U.S.S.R. Technical Books. Installation view. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Brooklyn Museum.

At the height of the Cold War, shortly after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S.S.R. Technical Books came to the Museum as part of an early Soviet-American cultural exchange program. It showcased Soviet science, industry, and medicine using manuals, textbooks, journals, and films, and included “documentaries on Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight, thermonuclear research and new Soviet surgical techniques.” According to the release, the exhibition “cannot fail to promote understanding between the American and Soviet people.”

Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective. Installation view. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Paintings and Sculpture.

The political and cultural upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s—and the ensuing nostalgia for “small town America … of a bygone, happier time”—is alluded to in the 1972 release for Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective, the first major exhibition of his original paintings. “Today, young America, of the long-haired, blue-jeaned Now generation, is discovering Norman Rockwell.”

Also during the early 1970s, the prolonged Vietnam War was starkly documented with an exhibition of work by nine photojournalists who were either killed or missing in action covering the war. The images in Viet Nam: A Photographic Essay “graphically depict the brutal face of war. Mounted without captions and numbered for identification purposes only, the pictures speak for themselves.”

Viet Nam: A Photographic Essay. Installation view. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Using original plans drawn by John A. Roebling, historical and contemporary art works, and early digital technology, The Great East River Bridge: 1883-1983 celebrated the centennial of the Brooklyn Bridge. “A computer program demonstrating the building of the bridge which has been created expressly for this exhibition by the Apple Computer Incorporat[ed], perpetuates the iconography of the bridge in modern day technology.” For more on this exhibition, including photos and essays from the catalogue, check out the Museum’s Research pages.

The Great East River Bridge: 1883-1983. Installation view. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Education.

]]> /2011/04/07/history-continues-with-the-cold-war-vietnam-and-early-apple-computer-kiosks/feed/ 7 /2011/04/06/press-releases-from-world-war-ii-and-beyond/ /2011/04/06/press-releases-from-world-war-ii-and-beyond/#comments Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:35:27 +0000 /?p=4063 The previous post on the Museum’s recently completed digitizing of historical exhibition press releases highlighted some excerpts from the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s. There are many interesting releases from World War II and its aftermath—so many, in fact, that it was tough to choose which to include here. Hopefully this will whet your appetite for further exploration …

In 1943, the work of cartographer Richard Edes Harrison was exhibited in Maps For Global War, which included such maps as Pacific Arena and Southeast to Armageddon, described as “Hitler’s view of the Middle East.” The Museum felt the exhibition was timely “not only because of the importance of maps in the understanding of the current war, but also because of the many fallacies concerning geography now entertained by the average person.”

The same year, Museum visitors saw “the first comprehensive demonstration for the general public of what the properly and well dressed woman war worker wears.” The exhibition Women at War: Work Clothes for Women, included a “survey of safety headgear and shoes, underclothes, stockings and other accessories” and “cosmetics and coiffeurs for the woman in industry.”

UN Photo. General view of Know Your United Nations at the Brooklyn Museum. October 1947.

UN Photo. Eleanor Roosevelt attends the exhibition Know Your United Nations at the Brooklyn Museum. September 15, 1947.

Two short years after the war ended, photographs, charts, and informational text explained why “the U.N. is vital to every human being in the world.” It was hoped that the 1947 exhibition Know Your United Nations would “prove to be an antidote to discouragement and a powerful incentive to keep on going toward peace.”

Page from catalogue for Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today, showing Olivetti electric calculator and portable typewriter.

In the early 1950s, the Museum mounted a major exhibition of contemporary Italian design to introduce Americans to “the spiritual and artistic resurgence achieved … by a nation which had been under a totalitarian yoke for decades.” Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today, also showed “what our taxes, supporting democratic aspirations abroad, have begun to produce …”

Franz von Stuck (German, 1863-1928). Golgotha, 1917. Oil on canvas, 41 3/4 x 43 3/8 in. (106 x 110.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Alfred W. Jenkins, 28.420

In 1928, just 10 years after World War I, the Exhibition of Paintings by Living Bavarian Artists was the first organized show of contemporary German work to travel to the United States after the war. The German officials who initiated it, including Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria “most earnestly desire to resume with the United States those cultural relations which were suspended during the war.”

In the early 1930s, when aviation was still new, the Museum presented photographs of the “epoch making ‘Flight over Mt. Everest’ ” as part of Britain Illustrated: Photographs Presented by The Times (London). The release describes in detail the harrowing “flight of the aeroplanes” from their base camp to the summit, which they passed over with “less than five hundred feet to spare,” using electrically heated suits, oxygen masks, and goggles.

From about the same time, the impact of the Great Depression is evident throughout the release for Fine Prints of the Year 1933. The exhibition’s curators agreed that “in spite of the year of depression,” the graphic arts were enjoying continued popularity, and that artists were producing quality work “in face of the discouraging economic conditions.”

Inventions for Victory. Installation view: bracketless shelf, from Whitehouse Research Bureau display. Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Photography.

Several exhibitions reflect the United States’ entry into World War II, including Inventions for Victory, mounted in the early 1940s. It was part of the Museum’s “wartime program,” demonstrating “American manufacturers’ ingenuity” and showcasing new materials substituting for wool, silk, rubber, and metals, which “prove more satisfactory than the older ones and show promise of progressive replacement.”

There are many more historical gems to explore in the Exhibitions section of our Open Collections! Some of the entries have photographs; if so, make sure to click on the Press tab (if available) to view any releases. And special thanks to the Museum’s Library, which provided some of these images.

Susan A. Hutchinson, Founding Museum Librarian, with William Henry Goodyear, Founding Curator of Fine Arts in the Library Reading Room circa 1910.

Since the images collected by William Henry Goodyear (1846-1923) are generating interest today we thought it would interesting to look back at Goodyear and several of his colleagues who built the Museum’s collections over the years. So let’s declare 2009 the year of looking back and learning from history. Hopefully this exercise will educate us all as we move forward and learn about each other and our cultural heritage. Who knows maybe we will end the year in a more peaceful way than we started.

Let me start with a quote from artist John La Farge to William Henry Goodyear: “You have opened the window that has been closed for centuries, and have let in the light”.

I believe that La Farge was referring to Goodyear’s intense interest in photography as a tool to document the world he saw. A Yale graduate and student at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, Goodyear devoted himself to teaching and lecturing about the history of art and architecture. After graduating from Yale in 1867, he traveled to Germany, Italy, Palestine and Syria to pursue his interest in architecture. It was in Pisa in 1870 that he began to focus on architectural details and later published in an article entitled “A Lost Art” in Scribner’s Magazine, the first of many essays he wrote about architectural refinements. Goodyear started his museum career in 1882 as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in 1899 came to the Brooklyn Museum as the first curatorial appointment made by the newly founded museum. At Brooklyn, Goodyear led a series of research and collecting expeditions with a mission to build an art collection. He oversaw the growth of the American, European and ancient art collections including the casts of Ancient and Renaissance sculpture as well as designing and installing exhibitions of newly acquired art.

Hall of Sculpture with Casts, circa 1904.

In addition to his curatorial mandate, Goodyear dedicated time to developing his architectural theory that historic buildings were planned with irregularities which he referred to as refinements. This study focused on architectural monuments found around the world from the Cathedral of Pisa to the temples of Egypt with stops in Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece and Turkey. Like his colleague Stewart Culin, founding curator of Ethnology from 1903 to 1929, Goodyear seems to have been interested in everything and this is evidenced in his photographs of people and places around the world from a street vendor in Istanbul to the vivid depictions of the world fairs of Chicago and Paris. Goodyear recognized the importance of these fairs as an educational tool to introduce cultures from different parts of the world. He, like Culin, also saw objects at the fairs and recommended their acquisition for Brooklyn. These photographs by Alfred Percival Maudslay were exhibited at the Chicago Columbian Exposition and collected for Brooklyn after Goodyear and Culin saw them at the fair. Indeed, Goodyear worked obsessively using photography as a tool to educate and a method to document his findings in the field in addition to his writings.

Maudslay photographs on view in the Chicago Columbian Exposition, circa 1893.

It seems that throughout his long life he developed theories that explored new themes in the history of art starting with his “Grammar of the Lotus” documenting continuing use of the lotus form in decorative art since its use in Ancient Egypt. He also wrote several popular histories of art and was one of the first to use actual photographs, as opposed to engravings, to illustrate these texts. He took and collected photographs and used them in the form of lantern slides to illustrate his many lectures–over 130 for the Brooklyn Museum alone–ranging from the art of ancient civilizations to the art of the nineteenth century. In addition to being known as an architectural historian, Goodyear was a scholar of anthropology, archaeology and ethnology with a focus on America, Egypt, Greece and Rome. All of this is evidenced in the photographs (lantern slides, negatives and prints) and his research (published and unpublished) found in the Museum Libraries and Archives.

His photographs offer detailed images of historic structures before the devastation of world wars and rampant twentieth century architectural “redevelopment.” His documentation of many buildings has served as guideposts to reconstruction of several monuments that have been destroyed or renovated over the years. But his influence went beyond architecture since it was his vision that laid the groundwork for two major art museum collections–the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was responsible for recommending the acquisition of several important objects including the antiquities collection and library assembled by Charles Edwin Wilbour, America’s first Egyptologist. Goodyear also established the first children’s museum in America – the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Today we all benefit from Goodyear’s scholarship and foresight as we see the world before us through his photographs and writings.

More to come about these early visionaries in Brooklyn, but today we are honoring Professor Goodyear by releasing more images from his archives of street scenes and mosques in Turkey in response to comments on Flickr Commons.

Bruce Cratsley (American, 1944–1998). Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Fireworks, 1983.
Gelatin silver print. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Billy Leight, 1996.167. © Bruce Cratsley

There’s a long tradition of fireworks over the Brooklyn Bridge, from its opening in 1883 to the centennial in 1983, and I’d venture to guess that every one of them has been captured by artists. A few years ago, we digitized everything we could find in the Museum collection that had to do with the Brooklyn Bridge, including some wonderful fireworks images. Take a look at The Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn Museum: Spanning Art and History.

There must be thousands (millions?) of photographs around from the last big celebration in 1983, in shoeboxes, slide carousels, and all of other analog places. This time, though, it’s going to be easier to share all of the digital images sure to be created during the 5-day celebration. Join our Brooklyn Bridge (Brooklyn Museum Web site) Group on Flickr and add your amazing fireworks images to the more than 900 images of “our” bridge on Flickr and linked to the Brooklyn Bridge pages on Museum website.

The first time I came across the statues that sit along the top of the building was when I digitized images of the Museum’s exterior as an intern in the Archives. It was great to see some of the early images of the building and to see how it developed and changed over the years. The statues are part of our Museum’s history and a frequently asked research topic at the Libraries and Archives. When I was thinking about this post, I was curious to see what types of questions we’ve received in the past, so I took a look at some of our old reference request forms. Yes, in typical archives fashion we keep these forms and they can be very useful, such as in this situation. The questions about the statues include inquiries about specific sculptors, the meaning of the statues, who created them, and when and how they were made. Here’s a little background information on the creation of the statues.

McKim, Mead & White, the architects of the Museum, included the statues as part of the Museum’s original design. The statues and the unrelated names inscribed below them were meant to represent notable aspects in the history of civilization. The statues in particular were symbolic and not intended to be portraits. This is visually reinforced by the fact that the statues and the names are not aligned, but staggered (see photo above).

Daniel Chester French in his workshop. Photo Collection: Museum building: exteriors [02].

The noted sculptor Daniel Chester French was given the responsibility of creating thirty statues of allegorical figures representing Persian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Greek and Roman subjects. He enlisted a group of highly-regarded sculptors to assist him with the project (Edmund T. Quinn, Attilio Piccirili, Edward C. Potter, Karl Bitter, Janet Scudder, Augustus Lukeman, Charles Keck, George T. Brewster, Kenyon Cox, Herbert Adams, John Gelert, and Charles A. Heber). The finished statues were installed in 1909.

Finished statues being hoisted into position. Photo Collection: Museum building: exteriors [02].

Because of the continuing interest in the statues, we thought it might be a good idea to put together some images and information on them. This was a group effort which included various departments (Information Systems, Digital Collections and Services, Conservation, Planning and Libraries and Archives). See below for additional images and resources. Hope you enjoy them.

Façade

• On the East façade (Washington Avenue), there are statues representing Persian Religion, The Indian Law Giver, Indian Literature, Indian Philosophy, and Indian Religion.
• The North façade (Eastern Parkway) features Chinese Religion, Chinese Philosophy, Chinese Art, Chinese Law, Japanese Art, The Hebrew Law Giver, The Hebrew Psalmist, The Hebrew Prophet, The Hebrew Apostle, The Genius of Islam, The Greek Epic, Greek Lyric Poetry, The Greek Drama, The Greek Statesman, Greek Science, Greek Religion, Greek Philosophy, Greek Architecture, Greek Sculpture, and Greek Letters.
• The West façade shows Roman Law, the Roman Statesman, the Roman Emperor, the Roman Orator, and the Roman Epic.

Online Resources

• The Statues and Their Meaning, Museum News 1910 (PDF)
• The Bulletin of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (PDF)
  
• Leland M. Roth also discusses the sculptures in his chapter in A New Brooklyn Museum: The Master Plan Competition (PDF)

Photos

These photos were taken by our Conservation team in 2001 just prior to the construction of our new entrance. The initial phase of the ambitious construction project called for the restoration of the entire Eastern Parkway façade of the building, which included the cleaning and re-pointing of all the limestone and granite. With scaffolding in place, the Museum’s conservation staff took advantage of a rare opportunity to survey the thirty large-scale statues on the Museum’s cornice and make necessary repairs.
Slideshow created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Having trouble seeing the slideshow? Photos are also on Flickr.

Further information on the statues can also be found in the Museum’s Library, which is open to the public Wednesday through Friday from 10:00 to 12:00 and 1:00 to 4:30.