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Pop Quiz Trivia: Road Trip USA, Weds, Feb 22

Ready to start spring break early? Come join us at the National Portrait Gallery on Wednesday, February 22, at 6:30 p.m. for our collections-inspired trivia game, Pop Quiz, in the Kogod Courtyard. This month’s theme is “Road Trip USA.” We will “travel” from sea to shining sea, testing your knowledge about state-inspired trivia questions and highlighting sitters in our collection who have special connections to different states in the USA.

For example, did you know that it took Gutzon Borglum (above) and his son more than ten years to sculpt Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota?

Make sure you come early—DJ Micah Vellian will be playing tunes from 5 to 6:30 p.m. The Courtyard Café will be open, and snacks and beverages will be available for purchase.

Here is a sneak peek at the ten-point bonus question for this month’s Pop Quiz trivia:

Before becoming one of the most beloved nineteenth-century American authors with poems including “Evangeline” and “Paul Revere's Ride,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (below) attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Longfellow returned to Bowdoin College before accepting a post at Harvard in 1834.

Which of the following commonly quoted phrases was not written by Longfellow?

A: "A boy's will is the wind's will"

B: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated"

C: "Ships that pass in the night"

D: "Footprints on the sands of time

Pop Quiz trivia occurs once a month in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard in the National Portrait Gallery. The next Pop Quiz is “The 1980s” on Tuesday, March 27, at 6:30.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow / Julia Margaret Cameron / Albumen silver print, 1868 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Gutzon Borglum /  ? Ording / Gelatin silver print, c.1920 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

February 6–16, 1862: The Rise of Ulysses Grant and the Fall of Forts Henry and Donelson

Ulysses S. Grant (above) began life as Ulysses Hiram Grant, but because of a mix-up on his West Point application and acceptance, he would afterwards be known as Ulysses S. Grant. It was simply a mistake on the part of the recommending congressman, but it would stay with Grant the rest of his days. His heroics would be recorded under that name—Ulysses S.—and not his given name. The chapters in his life beginning with February of 1862 were to yield another moniker altogether: “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

Early 1862 brought the need for action to the federal armies in the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys. In February, General Henry Halleck ordered Grant to reduce Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson, a much more defendable entity, on the Cumberland River, both in northwest Tennessee. On February 6, Grant brought the war to the poorly prepared Fort Henry and it was taken in less than two hours, mainly by the actions of United States Navy Flag Officer Andrew Foote (right).

Over the next ten days, Grant brought 15,000 troops east to Fort Donelson (the sister fort of Henry—some dozen miles away by the thin strip of land separating the two rivers) and the battle for it began on February 13. After being reinforced with several thousand more troops, Grant was able to take Fort Donelson; the terms of capitulation were simply “unconditional and immediate surrender.”

Fort Donelson, photograph by Warren Perry

Grant’s army would fight one of the bloodiest battles of the war at Shiloh within two months of this victory at Donelson. They would be at Vicksburg to lay siege to that city in the late spring and early summer of the following year. The last sword to be handed to Grant in unconditional surrender would be yet another three springs beyond that upcoming season of war in 1862.

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

Ulysses Simpson Grant / Ole Peter Hansen Balling / Oil on canvas, 1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Andrew Hull Foote / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, c. 1862 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

"When the Astors Owned New York" by Justin Kaplan

Available in the museum bookstore

Justin Kaplan is the type of writer of whom one wonders, “What will he do next?”  His projects are intriguing and his biographical narratives are something of a playground for the National Portrait Gallery collection; it is no surprise that he has a lot of fans among the NPG staffers.  His works include the Pulitzer Prize winning Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain and Walt Whitman: A Life, which won the National Book award.

NPG historian David Ward said of Kaplan, “Justin Kaplan is a clear and limpid writer specializing in biography, who is able to express the complexities of human life in a way that disguises the equally complex pattern of his thoughts.  His Whitman work is structured in such a way that the reader is barely aware that he is not reading a straight narrative.”

Since it might be an odd practice to review a book that has been on the shelves for several years, it seems more appropriate simply to extol the virtues of Kaplan’s 2007 work, When the Astors Owned New York.  Of the number of praiseworthy parts of this book, perhaps it is Kaplan’s discussion of the gilded opulence of the period that is the most exciting.  He describes the Waldorf-Astoria, completed and opened in 1897, as almost a Disneyland for the elite:

Pleasure dome and social force, theatre and theme park, the Astors’ great hotel, the most expensive of its kind, was a place of artistic, mechanical, and sybaritic wonders.  Its splendor legitimized the open existence of an American leisure class… The Waldorf-Astoria declared that New York was now a world capital with a place in history like Athens, Rome, and London.  Loosely described as German (or “Dutch”) Renaissance in style, the Waldorf-Astoria was topped with an eye-catching array of turrets, chimneys, and red-tiled gables, all producing an effect that was both quaint and homely.  Internally even more than externally, the massive building showed that superfluity and sometimes giantism (as exemplified by native strawberries and oysters) were themselves attractive goals.  The ninety-five-foot-long ballroom, for example, was three stories high.

The Astor family’s roots in America were so much more humble than all this, however.  Kaplan’s family history records that the origin of the Astor wealth was the hard work and sound real estate investments of John Jacob Astor (the first) who was born in 1763.  Astor arrived in New York in 1784 and owned a fur trading business within a couple of years.  He built his business and simultaneously began investing in property on Manhattan; Astor’s success was a symbol of America’s growth, certainly, and more specifically, Manhattan’s rise to the skies. 

Over the next generations, the Astor family would continue to own and to manage property in New York City, amassing a voluptuous bank account.  The coda to Kaplan’s work is the decline of the Astor family’s magnitude with the deaths of John Jacob Astor IV—who perished as a gentleman, staying aboard the Titanic as it sank—and the expatriate  William Waldorf Astor, who lived in England from 1891 until his death in 1919.

--Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

 

John Jacob Astor/ Carlo de Fornaro / Relief print on paper, 1902 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Jacob Astor / John Wesley Jarvis / Oil on canvas, 1825 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Susan Mary Alsop

Cited:
Kaplan, Justin.  When the Astors Owned New York.  New York: Penguin, 2006.           

 

 

Portrait of Fred Korematsu Unveiled, February 2, 2012

The journey to justice is often complex and arduous. After the prolonged internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, more than forty years passed before the United States government apologized for the internment of more than 120,000 citizens. Fred Korematsu, a young welder living in Oakland, California, was one of many Japanese Americans caught in what the United States government considered to be a security measure necessary after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Korematsu challenged the government’s right to detain American citizens under President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, but lost his case in 1944. The legal protest was dormant until 1983, when Korematsu appealed to have the case reopened and was subsequently given a favorable judgment by the Supreme Court. Ultimately, thanks to Korematsu’s courageous and persistent stand, surviving victims of the internment were awarded $20,000 each.

Karen Korematsu, Fred Korematsu’s daughter, has given the National Portrait Gallery two photos that survived from the period before the internment. NPG has just placed those images on display in its “The Struggle for Justice” gallery. One is a portrait of Fred Korematsu, circa 1940, while the other is a photograph of several Korematsu family members in their nursery, circa 1939. Because the citizens who were forced into these camps were allowed to bring a limited number of possessions with them, many photos from the period prior to the internment were among the cultural possessions lost in the process.

“My grandfather took these photographs and hid them in the rafters of the packing house next to the flower nursery. . . . We felt very fortunate that when my family returned, the photographs were still there,” Karen Korematsu noted at the dedication, adding, “We’re very fortunate they are here today; these represent 120,000 Japanese American people who were interned.”

Karen and Ken Korematsu, children of Fred Korematsu

“I am delighted that these photographs will reside in the museum’s exhibition ‘The Struggle for Justice,’” said Martin Sullivan, director of the museum. “Korematsu’s courageous advocacy in the courts on behalf of interned Japanese Americans was essential to ending legislated segregation.”

Among those present at the dedication was former United States Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who said, “We are eternally grateful to Fred for his act of defiance in 1942 and for his determination in the pursuit of justice.”

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery; Karen Korematsu, daughter of Fred Korematsu; Congresswoman Doris Matsui; The Honorable Norman Mineta; Floyd Mori, national executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League; and Congressman Mike Honda.

 

Fred T. Korematsu / Unidentified artist / Hand-colored gelatin silver print, 1940 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Fred T. Korematsu, Kakusaburo Korematsu, Katsui Korematsu, Junichi Korematsu,Takashi Korematsu,Hiroshi Korematsu / Unidentified artist / Gelatin silver print, 1939 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution