National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Beneath the Surface, an Unusual Installation

One of the aims of traditional curatorial practice is to display works of art so that the efforts of the curators, conservators, art handlers, and installation team are invisible. Hiding those efforts is part of the “museum magic.” Once the evidence of the museum team is gone, the viewer ideally experiences the art without the distraction of hanging hardware, exposed wires, and the trappings of engineering. Sometimes, however, getting a piece of art onto a wall is an act of artistic and engineering merit on its own.

In the National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition “Portraiture Now: Drawing on the Edge,” the works of Mequitta Ahuja compelled a treatment that combined no small amount of smoke and mirrors. Ahuja’s larger works are fragile and unwieldy; two of them—Mocoonama and Meecoo Mocoo—are monumental, each measuring more than five feet horizontally and six feet vertically.

Moreover, handling them is something of a task, as they consist of collaged vellum paper with acrylic, colored pencil, and enamel. Framing of works this size is cost-prohibitive in many cases. Conservator Rosemary Fallon said that the works “could have been displayed by traditional means but yes, it would have been expensive. In my opinion there is something about the pieces that are almost mural-like, meaning that they invoke a more immediate response from the viewer.”

Michael Baltzer, NPG exhibition designer, also recently discussed the installation of the Ahuja portraits. Baltzer commented, “The collage works by Mequitta Ahuja presented a challenge that’s common in contemporary art installation: how to install large unframed/unprotected works on paper at multiple venues in a way that doesn’t cause preventable wear or infringe on the artist’s aesthetic sensibilities.” Of the process, Fallon said, “This was a creative solution to make the drawings appear as if they were floating; i.e., suspended in air.”

In this case, the answer was to suspend the works with a support structure that is invisible to the viewer; the drawings were mounted with Japanese paper hinges and reversible adhesive at regular intervals on the back. They were then attached to wood frames using magnets covered with soft Tyvek and then mounted on the gallery walls.

The visual effect of the installation is that of a portrait that seems to be floating away from the wall. The paper hinges were aligned with metal plates inset along the sides of the wood frame; the hinges were folded down onto those metal plates and secured in place with the Tyvek-covered magnets.

“By creating a support system that’s simple to assemble and disassemble with recessed steel plates, and mounting the work with a series of hinges and magnets, we were able to ensure that the work would be installed over and over with minimal risk and wear,” Baltzer added.

--Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, with special thanks to Rosemary Fallon and Michael Baltzer for their help in preparing this article

Mocoonama / Mequitta Ahuja /  Enamel, acrylic, and glitter on stamped and collaged vellum, 2011 / Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France

Poetry reading to close “Poetic Likeness“ exhibition

Hear widely acclaimed poets John Koethe, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Paul Muldoon read their work on Sunday, April 21, at the National Portrait Galley.

NPG Historian David Ward is the curator of the current exhibition “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets” (through April 28, 2013). Recently he spoke with us about a poetry reading featuring three award-winning poets to be held at the Portrait Gallery on April 21, 2013. 

Q: John Koethe, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Paul Muldoon are coming to town. These are three distinct and powerful voices—first, can you tell us how you managed to reel in these poets for this event? 

DW: They are great poets, aren’t they? Our immediate relationship with them is that I had asked them to be among the twelve contemporary poets that we commissioned to write a new poem for Lines in Long Array: A Civil War Commemoration, Poems and Photographs, Past and Present, which NPG is publishing this fall. So we wanted to have an event this spring to both close the “Poetic Likeness” exhibition and pivot to anticipate this forthcoming publication. So I asked them if they’d come down and debut their Civil War poems and read their own work.

I had a prior relationship with these three poets (and some of the others who appear in Lines of Long Array) because I had put on a program in New York for a celebration of the Hudson River. Since that event, sponsored by the Port Authority of New York, went pretty well, I kind of had a foot in the door to get them to participate in these projects. Also I’ve found if you ask people to do things for the Smithsonian, they’re inclined to oblige!

Q: These poets each go in different directions—language, philosophy, traditional themes, nontraditional themes. Do you see any common denominators among them other than their shared excellence and artistic merit?  

DW: Hmmmm. I’m not sure there is any immediate connection between them, either in terms of style or subject, except that they’re all about the same age so they exemplify contemporary poetry at its best. They all are very skilful and move back and forth from formal to free verse across a range of subjects.

All three are very smart—I mean really smart—and they all have a powerful command of the literature; I’d liken them, in a way, to chess grand masters in how they’ve accumulated knowledge for their own use, for their own “game,” as it were.

One thing I like is that they are all pretty eclectic and write about a lot of different things; you can’t pigeonhole any of them. They also span cultures in a number of ways. Paul Muldoon is from a Catholic family in Protestant Northern Ireland and now lives in New Jersey; Yusef Komunyakaa came back from Vietnam and changed his name from James William Brown to honor his grandfather and the African diaspora; John Koethe is a philosophy professor as well as a poet—I think there’s a bit of his work on Wittgenstein in his poetry: the dilemma about how the world can be wholly known, if it can at all.

All of this knowledge is worn lightly, so all three of them are weighty without being leaden. The other thing is that they all are really good readers of both their own work—and the work of others. And they’ve all done us proud with the poems they’ve written for Lines in Long Array. It’s worth coming out just to hear these new works!

Q: This event will coincide with the closing of “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets,” an NPG exhibition that you curated. What would you like the NPG audience to take away from these experiences? 

DW: Enjoyment, first of all. I want the poetry reading to be fun. I don’t like the idea that poetry is Something Very Serious and an arcane branch of knowledge. I think there’s a general conception that poetry is very difficult—almost incomprehensible—and that it can’t be understood without a lot of struggle.

Poetry is a different language but I don’t think it’s a difficult language. Poetry is like driving a stick shift: you have to do two things at once—in poetry’s case, pay attention to the meaning of the words but also the rhythms and sounds the words make, and in turn how that inflects the meaning. And one of the ways of getting into this is to hear a really good poet read his or her work.

And as I said above, all of three of these guys have a really strong stage presence when reading. If Yusef reads his poem “You and I Are Disappearing”—and I’m going to ask him to—people are going to fall apart because it’s so powerful.

Also, I have to say that I’ve been gratified at the reception to “Poetic Likeness,” and I think having an event like this to close it out is a nice way to celebrate an exhibition that has meant a lot to me. It also will be an appetizer for the Civil War book in the fall, for which I will be putting on another, larger, public event, a combination of poets reading and scholars talking, I think, although I’m not sure yet of the exact lineup. Plus I want one more big weekend for attendance!

 

 

Behind the Scenes of “Bound for Freedom’s Light”

The third in a series of exhibitions marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, “Bound for Freedom’s Light: African Americans and the Civil War,” opened at the National Portrait Gallery on February 1. The installation uses vintage photographs and historic prints to focus on the roles that individual African Americans played during the course of the conflict.

According to Ann Shumard, NPG’s senior curator of photographs and the exhibition curator, the starting point for the show was the desire to “highlight the richness of NPG’s own collection,” rather than borrow the majority of works from other institutions.

The exhibition includes images of well-known individuals such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth (right). Rather than highlighting their familiar prewar abolitionist activities, however, the images and accompanying label text in this installation draw attention to the sitters’ wartime efforts, such as Douglass’s pressuring Lincoln on the question of emancipation, Tubman serving as an army scout and spy, and Truth assisting refugees from slavery and recruiting black men to join the Union army.

The exhibition draws its title from the lyrics of a song that Truth performed at recruiting meetings as a tribute to the First Michigan Colored Regiment, in which she proclaimed,

We are going out of slavery, we are bound for freedom’s light;

We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight!

While these famous figures certainly merit a place in the exhibition, Shumard felt that it was crucial to have less recognizable names included as well. As she explains, “the focus here needs to be on the experience of ordinary people, the less well-known figures who both affected and were affected by the events of the era.”

Perhaps the most riveting image in the show is that of Gordon (right), who escaped enslavement on a Louisiana plantation to join a black regiment and whose scarred back became a powerful testament to the brutality of slavery. Also represented in a photographic portrait is Robert Smalls, the South Carolina bondsman who freed himself and his family by seizing control of a Confederate ship and delivering is safely into Union hands.

