounds of the park. The signers include Theodore Roosevelt Sr., Howard Potter, J.P. Morgan, Levi P. Morton and others. This is an interesting period in the city and the nation’s history. Being the end of the year, the individuals were naturally in a mood of reflection and thinking about prospects for the future. It was more than that however. December 1868 is less than a month after the election of Ulysses S. Grant. The country had just gotten over the Andrew Johnson impeachment and trial. Johnson would leave office in just over three months. Just three weeks prior to this letter the Union League Club of New York held a reception for Grant at which many of these very were in attendance.

(image/1870 AMNH annual report)

The Brooklyn Museum’s Kaiser Wilhelm II

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Museums

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This image of Corcos’s portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II, perhaps from a 1907 New York Times clipping, shows the original painting upon which the Keinke in the Brooklyn Museum of Art was based.

A curious article appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on 26 December 1917 concerning a painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the possession of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The letter was from a concerned citizen who wrote the newspaper wondering if, with the United States now at war with Germany, it was appropriate for the Kaiser’s likeness to remain in the museum’s collection. The portrait of the German leader had been given to the Brooklyn Museum of Art eleven year previously under happier circumstances; in a very public ceremony on 16 July 1906 Herr von Gneist, Consul General of the Port of New York, had presented the 6’ x 9’ full portrait to the Brooklyn Museum on behalf of the Kaiser and the German government. Accepting the work for the museum was the Prussian-born former mayor of Brooklyn, Charles Adolph Schieren. The Reverend Dr. S. Parkes Cadman gave an address to an assembled crowd. The Kaiser’s portrait held a prominent pride of place in the Brooklyn Museum for several years thereafter. The painting—a copy of a more famous work—had more historical than artistic merit however, and was later quietly relegated to a small cove and eventually the storage basement out of public view. This apparently all happened before the start of the war in 1914 and had nothing to do with the Kaiser’s damaged reputation once the conflict began. In the basement the portrait sat, unseen and all but forgotten until Boxing Day 1917.

This tempest all came about because, a few days before Christmas, Harvard theologian Francis Greenwood Peabody had very publicly returned to the Kaiser the Order of the Prussian Crown medal he had been awarded several years earlier while a visiting professor at the University of Berlin. Newspapers across the country had covered Peabody’s gesture and now, after reading about the theologian and how he returned his decoration, this Brooklyn Daily Eagle reader was calling on the museum to return its Wilhelm painting. On 28 December the newspaper ran a letter from someone using the pseudonym “Flatbush,” proposing a contest in which readers could suggest what might be done with the painting. The Eagle duly agreed and dozens of entries poured in over the next week. The winner was to win one ton of coal, which was no small thing.

The preponderance of the entries were banal; multiple readers argued for burning the art work while others suggested using it for target practice. Other suggestions were more imaginative and included hanging it upside down from the Statue of Liberty or giving it to Wisconsin’s isolationist Senator Robert M. La Follette. One of the best came from someone suggesting it should be sent to Buckingham Palace to be placed next to a portrait of the late Queen Victoria, the Kaiser’s grandmother; in an obvious dig at the inbred familial ties of the European royal rulers who had stumbled into the war, this individual noted wryly that “blood is thicker than water.”

A. Augustus Healy was president of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences from 1895-1920 and helped build the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His wise and quick response to calls to destroy the portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II helped prevent what would have been an unfortunate incident in New York City’s World War One experience.

The extent to which the Eagle and its readers were being sincere or ironic is difficult to gauge a century later, but the contest was representative of the wider anti-German sentiment common in America during the war. Museum officials responded to all this with a firm calmness and the painting was never in danger. On 31 December A. Augustus Healy, the president of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences, the parent organization under whose auspices fell the Brooklyn Museum of Art, announced that it was the Insitute’s duty and responsibility to preserve the portrait. Healy averred that the museum’s stewardship of the suddenly-controversial artwork, like all the artwork in the museum, was “a perpetual trust.” Healy took his stewardship of that perpetual trust seriously. Born in 1850 and active in Brooklyn political and philanthropic causes throughout his life, Aaron Augustus Healy had been appointed president of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences in October 1895 during the Institute’s crucial transitional decade when it founded and built the Brooklyn Museum of Art. On 14 December 1895 Healy presided over the laying of the cornerstone of the iconic McKim, Mead & White building that still stands on Eastern Parkway today. Mayor Schieren, who eleven years later as an Institute vice president accepted the Kaiser painting from the German Consul General, laid the cornerstone.

The contest over what to do with the Kaiser’s likeness came to its conclusion just after the New Year. The winner turned out to be one Charles A Jaqueth. In a moment of lucidity all the way around, Eagle editors agreed with Jaqueth that the painting should be kept in the museum for posterity. Jaqueth explains in this letter published in the Eagle on Thursday 3 January 1918:

Charles A. Jaqueth’s letter to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 3 Jan 1918

True to its word, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle paid up on the ton of coal; in its 10 January 1918 edition the newspaper published a letter from Jaqueth thanking it for the delivery. Jaqueth expressed his appreciation for the coal and noted that with the war on and it now being January: “the “black diamonds” are almost as difficult to obtain as those of fairer hue.”

(images/top, New York Public Library; bottom two, Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

World War I and the Visual Arts

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, Museums, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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Last night was a special evening: a friend invited me to a group event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a private reviewing of the World War I and the Visual Arts exhibit currently on display through 7 January 2018. There were about a dozen of us on the tour, which took place after the Met Museum closed. To be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is always special, and even more so when it is the holidays and the place is empty. We arrived a little before the tour when the museum was emptying out and got to take in the Neapolitan Christmas tree that is on display every year. Here are a few photos from the evening.

Walter Trier color lithograph, “Maps of Europe.” Look closely.

As with the lithograph above, these color postcards are that much more striking in juxtaposition to the black and white images one usually sees from the Great War.

The four helmets are prototypes designed by Met curator Dr. Bashford Dean during the war for the United States military. As you can tell from the bottom two in particular, they are influenced by medieval armor. Here is more, including a letter to Dean from Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt’s father helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Our guide was the exhibition curator, seen here second from the right explaining this series.

Note the plea in the left hand portion asking the AEF to please rush. There were posters in the exhibit from all of the major nations.

It is not every day one sees the galleries empty at the Met. I snapped this one real fast as the group was heading out.

All in all this was a special night. Here is to good friends who think of you when opportunities such as this arise.

 

 

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