National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

American in Space: Alan Shepard’s Memorable Moments

Note: On April 17, 2012, the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum will become host to the Space Shuttle Discovery in a monumental event. Discovery will be flown from Cape Canaveral on the back of a Boeing 747 and will arrive later in the day at the Udvar-Hazy Center to become a permanent part of its collection.

As part of the Smithsonian-wide effort to share this special event with the world, this is the first of three articles featuring a discussion of some of the great personalities and moments of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

When the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin went into space on April 12, 1961, the United States was preparing to answer the challenge. In the course of the next decade, the United States would take the galactic gauntlet thrown down by the Soviets and repeatedly raise the stakes. And ultimately, although the USSR had gotten out of the gate first, it was the Mercury 7 astronauts—Captain Virgil Grissom, U.S. Air Force; Lieutenant M. Scott Carpenter, U.S. Navy; Captain Gordon Cooper Jr., U.S. Air Force; Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn Jr., U.S. Marine Corps; Lieutenant Commander Walter Schirra Jr., U.S. Navy; Lieutenant Commander Alan Shepard Jr., U.S. Navy; Captain Donald Kent (“Deke”) Slayton, U.S. Air Force—who piloted the United States into the stars. They achieved fame not only for their courage, but also for the regularity with which they suited up for missions.

Less than one month after Gagarin’s flight, on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard rode the Mercury capsule Freedom 7 into space history. Freedom 7 rode atop a Redstone rocket booster that propelled Shepard into a suborbital trajectory, making him the first American in outer space. Shepard was in the air for fifteen minutes, completing an arc that took him more than one hundred miles high and three hundred miles over the Atlantic, away from Cape Canaveral. Shepard became an instant hero. Although he was forced to sit out the rest of the decade due to an inner ear disease, the Mercury mission would not be his last trip into outer space.

Shepard’s second trek into space took place from January 31 through February 9, 1971. This Apollo 14 mission yielded one of the most unforgettable —if not wackiest—moments in NASA history. Apollo 14 was the third manned vehicle to land on the moon. Alan Shepard was mission commander, with Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart Roosa acting as lunar module pilot and command module pilot, respectively. Shepard and Mitchell were tasked with undertaking various studies after landing on the lunar surface.

During their nine hours plus of extra-vehicular activity, Shepard produced a modified six-iron and two golf balls. After playing in the dust for a couple of moments, the mission commander spanked both balls out of camera view, saying they flew “miles and miles and miles.” In all probability, they only traveled a few hundred yards, but the image of the astronaut with the golf club on the moon is forever burned into the highlight reels of space travel.

Shepard, who was the face behind two of America’s most memorable moments beyond our planet, retired as a rear admiral in 1974; he died in 1998.

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

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. / Everett Raymond Kinstler / Oil on board, 1965 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Everett Raymond Kinstler

Alan Shepard hitting golf balls on the moon.

Interview with NPG Historian David Ward

David Ward is the deputy director of the Charles Willson Peale papers at the National Portrait Gallery.  Last year’s Hide/Seek exhibition propelled Ward into the national spotlight and he continues to work on other ground-breaking projects.  We talked to him about Hide/Seek, his upcoming poetry exhibition, Poetic Likeness, and his most recent activities.  

Q: For both the critical acclaim it received and the controversies it generated, Hide/Seek was a mighty newsmaker in 2010 and 2011.  Now, an iteration of this exhibition has gone to two other venues.  Could you tell us about the reception this exhibition has received in those venues?

DW:  Hide/Seek has had an unusual history—in more ways than one! We tried to find other venues for it when we were planning it but had no takers. But after it was a success—and a success de scandal—we got interest from the Brooklyn Museum and Tacoma Art Museum to reconstitute it at their museums. We were happy to cooperate with them.

The exhibition has been very well received—both critically and popularly—at Brooklyn and now in Tacoma; I heard word of mouth that the Brooklyn Museum had one of its biggest attendance days on the show’s final day. Tacoma, where it just opened March 17, also has had good crowds. And critically, the exhibition is being well received and the public comments (on newspaper sites and blogs) seems pretty thoughtful. 

Q: Are you generally pleased with the shape of the ensuing discourse?

DW:  I’m happy that we’re done with the overt political issues that surrounded Hide/Seek when it was at the Portrait Gallery and made it into such a flash point. I think it’s good that people are now just focusing on the art and the history that the exhibition tells. I think getting to the art work and the cultural story is all to the good so I am pleased with that. 

Q:  We understand that you received an award recently.  Would you tell our audience about it?

DW:  Yes, we’re delighted that we received an award for Hide/Seek as the “Best Thematic Exhibition”, given by the International Art Critics Association-USA.  As I said before, I like that people are now focusing on the art exhibition rather than the cultural politics of Hide/Seek and this award is particularly gratifying because of all the hard work we did on the exhibition itself, both intellectually and programmatically. And, the list of other award winners is pretty stellar so we’re happy that the NPG is going to be in really good company.  We’re going to New York on April 2 for the awards dinner and I am looking forward to a swanky time! 

Q:  Could you tell us about the article you wrote for the Huffington Post?

DW:  Sure—it’s just a short piece on the history of Hide/Seek and how it ended up at Tacoma; the essay expands on the point I made above about the exhibit’s reconstitution by Brooklyn and then Tacoma. And I talk a little about how the exhibition came to be at the NPG, how we planned it, and so on. It is a kind of background piece on the origins of the exhibition.

Q: What other projects are you working on at the moment?  

DW:  Well, I’m not completely done with Hide/Seek! I go back out to Tacoma in June to give a lecture and effectively close the show. But I have turned my attention to two poetry projects: my exhibition on American poets from the NPG collection, called Poetic Likeness which opens October 12– it’s an interesting medium size show (mostly photographs) of the major American poets from Whitman to the late 1970s.

And I am working with Frank Goodyear, the Portrait Gallery’s associate curator of photographs, on a literary and photography project to help commemorate the Civil War. For this, we have asked 12 contemporary poets to write about the War and we’re pairing their works with poems from the time-period. Also we’re matching modern day battlescape photographs by the artist Sally Mann with those by Alexander Gardner from the war itself. We’ll publish it as a small book.

So far I have to say that the poems that have come in are extraordinarily good—some really thoughtful, well constructed poems considering the War in all of its aspects. I think people interested in American poetry will want to pay attention to our book when in comes out in 2013.

Pop Quiz Trivia: The 1980s, Tuesday, March 27

Are you ready for a blast from the past? If so, join us at the National Portrait Gallery on Tuesday, March 27, at 6:30 p.m., for our collections-inspired trivia game Pop Quiz, in the Kogod Courtyard.

