The daily art

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Museums, Washington, D.C.

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I am typing this from the public plaza at the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum. This was the site of the old Patent Office, where Walt Whitman and Clara Barton both worked at different times. I had an interesting conversation with the ladies in the Luce Foundation Center, during which they showed me some great turn of the twentieth century photographs of that portion of the building. The Smithsonian did an extensive renovation in the early 2,000s, but much remains the same. Even the Luce visible storage area has the look it did previously; if Patent Office officials could come back to life they would know where they are. Many visitors never make their way all the way up here.

One Life: Martin Luther King Jr. opened late last month and will be running through 1 June 2014. I was taken back by the immediacy of the photographs, most of which are now more than half a century old. For better or worse I have always interpreted art through a historical context and so these galleries are right up my alley. The Smithsonian staff have done a great job rotating the collection; each time I come there is always something new to see. Here were my two favorites for today:

The France Croissee, by Romaine Brooks

I am hoping that the World War One centennial does for our understanding of the Great War what the sesquicentennial has been doing for the American Civil War. We deserve more than the lions led by donkeys interpretation of 1914-1918, just as we deserved more than the moonlight and magnolias version of the War of the Rebellion we had to put up with until not that long ago. Oddly, Romaine Brooks was not American; she was born in Italy (1874) and died in France (1970). As much as I love the painting, I found it curious that it was in the American Art Museum until learning it was a gift of the artist. The Barton/Red Cross angle is a great piece of serendipity. The gauntness in the cheeks is haunting.

Town Square, by O. Louis Guglielmi

The Hopper-esque Town Square was painted by another artist not born the United States, though O. Louis Guglielmi eventually did move to America. It is not displayed here, but the painting is housed in a frame labeled WPA Federal Art Project. As you might guess, the statue and GAR Hall are what caught my attention. Painted in the mid-1930s, in the depth of the Depression, Town Square captures the bleakness of the era. Guglielmi seems to commenting on an America that is no more, economically and otherwise. The Civil War had been over for seventy years by this time, about the same amount of time as between WW2 and today. I don’t imagine there were too many GAR members left by this time, just as the Greatest Generation has now just about passed on.

(images/Smithsonian American Art Museum)

Monday evening winding down

27 Monday May 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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I just got back from DC. The Hayfoot and I had a good time. Being in the nation’s capitol on Memorial Day Weekend is always special. It was a great beginning to the summer. For starters, I have made it my goal to dedicate Memorial through Labor Day to reading novels and short stories, fiction being something I have gotten away from in recent years. To that end, I kicked off by reading John Williams’s 1965 Stoner on the bus ride up ad down. It is sort of The Death of Ivan Ilych if the protagonist were a frustrated academic living in Middle America in the early to mid twentieth century. I think this fiction thing is going to work out well; there is a lot of literature, in different genres, I wasn’t ready for as a younger person that I think will speak to me now.

I also got an interesting email from my sister on Saturday. She received a phone call out of the blue from a woman who is distantly related to us. I began my genealogy in earnest about a year ago and have become something of the de facto family historian. My sister gave me the woman’s contact information and I intend to call her now that I am back in town.

As I mentioned the other day, we planned to visit the Old Soldiers Home/Lincoln Cottage on Saturday. We did, and had a great time. The wife surprised me by arranging a visit to Manassas on Sunday with some friends of ours. I had never visited Bull Run before. It was a special day.

Here, quickly, are a few pics from the weekend.

Abe and the Hayfoot, Lincoln Cottage

President and Mrs. Lincoln spent more than a quarter of their time at the Old Soldiers Home. The Home, the grounds of which include the presidential cottage, lies about 3 1/2 miles north of the White House. Here Lincoln was able to get away somewhat from the city’s oppressive heat and endless stream of supplicants asking for favors.

There was little respite, however. In a painful reminder of the war’s human cost, this cemetery was within sight of the cottage. From the window of his study Lincoln could see the graves adding up.

Manassas

This monument atop Henry Hill was dedicated in June 1865 and was one of the very first constructed.

A living history unit representing the 14th Brooklyn was in attendance.

The 14th was one of many New York zouave units at both First and Second Manassas. In July 2011 I blogged about the rededication of the New York monuments at Bull Run during the Centennial fifty years ago. It meant a lot to finally see them in person.

Bull Run Creek

Overall it was some weekend. Thank you honey, and to everyone else who made it happen.

Good Friday

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Washington, D.C.

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I’m sorry about the lack of posts this week. I have been concentrating on my talk for the New York History conference in Cooperstown later this spring. Next week at my college I’ll be giving something of a preliminary talk during our annual faculty research program. It is an opportunity to run through some ideas before I give the “real” talk come June. I will be talking about Theodore Roosevelt Sr., William E. Dodge Jr. and what they did for the Union war effort. The basics are pretty much in place but I have more to do before it is there. I am fascinated by New York’s role in the war, and how that role played out in the ensuing decades as well. It is something I think we don’t fully understand.