The NPG collection even turned out to contain a fascinating story that was unknown to our staff. While sorting through some photographs for a different purpose, Shumard happened across a carte-de-visite photograph of an African American man known as Abraham. The portrait had been acquired some years ago in an album of cartes de visite but had not been individually researched.

When Shumard investigated, she discovered the amazing story of a slave literally blown to freedom. Union soldiers tunneling below Confederate defenses in the siege of Vicksburg (1863) had detonated powerful explosives that buried in debris seven enslaved workers used by Confederates to dig countershafts, but lofted an eighth—identified only as Abraham (below)—clear across the Union lines, where he recovered from his injuries and joined the Union war effort.

Moving beyond these amazing biographies, Shumard discovered that there were some facets of the African American experience that could not be told using conventional portraiture. To cover these aspects, she turned to historic prints that portray a scene or series of events.

One of Shumard’s favorite pieces in the show is a print called (in the parlance of the era), Stampede among the Negroes in Virginia—Their Arrival at Fortress Monroe.(below). While researching this exhibition, Shumard read a New York Times Magazine article about the fugitive slaves who were granted protection as “contraband of war” by General Benjamin F. Butler at Union-held Fort Monroe in Virginia beginning in May 1861.

The article mentioned that a print had appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in June of that year showing vignettes of refugees from slavery arriving at the fort. Shumard was delighted to discover that such a print existed and was available for acquisition, as she had been struggling with how to include the events at Fort Monroe in the exhibition. “We have a carte de visite of Butler in our collection, but that’s a poor way to tell this particular story, with just a picture of a white Union officer. And there were no formal portraits made of the Fort Monroe ‘contrabands’ themselves.”

Similarly, the story of the July 1863 draft riots in New York could only be told through periodicals, rather than traditional portraiture, as the participants were generally anonymous. This gruesome and little-known chapter of the Civil War era, when antidraft rioters looted and burned the Colored Orphan’s Asylum and attacked African Americans in their homes and on the streets, is represented in the exhibition by a wood engraving from an August 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly.. “The image [in the engraving] of a man being lynched is grim,” explains Shumard, “but we needed to include it in order to convey the African American experience more fully.”

There were just a few stories that Shumard was not able to tell with images from the NPG collection, such as the heroic performance of the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, the first black regiment to be organized in a northern state. According to Shumard, “we have a carte de visite of the commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, but that doesn’t capture the experience of the African Americans who served with him.”

Shumard was able to secure a loan from a private individual of a chromolithograph showing the regiment’s storming of Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina. Other loans to the exhibition include a group portrait of emancipated slaves that was sold to raise funds for their education; a print entitled Come and Join Us Brothers that was used to recruit black soldiers; and a reproduction of a photograph of an unidentified slave/body servant in Confederate uniform with a Confederate captain, which Shumard included to broach the controversial and historically inconclusive topic of black participation in the Confederate cause.

In putting together this exhibition, Shumard tried to find a balance between the content she wanted to include in order to paint as complete a picture as possible and the objects that were available. “Obviously we can’t be encyclopedic in an exhibition of this size,” she reflects, “and we can’t cover every aspect of the African American experience. But I am pleased that we were able to find such compelling representations to flesh out this fascinating story.”

—Miriam Szubin, NPG Department of Education

Images:
Sojourner Truth / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, c. 1864 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Gordon / Mathew Brady Studio, Copy after: William D. McPherson Copy after: Mr. Oliver / Albumen silver print, 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham / Unidentified Artist / Albumen silver print, 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

“Stampede Among the Negroes in Virginia” / Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper / Wood engraving on paper, 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of Ann M. Shumard

Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Opens!

The third Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is on the walls.  Like the previous iterations of the competition, this installment features many compelling, diverse works which represent the breadth of American portraiture.  The winner of the competition’s first prize was Bo Gehring, whose video portrait is the first work in that medium ever to be selected as competition winner.

Still from Jessica Wickham by Bo Gehring

Gehring’s work is a slowly moving, vertical, digital portrait, bottom to top, of his sitter, Jessica Wickham.  It is not a tilt, as the camera is not stationary; it is more akin to a video scan.  Gehring’s camera moves from below the feet of his subject to beyond the top of her head, equidistant from her body during the entire, seemingly ascendant—seemingly because the subject is laying down—process of the shot.        

Dorothy Moss, curator of the competition, said of the work, “Bo Gehring’s portrait of Jessica Wickham was selected unanimously by the jury as the first prize winner. It was exciting to see a panel of informed, opinionated people come together in complete agreement. We were all especially struck by the poignancy of the moment when Wickham self-consciously looks away from the camera revealing the intimate dynamic between artist and subject and implicating us (the viewers) in the process.” For his winning portrait, Gehring will receive a $25,000 prize and a separate commission from the museum to portray a remarkable living American for its permanent collection.

In an earlier interview with NPG, Gehring noted, “I had a good start in college but became disenchanted with engineering and dropped out to become an artist. In spite of believing I would never willingly do anything like engineering again, events quickly conspired to put me into very high-tech computer pursuits for the next thirty-five years. I was an early computer animator and also earned two patents developing three-dimensional sound. This background informs every art project I do; in fact, I think of each one of my artworks as a direct outgrowth, or flowering if you like, of the skills I learned in all those years in technology.”

The range of the works submitted was great.  Inside the field of forty-eight portraits, many are traditional forms such as oil on canvas and sculpture, while others are photographs, textiles, and collage.  There are also four video portraits, one of which is projected onto a glitter screen.  The sitters also encompass a broad range of individuals, including relatives of the artists—moms, dads, and cousins—and friends of the artists.  There are also self-portraits, portraits of homeless individuals, soldiers, and strangers.

Still from Buffalo Milk Yogurt by Jennifer Levonian

Second prize was awarded to Jennifer Levonian of Philadelphia, who submitted a digital video animation titled Buffalo Milk Yogurt. Third prize went to Sequoyah Aono of New York. His self-portrait sculpture was created with acrylic on wood.

Commended artists are Paul D’Amato of Riverside, Illinois for his photograph Lillian, New Covenant Church of Deliverance, Chicago, 2011; Martha Mayer Erlebacher, from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania for her pencil-on-paper self-portrait; Heidi Fancher, from Washington, D.C., for her C-print photograph titled For Delia; and Beverly McIver of Durham, North Carolina for her oil-on-canvas work titled, Depression. Each will also be awarded a cash prize.

“The overall quality of this competition’s entries was incredibly strong across media. A theme that runs through the work in the exhibition is perseverance and the human capacity for resilience,” said Moss, adding, “The artists, whether making self-portraits, individual portrayals, or exploring the dynamic between family members in group portraits, are working through uncertainty and finding resolution while mastering their chosen medium.”

 The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Mobile App

Learn more about the portrait competition with our free mobile app! Tour the exhibition, listen to interviews, get inside information, and vote your favorite portrait for the People’s Choice Award.

The Network: A Portrait

Sample of The Network by Lincoln Schatz.

The National Portrait Gallery today unveiled The Network, Lincoln Schatz’s new generative portrait. Rather than a single sitter, Schatz’s work features eighty-nine individuals who are a part of the national power structure. These sitters are captured on video discussing their roles in politics, science, and education, as well as their lives and significant moments in the nation’s story.

“How could I create portraits of power and leadership using new technologies?” Schatz asked during the dedication ceremony. “My idea was to emancipate the portrait from the single moment, allow it to occur over time. Enable it to continuously [and] democratically explore each of the sitters by topic in the service of creating a portrait of this moment in time in U.S. history.”

Schatz’s format contains a single subject appearing multiple times on the screen. The subject has been recorded digitally from different angles, but only one of those shots is a speaking shot. Because The Network is a digital recording, Schatz was able to create metadata tags for topics discussed within it, resulting in a randomly generated (hence, “generative”) video portrait. It is not looped as a traditional film would be and thus does not produce the same video sequence over repeated viewings.

Many of the eight-nine sitters featured in The Network.

The discourse is as varied as the sitters. Schatz conducted eighty-nine interviews with, for example, political figures such as Barney Frank, Vernon Jordan, Eric Cantor, Nancy Pelosi, and Sandra Day O’Connor. Among those in the arts and sciences interviewed were Steven Chu, Anthony Fauci, and Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough.

Anne Collins Goodyear, the National Portrait Gallery’s associate curator of prints and drawings and manager of new media acquisitions, said of the work, “I’m thrilled with it. I think it captures a moment in time that we know is ephemeral; it will carry insights for future generations that we cannot yet imagine.” Goodyear worked closely with the artist on the logistics; the interviews took place on the museum’s auditorium stage for more than fourteen months, from May 2011 to June 2012.

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

 

Lincoln Schatz, at the opening of The Network.

 

 

Poetic Likeness: News That Is Staying News

As Ezra Pound noted, “Poetry is news that stays news.” The National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition, “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets,” is a celebration of the American poet that is currently making exciting news. We recently spoke with exhibition curator David C. Ward.

Q: Our readers will recognize you from your previous work—“Walt Whitman: a kosmos,” “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” and “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln.” Can you tell our reading audience a little about why you wanted to curate this exhibition?

DW: I started getting interested in poetry, both as a scholar and as a writer, in the late 1980s. As I worked on poetry and American culture—I was moving in a more American Studies-ish direction: I was becoming more interested in the interrelationships of art, literature, and history.

It just seemed a natural fit for NPG to do an exhibition that would recognize the role of poets in the creation of American culture—as well, of course, to measure their contributions to poetry itself as an art form.

And in terms of the art of portrayal, the link between poets and artists has always been close, so an exhibition on poets would be an index to the evolution of modernist American art, particularly modernist photography; photographs make up the bulk of the images in “Poetic Likeness.”

Q: You are a widely published poet [Ward’s work has been published in many journals, and his collection, Internal Difference, was published in 2011 (Manchester, England: Lintott/Carcanet)]. How did you employ your criteria for poetry—that is, what you consider to be influential work—in picking the works for your show? Or did you?

DW: Well, I’m not really widely published as a poet! But I have a pretty good understanding of the history of poetry, the interrelationships between poets as the art form evolved, and the relationship between poetic writing and modernism.

The major question in thinking about “Poetic Likeness” was to come up with a time frame that would be coherent and interesting. For logistical reasons, the exhibition is based on our permanent collection. By far the strongest part of that collection when it comes to poetry is the modern era: roughly 1900 to the mid-1970s. We do have some earlier American poets, and I guess I could have done a “forerunner” room that included Joel Barlow or the poets in the Victorian era, which culminated with Longfellow. I just decided it made for a cleaner exhibition if it homed in on the modern era.

Conversely, I didn’t want to get too far beyond the 1970s into contemporary poets, because I think the cultural climate changes dramatically after the mid-1970s. Contemporary portraits would make up another exhibition entirely.

Q: Did you include a couple of poets you had second guesses about? That is, did you have any last minute epiphanies, or wake up in the middle of the night and say, “HD! I must have an imagist and she's the one—?”

DW: Not really. I was constrained by who we have in the collection. I recognize that there are poets who are missing, and I expect to get e-mails from people whose favorite poet isn’t represented. I did debate whether I should start with Longfellow or not, but I thought that would skew the show toward what came before by contrasting Longfellow with Whitman.

I admire Longfellow for his professionalism and the way that he competed, if that’s the word, with his English contemporaries—he did put American poetry on the map. But he is fundamentally a Victorian. So I started with Whitman who, as Pound wrote, “broke the new wood,” creating a poetry on which subsequent writers would build.

Q: You use “modern” in the title of your exhibition. How do you link Walt Whitman with all that is modern?

DW: I think Whitman is the key figure in American literature—well, maybe along with Emerson—and in Leaves of Grass he alters the cultural landscape by almost literally including the landscape of nineteenth-century America: he breaks with the genteel tradition and brings the street into the parlor.

With Whitman (right) we hear, refracted poetically, the language of actual Americans—the voice of the street—and see the turbulent society of which he was a part. He opens everything up. And he creates a particular style of poetry—free verse—that breaks the constraints of formal poetry based on iambic pentameter and other “rules.” He kicks down the door, as he himself puts it.

So his influence is incalculably liberating. But it takes Ezra Pound to mold and fashion all the raw, sometimes incoherent writings of Whitman into a sophisticated, modern poetry that was responsible to the art itself and on which an American poetic tradition could be built.

Q: Ezra Pound was widely disliked after World War II, but his poetry has no small amount of sway over poets and students these many decades beyond his death. Was your choice to put him in this show a “no-brainer,” or did Pound's politics enter the curatorial process?

DW: No, to paraphrase one of Donald Rumsfeld’s “rules,” you do history with the history you have: we are not in the business at the Portrait Gallery of just validating people we agree with. So putting Pound in—indeed giving him a formative position—was, as you say, a “no brainer.” Pound’s career is tremendously interesting and important, regardless of how we view his evolving political career and his activities in World War II.

For those who don’t know the story: Pound (right), who spent most of his life overseas, lived in Italy during World War II, and he made a series of inflammatory broadcasts in favor of the Fascist cause during the war.

Pound was imprisoned after the war, effectively as a war criminal, and he ran a real risk of being tried for treason and even executed, as other wartime propagandists, Lord Haw-Haw and Tokyo Rose, were.

I don’t think there was any real appetite for putting Pound on trial, and instead he was declared mentally unstable and incarcerated in St. Elizabeths for most of the 1950s. I don’t know if he was insane, but he certainly was broken by being imprisoned.

But what needs to be remembered is not how he ended his career but how he began it: not only as a great poet in his own right but as someone who had tremendous influence in creating the first generation of modern American poets. He was a very generous supporter of poets who differed widely in temperament and style, from Hilda Doolittle to Robert Frost. He famously edited T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, probably the greatest modern poem, and Eliot dedicated it to him as il miglior fabbro: the better maker.

So I think we have to recognize that even as we are clear-eyed about his faults. I think Americans tend to be a bit sentimental about history: they think that people have to be “good guys,” when history itself tells us that personal character frequently has nothing to do with achievement! But that’s another story . . .

Q: What projects are you working on now?

DW: Short term, i.e., for the life of “Poetic Likeness,” I am working on programming. In particular I want to organize a reading by major American poets to take place at the NPG sometime in April—National Poetry Month!—just before the exhibition closes. And there will be other, smaller poetic events. So watch this space.

Also, I have another very interesting poetry project which is that I coedited, with our curator Frank Goodyear: a small book called Lines in Long Array, which is part of the Smithsonian’s programming about the Civil War. What Frank and I did was to commission twelve contemporary poets to write about the war in any way that they chose to do so. We then paired those poems with twelve poems from the war years themselves, including work by Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. Plus we included modern photographic landscapes by the artist Sally Mann that are set off against photographs from the war by Alexander Gardner.

It’s a really nice book, and the poems we commissioned turned out wonderfully well. Really looking forward to seeing it through print— it should be out by the fall of 2013.

 

Walt Whitman / G. Frank E. Pearsall / Albumen silver print, 1872 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Feinberg

Ezra Loomis Pound / Alvin Langdon Coburn / Collotype print, 1913 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

 

For the 4th of July: Flag Stories & Facts from Collector Ben Zaricor

One of the many fascinating objects on display in the National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition, “1812: A Nation Emerges,” is a large American flag, 69 by 115 inches, with seventeen stars and seventeen stripes (above).

The owner of the flag is Ben Zaricor, who recently spoke with us about this flag, his extensive collection, and about flags in general.

Q: How did you begin your flag collection?

A: When I was a senior in college, I saw a young man beaten for wearing a stars-and-stripes band uniform (vest). It was taken by some people to be a flag shirt. He was a customer in a pizza restaurant and was approached by men who grabbed him and carried him outside like you would carry a pizza. They dropped him on the cement and started beating him.

This led to a small riot in front of the restaurant, with several people, including myself, trying to help the young man. We were then attacked by a total of fifteen men. Guns were shown by the attackers, and a full-scale riot was averted by the arrival of the uniformed police.

That experience gave me pause about the power of symbols. I was intrigued by a symbol that people would not only die for but would also kill for. From there, I began collecting flags, in part out of curiosity and in part as a form of protest of what happened to the young man.

I began collecting during my senior year in college at Washington University in St. Louis and have continued to this day. My first two flags were Canadian; my first American flag was my twenty-fifth, collected again as a symbol of protest of what happened to the young man that night at Talanya’s Restaurant in 1969.

I collected the first 1,500 flags very quietly, without fanfare. Only family and a few friends were aware of the collection until the early 2000s, when an alumnus who had heard about the collection asked me to do a small exhibition for an alumni function in San Francisco in 2003. By that time, I had begun collecting flags of great historical value. During the show at the Presidio in San Francisco, I saw the public’s reaction to our exhibition of 125 flags that had turned into a larger affair. The exhibition lasted nearly a year.

The experience of seeing peoples’ responses to these pieces of cloth helped me understand the quest that first drew me to collect flags—the power of a symbol, as well as flags’ relationship to stories about our country and its people. I realized that it was we the people who gave the meaning to the flag and to our life as a nation. Through these old and sometimes ragged pieces of cloth, their stories helped me understand the personality of our country and how we all have some story about a flag.

It was from that point in 2003 that I went public with the collection and decided to become more aggressive in obtaining collections—both personal and from museums. At this time we have eleven collections from other individuals who came before me, plus seven museum collections. Together they represent 862 years of collecting, in addition to my 43 years. This does not count all the ones and twos I picked up in the early years of building my collection. Amassing collections helped give the Zaricor Collection the depth and breadth that it has today.

Q: Your website says you have in excess of 3,300 flags; do you have a favorite or a handful of favorites in that mighty lot?

A: That is like asking which of your children is your favorite! To me, the little houseboat flag from Amsterdam that a man gave my wife and I the day we took a stroll together in 1974 along the canals means as much to me as having a flag associated with Lincoln, the Kennedy assassination, or some other historical event or person. I can recall the day and circumstances of most of the flags I brought into our collection. That was my criteria to add a flag to the collection—it had to be used, not new, and it usually had a story connected to it.

Again, to me these symbols are chronicles about who we are as a people and a nation; each story weaves the fabric of our country. You can often see—particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when flag-making was still a cottage industry—the personality of the flagmaker in their choice of materials, method of construction, and styles.

For example, I have a battle flag that was made from a dress given up one hundred and fifty years ago—you can see the wine stains from the day of the wedding. To me this speaks volumes about the meaning that this flag had to someone for them to use the most important piece of clothing they likely owned.

Q: Could you tell our reading audience a little about the seventeen-star American flag you loaned to the National Portrait Gallery for “1812: A Nation Emerges” (above)?

A: This flag is truly a national treasure and is one of only eight documented War of 1812 stars and stripes to survive today. During this war, our national emblem was still in transition, with many different patterns and star counts in use at the same time.

The official flag was a fifteen-star/fifteen-stripe flag mostly used by the U.S. Navy, as well as military forts and lighthouses. Myriad patterns were used on both sea and land: sixteen stars/thirteen stripes, sixteen stars/sixteen stripes, fifteen stars/thirteen stripes, seventeen stars/seventeen stripes (the flag in the exhibition), seventeen stars /thirteen stripes, and, at the end of the war, eighteen stars/thirteen stripes and eighteen stars/eighteen stripes. This tells us the country was still in search of its national character, and that we were still defining ourselves symbolically as a people.

Congress had attempted in the Second Flag Act, passed in 1794, to standardize our national flag to fifteen stars and fifteen stripes (an example is the Star-Spangled Banner). However, in 1818 Congress enacted the Third Flag Act, which had the stripes represent the thirteen colonies at the time of the American Revolution and the stars recognize a state when it entered the Union. Compromise settled the contradictions of the pattern of our national flag and united the country symbolically as well.

The flag on exhibit in “1812: A Nation Emerges” is the only known seventeen star/seventeen stripe flag to survive from that period of our history. I believe it survived more than 200 years because the Clephan family was judicious in storing it and limiting its exposure to the elements.

This flag is important for reasons other than its association with the War of 1812. Its configuration of stars in rows of a 6/5/6 pattern, with the middle star on the second row larger than the others, documents a custom from the American Revolution. (We stop seeing this in flag-making around 1880.)

It was not until we recently added this flag to our collection—along with two original thirteen-star flags, one with a large star in a pattern of 4/5/4 and one with 12 stars in a circle and one larger star within the circle—that we learned that this tradition has its roots in our country’s early history.

We have a contemporary drawing of George Washington in camp at Yorktown with a flag containing a horizontal row of stars and a second row containing a larger star, similar to one of our original thirteen-star flags. I now believe the custom dates back to the American Revolution. Our seventeen-star flag reconfirms that practice.

It is befitting that Portrait Gallery’s exhibition is the setting for the return home of this American flag after 200 years. I cannot think of a more appropriate place to show it to the American people for the first time.

Q: What are your thoughts on the 1812 exhibition?

A: The exhibition is a hard show to do successfully, and after seeing it, talking with Dr. [Sidney] Hart several times, and reading some material he prepared on the exhibition, I believe the National Portrait Gallery team accomplished the impossible—telling the story in these times when technology is the dominant factor in exhibitions, especially if you are going to discuss wars.

The exhibition’s use of period paintings and artifacts, as well as the setting and ambiance of the museum, give a refreshing approach to storytelling. It is fitting to learn that so much of country’s development owes its genesis to this period.

I think learning about the historical people, the politics, and direction of the country is fascinating and educational. It puts the war in a context few of us realize about its impact on the future development of the country and our customs and traditions. To do this with a low-tech approach gives me hope that content remains paramount to bells and whistles.

 

 

1812: The War That United the United States

"1812: A Nation Emerges" now open, on display through January 27, 2013

Thirty years after the American Revolution, the former colonies were a disparate bunch, spread over much of a continent, unsettled, and divided by politics and fear. Sidney Hart, curator of the National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition “1812: A Nation Emerges,” states, “In 1812, this is a very weak republic.”

In the exhibition catalog, Hart also notes, “With the exception of a few cities located in a narrow strip along the eastern seaboard, the new country was composed of farms and endless forests.” The War of 1812 would challenge and change the young nation in many ways and, in the end, bring that nation together.

Stories of valor and great battles were abundant after the war, and President James Madison’s wife, Dolley, was central to one of the most enduring tales. While taking Washington, the British laid waste to the city’s important buildings and set their sights on the White House. The exhibition’s assistant curator, Rachael Penman, describes the events that propelled the elegant first lady to the status of national hero:

On August 24, 1814, the citizens of Washington fled before an invading British army. After an easy victory against unprepared militia at Bladensburg, the British advanced into the city. Starting at the Capitol, the invaders, led by Major General Robert Ross, quickly set about burning the city’s public buildings. At the abandoned White House, the British found an elaborate dinner, left in haste as Dolley Madison had fled the house only hours before, after securing the legendary Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington.

Another spectacular moment in the war was recorded when forces under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry achieved one of the great American naval victories at Lake Erie on September 10, 1813. His first ship, the Lawrence, was decimated by British fire, and Perry was forced to move his command to the Niagara.

Perry's Victory on Lake Erie / Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Gift of Mrs. Charles H.A. Esling

Perry’s famous words to General William Henry Harrison are usually—but partially—remembered. “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” he wrote. However, the forgotten part of that statement was the codicil consisting of his list of captured vessels which were “two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” The entire participating British fleet was taken that day, a stunning loss for the navy that had, only eight years earlier, come to dominate the earth’s oceans with Lord Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

Stories such as these produced a less tangible but significant result of the war—these tales and others were responsible for a surge in nationalistic spirit and an increase in the collective American myth. In his essay “Art and War: Truth and Myth,” Sidney Hart writes, “Even the mythical part of the narrative reflects the truth about the outcome of this war. Although far from an American triumph, the war should have by all odds been lost, and although the United States did not win, it certainly did not lose.”

The nation would rally around the myths that were wrought from the war’s battles, and for a short few decades, a united nation would grow under the flag described in Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner—another episode of the war which would assume legendary status. 

The identity of the United States, in both historic and mythic forms, was crafted immensely during the War of 1812. And though the question of the ultimate victory yet remains in play to historians of today, Hart dismisses this as less important than how the war was perceived in its own day, noting, “For contemporary Americans, it did indeed seem that they had won the war.”

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

 

Dolley Dandridge Payne Todd Madison 1768–1849 / Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) / Oil on canvas, 1804 / White House Collection, Washington, D.C.; gift of the Walter H. & Phyllis Shorenstein Foundation in memory of Phyllis J. Shorenstein

Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie / Thomas Birch (1779–1851) / Oil on canvas, c. 1814 / Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; gift of Mrs. Charles H. A. Esling

 

Cited:
Hart, Sidney, and Penman, Rachel.  1812: A War Emerges (exhibition catalog).  Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012.

Teen Portrait Competition: Enter by April 29!

A sister competition to the third installment of the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2013, the Teen Portrait Competition is currently accepting entries. The deadline has been extended until April 29, 2012. Grand Prize winners will be honored at the National Portrait Gallery in 2013; competition details can be found at www.npgteenportrait.org.

Recently, we talked with one of the teen coordinators of this new completion, Sarah Schnorrenberg.

Q: What is your role in facilitating this competition?

SS: I am on the marketing team. The ten of us were split into teams: management, marketing, and design. As a group, we planned the entire competition. Rebecca Kasemeyer [NPG’s director of education] expected the competition to consist of photographs, but aside from that we had full rein in creating it, especially as this is the first one for teens.

Along with the other members of the marketing team, I've been trying to help get the word out about the competition. As is true for all of the teens working on the competition, this was a new experience. I've never done any marketing before, and I came out able to say that I've written a press release.

Q: How have you liked the response so far?

SS: Our most recent stat is 109 entries [as of publication there are more than 200 entries], which is about half of our target, but still a very respectable number. I'm hoping that in consecutive years, after news spreads, the response will be much larger.

Unfortunately, I won't be on the teen design team by then, but I'm sure that in years to come the competition will be just as acclaimed as the Outwin Boochever competition. However, I am not trying to diminish this accomplishment; 109 is a great number to achieve and we are all very excited. In this last month of the competition, we might reach our target.

 Q: The website notes, “The work entered should be understood as a portrait in the broadest sense.” What sort of stylistic representation is acceptable as an entry? Is this a wide-open entry field?

SS: The first day we came in to work on the competition, we spent the morning wandering around the National Portrait Gallery, looking at examples of portraits and discussing exactly what our definition of a portrait was.

The one example that we threw around during meetings of a more abstract portrait is the brick. Some artist [Robert Arneson] took a brick and called it a self-portrait for some esoteric reason. We tackled the question of whether or not we would accept this.

While I was inclined to accept bricks myself, we came to decide that the portrait must at least include part of a human body. Therefore, if one decides that a foot captures the essence of their subject, we will accept the picture of the foot. I would like to think that this is wide open. We are trying to get teens interested in portraiture, and it seems counterintuitive to me to reject one's form of expression when we are trying so hard to get them to express something in the first place.

Q: Can you tell us anything about the works you have seen so far, or is that an unfair question?

SS: The two I've seen were wonderful and complete opposites. When we opened the first entry, we were all taken aback. (Or at least I was.) A large, high-definition picture popped up on the computer screen, and it was great quality. It was a picture of a boy with water pouring over his hair and eyes popping against the blue water droplets. It was very striking, to say the least. I forget what the title was, but the artist wrote something about the portrait representing his brother's loss of innocence. It was all very Catcher in the Rye-esque.

The other portrait was much more subtle—black and white, with a girl against ivy and the lighting striking her just right. Both pictures give me great hope about the turnout we will have by April 29, and I'm eager to see all the entries in May. Clearly, teens still hold some esteem for portraiture as a form of art, because they do it so well.

 

The War of 1812 at the National Portrait Gallery

by Rachael Penman, Assistant Curator of  "1812: A Nation Emerges." The exhibition opens June 15, 2012

Perry's Victory on Lake Erie / Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Gift of Mrs. Charles H.A. Esling

Bicentennial commemorations for the War of 1812 will officially begin on June 18, 2012, in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Here at the National Portrait Gallery, the upcoming exhibition “1812: A Nation Emerges” will present the big picture of the “little war” that lasted nearly three years and stretched across North America.

The most exciting part of developing an exhibition on this scale is selecting pieces that will create the “wow” factor, both through visual impact and the stories they tell. The show contains roughly 100 pieces, ranging from an eight-foot-wide painting of Oliver Hazard Perry’s naval victory on Lake Erie (1812 was critical to the development of the U.S. Navy, which will be holding various commemorations throughout the year), to a life-size sculpture of the Native American leader Tecumseh, who sided with the British, and Gilbert Stuart’s famed portrait of Dolley Madison. Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Winfield Scott will be seen not as the old men we’re more familiar with from later photographs, but as they were in their prime—young, energetic, and ambitious. The War of 1812 launched their careers.

Some of the hardest works to track down were those of the British officers who came to America to fight for king and country. The portraits of major generals Edward Pakenham and Robert Ross, who both died in battle, still belong to their descendants and have never been on public display anywhere, let alone in America.

Three years after he reveled in the burning of Washington, Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn had his portrait painted with the city alight in the background. In June we’ll be putting up this very portrait in the heart of the city he attempted to destroy. Somewhere in England, Cockburn is rolling in his grave.

“1812” will also shed light on those men who were celebrated in their time but have been largely lost to history. General Zebulon Pike died in the successful attack on the Canadian capital of York (modern-day Toronto) and was forgotten, yet today visitors from all over the world climb Pike’s Peak in Colorado.

A Mohawk chief named Teyoninhokarawen (more commonly referred to as John Norton) fought in nearly every battle on the Canadian frontier but has been completely overshadowed by Tecumseh. William Thornton, superintendent of patents, stood up to a regiment of British soldiers about to set fire to the Patent Office Building (precursor to the building that now houses the National Portrait Gallery), saving the contents from destruction.

In the War of 1812 it is sometimes hard to separate the legends from the actual events. We don’t know if Dolley Madison was still at the White House when George Washington’s portrait was taken off the wall, although it was likely saved on her initiative. But we do know she took the red velvet curtains from the Oval Drawing Room and saved a red velvet dress until the end of her life. The dress is thought to have been made from the curtains and will be displayed in the exhibition.

Jean Lafitte is well known as the patriotic pirate who came to Andrew Jackson’s rescue at the Battle of New Orleans. What most people don’t realize is that we have no idea what he looked like, where he was born, how he died, and that he did not actually fight in the battle on January 8, 1815. The striking portrait thought to be Lafitte that we will display was found buried in a box at Lafitte’s last known base in Galveston, Texas.

From the American invasion of Canada, to the victories of the USS Constitution, the defense of Fort McHenry, and the Battle of Tippecanoe, “1812: A Nation Emerges” will tell the story of the war through the lives of extraordinary individuals, with portraits by some of the best artists America has ever produced. The United States emerged from the War of 1812 perhaps not the victor in battle, but successful in once and for all declaring itself a nation.

“1812: A Nation Emerges” will open on June 15, 2012, and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.

 

Interview with Photographer Alfred Wertheimer

"Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer" is on view through January 23, 2011.

In 1956, twenty-six-year-old Alfred Wertheimer was asked by RCA Records to photograph a rising twenty-one-year-old star named Elvis Presley. Upon receiving the assignment, Wertheimer responded “Elvis who?”

“I had never heard the name Elvis Presley in my life, at that time,” says Wertheimer. “He was basically a well-known regional singer in the South and now he was breaking in on the national scene.”

"Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer" showcases fifty-six photographs taken during Wertheimer’s short time with Elvis, documenting a young singer on the cusp of superstardom. The exhibition offers an intimate look at the public and private life of one of the world's most famous figures—from the diners to the train stops—in 1956. “Elvis at 21” is on view at the National Portrait Gallery through January 23, 2011.

Alfred Wertheimer was interviewed by Warren Perry, co-curator of “Elvis at 21.” The exhibition is on tour; for dates and locations, visit the tour schedule.

New Exhibition: “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture”

Opens tomorrow, Saturday, October 30

                  © Estate of Alice Neel

The National Portrait Gallery presents the first major museum exhibition showing how questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture. “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” will be on view through February 13, 2011.

Long before the advent of today’s gay and lesbian movement, many examples of art—paintings, sculptures, watercolors, prints, and photographs—acknowledged a variety of sexual identities. This exhibition features artists and sitters with a range of identities, from exclusively same-sex to exclusively heterosexual.

“The exhibition is titled ‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture’ because those with different sexual identities—who are of, but not fully a part of, the society they portrayed—occupied a position of influential marginality,” said NPG historian David C. Ward, who is also co-curator of the exhibition. “From this vantage point they crafted innovative and revolutionary ways of painting portraits. Society’s attempt to forbid them forced them to resist by developing new visual ways to code, disguise and express their subjects’ identities—and also their own.”


© Annie Leibovitz, 2010

Among the objects in the exhibition are Salutat by Thomas Eakins; Painting No. 47, Berlin by Marsden Hartley; Romaine Brooks’s 1923 oil-on-canvas self-portrait; Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp) by Man Ray; a photograph of Janet Flanner taken in 1927 by Berenice Abbott; Canto XIV by Robert Rauschenberg; We Two Boys Together Clinging by David Hockney; Troy Diptych and Camouflage Self-Portrait, both by Andy Warhol; Souvenir by Jasper Johns; Felix, June 5, 1994, by AA Bronson; and Ellen DeGeneres in Kauai, Hawaii, by Annie Leibovitz (shown above).

Co-curators of this exhibition are David C. Ward and Jonathan Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies, State University of New York at Buffalo.

The exhibition has been made possible by The Calamus Foundation with the leadership contributions of Donald A. Capoccia and Tommie L. Pegues, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional significant support is provided by many generous friends of the National Portrait Gallery, including the John Burton Harter Charitable Trust, E*TRADE, Ella Foshay, Vornado/Charles E. Smith, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, Catherine V. Dawson, Robby Browne and Madison Cumnock, The Durst Organization, Ashton Hawkins and Johnnie Moore, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, The Morrison & Foerster Foundation, Occasions Caterers, the David Schwartz Foundation, Frank J. Sciame, Jonathan Sheffer and Christopher Barley, and Jon Stryker.

Images:
Frank O'Hara / Alice Neel / Oil on canvas, 1960 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Hartley S. Neel; © Estate of Alice Neel

James Baldwin / Beauford Delaney / Pastel on paper, 1963 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Ellen DeGeneres / Annie Leibovitz / Gelatin silver print, 1997 / Collection of the artist; © Annie Leibovitz, 2010

Janet Flanner / Berenice Abbott / Photographic print, 1927 / Prints and Photgraphs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. / © Berenice Abbott / Commerce Graphics Ltd., Inc.

 

The Return of the King!

"Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer" opens tomorrow, Saturday, October 23

© Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.

The National Portrait Gallery's year long tribute to Elvis Presley continues this week with the opening of “Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer”, a collection of Alfred Wertheimer's photographs of Elvis from 1956. The exhibition will open on Saturday, October 23, and close on January 23, 2011.  Developed collaboratively by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Govinda Gallery of Georgetown, and the National Portrait Gallery, "Elvis at 21" is sponsored on its national tour by The History Channel.

Al Wertheimer first met Elvis in early 1956 when he was contracted by RCA to photograph the young singer.  Wertheimer shot photos of Elvis in New York first, then later, apart from his contract, in Richmond and Memphis.  Wertheimer says he spent his time following Elvis, "Tagging along like a little dog.  I just kept snapping."

© Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.

Elvis is shown performing in many of the photos, certainly, but he is also depicted much more intimately in many of the images.  Some photos capture him in moments of quiet—both alone and with family members, friends, or girlfriends.  Of all the images, perhaps the most talked about is the one Wertheimer calls "The Kiss," (above) in which Elvis and a beautiful young woman are sharing a softly passionate exchange in a stairwell of the Mosque Theatre in Richmond.  The identity of the ingénue is unknown. 

This body of work is now a national treasure, and serves to document the early moments of the Elvis phenomenon.  Wertheimer's photos, according to Chris Murray of Govinda, "are a one of a kind look at the greatest American entertainer of all time."

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

 

"Starburst" / Portrait of Elvis Presley by Alfred Wertheimer / © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.

"The Kiss" / Portrait of Elvis Presley by Alfred Wertheimer / © Alfred Wertheimer. All rights reserved.

Interview with Artist Lincoln Schatz

Lincoln Schatz’s generative portraits of nineteen leading American innovators, known collectively as Esquire’s Portrait of the Twenty-First Century, were created in 2008 on commission from the magazine. The portraits are on view at the National Portrait Gallery through July 10, 2011, as part of the “Americans Now” exhibition.

Esquire’s Portrait of the Twenty-First Century in "Americans Now"

Each of theses sitters—representing leadership in the realms of business, medicine, science, technology, and the arts, and including celebrities like George Clooney and LeBron James—sat for his or her portrait for one hour in the artist’s ten-by-ten-foot “Cube.” During this time they participated in activities of personal interest. 

The "Cube" in studio. Photo from incolnschatz.com

The Cube is embedded with twenty-four cameras, each of which recorded the sitter from a different angle. The ever-changing “generative portrait” that results consists for the footage from each camera played back for different durations and in different sequences, creating a representation that is analogous to a personal encounter with these individuals.

Schatz was Interviewed by Jesse Rhodes of Smithsonian Magazine; learn more about his work in Rhode’s article for the Smithsonian's Around the Mall blog.

Photo by Sara Ickow, National Portrait Gallery

 

New Exhibition: “Americans Now”

“Americans Now,” drawn from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, features portraits of outstanding individuals in the realms of science, business, government and the arts. The exhibition will be on view through June 19, 2011.

The show includes such familiar names as Erykah Badu, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Tom Hanks, Tony Hawk, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Willie Nelson, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Martha Stewart. These figures have been portrayed by some of the most prominent artists of our era: Chuck Close, Robert McCurdy, Elizabeth Peyton, Martin Schoeller, Kehinde Wiley and Dan Winters. The wide range of sitters continues with an iconic image of President Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey and a portrait of Michelle Obama by artist Mickalene Thomas.

“Americans Now” showcases a variety of media. Examples include a projected video—The Late Night Triad by Jason Salavon, which features Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and David Letterman—and video portraits of George Clooney and LeBron James that are a created through a process pioneered by Lincoln Schatz.

August 16, 1977—The Death of Elvis

 
Thirty-three years ago today, Elvis Presley died at his home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. At the time, had anyone told the world that Elvis would be as revered three-plus decades later as he was when he was in his prime, it is likely that the prognosticator would be ridiculed. However, the madness of such a forecast is only now exceeded by the madness that is still Elvis-mania. Hundreds of thousands of people visit Graceland yearly, and Elvis’s recordings sell to each succeeding generation.

The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition, “Echoes of Elvis,” is a collection of works that were created since Elvis’s death and pay tribute to the late king of rock and roll. Exhibition curator Warren Perry said, “We have been really pleased to be able to salute one of history’s greatest entertainers. That the show has been well received is due to Elvis’s continuing popularity, a third of a century since his death.”

The Portrait Gallery will also be paying homage to the king with a second Elvis show this year, “Elvis at 21,” which will feature photos (above) of Elvis by photographer Al Wertheimer. RCA asked Wertheimer to photograph Elvis during a March 1956 visit to New York, during which the young singer made an appearance on The Steve Allen Show and later recorded “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel.”

“Elvis at 21” will open on October 23, 2010, and run through January 23, 2011. “Echoes of Elvis” will close on August 29. 

Untitled (Elvis and Priscilla), from the portfolio Graceland / William Eggleston / Dye transfer print, 1983 (printed 1984) / Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of Amy Loeserman Klein / © Eggleston Artistic Trust and Cheim & Read, New York

Elvis Aron Presley and unidentified woman / Alfred Wertheimer  / Pigmented print, June 10, 1956 / Govinda Gallery, Washington D.C.

Portrait of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney by Jo Davidson

On view in the exhibition "Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze"

The National Portrait Gallery owns more than sixty of Jo Davidson’s portraits in bronze, marble, terra-cotta, and plaster, acquired over a number of years. Born in New York to Russian immigrant parents, Davidson struggled financially at the beginning of his career. But by the 1920s, his reputation as a leading portraitist in France, England, and the United States was secure, and later he became so well known that a photograph of his jovial, black-bearded countenance served as a clue in a crossword puzzle!

Jo Davidson’s charisma endeared him to many of his famous subjects. One of my favorites is our portrait of his contemporary, the sculptor and heiress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), one of those charmed by Davidson, and one of his earliest patrons. Just after she had been introduced to Davidson in Paris in 1908, Whitney began to purchase his work and to correspond with him, arranging visits when she was in France. In 1909 she wrote, “I hope you come to America. It’s good to go and look around there once in a while . . . come and look at me! too.”

During the years just after his marriage in 1909, Davidson and his wife Yvonne, a designer of fashionable dresses, did live in New York, where Whitney found studio space for him in MacDougal Alley, near her own studio and the new Whitney Studio Club on West Eighth Street. In 1917, she made a bronze portrait of Davidson. But Davidson’s 1916 portrait of Whitney was not a friendly gift; it was commissioned in order to help Davidson financially.

The portrait is very like contemporary photographs of Whitney, with her deep-set eyes, narrow brow, and thick hair. Davidson was known for capturing a likeness quickly, and he imbued his sitters with a vivacity born from conversation. As he confessed, “I often wondered what it was that drove me to make busts of people. It wasn’t so much that they had faces that suggested sculpture. . . . [It] was the people themselves—to be with them, to hear them speak and watch their faces change.”

The portrait was produced in several versions. Whitney mentioned a plaster and a polychromed terra-cotta in her correspondence from 1916 and 1917. A marble is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Davidson owned two plasters, and perhaps a version of the terra-cotta bust. But no contemporary bronze is known.

In 1968, this particular bust was cast in bronze for the National Portrait Gallery, using a plaster that had remained in the Davidson family. It was cast by the Valsuani foundry in France, the foundry Davidson used during his lifetime. That we know this much about Davidson’s portrait (and there is still much that we do not know) is due to our ongoing research into his sculptural production, initiated in 1993, when we examined Davidson’s personal papers at the Library of Congress.

This research brought us into contact with Davidson’s surviving son, Jacques Davidson, who, although he has now passed away, lived in France, where Jo owned a house. Jacques, as charming as his father, had been in touch with the Gallery over the years. During a trip to America with his son, he visited the Gallery again and examined many of our sculptures, offering opinions and reminiscences, and adding to our knowledge of Jo’s work.

Jo Davidson and Whitney remained close until her death in 1942. They visited each other, traveled together, and corresponded. Whitney bought heaps of Yvonne’s designer dresses for herself and her daughters. In 1927, she wrote a long, philosophical letter to Davidson, which began, “Life is funny and you are wonderful.” Davidson’s sensitive portrait of Whitney expresses his relationship with a woman who was not only a fellow artist and his patron, but also his friend.

 - Brandon Brame Fortune , Curator of Painting & Sculpture, National Portrait Gallery

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney / Jo Davidson / Bronze, 1968 cast after 1916 original / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Further reading: Davidson’s autobiography, Between Sittings (New York, 1951), is full of anecdotes about his life and his sitters. For an account of Davidson’s work, see Janis Conner and Joel Rosenkranz, Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893–1939 (Austin, Tex., 1989). The standard biography of Whitney, with references to her friendship with Davidson, is B. H. Friedman, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (New York, 1978).

James Monroe Cleans Up: The Conservation of an Early American Engraving

By Renée Wolcott, Intern, Lunder Conservation Center

When President James Monroe needed a bath, the National Portrait Gallery called on me to fill the tub. I’m a rising third-year graduate student in the Winterthur-University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. This summer, I’m treating prints and drawings as an intern in the paper lab of the Lunder Conservation Center.

My supervisor, Rosemary Fallon, has been paper conservator at the National Portrait Gallery for twenty-two years. During my first week, she presented me with a major treatment challenge: a grimy, foxed, ink-stained engraving of James Monroe, our fifth president. The early nineteenth-century print also had moisture stains, and its top had been folded back and torn—probably the result of squeezing it into a too-tight frame. Before it could be displayed in the “New Arrivals” exhibition this November, the important engraving needed help.

According to Wendy Wick Reaves, the Portrait Gallery’s curator of prints and drawings, Thomas Gimbrede created the engraving in 1817, basing it upon a John Vanderlyn portrait painted during Monroe’s candidacy. The engraving became the public image of Monroe during his presidency, and now both the original portrait and a rare copy of the engraving are part of the Portrait Gallery’s collection.

Cleaning up the president has required me to use a range of treatment techniques. I began by removing the surface grime with grated vinyl eraser crumbs, which are gentle enough to lift dirt without disturbing the paper fibers. I then tested the solubility of the disfiguring blue ink stain, and used a suction disk to pull the dampened ink into a blotter rather than letting it spread into the surrounding paper fibers.

When the stain had been reduced, I bathed the print in several changes of water at a slightly alkaline pH. Yes, bathed. Art conservation is a field that requires advanced education in chemistry, studio art, and art history—as well as a certain amount of chutzpah. While most people quiver at the thought of submerging paper-based artwork, paper conservators wade right in. (Only, of course, after thorough testing of the inks and other media!) Washing helps to pull out the acidic degradation products that darken paper and speed its deterioration.

When the engraving was still foxed and discolored after washing, I bathed the darkened areas locally on the suction table and then turned to light bleaching. The immersed print was exposed to UV-filtered fluorescent light for fourteen hours: a purely cosmetic treatment that can work wonders in lightening darkened cellulose. The paper is now significantly brighter, more uniform, and ready for mending.

For more information about art conservation, visit the Lunder Conservation Center. Glass walls invite you to watch us work, and a staff conservator offers a public tour every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. To see the improved James Monroe, visit the “New Arrivals” exhibition, which opens on November 19 at the National Portrait Gallery.

Reducing the blue ink stain with deionized water on the suction disk. Photo by Rosemary Fallon.

Removing the engraving of James Monroe from its light bleaching bath. Photo by Steven O'Banion.

Bathing the print margins with alkaline water on the suction table to reduce foxing. Photo by Rosemary Fallon.

Artist Rose Frantzen in “Portraiture Now: Communities”

“Portraiture Now: Communities” closes Monday, July 5. The exhibition features works by Rose Frantzen, Jim Torok, and Rebecca Westcott.

Born and raised in Maquoketa, Iowa, Rose Frantzen studied representational painting at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Connecticut, and with painter Richard Schmid in Chicago. Frantzen traveled extensively before returning to Maquoketa, where she paints and teaches.

In 2005 Franzten received a grant from the Iowa Arts Council to support her idea to paint a representative, but self-selected, group of citizens of Maquoketa. She rented a storefront on Main Street, hung posters, gave an interview to the local radio station, and began to paint anyone who lived in the town who was willing to sit for the four or five hours required to complete one of her paintings.

For Frantzen, this was an opportunity to give back to her community and democratize portraiture. As she states, to be her subject for the Portrait of Maquoketa, “You are worthy because you are here, in this town, in this time.” The resulting 180 paintings were created in 2005 and 2006. Frantzen’s work updates the alla prima technique, direct, wet-into-wet painting that requires enormous skill and stamina on the part of the artist.

 
Image: A selection taken from the 180 portraits of the citizens of Maquoketa, Iowa, created in 2005-6. All portraits belong to the collection of the artist, © Rose Frantzen.

Portrait of Elvis Presley by Ralph Wolfe Cowan

On view in the new exhibition “One Life: Echoes of Elvis”

Elvis Presley released hundreds of records throughout a career that spanned slightly more than two decades. He also starred in thirty-one feature films and two documentaries. He was photographed throughout his career, and images of him on film are part of the American visual experience. However, the King of Rock and Roll only sat for one portrait painter—Ralph Wolfe Cowan.

Elvis sat for Cowan in 1969, and Cowan produced the portrait that hangs today at Graceland. At the time, Cowan also made sketches for this portrait but left them alone until 1988, when he completed this work. At the time this portrait was drafted, Elvis was transitioning from making films to performing live; from 1968 until his death in 1977, he toured regularly. Of Elvis, Cowan said, he “was funny and had charisma that was bigger than life. I enjoyed our friendship.”

Cowan’s portrait is on display as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition “One Life: Echoes of Elvis.”  This one-room exhibition marks the seventh-fifth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth and also includes works by William Eggleston, Red Grooms, Robert Arneson, and others.

-Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery

Listen to an interview of artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan by “Echoes of Elvis” curator Warren Perry (22:33)

Elvis Presley / Ralph Wolfe Cowan (born 1931) / Oil on canvas, 1976–88 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of R. W. Cowan

Now on View: Bill Clinton by Chuck Close

 A key to Bill Clinton’s successes as president, along with his resilience and personal affability, was his determination to govern through consensus. Major accomplishments, such as welfare reform, the first budget surplus since the late 1960s, and successful U.S. intervention in the Balkans stemmed from this pragmatic viewpoint. Other proposals, such as universal health care, failed. His administration was plagued by several scandals, such as Whitewater and the consequences of his affair with a White House intern. His denial under oath about this relationship led to his impeachment. He was not convicted in the Senate trial, however, and his popularity actually increased as Americans continued to admire Clinton for his political talents, quick intelligence, and determination.

Chuck Close begins all his paintings by taking a photograph of the subject, in this case a 2005 image made as a cover for New York Magazine. He then creates grids on both the canvas and the original image to replicate the information contained in the photograph with a series of abstract modules. The portrait is on loan to the National Portrait Gallery from Ian and Annette Cumming, and is now on view in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition on the second floor.

Bring on the Year of Elvis!

The National Portrait Gallery begins a year of salute to Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, with the opening of “Echoes of Elvis” on January 8, 2010, what would have been Elvis’s seventy-fifth birthday.

“Echoes of Elvis” will feature portraits of the entertainer created since his death in 1977. Among the works in the exhibition are pieces by Robert Arneson, Red Grooms (shown at right), and Ralph Wolfe Cowan from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the United States Postal Service collection, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Several public programs will accompany the exhibition, beginning on January 23, when longtime Elvis friend and Memphis disc jockey George Klein will be signing his Elvis memoir, My Best Man. On the same day, NPG will host an Elvis costume contest. On March 26, the latest installment in the Edgar P. Richardson Symposium series will feature several scholars discussing Elvis Presley’s impact on music and culture.

On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the National Portrait Gallery will open the doors to “Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer.” This exhibition will feature more than forty monumental images of Elvis from 1956. NPG historian Amy Henderson writes that during 1956, “Elvis’s electrifying intrusion was as shocking as Sputnik would be a year later.”  Wertheimer’s photographs are the visual testimonial to Elvis’s launch; many of the images show Elvis in the last moments he would ever have as an individual unburdened by the trappings of fame. After 1956, Elvis belonged to the world.

The young fans who worshipped him in legions would serve as the nucleus of his fan base throughout his career. For the next twenty-one years, Elvis would continually serve notice in the entertainment world: his standard was the one to follow. Although the statement is often quoted, John Lennon’s comment that “before Elvis there was nothing” is perhaps the greatest statement of tribute by the most famous of all Elvis supplicants.

“When Elvis arrived, the youth of America took over,” states “Echoes of Elvis” curator Warren Perry. “Prior to the advent of rock and roll, young people were powerless in American society; rock and roll gave American youth a voice and an attitude. Elvis was the advance guard for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Later, after his time in the military, and as his fan base aged, Elvis became more accepted throughout America and the world. Still later, after more than a decade in the movies, Elvis reinvented himself. Elvis and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, took Elvis’s showmanship to the next level, and they rewrote the script for the Las Vegas experience.”

“Echoes of Elvis” will run until from January 8 to August 29, 2010;  “Elvis at 21” will run from October 30 to January 23, 2011.

--Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery

Elvis Aron Presley / Red Grooms / Lithograph on paper, 1987 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Now On View: LL Cool J by Kehinde Wiley

Rap star and actor James Todd Smith changed his name to LL Cool J (short for “Ladies Love Cool James”) at sixteen, when he released his first single, “I Need a Beat.” In the late 1980s, the success of his recordings helped make Def Jam a major label: his broad popular appeal and nine consecutive multiplatinum albums were significant in transforming rap from an underground genre to a mainstream cultural force.

Beginning in 1993, he included gangsta rap in his repertoire. He has also crossed over to acting, both in film (Toys, Halloween H20, Rollerball), and television (In the House, 30 Rock, House); currently, he is a regular in the series NCIS: Los Angeles.

Kehinde Wiley was commissioned to paint LL Cool J for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors program in September 2005. Last year, a selection of Wiley’s works was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery, as part of the exhibition “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture.” For “RECOGNIZE!” Wiley included paintings from his Hip Hop Honors body of work, depicting some of the foot soldiers of the hip hop movement. The artists chose poses from Wiley’s personal art book collection that best suited the performative and personal aspects of their character. Inspired by Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller, LL Cool J wanted this portrait to have a pose similar to John Singer Sargent’s painting of the philanthropist.

 
LL Cool J / Kehinde Wiley, 2005 / Oil on canvas / LL Cool J

Now On View: Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition

Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, has received first prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His photograph, titled Laura (shown on right), was chosen as the winner from a field of more than three thousand entries in every visual arts medium. First prize was a cash award of $25,000 and a commission from the museum to portray a remarkable living American for the NPG permanent collection. Woody’s portrait, as well as works from forty-eight other artists, are on display at the National Portrait Gallery, in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition exhibition on the second floor.

Of his work, Woody comments, “I am never really attracted to photographing subjects who are totally self-aware or self-confident, as I’m more interested in those people who move through this world with a quiet grace. Spending time with friends allows me to see them in a certain light where their mask drops and something soft and inviting is seen, and I’ll think of making a photograph of them.”

Stanley Rayfield of Richmond, Virginia, received second prize for a painting titled Dad, while third place went to Adam Vinson of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania for his oil-on-panel painting titled Dressy Bessy Takes a Nap. Commended artists are Margaret Bowland, for a her painting Portrait of Kenyetta and Brianna; Yolanda del Amo, for her C-print photograph Sarah, David; Gaela Erwin, for her pastel on paper Baptismal Self-Portrait; and Emil Robinson for an oil-on-panel portrait titled Showered. Each was awarded a cash prize.

NPG Director Martin Sullivan states, “The variety and depth of the entries was encouraging to me since it proved that portraiture is an ever-evolving genre. And best of all, this competition allows the National Portrait Gallery and its visitors to see how today’s artists interpret portraiture in all of its forms.”
Finalists for the 2009 competition were chosen in early May, and the winners were announced at the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Awards Celebration on Thursday, October 22. In addition, one exhibiting artist will win the People’s Choice Award, in which visitors to the exhibition, both online and in the gallery, may cast a vote for their favorite of the forty-nine finalists. Voting for the People’s Choice Award will close on January 18, 2010.

The competition is named for Virginia Outwin Boochever, a former NPG docent and an ardent supporter of the Portrait Gallery. The exhibition’s catalog describes Mrs. Boochever’s endowment for the portrait competition “as a way to benefit artists directly… as a unique opportunity to fill a void in the American art world.” The works in the Portrait Competition will be on display until August 22, 2010. To view images of the works, see the exhibition Web site.

Now On View: Katharine Hepburn’s Oscars

Bursting into Hollywood’s dream factory, Katharine Hepburn was an ironic misfit, sporting a highly stylized personality and headstrong independence that boldly announced a new kind of female presence on the silver screen. Her performances in Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond, (1981) won her four Best Actress Academy Awards, a record that still stands today. The National Portrait Gallery recently acquired the four Oscar statuettes as a gift from the Katharine Hepburn Estate; they are now on view in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” gallery on the museum’s third floor, next to a 1982 portrait of Hepburn by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler. 

Katharine Hepburn was honored first for her role in Morning Glory (1933). This statuette is a legend in itself. Although the origin of the term “Oscar” is debatable, its first use was in an article by entertainment columnist Sidney Skolsky. Reporting on the ceremony and stumped on the spelling of “statuette,” the term that was commonly used to refer to the award, Skolsky instead wrote that Hepburn “won the Oscar for her performance as Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory.”

The Oscar statuette was designed in 1927 by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by George Stanley. The figure stands on a film reel with five spokes, signifying the original branches of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences: actors, directors, producers, technicians, and writers. The pedestal was raised in 1945, giving the Oscar a height of 13 ½ inches; it weighs 8 ½ pounds. Rather than its original gold-plated bronze, it is now composed of the alloy britannia and coated in twenty-four-karat gold.  These design changes are why Hepburn’s first Oscar, for Morning Glory (1933), appears smaller and less opulent.

Learn more about Katharine Hepburn by visiting the online exhibition for "KATE: A Centennial Celebration.”  This exhibition was on view at the National Portrait Gallery from November 2, 2007, to September 28, 2008.

Katharine Hepburn's four Best Actress Academy Awards (Morning Glory, 1933; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967; The Lion in Winter, 1968; On Golden Pond, 1981) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the estate of Katharine Hepburn