This month’s Pop Quiz theme is “The 1980s” (poofy hair and neon leg warmers not required). We will test your knowledge on ’80s-inspired trivia questions and highlight sitters in the National Portrait Gallery collection—from politicians to singers and everyone in-between—who made their mark on the 1980s. For example, did you know that the famous LA Lakers player Magic Johnson and his rival from the Boston Celtics, Larry Bird, are credited with saving the NBA because their rivalry sparked interest in a whole new generation of fans?

Make sure you come early—DJ Micah Vellian will be playing your favorite ’80s 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 10-point bonus question for this month’s Pop Quiz trivia:

During the 1980s, Andy Warhol reemerged into the art scene because of his affiliation with younger, more prolific artists who were dominating the New York art scene. It was during this time that Warhol produced his famous screen-print of Michael Jackson. Warhol once said “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're so beautiful. Everything's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

Which celebrity did Andy Warhol NOT create a portrait of?

A. Mick Jagger

B. Judy Garland

C. Pete Rose

D. Betty White

Pop Quiz trivia occurs once a month in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard in the National Portrait Gallery.

 

Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone / Francesco Scavullo / Photograph, 1985 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine / © Francesco Scavullo

 

A Moveable Force: The Resonance of the Expatriate Experience

One of the most powerful and enduring American legacies is American only in its dramatis personae; the geography is strictly French. As Woody Allen magically illustrated in Midnight in Paris, the legion of Americans in the Paris of the 1920s was also responsible for a surfeit of creative activity, producing works that evoke images of rive gauche cafes and smoky evenings of wine, food, conversation, and music.

The names of those who shared the experience are a litany of the jazz age’s most creative individuals and electrifying personalities: Ernest Hemingway (above), Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, John Dos Passos, and Gerald and Sara Murphy.

While novels such as Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night romanticize the expatriate movement, biographical works such as Gerald Murphy’s Living Well Is the Best Revenge tell the tale of what Gertrude Stein described as “a lost generation.” Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast also depicts the era in a series of short sketches. Hemingway talks of being entertained in Stein’s famous salon and of the interesting dynamic at work in the home of Stein and her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas:

But we liked Miss Stein and her friend, although the friend was frightening. The paintings and the cakes and the eau-de-vie were truly wonderful. They seemed to like us too and treated us as though we were very good, well mannered and promising children and I felt that they forgave us for being in love and being married—time would fix that—and when my wife invited them to tea, they accepted.

Gertrude Stein’s home was the nucleus of the expatriate society, though she also shared her rooms with a number of her famous European friends, James Joyce and Pablo Picasso among them. Stein (above, with Alice B. Toklas) collected art as well as friends. Her life and impact on the art world were recently the themes of the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories.”

The personalities at work and play in this movement were fascinating. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (below) led passionate and frenzied lives fueled dually by a zeal for living and massive amounts of alcohol. Hemingway was a complex man who wrote in simple sentences; his works are at the psychological center of the lost generation’s existential crisis. Individuals such as Gerald and Sara Murphy contributed to the mix by sponsoring artists, throwing parties, and originating the American experience on the Mediterranean; their Cap d’Antibes cottage Villa America was a distinct and quiet refuge from the nightlife and party scene of Paris.

While Americans at home were left empty-glassed by Prohibition, the festival of bubbles poured over in Paris. Food and drink were a large part of the cultural discourse and also central to Hemingway’s themes. Again, from A Moveable Feast, we see Hemingway’s lean verbiage serving to enhance the table in front of him:

The pommes a l’huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer, I drank and ate very slowly. When the pommes a l’huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce. I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it drawn.

In the spare days before his success, Hemingway recorded many, many encounters with food, perhaps because he was hungry. “You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris,” he notes, “because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food.”

The other preoccupation of this period was, of course, art—in all its forms. Painting, writing, theater, and dance were all appreciated facets of the cultural scene. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway were alternately feathering and grinding words onto paper, Murphy and Picasso were splashing paints onto canvases, and Zelda Fitzgerald somehow convinced herself that she should become a ballerina, though her habits and age were somewhat ballet-prohibitive. All of these individuals met with creative success, even Zelda, who danced in staged works and gave herself over manically to ballet.

Their moment seemed to disappear as rapidly as it appeared. The crash of the stock market in 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression flung cold water onto the fire that was the roaring twenties. And while these figures appear to us now as flapping and dandified specters of a lost age—and generation—the freshness of the hope that Scott Fitzgerald called “the green light, the orgiastic future” still lives in their writings and paintings.

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

 

Ernest Miller Hemingway / Waldo Peirce / Ink on paper, 1928 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Jonathan Peirce

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas / Sir Francis Cyril Rose / Tempera and gouache on cardboard, 1939 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; partial gift of the T. Mellon Evans Foundation

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald / Harrison Fisher / Conté crayon on paperboard, 1927 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Fitzgerald's daughter, Mrs. Scottie Smith

F. Scott Fitzgerald / Harrison Fisher / Conté crayon and white paint on paperboard, 1927 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Fitzgerald's daughter, Mrs. Scottie Smith

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.

 

Portrait of a Prophet: Orlando Rouland’s John Muir, 1917

By Antonette Bowman, National Portrait Gallery Education Department

On Thursday, March 22, the National Portrait Gallery will host a free screening of the documentary film John Muir in the New World. The screening will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers.

The Prophet and the President

“Now this is bully!” exclaimed President Theodore Roosevelt (right) during his 1903 camping excursion into the Yosemite wilderness with legendary environmentalist John Muir.

The intrepid pair of adventurers embarked on an ambitious hike to magnificent Glacier Point. Sheltered by a grove of firs, the two enjoyed beefsteaks, coffee, and conversation over a crackling campfire. When the two rose the next morning and found themselves under a glorious blanket of several inches of spring snow, the president immediately shouted with boyish enthusiasm, “This is bullier yet!”¹

The man who coined the term “bully pulpit” fondly remembered his historic pilgrimage with Muir, recalling, “It was clear weather, and we lay in the open . . . the enormous cinnamon-colored trunks rising about like the columns of a vaster and more beautiful cathedral than was ever conceived by a human architect.”²

During what would later be recognized as one of the most consequential camping trips in environmental history, Muir persuaded Roosevelt to ensure federal protection of Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove. Muir later wrote, “Oh for a tranquil camp hour with you like those beneath the sequoias in memorable 1903.”³ Muir noted to friends, “Camping with the President was a remarkable experience. I fairly fell in love with him.”⁴

Muir more than impressed Roosevelt; the president admired Muir’s devotion to conservation, his ability as a nature writer, and his sense of civic duty. At the end of their journey, Roosevelt fondly said to “the Yosemite Prophet,” “Goodbye, John. Come and see me in Washington. I’ve had the time of my life.”⁶

In 1908 Roosevelt honored Muir by designating Muir Woods, an old-growth redwood forest on the northern California coast, as a national monument.

