National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

One of these things is not like the others…

Currently on display in the "One Life" gallery is the NPG exhibition "KATE: A Centennial Celebration," and as part of the show, its curator Amy Henderson negotiated the loan of Katharine Hepburn’s four Oscars from the Hepburn estate; the Oscars stay in storage at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood. 

Interestingly, Hepburn’s Oscar for Morning Glory (1933) is very different from her other three Oscars.  It appears to be smaller and less opulent, by far. Why is this?  According to Susan Oka, acquisitions librarian with the Academy, “From 1928 to 1945, the Oscars had a Belgian black marble base and, although the statuette has always been the same size, ten and a half inches, the three inch base was not adopted until after 1945.  Also, after 1945, the statuettes were made of Britannia metal, an alloy of tin, copper, and antimony.”   

Amy Henderson says of the award, “I love the early one best; it really has that art deco look that the sculptor, George Stanley, was famous for.  He did the sculptures at the Hollywood Bowl.  The history of the term 'Oscar' also has a close Hepburn connection.  The first time the name 'Oscar' was in print refers to Katharine Hepburn’s absence at the Academy ceremony in 1934 where she was awarded the best actress award for Morning Glory.”

And although Henderson says there are several great stories about the origin of the name “Oscar” for the award--its real name is the Academy Award of Merit--the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences maintains, per Oka, that an early executive director of the academy, Margaret Herrick, claimed that the statuette resembled her uncle Oscar.   

Learn more about Katharine Hepburn by visiting the website for "KATE: A Centennial Celebration".  And see the exhibition in person at the National Portrait Gallery; it will be on display until September 28, 2008.   

RECOGNIZE!

 

What does it mean to bring the energy and aesthetic vibrancy of hip hop into a Smithsonian museum? Some visitors to the current National Portrait Gallery exhibition, "RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture," on view until October 26, 2008, love the paintings, photographs, graffiti, installation, video, and poetry on view. 

Others are not so sure.  One recent visitor commented: “With pretty, polite framed portraits an art form based in combating oppression and the distinct yearning to be heard of creating something NEW is muted.  Hip Hop is many things.  This show only creates a palatable unchallenged portrait of hip hop—decreasing the impact of this transformational art form.”  See the show and tell us what you think.

CON/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp

The Mask of Lincoln

For the 2009 bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the NPG will have a Lincoln tribute on display from November 7, 2008 to July 5, 2009 in the "One Life" gallery. "The Mask of Lincoln" is being curated by NPG historian David C. Ward and he discussed the show recently.

[UPDATE: see this more recent blog post, and learn about the exhibition "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln" which opened on November 7, 2008}

Q. What will separate this show from all of the other Lincoln shows coming up in the bicentennial year?

DW. We have an excellent collection of all the best Lincoln portraits. We have thirty-one images, mostly photos, one painting, and four or five drawings. They span Lincoln’s life from the beardless youth to the Alexander Gardner cracked-plate image, which was broken in production. That’s a particularly great image:  he is wearing that Mona Lisa-like smile because he knows the war is coming to an end. This show will tell Lincoln ’s story of the Civil War; I wanted to deal with slavery and emancipation because the war went from a war to save the Union to a war to end slavery.

Q. What is the most important part of this show?

DW. The photographs. Lincoln was the first president to come of age in the photographic era and he quickly grasped how to use the medium of photography in order to project himself as a national leader. The nineteenth century is filled with artists who are trying to narrow the distance between the person and the likeness; photography did just that. In the industrial-era philosophy, the fact that photography was mechanical meant that it was more accurate because it did not produce an image from the shaky hand of the artist or the engraver’s tool.

Q. Lincoln will be everywhere next year. How big is he in history?

There are more biographies on Abraham Lincoln than there are on anyone else except Napoleon Bonaparte.   

 

For more information about this upcoming exhibition, an interview with curator, David Ward is now available on C-SPAN.

View video
 

An American Tragedy: Octavius V. Catto

While the National Portrait Gallery was closed for renovation, we used the opportunity to reorganize the museum to reflect two of the main themes of American history: first the establishment and preservation of the Union through the Civil War, and second, the struggle to expand civil rights to all Americans. These themes led to a further conversation about who deserves to be included in the NPG as exemplary national figures. The only people who get in automatically are the presidents – good, bad or indifferent. Everyone else has to be assessed by our curators and historians. As our nation has democratized so has our collection. Instead of just having famous politicians and generals, we include people from all walks of life who made a mark on America.

One such figure is Octavius Catto, who, I would guess, is the least prominent, least well known person in our collection. His is a fascinating, tragic story--one that shows how difficult the struggle for civil rights has been in our country.

Catto was an African American teacher, civil rights activist, and organizer of one of America’s first baseball leagues. The son of a South Carolina slave who was manumitted, he became a Presbyterian minister, and moved north to Philadelphia. Octavius did everything a bright, ambitious young man with a social conscience should do in antebellum America. He obtained an excellent education at the Institute for Colored Youth, participated in the lyceum and public culture of the day, and returned to the school as professor of English and mathematics. He insisted on the necessity of schools and education for the African American community. He further sought to strengthen that community thruogh his love for cricket, and then baseball, by founding the Pythian Baseball club, which played against both black and, despite resistance, white teams.

During the Civil War, Catto, working with Frederick Douglass and others, helped raised money and troops for the Union cause. With the war won, emancipation achieved, Catto realized that the next battleground would be for civil and political rights. He helped desegregate the Philadelphia streetcars with an act of civil disobediance, and he fully immersed himself in the campaign to pass the great civil rights amendments, including the Fifteenth Amendment which guaranteed voting righs to African American men.

Although Philadelphia had a better reputation than some northern cities on the race question, racial discrimination was still endemic and sparked to life during the postwar election campaigns. The election of 1871 was especially heated, with Democratic operatives threatening and intimidating black voters both during the campaign and on election day. During a street encounter, Catto was shot to death by a white man named Frank Kelly. Kelly fled and was never convicted of the crime.

Catto’s funeral was one of the largest public ceremonies in Philadelphia history, as the city looked at itself and was ashamed: Catto had been an exemplary citizen and had been punished for being black. His death marked the beginning of a new era in American history as the problem of freedom for the slave became the question of achieving civil rights for African Americans. Catto was, as his epitaph put it, “One More Martyr in the Cause of Constitutional Liberty.”

Listen here and learn more about Octavius Catto, from NPG Historian David Ward (12:23)

Octavius Catto, 1839-1871/ Broadbent and Phillips (active 1871-74) / Albumen silver print , c. 1871 / National Portrait Gallery