Today I was actually holed up with a minor ailment, fighting off a cold and minor fever. On the Hayfoot’s instructions I have been drinking warm milk spiked with turmeric. It is a great elixir for staving off illness and infection. I have taken the opportunity to get a quarter of the way through David Eisenhower’s Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961-1969. I read memoirs with the caveat that they are–by definition–self-serving but I must say Ike’s grandson does an excellent job of recounting the president’s time after he left the Oval Office. David is a very learned and thoughtful individual who knows his history.

I have been t the Eisenhower Farm several times over the years, but the book fills in significant gaps in my knowledge. In the Eisenhower house one sees a fair amount of Civil War memorabilia, and obviously his ties to Gettysburg go back to his years as a West Point cadet, but I had never quite put two and two together that his retirement in January 1961 coincided with the Centennial. I cannot help but wonder what he thought, if anything, about the way it all unraveled. He did create the Centennial Commission in 1957 after all. The book goes well with Evan Thomas’s Ike’s Bluff, which I finished a few weeks back.

Since 2008 and my first trip to Gettysburg I have been focusing so intently on the Civil War. It has been good because I feel I know much more than I did even just half a decade ago. Still, I feel I’ve lost some edge and my well-roundedness. It is important to focus on other areas to achieve greater wisdom. I am trying to do that this spring.

Going Home is actually the second memoir I have read in the past few days. Last week I downloaded Cynthia Helms’s An Intriguing Life to my Kindle from the library. Ms. Helms was married to CIA director Richard Helms and has certainly led a, well, intriguing life. Born in England in 1923 she served in the WRENS during the war before moving to America and raising a family. In her memoir she recounts transporting Queen Elizabeth ( i.e. later the Queen Mum) in her craft out to a waiting ship for a royal inspection. She also mentions seeing the Supreme Allied Commander, one Dwight Eisenhower, in the lead-up to the D-Day invasion. She was in her late teens and early twenties, understand. Now 90, Ms. Helms lives still lives in Washington and is still going strong; she seems to have known everyone who lived and served in the capitol going back decades. It is a witty and chatty look at the nation’s recent history as s told by someone who saw it. I feel I know Washington a little better than I did before. The best thing you can say about a book is that it brings you to a different level when you are done with it.

One Saturday on the Mall

25 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Washington, D.C.

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I went to DC for the weekend to see the Mrs., who began her job the Tuesday after President’s Day Weekend and moved into the apartment last week. The new job and commute has been going well, but is nevertheless difficult and challenging on many levels as you might imagine. This was my first trip to Washington since February. Saturday we took advantage of the warmish late winter weather to visit the Mall. The cherry blossoms are not yet in bloom but it was nonetheless a gorgeous day.

I was glad to see that the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture is proceeding apace. The sign above is from the construction site. I couldn’t resist sticking my camera above the chain link fence and take the picture of the footprint.

2015 is not far away.

We next walked down the Mall to the Martin Luther King jr. Memorial. No one deserves to be recognized on the Mall more that Dr. King, but I am afraid I must concur with the monument’s detractors. I understand what they were trying to accomplish but the Soviet Realist statue just doesn’t work. Still, it was good to see people congregating around the monument to one America’s great citizens. Maybe that’s enough.

I hope the powers-that-be think the Eisenhower Memorial through all the way before they build something that will remain on some of our nation’s most precious space for decades to come.

The Hayfoot noticed that a ranger tour was in progress and so naturally we joined. The ranger really knew his stuff. We were on the tour for a good hour. Later I asked him where he began and he said the Lincoln Memorial. I was surprised because if you know the National Mall you know this is a pretty fair distance. The entire talk must have been more than two hours and he was picking up people as he went. We were in awe. I cannot overstate how much he brought to the experience.

I had never seen the FDR Memorial before and did not know it was so large. The memorial is divided into different “rooms,” each covering different parts of Roosevelt’s presidency. There is a lot going on but it all ties together seamlessly and there is a nice mix of realism and avant-gardism. Above is the less controversial FDR statue; less so because his wheelchair is somewhat obscured by the cape. There is a smaller likeness of the 32nd president sitting in a chair in the memorial’s “prologue.” I thought both showed his humanity and vulnerability.

Note the right index finger. The shininess is the wear caused by people touching the statue. The damage is a reminder of why one should not do that.

. . . Listening attentively to a fireside chat. The sculptor captured the earnestness of the listener.

This couple serve as a reminder that in much of the country the Depression began in the early 1920s, not with the Great Crash of ’29 and Dust Bowl as we believe in our collective memory.

. . . and last but not least the Jefferson Memorial. I had never realized quite how it all fits together until visit until this most recent visit. We are looking forward to more excursions when this spring and summer in one of the cities we now call home.

Monday evening coming down

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Beatles, Museums, Philately, Washington, D.C.

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I just got back from my trip to Washington. I managed to visit the Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, and even sneak in a quick rendezvous to the Postal Museum while I was killing time this morning waiting for my bus. I was glad to see that the U.S. and International Stamps Gallery is again open to the public. When I was there about two years ago it was closed due to a leak in that part of the museum. It is good to see it up and running again. The stamps themselves are, after all, what the museum is all about.

The coolest thing I saw over the weekend was the Jedediah Hotchkiss map of the Shenandoah Valley, which was part of the Library of Congress’s sesquicentennial exhibit. According to this 1948 LOC document the Library of Congress owns over 600 hundred Hotchkiss maps from during and after the war. Major Hotchkiss was a cartographer who worked primarily for Stonewall Jackson. The one on display was from Jackson’s Valley Campaign. One does not have to be a Lost Causer to admire it as a work of art and engineering. I’m not sure how this one entered the collection, but apparently it was acquired by the Library of Congress in 1964. The how’s and why’s of how such documents get into various collections is fascinating in and of itself. In the case of the Civil War, collections were often donated to various repositories and museums by children or grandchildren well into the twentieth century, as late of the 1950s and 60s.

Catching up on my email and internet, I noticed that Beatle mentor Tony Sheridan died over the weekend. I always thought of him as being so much older than the Beatles but he was only 72, more or less the same age as Fabs. I mentioned just the other day that the Beatles and their inner circle are passing on. A few days ago Amazon UK posted the bibliographic details for volume one of Mark Lewisohn’s trilogy. As Lewisohn said there might be, there is to be an “author’s cut” and a “publisher’s cut.” Volume one for the author’s cut logs in at over 1,800 pages. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with that is new. The first volume ends in December 1962, so there will be a great deal on the late Tony Sheridan. Sad to know he’s gone.

David Adjaye speaks

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Museums, Washington, D.C.

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The Eisenhower Memorial, to be continued in 2013

23 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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The demands of work prevented me from commenting the week before last that the National Capital Planning Commission has decided to table any decision on the Eisenhower Memorial until sometime in 2013. I am taking that as a hopeful sign that the powers-that-be will reconsider (i.e. rescind) the plans of starchitect Frank Gehry for his monument to the general and president. In mid-November John S.D. Eisenhower, the 90 year old son of the 34th president and former general and ambassador in his own right, wrote a letter to Senator Daniel Inouye, vice chair of the memorial commission. Media outlets tended to publish only excerpts, His daughter Susan has just published the entire piece. It is worth checking out.

Remembrance Day

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C., WW1

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Today is Veterans Day. A few months back I posted the piece below about a potential WW1 memorial on the National Mall. I will still believe it when I see it, but various powers that be are still trying to make it a reality. This weekend William N. Brown, president of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia, wrote this piece in the Washington Post offering some possibilities. If nothing else, it gives me a chance to mention the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Whatever happens on the Mall, I hope he remember the Great War in a meaningful way.

Happy Veterans Day.

In the area where my brother lives in France Great War monuments are as ubiquitous as Civil War monuments are here in the United States. Every town square has its bronze doughboy representing the young men from that locale who mort pour la France. World War One monuments are less common here in America but one does see them on a fairly regular basis. We have been spending so much time on the Civil War sesquicentennial that the upcoming 100th anniversary of the First World War has been pushed to the back burner. Ready or not it is coming in just two short years. It will be an opportunity to challenge many of the assumptions we have about that conflict, just as the CW 150th has done for the War of the Rebellion. If you ever have a chance I strongly recommend a visit to the National World War One Museum in Kansas City; if you really have a chance take in the Historial de La Grande Guerre in Perrone. Both will change your perspective of this pivotal event in 20th century history.

I don’t know if the National Mall needs another monument but earlier this week Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) proposed the construction of a national World War One memorial to be built in Constitution Gardens near the Reflecting Pool. The proposal has a long road before reaching fruition because of a 2003 law prohibiting new construction on the Mall. Any exemption would mean setting a precedent. Washington already has a WW1 memorial, located in Pershing Park, but it is a local memorial dedicated to the soldiers from the District who fought in the conflict. It will be interesting to see if this proposal goes anywhere. Monuments take time, sometimes decades, to go from drawing board to ribbon cutting. I doubt this would take that long if it indeed comes to pass. 2014 is probably too soon. Perhaps five years, in time for the 100th anniversary of American involvement in April 2017, is more realistic. It will be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

(image/Thomas R Machnitzki)

My bucket’s got a hole in it

18 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Washington, D.C.

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The last few times I visited Washington I noticed a great deal of construction on the Mall. I assumed most of it was stimulus money, funds being spent by the current administration to boost the economy while improving infrastructure. A great deal was happening around the Lincoln Memorial among other places. As it turns out much of the work taking place is the Park Service and Corps of Engineers trying to improve the levees that protect the swampland that is our nation’s capital. A major breach in 1936 caused considerable damage to the Mall area, and a rainstorm in 2006 caused flooding up to three feet in 2006. Unfortunately, the new African American Museum is being laid on the lowest point in the area.This could be a story with major longterm implications.

Remembering the Great War

14 Friday Sep 2012