The Portrait

A work exemplifying many aspects of late nineteenth-century academic portraiture, Orlando Rouland’s contemplative 1917 posthumous portrait of Muir invites the viewer to reflect on the extraordinary life of the one of the most influential figures in environmental history. Notably, Rouland also painted a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt, featured in the New York Times in 1907.⁷

In a commemorative tribute to Muir in 1922, American writer and diplomat Robert Underwood Johnson described Muir as “a faithful citizen . . . a writer of enduring power, with vision, poetry, courage in a context, a heart of gold, and a spirit pure and fine.”⁸ Orlando Rouland’s portrait, painted three years after Muir’s death, allows the viewer to draw closer to such a spirit. Surprisingly, we see a man referred to as the “Apostle of Nature” not in the context of his beloved wilderness but within a manmade milieu.

Reminiscent of the “inward-turning thoughtfulness” of the work of American portraitist Thomas Eakins, the painting’s muted tones and quiet brushwork allow us to further sense the depth of Muir’s meditation; his chin rests heavily on his hand as if to prop up the weight of his ponderings. The unfocused character of the left hand, the open book, and the left leg contrast with the sharpness of the remainder of the work and suggest an attempt to reconcile tensions existing between the influences of photographic practice and the practices of the painter.⁹

Muir lifts his gaze from the pages of a volume that does not bear a title and leaves us wondering about the stories contained within. Rouland portrays Muir at a moment in the evening of life; perhaps Muir has chosen only to reflect on what has already been written.

Reel Portraits: John Muir in the New World, FREE and open to the public, Thursday, March 22 at 7:00 p.m,McEvoy Auditorium, 8^th and G Streets NW.  This program is presented in partnership with the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital.

Images:

John Muir / Orlando Rouland / Oil on canvas, 1917 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Theodore Roosevelt/ Adrian Lamb after Philip Alexius de László / Oil on canvas, 1967 copy after 1908 original / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Muir / William Dassonville / Platinum Print, c. 1910/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Cited:

1.Thurman Wilkins, John Muir: Apostle of Nature (London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 217.

2. Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 125.

3. William Frederic Badé, The Life and Letters of John Muir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1924), 420.

4. Donald Worster, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 368.

5. Ibid.

6. “Painting the President’s Portrait,” New York Times, February 10, 1907.

7. Robert Underwood Johnson, Tribute to Muir. Commemorative tribute read in the 1915–16 Lecture Series of the Academy of Arts and Letters. Reprinted from Vol. IX: American Academy of Arts and Letters,1922.

8.Dr. Ellen Todd (professor, George Mason University), in discussion. February 2012. Todd noted the “inward-turning thoughtfulness” of Eakins’s work.

9. Ibid.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Theodore Seuss Geisel was born on this date, March 2, in 1904.

© 1982 Everett Raymond Kinstler

It is called anapestic tetrameter, and for those outside of the campus department of English, the technique might sound difficult and insufferable, but it becomes a pleasant banter when metered out by the talented hand:

“I say!” murmured Horton. “I’ve never heard tell
Of a small speck of dust that is able to yell.
So you know what I think?... Why, I think that there must
Be someone on top of that small speck of dust!
Some sort of a creature of very small size,
Too small to be seen by an elephant’s eyes…”

Theodore Seuss Geisel, or Dr. Seuss, wrote his famous Horton Hears a Who in anapestic tetrameter. It is a peculiar line, composed of four sets (tetrameter) of three-syllable feet in which the first two syllables are short and the third is long (anapest). Dr. Seuss complicated his lines, per the above from Horton, by rhyming the ends in an AABB scheme.

Simply put, when Dr. Seuss penned a children’s book, the result might have been easy to read, but there was a complicated process at work behind it. And although he did not use the same technical poetic formulas for each work, all of his works show a mastery of techniques, imagination, and rhythm.

Had history played its hand in a different direction, Theodore Seuss Geisel might not be known for his books so much as for his beer. The Geisel family of Springfield, Massachusetts, became a brewing family soon after the arrival of the Geisel patriarch, Theodor Geisel—Dr. Seuss’s grandfather—in 1867. Geisel began brewing in 1876, and for two generations the family crafted some of the best beers in the northeast United States.

However, as the third generation entered college in the form of young Theodore, the barley-crushing monster of Prohibition rose on the horizon. Geisel biographers Judith and Neil Morgan state in their biography Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel:

In January of 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified by the states, and one year later Prohibition became law. Ted’s grandfather had predicted it but did not live to endure it; he died on December 5, 1919. Ted’s father rose, according to plan, from general manager to president of the merged Springfield Breweries, but it was a hollow tenure. The Volstead Act set the legal alcohol limit at one half of 1 percent and made it illegal to consume alcohol unless it had been bought prior to 1920. That meant the Geisel brewery was doomed.

As brewing was not an option for Theodore S. Geisel, he entered Dartmouth to study English. With some success there as a cartoonist and an editor, he went on to Oxford to study literature, but left the school and married Helen Palmer in 1927.

Geisel was not a man of limited success in one industry. His advertisements for Flit insecticide were seen all over, and as the Morgans note, “Flit sales increased wildly. No advertising campaign remotely like it had succeeded before on such a grand scale. The series found its way into history of advertising.” Theodore and Helen Geisel also wrote for the documentary Design for Death, which received an Academy Award in 1948.

However, it is for his children’s books that Theodore Geisel and Dr. Seuss will be forever known. Such titles as The Cat in the Hat and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish are standards of children’s literature, and the holiday film repertoire is not complete without an edition of How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

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

 

Theodore Geisel ("Dr. Seuss") / Everett Raymond Kinstler / Watercolor, pencil and charcoal on paper, 1982 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Everett Raymond Kinstler / © 1982 Everett Raymond Kinstler

Cited:
Neal Morgan and Judith Morgan, Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel (New York: De Capo Press, 1995)

Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who (New York: Random House, 1954)

George Eastman: A Strange Sort of Philanthropist

By Victoria Zimmer, intern, National Portrait Gallery

A man of science, inventor, and industrialist who worked his way to the top, George Eastman could have been the protagonist in a Horatio Alger novel.

He established the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, in 1892. The company produced affordable, easy-to-use film and cameras, thus revolutionizing photography in America. The success of his company made Eastman extremely wealthy, and he quickly became involved in philanthropic activities.

