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.