Eastman, however, was a strange sort of philanthropist. For example, he shied away from the limelight. In 1909 Eastman donated $1 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He requested that his gift remain anonymous, however, so MIT reported the donor as “Mr. Smith.”

In her biography on Eastman, Elizabeth Brayer writes that he derived great pleasure from the ensuing speculation in the newspapers and in society as to Mr. Smith’s true identity. Brayer further writes that when Eastman was eventually named as the anonymous benefactor, the New York Times ran an article about him entitled “Philanthropy under a Bushel,” after Eastman told the interviewer that he did not like to discuss his philanthropy.

Eastman, also unlike some of his contemporary philanthropists, did not employ an elaborate bureaucracy to handle and pare down pleas for assistance. That is not to say that Eastman was open to begging letters. In reality, he was unwilling to involve himself in personal requests for aid. Eastman wished to make contributions that would instead benefit the greatest possible number of people; he was particularly interested in improving the city of Rochester.

In a 1924 letter to Frank Seaman, his advertising agent in New York City, Eastman wrote, “I want to make Rochester for the thousands of people I have gathered here the best place on the face of the earth to live in and bring up their families.” Eastman contributed heavily to the University of Rochester, financing the creation of a music school, theater, dental dispensary, and medical school.

But Eastman was not content to simply write the check. He wanted a say in how the money would be used. Along this vein, he was determined to donate the bulk of his fortune while he was still alive. In 1925 he wrote to Dr. F. P. Keppel, president of the Carnegie Corporation, “it is my policy to place my money, all of it, before I die so that I can take some part in getting it into action.” In the same spirit, Eastman is said to have declared, “men who wait until they die before leaving their money are pie-faced mutts.”

Certainly a man of eccentricities and strong ideals, Eastman is a colorful figure in life and in death.

 

George Eastman / Nadar / Albumen silver print, 1890 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of George Eastman House

 

Cited:
George Eastman, Papers, University of Rochester, New York.

Elizabeth Brayer, George Eastman: A Biography (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006).

Elizabeth Brayer, “George Eastman,” Rochester History 102, no. 1 (1990).

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

 

The Death of John James Audubon: January 27, 1851

He killed thousands of birds and cruelly experimented on many animals, including catfish, a bald eagle, and his very own hunting dog. With friends, he buried a rat in a pot, its tail protruding from the dirt, and gave the complete ensemble to another friend, claiming it was a rare flower. He served jail time for bankruptcy and knifed a man in Kentucky over ownership of a steamboat.

Today, his drawings and paintings of American wildlife are respected worldwide, and his name is synonymous with environmental concern and wildlife preservation. A true enigma, John James Audubon was not even his name until he came to America in 1803 to look after his father’s business.

Audubon, born Jean Rabin in Saint-Domingue in 1785, was something of a liar from the beginning; he told others falsely and often that he studied painting with Jacques-Louis David. Artistically and professionally, Audubon struggled to gain acceptance into the strict company of American and British scientific academies.

Although Audubon’s technique of moving nature from the outdoors to the canvas was well within the realm of the acceptable in the early nineteenth century, today his process would be anathema to the society that now bears his name.

According to Audubon biographer William Souder, “At one time or another, Audubon killed specimens of all but a handful of the more than four hundred species of birds he ultimately painted, plus most of the quadrupeds of North America, from squirrels to alligators to moose.”

Simple enough to describe, his process was to kill, clean, position, and paint. One difference, however, between Audubon and his contemporary, Alexander Wilson, is that Audubon portrayed his ornithological subject matter at life size.

A second difference is that Audubon posed his birds in nature, conducting activities that he had either imagined or witnessed. For example, his Black Vulture appears to be eating the flesh of a deer carcass, while his female Great Cormorant is portrayed tending her young through tall grass.

With the exception of the display of birds in the Peale Museum in Philadelphia, wildlife work for the scientific community was usually posed and drawn on a small scale and without the aesthetic benefit of habitat, weather, and fauna in the forms of prey or predator.

By 1823, Audubon was living in Louisiana, drawing and teaching, having amassed great debt but also having assembled a vast portfolio of American wildlife art. When he arrived in Philadelphia in 1824, he hoped his art would receive acclaim, but his work was received poorly by the Academy of Natural Sciences and George Ord, a friend of the late Alexander Wilson. As Souder states, “Against Ord’s energetic opposition to him throughout the city and the orchestrated campaign to prevent his election to the academy, Audubon never had a chance.”

His work was well received throughout Britain, however. The Scots elected him to the elite scientific Wernerian Society in 1827, and he was elected to the Royal Society in London in 1830.

These successes coincided with the publication of Audubon’s most lasting achievement—what he called his “great work,” The Birds of America, containing 435 hand-colored images and distributed in 87 parts. A stunning achievement, also recognized in the United States, the publication of The Birds of America eventually propelled Audubon into the ranks of the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1831, seven years after his initial rejection.

Audubon spent most of his last decade in New York, having succumbed to various illnesses, and died there on January 27, 1851. He is buried in Trinity Church Cemetery at 155^th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

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

 

Cited:
William Souder, Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of “The Birds of America (New York: North Point Press, 2004).

 

John James Audubon / Unidentified artist /  Oil on canvas, c. 1841 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of the Avalon Foundation through the generosity of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, 1951

 

 

Pop Quiz Trivia: From Rags to Riches, Thursday, January 26

 

While walking through the halls of the National Portrait Gallery you will find countless examples of people in the collection who came from humble beginnings, but through perseverance and determination built very successful lives. For example, did you know that Cary Grant (above) was homeless as an adolescent and performed for circuses before finally making it big as an actor? These sorts of rags-to-riches stories are the foundation of the American Dream.  

Come test your knowledge on Thursday, January 26, at 6:30 p.m., when the National Portrait Gallery will be hosting our collections-inspired trivia game, Pop Quiz, in the Kogod Courtyard. This month’s theme, “From Rags to Riches,” is centered on our collection of portraits featuring American icons who have overcome adversity and have gone on to have find success as artists, athletes, musicians, authors, and entrepreneurs.

Here is a sneak peek look at the 10-point bonus question for this month’s Pop Quiz:

LeBron James was born to a single mother in Akron, Ohio. For much of his childhood, James’s family struggled financially and was forced to move frequently. James received international fame playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers and has won several of basketball’s highest honors, such as being named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in both the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

Before James played a single NBA game, he famously signed a deal with Nike for how much?

A) $35 million

B) $67 million

C) $75 million

D) More than $90 million

Snacks and beverages will be available for purchase in the Courtyard Café.

Pop Quiz trivia is played once a month in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard in the National Portrait Gallery. The next Pop Quiz is “Road Trip USA” on Wednesday, February 22, at 6:30 p.m. DJ Micah Vellian begins to play tunes at 5:00 p.m.

—Claire Lucas, Public Programs Intern, National Portrait Gallery

 

Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, Claude Rains / Morini / Print, c. 1950 / Color photolithographic poster with halftone / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

LeBron James / Michael O'Brien / Gelatin silver print, 2002 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Bill and Sally Wittliff, © Michael O'Brien

Staff Profile: Molly Grimsley, Registrar

Q: What is your job title and what do you do at the National Portrait Gallery?

A: I am the registrar for exhibitions and loans. I deal mostly with artwork coming into the Portrait Gallery for special exhibitions or inclusion in permanent exhibitions, as well as work we lend to other museums. The Registrar’s Office works very closely with the Conservation and Design & Production departments to ensure the artwork is maintained safely and securely.

When NPG borrows or lends artwork, with conservation and curatorial input, I negotiate loan agreements, setting in place the legal, conservation, packing and shipping, insurance, and art handling requirements that have to be adhered to.

Working with other NPG conservators, other museums, art packers, craters, and shippers, I coordinate the special packing and shipping needs—I’m a travel agent for artwork. When we ship artwork overseas, I work closely with customs brokers and freight forwarders to ensure that all of the import or export documents and permits are in place.

Sometimes I courier artwork, which means I travel with it to the borrowing museum, ensuring its safety during transit. Upon arrival, I oversee its unpacking and installation. Along with our art-handling staff, I unpack and condition-report artwork for the Portrait Gallery’s special exhibitions and coordinate de-installations.

Q: Where did you attend college, and how did you train to do what you do?

A: I have a studio art degree with an emphasis in drawing and design from George Mason University. By studying visual art, I gained knowledge about various art mediums and how works of art are constructed. This helps me greatly in my job as we complete what’s called “condition reports” on every artwork that enters and leaves the Portrait Gallery.

These reports document, by photography and the written word, any sort of damages, problems, or weaknesses that the artwork contains. When it leaves NPG’s custody, the artwork is examined again to ensure there aren’t any new problems. 

I also gained knowledge and hands-on experience on the job; out of college I began working as a volunteer in art storage at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where I was mentored by a wonderful staff member. This led to a permanent position in their Registrar’s Office, which eventually led to becoming the assistant registrar at the National Museum of African Art. This led me to the Portrait Gallery. 

Q: What is your favorite object in the collection and why?

A: I have two favorites: the John Singleton Copley self-portrait (right) is one of them. It’s a beautifully painted portrait—very romantic and delicate—and it captures an otherworldly mood. Also, I like our portrait of Pocahontas for personal reasons.

Q: Do you have a favorite NPG story you would like to share?

A: I’ve been so fortunate in that through my position at NPG, I’ve traveled to wonderful places, made friends with colleagues all over the world, met famous people, and have physically touched incredible art that you see in art history books.

One favorite story is when NPG borrowed the Oscar that director Vincent Minnelli won for Gigi from his wife for our “Red, Hot, and Blue” exhibition. I traveled to Beverly Hills, where I visited Mrs. Minnelli’s house (was escorted through the servants’ door!). She regaled me with wonderful old Hollywood stories as I packed the Oscar in her living room filled with photographs and memorabilia of Hollywood stars and politicians past and present.

After I finished, she gave me a tour of the house, ending in Vincent Minnelli’s bedroom, which she had left exactly as it was when he died—his glasses on his desk, robe on the bed, slippers on the floor, book opened, exercise bike in the middle of the room—it was like a Hollywood set.

I hand-carried the Oscar from LA to DC via a commercial airline; we had to buy an additional seat for the Oscar, which sat next to me for the five-hour flight. No one else on the plane knew there was an Oscar on board; discretion is one of the main tenets of a museum career. 

More recently I traveled to Moscow, Russia, to oversee the deinstallation and packing of two paintings the Portrait Gallery lent to an exhibition at the Russian Academy of Art, Tsereteli Art Gallery. Though it sounds like a glamorous trip, I arrived on Sunday and departed on Tuesday—courier trips are very quick and can be grueling.

It was an amazing experience, though, as I was able to visit the Basilica of St. Basil, the Kremlin, Red Square—places I never in my life thought I would see. The gallery was from the eighteenth or nineteenth century and had no freight elevator, so our large paintings had to be hand-carried down two flights of marble staircases that were lined on either side with marble sculptures on pedestals.

After the niceties of having tea with our Russian host, we packed in a huge atrium where, staring down as us from on high, were Communist-era statues reaching several stories high. Working with the Russian museum staff was especially challenging—out of the several people I worked with, only one spoke limited English, so we communicated mostly by sign language.

Luckily, another American colleague from Dubai was working on the exhibition, too, so between the two of us we were able to get the paintings packed safely and quickly. All in all, the Russian museum staff was a pleasure to work with, and it was an experience I would have never wanted to miss.

Packing paintings at the Russian Academy of Art, Tsereteli Art Gallery, in Moscow.

 

John Singleton Copley, Self-Portrait / Oil on canvas, 1780-1784 /   National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation with matching funds from the Smithsonian Institution; Frame conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee

Alice Waters: Turning the Tables

Food pioneer Alice Waters and top DC chefs all in one place -- Friday, January 20 at NPG.

The National Portrait Gallery will celebrate its newest acquisition with a reception featuring renowned chef Alice Waters and some of the Washington region’s most acclaimed masters of the kitchen. NPG will install the portrait of Alice Waters on Friday, January 20, and as a part of the evening, the gallery will host a conversation between Waters and José Andrés in the McEvoy Auditorium at 6:00 p.m.

Following the portrait presentation will be a chefs’ reception with light fare by Andrés, Cathal Armstrong, Adam Bernbach, Todd Gray, Haidar Karoum, Nora Pouillan, Adam Smith (representing Cowgirl Creamery) and Susan Gage. Information to purchase tickets for the event can be found here.

One remarkable component of Alice Waters’s culinary philosophy is that she teaches us what we already should instinctively know: the wisest meal begins close to home. Fresher ingredients, which do not require processing, naturally yield a higher-quality dining experience. Ironically, advancements in agriculture, the food industry, and technology have combined to remove us from the intimacy of meals featuring food we have seen cultivated and prepared. Alice Waters has been at the forefront of changing that concept.

“The Portrait Gallery recognizes Waters for changing the way the nation thinks about how people are connected to food and the environment,” notes Dr. Martin Sullivan, NPG director. Dave Woody, winner of the NPG's 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition (OBPC), was the artist commissioned to create the Waters portrait.

The journey from blank canvas to portrait on the wall is a lengthy one, with both the sitter and the artist being taken into consideration. Brandon Fortune, NPG’s chief curator, said of the process, “The National Portrait Gallery Commission reviewed a number of worthy candidates and finally voted to ask Dave Woody to create a portrait of Alice Waters.”

Woody received his bachelor of fine arts in photography from Colorado State University and his master of fine arts in studio art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. His photograph Laura (left) received the first prize in the 2009 OBPC, and he has also received multiple awards and honors while studying at the University of Texas. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally.

Waters, chef, author, and founder of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, is a pioneer of a culinary philosophy based on using only the freshest organic products, served only in season. Over the course of forty years, Chez Panisse has developed a network of local suppliers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures the restaurant a steady supply of pure, fresh ingredients.

Waters’s commitment to education led to the creation of The Edible Schoolyard, a one-acre garden and an adjacent kitchen classroom at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The project, started in 1996, gives nearly 1,000 students the knowledge and values they need to build a humane and sustainable future by actively involving them in all aspects of the food cycle.

The success of The Edible Schoolyard led to the School Lunch Initiative, which has as its national agenda the integration of a nutritious daily lunch and gardening experience into the academic curriculum of all the public schools in the United States.  

Meet Alice Waters, Dave Woody and top chefs from D.C.–area restaurants January 20 at this event.

 

Alice Waters / Dave Woody / Pigment print, 2010 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the Marc Pachter Commissioning Fund as part of the first prize, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009

Laura / Dave Woody / Digital print, 2007 / First prize winner, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009

 

1862: Bloody Momentum

What Abraham Lincoln could never know, as 1861 closed its curtains, was what the second act of the Civil War would bring. The characters and the scenery would change rapidly in the coming year. The two generals whose signatures would conclude the war at Appomattox—Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee—would each make substantial contributions to their respective causes in 1862.

In the first six weeks of the new year, Grant (above) would begin his ascent up the ladder of command by vanquishing the Confederate forces at Forts Henry and Donelson in west Tennessee. Lee would be made commander of the southern army on June 1, 1862, and he would conclude the year with an impressive victory at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Grant and Lee added to the roster of talented West Point graduates embroiled in the fight. And while Grant had never achieved much of merit outside of the military, Lee (below) had a fortune and a family name. Lee was taller than Grant, but Grant, at five feet eight inches, was not a short man for his day. Lee is credited with being more elegant and handsome, though, as Harold Holzer notes, “Lee had by this time lost much hair, and what remained had turned grey.” And though both men have been immortalized in equestrian statuary, Grant’s horsemanship is thought to have been one of his strongest assets.

Of Robert E. Lee's military pedigree, his general and memoirist A. L. Long writes:

From the date of its origin members of the family have gained distinction as warriors, until, through Launcelot Lee, Lionel Lee, and "Light-horse Harry," the culminating point is reached in Robert E. Lee, the greatest commander of modern times, and a military genius who may fairly be placed in comparison with the noted captains of the world as in some respects the noblest and ablest of them all.

Adjectives like “noble” are usually not assigned to Ulysses Grant. Often comparisons are made between Lee and Grant as they appeared at Appomattox; Lee is usually described as resplendent while Grant is pictured as grizzled and war-torn. How Ulysses Grant is depicted by historians matters significantly less than the single word that describes him at the end of the war: victorious.  

The war picked up speed and intensity in 1862, and as it did, both generals' roles would be increased. After Forts Henry and Donelson, large and horrible battles would be fought at Shiloh, Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. The war, by the end of 1862, was fought from Maryland to Missouri and from the Gulf Coast to the Shenandoah Valley.

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

 

Ulysses S. Grant / Samuel Bell Waugh / Oil on canvas, 1869 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Robert E. Lee / Edward Caledon Bruce / Oil on canvas, 1864-1865 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Cited:
Harold Holzer, "Virginians See Their War," in Virginia at War: 1862, ed. William C. Davis and James I. Robertson Jr. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007)

A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee: His Military and Personal History (reprint; Secaucus, N.J.: Blue and Grey Press, 1983).

A Portrait of Santa?

This time of year, visitors to the National Portrait Gallery often ask our docents, “Where is your portrait of Santa?” Although the question might sound like a simple one, the answer is actually complex.

First, Santa is truly a universal individual, and as much as we would like to place his picture among the noble Americans on display at the National Portrait Gallery, we simply cannot. “It would be super to have a picture of Santa in the collection, and we’ve tried for many years to get one, but Santa doesn’t like to confine himself to canvas or print—he also, I really believe, is bigger than any way we could possibly portray him,” notes Linda Thrift, keeper of the Catalog of American Portraits. Santa belongs to the whole world, it would seem, and not just to a single country or on a wall in a museum—even a portrait gallery.

Second, Santa is a very busy individual; he rarely has time to sit for the long hours it would take to accomplish a portrait. When Santa is not supervising his elves, he is preparing for his annual toy-delivery tour de force.

Last, painting portraits is a very difficult task, which requires a steady hand and ideal conditions. Most portrait artists cannot paint in cold weather, and Santa spends every night of the year but one at the North Pole. Deb Sisum, National Portrait Gallery new media expert, observes, “Of the portrait painters represented in our collection, I cannot think of a single one who could work in such a cold environment as the North Pole. Imagine painting at the North Pole! Your fingers would be cold, and you would have snow in your oils, inks, and acrylics; it would be tantamount to madness!”

Although the National Portrait Gallery does not have a portrait of Santa yet, the quest continues to locate a picture of the man who brings so much joy to so many. And who knows? Maybe sometime soon Santa will see the letters written by all our curators and historians and leave a special gift in a frame underneath the NPG tree.

 

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

 

NPG Intern Profile: Laura Conte

Q: Where are you attending college, and what are you studying?

A: I am a senior art history major at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Q: Why did you want to intern at NPG?

A: The National Portrait Gallery has a certain charisma that distinguishes it from other museums. As an art history major, I’d taken a variety of classes in different areas of study, but the one that had resonated with me most focused on nineteenth-century American art.

When I first applied, I did so partly because I have always had an interest in American art and portraiture. I’d never visited the Portrait Gallery prior to being selected to my intern position, but I really appreciated the idea of using art to tell a story. I was excited by an opportunity to intern at the NPG because it combined both art and history in telling stories about great Americans.

Q: What do you do typically during your days at NPG?

A: As an intern with the Cultures in Motion performance series, my responsibilities are primarily centered around research. Cultures in Motion creates staged performances from the biographies of sitters from the NPG collection.

I do a lot of reading and searching in the library stacks and through Internet sources seeking interesting biographical information on important Americans for future shows. I have the unique opportunity to sit in on meetings with playwrights and contribute my research, which will be used in the creation of a script.

Q: Tell us about an interesting project in which you have participated here at NPG.

A: I think the most interesting project I have participated in is my research on the first ladies of the Civil War. I don’t think I ever realized how nuanced those five years in American history were. I read a couple of different biographies on Mary Todd Lincoln (below), as well as a plethora of her correspondence. She had a tragic life, but it was so interesting!

My research also included reading the autobiography of a dressmaker named Elizabeth Keckley, who had worked for both both Varina Davis (first lady of the Confederacy) and Mrs. Lincoln. If it were not for this internship, I would never have learned about Keckley, who played a substantial role in Mrs. Lincoln’s life, especially after President Lincoln’s assassination.

Mary Ann Todd Lincoln / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Pearl Harbor: The Seventieth Commemorative Anniversary

The following is from President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to the Congress of the United States, December 8, 1941.

. . . Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy— the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu…

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

                                                 ********

We recently asked Stanley Weintraub, author of Pearl Harbor Christmas (Boston: Perseus Books, 2011) to give us some thoughts on this commemorative event.

Weintraub will be joining us this evening, December 7, in the “America’s Presidents” gallery on the second floor of the Donald W. Reynolds Center at 6:00 p.m. He will give a short talk in front of NPG’s portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, followed by a book-signing.

Q. Seventy years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, do you see Americans as still appreciating the gravity and resonance of December 7, 1941?

A. No. I think too many catastrophic events have intervened—such as 9/11.

Q. Why did you choose that particular image of FDR for the cover of Pearl Harbor Christmas? Can you tell us a little about that picture? 

A. He appears to be signing the declaration of war against Japan the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The black armband and black tie are in mourning for his mother who had died at age eighty-eight in September 1941.

Q. Are you pleased with the efforts—monumental, written, cinematic, and otherwise—that Americans have made to pay tribute to the men and women who fought and won World War II?

A. Not really. A proliferation of memorials is not as significant as the recognition that peace is harder to make than war.

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt/Douglas Granville Chandor, 1945/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

The Atlantic Commemorative Civil War Issue, Featuring Portraits from NPG

“Lincoln is a president I turn to often…” begins President Barack Obama’s essay in the current Atlantic Civil War commemorative issue.  This edition, to released today, features a special partnership with the National Portrait Gallery in which NPG Civil War images, as well as images from other Civil War collections, are paired with original Atlantic features by such writers as Mark Twain, Charles Francis Adams, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Of the many excellent moments in this journal, the first is a short essay by President Obama in which he discusses one of the NPG’s prize works, the portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner in which the photographic plate is cracked.

NPG Historian David C. Ward and Associate Curator of Photographs Frank Goodyear selected the images and worked with the editors of The Atlantic to place them in historical context. Ward and Goodyear note, “In the writings from The Atlantic and photographs from the National Portrait Gallery . . . one can see a people grappling to make sense of life in the cauldron of war. And one can see, in hesitant and undeveloped ways, the emergence of the modern United States of America.”

In late 2010, Ward gave a tour of the NPG “Hide/Seek” exhibition to the Atlantic editors (Ward was a co-curator of the exhibition). Members of The Atlantic staff returned for a visit to the Patent Office Building and the NPG collections.

“That tour sparked the idea of a cooperative venture in which the magazine drew on the NPG’s intellectual and artistic resources in publishing its commemorative issue on the Civil War. Both sides are very pleased with how things worked and hope to do more of this kind of collaborative programming and publishing in the future,” Ward said.

The 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War is being remembered by institutions across the nation in many ways. Few of them, however, have the memory of the Smithsonian or the Atlantic; fewer still have visual and written archives of America’s most divisive years.

Since the magazine’s inception in 1857, it has documented and commented on America’s progress, status, and past, while the Smithsonian’s mission—“the increase and diffusion of knowledge”—and its collections, such as the Civil War holdings, tell the story of the country’s past through its material culture.

Perspectives in this commemorative issue and the accompanying images are diverse and resonant, and many of the photographs—the scars on the back of the beaten slave, the bodies of dead soldiers in the field at Antietam—implore the viewer to seek out a higher meaning in the horror. President Obama characterizes Abraham Lincoln in terms of this imperative when he writes, “But Lincoln saw beyond the bloodshed and division. He saw us not only as we were, but as we might be. And he calls on us through the ages to commit ourselves to the unfinished work he so nobly advanced—the work of perfecting our Union.” 

 

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1865/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Gordon / Mathew Brady Studio / Albumen silver print, 1863 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

 

Woody Allen’s 76th Birthday, December 1, 2011

By the numbers, he is one of the most successful filmmakers and entertainers of all time. Woody Allen has three Oscars and twenty-one nominations; another twenty-one nominations with ten prizes from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA); eleven Golden Globe nominations with one Golden Globe; and nineteen nominations and four awards from the Writers Guild of America. The litany of his honors begins in 1966, and he has nominations and prizes from each decade since that year.

Allen has scores of other accolades from institutions, domestic and foreign, and, interestingly, he couldn’t care less about them. In his 1991 biography of Allen, Eric Lax writes, “As everyone knows, despite however many nominations he has, Woody will not campaign for them, nor will he attend the ceremony—or any awards ceremony.”

Allen is prolific in his directing and writing, and the roll call of his films contains many monuments of the cinematic landscape. Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Deconstructing Harry are among his critically acclaimed works. The box office does not necessarily go the way of the critics, however. His films often play on his obsessions and fears—sex and death are two key themes in his work—and however founded or unfounded his neuroses, they serve his comedy well.

As a rule, Allen’s work is set in New York; a notable exception is his 2011 release, Midnight in Paris. He does not film in New York out of a desire to use a familiar setting, but out of an allegiance to his hometown (he was born and grew up in Brooklyn). Of the gestures made to the city after the attacks of September 11, 2001, perhaps Woody Allen’s was one of the most unusual. “I plead with you, please come make the films there; it [New York] remains a great, great city,” he said to the audience at the 2002 Academy Awards. Although he would not ascend the Oscar stage to accept any of the awards he had previously received, Allen did not hesitate to do the bidding of his hometown in its sad hour.

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

 

Woody Allen / John Kascht / Watercolor, colored ink and graphite on pape, 1997 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, © John Kascht

Cited:
Eric Lax, Woody Allen (New York: Knopf, 1991).

 

Presidential Birthdays for Thanksgiving Week

Not only do we celebrate our national holiday of Thanksgiving this week, but also we mark the birthdays of two American presidents—Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce.

Zachary Taylor, a career soldier, was the seventh American president from Virginia; he was born on November 24, 1784. Taylor's victories in the Mexican American War made him popular back east, and as former NPG historian Frederick Voss notes, "Not only was Taylor a national hero; his homespun appearance and well-known indifference to rules of military protocol were assets that were certain to play well among the voters."

Although Taylor was not a politician, he nonetheless was elected twelfth president of the United States in 1848. He only lived to serve sixteen months of his term, however; he died in office in the summer of 1850.

Franklin Pierce was quite the opposite of Taylor. While Taylor was "homespun" and disinterested in politics, Pierce was educated and politically astute. Pierce graduated from Bowdoin College and later served in the Mexican War.

Pierce was elected the fourteenth president of the United States in 1852 and served one term; he has the sad distinction of being rejected by his own Democratic Party in a bid for a second term in the White House. Pierce was born on November 23, 1804.

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

 

Cited:
Voss, Frederick.  Portraits of the Presidents: The National Portrait Gallery.  New York: Rizzoli, 2000.

 

Zachary Taylor /  James Reid Lambdin / Oil on canvas, 1848 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Barry Bingham, Sr.

Franklin Pierce. / Franklin Pierce / George Peter Alexander Healy / Oil on canvas, 1853 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Living People on Stamps & Portraits: Two Museums & the “Dead Enough” Rule

US stamp images © US Postal Service. All rights reserved

Part 1
Erin Marie Blasco, Public Programs Coordinator, Smithsonian National Postal Museum

This month, the U.S. Postal Service announced that living figures would be considered for commemoration on postage stamps. Its invitation to suggest names of living individuals in sports, entertainment, and other professions to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee elicited all-caps cries for a stamp portraying Lady Gaga, or perhaps Bruce Springsteen.

As an educator at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, it’s exciting to see people energized about postage stamps. People online and in the museum debate the merit of honoring one American figure over another and discuss what it actually means to have one’s face on a stamp. I’ll have to un-memorize my answer to frequently asked questions such as, “Why isn’t President Obama on a stamp yet?” and “When will there be a George Lucas stamp?”

In the past, I’d answer these questions by explaining that figures on U.S. stamps have to be deceased for at least five years. U.S. presidents are the only exception; they only need to be dead for a year before appearing on a stamp. Fictional figures like Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson, and Miss Piggy stand outside the rule, of course. Now that the policy has changed, we have the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be on a stamp and which names are coming up most frequently for consideration.

This isn’t the first time the living/dead discussion has occurred. In 1945, for example a stamp (above) was issued honoring American achievements during World War II. A large group of soldiers is depicted with the Arc de Triomphe in the background. In the stamp, which is drawn from a black-and-white photograph, some of the soldiers in the front row are recognizable as individuals. But the stamp doesn’t break the “dead for five years” rule because it commemorates an event using a group, not individuals.

A number of countries don’t hesitate to issue stamps featuring living figures. Some do this to turn a profit from collectors, while others routinely put their living leaders on postage. Interested in who has already been commemorated on U.S. postage? Browse the Postal Museum’s virtual vault to see high-resolution images of stamps celebrating figures from George Washington (the first face on a U.S. postage stamp) to Zasu Pitts.

US stamp images © US Postal Service. All rights reserved

Part 2
Geri Provost Lyons, Youth & Family Program Coordinator, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The conversation about living figures on stamps is somewhat familiar for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, which for many years collected only portraits of Americans who had been dead at least ten years, with the exception of U.S. presidents.

In 2001, the museum’s board of Commissioners agreed to change the bylaws to eliminate the “ten-year” rule. Since that time, the Portrait Gallery has actively collected portraits of living sitters in all mediums—photographs, time-based media, drawings, prints, paintings, sculpture, and mixed media.

The rule change also allowed for the commissioning and acquisition of contemporary portraits of living sitters, from many backgrounds and disciplines. For example, the first commission of a living sitter was of Eunice Kennedy Shriver by artist David Lenz; the second was of Bill and Melinda Gates by Jon Friedman. NPG has also collected portraits of such well-known Americans such as Martha Stewart, Yo Yo Ma, Norman Mineta, and Michelle Obama, to just name a few.

As an educator for the Portrait Gallery, I am thrilled when visitors can make a connection with a portrait of a living sitter. As of October 2011, 361 living Americans are represented in the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection, according to a recent database search. Use our online database to view portraits of living Americans in our permanent collection. Some of the living sitters may have more than one portrait in our collection, but only one has been selected. We hope you enjoy looking at these images!

US stamp images © US Postal Service. All rights reserved

Lincoln and McClellan: An Army Ready for War

The Grand Review of the Troops, November 20, 1861

The Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac in November 1861 was the culmination of months of recruitment, training, and effort.  Recently, we spoke with National Portrait Gallery historian James Barber concerning the massive parade of troops.

Q: What was the significance of the Grand Review of the Troops on November 20, 1861?

A: In an effort to rebuilt the shattered Union army after its demoralizing defeat and chaotic retreat during the First Bull Run campaign, President Abraham Lincoln in the late summer and fall of 1861 appointed General George B. McClellan general and chief of all Federal armies, replacing the venerable Winfield Scott.

Energetic and supremely self-confident, McClellan, 34, set to work, and after nearly four months he was ready to show the president and the nation the fruits of his organizational prowess. On the afternoon of November 20, McClellan presided over a Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac in the northern Virginia countryside near Bailey’s Crossroads.

For three hours some 70,000 polished troops marched passed the reviewing stand, where the president, members of his cabinet, and Washington dignitaries were in attendance. It was the largest military assemblage up to that time in North America.  “The Grand Review went off splendidly,” wrote McClellan that night in a letter to his wife, “not a mistake was made, not a hitch. I never saw so large a Review in Europe so well done—I was completely satisfied & delighted beyond expression.”

Q: How does Julia Ward Howe tie into this event?

A: Among the 20,000 spectators to witness the Grand Review was the poet and social activist Julia Ward Howe of Boston, Massachusetts, who was visiting the Washington area with her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.

After leaving the review, during the carriage ride back to Washington, she heard troops singing the song “John Brown’s Body.” A companion suggested that she should write new lyrics to the song, the melody of which lingered in her mind that night in her room at Willard’s Hotel in Washington. She awoke “in the gray of the morning twilight” with the song still in her head and “the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.” She arose quickly and in the dimness of the early hour she began scribbling the verses on stationery “almost without looking at the paper.”

Her poem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was first published in The Atlantic Monthly on February 1862; the magazine paid her five dollars. Soon thereafter her verse was set to music and her inspirational song became a wartime favorite, and is still popular today.

Julia Ward Howe / Sarah Choate Sears / Photogravure, 1907 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Champions of the Union / Currier & Ives Lithography Company / Lithograph with tintstone on paper, 1861 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution