Engaging Musings

Today in History for 24th September 2015

Historical Events

Events 1 - 100 of 206

312 - Start of Imperial Indication

366 - Liberius ends his reign as Catholic Pope

673 - Synod of Hertford opens; canons made for English Church

787 - 2nd Council of Nicaea (7th ecumenical council) opens in Asia Minor

1180 - Manuel I Komnenos, last Emperor of the Komnenian restoration dies. The Byzantine Empire slips into terminal decline.

1493 - Columbus' 2nd expedition to New World

1537 - Uprising in Lubeck fails

1625 - Dutch attack San Juan, Puerto Rico

1629 - Jacques Specx appointed governor-general of Dutch-Indies

1657 - First autopsy & coroner's jury verdict is recorded in Maryland

1664 - Dutch Fort Orange (New Netherland) in present day Albany NY surrenders to the English

1683 - King Louis XIV expels all Jews from French possessions in America

1688 - France declares war on Germany

1706 - Treaty of Altranstdt: Charles XII of Sweden & August II of Saksen

1742 - Faneuil Hall, Boston, opens to public

1776 - First St Leger horesrace held at Doncaster

The Sun King of France Louis XIV1786 - American American slave Jupiter Hammon makes his "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York" speech advocating emancipation at meeting of African Society in NY

1789 - US Congress establishes Post Office Department following the new constitution

1789 - US Federal Judiciary Act is passed & creates a six-person Supreme Court

1789 - President George Washington nominates John Jay the 1st Chief Justice

1789 - US Attorney General Office is created

1829 - Russia & Ottoman Empire sign Peace Treaty of Adrianople

1838 - Anti-Corn-Law League forms to repeal English Corn Law

1841 - British adventurer James Brooke obtains lands around the Sarawak river from the Sultan of Brunei

1850 - Papal Bull issued, establishes Roman Catholic hierarchy in England

1852 - Henri Giffard, a French engineer, makes 1st engine powered dirigible/airship flight with steam power

1st White Rajah of Sarawak James Brooke1853 - 1st round-the-world trip by yacht (Cornelius Vanderbilt)

1853 - France annexes New Caledonia

1853 - Northern Daily Times, 1st provincial daily newspaper, starts in London

1862 - Confederate Congress adopts confederacy seal

1865 - James Cooke walks tightrope from Cliff House to Seal Rocks, SF

1869 - Black Friday; Wall St panic after Gould & Fisk attempt to corner gold

1872 - Franz Grillparzer's "Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg" premieres in Vienna

1877 - Battle of Shiroyama, decisive victory of the Imperial Japanese Army over the Satsuma Rebellion

1881 - Henry Morton Stanley signs contract with Congo monarch

1883 - National black convention meets in Louisville, Kentucky

1884 - Dixey, Rice & Gill's musical "Adonis" premieres in NYC

1885 - Five German warships depart to Zanzibar

1889 - Alexander Dey patents dial time recorder

1890 - President of Mormon Church in Salt Lake City issues a manifesto advising members that teaching & practice of polygamy should be abandoned

1895 - 1st round-the-world trip by a woman on a bicycle (took 15 months)

1902 - Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Red Circle" (BG)

1903 - Alfred Deakin succeeds Edmund Barton as Australia premier

1903 - Bill Bradley becomes 1st Cleveland baseball player (Cleveland Naps) to hit for cycle

1906 - St Louis Card Stony McGlynn no-hits Dodgers, 1-1 in 7 inning game

1906 - V Herbert & H Blossom's musical "Red Mill" premieres in NYC

1906 - Prince George of Greece, convinced that he can no longer serve the cause of Crete, resigns as High Commissioner

1908 - Robert B Rhoads becomes 1st Cleveland pitcher (Cleveland Naps) to toss a no-hit game, Cleveland 2, Boston 1

1916 - Indians' Marty Kavanaugh, hits AL's 1st pinch-hit grand slam

Baseball Legend Babe Ruth1919 - Babe Ruth sets season homer mark at 28 off of Yankee Bob Shawkey

1922 - Nuremberg fusion congress USDP-SPD; picks Karl Kautsky

1922 - Roger Hornsby sets NL HR mark at 42

1923 - Premiere of 1st celluloid film "Das Leben auf dem Dorfe" (Berlin)

1924 - Boston, Massachusetts, opens its airport

1926 - Cardinals clinch NL pennant by beating Giants 6-4

1927 - NHL's Toronto St Patricks become Maple Leafs

1927 - Yanks set record of 106 victories

1928 - Cohan/Lardner's musical "Elmer the Great" premieres in NYC

1929 - Lt James Doolittle guides a Consolidated N-Y-2 Biplane over Mitchell Field in NY in 1st all-instrument flight

1929 - Yanks Tom Zachary ends season 12-0

1930 - G Kaufman & M Hart's "Once in a Lifetime" premieres in NY

Aviation Pioneer Jimmy Doolittle1930 - Noel Coward's "Private Lives" premieres in London

1930 - Portsmouth beats Brooklyn in 1st NFL game played under floodlights

1931 - Round-robin playoff among NYC's 3 major league teams, to raise money for unemployed, concludes with Brooklyn losing to both Giants & Yanks

1932 - NY Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt visits LA

1934 - 2,500 fans see Babe Ruth's farewell Yankee appearance at Yankee Stadium

1934 - Idle Detroit wins pennant, as Red Sox beat Yankees 5-0

1935 - Earl Bascom and Weldon Bascom produce the first rodeo ever held outdoors under electric lights at Columbia, Mississippi

1938 - Alice Marble wins her 2nd singles US tennis title

1938 - 58th U.S. Men's National Championship: Don Budge beats Gene Mako (6-3, 6-8, 6-2, 6-1) and becomes 1st tennis player to win a grand slam

1938 - 52nd U.S. Women's National Championship: Alice Marble beats Nancye Wynne Bolton (6-0, 6-3)

Tennis Champion Alice Marble1940 - Jimmy Foxx hits his 500th career HR

1940 - Luftwaffe bombs Spitfire factory in Southampton

1941 - Nine Allied governments pledge adherence to the common principles of policy set forth in the Atlantic Charter

1941 - Bomb explosion in German headquarter in Hotel Continental in Kiev

1943 - Soviet forces reconquer Smolensk

1946 - Yanks set season attendance record of 2,309,029 besting 1929 Cubs

1948 - Mildred Gillars (Axis Sally), an American broadcaster employed by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany to proliferate propaganda during World War II, pleads not guilty to eight chargs of treason in Washington, D.C.

1948 - Yanks, Boston & Cleveland are tied for 1st place in AL (91-56)

1948 - The Honda Motor Company is founded.

1950 - "Operation Magic Carpet" - all Jews from Yemen move to Israel

1951 - Industrial estate opens at Harlow New Town, England

1951 - USSR performs nuclear test

1952 - Dutch minister Dark sentences war criminal W Lages to death

1952 - Underwater volcano explodes under research vessel Kaiyo-maru-5

1953 - "Take a Giant Step," opens on Broadway

Heavyweight Boxing Champion Rocky Marciano1953 - Rocky Marciano TKOs Roland LaStarza in 11 for heavyweight boxing title

1954 - Tonight Show premieres on NBC (Johnny takes over 8 years later)

1954 - Yanks tie a record, 3 of their pinch hitters strike out in 1 inning

1955 - "Catch a Star" closes at Plymouth Theater NYC after 23 performances

1955 - US President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack on vacation in Denver

1955 - Washington Senators lose their 99th & 100th games of season

1957 - Brooklyn Dodgers play last game at Ebbets Field, defeat Pirates 2-0

1957 - President Eisenhower orders US troops to desegregate Little Rock schools

1957 - Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, is opened in Barcelona.

1958 - Donna Reed Show premieres on ABC

1958 - 1st welded aluminum girder highway bridge completed, Urbandale, Ia

1960 - International Development Association (UN agency) comes into existence

1960 - USS Enterprise, 1st nuclear power aircraft carrier, launched

1961 - Mickey Wright wins LPGA Sacramento Valley Golf Open

Famous Birthdays

Birthdays 1 - 100 of 218

15 - Vitellius, Roman Emperor (d. 69)

1301 - Ralph Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford, English soldier (d. 1372)

Mathematician Girolamo Cardano (1501)1501 - Girolamo Cardano, Italy, mathematician/astrologer (Ars Magna-1545)

1513 - Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg, Queen of Sweden (d. 1535)

1534 - Guru Ram Das, fourth Sikh Guru (d. 1581)

1564 - William Adams, English navigator and 1st ever Western Samurai (d. 1620)

1583 - Albrecht Eusebius Wenzel von Wallenstein, German general

1625 - Johan de Witt, statesman/advisor of Holland

1667 - Jean-Louis Lully, Paris France, composer

1705 - Leopold Josef Graf Daun, Austrian field marshal (d. 1766)

1717 - Horace Walpole, England, British horror writer (Castle of Otranto)

1725 - Sir Arthur Guinness, Irish brewer (d. 1803)

1748 - Philipp Meissner, composer

1755 - John Marshall, Germantown Virginia, 4th Supreme Court Chief Justice (1801-35)

1762 - William Lisle Bowles, English poet (14 Sonnets)

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States John Marshall (1755)1773 - Johann Philipp Christian Schulz, composer

1801 - Mikhail Vasilievich Ostrogradsky, Ukrainian scientist (d. 1862)

1802 - Adolphe d'Archiac, French paleontologist and geologist (d. 1868)

1806 - George Alexander Osborne, composer

1817 - Ramon de Campoamor Campoosorio, Spanish poet (Doloras)

1821 - Cyprian K Norwid, Polish painter/poet/playwright (Wanda)

1824 - Truman Seymour, Bvt Major General (Union Army), (d. 1891)

1825 - Frances E W Harper, famous African

1827 - Henry Warner Slocum, Major General (Union volunteers), (d. 1894)

1829 - James St Clair Morton, Brigadier General (Union volunteers), (d. 1864)

1829 - Charles S. West, Texas jurist and politician (d. 1885)

1833 - Henry Alanson Barnum, Bvt Major General (Union volunteers)

1848 - Pieter Louis Tak, literary (The Chronicle)

1858 - Eugene Foss, 45th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1939)

1859 - Julius Klengel, cellist/composer

1860 - Samuel Rutherford Crockett, novelist

1870 - Georges Claude, inventor (neon light)

1871 - Lottie Dod, English athlete (d. 1960)

1878 - C. F. Ramuz, Swiss writer (d. 1947)

1884 - Gustave Garrigou, French cyclist (d. 1963)

1884 - Hugo Schmeisser, German weapons designer (d. 1953)

1885 - Herman Bouber, Dutch actor/playwright (Sailor's Wives)

1886 - James Burke, actor (Mystery Theater, Great Guy), born in NYC, New York

1890 - Alan Herbert, England, journalist/writer (Punch, Helen)

1890 - Mike Gonzlez, baseball player (d. 1977)

1892 - Sam[uel] de Vries, actor (Wandering Jew)

1892 - Adlard Godbout, premier of Qubec (d. 1956)

1893 - Blind Lemon Jefferson, Coutchman, Texas, blues singer and guitarist, (d. 1929)

1893 - Julia Faye, Richmond VA, actress (10 Commandments, Samson & Delilah)

1894 - Tommy Armour, Anglo-American golfer (d. 1968)

1895 - Andre Cournand, physician

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896)1896 - F Scott Fitzgerald, St Paul Minn, author (Great Gatsby), (d. 1940)

1898 - Charlotte D baroness of Pallandt, Dutch sculptress

1898 - Howard Florey, Adelaide Aust, pathologist/phamacologist; purified penicillin (Nobel '45), (d. 1968)

1899 - Eduardo Hernandez Moncada, composer

1899 - Sir William Dobell, Australian portrait artist (d. 1970)

1900 - Ham Fisher, American cartoonist (d. 1955)

1902 - Cheryl Crawford, producer (Touch of Venus, Brigadoon)

1902 - Ayatollah Khomeini [Ruhollah Khomeini], Supreme leader of Iran (1979-89), religious figure, and political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution (d. 1989)

1904 - Cemal Resit Rey, composer

1904 - Owen Saunders, mechanical engineer

1905 - Severo Ochoa, Nobel Laureate (d. 1993)

Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini (1902)1906 - Victor Wong, LA Cal, actor (Mission to Moscow, Son of Kong, King Kong)

1907 - Pierre Moulaert, composer

1909 - Gerard Cioek, Polish architect (d. 1966)

1910 - Cao Yu, dramatist

1910 - Frank Pelleg, composer

1910 - Jean Servais, Angers Belgium, actor (Every Man is My Enemy)

1910 - Leonarda da Vinci MacLaren, founder (LSE)

1911 - Konstantin Chernenko, USSR leader

1912 - Don Porter, Miami Oklahoma, actor (Russ Lawrence-Gidget, Ann Sothern Show)

1912 - Ian Serraillier, children author

1914 - Andrzej Panufnik, Warsaw Poland, composer (Tragic Overture)

1914 - Hein J M Jordans, Dutch conductor

1914 - Herb Jeffries, actor (Where's Huddles), born in Detroit, Michigan

1914 - Sir John Kerr, 18th Governor-General of Australia, who dismissed Whitlam government (d. 1991)

1915 - Larry Gates, St Paul Minn, actor (Guiding Light, Body Snatchers)

1915 - Margarita J Aliger, Russian poetess (Zoja) [OS]

1915 - Seymour Egerton, CEO (Coutis Bank)

1916 - John Lapsley, British air marshal

1917 - Colin Cowe, senior bursar (Magdalen College Oxford)

1917 - William Putnam Bundy, editor (Lvaggerier & Vagaries), born in London, England

1918 - Audra Lindley, actress (Helen Roper-3's Company, Ropers), born in Los Angeles, California

1918 - Richard Hoggart, author/warden (Goldsmith's College London)

1919 - Dayton Allen, comedian (Steve Allen Show), born in NYC, New York

1919 - Vaclav Nelhybel, Polanka Czechoslovakia, composer (Everyman)

1921 - Jim McKay, Phila Pa, sportscaster (ABC's Wide World of Sports)

1921 - Leonard Overton, British glider pilot (Arnhem 1944)

1921 - Leonard Lopes-Salzedo, British composer, born in London, England

1922 - Cornell MacNeil, US, singer/actor (La Traviata)

1922 - David Lane, CEO (Commission for Racial Equality)

1922 - Theresa Merritt, Newport News Va, actress (Mama-That's My Mama)

1923 - Ladislav Fuks, writer

1923 - Mervyn Brown, diplomat

1923 - Fats Navarro, American jazz trumpet player (d. 1950)

1924 - Jean-Pierre Warner, British high court judge

1924 - Sheila MacRae, actress (Jackie Gleason Show), born in London, England (d. 2014)

1924 - Simpson Guillen, cricketer (wicket-keeper for West Indies & NZ)

1924 - Walter Fufido, Iwo Jima casualty (WW II), born in The Bronx, New York

1924 - Nina Bocharova, Soviet gymnast

1924 - Theresa Merritt, American actress (d. 1998)

1925 - Autar Singh Paintal, Indian medical scientist (d. 2004)

1927 - Richard Swift, composer

1929 - George McNicol, principal (Aberdeen University)

1929 - Edward M. Lawson, Canadian politician

Famous Weddings

Weddings 1 - 11 of 11

Founder of Sikhism Guru Nanak (1487)1487 - Founder of Sikhism Guru Nanak marries Mata Sulakkhani in Batala

1948 - American Major League Baseball outfielder Ty Cobb (61) weds Frances Cass (40)

1953 - Singer Dick Haymes (35) weds Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth (34) at The Sands hotel-casino in Las Vegas

1964 - Actress Jayne Mansfield (31) weds film producer and director Matt Cimber in Mulege, Baja California Sur, Mexico

1993 - Beverly Hills 90210 star Shannen Doherty (Brenda) weds Ashley Hamilton

2004 - Former "Baywatch" actor Michael Bergin (35) weds makeup artist Joy Tilk (34) at Hanalei Bay Resort in Kauai, Hawaii

2005 - Actor Ashton Kutcher (34) weds actress Demi Moore (49) in Beverly Hills, California

2005 - "30 Minute Meals" TV host Rachael Ray (37) weds "The Cringe" lead singer John Cusimano in Montalcino, Italy

Actor Ashton Kutcher (2005)2005 - "King of Queens" actor-comedian Patton Oswalt (36) weds writer Michelle McNamara in Los Angeles

2011 - Model and actress Molly Sims (38) weds film producer Scott Stuber at Frank Caferatta Vineyards in Napa, California

2012 - "Sugar Ray" singer Mark McGrath (44) weds longtime love Carin Kingsland (39) at San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, California

Famous Deaths

Deaths 1 - 97 of 97

366 - Liberius, Italian Pope (352-66), dies

768 - Pippin III, the short, King of France, dies at 53

786 - Al-Hadi, Arabic kalief of Islam (185-86), dies

911 - Ludwig III, the child, last Carolingian German King (899-911), dies

1054 - Hermannus Contractus, scholar (b. 1013)

1118 - Robert of Knaresborough, hermit (b. 1160)

1120 - Welf II, Duke of Bavaria (b. 1072)

1143 - Innocent II, [Gregorio de' Papareschi], Ital Pope (1130-43), dies

1143 - Agnes of Germany, daughter of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1072)

1180 - Manuel I Comnenus, Byzantine emperor (1143-80), dies

1213 - Gertrude of Merania, wife of Andrew II of Hungary (murdered) (b. 1185)

1228 - Stefanus I Nemanjic de Eerstgekroonde, king of Serbia (1217-28), dies

1230 - Alfonso IX, king of Leon/Castile, dies

1275 - Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford, Constable of England (b. 1208)

1435 - Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen and wife of Charles VI of France (bc. 1370)

1494 - Poliziano, Italian humanist (b. 1454)

1517 - Frederik IV, of Baden, bishop of Utrecht, dies

1536 - Janus Secundus, neo latin poet (Basia), dies at 24

Physician/Alchemist Paracelsus (1541)1541 - Philippus A Paracelsus, Swiss physician/alchemist, dies at 47

1545 - Albrecht von Brandenburg, archbishop/monarch of Mainz, dies at 55

1568 - Antoon van Stralen, Flemish mayor of Antwerp, beheaded at about 47

1605 - Manuel Mendes, Portuguese composer (bc. 1547)

1621 - Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, Polish military commander (b. 1560)

1646 - Duarte Lobo, Portuguese composer (bc. 1565)

1707 - Vincenzo da Filicaja, Italian poet (b. 1642)

1732 - Emperor Reigen of Japan (b. 1654)

1742 - Johann Matthias Hase, German scientist (b. 1684)

1755 - Georg Gebel, composer, dies at 45

1790 - John Keyse Sherwin, engraver/painter, dies

1802 - Alexander Radishchev, Russian writer (b. 1749)

1813 - Andre-Ernest-Modeste Gretry, composer, dies at 72

1815 - John Sevier, indian fighter (Gov/Rep-Tn), dies at 70

1834 - A J Pedro I van Alcantara, Emperor of Brazil (1822-31), dies

1855 - Alexandre Stievenard, composer, dies at 86

1856 - Henry, 1st viscount Hardinge of Lahore, gov-gen of India, dies

1865 - Frantiszek Soltyk, composer, dies at 81

1875 - William Walker, composer, dies at 66

1881 - Luigi Ferdinando Casamorata, composer, dies at 74

1892 - Cornelis A van Sypesteyn, Dutch governor of Suriname, dies at 69

1892 - Patrick S Gilmore, composer, dies at 62

1894 - Martinus Nijhoff, founder Nijhoff's book publisher (Van Dale), dies

1896 - Percy McDonnell, cricketer (19 Tests 1880-88, 3 centuries), dies

1896 - Louis De Geer, 1st Swedish Prime Minister (b. 1818)

1898 - Bartel Wilton, ship builder, dies at 70

1910 - Rudolf Dellinger, composer, dies at 53

1919 - Frank Laver, cricketer (15 Tests for Aust 1899-1909), dies

1930 - William A. MacCorkle, Governor of West Virginia (b. 1857)

1933 - Mike Donlin, baseball player (b. 1878)

1933 - Alice Muriel Williamson, British novelist (b. 1869)

1934 - Edwin Lehare, composer, dies at 69

1938 - Lev Schnirelmann, Russian mathematician (b. 1900)

1939 - Carl Laenmie, film producer, dies

1948 - Warren William, actor (Fear, Wolf Man, Madame X), dies at 53

1949 - Pierre Breville, composer, dies at 88

1951 - Georges Rency, Belgian poet/literature, dies at 75

1953 - Berthold Viertel, writer, dies at 68

1954 - Edward Pilgrim, British suicide hastened by bureaucracy (b. 1904)

1960 - Matyas Seiber, composer, dies at 55

1960 - Melanie Klein, [Reizes], child psycho-analyst, dies

1961 - Sumner Welles, US diplomat (Good Neighbor Policy), dies at 68

1967 - Orville Caldwell, Deputy Major (LA-1940), dies at 71

1967 - Robert H van Gulik, diplomat/writer (Judge Tie), dies

1968 - Harry Robert Wilson, composer, dies at 67

1968 - Robert Arthur Ley, sci-fi author (Telepath, Power of X), dies at 47

1975 - Clive Morton, actor (Goodbye Mr Chips, Moonraker), dies at 71

1975 - Ian Hunter, actor (Sir Richard-Robin Hood), dies at 75

1975 - Earle Cabell, Texas politician (b. 1906)

1976 - Bruno VeSota, actor/director (Chopper, Teenage Doll), dies at 54

1976 - Romney Brent, actor/writer (Dinner at the Ritz), dies at 74

1978 - Ruth Etting, US dancer/singer (Ziegfeld Follies), dies at 80

1981 - Patsy Kelly, actress (Brigid Murphy-Cop & the Kid), dies at 71

1982 - Sarah Churchill, actress (Royal Wedding, Spring Meeting), dies at 67

1983 - Isobel Baillie, oratorio singer, dies

1984 - Neil Hamilton, actor (Com Gordon-Batman), dies of asthma at 85

1990 - Jay Currin, stuntman/actor (Back to the Beach, Serial), dies at 34

1991 - Mary Lawrence, actress (Best Man), dies of respiratory failure at 73

Children's Author Dr. Seuss (1991)1991 - Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), children's author, dies of cancer at 87

1991 - Peter Bellamy, folk singer (b. 1944)

1993 - Zita Johann, Hungarian/US actress (Mummy), dies at 89

1993 - Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian physicist (b. 1913)

1993 - Ian Stuart Donaldson, British musician (b. 1957)

1994 - Colin Berry Haycraft, publisher, dies at 65

1994 - David Napley, solicitor, dies at 79

1994 - Otto F Walther, Swiss publisher/author (Der Stumme), dies at 66

1996 - Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, egyptologist, dies at 87

1996 - Mark Frankel, actor (Solitaire for 2, Simon-Sisters), dies at 34

1996 - Pavel Anatolievich Sudoplatov, spy, dies at 89

1997 - Jonathon Silver, entrepreneur/arts patron, dies at 47

2002 - Youssouf Togomi, Chadian rebel (b. 1953)

2002 - Mike Webster, National Football League player (b. 1952)

2003 - Rosalie Allen, American singer and disc jockey (b. 1924)

2003 - Lyle Bettger, American actor (b. 1915)

2004 - Franoise Sagan, French writer (b. 1935)

2005 - Tommy Bond, American actor (b. 1926)

2008 - Mickey Vernon, American baseball player (b. 1918)

2009 - Susan Atkins, American murderer (b. 1948)

2010 - Gennady Yanayev, Soviet politician (b. 1937)



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The Broad Museum Is A Contemporary Art Collector's Gift To Los Angeles

The Broad Museum, on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, opens Sunday. Admission is free. Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro hide caption

itoggle caption Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro The Broad Museum, on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, opens Sunday. Admission is free.

Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Los Angeles is getting a new contemporary art museum, courtesy of billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and his wife Edythe. Their free museum opens Sunday.

Surrounded by the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad is already an architectural landmark, with its honeycomb-like exoskeleton.

"This shell of sorts, this light filter, this amazing sculptural structure ... enrobes the museum," says Joanne Heyler, the museum's director and chief curator.

Traveling up through the middle of the building in the round, glass elevator you can peek inside what's known as "the vault" an entire floor storing the Broads' collection of more than 2,000 paintings, photos and sculptures.

On the top floor, diffused natural light pours in through skylights. There's work here from Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman and Chris Burden. There's an entire room for Takashi Murakami. The collection includes a lot of L.A. artists, Heyler says.

Despite the insane art market, the Broads have no trouble purchasing the art they like. "It's simple," says Heyler. "If there's a work of interest, we acquire it. There's no committee process. There isn't a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process to follow."

Eli and Edythe Broad have been collectors for more than 40 years. Elizabeth Daniels/Courtesy of The Broad hide caption

itoggle caption Elizabeth Daniels/Courtesy of The Broad Eli and Edythe Broad have been collectors for more than 40 years.

Elizabeth Daniels/Courtesy of The Broad

From his office in L.A.'s Century City neighborhood, Eli Broad, 82, can look out over the many of the cultural institutions he's helped fund the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and now, his museum.

"We want this to be a gift to the city of Los Angeles," he says. "We've been collectors now going on 45 years."

Broad says building his museum took longer and cost more than he thought it would. But he wanted a permanent home for his collection so people could see it and enjoy it.

"We wanted to share it with the broadest possible public," he says. "That's why we have free admission."

Forbes estimates Eli Broad is worth $7.4 billion. He made his fortune building suburban tract homes, and also running an insurance company. He and his wife bought their first artwork a van Gogh drawing and then quickly switched to collecting contemporary art. He says they liked buying works with social or political meaning. And along the way, they've gotten to know the artists personally.



With skylights and the "interior veil," light streams into The Broad's third floor galleries. Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro hide caption

itoggle caption Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro



He remembers artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose at age 27, smoking pot in their powder room. He says the first time he saw Basquiat's work in New York he was drawn to it "because it wasn't just graffiti, it was very thoughtful," Broad says.

He recalls seeing Cindy Sherman's work for the first time in a gallery on Mercer Street in New York. "We followed her career and have 120 of her works," he says.

Painter Lari Pittman says considering the caliber and number of artists who live in L.A., he wishes the city had more museums. Ten of his paintings are in the Broads' permanent collection and he's honored to have his work in this new museum.

"The Broads have really decided to make something private public ... for free," he says. "That is a huge social gesture. You know, I know a lot of wealthy people. They do nothing."

Artist Barbara Kruger also says she welcomes the new museum, which showcases several of her works. "The Broads are truly collectors," she says. "They are not speculators. And they tend to collect works that many would find challenging and engaging on a visual and intellectual level. And I'm sure this will continue as artists continue to make critical and resistant works."



The installation of the painting "Like You," by Lari Pittman, 1995. Nina Gregory/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nina Gregory/NPR



The first floor of the Broad showcases newer artists video installations, a mirrored "infinity" room, a chilling drawing of the police in Ferguson, Mo. The editor and publisher of Artillery Magazine, Tulsa Kinney, says she's glad Broad continues to collect.

"I just hope he really broadens his eye towards not just white male artists," Kinney says, "Come on, look, we're in Los Angeles."

There's no lack of excitement for the new museum. Even before the doors open, nearly 100,000 art lovers have already booked their free tickets.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/440574106/the-broad-museum-is-a-contemporary-art-collectors-gift-to-los-angeles?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

How Fishermen's Bragging Rights Gave Birth To Fine Art

Fishing for fine art: Gyotaku, the art of making inked prints from real fish, originated in 19th century Japan. Above, three examples from modern Gyotaku artist Heather Fortner (from left): Under the Rainbow Rainbow Trout; Little big skate and Primary colors butterfly ray. Courtesy of Heather Fortner hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Heather Fortner Fishing for fine art: Gyotaku, the art of making inked prints from real fish, originated in 19th century Japan. Above, three examples from modern Gyotaku artist Heather Fortner (from left): Under the Rainbow Rainbow Trout; Little big skate and Primary colors butterfly ray.

Courtesy of Heather Fortner

Fishing lore is full of tales about "the one that got away," and fishermen have been known to exaggerate the size of their catch. The bragging problem is apparently so bad, Texas even has a law on the books that makes lying about the size or provenance of a fish caught in a tournament an offense that could come with a felony charge.

But in 19th-century Japan, some enterprising fishermen found a foolproof way to record trophy catches. (Some versions of this origin story suggest they did so at the emperor's behest.) The method was known as gyotaku, or "fish rubbing," and allowed fishermen to print inked fish onto paper creating a permanent record of their size. They used a nontoxic sumi-e ink, a black ink traditionally used in both writing and painting which could be easily washed off. Once the print was made, the fish was either released, if it was still alive, or sold at market.

At first, these prints were rudimentary, but they soon became works of art. Fishermen began adding details like eyes (which don't show up in a print) and enhancing other parts of the image. Over time, gyotaku became an established art form with two printing methods: direct and indirect.

Gyotaku artist Heather Fortner explains that in direct printing, the ink is placed directly onto the fish, using it almost like a stamp on the page. Indirect printing is the "finer art form," she says: The paper is glued to the fish and ink is tamped gently onto the page, "like a gravestone rubbing."

Though gyotaku artists traditionally used sumi-e ink, today, anything from India ink to acrylic is considered fair game.

Another artist, Derek Wada, spends up to a full day working on the base prints for his gyotaku. "It's hard, because you're trying to put a 3-D art onto a 2-D medium," he says. "You have to make up the shape and silhouette of the fish by pressing." If the fish was speared, the gyotaku will have a hole on the page. Likewise with ripped fins, scars, or any other flaws.

From there, artists may add color (if they didn't include it in the original pressing), draw the eyes, and any other finishing touches. "You can get a really good print, but it's ruined if you don't have a good eye," Wada says.

Some gyotaku artists, like Japanese fishermen of yore, do eat the fish when their printing is over, but many don't.

"The fish needs to be room temperature or the ink will condensate," Wada says. "I use acrylic ink or paint, and depending on the color, it might have cadmium and other toxic chemicals." Between the threat of food or heavy-metals poisoning, many artists simply refreeze the fish and print another day.

Today, a basic form of gyotaku is sometimes offered as an easy art and educational activity for children. "It introduces them to biology, art, and fish, all at the same time," Fortner says. Though a child may not be able to paint, they likely can press an ink-covered fish onto a piece of paper.



Kumu (sp. Parupeneus porphyreus). The Whitesaddle Goatfish has a special place in Hawaiian culture. In ancient Hawaii, the fish were used in offerings to the gods. Courtesy of Derek Yoshinori Wada hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Derek Yoshinori Wada



And many fishermen still use gyotaku as a record of their catch, keeping the origins of the art form alive.

Fish printing often attracts those who have a connection with the ocean or marine life. Wada, who is Japanese-American, grew up in Hawaii and was taught how to fish by his family at a young age. And before she became a gyotaku artist, Fortner was a commercial fisherman, research vessel deckhand, and a ship's officer and Master in the U.S. Merchant Marine. "I have always loved the ocean and anything from the ocean," she says.

She adds: "Gyotaku allows you to express an appreciation for the natural world by partnering with the finest artist in the world: Mother Nature."

Tove Danovich is a writer based in New York City.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/30/435248291/how-fishermen-s-bragging-rights-gave-birth-to-fine-art?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

The Broad Museum Is A Contemporary Art Collector's Gift To Los Angeles

The Broad Museum, on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, opens Sunday. Admission is free. Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro hide caption

itoggle caption Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro The Broad Museum, on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, opens Sunday. Admission is free.

Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Los Angeles is getting a new contemporary art museum, courtesy of billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and his wife Edythe. Their free museum opens Sunday.

Surrounded by the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Music Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad is already an architectural landmark, with its honeycomb-like exoskeleton.

"This shell of sorts, this light filter, this amazing sculptural structure ... enrobes the museum," says Joanne Heyler, the museum's director and chief curator.

Traveling up through the middle of the building in the round, glass elevator you can peek inside what's known as "the vault" an entire floor storing the Broads' collection of more than 2,000 paintings, photos and sculptures.

On the top floor, diffused natural light pours in through skylights. There's work here from Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman and Chris Burden. There's an entire room for Takashi Murakami. The collection includes a lot of L.A. artists, Heyler says.

Despite the insane art market, the Broads have no trouble purchasing the art they like. "It's simple," says Heyler. "If there's a work of interest, we acquire it. There's no committee process. There isn't a long, drawn-out bureaucratic process to follow."

Eli and Edythe Broad have been collectors for more than 40 years. Elizabeth Daniels/Courtesy of The Broad hide caption

itoggle caption Elizabeth Daniels/Courtesy of The Broad Eli and Edythe Broad have been collectors for more than 40 years.

Elizabeth Daniels/Courtesy of The Broad

From his office in L.A.'s Century City neighborhood, Eli Broad, 82, can look out over the many of the cultural institutions he's helped fund the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and now, his museum.

"We want this to be a gift to the city of Los Angeles," he says. "We've been collectors now going on 45 years."

Broad says building his museum took longer and cost more than he thought it would. But he wanted a permanent home for his collection so people could see it and enjoy it.

"We wanted to share it with the broadest possible public," he says. "That's why we have free admission."

Forbes estimates Eli Broad is worth $7.4 billion. He made his fortune building suburban tract homes, and also running an insurance company. He and his wife bought their first artwork a van Gogh drawing and then quickly switched to collecting contemporary art. He says they liked buying works with social or political meaning. And along the way, they've gotten to know the artists personally.



With skylights and the "interior veil," light streams into The Broad's third floor galleries. Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro hide caption

itoggle caption Iwan Baan/Courtesy of The Broad/Diller Scofidio + Renfro

He remembers artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died of a drug overdose at age 27, smoking pot in their powder room. He says the first time he saw Basquiat's work in New York he was drawn to it "because it wasn't just graffiti, it was very thoughtful," Broad says.



He recalls seeing Cindy Sherman's work for the first time in a gallery on Mercer Street in New York. "We followed her career and have 120 of her works," he says.

Painter Lari Pittman says considering the caliber and number of artists who live in L.A., he wishes the city had more museums. Ten of his paintings are in the Broads' permanent collection and he's honored to have his work in this new museum.

"The Broads have really decided to make something private public ... for free," he says. "That is a huge social gesture. You know, I know a lot of wealthy people. They do nothing."

Artist Barbara Kruger also says she welcomes the new museum, which showcases several of her works. "The Broads are truly collectors," she says. "They are not speculators. And they tend to collect works that many would find challenging and engaging on a visual and intellectual level. And I'm sure this will continue as artists continue to make critical and resistant works."



The installation of the painting "Like You," by Lari Pittman, 1995. Nina Gregory/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nina Gregory/NPR

The first floor of the Broad showcases newer artists video installations, a mirrored "infinity" room, a chilling drawing of the police in Ferguson, Mo. The editor and publisher of Artillery Magazine, Tulsa Kinney, says she's glad Broad continues to collect.

"I just hope he really broadens his eye towards not just white male artists," Kinney says, "Come on, look, we're in Los Angeles."

There's no lack of excitement for the new museum. Even before the doors open, nearly 100,000 art lovers have already booked their free tickets.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/440574106/the-broad-museum-is-a-contemporary-art-collectors-gift-to-los-angeles?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

Set In Stone But Ever-Changing: Sculptures Reshaped By The Tides

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The Rising Tide, on the shore of Thames River in London. Each horse is a hybrid half animal, half oil pump.

Jason deCaires Taylor

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Of the four sculptures that comprise The Rising Tide, two are businessmen or politicians including this one with arms folded and eyes shut tight.

Jason DeCaires Taylor

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At high tide, the four sculptures of The Rising Tide are almost entirely submerged.

Jason DeCaires Taylor

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The Silent Evolution, by Jason deCaires Taylor, in Cancun, Mexico.

Jason deCaires Taylor

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The Silent Evolution, by Jason deCaires Taylor, off the coast of Cancun, Mexico.

Jason deCaires Taylor

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Inertia, by Jason deCaires Taylor, in Punta Nizuc, Mexico.

Courtesy of Jason deCaires Taylor

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Vicissitudes, by Jason deCaires Taylor, off the coast of Granada.

Courtesy of Jason deCaires Taylor

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Man on Fire, by Jason deCaires Taylor, off the coast of Cancun, Mexico.

Jason deCaires Taylor

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Anthropocene, by Jason deCaires Taylor, off the coast of Cancun, Mexico.

Jason deCaires Taylor

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The Banker, by Jason deCaires Taylor, off the coast of Cancun, Mexico.

Jason deCaires Taylor

You probably never will see most of Jason deCaires Taylor's public art projects firsthand at least, not without goggles and fins.

Most of his sculptures stand at the bottom of the sea. His life-size statues ghostly figures of men, women and children seem to walk the ocean floor as they hold hands, huddle, even watch TV.

But his latest art installation is an exception: You can fully see it (if only twice a day). The Rising Tide, a set of four horseback riders standing in the river Thames in London, is completely visible only at low tide, when the water recedes.



As he tells NPR's Scott Simon, his style gives rise to a curious fact: Between the elements, the tides and the life that grows up all around them, his works are never quite the same from one moment to the next.

Interview Highlights

On The Rising Tide, his newest work

These four horses, they're all based on the foreshore of the River Thames, just next to Vauxhall Bridge in central London. And it depicts four large-scale horses, based on the London working horse, or the Shire horse. And each one of them has a rider on top, and also is a kind of hybrid structure so it's half horse and half oil pump. ...

They're also in a very tidal zone, so there's 7 meters of tidal water that rises and falls twice a day. And so, depending on what time of day you visit them, sometimes almost concealed, and sometimes they're completely revealed by the water.

On how he casts sculptures in what amounts to an underwater gallery

It's very different, obviously, from normal public sculpture. I have to use materials which obviously don't pollute in any way, that are friendly to the marine life.

They're also durable. The idea, especially with a lot of the tropical pieces that make artificial reefs, is that they're going to be around for a very long time. Obviously corals, hard corals, can take ages to really get established. So all the materials are very much with that in mind. And they're very much permanent, and very much fixed in place.

On the role of the elements in his work

It works in both ways. I mean, obviously they're all designed to change and evolve in the ecosystem where they're placed. And sometimes that provides spectacular results. You know, we get sort of pink and purple corals and sponges and fire coral and tunicate all these amazing things growing on them, morphing them. That only adds to them: They really sort of then become alive.

But also, you're in this really kind of difficult environment; you're in the sea. So, in tropical areas you get big hurricanes, you get surges of waves. And so with that in mind, you really have to sort of program them so they're fixed and stable, and that can be a challenge.



On the difficulties of seeing his pieces and why he likes it that way



I think you have to make a conscious effort, obviously, to go there. I mean, part of my challenge, and one of the things I'm most interested in showing is, you know, to most people the sea is this sort of hidden, concealed world that, when they look at, they just see a blue horizon, whereas it's actually a spectacular place underwater it's this marvelous world that we have on our doorsteps. And I don't think that's fully understood or appreciated.

I want my work to be a kind of portal or an entrance for people to get to know more about the sea, and obviously it's in peril from many different threats at the moment. And I really want to draw attention to that.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459110/set-in-stone-but-ever-changing-sculptures-reshaped-by-the-tides?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

VIDEO: 12-Year-Old Boy Trips, Rips Hole In $1.5 Million Painting

If you've ever been to a museum with a child, this video probably represents your worst nightmare:

[embedded content]

YouTube

It shows a 12-year-old boy in Taiwan trip and stumble onto a 350-year-old Paolo Porpora oil on canvas painting called Flowers. The boy ripped a fist-sized hole in the painting, which is valued at $1.5 million.

Oops.



Luckily, The Guardian reports:

"The organizers will not ask the boy's family to pay for the restoration costs, according to Focus Taiwan news. It said the exhibition organizer, Sun Chi-hsuan, said the boy was very nervous but should not be blamed and the painting, part of a private collection, was insured. ...

"The exhibition, which also includes portraits of Leonardo, shows 55 paintings in Taiwan 'gathered from the finest art collectors in the world', according to the organizers.

" 'All 55 paintings in the venue are authentic pieces and they are very rare and precious,' a post on the exhibition's Facebook page said. 'Once these works are damaged, they are permanently damaged.' "



We'd like to remind the boy that sometimes accidents turn out fortuitous.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/25/434565176/video-12-year-old-boy-trips-rips-hole-in-1-5-million-painting?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

After Sandy, Katrina And Sept. 11, This Sculptor Finds Art In Survival

Christopher Saucedo's World Trade Center as a Cloud, No. 4 is part of a papier-mch series on display at the U.S. District Court in East Brooklyn through mid-November. Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans Christopher Saucedo's World Trade Center as a Cloud, No. 4 is part of a papier-mch series on display at the U.S. District Court in East Brooklyn through mid-November.

Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans

While driving to his studio in New York's Rockaway Beach neighborhood, artist Christopher Saucedo looks out across Jamaica Bay. He sees a glittering Manhattan and the spire of the new World Trade Center gleaming in a cloudless sky.

"Obviously, where it stands there were once two other very tall towers," the art professor says dryly.

Saucedo grew up playing stickball on the streets in Brooklyn and watching the original World Trade Center rise over New York City. His father took him and his brothers to the construction site to watch it being built. The youngest, Gregory, died in the line of duty in the north tower on Sept. 11.

"He loved being a fireman," Saucedo says, his voice catching.

A few days after the attack, Saucedo drove frantically to New York from New Orleans, where he then lived. "I'm a sculptor, so I packed my boots, my gloves, my respirator and some crowbars because I imagined I would be at the pit helping to find my brother," he says. No trace of Gregory was ever recovered and Saucedo went home to New Orleans in grief. Four years later, when Hurricane Katrina hit and the levees broke, his house was flooded to the rafters.

Christopher Saucedo teaches sculpture, drawing and mixed media art at Adelphi University. Felicia Saucedo/Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo hide caption

itoggle caption Felicia Saucedo/Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo Christopher Saucedo teaches sculpture, drawing and mixed media art at Adelphi University.

Felicia Saucedo/Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo

"In Katrina, we lost everything except for our Christmas decorations and our Easter baskets, which were in the attic," he says. "Things you don't want are in the attic."

Saucedo's family evacuated to Houston. Returning to a ruined house was anathema to his wife, who wanted to move back to New York, so they bought a house in Queens just steps from the beach and 7 feet above sea level. Unfortunately, during Superstorm Sandy, a 12-foot tidal surge deluged the house with 5 feet of water.

"If you were writing a story, the editor might say, 'Drop the second hurricane. It doesn't read well. It doesn't make any sense,' " Saucedo observes wryly. "After Hurricane Sandy, I really started to wonder if I was going to be forever put upon by forces beyond my control. It was really like, 'Come on!' "

Art helped Saucedo make sense of his experience living through three of the worst events on U.S. soil in the past 15 years. Still, it took a long time for him to address his brother's death in the fall of the twin towers.

"I'm a sculptor who primarily works with steel and wood and cast metals and big physical materials," he says. But after being at ground zero, he didn't want to memorialize the catastrophe with exactly the same material that comprised the World Trade Center's remains. Instead, he hand-pressed layers of linen, making 10 blue papier-mch rectangles. It's recognizably a Sept. 11 blue the blue of that day's sky. There appear to be clouds floating on the surface, but a closer look reveals that they're wispy renditions of the World Trade Center two towers seemingly made of vapor, floating up and away.

"I think that they're incredibly powerful," says Russell Lord, a curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where the series was exhibited over the summer. (The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has also acquired one of the works.)

Lord says imagining the World Trade Center as clouds makes something weighty feel weightless and ethereal. "And, of course, the blue paper is incredibly evocative," he says, "because we all remember the blue of the sky that day that incredibly beautiful day against which all of these unbelievable things unfolded."

Last month, Saucedo installed another memorial in New Orleans commemorating the victims of Katrina. He says this time every year there's a flurry of interest in his art.

Located in the artist's former New Orleans neighborhood of Gentilly, Saucedo's Flood Marker commemorates the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans Located in the artist's former New Orleans neighborhood of Gentilly, Saucedo's Flood Marker commemorates the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans

"I hope it's testament to the quality of my work, but I know it's testament to my involvement in these tragedies," he says. "And I'm wondering: So now am I the artist who has, you know, misfortune? Is that my new label? I don't want to be that, but I guess I don't want to not be that. I just want to be an artist who makes work that's relevant in his time."

After Superstorm Sandy, Saucedo used aid materials from the Red Cross to create Red Cross Blanket (Family Portrait as Water). Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans After Superstorm Sandy, Saucedo used aid materials from the Red Cross to create Red Cross Blanket (Family Portrait as Water).

Courtesy of Christopher Saucedo and LeMieux Gallery, New Orleans



After Sandy, the Red Cross went through Saucedo's neighborhood and gave everyone bleach, a bucket, gloves and blankets. Saucedo decided to use the blankets as the backdrop for new works of art: He's using them to embroider tapestries. "If you have lemons, make lemonade," he says. "I had Red Cross blankets; I made some tapestries."

The artist is used to awkward jokes about where he and his family plan to move next so the rest of us will know where to avoid. "We have survived a couple of hurricanes," he says, "so you might want to move with us because we never succumb to the elements."

Indeed, Christopher Saucedo endures. He hopes his art helps people relate to his own experience and, more generally, what it means to lose and how we manage to survive.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/11/439236972/after-sandy-katrina-and-sept-11-this-sculptor-finds-art-in-survival?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

People Love Art Museums -- But Has The Art Itself Become Irrelevant?

Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring stares back at cellphones at the Frick Collection in New York City. "The art museum used to offer objects, works of art, the finest that we have," Lewis says. "And it's gone from offering objects to offering an experience." Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring stares back at cellphones at the Frick Collection in New York City. "The art museum used to offer objects, works of art, the finest that we have," Lewis says. "And it's gone from offering objects to offering an experience."

Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

How much is a visible work of genius worth? In May, a 1955 painting by Pablo Picasso was sold at auction for more than $179 million, the highest price at auction ever. And attendance at major art museums is booming.

"The art world has never been healthier, if you measure the intensity of the human experience of what art has to offer," says Michael Lewis, an art history professor at Williams College. "Glistening new buildings everywhere and the great rise in the subsidiary parts of art museums the cafe and gift shops there's no question that there's a great allure in the museum world today."



There's a but, of course.

In the current issue of Commentary Magazine, Lewis argues that we shouldn't be fooled by the gleaming appearance of the art world today. He tells NPR's Scott Simon that most Americans have in fact become indifferent to art.

"Behind the high attendance figures and the high auction prices, things are going badly," he argues.

Interview Highlights

On one reason things are worse than they look in the world of art

The week I was asked to write the [Commentary] piece was the same week that we introduced to our introductory class the career of the performance artist Christopher Burden. He's the fellow who achieved fame in 1971 by having a friend shoot him through the arm as a performance.

And what struck me, when we showed it, was that my students refused to judge it. They were intrigued by it; I could see from many of their faces that many were horrified. But it's a sign of our times that when they were asked to speak about it, they dealt with questions of legal liability ("Did his friend sign a release to do that?"), but not one of them expressed a human emotion of revulsion, that this is a horrible thing why did he do it?

It occurred to me that this is not good for art. The art world can survive anything from the public hostility, ignorance, even fanatical prudishness but the art world cannot survive an indifferent public.

On what accounts for museums' high attendance numbers



They offer a titillating experience. Lively interaction with the people around you, well-dressed people it's exciting. But what has happened is the art museum used to offer objects, works of art, the finest that we have. And it's gone from offering objects to offering an experience. ...

It occurred to me that this is not good for art. The art world can survive anything from the public hostility, ignorance, even fanatical prudishness but the art world cannot survive an indifferent public.

Professor Michael Lewis

There's the critical moment: 1978. I was in college at the time. It was the King Tut exhibit at the Met: 1.8 million people lined up to see that show. And that got the attention of the administrators not just of the Met but the trustees of every museum in the country.

This hadn't happened before. Museums tended to be dowdy places run by superannuated financiers who every year would write a personal check to cover the deficit. They suddenly realized that, well, "I don't have to cover the deficit if you can produce more of these blockbuster exhibits."

I actually talk about this in the piece. It was almost 20 years to the day, 20 years after The Treasures of Tutankhamun, the Guggenheim did The Art of the Motorcycle. And it was equally thrilling, equally successful, but it tells us that our society can no longer distinguish effectively distinguish between a Harley-Davidson Sportster and a 3,000-year-old golden mask from Egyptian New Kingdom, can't make a qualitative judgment about intrinsic value.

So, the museum seemed to be more and more successful, but there's been a little bit of a cultural bait-and-switch that's going on behind the doors of many.

On the relationship between art museums and their architecture

Really, it was the great breakthrough of [architect] Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. And what that showed, if you picked a remote part of the world and put a world-class museum in it, the world would beat a path to your door. That's the so-called "Bilbao Effect," but you'll notice that doesn't mention art; it mentions tourism, travel and finance.

I feel we're in a strange time where we're building furious Potemkin villages of seeming life, behind which, if you looked with the right eyes, you would see cobwebs and skeletons.

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/15/432356563/people-love-art-museums-but-has-the-art-itself-become-irrelevant?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

Documenting Poverty in Nineteenth Century London, Part One

(Not)Picturing the Slums

The London of the twentieth century imagination is based upon Merchant-Ivory film productions or Masterpiece Theater, or both. Here in these nostalgic realms, upper class life is recreated and evoked through elegant horse drawn carriages trotting past white row houses of the wealthy, jewel tone gowns and elegant tuxedos dancing at never-ending balls, spacious drawing rooms and book lined libraries, all bathed in the sepia tones, implying historical authenticity. What is conspicuously absent in these portrayals of the privileged is the overwhelming blanket of smells, the noxious stench that characterized modern London. Part of the appealing symphony of odors that wafted off the city, so powerful the scents travelled fifty or more miles, was the residue of unchecked industrialization. But there were other elements mixed into the aroma stewhuman and animal waste, raw sewage and garbageclouds of filthy fumes that presided over endless epidemics and parades of diseases, in other words, the fragrance of the poor, the unemployed, the left behinds, the left-outs, the left-overs, the unfortunates, better known as those who dwelled in the slums. While London and New York were similar in the refusal of those in power to remedy the conditions for those who lived in Seven Dials or St. Giles, for example, unlike the wealthy of New York, the rich of London did not live some distance away from the unfortunate immigrants and vagrants. Instead, a well-heeled English family in London could live back to back with back streets and back alleys, smell the smells without actually treading wading through the muck of despair and hopelessness. In fact, if the privileged classes of London had not been threatened by the constant cholera epidemics and revolted by the stench, little would have been done to improve, if nothing else, the sanitary conditions of the city.

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As late as 1890, Punch published a cartoon about the smells, smells, smells and the nasal misery of London. And yet dramatizations of fin-de-sicle London fail to have characters mention the appalling living conditions. True, Sherlock Holmes used fog, which was really smog or reeking pollution, for dramatic effect, in The Forsyte Saga, a major character was fatally injured in a carriage accident caused by the shroud of unhealthy air, and Whitechapel, the killing grounds of Jack the Ripper, is familiar to any television audience. As the marvelous 2014 book by Lee Jackson,Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, recounts,London streets were coated with a mud thick with the dung and urine of the 100,000 horses of the city and blackened with soot, a mud that stuck to the shoes and the edges of long skirts. So terrifying was a walk on the streets of London that a new occupation, a street sweeper, sprang up. A young boy with a broom would appear and offer to sweep the detritus of the crossing, so that the fastidious could get from one sidewalk to the other without floundering in the mire.



William Firth. The Crossing Sweeper (1858)

But when Hollywood ventures into the Rookeries of London, the cinematic imagination machine grinds to a halt and reverts to the cosmetic and the picturesque of My Fair Lady (1964). It is possible that when George Bernard Shaw wrote the predecessor to the film, Pygmalion (1912), he did not realize that it was physically impossible to pass off a flower girl as a lady, because, due to poor nutrition, the poor were some four inches shorter than the rich. Shaws probable ignorance of poverty was typical of his time. Nineteenth century documentary of poverty was erratic, with writers, such as Henry Mayhew (1812-187) and Henry Mayhew (1812-187), doing the better job of describing the conditions of the slums, embellishing the general horrors with human interest stories and opening appealing to the empathy of their readers. Whose heart would not be moved by the plaintive plea of abandoned child, Oliver Twist, Please, sir, may I have some more? As it turns out, the answer wasmost people, who, like New Yorkers favored the explanation of Social Darwinism: survival of the fittest, and it you were poor, you were the author of your fate. Mayhew told other kind of stories, that of the city itself, the city and the River Thames, so filled with offal and dead bodies, it scarcely flowed. It sat and stank. As Mayhew wrote in September of 1849 in A Visit to the Cholera District of Bermondsey, the inhabitants near the river carried its poison in their bodies,

The inhabitants themselves show in their faces the poisonous influence of the mephitic air they breathe. Either their skins are white, like parchment, telling of the impaired digestion, the languid circulation, and the coldness of the skin peculiar to persons suffering from chronic poisoning, or else their cheeks are flushed hectically, and their eyes are glassy, showing the wasting fever and general decline of the bodily functions. The brown, earthlike complexion of some, and their sunk eyes, with the dark areol~ round them, tell you that the sulphuretted hydrogen of the atmosphere in which they live has been absorbed into the blood; while others are remarkable for the watery eye exhibiting the increased secretion of tears so peculiar to those who are exposed to the exhalations of hydrosulphate of ammonia.

It is against this backdrop that the picturing of poverty in the nineteenth century London, its slums and its people, needs to be understood. For an artist, for a photographer, there are obvious problems. First and foremost, for a professional and commercial visualizer, the only question is who will purchase my work? And this business quest for a target audience leads to the next questionwhat do people want to look at? The people of Henry Mayhew? Only Gustave Dor (1832-1883), a French illustrator, who was accused on inventing the sights he chronicled in London: A Pilgrimage (1868), did not flinch from entering into the heart of the maze of poverty and drawing what he found there. Dor and his pilgrimage into the hell of the slums is of particular interest because his book of engravings is contemporaneous with the documentary photography of John Thomson (1837-1921). In answering the question,what do people want to look at? Thomson answer was far more conventional and fit into the existing cultural horizon, not just of social expectations but also of political desires. Indeed, in his preface to his book Street Life in London (1877), Thomson took care to point out that photography produces the unquestionable accuracy of this testimony ..will enable us to present true types of the London Poor and shield us from the accusation of either underrating or exaggerating individual peculiarities of appearance.

The pertinent and inevitable comparisons of Thomsonto Dor, an critical outsider, and to Jacob Riis in New York are both accurate and unfair at the same time. Dors work is perhaps the most compelling and unflinching of his time and Riis, like Dor, plunged directly into Mulberry Bend, the American equivalent of Whitechapel, and photographed the conditions and the people candidly without flinching. But Thomson followed another, already existing precedent, the tradition he had followed in China, that of what the French call petits mtiers or street traders and vendors, considered the colorful types of any big city. This intention sets him apart fromsocial reformers and places him in the preexisting practice of collecting and archiving only certain elements of the populationthe dangerous classes, which needed to be monitored and studied. In the 2007 article John Thomsons London Photographs, Lindsay Smith noted that Thomson was very aware of the earlier work of Henry Mayhew and of his use of photographs which were reproduced as engravings in his earlier books.



Gustave Dore.Houndsditch (1872)

In New York, Jacob Riis was inspired by the examples of Dickens and Mayhew and Dor, but in London, John Thomson, fresh from his adventures in China, chose time-honoredEuropeanprototypes for his study of Street Life in London. In producing this study of trades, which were presumed to coincide with humantypology, Thomson did not work alone. He worked with Adolphe Smith (1846-1925), a journalist sometimes described as radical or socialist, who provided vivid texts to the photographs and, clearly, both men intended this book to be a kind of reportage about the individuals theyfound working in the largest city in the world. Indeed, this book is often referred to in terms of London poverty and even is placed within the context of the slums themselves. But, these individuals are not the poor; they are the hard working, masters of itinerate labor, skilled at specific tasks but adept at changing occupations as the weather or the customers demanded. As authentic as they supposedly were, these individuals were posed and photographed at the command of Thomson, pictured in a distancing and sanitizing manner, which separated the subjects from their customary lodgings and isolating them within the familiar framework of an encyclopedia of types, or the typical and colorful trades of the lower classes. The typological approach conceals the very real social problems that cause such precarious existences. In fact, to contemporary eyes, the very cover of their book signals codes of quaintness and a somewhat patronizing attitude towards the colorful street types who decorate London.



The semiotics that masked real social problems was typical of the genre and can be dated back to the eighteenth century prints of the painter in water colours to Queen Charlotte, William Marshall Craig, who showed the lives of itinerate workers in London. These workers, whose descendants would be photographed by Thomson a century later, would call out their services or name their wares in a chorus of shouts that were famous in London. Cries of London showed a tradition of street theater, characteristic of the city since the seventeenth century.





William Marshall Craig. Hair Brooms.Cries of London.Itinerant Traders of London in their Ordinary Costume with Notices of Remarkable Places given in the Background(1804)

InThe Rise and Fall of Class in Britain (1999),David Cannadine explained that the British class system changed during the early years of the nineteenth century. A series of laws and reforms, especially after the passage of the Reform Act of 1835, served to consolidate the traditional historical power of the privileged aristocrats and the new financial power of the middle class, thus elevating the wealthy strata of society in to one social and political unit that acted in unison. While there were class distinctions between the landed gentry and the factory owners, the sharing of political power had the practical effect of severing all ties with the lower classes. These ties, for the nobility, had been ties of responsibility or of patronage, a sense that the tiled masters of the realm had a moral and ethical responsibility toward their laborers. The connection, for the middle class, was one of origins and proximity, as the working class or the lower class, found economic success. But by the mid nineteenth century the working classes and their less successful corollary the poor were left behind and a huge gulf opened between people who actually lived very closely together. One can only speculate that it was this very closeness in which the working classes worked to benefit the upper (aristocracy and middling ranks) classes that made it necessary for those of the lower orders to become invisible to those who actually depended upon them. It was the work of John Thomson that rendered the trades of the streets of London visible.



John Thomson. London Cabmen, from Street Life in London (1877)

In the second part of this topic, the mode of representation, documenting the poor or London, will be discussed.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/documenting-poverty-nineteenth-century-london/

Today in History for 13th September 2015

Historical Events

Events 1 - 100 of 240

509 BC - The temple of Jupiter on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September.

122 - Building begins on Hadrian's Wall

533 - General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium, near Carthage, North Africa.

604 - Sabinian begins his reign as Pope replacing Pope Gregory the Great

1125 - Duke Lotharius of Supplinburg crowned as German king Lotharius III

1224 - Francis of Assisi is afflicted with stigmata.

1440 - Gilles de Rais is finally taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes.

1503 - Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David.

1504 - Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built.

1515 - -14] Battle at Marignano: France beats Habsburgers & Pope Leo X

1549 - Pope Paul III signs Council of Bologna

1553 - English bishop Hugh Latimer arrested

1556 - Charles V & Maria of Hungary march into Spain

1574 - Turkish fleet recaptures Tunis

Pope Leo X1579 - Breda forms Union of Utrecht

1625 - 16 Rabbis (including Isiah Horowitz) are imprisoned in Jerusalem

1631 - Admiral Tholen conquerors 30+ Spanish frigates

1663 - 1st serious slave conspiracy in colonial America (Virginia)

1743 - Britain, Austria & Savoye-Sardinia sign Treaty of Worms

1751 - Britain signs Austrian & Russian alliance

1759 - British beat French forces at Plains of Abrahams (Quebec)

1775 - Gotthold Lessing's "Die Juden," premieres in Frankfurt-am-Main

1787 - Prussian army moves into Netherlands

1788 - NY City becomes 1st capital of US

1789 - 1st loan to US government (from NYC banks)

1791 - France's King Louis XVI accepts constitution

1800 - Curacao in British hands (until Jan 1803)

1808 - Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Dbeln beat the Russians, making von Dbeln a Swedish war hero.

1847 - American-Mexican war: US Gen Winfield Scott captures Mexico City

1849 - 1st US prize fight fatality (Tom McCoy)

1858 - Hamburg-US ship Austria catches fire & sinks, 471 die

1861 - 1st naval battle of Civil War, Union frigate "Colorado" sinks privateer "Judah" off Pensacola, Fla

1866 - 7th British Golf Open: Willie Park, Sr. shoots a 169 at Prestwick Golf Club

1867 - Gen E R S Canby orders SC courts to impanel blacks jurors

1869 - Jay Gould & James Fisk attempt to control US gold market

1872 - 12th British Golf Open: Tom Morris, Jr. shoots a 166 at Prestwick Golf Club

1881 - Lewis Latimer invents & patents electric lamp with a carbon filament

1882 - Battle at Count el-Kebir: British troops invade Egypt

1883 - Hugh Daily, a one-armed pitcher for Cleveland (Forest City), tosses 1-0 no-hitter against Philadelphia

1890 - Cecil Rhodes' colonies hoist Union Jack in Mashonaland & Salisbury

1898 - 20,000 Paris construction workers go on strike

1898 - Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film

1899 - Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199m - 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya.

1900 - Filipino resistance fighters defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine-American War.

1906 - 1st airplane flight in Europe

1907 - Canadian Interprovincial Rugby Football union (Big Four) forms with Hamilton Tigers, Toronto Argonauts, Ottawa Rough Riders & Montreal Foot Ball

MLB Legend Ty Cobb1909 - Ty Cobb clinches AL HR title with his 9th HR (all inside-the-park)

1910 - Regina Rugby Club forms

1918 - Train accident at Weesp Neth, kills 42

1919 - Guy Bolton & George Middleton's "Adam & Eve," premieres in NYC

1922 - 136.4F (58C), El Aziziyah, Libya in shade (world record)

1923 - With Spain's king Alfonso XIII assist, army coup under de Rivera

1924 - 19th Davis Cup: USA beats Australia in Philadelphia (5-0)

1925 - 1st US University for Blacks, Xavier University, opens in New Orleans

1925 - Bkln Dodger Dazzy Vance no-hits Phillies, 10-1

1927 - Yanks clinch pennant, Ruth hits 2 HRs (52 en route to 60)

1927 - Waite Hoyt became only 20 game winner of 1927 Yankees

1928 - KOH-AM in Reno NV begins radio transmissions

1930 - 50th US Mens Tennis: J H Doeg beats Francis Shields (10-8 1-6 6-4 16-14)

Runner nicknamed the "Flying Finn" Paavo Nurmi1930 - Paavo Nurmi runs world record 20,000m (1:04:38.4)

1930 - Tommy Armour wins PGA golf tournament

1930 - Winnipeg Rugby Football Club 1st game, loses to St John's Rugby, 7-3

1930 - 50th U.S. Men's National Championship: John Doeg beats Frank Shields (10-8, 1-6, 6-4, 16-14)

1931 - Capt G H Stainworth flies world speed record (655 kph)

1931 - Right-radical coup of Dr Pfrimer fails in Austria

1932 - NY Yankees clinch their 7th AL pennant

1933 - Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first New Zealand woman Member of Parliament

1934 - Judge Landis sells World Series broadcast rights to Ford for $100,000

1935 - Rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ends the Great Gorge and International Railway.

1936 - Cleve Bob Feller strikes out then record 17 in a game (vs Phila A's)

Mobster Louis Buchalter1936 - Acting on the orders of Louis Buchalter, Murder Inc. killers gun down Joseph Rosen, a Brooklyn candy store owner

1938 - Alexander Cartwright selects to Baseball's Hall of Fame

1940 - Buckingham Palace damaged by German bombs

1940 - Italian troops under Marshal Graziani attack Egypt

1942 - Battle of Edson's Ridge (2nd Japanese assault) at Guadalcanal

1942 - Cubs shortstop Leonard Merullo makes 4 errors in 1 inning

1942 - German forces attack Stalingrad

1943 - German counter attack at Salerno

1943 - The Municipal Theatre of Corfu is destroyed during an aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe.

1944 - 30th Infantry division of US 1st Army frees Margraten

1944 - Last transport out camp Westerbork to Bergen Belsen

1944 - US 28th Infantry division opens assault on Siegfried line/Westwall

1946 - Boston Red Sox clinch AL pennant

1947 - WPVI TV channel 6 in Philadelphia, PA (ABC) begins broadcasting

1948 - Margaret Chase Smith (R-Me) elected senator, 1st woman to serve in both houses of Congress

1949 - Ladies Pro Golf Association of America formed in NYC

1951 - St Louis Cards beat NY Giants 6-4 (rescheduled from 9/12) then at night lose to Boston Braves 2-0

1952 - Adolfo Ruiz Cortinez elected president of Mexico

1953 - Pitcher Bob Trice is 1st black to play on Phila A's

1953 - 4th Formula One WDC: Alberto Ascari wins by 6.5 points

1954 - Reds Ted Kluszewski scores a run in record 17 consecutive games

1954 - WPBN TV channel 7 in Traverse City, MI (NBC) begins broadcasting

1956 - Dike around Dutch polder Eastern Flevoland closes

1956 - Stravinsky's "Canticum Sacrum," premieres in Venice

1956 - IBM introduces the first computer disk storage unit, the RAMAC 305.

1958 - Braves Warren Spahn is 1st lefty to win 20 or more games 9 times

1958 - Queen Juliana christens passenger ship Rotterdam

1959 - 73rd US Womens Tennis: Maria Fraser beats Christine Truman (61 64)

1959 - 79th US Mens Tennis: Neale Fraser beats Alejandro Olmedo (63 57 62 64)

1959 - Marilynn Smith wins LPGA Memphis Golf Open

Famous Birthdays

Birthdays 1 - 100 of 215

204

1087 - John II Komnenos, Byzantine Emperor (d. 1143)

1157 - Alexander Neckum/de Sancto Albano, English theologist/encyclopedist

1475 - Cesare Borgia, Italian aristocrat (d. 1507)

1502 - John Leland, English antiquarian (d. 1552)

1520 - William Cecil 1st baron Burghley, English premier

1551 - Pandolfo Zallamella, composer

1594 - Francesco Manelli, composer

1604 - William Brereton, English soldier and politician (d. 1661)

Novelist Daniel Defoe (1660)1660 - Daniel Defoe, English novelist (Robinson Crusoe), born in London, England

1673 - Hercule Brehy, composer

1676 - lisabeth Charlotte of Orlans, Duchess of Lorraine (d. 1741)

1682 - Theodor Christleib Reinhold, composer

1688 - Luca Antonio Praedieri, composer

1694 - Yeongjo of Joseon, ruler of Korea (d. 1776)

1739 - Giuseppe Sigismondo, composer

1751 - Henry Kobell, Dutch painter/cartoonist

1755 - Oliver Evans, pioneered high-pressure steam engine

1766 - Samuel Wilson, possible namesake of Uncle Sam (d. 1854)

1775 - Laura Secord, Canadian war heroine (d. 1868)

1802 - Arnold Ruge, German philosopher and writer (d. 1880)

1806 - Joseph Lewis Hogg, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), die in 1862

Canadian War Heroine Laura Secord (1775)1806 - Moritz Ganz, composer

1813 - John Sedgwick, Major General (Union volunteers), (d. 1864)

1814 - Nicolas Beets, [Hildebrand], Dutch writer (Camera Obscura=

1817 - John McAuley Palmer, US Union msj-gen/(Gov-Ill, 1868-72)

1818 - Olivier Gloux, [Aimard], Fren world explorer/writer (Grande Flibuste)

1819 - Clara Schumann, German pianist and composer (d. 1896)

1830 - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian writer (d. 1916)

1831 - Andrew Noble, Greenock, Scottish Physicist who was a founder of the science of ballistics

1836 - John McCausland, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), (d. 1927)

1841 - Johannes de Koo, Dutch journalist/stage writer

1842 - Odon Peter Jozsef de Mihalovich, composer

1842 - John H. Bankhead, U.S. Senator (d. 1920)

1846 - Richard Kiepert, German cartographer (Africa)

1847 - Charles Dupee Blake, composer

1851 - Walter Reed, US Army Surgeon, proved mosquitoes transmit yellow fever

Chocolate Tycoon Milton S. Hershey (1857)1857 - Milton S. Hershey, Derry Township, Pennsylvania, American chocolate tycoon (The Hershey Chocolate Company) and philanthropist, (d. 1945)

1857 - Micha Drzymaa, Polish peasant rebel (d. 1937)

1858 - Catherinus Elling, composer

1860 - John J. Pershing (Blackjack), Laclede, Missouri, US commander (WW I), (d. 1948)

1862 - Dirk Bos, Dutch liberal 2nd Member of parliament

1863 - Arthur Henderson, Britain, socialist/disarmament worker (Nobel 1934)

1866 - Adolf Meyer, US, psychiatrist/neurologist (pioneered mental hygiene)

1871 - Alma Kruger, actress (Made For Each Other), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

1874 - Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian composer (2nd Quartet) and painter associated with the expressionist movement, born in Vienna, Austria (d. 1951)

1874 - Henry Fountain Ashurst, American politician (d. 1962)

Composer and Painter Arnold Schoenberg (1874)1876 - Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio, author/publisher (Winesburg)

1877 - Wilhelm Filchner, German explorer (d. 1957)

1877 - Stanley Lord, captain of the SS Californian the night of the Titanic disaster (d. 1962)

1882 - Henri Potiron, composer

1882 - Ramn Grau, Cuban president (d. 1969)

1885 - Wilhelm Blaschke, Austrian geometer (d. 1962)

1886 - Alain LeRoy Locke, African American writer and philosopher Father of the Harlem Renaissance

1887 - Lavoslav Ruzicka, Croatian chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1976)

1893 - Larry Shields, American musician (d. 1953)

1894 - Anton Roosjen, Dutch politician/NCRV-chairman

1894 - John B[oynton] Priestly, author (Good Companions)/wed Jessica Hawkes

1894 - Julian Tuwim, Polish poet (d. 1953)

1895 - Ruth McDevitt, Coldwater Mich, actress (Jo-All in the Family)

1896 - Morris Kirksey, US, 4 X 100m (Olympic-gold-1920)

1897 - Gaspar Cassado Moreu, composer

1899 - Anton Constandse, Dutch anarchist/writer

1899 - Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader of the Iron Guard (d. 1938)

1901 - Philip Dorn, Scheveningen Netherlands, actor (I Remember Mama)

1902 - Hermine Heijermans, Dutch actress/author

1902 - Leland Hayward, US producer (Spirit of St Louis)

1903 - Claudette Colbert [Lily Chauchoin], French-born American actress (Texas Lady, It Happened One Night), born in Paris (d. 1996)

1904 - Gladys George, Patten Maine, actress (Roaring Twenties)

1907 - Victor Reinganum, artist

1908 - Ray Burns Green, composer

1909 - Herbert Berghof, actor (Belarus File), born in Vienna, Austria

1911 - Bill Monroe, Rosine Ky, country singer (Blue Moon of Kentucky)

1912 - Reta Shaw, South Paris Maine, actress (Ghost & Mrs Muir)

1913 - Roy Engle, Mo, actor (Police Chief-My Favorite Martian)

1914 - Leonard Geoffrey Feather, jazz critic/musician

1915 - Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes, fighter Pilot

Author Roald Dahl (1916)1916 - Roald Dahl, Llandaff, Cardiff, author (Over to You, Taste, 2 Fables), (d. 1990).

1916 - Dick Haymes, Argentine vocalist (d. 1980)

1917 - Jon Thorarinsson, composer

1917 - Robert Eugene Ward, composer (Pantaloon), born in Cleveland, Ohio

1918 - Ray Charles, orchestra leader (Perry Como), born in Chicago, Illinois

1919 - Mary Midgley, American philosopher

1920 - Carole Mathews, Montgomery Ill, actress (Wilma-Californians)

1922 - Yma Sumac, [Chavarri], Ichocan Peru, 5 octave soprano (Omar Khayyam)

1922 - Charles Brown, American singer and pianist (d. 1999)

1923 - Reninca, [Rene Lauwers], Flemish author (Seed in the Wind)

1923 - Edouard Boubat, French photographer (d. 1999)

1924 - Maurice Jarre, Lyons France, composer (Doctor Zhivago-Acad Award 1966)

1924 - Norman Alden, Fort Worth Tx, actor (Pilaski-Hennesey, Al-Fay), (d. 2012)

1924 - Scott Brady, American actor (China Syndrome, Gremlins, Johnny Guitar), born in Brooklyn, New York

1924 - Harold Blair, Australian tenor, Aboriginal activist (d. 1976)

1925 - Gabriel Charpentier, composer

1925 - Mel Torm, American singer (d. 1999)

1926 - Emile Francis, NHL player/coach/GM (Rangers, Blues, Whalers)

1928 - Ernest L Boyer, educator/chancellor (NY's State Universities-SUNY)

1929 - Nicolai Ghiaurov, Bulgarian opera singer (d. 2004)

1930 - James McLane, US, 1500m freestyle swimmer (Olympic-gold-1948)

1930 - Robert Gavron, Baron Gavron, English publisher/multi-millionaire (St Ives)

1931 - Barbara Bain, Chic, actress (Cinnamon-Mission Impossible, Space 1999)

1931 - Marjorie Jackson, Australia, sprinter (Olympic-gold-1952) [or Feb 13]

Famous Weddings

Weddings 1 - 7 of 7

Microbiologist Robert Koch (1893)1893 - Microbiologist Robert Koch (49) weds actress Hedwig Freiberg (20)

1963 - Singer Barbra Striesand & actor Elliot Gould marry

1975 - Novelist Danielle Steel (28) weds Danny Zugelder in the prison canteen

1998 - "Spice Girls" pop singer Melanie Brown (23) weds Jimmy Gulzar in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire

2000 - Wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (35) weds WWE Diva Debra Marshall (40) at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas

2008 - "Curb Your Enthusiasm" comedian actress Susie Essman (53) weds real-estate broker Jim Harder (51) at the Friars Club in Manhattan

2014 - Paper Crown fashion designer Lauren Conrad (28) weds musician William Tell (34) in California

Famous Divorces

Divorces 1 - 1 of 1

Composer & Singer Quincy Jones Jr (1974)1974 - Singer-composer Quincy Jones Jr (28) divorces actress Ulla Andersson (41) after 5 years of marriage

Famous Deaths

Deaths 1 - 85 of 85

81 - Titus Flavius Vespasianus, emperor of Rome (69-81), dies of a fever at about 42

867 - Nicholas I, the Great, Italian Pope (858-67), dies

1321 - Dante Alighieri, author (Divine Comedy), dies

1506 - Andrea Mantegna, Italian painter

1557 - John Cheke, English classical scholar and statesman (b. 1514)

1592 - Michel de Montaigne, French writer (b. 1533)

1596 - Pieter D Keyzer/Keyser, astronomer/navigator (Java)

1598 - Philip II, King of Spain (1556-98), dies at 71

1632 - Leopold V, regent of the Tyrol (b. 1586)

1650 - Ferdinand, of Bayern, prince-bishop of Luik/archbishop, dies at 72

King of Spain Philip II (1598)1657 - Jacob van Campen, painter/architect (Amsterdam Townhall), dies at 62

1759 - James Wolfe, British general (Plains of Abraham), dies in battle at 32

1766 - Benjamin Heath, English classical scholar (b. 1704)

1803 - John Barry, 1st American commodore, dies

1806 - Charles James Fox, English politician (b. 1749)

1808 - Saverio Bettinelli, Italian writer (b. 1718)

1813 - Hezqeyas of Ethiopia, deposed Emperor of Ethiopia

1847 - Nicolas Oudinot, French marshal (b. 1767)

1859 - Cornelis J van Axes, lawyer, dies at 71

1872 - Ludwig A Feuerbach, German philosopher (Man what he eats), dies at 68

1881 - Ambrose Everett Burnside, US Union general, dies at 57

1885 - Friedrich Kiel, Austrian composer (b. 1821)

1894 - Emmanuel Chabrier, French composer (b. 1841)

1904 - Raden Ayu Kartini, Indonesian national heroine (b. 1879)

British Army Officer James Wolfe (1759)1905 - Ren Goblet, French politician (b. 1828)

1906 - Georg Jacobi, composer, dies at 66

1912 - Maresuke Nogi, Japanese general (b. 1849)

1913 - Alfred Gaul, composer, dies at 76

1915 - Andrew L. Harris, American Civil War hero and Governor of Ohio (b. 1835)

1921 - Italo Svevo, writer, dies at 59

1921 - Ludwig-Alexander von Battenberg [Mountbatten], adm (WW I), dies at 67

1924 - Pekka Hannikainen, composer, dies at 69

1928 - Italo Svevo, [Ettore Schmitz], Italian writer (Una Vita), dies at 66

1932 - Julius Rontgen, composer, dies at 77

1932 - Paul Gorguloff, murderer of French pres Doumer, beheaded

1938 - Samuel Alexander, Engl philosopher (Space, time & deity), dies at 79

1946 - Eugene Lanceray, Russian painter (b. 1875)

1948 - Paul Wegener, German actor/director (Golem, Svengali), dies at 73

Zoophysiologist and Nobel Laureate August Krogh (1949)1949 - August Krogh, Danish zoophysiologist, dies at 75

1950 - Sara Allgood, Irish actress (Jane Eyre, Spiral Staircase), dies at 56

1953 - Lewis Stone, actor (Just This Once, Key to the City), dies at 73

1959 - Gilbert Adrian, costume designer, dies of heart attack at 56

1960 - Leo Weiner, Hungarian composer (Toldi), dies at 75

1965 - Jean B. Fletcher, American architect (b. 1915)

1967 - Russell L Rogers, USAF/astronaut (X-20), dies in explosion at 38

1969 - Charles Foulkes, Canada gen/honorary citizen of Wageningen, dies at 66

1971 - Lin Piao, Chinese party leader, dies in air crash at 63 [or Sept 13]

1971 - Nelly A "Nell" Knoop, Dutch actress (Silent Waters), dies at 72

1973 - Betty Field, actress (Kings Row), dies of cerebral hemorrhage at 60

1976 - Albert Tessier, French Canadian priest, historian and film maker (b. 1895)

1976 - Armand Mondou, French Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1905)

1977 - Arthur Fagg, cricketer (5 Tests for England 1936-39/umpire), dies

1977 - Leopold Stokowski, symphonic conductors, dies in England, at 95

1981 - William Loeb, publisher of Manchester Union Leader, NH, dies at 75

1982 - Philip Ober, actor (Gen Stone-I Dream of Jeannie), dies at 80

1985 - Dane Rudhyar, composer, dies at 90

1987 - Mervyn Leroy, actor/screenwriter/director (Quo Vadis), dies at 86

1989 - Yamada Koun, Zen teacher Sanbo Kyodan line, dies at 82

1991 - Ferry Barendse, trumpeter/composer/arranger (Ramblers), dies

1991 - Joe Pasternak, producer (Spinout, Big City), dies of Parkinson's at 73

1991 - Metin Oktay, Turkish football player (b. 1936)

1992 - Lou Jacobs, US clown (1966 US postage stamp), dies at 89

1994 - John William Stevens, jazz drummer, dies at 54

1994 - Kaleria Fadicheva, ballerina, dies at 58

1994 - Pieter Zaanen, architect (Musical Trade scholarship, Amsterdam), dies

1995 - Francesco Messina, sculptor, dies at 94

1995 - Harold Sheperdson, soccer Trainer, dies at 76

1995 - Walter Goetz, illustrator cartoonist/painter, dies at 83

1996 - Anthony Nicholas Maria Wahl, historian, dies at 68

1996 - Cesar Mendoza, general of Military junta of Chile (1973-85), dies

1996 - Jane Baxter, actress (We Live Again, Blossom Time), dies at 87

1996 - Silas Roy Crain, singer/songwriter, dies at 85

Rap Musician and Actor Tupac Shakur (1996)1996 - Tupac Shakur, rap star/actor (Juice, Bullet), dies of internal bleeding after a drive by shotting at 25

1998 - Harry Lumley, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1926)

1998 - George Wallace, American politician (b. 1919)

1999 - Benjamin Bloom, American educational theorist (b. 1913)

2001 - Dorothy McGuire, American actress, dies of cardiac arrest following a short illness at 85

2003 - Frank O'Bannon, Governor of Indiana (b. 1930)

2004 - Luis E. Miramontes, Mexican chemist, co-inventor of the combined oral contraceptive pill (b. 1925)

2005 - Toni Fritsch, Austrian football and American football player (b. 1945)

2005 - Julio Csar Turbay Ayala, Colombian politician (b. 1916)

2006 - Ann Richards, 46th Governor of Texas (b. 1933)

2007 - Whakahuihui Vercoe, New Zealand clergyman (b. 1928)

2011 - DJ Mehdi, French hip hop and electro producer (b. 1977)

2011 - Walter Bonatti, Italian climber (b. 1930)



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Photographing the Other: Edward Curtis, Part One

Photography as Re-Enactment

Part One

It is difficult to know what to do with Edward Curtis (1868-1952)was he a photographer, an anthropologist, an ethnographer, a film director, a historian? Did he combine all of these disciplines or did Curtis participate in none of these activities? Perhaps Curtis himself provided the best clue when he said, While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically, and indeed, when one views his sepia-toned images of Native Americans and the romanticized mood that has been created for the subjects, the word artist is the designation that comes to mind. Edward Curtis undertook a task that was ultimately a thankless one, that of attempting to capture a civilization deliberately extinguished before its heirs could perish with the last lingering memories of what it had once meant to be a native of America, living free. It is perhaps no coincidence that when Curtis began his epic journeys through the surviving settlements of Native Americans in 1890, was the same year that an official United States census revealed that the frontier or a lightly populated region no longer existed in the West. The population was now two persons or more per square mile. A young historian, Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932), was so impressed with that apparently arcane fact that in 1893 he presented a paper titledThe Significance of the Frontier in American History.

Turner defined the term as, ..the frontier is the outer edge of the wavethe meeting point between savagery and civilization.. and noted that ..it lies at the hither edge of free land. This famous essay primarily focused on how the idea of a frontier or a place where one could go West, from the Allegheny mountains to the plains of the Midwest to the coastal edges of Washington tosettle territory assumed to be open and there for the taking. What is remarkable about this essay is that it studies the impact of the concept of the West or the frontier as a place beyond, needing to be civilized and rendered productive, upon the American imagination and character. For Turner, American is always white, and, while one would not expect in such a short essay, that the would mention the haven that former slaves found west of the Mississippi, the absence of the original Americans, the natives is very telling. For Turner, the mis-named Indians have vanished. In not mentioning the impact of the frontier and its ending upon the minds of Native Americans, the historian may have been sticking closely to his stated topic or he may have, along with many Americans, assumed that after decades of physical and cultural genocide, that the paradox of inhabitants living on free land had been solved. It would be decades before the American conscience would be awakened in a post Civil Rights Era and authors such as Dee Brown (1908-2002) and his seminal book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), would write a more complete history of measures were taken to sweep the prairies clear for the settlers. In the meantime, there was Edward Curtis.

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When Curtis began his quest to collect the remnants of cultural memories before time spirited them away, most western Native Americansthose who had survived or had not fled to Canadahad been rounded up and placed securely inside reservations, or lands placed in reserve for their use alone. Ostensibly, these lands were the homelands of the tribe, but what was ceded to the Native Americans were the worst lands, those unwanted by the whites, left behind by the settlers, who took over all desirable territory. By the 1890s, these remaining peoples were not only placed out of sight and out of mind but also were expected to vanish. Although the notion of a vanishing American had, to white people, a certain romantic appeal combined with a very pragmatic assumption of inevitability, the actual physical killing was mostly over. By the end of the century, vanishing involved deliberate erasure of the many stories and songs and dances of a people deemed insufficiently modern. Given that nothing of their myths or histories were worthy of recording, the children would be removed from the parents, played in boarding schools, where their hair was cut, English was learned, and the old ways were replaced with practical knowledge suited to the white world. Curtis made it his life work to recover the rich trove of recollection and experience from the Native Americans held in western reservations before it was too late and they were assimilated (vanished) into the mainstream white society.



Edward Curtis. Canyon de Chelly(1904)

As Native American historian, George Horse Capture, noted,

Not content to deal only with the present population, and their arts and industries, he recognized that the present is a result of the past, and the past dimension must be included, as well. Guided by this concept, Curtis made 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. In addition he took over 40,000 images from over 80 tribes, recorded tribal mythologies and history, and described tribal population, traditional foods, dwellings, clothing, games, ceremonies, burial customs, biographical sketches and other primary source information: all from a living as well as past tradition. Extending the same principle to the photographs, he presented his subjects in a traditional way whenever possible and even supplied a bit of the proper clothing when his subjects had none. Reenactments of battles, moving camp, ceremonies and other past activities were also photographed. These efforts provided extended pleasure to the elders and preserve a rare view of the earlier ways of the people.

For this laudable project, Curtis was supported by President Theodore Roosevelt and funded by financier J.P. Morgan, but the time he spent collecting his materials, both visual and verbal, was also the decades when the American mind mentally shelved the remaining tribes and their lore in the place of history. Most Americanswerecontent with Hollywood Indians, galloping about on celluloid. From 1907 to 1930 Undaunted, Curtis published twenty volumes on The North American Indians, which explained their customs and their cultures and their languages, illustrated by 75 hand-pressed photogravures and 300 pages of text. Each volume was accompanied by a portfolio of 36 photogravures. But thirty years is a long time, so long that Morgan died before Curtis had completed his work, and so long that the Great Depression moved over the nation like a black cloud, blotting out all but a passing interest in Native American culture. In the end, Curtis broke, ill, threatened by arrest from an angry ex-wife, mentally in great distress, turned the copyright for him images over to the Morgan family. In 1930, shortly after the last of the twenty volumes was published, the Morgan Company sold nineteen complete sets of the twenty-volume project, including copper plates and prints,to Charles Lauriat Books of Boston, for $1,000 in exchange for royalties. While Curtis spend the nexttwo decades searching for gold, Lauriat attempted to sell his unwhiedly assets, but to little avail. The collection languished, was forgotten, until it was rediscovered in 1970.



Edward Curtis. The Vanishing Race, back and front (1904)

Despite such a sad ending to an endeavor begun with such high ideals, in his own time, Curtis was respected and well regarded. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt wrote the forward for the entire project:

In Mr. Curtis we have both an artist and a trained observer, whose pictures are pictures, not merely photographs; whose work has far more than mere accuracy, because it is truthful. All serious students are to be congratulated because he is putting his work in permanent form; for our generation offers the last chance for doing what Mr. Curtis has done. The Indian as he has hitherto been is on the point of passing away. His life has been lived under conditions thru which our own race past so many ages ago that not a vestige of their memory remains. It would be a veritable calamity if a vivid and truthful record of these conditions were not kept. No one man alone could preserve such a record in complete form. Others have worked in the past, and are working in the present, to preserve parts of the record; but Mr. Curtis, because of the singular combination of qualities with which he has been blest, and because of his extraordinary success in making and using his opportunities, has been able to do what no other man ever has done; what, as far as we can see, no other man could do. He is an artist who works out of doors and not in the closet. He is a close observer, whose qualities of mind and body fit him to make his observations out in the field, surrounded by the wild life be commemorates. He has lived on intimate terms with many different tribes of the mountains and the plains. He knows them as they hunt, as they travel, as they go about their various avocations on the March and in the camp. He knows their medicine men and sorcerers, their chiefs and warriors, their young men and maidens. He has not only seen their vigorous outward existence, but has caught glimpses, such as few white men ever catch, into that strange spiritual and mental life of theirs; from whose innermost recesses all white men are forever barred. Mr. Curtis in publishing this book is rendering a real and great service; a service not only to our own people, but to the world of scholarship everywhere.

However history, post 1970s, has not been kind to the photographer and very real questions arise in the gulf between the admittedly beautiful photographs and their mode of ethnocentric production. Curtis was unfortunate in his timing in so many ways. A generation later than the photographers who were among the first to photograph the bewildered Native Americans in the western military forts, such as Timothy OSullivan, Curtis did not have access to the actual experience of native life on the plains, in the southwest or in the northwest. Working twenty years after the opening of the frontier, Curtis was forced into being an anthropologist at a time when this new profession was still being established through trial and error. Contemporary anthropology is painfully aware that the mere presence of an observer alters the situation, but in the time of Curtis his active intervention into reservation life was totally acceptable. In addition, Curtis was working within a documentary tradition that was still quite unsophisticated. In his time, documentation was considered truth, because the use of a camera created the illusion of fact as if the image itself corresponded to reality. In fact, documentation hasalways been framed from a particular point of view in order to make a certainpoint. Only selectedtruths or evidence is recorded or put forward, not out of mal fois but due to the creator looking in one direction, rather than another. But in the time of Curtis, all that was required was the effect of the real. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, Curtis was not trained and was not qualified to do the serious study he intended to do. Perhaps the fault was not his own, for he worked with a famous anthropologist and an authority on the Cherokees, George Bird Grinnell, who could have and should have advised the photographer on the proper procedures when studying an unfamiliar culture.



In short, the well-meaning and laudable enterprise of Edward Curtis was problematic from the very start in ways that were unknown to himself. In the process of recording the life of the remaining Native Americans, Curtis, in a flagrant disregard for accuracy, combined cultural artifacts from different tribes, turned a blind eye to the actual social conditions and economic desertion of his subjects, who in some instances, were near starvation, in favor of recreating an idealized past. When his work was rediscovered and revisited, the new historical scholarship, informed by a sharpawareness of embedded racism, could see all too starkly, the rather chilling scenario of a man, privileged by his color, exploiting a subordinated and oppressed people, forcing them to remain in a mythic past, a past that few of them had actually participated in. Acting as a powerful director, Curtis ordered up a revision of Native American life that suspiciously resembled the Western, the movie. Regardless of the hundreds of recordings of languages soon to be extinct, the many interviews which collected historical accounts that would have otherwise never been acquired, the work of Curtis was tainted by the superimposition of an imperialperspective upon a conquered people. The result of the photographers life work was a romanticized costume drama that reflected a white colonial and patronizing perspective on a doomed way of life, lovely but unable to cope with the present.



Edward Curtis.An Oasis in the Bad Lands (1905)

One would expect, therefore, for the project of Edward Curtis, from his many albums, attempts at filmmaking, thousands of photographs and so on, to be put under a scrutiny with a mindset that simply did not exist in his time. Every historian works under the same burden as that of an anthropologist, that intervention inevitably changes the field of scrutiny. Even the founder of modern history, Leopold von Ranke, stated, History differs from all other scholarly activities by being also an art. Ranke, who often used literary devices to relate historical events, stated in his preface toHistories of the Latin and Teutonic Nations,To history has been assigned the task of judging thepast, of insuring he world of today for the benefit of future years.He added thatStrict description of the fact, although it might limit us and prove to be unpleasant, is without doubt the supreme law.Due to the precedents set by Ranks, the idea of an archive as being the appropriate site of research for the historian became the foundation of historical study. But in the early eighteenth century, the idea of the archive itself was not critiqued, but, given that Curtis took on multiple roles, especially as that of a collector of objects and artifacts that constituted an archive, one must consider his magnum opus an intentional archive. But is his work art masquerading as an archive? Is his historical research a recreation of something that had never been or was Curtis, in fact, gathering up the last of a dying culture? Do his intentions matter or does the contemporary rereading of him images take precedent? In other words, with the work of Edward Curtis we are faced with the historians dilemma: does one judge history in terms of todays thinking?

If one follows the thinking of Ranke, there is one element that is hard to debate, and that is his admonishment to strictly adhere to facts. Here is where Curtis can perhaps be faulted. The facts of the actuals conditions of Native American life during the fin-de-sicle period, had he chosen to show the real situation, would have been nothing short of an indictment of a systematic crushing of a culture judged to be too inferior to survive. But, one must ask, who wanted to see such images? The audience of socially conscious critiques of governmental policies was small and the number of potential viewers of the vanishing race was large. In undertaking what was essentially a commercial enterprise, Edward Curtis was posthumously caught between two uneasy placesan artist attempting to be a documentarian and an amateur anthropologist, creating flawed evidence. The second part of this post on Curtis will discuss the photographer and his many contemporary critics.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

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Artist Kehinde Wiley Mixes Modern Figures With Old European Art Traditions

NPR's Audie Cornish speaks with Wiley about his latest exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, "A New Republic." This story originally aired on May 22, 2015, on All Things Considered.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And the first time I saw a Kehinde Wiley painting was out of the corner of my eye. I saw this blood red and gold pattern. It looked like satin wallpaper. And then I saw a Timberland boot, and I soon found myself in front of a massive portrait of a young black man. He wore a creamy white velour tracksuit but held a sword like a king from an old European oil painting. This is what Kehinde Wiley does. He takes contemporary people - oftentimes it's young black men, young black women - and put them in a pose you'd expect to see in the Louvre or the Met.

Now, this month, his retrospective called A New Republic opens in Fort Worth, Texas - a good reason to go back to a conversation I had with him this spring. Like his paintings, Wiley himself is eye-catching. The day I met him, he was gearing up for an evening cocktail party celebrating the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. He was wearing a navy blue suit with corn-silk-yellow paisley print.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

KEHINDE WILEY: A little piece of Senegal. I spent a lot of time in Senegal. In fact, I have a studio there.

CORNISH: Wiley is 38. He grew up in LA. His mom started him with painting lessons when he was 11. Now he's getting the retrospective treatment after more than a decade of work. Fifty-eight pieces are on display. I wanted him to tell me about that regal-looking man in the Timberland boots, the first painting of his I ever saw, which is one of the first paintings in the exhibit.

WILEY: The original painting, actually, is an old Dutch painting that depicts a man. He has his hand on his hip. His fist is turned outward, and he has a sword in the other hand. And it's a very regal look. It's very self-possessed. And in this particular painting that I chose to create, all of that pose is recreated with the exception that there is a young man who I met in the streets of Brooklyn back in 2006 who chose that painting as his pose. And here, he's wearing a Velour Sean John suit, a pair of timberlands, but that same sense of regal hauteur is there.

CORNISH: I noticed that you leave in the brands.

WILEY: Yeah.

CORNISH: I see tags on sneakers. I see Adidas and labels. Why leave that in?

WILEY: Why take it out, would be the real question. The brands that people wear are serious business. I remember growing up as a kid in South Central Los Angeles back in the 1980s when people were being killed for Jordan sneakers. Branding says a lot about luxury and about exclusion and about the choices that manufacturers make.

But I think what the society does with it after it's produced is something else, and the African-American community has always been expert at taking things and repurposing them towards their own ends. This code switching that exists between luxury and urban is something that was invented in the streets of America, not on 6th Avenue.



CORNISH: I want to turn around to this painting behind us called the "Mugshot Study" because it doesn't look like anything else in the exhibit, and talk about how this painting came to be.

WILEY: Well, what this painting is is a portrait of a young black man possibly between the ages of 18 and 26 - I can't really say. He has these beaded necklaces around his neck - nothing more than a wife beater. It's a painting that's cropped, and, in fact, the way that I found this image was, I was walking down the street in Harlem, and I found this crumpled piece of paper. And on it was a mug shot. Presumably, it fell out of a police car. And it got me thinking about portraiture. It got me thinking about the choices that one has to make in order to be in a portrait of this type.

CORNISH: It's also the antithesis of the work people may recognize, right? Like, if anything, your work, for a lot of people, has been a rebuke of the mug shot when it comes to black men, right?

WILEY: It's a rebuke of the mug shot. It's an ability to say that I will be seen the way that I choose to be seen. All of the models are going through art history books and deciding, out of all the great portraits in the past, which ones do they feel most comfortable with, which ones resonate with them. And so I go through the studios with individuals who go through art history books and choose how they want to perform themselves.

CORNISH: Why use what people might consider old European art traditions? I think one thing, when it comes to African-American art forms, one of the defining features has been to create something wholly new - right? - to, like - to actually divorce yourself, in a way, from the old traditions - right? - whether it be jazz or whatever.

WILEY: Right. In fact, that's the rallying call of the avant-garde - to create something wholly new. The simple truth is that, rhetorically, we cannot do that.

CORNISH: You've been asked this question a lot, right? And it must be frustrating (laughter) to have people...

WILEY: No.

CORNISH: Really?

WILEY: Not at all.

CORNISH: OK.

WILEY: No, no. You're getting to the heart of my love affair with art. My love affair with painting is bittersweet. I love the history of art. You asked me about that moment when I first looked at this stuff and when I first fell in love with it. It was only later that I understood that a lot of destruction and domination had to occur in order for all of this grand reality to exist.

So what happens next? What happens is the artist grows up and tries to fashion a world that's imperfect. He tries to say yes to parts that he loves and to say yes to the parts that he wants to see in the world, such as black and brown bodies like my own in the same vocabulary as that tradition that I had learned so many years before. It's an uncomfortable fit, but I don't think that it's something that I'm shying away from it all. In fact, I think what we're arriving at is the meat of my project, which is that discomfort is where the work shines best. These inconvenient bedfellows that you're seeing all over this museum are my life's work.

CORNISH: When we talked to museum visitors yesterday, one of them actually said that they felt as though the work resonated with them in particular because of the events from the last year, the conversation about police brutality and the deaths of young black men, in many cases at the hands of police.

WILEY: Right.

CORNISH: And I realize maybe that, also, is something I was feeling in my gut, that I was seeing.

WILEY: No, you're not making that up. You're not seeing something that's not there. This entire body of work comes out of a sense of vulnerability, and I love that you've arrived at that point because what I wanted to do was to look at the powerlessness that I felt as - and continue to feel at times - as a black man in the American streets. I know what it feels like to walk through the streets knowing what it is to be in this body and how certain people respond to that body, this dissonance between the world that you know and then what you mean as a symbol in public, that strange, uncanny feeling of having to adjust for...

CORNISH: What people think of you, yeah.

WILEY: This kind of double consciousness.

CORNISH: Well, Kehinde Wiley, thank you so much for walking us through the show. This was really lovely. And best of luck with the next 14 years (laughter).

WILEY: Thank you. It was my pleasure.

CORNISH: Artist Kehinde Wiley. I spoke with him back in May right before his mid-career retrospective closed at the Brooklyn Museum. It's now on the road and opens September 20 in Texas at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

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Muslim Feminists Rewrite Boundaries On The Street And At Home

"Words are a way to find each other," says Muslim writer Mona Eltahawy. Her book, Headscarves and Hymens, is a stinging condemnation of the treatment of women in Islamic countries. Dirk Eusterbrock hide caption

itoggle caption Dirk Eusterbrock "Words are a way to find each other," says Muslim writer Mona Eltahawy. Her book, Headscarves and Hymens, is a stinging condemnation of the treatment of women in Islamic countries.

Dirk Eusterbrock

When writer Mona Eltahawy was 15 her family moved to Saudi Arabia from the UK. It was a shock. Suddenly her highly educated mother could not drive or go anywhere unless accompanied by a man. Boys and girls lived segregated lives and it seemed to Eltahawy that women were considered the walking embodiment of sin. She found her refuge in reading and eventually discovered the writing of Muslim feminists.

"I always say now that to be a female in Saudi Arabia, a girl or a woman, you basically have two options: to lose your mind or become a feminist," she says. "And at first I did lose my mind because I fell into a deep depression. But then I was saved by feminism so it worked out I guess. It made me the woman I am."

Now a journalist and a writer, Eltahawy believes this is an exciting time to be a Muslim woman.

"Because I am able to challenge things and ideas and people that when I was that 19-year-old discovering the words of feminism were unheard of," she explains. "I could never imagine I could challenge things in this way, that almost 30 years later I am able to address so many people with my own vision of what I think a Muslim is or a feminist is or ways that we can challenge that toxic mix of religion and culture."



Her new book Headscarves and Hymens is a collection of essays. In one of them Eltahawy writes about the numerous sexual assaults against women who took part in the Arab Spring protests in Cairo. Eltahawy herself was attacked during demonstrations in November of 2011. After the protests she made a BBC radio documentary, The Women of the Arab Spring. She wanted to be sure their stories were told.

Eltahawy advocates for a social and sexual revolution to overturn what she calls a trifecta of oppression against Muslim women: by the state, on the streets and at home.

"When you tell your story you not only overcome fear, silence and shame, but you also pave the way you break down the barriers for those who come after you, who can't speak," she says.

Eltahawy uses every means she can to share her ideas she loves social media and tweets constantly. (You can follow her @monaeltahawy).

"The power of words not only gives you the ammunition and the artillery with which to fight back against whatever forces you feel are silencing you, but they connect you and they help you find other people who are engaged in similar struggles so you feel these kind of parallels your alliances," she says. "You know ,you look to your right and you look to your left and you see other people who are also using words and you think, this is powerful."

Creating 'A Space For Rebellion'

Making connections is important to Pakistani writer Rafia Zakaria as well. When her cab pulled up in front of the Hirshhorn museum in Washington, D.C., on a recent afternoon, she was excited to see a huge poster of Iranian artist Shirin Neshat hanging on the front of the building. Seeing Neshat's Muslim name gave her a surge of pride and connection.

"Sometimes it's very lonely as a Muslim woman who's writing or a Muslim woman who's doing artistic work because you're constantly pushing boundaries so when you see that, it just, it makes you happy," she says.

She sees parallels between the Neshat's visual work about Iran, and her literary work about Pakistan.

In her book The Upstairs Wife, Pakistani lawyer and writer Rafia Zakaria uses a family story to illuminate the history of Pakistan and women's place in it. Jeremy Hogan/Herald-Times/Courtesy of Beacon Press hide caption

itoggle caption Jeremy Hogan/Herald-Times/Courtesy of Beacon Press In her book The Upstairs Wife, Pakistani lawyer and writer Rafia Zakaria uses a family story to illuminate the history of Pakistan and women's place in it.

Jeremy Hogan/Herald-Times/Courtesy of Beacon Press

"I think Shirin's work represents a reclamation of Iranian history for Iranian women," says Zakaria. "Just by the act of saying: I am an Iranian woman and this is how I see Iran. For me, the act of saying: I am going to claim Pakistan by writing a history for Pakistani women and that's told through their perspectives. I think that project of reclaiming identity is crucial to Muslim woman today."

The exhibition intersperses Neshat's films and photographs with archival material from pivotal events in Iran's history.

In the same way Zakaria says her book The Upstairs Wife, juxtaposes the history of Pakistan with her own family's story. Zakaria focuses the family story on her aunt who was trapped in a polygamous marriage. She also explains how and why laws that allowed for polygamy were passed by the Pakistani government.

"You know when the laws were being passed I don't think anyone in my family paid any attention at all," she says.

Zakaria says in her book she set out to push the boundary between the private and the political.

"It's an appeal to Pakistani women to say: OK, you like your private sphere and you imagine it as a sanctuary from the public and the political but is it really? I don't think it is," she says. "This idea that you can just live your life and it's not going to be touched by what's happening outside is just a myth."



Zakaria believes a Muslim feminist revolution should honor women like her aunt.

"You know we have to be connected to the women that came before us that have modeled resilience, that have modeled dignity in suffering and modeled strength in suffering," she says. "But then we also have to create space for rebellion. We have to create space for expressing what we want and our needs and our ideas."

'Taking the Revolution Home'

In the Muslim world, much of the feminist revolution has to be fought on the home front, says Mona Eltahawy, because that is where so many Muslim women live so much of their lives.

"Home is where all the silence and the shame and all the taboos fester," she says. "But what makes me optimistic is it's also the home where all those women who went out and marched and fought side by side and were hurt and were detained and were violated: they went home with the men and looked at the men and on many levels have said you know: You're just like the guy that I just tried to overthrow. So taking the revolution home, it might seem like it's a very quiet process, it might need much more time. But that Mubarak at home knows that his time will come and that we will have a reckoning."

When Eltahawy and Zakaria were growing up they found their way out into the world through the words they found in books. Now, they are writers using their own words to inspire the kind of change they hope make life better for millions of other women around the world.

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John Thomson in China

The BritishLook at the Chinese: TheAnthropologicalGaze

When John Thomson (1837-1921), a native of Scotland, arrived in China, Great Britain had just militarily and politically and diplomatically defeated this huge nation, going to war, not once but twice, over the lucrative matter of the opium trade. Unlike many photographers in foreign lands, Thomson did not establish a studio or a gallery in a Chinese city, and, from 1868 to 1872, he was always mobile, often on the streets, hauling his heavy equipment and bulky materials over the countryside and taking long journeys within the country. Like so many photographers abroad during the wet-plate period, the photographer was a beneficiary of the colonialism of the time, for it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible for him to gather the photographic record of China without the laborers who fetched and carried his equipment on his behalf. He made hundreds of glass plate negatives, ranging in size from 10X12 to 12X16 inches and most of these plates survive today, can still be used for printing and can be viewed in the Wellcome Collection in London.



Glass Plate Negative of Prince Gong

What Thomson found in China was a territory so vast he could hope to traverse only a small fraction of coastal terrain, and Thomson, who considered himself an expert on China, never learned the language and absorbed much of his information through the simple practice of observation and writing down about what he saw. The camera, for Thomson, represented an irrefutable record keeperand he is often understood as an early photojournalist. When he returned to Britain, Thomson expended much effort in educating the British people on their newest colonial possession through lectures and albums and even reproductions in illustrated magazines. More recent discussions of Thomson view him through the perspective of the colonialism and imperialism of his time. In the article Through the Looking Glass: Photography, Science and Imperial Motivations in John Thomsons Photographic Expeditions, Geoffrey Belknap argued that Thomsons lens were embedded in practices of taxonomical colonial encounter. In arriving in China after the Second Opium War, Thomson constructed a visual and textual language of racial, economic and gender differences which was articulated through the publications of his photographic interactions with colonial spaces. Thomson acted as an imperial agent, with his camera as his tool of visual acculturation and the travel book as his medium for expressing this gaze.



John Thomson in China in 1871

Like most of the nations of the Far East, the China of the 1860s was backward and rural, lacking in Western technology, now the new measure of progress. For centuries China had been isolated by distance. Bits and pieces of Chinese culture floated to Europegunpowder and noodles and the compass and paper bank notes and movable type and restaurants. Until the seventeenth century, China was as cultivated as Europeans. As naval technology progressed, it became possible for trade to be established between China and European nations which were enamored of the fine porcelain, or china, and the excellent tea. Although the English developed a China Mania for Chinese design and architecture in the mid to late eighteenth century, the term chinoiserie to refer to Chinese motifs was apparently not coined until 1911 . The problem that developed between China and England is readily apparent for there is a lack or reciprocity in trade. England had little that China wanted beyond good hard shiny currency, preferably silver. Like Japan, China had steadfastly resisted Western influences but, by the nineteenth century found itself unable to effectively engage the British Empire which was determined to exploit the huge market, waiting for English imports.

The import that couldbecome necessary to the Chinese was an Indian product, opium, a powerful and addictive drug. Once the buyer was hooked on the dust of the poppy, this individual would spend any amount of money to maintain what would be a life-time of addiction. Few products have such profit and longevity. Few consumer goods demand to be replaced on a regular and frequent basis. Opium was a virtual gold mine for the English, the drug suppliers, who found it easy to cut the Chinese middle men, the dealers, in on this lucrative trade, which had the added benefit of lifetime users. Everyone made money but the Chinese government which saw the coastal cities of the Canton province plagued by a crippling drug and crippled population of opium-addled users. Alarmed, the Chinese Emperor struck back at the traffic in drugs and the British, apparently disinterested in the social costs of addiction to the Chinese, were determined to maintain the trade and were willing to wage a punitive war in this cause.



John Thomson.Opium Smoking in China

The result were two ruthless wars, The First Opium War(183942) and the Second Opium War (1856-60), between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). In between these wars, England also put down the Mutiny in India. It is at mid-century, that it became clear to anyone observing the rising tide of imperialism that the British were now pitiless empire builders, amoral actors without mercy. To complete the humiliation of the Chinese and to seal its dominance over the now prostrate dynasty, England attacked Beijing in 1859 and looted and sacked the Summer Palace in 1860. The action, joined by the French, was in reprisal for the Chinese who had captured, tortured and killed French and British delegates negotiating a treaty to end the War under a flag of truce. The French were incensed enough to demand that the Forbidden Palace, the home of the Emperor, also be destroyed, but the British convinced them to be content with merely destroying the Summer Palace, which was onfire for three days and nights.

A Royal Engineer, who was present at the destruction, Charles George Gordon, later wrote, You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the places we burnt. It made ones heart sore to burn them; in fact, these places were so large, and we were so pressed for time, that we could not plunder them carefully..Quantities of gold ornaments were burnt, considered as brass. It was wretchedly demoralising work for an army. The plundered items eventually found theirway into British, French and American collectionsand to this day, the Chinese, who recently rebuilt the Old Summer Palace, seek to recover their property. The British settled into a newly subdued China, basing themselves in Hong Kong, leaving the hard work of government to the Chinese, but this autonomy was an illusion. The Chinese nation was denied full sovereignty or the right to govern not only itself but also those foreigners who lived on its soil. The British were truly imperious, above and exempt from Chinese law. Thus beganwhat was for the Chinese, a century ofhumiliation, ended only when MaoZedong took power in 1949. John Thomson was the photojournalist who captured this backward and humiliated China, a China, that unlike Japan, resisted modernization and industrialization, a costly decision in the long run.



John Thomson. FromIllustrations of China and its People (1874)

In his 1898 book, Through China with a Camera, John Thomson explained a culture dedicated to tradition not to change or progress:

Signs of forward movement, however, have not been wanting, but they are solely due to pressure from without, not infrequently applied at the point of the bayonet. There has been spontaneous dance. The effort of the Chinese have been spent, and their resources exhausted, in futile endeavors to safeguard their ancient institutionsthe Chinese today place implicit faith in their time worn moods of training for germinate service, civil and military.

Thomsons book reads like a textbook on China, rather dull, fact-filled, but informative, droning on like a conscientious lecturer. Of course, as the quoted passage suggests, his discourse reflects the prevailing European perspective on China as being mired in the past and refusing to move into modern times. Given that Chinas experience with modernity was opium addiction, it is understandable that the Qing dynasty sought to protect itself from an invasion that was the equivalent of a cultural and social death threat. But even though he decries the reluctance of the Chinese to accept change, the goal of Thomson is not to make the casefor British colonialism in China, a condition he takes for granted, but to divide the Chinese population into the now-familiar types, from scholars to shopkeepers. A hybrid of anthropology and sociology and journalism, the book is lustrated with his photographs and the images are put into the social context of life in Hong Kong (Honking, as Thomson spells it) where opium smoking is a part of ordinary life, taking place out in the open.

Music halls, according to Thomson have an altar to the god of pleasure at their entrance. Nearby half a dozen of the most fascinating of the female singers were seated outside the gate; their robes were of richly embroidered silk, their faces were enameled, and their hair bedecked with perfumed flowers and dressed, in some cases, to represent a teapot, in others, a bird whispered wings on the top of the head. When Thomson uses the word enameled to describe the face of a Chinese woman he is not exaggerating. Chinese women covered their faces with thick white paste, which, when hardened, was then polished. Color was then applied to the cheeks and lips and even to the palms of the hands. Later on Thomson describes these faces as painted until they resembled their native porcelain ware.



John Thomson. A Manchu Bride in Beijing

In many ways, Thomson takes the armchair reader on a tour of Chinese neighborhoods and the book often reads like a tourist guide, meaning that it is part of the growing genre of travel literature. This books appears to be written in chronological order of his travels and the photographer meanders from Hong Kong to some inland villages to the port city of Canton to the Portuguese city of Macao to the island of Formosa to Shanghai and beyond to the Great Wall itself. Thomson describes every kind of occupation and industry and even explains to the English reader where the famous Chinese silks come from, starting with the worms. He describes the degraded situation of the ubiquitous peasant class and notes the terrible poverty viewed at every turn. One recalls that it is from the Canton region that so many Chinese man migrated to California to build a railroad for Mr. Stanford and his friends. Thomson wrote extensively on the low wages for artisans in Canton and spent a few pages on the artists who designed the elaborate patterns on shoes and those who embroider the delicate pairs for men and women. It will be seen from the foregoing notes that skilled labour is so cheap in China so to give artisans a great advantage in all those various branches native industry which find a market abroad; and this will one day refer the clever, careful and patient Chinaman a formidable rival to European manufacturers hen he has learned how to use machine in weaving fabrics of cotton or silk.





Thomson was a discerning and noticing traveler and, as the book progresses, one begins to understand why he was considered a photo-journalist for his rather spare writing is pithy and descriptive, allowing the British or Scottish reader to visualize, with the aid of the images scattered among the pages, a strange and alien culture. But he is not without empathy for the extreme and horrifying poverty he observes in the imperial city of Beijing (Peking in his day) and it is possible to watch his mind already turning to his next project, the poor of London, another great city with extreme contrasts of wealth and squalor. The shops in Peking, both outside and within doors , are very attractive objects..I could discover evidence of distribution of the wealth of the official classes in all those shops which in any way supplied their wants, or ministered toothier tastes. On the other hand, signs of squalor and misery were apparent everywhere n the unwelcome and uncared-for poor; all the more apparent, perhaps, when brought face to face with the tokens of wealth and refinement..In his conclusion to his sort but remarkably board portrait of China, Thomson wrote, Poverty and ignorance we have among us in England; but no poverty so wretched, no ignorance so intense as are found among the millions of China. His statement is not one of contempt but one of pity, empathy and despair, a curious ending for a voyage of discovery into the heart of the Orient.



Thomsons Chest for Glass Plates

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

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http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/john-thomson-in-china/

Today in History for 3rd September 2015

Historical Events

Events 1 - 100 of 216



36 BC - In the Battle of Naulochus, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, admiral of Octavian, defeats Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey, thus ending Pompeian resistance to the Second Triumvirate.

301 - San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, is founded by Saint Marinus.

590 - St Gregory I begins his reign as Catholic Pope

1189 - Richard the Lionheart is crowned in Westminster. 30 Jews are massacred after the coronation - Richard ordered the perpetrators be executed.

1260 - Battle of Ain Djaloet, Palestine defeats Mongols army

1483 - Utrecht surrenders to Habsburg army

1543 - Cardinal Beaton replaces the Earl of Arran as regent for Queen Mary of Scotland

1632 - Battle of Nuremberg: Duke Wallenstein beats Sweden

1650 - Battle of Dunbar: England vs Scotland

1651 - Battle of Worcester-Oliver Cromwell destroys English royalists

1658 - Richard Cromwell ("Tumbledown Dick") succeeds his father as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth

1683 - Turkish troops break through defense of Vienna

1697 - King William's War in America ends with Treaty of Ryswick

English Military and Political Leader Oliver Cromwell1709 - 1st major group of Swiss/German colonists reaches NC/SC

1725 - Britain, France, Hannover & Prussia sign Covenant of Hannover

1731 - Willem KH Friso installed as viceroy of Friesland

1752 - Britain and the British Empire (including the American colonies) adopt the Gregorian Calendar, losing 11 days. People riot thinking the government stole 11 days of their lives

1777 - Cooch's Bridge - Skirmish of American Revolutionary war in New Castle County, Delaware where the Flag of the United States was flown in battle for the first time.

1779 - Earl d'Orvilliers (French/Spanish Armada) sails back to Brest

1783 - Treaty of Paris signed in Paris ends the American Revolutionary War between Great Britain and United States of America

1791 - French Constitution passed by French National Assembly

1798 - Weeklong battle of St. George's Caye began between Spanish and British off the coast of Belize.

1812 - World's first cannery ( Donkin, Hall and Gamble) opens in London, England to supply food to the Royal Navy

1826 - USS Vincennes leaves NY to become 1st warship to circumnavigate globe

1832 - Rebellious slaves set fire to Paramaribo Suriname

1833 - New York Sun begins publishing (1st daily newspaper)

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass1838 - Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery disguised as a sailor

1849 - California State Constitutional Convention convenes in Monterey

1852 - Anti-Jewish riots break out in Stockholm, Sweden

1855 - Indian Wars: In Nebraska, 700 soldiers under American General William S. Harney avenge the Grattan Massacre by attacking a Sioux village, killing 100 men, women, and children.

1861 - Confederate forces enter Kentucky, thus ending its neutrality

1864 - Battle of Berryville, VA

1864 - US, British, French & Dutch naval officer sails Straits of Simonoseki

1865 - Army commander in SC orders Freedmen's Bureau to stop seizing land

1874 - The congress of the state of Mxico elevates Naucalpan to the category of Villa, with the title of "Villa de Jurez".

1878 - British passenger paddle steamer Princess Alice sunk in a collision on the River Thames with the collier Bywell Castle; 645 die

1881 - 1st US Men's Tennis: Richard D Sears beats William E Glyn (6-0 6-3 6-2)

1881 - Anton Bruckner completes his 6th Symphony

1881 - 1st U.S. Men's National Championship: Richard Sears beats William E. Glyn (6-0, 6-3, 6-2)

1882 - French/Vietnamese/Chinese battle at Hanoi, 100s die

1889 - 9th U.S. Men's National Championship: Henry Slocum beats Quincy Shaw (6-3, 6-1, 4-6, 6-2)

1890 - Oliver S Campbell wins US Tennis Open

1891 - 11th US Men's Tennis: Oliver S Campbell beats C Hobart (2-6 7-5 7-9 6-1 6-2)

1891 - Cotton pickers organize union & stage strike in Texas

1891 - John Stephens Durham named US minister to Haiti

1895 - 1st pro football game played, Latrobe beats Jeanette 12-0 (Penn)

1900 - With a proclamation by General Lord Roberts, Britain annexes the Boer Republic of South Africa

1900 - Russian troops now control both sides of the Amur River on the Russo-Manchurian boundary

1901 - Boer General Smuts enters Kiba Drift in Cape Colony

1902 - Pittsburgh Pirates, win earliest pennent (full season)

1902 - Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Illustrious Client"

1903 - Resolute beats Shamrock III (England) in 13th America's Cup

1904 - St Louis Olympics closes

1906 - Phila Giants win Negro Championship Cup in Phila before 10,000 fans

1906 - Yanks win 2nd game on a forfeit over A's; 2nd forfeit win

1908 - James Barries "What Every Woman Knows" premieres in London

1911 - 31st US Men's Tennis: Wm A Larned beats Maurice E McLoughlin (6-4 6-4 6-2)

1911 - 31st U.S. Men's National Championship: William Larned beats Maurice McLoughlin (6-4, 6-4, 6-2)

Composer and Painter Arnold Schoenberg1912 - Arnold Schoenberg's "Funf Orchesterstucke" premieres

1914 - British expeditionary army/general Lanrezacs army attack the Marne

1914 - Cardinal Giacome della Chiesa becomes Pope Benedict XV

1914 - French troops vacate Rheims

1914 - Prince Wilhelm von Wied leaves Albania

1914 - Lemburg capital of Galicia, is taken after a three-day battle in which the Russians rout the Austrians

1916 - Allies turned back Germans in Battle of Verdun

1916 - US President Wilson signs Adamson Act, providing an 8-hour day on interstate railroads, preventing a national railroad strike

1917 - 1st night bombing of London by German aircraft

1917 - German troops overrun Riga, Latvia

1917 - Grover Cleveland Alexander pitches complete wins in a doubleheader

1917 - Utrecht soccer team Holland forms

1918 - 38th US Men's Tennis: R L Murray beats William T Tilden (6-3 6-1 7-5)

1918 - 5 soldiers hanged for alleged participation in Houston riot (or Camp Logan riot); in all 19 mutineers were executed.

1918 - Allies forced Germans back across Hindenburg Line

1918 - 38th U.S. Men's National Championship: Robert Lindley Murray beats Bill Tilden (6-3, 6-1, 7-5)

28th US President Woodrow Wilson1919 - President Woodrow Wilson set out on a tour of the USA to rouse public opinion behind the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations

1921 - 16th Davis Cup: USA beats Japan in New York (5-0)

1921 - KPB, Communist Party of Belgium forms

1923 - Dorothys Donelly's "Poppy" premieres in NYC

1924 - Civil war breaks out in China (Gen Tsi moves to Shanghai)

1924 - L Stallings & M Anderson's "What Price Glory?" premieres in NYC

1925 - 1st international handball match held

1925 - The airship USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) crashes in a storm near Caldwell, Ohio, killing 14, 29 survive

1928 - Baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb got his 4,191th & final career hit

1929 - Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches all time high of 381.17, to be shortly followed by the Crash of 1929.

1930 - Hurricane kills 2,000, injures 4,000 (Dominican Republic)

MLB Legend Ty Cobb1932 - Ellsworth Vines beats Henri Cochet for US Tennis title

1932 - Jimmie Foxx of A's hits 50th & 51st HRs to become 3rd to hit 50

1933 - Yevgeniy Abalakov reaches the highest point of the Soviet Union - Communism Peak (7495 m).

1934 - Tunisia began its move for independence

1935 - 1st automobile to exceed 300 mph, Sir Malcolm Campbell (301.337 mph)

1935 - Andrew Varipapa sets bowling record of 2,652 points in 10 games

1936 - 3rd NFL Chicago All-Star Game: All-Stars 7, Detroit 7 (76,000)

1938 - 1940 Olympic site changed from Tokyo Japan to Helsinki Finland

1939 - German submarine U-30, commanded by Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, sinks British passenger ship SS Athenia; 117 people die, among them 28 Americans

1939 - Yanks beat Red Sox on a forfeit, their 4th forfeit win

1939 - WWII: Britain declares war on Germany after invasion of Poland. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by Australia, New Zealand, South Africa & Canada

1940 - 39.4 cm rainfall at Sapulpa, Oklahoma (state record)

Dictator of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler1940 - Hitler orders invasion in England on Sept 21 (Operation Seelwe/Sealion)

1940 - Dutch government in exile of Gerbrandy forms in London

1940 - Sicherheits police bans Free masons, Rotary & Red Cross

Famous Birthdays

Birthdays 1 - 100 of 217

1034 - Emperor Go-Sanj of Japan (d. 1073)

1499 - Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II of France (d. 1566)

1568 - Adriano Banchieri, composer

1596 - Nicolo Amati, Italy, violin maker (Stradivari & Guarneri)

1600 - Dirck Graswinckel, Dutch States-General court clerk

1608 - Pieter Stockmans, Flemish chairman of military

1675 - Paul Dudley, Attorney-General of Massachusetts (d. 1751)

1693 - Charles Radclyffe, British politician (d. 1746)

1695 - Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Italian violinist/composer

1703 - Johan-Theodoor van Bayern, prince-bishop of Luik/cardinal

1710 - Abraham Trembley, Swiss naturalist (d. 1784)

1719 - Ferdinand Zellbell, composer

1724 - Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester, British soldier and Governor of Quebec (d. 1808)

1757 - Charles X, Versailles France, Duke of Prussia

1778 - Jean Nicolas Auguste Kreutzer, composer

1781 - Eugne de Beauharnais, son of Josephine de Beauharnais (d. 1824)

1789 - Ludvig Anton Edmund Passy, composer

1803 - Alexander L'vovich Gurilyov, composer

1803 - Prudence Crandall, founder (School for "young ladies of colour")

1810 - Paul Kane, Canadian painter (d. 1871)

1811 - John Humphrey Noyes, Vt, found Oneida Community (Perfectionists)

1820 - George Hearst, American businessman and father of William Randolph Hearst (d. 1891)

1825 - Armistead Lindsay Long, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), (d. 1891)

1825 - William Wallace Burns, Brigadier General (Union volunteers), (d. 1892)

1835 - William Gaston Lewis, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), (d. 1901)

1840 - Jacob Fabricius, composer

1841 - Tom Emmett, England cricketer (d. 1904)

1849 - Sarah Orne Jewett, Maine, author (Country of the Pointed Firs)

1851 - Olga Konstantinovna of Russia, Queen of Greece (d. 1926)

Architect and Father of Skyscrapers Louis Sullivan (1856)1856 - Louis Sullivan, American architect (father of skyscrapers), born in Boston, Massachusetts

1859 - AAJ Jean Jaurs, French socialist (L'Humanit, Les Preuves)

1860 - Edward Albert Filene, merchant, established US credit union movement

1864 - Hale Ascher VanderCook, composer

1865 - Wilhelm Bousset, German theologist/historian

1875 - Ferdinand Porsche, German car inventor (Porsche, Volkswagen)

1882 - Johnny Douglas, England cricketer and boxer (d. 1930)

1887 - Frank Christian, American musician (d. 1973)

1889 - Cecil Weston, South Africa, actor (Dude Ranch, Huckleberry Finn)

1890 - J Patrick O'Malley, Forest City PA, actress (Courage of Black Beauty)

1891 - Bessie Annie Elizabeth Delany, dentist writer

1893 - Florrie Rodrigo, Dutch dancer/choreography/teacher (Schepelingen)

1897 - Cecil Parker, Hastings England, actor (Indiscreet, Tale of 2 Cities)

1897 - Francisco Paolo Mignone, composer

1897 - Sally Benson, American writer (d. 1972)

1900 - Urho K Kekkonen, premier/president Finland (1956-81)

1901 - Eduard A van Beinum, Dutch musician/conductor

1902 - Mantan Moreland, Monroe LA, comedian (Charlie Chan, Spirit of Youth)

1903 - Willem Kooiman, Dutch theologist/church historian

Nobel Laureat Physicist Carl David Anderson (1905)1905 - Carl David Anderson, physicist (1936 Nobel Prize for physics), born in NYC, New York (d. 1991)

1905 - Robert Ruthenfranz, composer

1907 - Andrew Brewin, Canada, lawyer/cofound New Democratic Party

1907 - Loren Eiseley, professor of Anthropology (Animal Secrets)

1908 - Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Russian mathematician (d. 1988)

1910 - Dorothy Maynor, Norfolk Va, soprano/founder (Harlem School of Arts)

1910 - Kitty Carlisle, American actress and television personality (d. 2007)

1911 - Bernard Mammes, American cyclist (d. 2000)

1913 - Alan Ladd, Hot Springs AR, actor (Shane, Carpetbaggers)

1914 - Kitty Carlisle Hart, actress (Animal Crackers), born in New Orleans, Louisiana

1914 - Dixy Lee Ray, American politician (d. 1994)

1915 - Abel Ehrlich, composer

1915 - Knut Nystedt, composer

1915 - Memphis Slim, [John Len Chatman] American blues musician ("Every Day I Have the Blues"), born in Memphis, Tennessee (d. 1988)

1917 - Eddie "Brat" Stanky, Phil Rizzuto's nemisis/2nd baseman (Dodgers)

1917 - Peter Winter, naval commander

1918 - Helen Wagner, Lubbock Tx, actress (Nancy-As The World Turns)

1921 - Marguerite Higgins, American reporter and war correspondent, Pulitzer prize winner (d. 1966)

1921 - Thurston Dart, English harpsichordist and conductor (d. 1971)

1922 - Rosendo Ejercito Santos, composer

1923 - Mort Walker, cartoonist (Beetle Bailey, Hi & Lois)

1923 - Terry Wilson, California, actor (Bill-Wagon Train)

1925 - Bengt Lindstrm, Swedish artist (d. 2008)

1925 - Shoista Mullodzhanova, Shashmakom singer

1925 - Hank Thompson, American singer (d. 2007)

1926 - Alison Lurie, US, novelist (War Between the Tates)

1926 - Anne Jackson, Penn, actress (Dirty Dingus Magee, Angel Levine)

1926 - Bill Flemming, sportscaster (ABC's Wide World of Sports)

1926 - Irene Papas, Corinth Greece, Greek actress (Zorba the Greek, Attila The Hun)

1926 - Joe Kolter, (Rep-D-PA, 1983- )

1926 - John R[obert] Jones, US, sci-fi author (White Regiment, Lizard War)

1928 - Gaston Thorn, President of the European Commission(d. 2007)

1929 - Carlo Clerici, Swiss cyclist (d. 2007)

Gangster Whitey Bulger (1929)1929 - Whitey Bulger [James Joseph Bulger Jr.], American gangster, born in Boston, Massachusetts

1930 - Cherry Barbara Grimm, [Lockett], NZ, sci-fi author (Nearest Fire)

1930 - Haty Tegelaar-Boonacker, Dutch 2nd chamber member (CDA)

1931 - Dick Motta, NBA coach (856 wins, Its not over 'til the fat lady sings)

1931 - Rudolf Kelterborn, composer

1931 - Albert DeSalvo, The Boston Strangler (d. 1973)

1932 - Richard Tyler, actor (Henry Aldrich-Aldrich Family), born in NYC, New York

1932 - Eileen Brennan, American actress (Laugh-In, Pvt Benjamin), born in Los Angeles, California (d. 2013)

1933 - Roland Kayn, composer

1933 - Tompall Glaser, Spalding Neb, singer (Glaser Bros-Getting to Me Again), (d. 2013)

1934 - Xavier Darasse, composer

1934 - Freddie King, Gilmer Tx, blues singer (Hideaway)

1935 - Otto Ketting, trumpeter/composer (Passacaglia)

1936 - John W Olver, (Rep-D-Massachusetts)

1936 - Zine al-Abidine Ben Ami, general/president of Tunisia (1987- )

1938 - Caryl Churchill, English playwright

1938 - Ryoji Noyori, Japanese chemist, Nobel Prize laureate

1940 - Pauline Collins, actress (Shirley Valentine), born in London, England

1940 - Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist and writer, born in Montevideo

Famous Weddings

Weddings 1 - 14 of 14

Author Ernest Hemingway (1921)1921 - American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway (22) marries 1st wife Hadley Richardson (29)

1923 - Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (21) weds field archaeologist Luther Cressman (25)

1937 - Author Muriel Spark (19) weds teacher Sidney Oswald Spark in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia

1953 - Explorer Edmund Hillary (34) weds Louise Mary Rose

1957 - World Heavyweight champion Sonny Liston (25) weds Geraldine Clark in St. Louis, Missouri

1977 - "I Dream of Jeannie" actress Barbara Eden (43) weds Charles Donald Fegert

1999 - "The Steve Harvey Show" actor Cedric The Entertainer (35) weds Lorna Wells (33)

2000 - "Will & Grace" actress Debra Messing (32) weds actor-screenwriter Daniel Zelman (33) at a private estate in Santa Barbara, California

Journalist Gloria Steinem (2000)2000 - American feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem (66) weds environmentalist David Bale (59) in Adair County, Oklahoma

2004 - "Baywatch" actress Gena Lee Nolin (32) weds NHL hockey player Cale Hulse (30) at the Royal Palms Resort in Phoenix, Arizona

2005 - Former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Kevin Nealon (51) weds actress Susan Yeagley (33) inside the town hall in Bellagio, Italy

2007 - Oscar winning actor Ben Kingsley (63) weds Brazilian actress Daniela Lavender (33) in North Leigh, Oxfordshire

2007 - Actor Tobey Maguire (32) weds jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer (30) in Kona, Hawaii

2011 - English DJ and musician Mark Ronson (36) weds french actress Josephine De La Baume (27) in Aix-en-Provence, France

Famous Divorces

Divorces 1 - 1 of 1



2010 - Pop singer Cheryl Cole (27) divorces England soccer player Ashley Cole (29) due to unreasonable behavior after 3 and a half years of marriage

Famous Deaths

Deaths 1 - 100 of 120

1189 - Jacob of Orleans, Rabbi, killed in anti Jewish riot in London England

1205 - Petrus van Poitiers, French theologist (Sententiarum libri V), dies

1402 - Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duke/tyrant of Milan (1395-1402), dies at 51

1420 - Robert Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany, regent of Scotland

1592 - Robert Greene, English writer (b. 1558)

1634 - Edward Coke, English Chief Justice/politician, dies

1642 - Elisabeth of Nassau, daughter of Willem I/Charlotte, dies at 65

1653 - Claudius Salmasius, [Claude Saumaise], French linguistic, dies at 65

1655 - Jan W van Brederode, Dutch governor/field marshal, dies at 56

English Military and Political Leader Oliver Cromwell (1658)1658 - Oliver Cromwell, English general (1653-58)/Lord Protector, dies at 59

1662 - William Lenthall, English politician (b. 1591)

1667 - Alonso Cano, Spanish painter/sculptor/architect, dies at 66

1675 - Pieter Boel, Flemish painter/etcher, dies

1708 - Christian Liebe, composer, dies at 53

1720 - Henri de Massue, French soldier and diplomat (b. 1648)

1722 - Ivan Skoropadsky, Hetman of Ukraine (b. 1646)

1729 - Jean Hardouin, French scholar (b. 1646)

1739 - George Lillo, English dramatist (Fatal Curiosity), dies at 46

1766 - Archibald Bower, Scottish historian (b. 1686)

1790 - Thomas Norris, composer, dies at 49

1808 - John Montgomery, American Continental Congressman (b. 1722)

1811 - Ignaz Franzl, composer, dies at 75

1843 - Cornelis PJ Elout, military/pres of West Sumatra, dies at 47

1849 - Earnest Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, Austria writer/physician, dies

1857 - M Heinrich C Lichtenstein, German zoologist/explorer, dies at 77

1857 - John McLoughlin, Canadian trapper (b. 1784)

1860 - Aleksey Khomyakov, Russian poet (b. 1804)

1866 - Konstantin Flavitsky, Russian painter (b. 1830)

1871 - Vaclav Horak, composer, dies at 71

1876 - Felix, cricketer (legendary All-England player), dies

1877 - Adolphe Thiers, 1st president of 3rd French Rep (1871-77), dies at 80

1883 - Iwan Turgenjew, writer, dies at 64

1886 - William W. Snow, American politician (b. 1812)

1890 - Charles-A Chatrian, French writer (Waterloo), dies at 63

1890 - Willem Linnig Jr, Flemish painter/graphic artist, dies

1893 - James Harrison, Scottish-born inventor (b. 1816)

1903 - Joseph Skipsey, British poet (b. 1832)

1908 - Cornelis Pijnacker Hordijk, gov-gen (Dutch East-Indies), dies

1914 - Lucien-Denis-Gabriel-Alberic Magnard, composer, dies at 49

1918 - Fanya Kaplan, Russian who shot at Lenin on Aug 30th, executed

1935 - Johannes Aengenent, bishop of Haarlem (1928-35), dies at 62

1936 - Nikita Balieff, Armenian vaudevillian and impressario (b. 1876 or 1877)

1938 - Bart de Ligt, anti military theologist, dies at 77

1940 - Otto V Ekelund, Swedish poet/writer (Hafvets Stjorna), dies at 59

1944 - Frantisek Alois Drdla, composer, dies at 75

1946 - Carl Emil Paul Lincke, composer, dies at 79

1948 - Eduard Benesj, president Czechoslovakia (1921-22, 35-48), dies

1951 - Arnold Warren, cricketer (only Test for England), dies

1951 - Robert Franz Richard Hernried, composer, dies at 67

1954 - Eugene Pallette, actor (It's a Date, My Man Godfrey), dies at 65

1960 - Joseph Lamb, composer, dies at 72

1961 - Robert E. Gross, American businessman (b. 1897)

1962 - Anton Mauve, Dutch painter, dies at 63

1962 - e[dward] e cummings, US poet (Tulips & Chimneys), dies at 67

1963 - Cruys Voorbergh, actor/director (Vliegende Hollander), dies at 64

1963 - Frico Kafenda, Slovak composer, dies at 79

1964 - Joseph Marx, Austrian composer, dies at 82

1964 - Stewart Holbrook, American author (b. 1893)

1965 - Otto Lederer, actor (Jazz Singer), dies at 79

1967 - David Cohen, historian/chairman (Jewish Council), dies at 84

1968 - Isabel Withers, American actress (b. 1896)

Vietnamese Communist Revolutionary Ho Chi Minh (1969)1969 - Ho Chi Minh [Nguyn Sinh Cung], Vietnamese communist revolutionary and President of North Vietnam (1946-69), dies at 79 of heart failure

1969 - John Lester, American cricketer (b. 1871)

1970 - Al Wilson, "Blind Owl", guitarist/vocalist (Canned Heat), dies at 27

1970 - Jochen Rindt, German race car driver, dies at 28

1970 - Vince Lombardi, football coach (Packers), dies in Washington, D.C. at 57

1971 - Percy Holmes, cricketer (Yorks opener, 7 Tests for Eng 1921-32), dies

1971 - Veronica Turleigh, actress (Promoter), dies at 68

1974 - Harry Partch, American composer (b. 1901)

1980 - Barbara O'Neil, actress (Tower of London, Stella Dallas)

1980 - Duncan Renaldo, actor (Cisco Kid, Guns of Fury), dies at 76

1980 - Fabian von Schlabendorff, German resistance fighter/judge, dies at 73

1980 - Dirch Passer, Danish actor (b. 1926

1981 - Alec Waugh, English writer (b. 1898)

Coach Vince Lombardi (1970)1982 - Della Chiesa, Italian general/mafia fighter, murdered

1982 - Michael Thoma, actor (8 is Enough, Fame), dies at 55

1983 - Ellie Lambeti, Greek actress (b. 1926)

1984 - Arthur Schwartz, producer (Inside USA with Chevrolet), dies at 83

1984 - Duncan Renaldo, actor (Cisco Kid), dies at 80

1985 - Joe Jones, drummer, dies at 73

1985 - John Herbert McDowell, composer, dies at 58

1987 - Morton Feldman, US composer, dies at 61

1987 - Viktor P Nekrasov, Ukraine architect/author (Soldiers), dies at 76

1987 - Vokopach Stalingrada/Kira Georgijevna, dies at 76

1990 - David Acer, Florida dentist, dies of AIDs after infecting 5 patients

1991 - Frank Capra, American film director (It's a Wonderful Life), dies at 94

1991 - Henri de Lubac, French theologist/antifascist, dies

1992 - Johannes van Capel, oldest man in Netherlands (Born 4/22/1884), dies

1993 - Leon Liebgold, Pol/US actor/chairman (Hebrew Actors Union), dies at 83

1994 - Billy Wright, English soccer player (World Champion 1950), dies at 70

1994 - James Aubrey, actor (Riders of the Storm), dies of heart attack at 75

1994 - Major Lance, soul singer, dies at 55

1994 - Marijke Vetter, Dutch journalist, dies at 82

1994 - Nikos Ghika, artist, dies at 88

1994 - Roswell Gilbert, who mercy killed his ailing wife, dies at 85

1994 - William Ambrose Right, footballer, dies at 70

1995 - Alex Brown, snooker player, dies at 87

1995 - Alfred Earle Birney, poet, dies at 91

1995 - Donald Cuthbert Coleman, economic historian, dies at 75

1995 - Mary Adshead, muralist/painter, dies at 91

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Photography, Archaeology, and Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, Part One

Nineteenth Century Imperialism in the Middle East

Part One: James McDonald and the Ordnance Survey

It is in fact with the Bible in his hand that a traveller ought to visit the Holy Land.

Viscount Franois-Ren de Chateaubriand.Itinraire de Paris Jrusalem (1811)

Heres a question for you: what is the connection between a college graduation, the Suez Canal and the terrorist group ISIS, also known as ISIL? The answer lies in the political condition of the Ottoman Empire in the Levant in relation to the European powers, which were circling like vultures of a still stirring corpse as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century. During the entire nineteenth century, it was easier to pick off chunks of the recumbent empire than it was to instigate a direct war and the European powers allowed their ally during the Crimean War to continue as an ineffective shadow of its former self. If nothing else, the continued existence of the Ottoman Empire was a check on the ambitions of another circling vulture, the rising Russian Empire. The extent of the inability of the Ottoman Empire to respond to the incursions or invasions into its territories by its fellow empire makers, France and England, can be measured by the weak response of Turkey to the French usurpation of Egyptian lands and Egyptian peoples during the building of the Suez Canal. Ever since Napolon scouted Egypt in 1798 and claimed it as his conquest before he returned to France, the French were aware to the possibility of cutting a canal across the Isthmus to connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Teams of Napolonic engineers were sent out the explore the feasibility of such a project but incorrectly concluded that the relative sea levels were too incompatible for such a connection.It wasnt until 1847 that more modern and accurate surveys revealed that the levels of the Mediterranean and Red Seas were similar and the dream of a canal was resurrected.



In the intervening decades, England had surged ahead of France and began to build a substantial empire, with India firmly in the hands of its East India Company, and Great Britaineyed French activities in Egypt warily. For England, Egypt was an important land bridge to India. Indeed, due to the Anglo-Turkish Trade Treaty of 1838, the British Empirehad strong trade interests in Egypt, especially in its cotton, accounting for a lions share of the imports and exports of its subordinated partner. And in fact, by mid century, the strategic territory was semi-independent from the Ottoman Empire but under the dubious protection and control of England and France. England, ever interested in transporting its goods across Egypt, built a railroad, the Alexandria-Cairo-Suez, completed in 1857. In response to the English activities in Egypt, the French proposed the long dreamed of Canal across the Suez. Perhaps wisely, the British stood back and allowed the French to dig the massive trench, intending to claim its rewards in increased trade while spending no English money in the process. During the messy and corrupt business of building the Canal, the British protested the sheer scale of theft of lands from a simple people and the outright slavery of the Egyptian workers in the service of the French government of Napolon III. The Emperor was related by marriage to the former diplomat,Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-1894),who was in charge of financing the project and fashioned a favorable agreement with the viceroy of Egypt, Said Pasha. Pasha, in return, granted the necessary lands along the canal route and needed the quarries for materials and the human labor, all provided without costto the French.

Although the actual construction of the Canal began in 1861, the time of the industrial revolution, the conditions for workers was the same as that of ancient Egypt under the Pharaohsthey worked with their hands, no machines and no salaries. Machines were expensive and cheap labor, four-fifths of which worked for free under the threat of government violence,greatly increased the future profits for the French, especially if those who toiled used the same methods employedunder Pharaoh Senusret III in 1850 BCE. Igniting a media campaign, the British used the French exploitation of Egyptian labor as a wedge between the French and the rest of the civilized European world. Eventually, public opinion and threats from the Ottoman Empire, the Porte, forced the Emperor and his minions to pay the workers a living wage in 1863 and the increased expense forced the French to use and even invent machines to build the Canal. The Egyptian government went into such debt breaking open the Isthmus that it sold the majority of its shares to England and France, who now, for all intents and purposes, owned the Suez Canal when it opened in 1869 in a ceremony on November 17surely the high-water mark of the Second Empire. At the request of the viceroy, the composerGiuseppeVerdi (1813-1901) wrote the opera Aida in 1871 and its famous triumphal march used for college graduations to this day.



Opening the Suez Canal, November 1869

Historically,Egypt was not the only Middle Eastern territory of the Ottoman Empire where England and France vied for control. The two nations also took advantage of the lax control of Turkey over the Levant or the modern nations ofIsrael,Jordan,Lebanon,Palestine,andSyria, and Iraq. This is the medieval territory of the caliphate or parts of the old Abbasid Caliphate, from mid eighth century to the mid thirteenth century, predating the Ottoman Empire. By the mid nineteenth century, all of these nations were withinthe imperial sphere of England and France, as tolerated by the Ottoman Empire. The extent to which this modern imperialism was self-assured and unchallenged can be quite literally illustrated by amajor photographic activity in the area, the Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Syria, which includedJerusalem. This massive military and biblical examination of the holy land was undertaken by the British Empire between 1864 and 1869. Ordnance means exactly what the word states, weapons, ammunition, guns, cannon, and other military supplies. The result of this Survey was hundreds of photographs, most taken by a sergeant, James McDonald, in the service of his country, a military reconnaissance acting under the guise of biblical antiquarians in search of archaeological sites.



James McDonald.Members of the Sinai Survey

(The Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai) (1869)



In 1873, the British publicationThe Athenaeum announced that the Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai made by Capts. C. W. Wilson and H. S. Palmer, R. E., under the direction of Col. Sir Henry James, R. E., Director-General of the Ordnance Survey. 5 vols. had completed its publication, explaining that three of the five volumes, containing the photographs, had been published two years earlier.The newspaper noted that the idea of the Survey was instigated by religious figures who wanted to explore what was then called the Holy Land to locate the major sites mentioned in the Bible. The significance of such a religiously inspired survey can be better understood not only against the backdrop of the Suez Canal in progress and the recent publication of Charles DarwinsOn the Origin of Species in 1859, a book that challenged conventional Christian assumptions of faith with suggestive science. Photographs, such as those taken by McDonald, of Biblical sites were thought to be a form of irrefutable proof of the final truth of the events related in the Bible itself. Today, as Suzanne Richard pointed out in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader(2003) pointed out, the fields of Biblical archaeology and Palestinian archaeology, i.e., religious studies and historical studies, while overlapping in spheres of interest, are separate in methodologies, but in the dawn of archaeology, there would have been no distinction between the Bible and actual history.





James McDonald.Seyal (Shittim) Tree, Mouth of Wady Aleyat (from the album Ordinance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai (1869)

The Ordnance Survey sprang out of an innocent desire on the part of English scholars to find the fact of the Bible. Sponsored by Queen Victoria, the Palestine Exploration Fund, or the PEF, was set up in 1865 by British and American scholars who needed accurate maps and a precise exploration of the Holy Land. According to the 2013 bookHebrew Bible / Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation. III/I: From Modernism to Post-Modernism,the full title of the PEF was Palestine Exploration Fund. A Society for the Accurate and Systematic Investigation of the Archaeology the Topography, the Geology and Physical Geography, the Manners and Customs of Holy Land for Biblical Illustration. The author Steven W. Holloway also noted that From the beginning, the PEF operated in a place and time when Victorian Protestantism marched openly in step with British imperial pursuits. When the French built the Suez Canal, the PEF, founded by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminser and Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, provided excellent cover for the Ordnance Survey, which produced no nonsense military instruments, virtually devoid of biblical allusion. This pattern of military cartography under camouflage of biblical research would be repeated several times by the PEF..or what could be termedGovernmental backing in theprosecution of Kiplings Great Game, or the imperial contest between England and Russia.

In her 2003 essay, Mapping Sacred Geography: Photographic Surveys by the Royal Engineers in the Holy Land, 1864-68, Kathleen Stewart Howe noted that the official survey photographer Sergeant James McDonald posed the Officers of the Royal Engineers ofthe Ordnance Survey with the PEF scholars of Oxford and Cambridge, who were in the dubious business of claiming the Holy Land as a uniquely British possession. As the author pointed out, echoing Holloway, Surveying the East, in this case, the birthplace of Western Christianity, united military surveyors, philologists and biblical scholars in a quasi-military campaign articulated in terms of the great intellectual project to know the Orient. The taking, organizing, collecting and viewing of the photographs was an integral part of that project. Howe recognized the tangled alliance between photography and areas of belief, intellectual inquiry and imperial claim.As early as 1856 the Engineers had prowled around Jerusalem, as if they owned the territory outright, examining buildings and and bridges, with the intent of modernizing where needed, locating sites where soldiers could drill and even Recording the effects of the explosion of gunpowder in different positions. Keep in mind that all this British activity, from explosions to photography, was undertaken in the heart of the Ottoman Empire with apparent impunity.

Given that the meaning of McDonalds photographs were purely documentary and intended for the combined military and religious contention that, as the Archbishop of York, William Thomson expressed it in 1875, Our reason for turning to Palestine is that Palestine our country. I have used the expression before and I refuse to adopt any other,these images by McDonald are devoid of the poetry expressed by Eadweard Muybridge in Yosemite and lack the flights of imagination played out by Timothy OSullivan in the barren deserts of Western America. McDonald was required to record the territories of Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula for two purposes, military information and religious convictions, or as Howe eloquently expressed the role of the photographs as graphic articulations of a physical possession, defined and justified by a pervasive geopiety centre on the lands of he Bible; at the same time, they reinforce that attachment to sacred place with is geopiety.



James McDonald.Mount Sinai.PEF Palestine Exploration Fund (1868-1869)

Little is known of McDonald himself beyond the fact that he was a Color Sergeant who had been selected for the task due to his dual expertise in surveying and photography. The Royal Engineers were among the first military units that instituted photography as a basic skill taught to the specialists. McDonald, however, was primarily a surveyor,his main task for the Palestinian Exploration Fund. Like all the engineers, he was part of a support group, providing expertise to the scholars, but when he wasnt engaged in the Survey itself, he was expected to take photographs of important religious sites. In his role as photographer, McDonald worked directly under the personal supervision ofthe Director General of the Ordnance Survey, Major General Sir Henry James, who had been instrumental in raising the public subscriptions or funding which paid for the Survey and its staff, including the photographer. Sir Henry even used his own money to purchase the necessary photographic equipment and supplies, and the photographs taken by McDonald should be considered as supplemental to or illustrative of the (military) maps produced by the Survey party. As James explained, This map is especially required by Biblical scholars and the public, to illustrate the Bible history, and to enable them, if possible, to trace the routes which were taken by the Israelites in their wanderings in the wilderness of Sinai and to identify the mountain from which the Law was given. Despite the private/public hybridity of the mission of the Survey, the images taken by McDonald are singularly lacking in any spiritual feeling. It is clear that the Sergeant did not seek either light or shadow to imply religious implications or significance. Instead, the photographs are best seen as imperial images, worked up by a military man with a straightforward mind, recording the terrain of a weakened ally, Turkey, which was allowing Britain to possess and map what would be its future possessions. In an age of empiricism and positivism, photographs could be matched to biblical sites and became part of an archaeological collection of evidence that reinforced stories told in the Bible. The intellectual thought process matched the straightforwardness of a McDonald image: if a place mentioned in the Bible can be found, then the existence of this sacred terrain proves that the Bible is not only true but also history. Charles Darwin was thus challenged on the empirical ground of scientific evidence.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/photography-archaeology-imperialism-in-the-nineteenth-century/

Today in History for 31st August 2015

Historical Events

Events 1 - 100 of 206

1056 - Byzantine Empress Theodora becomes ill, dying suddenly a few days later, without children to succeed the throne, ending the Macedonian dynasty.

1142 - Possible date for establishment of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) League - with the aid of Hiawatha and Deganawidah

1230 - Bishop Willebrand of Utrecht grants Swells state justice

1310 - German king Heinrich VII makes his son Johan king of Bohemia

1422 - Henry VI, becomes King of England at the age of 9 months.

1535 - Pope Paul II excommunicates King Henry VIII of England

1745 - Bonnie Prince Charlie reaches Blair Castle, Scotland

1751 - British troops under Sir Robert Clive occupy Arcot, India

1772 - Hurricane destroy ships off Dominica

1778 - British kill 17 Stockbridge indians in Bronx during Revolution

1829 - Opera "Guillaume Tell" is produced (Paris)

1836 - HMS Beagle anchors in Postage Praia, Cape Verde Islands

1842 - Micah Rugg patents a nuts & bolts machine

1842 - US Naval Observatory authorized by an act of Congress

1843 - Liberty Party nominates James Birneyas presidential candidate

King of England Henry VIII1850 - California pioneers organized at Montgomery & Clay Streets

1864 - Atlanta Campaign: Battle of Jonesboro Georgia, 1900 casualties

1876 - Ottoman sultan Murat V is deposed and succeeded by his brother Abd-ul-Hamid II.

1881 - 1st US men's single tennis championships (Newport, RI)

1886 - 1st major earthquake recorded in eastern US, at Charleston SC, 110 die

1886 - Crocker-Woolworth National Bank organized

1887 - Thomas A Edison patents Kinetoscope, (produces moving pictures)

1889 - Start of Sherlock Holmes adventure "Cardboard Box" (BG)

1891 - 11th U.S. Men's National Championship: Oliver Campbell beats Clarence Hobart (2-6, 7-5, 7-9, 6-1, 6-2)

1894 - Phillies Billy Hamilton steals 7 bases

1894 - The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act passed by Richard Seddons Liberal government, making New Zealand the first country in the world to outlaw strikes in favour of compulsory arbitration

1895 - 1st pro football game (QB John Brallier paid $10 & won 12-0)

1896 - Louis Napoleon Parker's "Rosemary" premieres in NYC

1897 - General Kitchener occupies Berber, North of Khartoum

Inventor Thomas Edison1897 - Thomas Edison patented his movie camera (Kinetograph)

1900 - British troops over run Johannesburg

1900 - Dodgers' Brickyard Kennedy walks 6 straight Phillies

1902 - Split skirt 1st worn by Mrs Adolph Landeburg (horse rider)

1903 - Joe McGinnity wins his 3rd doubleheader of month

1904 - 24th U.S. Men's National Championship: Holcombe Ward beats William Clothier (10-8, 6-4, 9-7)

1905 - 25th US Men's Tennis: Beals C Wright beats Holcombe Ward (6-2 6-1 11-9)

1905 - Mbunga-rebellion takes German Fort Mahenge East-Africa

1905 - 25th U.S. Men's National Championship: Beals Wright beats Holcombe Ward (6-2, 6-1, 11-9)

1907 - Britain & Russia sign treaty with Afghanistan, Persia & Tibet

1907 - Britain, Russia & France form Triple Entente

1909 - A J Reach Co patents cork-centered baseball

1909 - Thure Johnstown wins Stockholm marathon (2:40:34.2)

26th US President Theodore Roosevelt1910 - Theodore Roosevelt makes a speech in Kansas advocating a 'square deal': property shall be 'the servant and not the master of the commonwealth'

1911 - Anthony Fokker's demonstrates aircraft "Snip"

1913 - Soccer club PSV forms in Eindhoven, Netherlands

1913 - Massive protest rally on Sackville Street attacked by the Dublin Metropolitan Police; two strikers killed by the police

1914 - 24.8 cm rainfall at Bloomingdale, Michigan (state record)

1914 - General von Kluck decides not to attack Paris

1914 - German troops reconquer Soldau/Neidenburg East-Prussia

1914 - Ecuador becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

1915 - Chicago White Sox Jimmy Lavender no-hits NY Giants, 2-0

1915 - Brazil becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

1916 - Oscar Asche's musical "Chu Chin Chow" premieres in London

1917 - In China, Sun Yat-sen and his supporters' 'rump' parliament establishes a military government and elects Sun Yat-sen as commander-in-Chief

1918 - Boston Red Sox, win earliest AL pennent ever (season ended Sept 2)

1919 - John Reed forms American Communist Labor Party in Chicago

1919 - Petlyura's Ukrainian Army kills 35 members of a Jewish defense group

1919 - Ukranian (Petlyura) Army recaptures Kiev

1920 - Belgium starts paying old age pensions

1920 - Detroit radio station is 1st to broadcast a news program on the air

1923 - League of Nations gives Belgium mandate of Ruanda-Urundi (was German)

Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini1923 - Mussolini's troops occupy Corfu

1923 - Mussolini orders the Greek Government to apologize for the deaths of an Italian general and his staff on the Greco-Albanian border

1924 - Paavo Nurmi runs world record 10,000m (30:06.2)

1928 - Brecht & Weils "Dreigroschenoper" premieres

1934 - 1st NFL Chicago All-Star Game: Chi Bears 0, All-Stars 0 (79,432)

1935 - 1st national skeet championship (Indianapolis)

1935 - Chicago White Sox Vern Kennedy no-hits Cleve Indians, 5-0

1935 - FDR signs an act prohibiting export of US arms to belligerents

1935 - Russian Aleksei Stachanov digs 6 hours, 105 tons of cabbages

1935 - White Sox Vern Kennedy no-hits Indians 5-0

1937 - Det's rookie Rudy York sets record for HRs of 18 HRs in August

1938 - 5th NFL Chicago All-Star Game: All-Stars 28, Washington 16 (74,250)

1939 - Japanese invasion army driven out of Mongolia

32nd US President Franklin D. Roosevelt1939 - Staged "Polish" assault on radio station in Gleiwitz

1940 - 1st edition pf illegal opposition newspaper Free Netherlands

1940 - 56 U-boats sunk this month (268,000 ton)

1940 - RAF Fighter Command loses 39 aircraft against Luftwaffe 41

1940 - German occupiers in Netherlands begin soap rationing

1940 - US National Guard assembles

1941 - 23 U-boats sunk this month (80,000 ton)

1941 - Great Gildersleeve, a spin-off of Fibber McGee & Molly debuts on NBC

1942 - Battle at Alam Halfa: German & Italians assault

1942 - U boats sunk this month 108 ships (544,000 ton)

1943 - 1st battle of Essex/new Yorktown: US assault on Marcus Island

1943 - Japanse occupiers intern Jewish Congregation of Sorabajo

1944 - Allied offensive at "Gothen-linie" Italy

1944 - French provisional government moves from Algiers to Paris

1944 - French troops liberate Bordeaux

1944 - Russian-Romanian troops march into Bucharest

12th Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies1945 - The Liberal Party of Australia is founded by Robert Menzies.

1947 - Hungarian communist party wins election

1947 - NY Giants set season record for HRs by a club 183 (en route to 221)

1948 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands celebrates golden jubilee

1950 - Dodger Gil Hodges hits 4 HRs & a single in a game vs Braves

1951 - 1st 33 1/3 album introduced in Dusseldorf

1953 - KRBC TV channel 9 in Abilene, TX (NBC) begins broadcasting

1953 - WKBG (now WLVI) TV channel 56 in Cambridge-Boston, MA (IND) begins

1954 - US Census Bureau forms

1954 - Hurricane Carol hits New England, 70 die, Costliest ever hurricane at the time and 1st storm name to be retired.

Famous Birthdays

Birthdays 1 - 100 of 224

3rd Roman Emperor Caligula (12)12 - Caligula, [Gaius Caesar], 3rd Roman emperor (37-41 AD)

161 - Commodus, Lanuvium, Roman Emperor (180-92)

1569 - Djehangir/Jahangir, great mogol of India

1602 - Amalia, countess of Solms-Braunfels, wife of Gov Frederik Hendrik

1663 - Guillaume Amontons, French physicist

1696 - Johann Paul Kunzen, composer

1721 - George Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol, British statesman (d. 1775)

1741 - Johann Paul Aegidius Martini, composer

1741 - Husein Gradaevi, Bosniak general (d. 1834)

1748 - Jean-Etienne Despreaux, composer

1749 - Radistschew, writer

1755 - Johann Ignaz Walter, composer

1775 - Francois de Paule Jacques Raymond de Fossa, composer

1811 - Goode Bryan, Brigadier General (Confederate Army), (d. 1885)

Roman Emperor Commodus (161)1811 - Theophile Gautier, Tarbas France, writer/poet (Albertus)

1821 - Vaclav Hugo Zavrtal, composer

1822 - Fitz John Porter, Major General (Union volunteers), (d. 1901)

1823 - Galusha Aaron Grow, MC (Union), (d. 1907)

1828 - George Leonard Andrews, Bvt Major General (Union volunteers)

1834 - Amilcare Ponchielli, Paderno Italy, composer (I Lituani)

1843 - Georg von Hertling, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1919)

1852 - Georges/Joris Helleputte, Belgian Catholic minister

1855 - Stefan Surzynski, composer

1856 - Nikoghayos Fadeyi Tigranyan, composer

1864 - Max Wilhelm Zach, composer

1870 - Maria Montessori, Italy, educator (spontaneous response), (d. 1952)

1871 - James E. Ferguson, Texan governor (d. 1944)

1874 - Edward Thorndike, Williamsburg, Massachusetts, USA, American psychologist (father of modern educational psychology)

Educator Maria Montessori (1870)1878 - Albert Riemenschneider, composer

1878 - Frank Jarvis, American athlete (d. 1933)

1879 - Joshihito, emperor of Japan (1912-26)

1879 - Viktor Alexandrovich Uspensky, composer

1879 - Alma Mahler, wife of Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel (d. 1964)

1880 - Wilhelmina HPM, queen of the Netherlands (1898-1948)

1884 - George Al Sarton, Belgian/US historian

1885 - DuBose Heyward, US novelist (Porgy)

1887 - Friedrich A Paneth, Austrian/British chemist

1888 - Ramon de Basterra, Spanish writer/diplomat (La Obra de Trajano)

1889 - A Provost Idell, father of modern volleyball

1892 - Claire DuBrey, Bonner's Ferry ID, actress (Lightnin' in the Forest)

1893 - Lily Laskine, French harpist (d. 1988)

1894 - Albert Facey, Australian writer (d. 1982)

1895 - Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger, composer

1896 - Flix-Antoine Savard, French-Canadian priest and novelist (d. 1982)

1897 - Frederic March [Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel], Racine, Wisconsin, American actor (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Best Years of Our Lives)

1897 - Marianne Bruns, writer

1899 - Paul E Garber, US founder/1st curator of National Air & Space Museum

1899 - Walter Muller von Kulm, composer

1900 - Roland Culver, actor (Thunderball, Encore), born in London, England

1900 - Gino Lucetti, Italian anarchist (d. 1943)

1903 - Arthur Godfrey, radio/TV host (Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scout), born in NYC, New York

1903 - Vladimir Janklvitch, French philosopher (d. 1985)

1905 - Dore Schary, producer/writer/director (Act 1, Boys Town, Big City)

1905 - Sal Tas, Dutch journalist & CIA agent (Het Parool) [or 1897]

1905 - Sanford Meisner, American actor and teacher (d. 1997)

1906 - Vivienne Byerley, publicist

1907 - August F Hawkins, (Rep-D-CA, 1963- )

7th President of the Philippines Ramon Magsaysay (1907)1907 - Ramon Magsaysay, politician and 7th President of the Philippines (US Legion of Merit-1952) at Iba Philippines (d. 1957)

1907 - Augustus F. Hawkins, American politician and civil rights lawmaker (d. 2007)

1907 - William Shawn, American editor (d. 1992)

1907 - Altiero Spinelli, Italian citizen and advocate of European federalism (d. 1986)

1908 - Lab Rachel Katherine Hamilton-Russell ouchere, local historian

1908 - Peter Conrad Baden, composer

1908 - William Saroyan, US, novelist/playwright (Time of Your Life)

1909 - Marie-Louise Grog-Carven, French fashion designer (Ma Griffe perfume), born in Chtellerault, Poitou-Charentes (d. 2015)

1911 - Hilde Jarecki, educationist

1912 - Ramon Vinay, operatic tenor/baritone

1912 - Reinoud Anders, [Lady Blits], Dutch actor (Hamlet)

1913 - Michiel P Gorsira, 1st Dutch Antillean in charge of Curacao (1951-67)

1913 - Sir Bernard Lovell, Bristol England, radio astronomer, founded Jodrell Bank Observatory, (d. 2012)

1914 - Richard Basehart, Zanesville Oh, actor (Voyage to Bottom of Sea)

1916 - Daniel Schorr, broadcast journalist (CBS)

1918 - Alan Jay Lerner, lyricist composer (Lerner & Loewe-My Fair Lady)

1918 - Lucrecia Roces Kasilag, composer

1919 - Amrita Preetam, Indian poet and author (d. 2005)

1920 - James Lanphier, NY, actor (Flight of Lost Balloon)

1921 - Raymond Williams, Welsh academic (d. 1988)

1923 - Larry White Grayson, British comedian (Generation Game)

1923 - Serafina K "Sera" Anstadt, Polish/Dutch actress/author

1924 - Buddy [Leonard] Hackett, Bkln, comedian (God's Little Acre, Music Man)

1924 - Klaus Hashagen, composer

1926 - Georgiy Petrovich Katys, Russia, cosmonaut (Voskhod 1 backup)

1926 - Jan de Koning, minister of Agriculture/Social Businesses (CDA)

1928 - James Coburn, Laurel Nebr, actor (Our Man Flint, Magnificent Seven)

1928 - Jeremy Stephen Maas, writer/art dealer

1929 - Julio Ramon Ribeyro, writer

1930 - Owen B Pickett, (Rep-D-Virginia)

1930 - Tiny Little Jr, Worthington Minn, pianist (Lawrence Welk Show)

1931 - Dan Rather, news anchor (CBS-TV)

NHL Legend Jean Beliveau (1931)1931 - Jean Marc Beliveau, Canadian NHL player (Montreal Canadiens, 10 Stanley Cups), born in Trois-Rivieres Quebec, (d. 2014)

1931 - Noble [Henry] Willingham, Mineola, Texas, American actor (Walker, Texas Ranger, The Corndog Man)

1932 - Benito Wogatzki, writer

1932 - Robert [Franklin] Adams, US, sci-fi author (Castaways in Time)

1932 - Roy Castle, entertainer

1934 - Nikos Xanthopoulos, Greek actor

1935 - Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther turned Republican

1935 - Frank Robinson, baseball player/manager (MVP 1961-NL 1966-AL)

1936 - Marva Nettles Collins, educator (west side preparatory school)

1937 - Guido de Moor, Dutch actor (Apart, Because the Cats)

1937 - Warren Berlinger, Bkln, actor (Larry-Joey Bishop Shop, Take Two)



Famous Weddings

Weddings 1 - 8 of 8

1940 - "Wuthering Heights" actor Laurence Olivier (33) weds "Gone With The Wind" actress Vivien Leigh (26)

Coach Vince Lombardi (1940)1940 - Football player and coach Vince Lombardi (27) weds Marie Planitz at Our Lady of Refuge Church in Bronx, New York

1952 - Soprano singer Leontyne Mary Violet Price (25) weds concert bass-baritone singer William Warfield (32)

1991 - Musician Jan Berry (Jan & Dean) weds Gertie Filip

2010 - Actress Leelee Sobieski (27) weds fashion designer Adam Kimmel in Italy

2013 - "Blue Crush" actress Kate Bosworth (30) weds director Michael Polish (42) in Philipsburg, Montana

2014 - Model and TV host Jenny McCarthy (41) weds singer Donnie Wahlberg (45) at the Hotel Baker in St. Charles, Illinois

2014 - Singer-songwriter Ashlee Simpson (29) weds "Hunger Games" actor Evan Ross (26) in Greenwich, Connecticut

Famous Deaths

Deaths 1 - 100 of 115

651 - Saint Aidan of Lindisfarne, Irish bishop and missionary

683 - Pacal II ruler of the Maya polity of Palenque

1056 - Theodora, Byzantine Empress (b. 981)

1057 - Leofric, count of Mercia/husband of Lady Godiva, dies

1158 - Sancho III, King of Castile, dies

1218 - Al-Malik ab-Adil/Saphadin/Saif al-Din), brother of Saladin, dies

1234 - Emperor Go-Horikawa of Japan (b. 1212)

1372 - Ralph Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford, English soldier (b. 1301)

1422 - Henry V, King of England (1413-22)/France (1416-19), dies

1590 - Floris Thin, politician/land advocate of Utrecht, dies

1604 - Giovanale Ancina, composer, dies at 58

1616 - Gemignano Capilupi, composer, dies at 43

1631 - Nicolaus Erich, composer, dies at 43

1638 - John Ward, composer, dies at 67

1645 - Francesco Bracciolini, Italian poet (b. 1566)

1654 - Ole Worm, Danish physician (b. 1588)

1667 - Johann Rist, composer, dies at 60

1688 - John Bunyan, preacher/novelist/author (Pilgrim's Progress), dies

1730 - Gottfried Finger, Czech composer (b. 1660?)

1741 - Johann Gottlieb Heineccius, German jurist (b. 1681)

1772 - William Borlase, English naturalist (b. 1695)

1795 - Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, composer, dies at 68

1796 - John McKinly, American physician and President of Delaware, dies at 75

1799 - Nicolas-Henri Jardin, French architect (b. 1720)

1805 - Joseph Marie Clement dall' Abaco, composer, dies at 95

1814 - Arthur Phillip, British admiral, first Governor of New South Wales (b. 1738)

1832 - Jean Nicolas Auguste Kreutzer, composer, dies at 53

1862 - George William Taylor, US Union brig-general, dies in battle

1862 - Ignaz Assmayer, composer, dies at 72

1864 - Ferdinand Lassalle, French politician (ADA), dies at 39

1867 - [Pierre-]Charles Baudelaire, Fren poet (Journaux Intimes), dies at 46

1869 - Mary Ward, Irish scientist, first automobile accident victim (b. 1827)

1873 - Charles F Pahud de Montagnes, gov-gen (Dutch East Indies), dies at 70

1875 - Oskar Peschel, German geographer (Physicist Erdkunde), dies at 49

1879 - William Barber, 6th US chief engraver (1844-79), dies

First Victim of Jack the Ripper Mary Ann Nichols (1888)1888 - Mary Ann Nichols, a 42-year-old prostitute, was found stabbed to death in London, 1st of at least five murders by Jack the Ripper

1902 - Mathilde Wesendonk, German author/poetess, dies at 73

1910 - Emils Darzins, composer, dies at 34

1918 - Joe English, Irish/Flemish signaler (WW I), dies at 36

1920 - Wilhelm Wundt, German physiologist/psychologist/philosopher, dies

1931 - Marcel Planiol, French private law scholar, dies

1934 - Johan H A Schaper, Dutch MP (SDAP), dies

1935 - Abraham Isaac Kook, rabbi/author (Hokhmat Ha-kodesh), dies

1940 - Johanna "Annie" Bakker, revue-artists/singer/actress, dies at 58

1940 - Georges Gauthier, French Canadian Roman Catholic archbishop of Montreal (b. 1871)

1941 - Marian Zwetajewa, writer, dies

1941 - Marina Tsvetaeva, Russian poet (b. 1892)

1942 - Von Bismarck, German major general, (Africa Corps), dies in battle

1944 - Killinger, German ambassador to Romania, commits suicide

1946 - Paul August von Klenau, Danish opera composer/conductor, dies at 63

1948 - Andrei A Zjdanov, Rus politician (against kosmopolitism), dies at 52

1948 - Billy Laughlin, American actor (b. 1932)

1949 - Andre Debierne, French chemist/physicist (actinium), dies

1949 - Paul Hoffer, composer, dies at 53

1952 - Henri Bourassa, French Canadian political leader (b. 1868)

1959 - Charles Delaney, dies at 67

1963 - George F Broque, cubist painter, dies at 81 in Paris

1963 - Georges Braque, French painter (b. 1882)

1964 - Carole Coleman, singer (Make Mine Music), dies at 42

1966 - Kasimir Edschmid, [Karl E Schmidt], German writer, dies at 75

1967 - Ilja G Ehrenburg, Russian poet/writer (9th wave), dies at 76

1967 - Michael Fitzmaurice, dies of lymphoma at 59

1968 - Dennis O'Keefe, actor (Suspicion), dies of lung cancer at 60

1968 - George P Gooch, English historian/House of Commons leader, dies

1969 - Ottmar Gerster, composer, dies at 72

Heavyweight Boxing Champion Rocky Marciano (1969)1969 - Rocky Marciano, former heavyweight champ, dies in a plane crash at 45

1973 - John Ford, US director (Mary of Scotland, Stagecoach), dies at 78

1973 - Raymond Keane, dies at 66

1973 - Stan Worthington, English cricket pace bowler (9 Tests 1930-36), dies

1974 - William Pershing Benedict, American pilot

1974 - Norman Kirk, New Zealand prime minister (b. 1923

1975 - Pierre Blaise, French actor (Lacombe Lucien), dies at 24

1976 - Kornelis H Miskotte, theologist (If the Gods Keep Silent), dies at 81

1978 - John Wrathall, President of Rhodesia (b. 1913)

1979 - E J "Tiger" Smith, England cricket wicket-keeper 1911-14), dies

1979 - Sally Rand, stripper, dies at 75

1981 - Joseph H Hirschhorn, US art collector/founder H Museum, dies at 82

1981 - Victor Trumper Jr, cricketer (7 games for NSW, 74 runs 12 wkts), dies

1985 - Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Australian biologist, Nobel laureate (b. 1899)

Film director John Ford (1973)1986 - Henry Moore, English sculptor/cartoonist, dies at 88

1986 - Urho K Kekkonen, premier/president of Finland, dies at 85

1990 - Johnny Lindsay, cricketer (South African wicket-keeper 1947), dies

1990 - Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton, NY Knick, dies at 65 of a heart attack

1991 - Leigh Watson, US aviation pioneer/air force general, dies at 93

1993 - Gerben Wagenaar, Dutch resistance fighter (communist), dies at 80

1994 - Artur Balsam, Polish/US pianist, dies at 88

1994 - Barbara Hammer Avedon, scriptwriter, dies at 69

1994 - Norman "Doc" Jones, bassist, dies at 68

1995 - Beant Singh, PM of Punjab province of India, assassinated at 73

1995 - David Farrar, actor (Beat Girl, I Accuse, Watusi), dies at 87

1995 - David Richard Holloway, literary Editor, dies at 71

1995 - Hajime Miterai, industrialist, dies at 56

1995 - Horst Janssen, graphic Artist, dies at 65

1995 - John Erik Jonsson, businessman/Mayor of Dallas, dies at 93

1996 - David Scott, priest, dies at 72

1996 - Harald James Penrose, pilot, dies at 92

1996 - Milton "Tippy" Larkin, band leader, dies at 85

Princess of Wales Diana Spencer (1997)1997 - Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, dies in car crash in Paris at 36

2000 - Patricia Owens, Canadian actress (b. 1925)

2002 - Lionel Hampton, American vibraphone player (b. 1908)

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A Picasso, A Yacht And A Dollop Of International Intrigue

A photo of Pablo Picasso's painting, Head of a Young Woman, released by French authorities on Tuesday. The painting was seized from a yacht on July 31 in Corsica, France. The painting belongs to a Spanish billionaire who was planning to sell it elsewhere in Europe. But Spanish authorities say it is a "national treasure" that can't be sent abroad without government permission. Douane Francaise via AP hide caption

itoggle caption Douane Francaise via AP A photo of Pablo Picasso's painting, Head of a Young Woman, released by French authorities on Tuesday. The painting was seized from a yacht on July 31 in Corsica, France. The painting belongs to a Spanish billionaire who was planning to sell it elsewhere in Europe. But Spanish authorities say it is a "national treasure" that can't be sent abroad without government permission.

Douane Francaise via AP

For nearly 40 years, Jaime Botn, a member of the wealthy family that runs Spain's Santander Bank, has owned Pablo Picasso's Head of a Young Woman. Botn kept the painting on his private yacht docked on Spain's Mediterranean Coast.

The 1906 work is not one of the Spanish master's most famous paintings, but it is from an important year in Picasso's life, and it has been valued at up to $28 million.

Botn's son Alfonso took the boat for a sail last month to the French island of Corsica, and that's where the trouble began. French customs officials boarded the yacht and seized the painting.

The yacht Adix, owned by Spanish billionaire Jaime Botin, sails off the coast of Corsica on Aug. 4, four days after French customs officials seized a Picasso painting on board. The painting has been valued at around $28 million. Pascal Pochard Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Pascal Pochard Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images The yacht Adix, owned by Spanish billionaire Jaime Botin, sails off the coast of Corsica on Aug. 4, four days after French customs officials seized a Picasso painting on board. The painting has been valued at around $28 million.

Pascal Pochard Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images

"We found the artwork on the boat already packaged up," French customs official Vincent Guivarch told reporters. "It appeared ready to be shipped."



Authorities believe the Botns were planning to send the painting to Switzerland, to sell it there. But Spain considers the Picasso a "national treasure," a cultural asset that can't be taken out of the country.

This case has raised questions about rich art collectors' rights to do what they want with paintings they own versus government efforts to protect what they consider to be part of the national heritage.

"The law says that if the artwork is more than 100 years old and has national cultural significance, the owner needs to apply for permission to take it abroad or sell it," says Jos Castillo, a national heritage expert at Spain's University of Granada.

Spanish authorities carry a box containing Picasso's painting Head of a Young Woman at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid after being transferred from the French island of Corsica on Tuesday. Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images Spanish authorities carry a box containing Picasso's painting Head of a Young Woman at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid after being transferred from the French island of Corsica on Tuesday.

Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

Botn has been denied such permission for years. Spanish officials say he finally gave up and was trying to smuggle the painting through Corsica.

Botn's lawyer says Spanish law shouldn't even apply, because the yacht where the painting was kept sails under a British flag, no matter where it's docked.



Spanish police flew to Corsica on Tuesday, where they picked up the painting from French customs officials. The painting was then taken to Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum on Tuesday evening and will remain there until its legal status is resolved.

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Video Shows Unauthorized Visitor One Night Before Museum Theft

203

Investigators have just released old surveillance video of the Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in 1990, just before it was robbed of $500 million in art. They're asking the public for help.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

An update now on a notorious unsolved art heist from 1990. Late last week, federal investigators dug up an old surveillance video of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The film captures the scene before thieves made off with $500 million worth of Vermeer, Manet and a raft of Degas masterworks. The footage shows an unauthorized visitor being buzzed in by a security guard. That visitor enters through the same door from which the thieves made off with the loot the following night. They had cut the priceless canvases out of their frames. FBI investigators and the Massachusetts district attorney are asking the public to help identify the man. His shadowy face is visible two minutes into the video. The haul remains the largest art theft in American history. A quarter-century after the burglary, the 13 empty frames left in the museum that night are still on a display.

Copyright 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio.

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Durand-Ruel: The Art Dealer Who Liked Impressionists Before They Were Cool

Paul Durand-Ruel, shown above in his gallery in 1910, acquired some 5,000 impressionist works long before others were buying them. Dornac/Durand-Ruel & Cie/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption Dornac/Durand-Ruel & Cie/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

It might seem unusual for an exhibit to focus on a man who sold paintings rather than the artists who painted them. But there was one particular 19th century Paris art dealer who shaped the art market of his day and ours by discovering artists who became world-wide favorites. He's now the subject of a major exhibition in Philadelphia.

Paul Durand-Ruel was quite the shopper. He was the first buyer of Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, Monet's Stacks of Wheat (End of Day Autumn), some 100 works in the Muse d'Orsay's impressionist collection in Paris, and more than than 100 paintings in Dr. Albert Barnes' Foundation in Philadelphia all purchased from Durand-Ruel.

Durand-Ruel purchased some 200 of Edouard Manet's works, including his 1864 painting The Battle of the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama. Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

"He bought over 1,000 Monets, 1,500 Renoirs, 800 Pissarros, 400 Sisleys, 400 Cassatts, and about 200 Manets," says Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Jennifer Thompson. "So over 5,000 impressionist pictures all told."

It was Durand-Ruel who spotted their talent before anyone else. In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, Durand-Ruel packed up all his stock, left Paris and went to London. There, an artist friend also an migr gave him some advice: He should go check out the work of two guys named Monet and Pissarro.

Or, at least that's how Thompson's co-curator Joe Rishel tells it. Thompson has a slightly different version. Here's how she says it happened: "One of his artists came in one day with a young French painter, introducing him and saying, 'This artist will surpass us all' and that artist was Claude Monet."

Pissarro heard about all the Monets Durand-Ruel had bought, and not wanting to miss out brought his work over. The dealer was not in, but Pissaro left his paintings at the gallery.

"Durand-Ruel immediately writes him a letter saying: 'I'm so sorry I missed you. I'm delighted with the paintings you left. Could you name a price and bring me others?' " says Thompson. "So that of course was the start of what would be the pivotal movement of Durand-Ruel's career, which was the meeting of the impressionists."

Durand-Ruel was unique in that he would buy out an artist's studio right at the outset. He bought 29 of Alfred Sisley's paintings in the very first year that he met him. Above, Sisley's 1872 The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art Durand-Ruel was unique in that he would buy out an artist's studio right at the outset. He bought 29 of Alfred Sisley's paintings in the very first year that he met him. Above, Sisley's 1872 The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

Eventually the dealer went back to Paris. He met Degas, Sisley, Renoir and others, and in a move that was quite unusual started buying out their studios.

"He buys 29 Pissarros, 29 Sisleys, 10 Degases, two Renoirs all within the first year of meeting these artists," Thompson says.

Neither Degas nor Cassatt particularly liked the term "impressionism"; to them it implied carelessness and haste. They called themselves "independents." Above, Cassatt's 1893 work The Child's Bath. The Art Institute of Chicago/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption The Art Institute of Chicago/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art Neither Degas nor Cassatt particularly liked the term "impressionism"; to them it implied carelessness and haste. They called themselves "independents." Above, Cassatt's 1893 work The Child's Bath.

The Art Institute of Chicago/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

Buying so much so early was an innovation, Thompson explains. "Other dealers would buy 10 works, wait for them to sell and then come back and buy more. But he was very innovative in buying large amounts of work. ... It enabled him to corner the market, and it also was a tremendous show of support for the artist."

But it was also risky business.

"It was quite a big gamble to invest so much money and much of his potential resources into artists," says Thompson. "And in the case of the impressionists, he was investing in artists who were not widely recognized ... or liked. [It was] the rare collector in 1870s who would buy an impressionist painting."



It often took 10 to 20 years for Durand-Ruel to sell some of the paintings. Monet's brushy picture of a misty morning in London's Green Park, Manet's image of a battle between two ships carrying supplies in the American Civil War, Degas' pale ballerinas there was no ready audience for those works.

In 1876, when he filled three rooms of his gallery at 11 rue Le Peletier with art for the second impressionist show, French critics were vicious. In response to a Renoir nude depicted in a sun-dappled setting, critics commented: "Go ahead and try to explain to Renoir a woman's flesh doesn't look like decomposing flesh it's not composed of purple and green splotches."

Over his lifetime, Degas created 1,500 paintings, pastels and drawings of dancers more than any other artist. Above, his 1872 work, The Dance Foyer at the Opera on the rue Le Peletier. Musee d'Orsay/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption Musee d'Orsay/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art Over his lifetime, Degas created 1,500 paintings, pastels and drawings of dancers more than any other artist. Above, his 1872 work, The Dance Foyer at the Opera on the rue Le Peletier.

Musee d'Orsay/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

But Durand-Ruel remained loyal to his artists. He gave them one-man shows another innovation and supported them in all sorts of ways.

"He became a very good friend of the impressionists and would offer them stipends," Thompson says. "When they needed to pay rent or had bills, he would offer them loans. Even later into the 1890s he was making advances allowing them to buy some great properties. So when Monet goes to buy his property at Giverny, he does so with an advance against pictures that he's going to be presenting at Durand-Ruel's gallery."

There were dark days when Durand-Ruel went broke. And days when his artists lost faith in their own work. Thompson says in one series of letters to the dealer, Monet expresses the frustration he is having while painting on the Norman coast. He threatens to destroy his canvases. "And Durand-Ruel says: 'Please don't do that. I'll send you money. Just send me the canvases in return.' So he's also offering guidance and saying: 'Don't despair if you're feeling like you're in a rut artistically. I believe in you. Continue to paint and we'll find a market.' "

Monet painted The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil (A Corner of the Garden with Dahlias) in 1873. National Gallery of Art/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption National Gallery of Art/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art Monet painted The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil (A Corner of the Garden with Dahlias) in 1873.

National Gallery of Art/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

In addition to friendship, and financial and moral support, the dealer gave the painters his trust. "Durand-Ruel never had contracts with his artists that established a kind of exclusive relationship," says Thompson, "but he did pride himself and really prized his relationship with artists and got very nervous when they started talking to other dealers. He wanted to be the exclusive dealer for impressionists, and that made sense because he had the largest stock of anyone."

Renoir painted this portrait of Durand-Ruel in 1910. Courtesy of Philadelpha Museum of Art hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Philadelpha Museum of Art Renoir painted this portrait of Durand-Ruel in 1910.

Courtesy of Philadelpha Museum of Art

So was he a visionary, an art lover, or a canny businessman? Thompson says it was all of the above.

"He talks constantly in his memoirs about his love of art and his support of artists," she says, "but he is an extraordinary businessman and an entrepreneur. When you look at his business practices, he was extraordinarily clever."

Case in point: It was obvious that Europe didn't like the impressionists very much. So in 1886 the dealer packed up 300 works in 43 crates and took them by boat to America. He spent three months in the U.S., putting on an exhibition traveling to Washington, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, visiting collectors. He sold 49 pictures for about $40,000 nice money for art in those days. A year later he opened a gallery in New York. (It operated until 1950!) Many of the works he sold became the centerpieces of impressionist collections in major American museums.

To think that, had I passed away at 60, I would have died debt-ridden and bankrupt, surrounded by a wealth of underrated treasures.

Paul Durand-Ruel, just before his death at age 89

So America saved Durand-Ruel and his painters. And his painters were saved by Durand-Ruel. Just before the end of his life, Monet said: "We would have died of hunger without Durand-Ruel, all we impressionists."



Durand-Ruel himself died in 1922 at the age of 89. "At last the impressionist masters triumphed," he said. "My madness had been wisdom. To think that, had I passed away at 60, I would have died debt-ridden and bankrupt, surrounded by a wealth of underrated treasures."

"Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting" is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art its only U.S. venue through Sept. 13. It's a show about a principled, devoted dealer and the artists he supported in so many unprecedented ways.

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Photographing the Other: Edward Curtis, Part One

Photography as Re-Enactment

Part One

It is difficult to know what to do with Edward Curtis (1868-1952)was he a photographer, an anthropologist, an ethnographer, a film director, a historian? Did he combine all of these disciplines or did Curtis participate in none of these activities? Perhaps Curtis himself provided the best clue when he said, While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically, and indeed, when one views his sepia-toned images of Native Americans and the romanticized mood that has been created for the subjects, the word artist is the designation that comes to mind. Edward Curtis undertook a task that was ultimately a thankless one, that of attempting to capture a civilization deliberately extinguished before its heirs could perish with the last lingering memories of what it had once meant to be a native of America, living free. It is perhaps no coincidence that when Curtis began his epic journeys through the surviving settlements of Native Americans in 1890, was the same year that an official United States census revealed that the frontier or a lightly populated region no longer existed in the West. The population was now two persons or more per square mile. A young historian, Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932), was so impressed with that apparently arcane fact that in 1893 he presented a paper titledThe Significance of the Frontier in American History.

Turner defined the term as, ..the frontier is the outer edge of the wavethe meeting point between savagery and civilization.. and noted that ..it lies at the hither edge of free land. This famous essay primarily focused on how the idea of a frontier or a place where one could go West, from the Allegheny mountains to the plains of the Midwest to the coastal edges of Washington tosettle territory assumed to be open and there for the taking. What is remarkable about this essay is that it studies the impact of the concept of the West or the frontier as a place beyond, needing to be civilized and rendered productive, upon the American imagination and character. For Turner, American is always white, and, while one would not expect in such a short essay, that the would mention the haven that former slaves found west of the Mississippi, the absence of the original Americans, the natives is very telling. For Turner, the mis-named Indians have vanished. In not mentioning the impact of the frontier and its ending upon the minds of Native Americans, the historian may have been sticking closely to his stated topic or he may have, along with many Americans, assumed that after decades of physical and cultural genocide, that the paradox of inhabitants living on free land had been solved. It would be decades before the American conscience would be awakened in a post Civil Rights Era and authors such as Dee Brown (1908-2002) and his seminal book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), would write a more complete history of measures were taken to sweep the prairies clear for the settlers. In the meantime, there was Edward Curtis.

When Curtis began his quest to collect the remnants of cultural memories before time spirited them away, most western Native Americansthose who had survived or had not fled to Canadahad been rounded up and placed securely inside reservations, or lands placed in reserve for their use alone. Ostensibly, these lands were the homelands of the tribe, but what was ceded to the Native Americans were the worst lands, those unwanted by the whites, left behind by the settlers, who took over all desirable territory. By the 1890s, these remaining peoples were not only placed out of sight and out of mind but also were expected to vanish. Although the notion of a vanishing American had, to white people, a certain romantic appeal combined with a very pragmatic assumption of inevitability, the actual physical killing was mostly over. By the end of the century, vanishing involved deliberate erasure of the many stories and songs and dances of a people deemed insufficiently modern. Given that nothing of their myths or histories were worthy of recording, the children would be removed from the parents, played in boarding schools, where their hair was cut, English was learned, and the old ways were replaced with practical knowledge suited to the white world. Curtis made it his life work to recover the rich trove of recollection and experience from the Native Americans held in western reservations before it was too late and they were assimilated (vanished) into the mainstream white society.



Edward Curtis. Canyon de Chelly(1904)

As Native American historian, George Horse Capture, noted,

Not content to deal only with the present population, and their arts and industries, he recognized that the present is a result of the past, and the past dimension must be included, as well. Guided by this concept, Curtis made 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of Indian language and music. In addition he took over 40,000 images from over 80 tribes, recorded tribal mythologies and history, and described tribal population, traditional foods, dwellings, clothing, games, ceremonies, burial customs, biographical sketches and other primary source information: all from a living as well as past tradition. Extending the same principle to the photographs, he presented his subjects in a traditional way whenever possible and even supplied a bit of the proper clothing when his subjects had none. Reenactments of battles, moving camp, ceremonies and other past activities were also photographed. These efforts provided extended pleasure to the elders and preserve a rare view of the earlier ways of the people.



Edward Curtis. The Vanishing Race, back and front (1904)

Despite such a sad ending to an endeavor begun with such high ideals, in his own time, Curtis was respected and well regarded. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt wrote the forward for the entire project:



In Mr. Curtis we have both an artist and a trained observer, whose pictures are pictures, not merely photographs; whose work has far more than mere accuracy, because it is truthful. All serious students are to be congratulated because he is putting his work in permanent form; for our generation offers the last chance for doing what Mr. Curtis has done. The Indian as he has hitherto been is on the point of passing away. His life has been lived under conditions thru which our own race past so many ages ago that not a vestige of their memory remains. It would be a veritable calamity if a vivid and truthful record of these conditions were not kept. No one man alone could preserve such a record in complete form. Others have worked in the past, and are working in the present, to preserve parts of the record; but Mr. Curtis, because of the singular combination of qualities with which he has been blest, and because of his extraordinary success in making and using his opportunities, has been able to do what no other man ever has done; what, as far as we can see, no other man could do. He is an artist who works out of doors and not in the closet. He is a close observer, whose qualities of mind and body fit him to make his observations out in the field, surrounded by the wild life be commemorates. He has lived on intimate terms with many different tribes of the mountains and the plains. He knows them as they hunt, as they travel, as they go about their various avocations on the March and in the camp. He knows their medicine men and sorcerers, their chiefs and warriors, their young men and maidens. He has not only seen their vigorous outward existence, but has caught glimpses, such as few white men ever catch, into that strange spiritual and mental life of theirs; from whose innermost recesses all white men are forever barred. Mr. Curtis in publishing this book is rendering a real and great service; a service not only to our own people, but to the world of scholarship everywhere.

However history, post 1970s, has not been kind to the photographer and very real questions arise in the gulf between the admittedly beautiful photographs and their mode of ethnocentric production. Curtis was unfortunate in his timing in so many ways. A generation later than the photographers who were among the first to photograph the bewildered Native Americans in the western military forts, such as Timothy OSullivan, Curtis did not have access to the actual experience of native life on the plains, in the southwest or in the northwest. Working twenty years after the opening of the frontier, Curtis was forced into being an anthropologist at a time when this new profession was still being established through trial and error. Contemporary anthropology is painfully aware that the mere presence of an observer alters the situation, but in the time of Curtis his active intervention into reservation life was totally acceptable. In addition, Curtis was working within a documentary tradition that was still quite unsophisticated. In his time, documentation was considered truth, because the use of a camera created the illusion of fact as if the image itself corresponded to reality. In fact, documentation hasalways been framed from a particular point of view in order to make a certainpoint. Only selectedtruths or evidence is recorded or put forward, not out of mal fois but due to the creator looking in one direction, rather than another. But in the time of Curtis, all that was required was the effect of the real. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, Curtis was not trained and was not qualified to do the serious study he intended to do. Perhaps the fault was not his own, for he worked with a famous anthropologist and an authority on the Cherokees, George Bird Grinnell, who could have and should have advised the photographer on the proper procedures when studying an unfamiliar culture.

In short, the well-meaning and laudable enterprise of Edward Curtis was problematic from the very start in ways that were unknown to himself. In the process of recording the life of the remaining Native Americans, Curtis, in a flagrant disregard for accuracy, combined cultural artifacts from different tribes, turned a blind eye to the actual social conditions and economic desertion of his subjects, who in some instances, were near starvation, in favor of recreating an idealized past. When his work was rediscovered and revisited, the new historical scholarship, informed by a sharpawareness of embedded racism, could see all too starkly, the rather chilling scenario of a man, privileged by his color, exploiting a subordinated and oppressed people, forcing them to remain in a mythic past, a past that few of them had actually participated in. Acting as a powerful director, Curtis ordered up a revision of Native American life that suspiciously resembled the Western, the movie. Regardless of the hundreds of recordings of languages soon to be extinct, the many interviews which collected historical accounts that would have otherwise never been acquired, the work of Curtis was tainted by the superimposition of an imperialperspective upon a conquered people. The result of the photographers life work was a romanticized costume drama that reflected a white colonial and patronizing perspective on a doomed way of life, lovely but unable to cope with the present.



Edward Curtis.An Oasis in the Bad Lands (1905)

One would expect, therefore, for the project of Edward Curtis, from his many albums, attempts at filmmaking, thousands of photographs and so on, to be put under a scrutiny with a mindset that simply did not exist in his time. Every historian works under the same burden as that of an anthropologist, that intervention inevitably changes the field of scrutiny. Even the founder of modern history, Leopold von Ranke, stated, History differs from all other scholarly activities by being also an art. Ranke, who often used literary devices to relate historical events, stated in his preface toHistories of the Latin and Teutonic Nations,To history has been assigned the task of judging thepast, of insuring he world of today for the benefit of future years.He added thatStrict description of the fact, although it might limit us and prove to be unpleasant, is without doubt the supreme law.Due to the precedents set by Ranks, the idea of an archive as being the appropriate site of research for the historian became the foundation of historical study. But in the early eighteenth century, the idea of the archive itself was not critiqued, but, given that Curtis took on multiple roles, especially as that of a collector of objects and artifacts that constituted an archive, one must consider his magnum opus an intentional archive. But is his work art masquerading as an archive? Is his historical research a recreation of something that had never been or was Curtis, in fact, gathering up the last of a dying culture? Do his intentions matter or does the contemporary rereading of him images take precedent? In other words, with the work of Edward Curtis we are faced with the historians dilemma: does one judge history in terms of todays thinking?

If one follows the thinking of Ranke, there is one element that is hard to debate, and that is his admonishment to strictly adhere to facts. Here is where Curtis can perhaps be faulted. The facts of the actuals conditions of Native American life during the fin-de-sicle period, had he chosen to show the real situation, would have been nothing short of an indictment of a systematic crushing of a culture judged to be too inferior to survive. But, one must ask, who wanted to see such images? The audience of socially conscious critiques of governmental policies was small and the number of potential viewers of the vanishing race was large. In undertaking what was essentially a commercial enterprise, Edward Curtis was posthumously caught between two uneasy placesan artist attempting to be a documentarian and an amateur anthropologist, creating flawed evidence. The second part of this post on Curtis will discuss the photographer and his many contemporary critics.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/photographing-the-other/

Photographing Imperialism, Part Two

Samuel Borne: Kashmirand the Aesthetics ofConquest

In her seminal book, British Rule in India: A Historical Sketch (1857), Harriet Martineau called India our great Asiatic dependency and described the Himalayas as a steep slope like a diversified wall with embrasures, covering an area of from 90 to 120 miles in breadth, and running a line of 1,500 miles. From a time beyond record the ridge of this slope has been called by the people who live below it is the Abode of Cold or of SnowHimlaya. She continued to explain the meaning of the motion range to the British people, ..we need not scruple to mount the Abode of Coldto the very palace of the old divinityand use his standpoint, and borrow his eyes, for our survey of our own dominions lying below. This is an elegant statement of Empire, clearly linking the divine right to rule borrowed by the English people from god with exploration which was in turn coupled to imperialism. Indeed, understanding the journeys of Samuel Bourne into the Himalayas it is necessary to understand The Great Game. The Himalayas are a long and majestic mountain range that runs the entire border of northern India. Most of the Himalayas lie along the border of China and India, but Bournes destination was a small portion of the mountains, a territory contingent to British controlled India, the independent (as of 1846) kingdom of Kashmir. Kashmir, lying north and just outside of direct British interests was interesting the the Empire because this part of the range erected a formidable barrier to invasion from Russia and was cut by trade routes that were vital to the interests of trade and commerce.



For the second half of the nineteenth century, the Empires of England and Russia fought a long and silent cold war,struggling for control of the various stan territoriesAfghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistanthat stood between them both. An examination of the modern maps, with all these territories clearly spelled out also explains the Crimean War (1853-1856) in which England and France joined forces with Turkey against Russia in order to prevent the Eastern Empire from threatening the Ottoman Empire along the Danube River. Russia was also threatening the British hold on India along the northern borders, thwarted only by the mountains and the buffer zone of territories such as Afghanistan, which both Empires attempted to control, a task that has historically proven to be impossible. In point of fact, the first English photographer to explore the Himalayas was James Burke who entered into the contested zone during the First Afghan War and the First and Second Sikh Wars, early skirmishes in the Great Game. In his 2002 book,From Kashmir to Kabul: The Photographs of Burke and Baker, 1860-1900,Omar Kahn referred to the colonial imaginations conquest of Kashmir. What Kahn was describing was an emotional investment on the part of the British in what was essentially a fantasy that would be created by an English eye that sought both the familiarforests, lakes, and villageswhile also glorying in the majesty of mist-veiled peaks that ascended into the clouds while below two conquering giants engaged in feints towards one another in the valleys below.



The Great Game was a chess match between two burgeoning Empires, a game, which given the difficult territory, was a contest neither could win. For the British, Kashmir was a mysterious region at the edges of its official borders, a land of legend and myth. Today, Kashmir, a largely Muslim territory is described as Indian-controlled, a euphemism that elides the fact that Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India and that the Indian part of Kashmir has been engaged in a decades long and bloody struggle to separate itself from the clutches of the massive continent. In the 1860s, politically, Kashmir was a buffer zone, in a time of imperialism, the Himalayas were places to be explored and conquered, mapped and tamed by the ever expanding British interests. When Bourne photographed the Memorial for the fallen at Cawnpore, the framing of the architectural homage to the fallen was an obligatory stop for any photographer of Empire, but his eyes were set on places less conquered and claimed by his predecessors. Like other photographers in India, Bourne was a professional, making all the steps and stops expected by the home audience identifying itself with the conquests of the British Empire, while seeking new scenes not so familiar. In his three excursions into Kashmir, from 1863-1869, Bourne left behind the urban areas of India and the culture he held in a certain amount of contempt and entered the realm of the sublime. In November of 1862 he wrote,

What a mighty unbarring of mountains! it was impossible to gaze on this tumultuous sea of mountains with being deeply affected with their terrible majesty and awful grandeur, without an elevation of the Sous capacities, and without a silent uplifting of the heart to Him who formed such stupendous works, whose eye alone has scanned the red depths of their sunless recesses, and whose presence only has rested on their mysterious and sublime elevations; and it must be to the credit of Photography that it teaches the mind to see the beauty and power of such scenes as these, and renders itmore susceptible of their sweet and elevating impression.



Wooded Valley from Fulaldarn with the Srikanta Peaks in the Distance(1860s)

The Kashmir beckoned Bourne, attracted by its relative inaccessibility and remoteness and the legends that still cling to the very name itself. The Himalayas must have seemed to Bourne to be amenable to the categories of British landscape painting, especially the sublime. Just as in the American West, the colonizing mindset would have framed the aesthetics of photographing the unknown in a way to make the strangeness seem both novel and familiar at the same time. In other words, during his three treks into the Himalayas, Bourne familiarized himself and his audience with the magnificant scenery of Kashmir while, asSandeep Banerjeepointed out in his 2014 article Not Altogether Unpicturesque: Samuel Bourne and the Landscaping of the Victorian Himalaya, the photographer tamed the sublime into the picturesque. But Bournes description of his own work, evokes his personal feelings of awe and wonder, evoking poetics,What a mighty up bearing of mountains! What an endless vista go gigantic ranges and valleys, untold and unknown! Peak rose above peak, summit above summit, range above and beyond range, innumerable and boundless, until the mind refused to follow the eye in its attempt to comprehend the whole in one grand conception.



Samuel Bourne.Poplar Avenue. Srinagar. Kashmir (1864)

But Bourne also described his mission in India was to search for the Indian picturesque. He made three trips in to the Himalayan ranges, substituting what were Photographic Expeditions for imperial explorations. Hefirst explored the Simla Hills and Sutlej valley in 1863, returning with one hundred forty seven photographs, and then he scouted the Kangra Valley and Kashmir in 1864, ending his time in Kashmir with asix month expedition to Kulu, Lahoul and Spiti in 1866, where he photographed the Gangotri Glacier, the source of the Ganges. The result was thousand of photographs andfour series of letters he wrote for theBritish Journal of Photography, letters which were not published in their entireity until 1870. Bourne was very fortunate, according to all accounts, to have gone into partnership with Charles Shepherd, his co-photographer and printer. The result of their Calcutta business, Bourne & Shepherd, were beautifully developed exquisitely rendered flawlessly executed images made from wet plates. These photographs were seamless film capable of displaying extreme detail with a quality that made him the most successful photographer of Indian scenes and allowed him to expand his business to Bombay and Simla.



Samuel Bourne.View in Narkunda Forest, Chini Valley, Himalayas (1864)

Writing for the Getty Museum, Sarah McDonalds article Man of His Time, described as epitomizing all the clichs of the Victorian gentleman abroad: a conceit of his British standing; a bullying, colonial attitude towards the natives, traveling with a ridiculous quantity of extraneous luggage including ad hoc pieces of furniture, and an almost lunatic persistence in pursuit of his hazardous expeditions.The quest into Kashmir for Bourne mirrored the next phase of exploration and discovery on the part of the ever-confident Britain. Now that relative calm had been imposed on the realm, such ventures now fell into the realm of extreme sport. Women were able to participate in such adventures but the individual conquest of exotic locales were mainly a male enterprise that, in the minds of imperialists, was linked to pig-sticking and polo, quintessentially masculine pastimes. Exploring the far off mountain ranges involved the Englishman in the role of conquerer and leader, employing scores of servantsBourne employed forty some on his first journey (and they quit his service and abandoned him in dangerous circumstances)and gave him the sense of being an individual ruler of his own enterprise.





Samuel Bourne.Gangotri Glacier and the Bhagirathi Peaks (1866)

AsPramod K. Nayar, the great post-colonialist scholar of theUniversity of Hyderabad, pointed out inEnglish Writing and India, 16001920: Colonizing Aesthetics (2007), exploration was linked to hunting and domination and to masculinity and Bourne would have been transporting his heavy cameras and multiple glass plates in a fairly domesticated adventure. Writing in what Naya described as a discourse of colonial conquest, Bourne complained that even his large size cameras could not encompass the scope and expanse of the Himalayas. Naya continued in his explanation of the meaning of concepts, suchas an aesthetic mode.

It is in this context of a disappearing exotic, excessive tourism, the sense of vulnerability and the desire to react colonial control (after 1857) that the picturesque is revived in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The search forpicturesque scenes in an era of greater imperial control, mapped terrain and improved transport facilities scaled for and resulted in a new version of the aesthetic..Danger is as integral to the luxuriant as the passive to the beautiful. What the English traveller seeks is an escape form a routine of everyday life and therefore embarks on a quest for difficulty.

And Bournes explorations were as extreme as his ego, but he earned his reputation as being a peerless and fearless photographer. In addition to carrying a food supply of live sheep and goats and a portable darkroom tent, he photographed at a record height of almost 19,000 feet where he achieved the promise of photography, its marvelous truth and power and its ability to record and render, all in the spirit of colonialpower. The military-like marches by Bourne could not have been carried out without his scores of Indian subalterns, who rarely if ever were depicted in his scenes of photographic conquest, termed by Nigel Leask as imperial picturesque in his 2004 book Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel-Writing, 1770-1840.The Kashmir of Samuel Bourne is orientalized in the sense that the region is fashioned into The Other or the alien yet familiarized but wild Indian version of the Highlands and the Lake Country. The mere use of the words, picturesqueand sublime in the context of colonial and imperial describe the enterprise of Empire in India which used an imperial discourse, both text and image based, which settled upon the continent like a heavy hand. The British armchair traveller was given the illusion of power and containment over India, even in its most dangerous and remote regions, and these adventurous wanderings of the photographer proved that these distant lands of English desire could be owned and set in place as the jewel in the crown in the regalia of Queen Victoria.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/photographing-imperialism/

Photography, the Archive, and Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, Part Two

Nineteenth Century Imperialism in the Middle East

Part Two:Flix Bonfils and the Levant

The Levant was essentially a European imaginary configuration imposed upon a certain stretch of the moribund Ottoman Empire, but more precisely, the Levant, a term derived from the French word for rising, or levant,meaning to rise, like the sun or to get out of bed in the morning. For French kings, the Levant was a ceremonial event, witnessed by privileged courtiers, and the importation of a French word to an Arab speaking word speaks volumes of the rising Orientalism during the nineteenth century. During the early decades of the century, the lingua franca of the coastal region east of the Mediterranean Sea, was a simple version of Italian, but when the ties of the French government and the Ottoman Empire strengthened, in the second half of the century, French became the European language of the Levant. On one hand, the Levant was, since the fifteenth century, a figment of European desires, on the other, its major port cities, such as Beirut and Alexandria, signified the commercial role of the region as a conduit for European trade. As a map of the area suggests, the Levant was border territory, a slice of land where East and West met, where Jews, Christians and Muslims mingled, and where empires, British, French and Turkish sat down to do business.

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As the outward looking edge facing Europe, the Levant was comparatively familiar, while the interior of the territories east of the trade coastwere virtually untouched by either the French or the British, the key players in the Orient. But as the French were in the midst of building the Suez Canal, in 1861 the Emperor Napolon III became uneasy over the unknown deserts stretching beyond his control and knowledge. The blank map, todays Saudi Arabia, was a truly dangerous place for the unwary and un-pious to visit, for here was the home land of the most virulently fundamental strain of Islam, the site of the Wahabee beliefs. The individual selected by the Emperor to reconnoiter this interiorin disguisewas one of historys strangest characters, William Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888). Although he came from a privileged sector of British society, Palsgrave was one of those restless Europeans who fled the conventional and banked like a pool ball around a variety of identities and guises. He began as a Protestant, became a Jesuit, and, as a scholar of all things Arabic, Palgrave was as close as any European could come to being an expert on Muslim society and religious beliefs. In his 2003 bookIn Pursuit of Arabia,Rshid Shz attempted to untangle the complexities that were Palgrave.

It is difficult to believe how Palsgrave, who came from a respectable British family the members of which excelled in the service of Britain, could come to identify himself with France, a rival Empire..The only way to reconcile theses two apparently contradictory identities was to assume the role of a European imperialist rather than that of a British or a French one. This enabled him to see the world divided into two blocs, European and non-European, Shz explained.



Like all Europeans, especially missionaries, such as Palgrave, this spy for the Emperor believed firmly in European superiority. The result of his journey, the purpose of which was to examine and diagnose the extent to which these savage and ignorant people could be elevated or saved, was a polyglot volume, The Personal Narrative of a Years journey Through Central and Easter Arabia (1865). The Narrative mixed facts, especially ethnographic descriptions of heretofore unknown tribal peoples, with the European assumptions and fantasies about them, a combination that did not please exacting scholars of the Orient, but, during the decades when France and England were sharing the power in the Levant between them, delighted the more causal readers, eager for narratives of imperialism.



Flix Bonfils. The Sphinx (1870s)

But Palgrave deserves our attention today, for he was literally the first European to enter into the capital of what Shz termed the Wahabee Empire, Riyadh. This empire was an internal one, tucked inside the Ottoman Empire, but, because of power of its unique religious beliefs, the region could resist and indeed lead a revolution against European interests. Unfortunately, Palgrave conflated a fringe view of Islam with the broader Muslim faith, and, given that only Saudi Arabia is still the heartof Wahabeeism, this confusion stillexists today. Still, his writings on the Wahabees, the first of their kind in the 1860s, echo eerily today: he writes of how this branch of the faith was spread though the sword and forced marriages, similar to the tactics ISIL uses in the twenty-first century. The adventures of Palgrave in the lands of Saudi Arabia, the interior beyond the civilized lands of the Levant, blazed a trail for T. E. Lawrence to follow during the Great War, when, bringing the predictions of Napolon III to fruition, he allied the British with the Wahabee regime against the Turks. In contrast to the dark and unenlightened interior space of fanaticism, the coastal Orient was a place of tourism, rapidly being modernized by the presence of railroads and, of course, the Suez Canal, which opened in 1871.

It is important to make the distinction between the myth of imperialism and the actual extent of the literal power of those Europeans, who would dominate in the Middle East, and the limits of the territorial power of the Turks, the British and the French, can be measured by the careful incursion of W. G. Palgrave into the land of Wahabeeism and danger. Indeed, it can be argued that Orientalism can be geographically located in the Levant, a crossroads of global influences, where the European control both begins and ends. Here, it is easy to imagine the mysterious east, in the process of being mapped and measured and occupied both mentally and physically by Europeans in such a way to make it safe and preserve its mystery. During the significant event of opening the Canal in which ancient Egypt was dragged into the modern world and placed beneath the imperialism of European rule, a remarkable family of French photographers, headed by Flix Bonfils (1831-1886)were carefully photographing the entire architecture and archaeology of the region. Setting up in Beirut in the Maison Bonfils, the activities of Bonfils extended to Jerusalem and Egypt and even to Greece, all under the nominal control of the Ottoman Empire while being confusingly but peacefully occupied economically by the British and the French. This all-encompassing generational project by a single family paralleled the consolation of European power in the Middle East and established a visual and pictorial terrain of scenic vistas that constructedthe collective European imagination of possession and empire.



Flix Bonfils. Jews at the Western Wall. Jerusalem (1870s)

At a time when intrepid Europeans were roaming over the Middle East, collecting souvenirs of various sizesworks of art, mummies, and in the case of the Germans, entire temples, photographs became a more acceptable way of removing historical artifacts from their place of origin. Flix Bonfils, who had studied photography under the nephew ofNicphore Nipce,Nipce de St Victor, had worked in Arles, until his sonAdrien developed respiratory ailments. Bonfils had served with the French military in Lebanon and remembered its dry climate, excellent for those with breathing problems. The entire family moved to Beirut and all became involved in the serious business of photographing the Levant and Egypt, resulting in what is claimed to be 15,000 images, including some 8,000 stereographs. Upon the death of his father in 1885, the son took up the business, assisted by his mother, Lydia. Adrien, in fact, seems to have move on by 1900, but Lydia, who had been in charge of making the albumen for the wet plates, remained so active that she had to be removed from Lebanon in 1917 when the Great War finally arrived to put thecoup de grceto the Ottoman Empire.

The interests of the family mirrored the imperialist mindset of the French and English: an interest in mapping through images, creating an inventory of historical sites, and a careful record of an ancient past, often related to the Bible, that was under threat of modernization as the Ottoman influence waned and the Europeans pressed their claims on what they considered to be their historic (Christian) inheritance and the cradles of their civilization. In the 2011 exhibitionIn Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in Nineteenth-century Photographyat the Getty Museum, curators noted thatMilitary and economic aims merged with religious fervor and the advent of archaeologyand photography played an important part in the imperialism of the period. Maison Bonfils was engaged in a frankly commercial enterprise, aimed at tourists and at those who traveled via photographs. Today, we possess as individuals, obsessively taking images wherever we go. In the nineteenth century, this kind of inventory was the domaine of professional photographers, such as Flix Bonfils. He knew his audience, religious pilgrims who sought the authentic Bible, adventurers tired of the familiar and hungry for the novel, and the entire panoply of military and government staffs who occupied the Levant. The audience at home, back in Paris or London or New York, wanted information, places to attach to names, and, while the work of Bonfils did not function as evidence, his photographs were straightforward documents.



Flix Bonfils.Bedouin Women. Jerusalem(18780s)

Maison Bonfils could be counted on to print thousands of excellent, detailed, well-composed, informative images of the Levant, a territory that was multi-cultural and international. The mental position or the psychological attitude of the point of view of the Bonfils camera, whether single image or stereograph, was one of and imperial gaze that reflected the colonial posture of France and other European nations. The prevailing mindset of the Europeans during the nineteenth century was nicely summed up in 1903 byHermann Vollrat Hilprecht, Immanuel Benzinger, Fritz Hommel inExplorations in Bible Lands During the 19th Century. They write about Restlessly shifting nomads in the north and ignorant swamp dwellers in the south have become the legitimate heirs of Asshur and Babel. What a contrast between ancient civilization and modern degeneration! Driven by vanity and unexamined assumptions of superiority, the Europeans overlooked the present and sought the glories of the past to be retold in their own terms. The Bonfils family not only participated in this antiquarian mindset of acquisition but also joined in the contemporary practice of making encyclopedias of types of people. This early form of classification of population groups was greatly enhanced by photography which allowed for a higher level of surveillance, and the massive collection of Bonfils family photography included types of Semitic peoples found throughout the Levant.



Many of these photographs of the inhabitants of the region were made, not for the individuals photographed, but for a consumer base of Europeans who needed souvenirs and reassurance of the exoticism of the Other. Often posed artificially in the Bonfils studio, with oddly un-Oriental backdrops, the peoples of the Levant seem frozen in time, retaining their quaint folkways, while all around them, the European civilization teems with industry and purpose. There are haunting photographs of women in all enveloping burkas, while other women display their faces and gaze straight at the camera.It is possible to assume that it was Lydia who photographed the women of the region. This vast archive of the Middle East was distributed, along with the array of vistas, views, and sites of the Orient, in Paris, London, and even in America. The ambitions of the Bonfils family and its business sense can be seen in the translations of the labels which were published in three languages, English. French, andGerman. Few of the original glass negatives have survived and most of what has come down from Bonfils are the prints themselves. The most significant volume was, oddly enough, produced by Bonfils after he returned to France in 1878,Souvenirs dOrient, which won a medal in Paris on the occasion of theExposition universelleof the same year.



Very little has been written on Flix Bonfils, although there is an excellent catalogue dating from 1980, Remembrances of the Near East: The Photographs of Bonfils, 1867-1907, presented by the Jewish Museum in New York. This seminal and to this day definitive exhibition was prepared by Robert Sobieszek who used the term Romantic Orient to describe the cultural construction of the Levant. The term is an appropriate one, for it evokes the romanticism of Eugne Delacroix and Jean-Lon Grme, painters who recreated what was an alien culture into visual terms the French people could comprehend.Sobieszek referred to the work of Bonfils as

picaresque since they are images of travel and souvenirs of distant locales meant to instruct and entertain. They are picturesque in that they depict the exotic as well as the natural in order to pictorially delight. The curator also points out the formal and compositional correctness used by Bonfils to create the prolixity of the Oriental dream..Bonfilss work is a veritable photographic chrestomathy, like those selected Arabic texts complied earlier in the century and designed to teach the language, except here it is the visual language of the look of the Orient.

The brief catalogue, which consisted of about two paragraphs, concluded with a list of the publications of the family Bonfils: Architecture antique: Egypte, Grce, Asie Mineure. Album de photographies (1872), Catalogue des Vues photographiques de lOrient (1876) and Souvenirs dorient. Album picturesque des sites, villas et ruined les plus remarquables de lEgypt et de la Nubie (de la Palestine, de la Syrie et de la Grce) (1878). Although all the photographs were signed Bonfils, it must be assumed that many images were taken by family members.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/photography-archaeology-and-imperialism-in-the-nineteenth-century-part-two/

Photographing Imperialism, Part Two

Samuel Borne: Kashmirand the Aesthetics ofConquest

In her seminal book, British Rule in India: A Historical Sketch (1857), Harriet Martineau called India our great Asiatic dependency and described the Himalayas as a steep slope like a diversified wall with embrasures, covering an area of from 90 to 120 miles in breadth, and running a line of 1,500 miles. From a time beyond record the ridge of this slope has been called by the people who live below it is the Abode of Cold or of SnowHimlaya. She continued to explain the meaning of the motion range to the British people, ..we need not scruple to mount the Abode of Coldto the very palace of the old divinityand use his standpoint, and borrow his eyes, for our survey of our own dominions lying below. This is an elegant statement of Empire, clearly linking the divine right to rule borrowed by the English people from god with exploration which was in turn coupled to imperialism. Indeed, understanding the journeys of Samuel Bourne into the Himalayas it is necessary to understand The Great Game. The Himalayas are a long and majestic mountain range that runs the entire border of northern India. Most of the Himalayas lie along the border of China and India, but Bournes destination was a small portion of the mountains, a territory contingent to British controlled India, the independent (as of 1846) kingdom of Kashmir. Kashmir, lying north and just outside of direct British interests was interesting the the Empire because this part of the range erected a formidable barrier to invasion from Russia and was cut by trade routes that were vital to the interests of trade and commerce.



For the second half of the nineteenth century, the Empires of England and Russia fought a long and silent cold war,struggling for control of the various stan territoriesAfghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistanthat stood between them both. An examination of the modern maps, with all these territories clearly spelled out also explains the Crimean War (1853-1856) in which England and France joined forces with Turkey against Russia in order to prevent the Eastern Empire from threatening the Ottoman Empire along the Danube River. Russia was also threatening the British hold on India along the northern borders, thwarted only by the mountains and the buffer zone of territories such as Afghanistan, which both Empires attempted to control, a task that has historically proven to be impossible. In point of fact, the first English photographer to explore the Himalayas was James Burke who entered into the contested zone during the First Afghan War and the First and Second Sikh Wars, early skirmishes in the Great Game. In his 2002 book,From Kashmir to Kabul: The Photographs of Burke and Baker, 1860-1900,Omar Kahn referred to the colonial imaginations conquest of Kashmir. What Kahn was describing was an emotional investment on the part of the British in what was essentially a fantasy that would be created by an English eye that sought both the familiarforests, lakes, and villageswhile also glorying in the majesty of mist-veiled peaks that ascended into the clouds while below two conquering giants engaged in feints towards one another in the valleys below.





The Great Game was a chess match between two burgeoning Empires, a game, which given the difficult territory, was a contest neither could win. For the British, Kashmir was a mysterious region at the edges of its official borders, a land of legend and myth. Today, Kashmir, a largely Muslim territory is described as Indian-controlled, a euphemism that elides the fact that Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India and that the Indian part of Kashmir has been engaged in a decades long and bloody struggle to separate itself from the clutches of the massive continent. In the 1860s, politically, Kashmir was a buffer zone, in a time of imperialism, the Himalayas were places to be explored and conquered, mapped and tamed by the ever expanding British interests. When Bourne photographed the Memorial for the fallen at Cawnpore, the framing of the architectural homage to the fallen was an obligatory stop for any photographer of Empire, but his eyes were set on places less conquered and claimed by his predecessors. Like other photographers in India, Bourne was a professional, making all the steps and stops expected by the home audience identifying itself with the conquests of the British Empire, while seeking new scenes not so familiar. In his three excursions into Kashmir, from 1863-1869, Bourne left behind the urban areas of India and the culture he held in a certain amount of contempt and entered the realm of the sublime. In November of 1862 he wrote,

What a mighty unbarring of mountains! it was impossible to gaze on this tumultuous sea of mountains with being deeply affected with their terrible majesty and awful grandeur, without an elevation of the Sous capacities, and without a silent uplifting of the heart to Him who formed such stupendous works, whose eye alone has scanned the red depths of their sunless recesses, and whose presence only has rested on their mysterious and sublime elevations; and it must be to the credit of Photography that it teaches the mind to see the beauty and power of such scenes as these, and renders itmore susceptible of their sweet and elevating impression.



Wooded Valley from Fulaldarn with the Srikanta Peaks in the Distance(1860s)

The Kashmir beckoned Bourne, attracted by its relative inaccessibility and remoteness and the legends that still cling to the very name itself. The Himalayas must have seemed to Bourne to be amenable to the categories of British landscape painting, especially the sublime. Just as in the American West, the colonizing mindset would have framed the aesthetics of photographing the unknown in a way to make the strangeness seem both novel and familiar at the same time. In other words, during his three treks into the Himalayas, Bourne familiarized himself and his audience with the magnificant scenery of Kashmir while, asSandeep Banerjeepointed out in his 2014 article Not Altogether Unpicturesque: Samuel Bourne and the Landscaping of the Victorian Himalaya, the photographer tamed the sublime into the picturesque. But Bournes description of his own work, evokes his personal feelings of awe and wonder, evoking poetics,What a mighty up bearing of mountains! What an endless vista go gigantic ranges and valleys, untold and unknown! Peak rose above peak, summit above summit, range above and beyond range, innumerable and boundless, until the mind refused to follow the eye in its attempt to comprehend the whole in one grand conception.



Samuel Bourne.Poplar Avenue. Srinagar. Kashmir (1864)

But Bourne also described his mission in India was to search for the Indian picturesque. He made three trips in to the Himalayan ranges, substituting what were Photographic Expeditions for imperial explorations. Hefirst explored the Simla Hills and Sutlej valley in 1863, returning with one hundred forty seven photographs, and then he scouted the Kangra Valley and Kashmir in 1864, ending his time in Kashmir with asix month expedition to Kulu, Lahoul and Spiti in 1866, where he photographed the Gangotri Glacier, the source of the Ganges. The result was thousand of photographs andfour series of letters he wrote for theBritish Journal of Photography, letters which were not published in their entireity until 1870. Bourne was very fortunate, according to all accounts, to have gone into partnership with Charles Shepherd, his co-photographer and printer. The result of their Calcutta business, Bourne & Shepherd, were beautifully developed exquisitely rendered flawlessly executed images made from wet plates. These photographs were seamless film capable of displaying extreme detail with a quality that made him the most successful photographer of Indian scenes and allowed him to expand his business to Bombay and Simla.



Samuel Bourne.View in Narkunda Forest, Chini Valley, Himalayas (1864)

Writing for the Getty Museum, Sarah McDonalds article Man of His Time, described as epitomizing all the clichs of the Victorian gentleman abroad: a conceit of his British standing; a bullying, colonial attitude towards the natives, traveling with a ridiculous quantity of extraneous luggage including ad hoc pieces of furniture, and an almost lunatic persistence in pursuit of his hazardous expeditions.The quest into Kashmir for Bourne mirrored the next phase of exploration and discovery on the part of the ever-confident Britain. Now that relative calm had been imposed on the realm, such ventures now fell into the realm of extreme sport. Women were able to participate in such adventures but the individual conquest of exotic locales were mainly a male enterprise that, in the minds of imperialists, was linked to pig-sticking and polo, quintessentially masculine pastimes. Exploring the far off mountain ranges involved the Englishman in the role of conquerer and leader, employing scores of servantsBourne employed forty some on his first journey (and they quit his service and abandoned him in dangerous circumstances)and gave him the sense of being an individual ruler of his own enterprise.



Samuel Bourne.Gangotri Glacier and the Bhagirathi Peaks (1866)

AsPramod K. Nayar, the great post-colonialist scholar of theUniversity of Hyderabad, pointed out inEnglish Writing and India, 16001920: Colonizing Aesthetics (2007), exploration was linked to hunting and domination and to masculinity and Bourne would have been transporting his heavy cameras and multiple glass plates in a fairly domesticated adventure. Writing in what Naya described as a discourse of colonial conquest, Bourne complained that even his large size cameras could not encompass the scope and expanse of the Himalayas. Naya continued in his explanation of the meaning of concepts, suchas an aesthetic mode.

It is in this context of a disappearing exotic, excessive tourism, the sense of vulnerability and the desire to react colonial control (after 1857) that the picturesque is revived in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The search forpicturesque scenes in an era of greater imperial control, mapped terrain and improved transport facilities scaled for and resulted in a new version of the aesthetic..Danger is as integral to the luxuriant as the passive to the beautiful. What the English traveller seeks is an escape form a routine of everyday life and therefore embarks on a quest for difficulty.

And Bournes explorations were as extreme as his ego, but he earned his reputation as being a peerless and fearless photographer. In addition to carrying a food supply of live sheep and goats and a portable darkroom tent, he photographed at a record height of almost 19,000 feet where he achieved the promise of photography, its marvelous truth and power and its ability to record and render, all in the spirit of colonialpower. The military-like marches by Bourne could not have been carried out without his scores of Indian subalterns, who rarely if ever were depicted in his scenes of photographic conquest, termed by Nigel Leask as imperial picturesque in his 2004 book Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel-Writing, 1770-1840.The Kashmir of Samuel Bourne is orientalized in the sense that the region is fashioned into The Other or the alien yet familiarized but wild Indian version of the Highlands and the Lake Country. The mere use of the words, picturesqueand sublime in the context of colonial and imperial describe the enterprise of Empire in India which used an imperial discourse, both text and image based, which settled upon the continent like a heavy hand. The British armchair traveller was given the illusion of power and containment over India, even in its most dangerous and remote regions, and these adventurous wanderings of the photographer proved that these distant lands of English desire could be owned and set in place as the jewel in the crown in the regalia of Queen Victoria.

If you have found this material useful, please give credit to

Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette andArt History Unstuffed. Thank you.

[emailprotected]

http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/photographing-imperialism/

Today in History for 18th August 2015

Historical Events

Events 1 - 100 of 193

293 BC - The oldest known Roman temple to Venus is founded, starting the institution of Vinalia Rustica.

1201 - The city of Riga is founded.

1289 - Pope Nicolas IV publishes degree "Supra montem"

1541 - A Portuguese ship drifts ashore in the ancient Japanese province of Higo (modern day Kumamoto Prefecture). (Traditional Japanese date: July 27, 1541)

1564 - Spanish king Philip II joins Council of Trente

1587 - Saul Wahl is elected King of Poland, according to legend.

1591 - Governor of Roanoke Island colony returns from England to find everyone in the colony had disappeared [or Aug 17, 1590]

1605 - Spanish army under of general Spinola conquerors Lingen

1634 - Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France.

1636 - The Covenant of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts is first signed.

1674 - Jean Racine's "Iphignie" premieres in Versailles

1686 - Cassini reports seeing a satellite orbiting Venus

1698 - Russian Tsar Peter the Great arrives in Zaandam

1700 - Swedish, English & Dutch army lands on Seeland, Denmark

Russian Tsar Peter the Great1735 - Evening Post begins publishing (Boston, Mass)

1759 - -19] 2nd sea battle of Lagos: England vs France

1769 - Gunpowder in church in Brescia, Italy, explodes, killing 3,000

1795 - Curacao governor De Veer sends miltia to stop rebellious slaves

1817 - Gloucester, Mass, newspapers tells of wild sea serpent seen offshore

1834 - Mt Vesuvius erupts

1835 - Last Pottawatomie Indians leave Chicago

1838 - 1st US marine expedition

1840 - Organization of American Society of Dental Surgeons founded (NY)

1840 - French colony established in Akaroa, South Island of New Zealand

1846 - Gen Stephen W Kearney's US forces captures Santa Fe NM

1848 - Camila O'Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.

1858 - Netherlands & Japan sign trade agreement

Confederate General Robert E. Lee1862 - General Lee's adjutant Major Stuart captured

1862 - Sioux Indians begin uprising in Minnesota (it is later crushed)

1864 - 6th day of battle at Deep Bottom Run, Virginia: Confederate assault

1864 - Petersburg Campaign-Battle of Weldon Railroad day 1 of 3 days

1868 - French Astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium in solar spectrum during eclipse

1870 - Battle at Gravelotte Privat: Prussia beat France, 32,000 casualties

1872 - 1st mail-order catalog issued by A M Ward

1873 - 1st ascent of Mount Whitney, California (14,494')

1886 - Carr Baker Neel & Samuel Neel win US Lawn Tennis Association doubles

1891 - Hurricane hits Martinique, about 700 die

1894 - US Congress creates Bureau of Immigration

1896 - Adolph Ochs (39) buys NY Times

1904 - Chris Watson resigns as Prime Minister of Australia and is succeeded by George Reid.

27th US President William Howard Taft1909 - Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki presents Washington, D.C. with 2,000 cherry trees, which President Taft decides to plant near the Potomac River.

1914 - Oscar Egg sets new cycling hour record (44,247 km)

1914 - -20] Belgian army withdraws to Antwerp

1914 - French troops under general Dubail occupy Sarrebourg

1914 - US President Woodrow Wilson issues "Proclamation of Neutrality"

1915 - Braves Field opens in Boston to see Braves beat Cards 3-1

1917 - Dutch Naval Air Force forms (MLD)

1917 - A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless.

1919 - Anti-Cigarette League of America forms in Chicago, Illinois

1920 - 1st class cricket debut of Walter Hammond

1920 - US ratifies the 19th Amendment to the constitution bringing in women's suffrage

Tennis Player Helen Wills Moody1923 - 37th US Women's Tennis: Helen Wills Moody beats Molla Mallory (6-2 6-1)

1923 - 37th U.S. Women's National Championship: Helen Wills Moody beats Molla Bjurstedt Mallory (6-2, 6-1)

1923 - 16th Australasian Championships: Margaret Molesworth beats Esna Boyd (6-1, 7-5)

1923 - 16th Australasian Championships: Pat O'Hara Wood beats Bert St John (6-1, 6-1, 6-3)

1924 - France begins withdrawing troops from the Ruhr

1925 - Belgian & US sign treaty about war debts

1925 - Cardinal Mercier warns Belgians against socialism/liberalism

1926 - England regain Ashes with 5th Test Cricket win, to take series 1-0

1926 - Weather map televised for 1st time

1930 - Eastern Airlines begins passenger service

1931 - Lou Gehrig hitless in Detroit, his 1,000th consecutively played game

Baseball Player Lou Gehrig1932 - Auguste Piccard/Max Cosijns reach 16,201m in a balloon

1932 - Englishman James Mollisson is 1st to fly east to west over Atlantic

1934 - 48th US Women's Tennis: Helen Jacobs beats Sarah H Cooke (6-1 6-4)

1934 - Bradman scores 244 in 5th Test Cricket, 316 mins, 32 fours 1 six

1934 - Ponsford & Bradman make 451 partnership in 316 minutes v Eng

1934 - 48th U.S. Women's National Championship: Helen Jacobs beats Sarah Palfrey Cooke (6-1, 6-3)

1936 - 106.5F-Hottest afternoon ever in Iowa

1937 - 1st FM radio construction permit issued (W1X0J (WGTR) in Boston MA)

1938 - FDR dedicates Thousand Islands Bridge connecting US & Canada

1940 - Battle of Britain - 'The hardest day": Luftwaffe attacks the RAF in largest ever air battle

1940 - 71 German aircraft shot down above England

32nd US President Franklin D. Roosevelt1941 - German concentration camp Amersfoort opens

1941 - Phillies commit 8 errors in a game

1942 - Carlson's Raiders land on Makin, Gilbert islands, kill 350 Japanese

1943 - Carl Hubbell wins his 253rd & final game, all with Giants

1943 - Final convoy of Jews from Salonika, Greece, arrives at Auschwitz

1943 - Otto Skorzeny's Heinkel-111 shot down at Sardinia

1944 - Chartres freed by US 3rd Army forces during WWII

1944 - Paris rail workers strike against Nazi occupiers

1944 - US 15th Army Corps reaches Mantes-Gassicourt near Paris

1944 - US 20th Army Corps conquers Chartres

1945 - Scheduled demonstrations at Polo Grounds & Ebbets Field to end segregation in organized baseball are called off

1945 - Sukarno elected 1st President of Indonesia by the Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence (PPKI)

1st President of Indonesia Sukarno1946 - Golf Writers Associaton of America forms

1947 - Naval torpedo & mine factory explodes at Cadiz, Spain killing 300

1949 - Hungary adopts constitution

1949 - Ralph Flanagan & his orchestra records "You're Breaking My Heart"

1950 - Julien Lahaut, the chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium is assassinated by far-right elements.

1951 - Cricket 1st-class debut of Raymond Illingworth

1954 - James E Wilkins is 1st black to attend a US cabinet meeting

1955 - -19] Hurricane Diane, kills 400 in US

1955 - 46.1 cm rainfall at Westfield, Massachusetts (state record)

1955 - Sjukri al-Quwatli re-elected president of Syria

1956 - Cin Reds (8) & Cubs (2) combine to hit 10 HRs in a 9 inning game

1956 - Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel" reaches #1

1957 - Amelia Wershoven sets record of female throwing a baseball (252'4")

Singer & Cultural Icon Elvis Presley1957 - Betty Dodd wins LPGA Colonial Golf Open

1957 - Juan-Manuel Fangio, wins his last auto World Championship at 46

Famous Birthdays

Birthdays 1 - 100 of 231

472 - Flavius Ricimer, general of the Western Roman Empire, kingmaker

1414 - Jami, Persian poet (d. 1492)

1450 - Marko Marulic/Marulus/Splichanin/Pechinich, Croatian poet

1579 - Charlotte Flandrina van Nassau, daughter of Willem I of Orange

1587 - 1st English child born in New World (Virginia Dare)

1596 - Jean Bolland, Flemish Jesuit writer (d. 1665)

1605 - Henry Hammond, English churchman (d. 1660)

1606 - Maria Anna of Spain, Holy Roman Empire Empress and Queen of Hungary (d. 1646)

1611 - Ludwika Maria Gonzaga, queen of Poland (d. 1650)

1657 - Ferdinando Galli Bibiena, Italian architect/designer (d. 1743)

1685 - Brook Taylor, England, mathematician, discoverer of Taylor's Theorem

1692 - Louis Henri, Duc de Bourbon, Prime Minister of France (d. 1740)

1720 - Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, English murderer (d. 1760)

1745 - Vaclav Josef Bartolomej Praupner, composer

Composer Antonio Salieri (1750)1750 - Antonio Salieri, Italy, composer (Tatare)

1754 - Franois, marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, French general (d. 1833)

1769 - Alexandre Stievenard, composer

1774 - Meriwether Lewis, Charlottsville VA, solider and public administrator (Lewis & Clark Expedition), (d. 1809)

1792 - John, 1st Earl Russell, British Whig PM (1846-52, 1865-66)

1803 - Nathan Clifford, American statesman, diplomat, and Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (d. 1881)

1805 - Josef Danhauser, Austrian painter (Mutterliebe)

1807 - Charles Francis Adams, (Union), (d. 1886)

1813 - Benjamin Alvord, Brigadier General (Union volunteers), (d. 1884)

1818 - William Farquhar Barry, Bvt Major General (Union Army), (d. 1879)

1819 - Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaievna, Duchess of Leuchtenberg (d. 1876)

1823 - Willem J F Nuyens, Dutch physician/RC historian

Soldier/Public Administrator Meriwether Lewis (1774)1830 - Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria (d. 1916)

1834 - Marshall Field, Conway Massachusetts, owner (Field Dept Store)

1849 - Benjamin Louis Paul Godard, composer

1855 - Alfred Wallis, English artist and mariner (d. 1942)

1856 - Charles Hutchison Gabriel, composer

1856 - Jan Karol Gali, composer

1857 - Libert H. Boeynaems, Belgian Catholic prelate (d. 1926)

1870 - Hugh Bromley-Davenport, England cricketer (d. 1954)

1871 - Johan J Arch, graphic artist (wood cutter)

1873 - Leo Slezak, Austria tenor/actor (Othello)

1873 - Otto Harbach, songwriter (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes)

1875 - Johan E Elias, historian (Amsterdam)

1878 - Fritz Brun, composer

1879 - Aleksandr Rodzyanko, Russian general (d. 1970)

1881 - Hermann Karl Josef Zilcher, composer

1882 - Eugeen Calleen, Flemish sculptor

1882 - Marcel Louis Auguste Samuel-Rousseau, composer

1885 - Nettie Palmer, Australian poet and essayist (d. 1964)

1887 - Nico J Polak, Dutch economist

1890 - Walther Funk, German Nazi politician (d. 1960)

1893 - Ernest MacMillan, composer

1893 - Burleigh Grimes, American baseball player (d. 1985)

1896 - Alan Mowbray, actor (Dante, Colonel Flack), born in London, England

1896 - Jack Pickford, Canadian-born actor (d. 1933)

1900 - Walter O'Keefe, Hartford Ct, songwriter/TV host (Mayor of Hollywood)

1900 - Glenn Albert Black, American archaeologist (d. 1964)

Indian Politician and Diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (1900)1900 - Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Allahabad Oudh, Indian diplomat and politician

1902 - Julius Kalas, composer

1902 - Adamson-Eric, Estonian painter (d. 1968)

1903 - Ake Olof Sebastian Udden, composer

1903 - Lucienne Boyer, French singer (d. 1983)

1904 - Max Factor Jr, CEO (Max Factor Cosmetics)

1904 - Sterling W Cole, (Rep-R-NY)

1904 - [Francis] Max Factor, cosmetics manufacturer (Max Factor)

1905 - Peter Paul Kreuder, composer

1906 - Andre Van Gyseghem, England, actor (Search for the Nile)

1907 - Cecilia Grace Hunt Reeves Gillie, Executive (BBC)

1907 - Enoch Light, Canton Ohio, orchestra leader (Gulf Road Show with Bob Smith)

1907 - Howard Swanson, composer

1907 - Otto Mortensen, composer

1908 - Armijn Pane, Indonesian writer (Belenggu)

1908 - Bill Merritt, cricketer (early NZ Test leg-spinner, also Northants)

1908 - Edgar Faure, thriller writer/PM of France (1952, 52-56)

1908 - Milan Ristic, composer

1909 - Miliza Korjus, Warsaw Poland, actress (Great Waltz)

1910 - Charles Wegg-Prosser, solicitor

1910 - Herman Berlinski, composer

1915 - Max Lanier, baseball player

1916 - Elsa Morante, Italy, writer (L'isola di Arturo)

1916 - Moura Lympany, Saltash England, pianist (OBE-1979)

1917 - Casper Weinberger, US Secretary of Defense (1981-87)

1918 - Elsa Morante, writer

1919 - Walter J Hickel, (Gov-R-Alaska)/US Secretary of Interior (1969-71)

1920 - Bob Kennedy, baseball player

1920 - [Thomas] Godfrey Evans, English cricket keeper (1950's)

Actress Shelley Winters (1920)1920 - Shelley Winters, St Louis Missouri, actress (A Place in the Sun, A Patch of Blue & Poseidon Adventure), (d. 2006)

1921 - Zdzisaw ygulski, Jr., Polish art historian

1922 - Alain Robbe-Grillet, France, novelist (Voyeur)

1922 - Eric William Hunter Christie, barrister

1923 - Jahangir Khan Irani, cricket wicketkeeper for India (1947-8 Aust tour)

1923 - Sadu Shinde, cricketer (Indian leg-spinner late 1940's/early 1950's)

1923 - Jenni Irani, Indian cricketer (d. 1982)

1924 - Mohammad Zia Ul-Haq, pres of Pakistan (1977-88)[or Aug 12]

1925 - Brian W[ilson] Aldiss, UK, sci-fi author (Helliconia Trilogy)

1925 - Tonny Til, rocker

1925 - Pierre Grondin, French Canadian cardiac surgeon (d. 2006)

1927 - Rosalynn Smith Carter, Georgia, 1st lady (1977-1981), Jimmy's lust

1928 - Marge Schott, CEO (Cincinnati Reds)

1929 - Hugues Aufray, French singer

1930 - Carl Barger, Lewistown Pa, baseball pres (Pittsburgh Pirates, Fla Marlins)

1930 - Grant Williams, actor (Hawaiian Eye, Incredible Shrinking Man), born in NYC, New York

1930 - Johnny Preston, Port Arthur, Tx, rocker (Feel So Fine)

1930 - Liviu Librescu, Israeli professor, killed in the Virginia Tech massacre

1931 - Henricus AFMO "Hans" van Mierlo, Dutch minister of Defense (D66)

Famous Weddings

Weddings 1 - 13 of 13

1572 - King Navarra Henri de Bourbon marries Margaretha van Valois

Poet/Artist William Blake (1782)1782 - Romantic Age poet and artist William Blake (24) marries Catherine Boucher, 5 years his junior, in St. Mary's Church, Battersea, London.

1918 - Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (45) weds socialite Dorothy Benjamin (25)

1932 - Actress Bette Davis (24) weds musician Harmon Nelson (25)

1979 - Nick Lowe marries singer Carlene Carter

1984 - Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes (22) weds Des Moines department store heiress Julie Anne Friedman (25) at London registrar's office

2000 - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (57) weds former congressional aide Calista Bisek (34) in Alexandria, Virginia

2005 - Model and former Playboy Playmate Kylie Bax (30) weds photographer Spiros Poros in Delos, Greece

2011 - American Idol's first-ever blind finalist Scott MacIntyre (26) weds Christina Teich in Scottsdale, Arizona

2012 - "Melrose Place" actor Grant Show (50) weds "The Campaign" actress and former ballet dancer Katherine LaNasa (45) at The Oak Grove at Ribbit Tree & Plant Nursery in Topanga, California

Actress Bette Davis (1932)2012 - Former "Martin and Everybody Hates Chris" actress Tichina Arnold (43) weds Rico Hines in Honolulu, Hawaii

2013 - Actress Rosanna Arquette (54) weds investment banker Todd Morgan at a private ceremony in Malibu, California

2013 - Pro surfer Bethany Hamilton (23) weds boyfriend Adam Dirks in Kauai, Hawaii

Famous Deaths

Deaths 1 - 100 of 101



353 - Decentius, Roman usurper

849 - Walafrid Strabo, German monk and theologian

1227 - Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror, dies

1236 - Theodorus Van Celles, monastery founder (Kruisheren), dies

1258 - Theodore II Lascaris, Emperor of the Empire of Nicaea

1276 - Adrian V, [Ottobono Fieschi], Italian Pope (7/11-8/18/1276), dies

1318 - Clare of Montefalco, Italian Abbess and religious leader (born c. 1268)

1430 - Thomas de Ros, 9th Baron de Ros, English soldier and politician (drowned) (b. 1406)

Great Khan of the Mongol Empire Genghis Khan (1227)1503 - Alexander VI, [Rodrigo de Borja], Spanish Pope (1492-1503), dies

1559 - Paul IV, [Giampietro Caraffa], Pope (1555-59), dies at 83

1563 - tienne de La Botie, French judge and writer (b. 1530)

1613 - Giovanni Artusi, Italian composer

1620 - Wanli, Emperor of China (b. 1563)

1634 - Urbain Grandier, French priest (b. 1590)

1642 - Guido Reni, Italian painter (b. 1575)

1645 - Eudoxia Streshneva, Tsarina of Mikhail I of Russia (b. 1608)

1652 - Benjamin G Cuyp, historical painter, dies at about 40

1683 - Charles Hart, English actor (b. 1625)

1707 - William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, English soldier and statesman (b. 1640)

1712 - Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, English soldier

1765 - Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor (1745-65) dies at 56

1803 - James Beattie, Scottish poet/philosopher (Essay on Truth), dies at 67

1809 - Matthew Boulton, English manufacturer and engineer (b. 1728)

1811 - Johann Heinrich Zang, composer, dies at 78

1815 - Chauncey Goodrich, American politician (b. 1759)

1840 - Antony CW Staring, Dutch patriot/poet (Jaromir), dies at 73

1842 - Louis de Freycinet, French explorer (b. 1779)

1850 - H de Balzac, writer, dies at 51

1853 - Peter Lichtenthal, composer, dies at 73

1863 - Thomas Welsh, US Union brig-general (Antietam), dies at 39

1870 - Felix Salm-Salm, Prussian/US prince/brig-general, dies in battle

1894 - William Charles Levey, composer, dies at 57

1896 - Frederick Nichols Crouch, composer, dies at 88

1901 - Richard Kleinmichel, composer, dies at 54

1907 - John Kerr, physicist (magneto-optic Kerr-effect), dies at 82

1916 - Edward D Pain, English journalist (NY World), dies in battle at 36

1919 - Joseph E. Seagram, Canadian distillery founder (b. 1841)

1934 - Delilah L Beasley, US author/columnist (Oakland Tribune), dies at 61

1940 - Walter P. Chrysler, American automobile executive (b. 1875)

1942 - Erwin Schulhoff, Czech/Russian composer/pianist, dies at 48

1943 - Hans Jeschonnek, German air force general/chief-staff, commits suicide

1943 - Ali-Agha Shikhlinski, Russian-Azerbaijani general (b. 1865)

1944 - Ernst "Teddy" Thalmann, leader of German KPD, dies

1949 - Paul J Mares, US jazz trumpetist/composer (Tin Roof Blues), dies at 49

1950 - Julien Lahaut, chairman Belgian Communist Party, murdered

1952 - Ralph Byrd, actor (Dick Tracy TV Show), dies at 43

1952 - Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, Chilean Jesuit saint (b. 1901)

1957 - Wawrzyniec Jerzy Zulawski, composer, dies at 41

1961 - Learned Hand, Chief judge of US court of Appeals, dies at 89

1961 - Leonhard Frank, writer, dies at 78

1962 - Cleo Ridgely, silent screen actress (I Remember Mama), dies at 68

1966 - Isaac Keesing, Dutch founder (System Keesing), dies at 80

1966 - Watze Cuperus, Frisian author (Struggle & Blessing), dies at 75

1968 - Cy Walter, pianist (3's Company), dies at 52

1969 - Laci Boldemann, composer, dies at 48

1969 - Mildred Davis, actress (Haunted Spooks), dies of coronary at 68

1969 - Otto Stern, German/US physicist (Nobel 1943), dies at 81

1980 - Norman Cazden, composer, dies at 65

1981 - Anita Loos, US (stage)author (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), dies at 88

1982 - Beverly Bayne, actress (Romeo & Juliet, Passionate Youth), dies at 87

1983 - Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born art historian (b. 1902)

1988 - Alexandr V Shchukin, Russian cosmonaut, dies in SU-26 crash at 42

Choreographer Frederick Ashton (1988)1988 - Frederick Ashton, British choreographer (Cinderella), dies at 83

1989 - Bert Oosterbosch, cyclist, dies

1989 - Luis Carlos Galan, Colombian presidential candidate, murdered

1990 - B F Skinner, psychologist (Skinner Box), dies of Leukemia at 86

1990 - Raf Reymen, Flemish actor, dies

1990 - Grethe Ingmann, Danish singer (b. 1938)

1991 - Vaughn Shoemaker, US cartoonist (John Q Public, Pulitzer), dies

1992 - Gerard Sonder, Dutch radio host (AVRO), dies

1992 - John Stuges, director (Gunfight at OK Corral), dies of emphysema at 82

1992 - Christopher McCandless, subject of the book Into the Wild (b. 1968)

1993 - Alf Bold, German festival programmer, dies of AIDS at 47

1994 - Gottlob Frick, singer, dies at 88

1994 - John Beavan, newspaper Editor, dies at 84

1994 - Judy Ann Scott-Fox, agent, dies at 56

1994 - Richard Lawrence Millington Synge, chromatographer, dies at 79

1995 - James Ackley Maxwell, actor/director (Traitors, Otley), dies at 66

1995 - Sylvester Louis Adams, murderer, dies at 39

1996 - Geoffrey Dearmer, poet, dies at 103

1996 - Hugo Gabriel Gryn, rabbi, dies at 66

1996 - Thoams Eric Evans, dean of St Paul's, dies at 68

1998 - Persis Khambatta, Indian actress (Star Trek), dies of a heart attack at 49

2001 - David Peakall, British scientist (b. 1931)

2002 - Dean Riesner, American film and television writer (b. 1918)

2003 - Tony Jackson, English musician (The Searchers) (b. 1938)

2004 - Elmer Bernstein, American composer (b. 1922)

2004 - Hiram Fong, former U.S. Senator from Hawaii (b. 1906)

2005 - Christopher Bauman, American wrestler (b. 1982)

2005 - Gao Xiumin, Chinese comedy actress (b. 1959)

2006 - Fernand Gignac, Canadian singer and actor (b. 1934)

2006 - Jamie Astaphan, Caribbean-born physician (b. 1946)

2007 - Michael Deaver, Reagan Administration Deputy White House Chief of Staff (b. 1938)

2009 - Kim Dae-jung,15th President of South Korea (b. 1925)

2009 - Robert Novak, American journalist and commentator (b. 1931)

2010 - Hal Connolly, American Athlete and hammer thrower (b.1931)

2010 - Scott Davis, American Announcer of Track and Field (b.1943)

2010 - Benjamin Kaplan, copyright scholar

2012 - Scott McKenzie, American singer, dies at 73

2013 - Dezs Gyarmati, Hungarian water polo player, dies at 85

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Opulent And Apolitical: The Art Of The Met's Islamic Galleries

Sultan 'Ali 'Adil Shah II Slays a Tiger (ca. 1660) is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's critically acclaimed Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700 Opulence and Fantasy exhibition.

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Lent by Howard Hodgkin./Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Lent by Howard Hodgkin./Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sultan 'Ali 'Adil Shah II Slays a Tiger (ca. 1660) is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's critically acclaimed Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700 Opulence and Fantasy exhibition.

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Lent by Howard Hodgkin./Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is an introduction to NPR's Muslim Artists, Now series, which will highlight contemporary Muslim musicians, writers, painters and filmmakers, among others.

When the Islamic galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art reopened in 2011 (after eight years of renovation), it was heralded as a landmark moment for deepening American understanding of the Islamic world. Amid live performances and lectures, the museum's 15 new galleries brought audiences into a physical world of lavish carpets, ceramics and miniature paintings.

Since the Met's Islamic revival, the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London have also invested in glittering new galleries for Islamic art. And this year alone in the United States, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Baltimore's Walters Art Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art each has an exhibition dedicated to the genre.

Sheila Canby, the curator in charge of the Met's Department of Islamic Art, acknowledges that showcasing the galleries' objects provides an alternative to the predominant political narrative. She says, "After things like Sept. 11, after things like the destruction of ancient sites in northern Iraq and Syria, museums serve as a place where people can come to this idea of Islam through the material culture, not just through what they're being told all the time."



But at a time when the meaning of Islam is so fraught and the debate over Muslim values is so charged, what exactly constitutes Islamic art? Is it a religious definition, an ethnic category or a political statement?

The formal, art history discipline of "Islamic art" originated in 20th-century Western museums. It began as an offshoot of antiquities departments as curators began to notice the aesthetic links between medieval Islamic courts stretching from Spain to India. The Met defines the most salient of these links as "the predilection for all-over surface decoration," and it includes calligraphy, vegetal patterns, geometric patterns and figural representation.

The Met's first Islamic galleries were called "Islamic Art" and opened in 1975. When they reopened in 2011, they were also given a new name: "New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia." Curator Sheila Canby says, "What we want to reflect in the title over the door is kind of what we cover and what we don't cover, because of course there's a huge population of Muslims in places like Indonesia, but we don't have the art of Indonesia in these galleries."

That evolution in the study of Islamic art mirrors cultural shifts in today's Muslim societies. The kingdoms that gave rise to the workshops and artisans whose work fills the Met's galleries no longer exist, and today those regions have new borders, new crises and new economic realities.

For Met curator Navina Haidar, the central vision in reopening the museum's galleries was to highlight these objects as the world's heritage. She says the fundamental question is whether you see it "as the heritage of the Islamic world or do you think about it as the Islamic heritage of the world. You see, there's a difference there."

This summer, Haidar curated a critically acclaimed exhibition about the Muslim kingdoms of India's Deccan plateau. It included bejeweled decorative objects, massive diamonds and miniature paintings filled with details that required magnifying glasses. Like the museum's permanent Islamic collection, the emphasis was on showcasing the global trade links that created this world. Gallery labels underscored influences from China, Africa and Europe. And to make this even more inviting for a modern audience, Haidar sought to create an alluring vibe using music, mood lighting and and deeply colored walls -- after all, the subtitle of the show was "Opulence and Fantasy."

"Sometimes when you're too puritan about things you can actually kill off the vibe completely, which is what we definitely didn't want to do," Haidar says. "One of the important concepts, actually, in the Deccan is Rasa -- is flavor, is juice, is essence."

The interesting thing about the arts of the Islamic world and courts is that there is always a wonderful tension between ... the stark of beauty of [the most austere traditions] contrasted with a kind of opulence and a love for color ...



Navina Haidar, curator

That might seem to run counter to the perception a lot of people have of Muslims as puritanical and uninterested in physical beauty. But Haidar says, "The interesting thing about the arts of the Islamic world and courts is that there is always a wonderful tension between ... the stark of beauty of [the most austere traditions] contrasted with a kind of opulence and a love for color, for texture; an imagination, a feeling for romance and beauty; some great music. So, you know, you have both ends of the spectrum and to somehow be inclusive in one's thinking is the best way to go."

But the museum's exploration of the Islamic world stops short of the 20th century, and that's a challenge for Munir Jiwa, a professor of Islamic studies at Graduate Theological Union. He says he loves visiting the Met's Islamic galleries, but it's difficult for him to make the connection between what's in the museum and what he sees, hears and teaches. "My daily work reminds me of ... just how difficult it is to relate or translate that very beautiful aesthetic experience that one finds in a place like the Met to the realities on the ground and the very difficult and challenging present," Jiwa says.

But according to Haidar, the role of the Met and of Islamic art historians is to be dispassionate and apolitical. "We show things on the basis of their artistic merit, their rarity, their condition and their historical importance," she says. "So we don't censor the evidence. We don't promote the evidence. We try to be strictly dispassionate about the evidence. The only place where we allow ourselves any passion is in the artistic joy and excitement of something that's beautiful and elevating and technically accomplished. But we don't get ideological about it."

Still, as you leave the Met's opulent galleries and return to the real world, it's striking that the formal idea of Islamic art ends in the 19th century. What's happened to Muslim creativity since the collapse of these kingdoms, since industrialization, since globalization and since our current debates around radicalization? Those are questions that contemporary artists have taken up -- artists Haidar has the utmost respect for.

"Most contemporary artists are very brave people," she says, "because they actually are willing to take on these issues and not let their expression be suppressed. ... And if their voices were to be extinguished -- the voice of the writer, the voice of the artist, the voice of the poet, and then the evidence of history -- that would be a truly terrible, dark world that would descend upon all of us."

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/03/429010005/opulent-and-apolitical-the-art-of-the-mets-islamic-galleries?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

Take A Trip To D.C.'s Indoor Beach, Where It's Always 75 And Sunny

Museumgoers play in the 10,000-square-foot exhibition called "The Beach" at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Noah Kalina/National Building Museum

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Noah Kalina/National Building Museum

Museumgoers play in the 10,000-square-foot exhibition called "The Beach" at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.



Noah Kalina/National Building Museum

The nation's capital is sweaty and sweltering right now, but Washington locals and visitors can find a seaside getaway in the most unlikely of places. In the middle of downtown D.C., the National Building Museum has installed a 10,000-square-foot indoor "beach" that has attracted kids, tourists and workers looking for an out-of-the-ordinary lunch break.

"What we've got here is a big, white box 200 feet by 50 feet," explains Cathy Frankel, vice president for exhibitions. "We have it carpeted with our sand, which is more like white AstroTurf. You can walk around here on the beach. It's always 75 degrees and sunny here."

The exhibition includes lounge chairs and 700,000 white plastic orbs in the museum's Italian Renaissance style building.

Noah.Kalina/National Building Museum

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Noah.Kalina/National Building Museum



The exhibition includes lounge chairs and 700,000 white plastic orbs in the museum's Italian Renaissance style building.

Noah.Kalina/National Building Museum

The beach -- situated in the museum's Great Hall amid massive Corinthian columns -- consists of a snack bar, white lounge chairs with umbrellas and a pool of 700,000 white plastic balls, up to 3 feet deep in some places.

"It took a full day for the entire staff to unload all the boxes of balls into the ocean," says Chase Rynd, the museum's executive director. "We thought it was going to be really simple. ... No, it was work."

On a recent afternoon, Cindy Guan and Olivia de Fouchier -- two interns from the Justice Department -- stop by for a dip. Dressed in business attire, they take off their shoes and wade into the ocean alongside throngs of screaming kids. "I thought it would be a great way to have fun in the middle of the day," says de Fouchier. "This is wonderful."

Rynd says he wants to give visitors a new and fresh perspective of the formal and elegant museum interior. "We were really intent upon using our space in different ways," he says.

Sitting on the white "sand" with friends visiting from Juneau, Alaska, Ellen Canopy thinks it's working: "It's kind of neat being surrounded by this beautiful building -- being here at the beach and look around and see these gold columns and beautiful windows," she says. "It's a beautiful place. It's a neat concept."

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/09/421359521/a-trip-to-the-beach-wheres-its-always-75-degrees-and-sunny?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

What Right Do Muralists Have To The Buildings They Paint On?

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A Philadelphia mural titled You Go Girl by Jetsonorama and Ursula Rucker. This is just one of many murals that the city's Mural Arts Program helped create.

Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

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Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program



Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

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Staircases and Mountaintops: Ascending Beyond the Dream by Willis Humphrey.

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

It took artist Katherine Craig about a year to create her nine-story mural on 2937 E. Grand Blvd. in Detroit. Most people who drive around the city have seen it -- one side of the Albert Kahn-designed building is covered in a blanket of electric blue, and a flowing waterfall of multicolored paint splatters descend from the roof line. It stands in stark contrast to the rest of the landscape of low buildings and muted Midwestern colors.

It's called "The Illuminated Mural" and it's become emblematic of Detroit's North End neighborhood.

This week, it was also on the auction block.

Katherine Craig painted Illuminated Mural in Detroit with the help of neighborhood children. The building it's on was auctioned this week.

BB and HH/Flickr

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BB and HH/Flickr

Katherine Craig painted Illuminated Mural in Detroit with the help of neighborhood children. The building it's on was auctioned this week.

BB and HH/Flickr

Well, the building is. But what does that mean for Craig's mural? What rights does a muralist have to the wall she painted on?

That's a question that echoes throughout the country right now, as muralists try to lay claim to their artwork under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990.

A Massive Loss, A Huge Win

California muralist Kent Twitchell was in a hotel room in Sausalito, Calif., when he got the call -- his six-story mural of Ed Ruscha in Los Angeles had been painted over. It was June 2, 2006, a date he remembers vividly because it was the day he lost his mural, and also the day of his daughter's wedding.

Kent Twitchell's Ed Ruscha Monument, located on the side of a building in Los Angeles, was destroyed in 2006.

Melba Levick/Courtesy of Kent Twitchell

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Melba Levick/Courtesy of Kent Twitchell

Kent Twitchell's Ed Ruscha Monument, located on the side of a building in Los Angeles, was destroyed in 2006.

Melba Levick/Courtesy of Kent Twitchell

Twitchell had worked on the mural over the course of nine years, and it was ruined in one day.

"It's hard to describe," he says. "It's like being kicked in the stomach, I guess. It takes the wind out of you."

So he took the case to court. He sued the U.S. government, which owned the building, and 11 other defendants for damages under the Visual Artists Rights Act, which prohibits the desecration, alteration or destruction of public art without giving the artist at least 90 days' notice.

He won $1.1 million, which is regarded as the largest win under VARA.

"If the work is destroyed, it's like part of your resume being destroyed," says Eric Bjorgum, the lawyer who won Twitchell's case, and the president of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles.

Many disputes surrounding murals have a lot to do with advertising, Bjorgum explains. When an area of a city is downtrodden, muralists choose highly visible walls for their works to spruce up the space. But when that area is developed, large spaces that are seen easily from the street are ideal real estate for advertisers.

Money is always a motivator -- in one of Bjorgum's cases, a brewing company was paying $18,000 per month to have a beer ad on a wall, covering up a mural.

Muralist Robert Wyland knows how that goes all too well. In 27 years, he painted 100 whale-themed murals, called Whaling Walls, in cities around the world. With that many murals, it makes sense that he's run into problems. Some of the murals were painted over, relocated or destroyed.

Others were covered with gigantic, multistory advertisements.

That's what happened in his hometown of Detroit. Whale Tower, painted in 1997, is on the back side of the 34-story Broderick Tower. The Grand Circus Park area wasn't very populated when he painted the mural, Wyland explained, so when the new stadium, Comerica Park, went up next door in 2000, the wall his mural was on became a hot commodity for advertisers.

In 2006, a gigantic vinyl ad for Chrysler's Jeep Compass was put up over the mural. Verizon Wireless followed suit. Wyland was angry, but knew that even if he sued the companies under VARA, it would only be a "drop in the bucket" in comparison to the ad revenue they were getting from the space. They'd pay him off and keep his mural covered.

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/27/417204222/what-right-do-muralists-have-to-the-buildings-they-paint-on?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

Do It Like A Deity: A Dutch Artist Depicts Gods Gone Wild

Editor's Note: Before you scroll down, a warning that the images below depict gods, goddesses and biblical figures engaging in some NSFW behavior.



Wtewael revisited the adultery of Mars and Venus several times. In this version of Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan (1604-1608), Apollo raises the curtain on the bed as Vulcan, Venus' husband, approaches with his net, hoping to ensnare the couple. Cupid -- Venus' son -- takes aim at Apollo, as Mercury, Diana and Saturn look on and laugh.

The J. Paul Getty Museum/National Gallery of Art

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The J. Paul Getty Museum/National Gallery of Art

Wtewael revisited the adultery of Mars and Venus several times. In this version of Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan (1604-1608), Apollo raises the curtain on the bed as Vulcan, Venus' husband, approaches with his net, hoping to ensnare the couple. Cupid -- Venus' son -- takes aim at Apollo, as Mercury, Diana and Saturn look on and laugh.

The J. Paul Getty Museum/National Gallery of Art

The Dutch have given the world an array of master painters -- Van Gogh, Vermeer, Rembrandt. But the brilliant and risque work of a lesser-known Dutchman is currently on display at the National Gallery of Art.

In his 1601 Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan, Wtewael shows Mercury raising the bed curtain to let the other gods see the couple. Here, Cupid raises an arrow at Mercury as Saturn, Diana, Jupiter, Minerva and Truth look on.

National Gallery of Art

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National Gallery of Art

In his 1601 Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan, Wtewael shows Mercury raising the bed curtain to let the other gods see the couple. Here, Cupid raises an arrow at Mercury as Saturn, Diana, Jupiter, Minerva and Truth look on.

National Gallery of Art

Joachim Wtewael (pronounced U-te-val) worked in Utrecht in the late 1500s and early 1600s. He loved painting stories from the Bible and mythology -- impressively buff Roman gods and goddesses in -- at times -- downright salacious comportment.

"You know, gods didn't always behave particularly well," says curator Arthur Wheelock Jr. "And that was something Wtewael and people from his generation loved to explore."

In vivid colors, with precisely painted details, on huge canvases as well as small copper plates, naughty gods and goddesses frolicked and fooled around.

Wtewael depicts Mars and Venus "having at it," says Wheelock, "and this was not so good because Venus was married."

In 1610, Wtewael paints Venus looking up at Mercury as Apollo and Minerva raise the curtain of the bed. Vulcan, with his net, stands to the side of the bed, with Apollo, Jupiter, Saturn and Diana above.

Carola van Wijk/National Gallery of Art

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Carola van Wijk/National Gallery of Art

In 1610, Wtewael paints Venus looking up at Mercury as Apollo and Minerva raise the curtain of the bed. Vulcan, with his net, stands to the side of the bed, with Apollo, Jupiter, Saturn and Diana above.

Carola van Wijk/National Gallery of Art

Her husband, Vulcan, caught them in the act. He got a big metal net and trapped them inside it. In three separate small paintings, Wtewael shows Vulcan revealing Venus and Mars to the other gods.

"All the gods are lying around, looking and laughing at them being caught in the act," says Wheelock.

Large canvases show gods getting married, taking baths, waging wars. Wtewael also did Christian scenes -- adoration of the baby Jesus, the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. They're all gorgeously painted works, just teeming with life.

In the late 1500s, inspired by a story from Genesis, Wtewael painted Lot and His Daughters:

They've just fled Sodom. Lot's wife looks back at the destroyed sin city and is turned into a pillar of salt. Lot and his daughters hide in a cave, thinking the world is coming to an end. His daughters fear that -- with no men left -- they'll never have children. So ...

Sodom burns in the background as Lot's daughters seduce him in Wtewael's 1597-1600 depiction of a scene from Genesis.

National Gallery of Art

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National Gallery of Art

Sodom burns in the background as Lot's daughters seduce him in Wtewael's 1597-1600 depiction of a scene from Genesis.

National Gallery of Art

"In the efforts to maintain the line and keep the line going, Lot's daughters got Lot drunk. ... This [painting shows] the moment when they're all partying. Lot doesn't know what's going on," Wheelock explains.

And then a Lot of things got out of hand; Wtewael paints him blotto, surrounded by his voluptuous, naked daughters. "He's clutching one of their breasts, and she is reaching up to tickle his chin," Wheelock says. "It's a very sensual work."

The daughters end up with two sons. Incest! Booze! Lust! Adultery! And to make it even more intriguing-- the painter himself was such a proper 16th century fellow -- a very strict Calvinist, a pillar of the community. But with his paints and brushes, he embraced the fullness of life.

"I think that is what I love about Wtewael," Wheelock says. "The engagement in all aspects of life: the sensual, the spiritual, religious, all these things are there. It's a fun show; nobody's having a bad time."

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/08/420570486/do-it-like-a-deity-a-dutch-artist-depicts-gods-gone-wild?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

Could The Masterpiece Be A Fake? Profit, Revenge And 'The Art Of Forgery'

In 2010 the Detroit Institute of Arts hosted the exhibit "Fakes, Forgeries, and Mysteries" -- about how experts figure out whether artworks are authentic. Above, a painting titled A Female Saint (left) that was once attributed to Italian artist Sandro Botticelli is exhibited alongside The Resurrected Christ (right), a Botticelli painting from around 1480.

Paul Sancya/AP

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Paul Sancya/AP

In 2010 the Detroit Institute of Arts hosted the exhibit "Fakes, Forgeries, and Mysteries" -- about how experts figure out whether artworks are authentic. Above, a painting titled A Female Saint (left) that was once attributed to Italian artist Sandro Botticelli is exhibited alongside The Resurrected Christ (right), a Botticelli painting from around 1480.

Paul Sancya/AP

Michelangelo is known for masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel and the statue of David, but most people probably don't know that he actually got his start in forgery. The great artist began his career as a forger of ancient Roman sculptures, art scholar Noah Charney tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies.

By the time Michelangelo's forgery was revealed, the Renaissance master was famous in his own right. But many other artistic forgers continue to copy the work of past artists in the hopes of passing their creations off as authentic.

The art industry, says Charney, is a "multibillion-dollar-a-year legitimate industry that is so opaque you can't quite understand why anyone participates in it." In his new book, The Art of Forgery, Charney traces a tradition of fakes and forgeries that dates back to the Renaissance.

In many instances, forgery is a question of economics; a forgery that is authenticated may be worth millions of dollars. But Charney says that many other art forgers are doing it as a "sort of passive aggressive revenge" against an art world that was not interested in their original work -- but was too dim to tell forgeries from true masterpieces.

Charney adds that the business practices of the art world provide a "fertile ground" for criminals: "You do not necessarily know who the seller is when you're buying a work of art. You might have to send cash to anonymous Swiss bank account. You may or may not get certificates of authenticity or any paperwork attributing to the authentic nature of the work in question. You may not be certain the seller actually owns the work. You might have gentlemen's agreements and handshakes rather than contracts -- and this is normal in the legitimate art world."

Interview Highlights

On Michelangelo's forged sculptures

In the Renaissance ... an ancient Roman sculpture was far more valuable than a work made a few weeks ago by this character Michelangelo ... who no one had ever heard. And so he, in cahoots with an art dealer, contrived to make a marble sculpture called Sleeping Eros. And it was buried in a garden and dug up, broken, repaired and sold as an antiquity to a cardinal who was an expert in antiquities and should probably have known better.

But the cardinal, after a few years, started to get suspicious and tried to return the sculpture to the dealer, but by this time, Michelangelo was the most famous sculptor in Rome. So the dealer was very happy to take the sculpture back and he sold it very easily as now a Michelangelo original.

On the problem with art expertise

One of the odd things about the art world is that there has never been any objective determination of expertise in a specific period or artist. You could have a Ph.D. or even two in Rembrandt and that doesn't necessarily mean that you can identify a Rembrandt from a copy after Rembrandt or something done by someone in his studio. In the world of wine, you need to go through elaborate steps to become a master of wine over many years and fulfill these objective tests -- the art world doesn't have that.

So expertise has always been a matter of personal opinion and it's been quite subjective. It's very unscientific, and yet, for centuries, expertise has been the primary way to authenticate something. The secondary way is provenance research, looking into the documented history of the object, but knowing this, criminals can insert themselves into the history of the object and pass off forgeries with remarkable ease because the art world, unfortunately, is often inadvertently complicit in authenticating forgeries.



Noah Charney is an art historian and writer, and the founder and president of The Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a non-profit research group devoted to issues of art crime.

Urksa Charney/Phaidon Press

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Urksa Charney/Phaidon Press

Noah Charney is an art historian and writer, and the founder and president of The Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a non-profit research group devoted to issues of art crime.

Urksa Charney/Phaidon Press

On what to look for in a painting

It depends on the type of painting, but if we're talking about an oil painting one of the things that has to be replicated in order for it to appear old is called craquelure. Craquelure is the web of cracks that appears naturally in oil paint over time as it expands and contracts and that literally looks like little webbing on the surface and you can study that and you can determine whether it was artificially induced to make it look old quickly or whether it appeared naturally.

There are various tricks to try to make it appear that it was old when it was artificially induced, but that's usually a good clue for oil paintings. ... We actually have some accounts, voluntarily presented by famous forgers, for their own recipes for how to make forgeries and a handful of the forgers in the book volunteer themselves -- they were never caught -- because they wanted the notoriety.

On his favorite forger

One of them is Eric Hebborn, and if I'm allowed to have a favorite forger it would be him. He's the only forger in this pantheon of forgers in this book who I would argue was at the same artistic skill level as the people he imitated. And he published a book called The Art Forger's Handbook which was literally -- it was like a cookbook of recipes for how to create forgeries and artificially age them -- and one of the techniques is to take an oil paint and cover it in a shortening, like Crisco or Bake Rite. And you literally bake it in an oven at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time and it artificially induces something that looks like craquelure. He also explained how you could paint on craquelure, which is very painstaking, but he was able to successfully pull it off.

On how forgers get caught

Most forgers are caught on the charge of fraud, and for that to happen, someone has to be defrauded out of money, or perhaps their reputation. And what tends to happen and the way that they're caught, is that they accidentally leave some sort of anachronism in one of their works of art.

For example, the famous German forger Wolfgang Beltracchi, who got out of prison just a few weeks ago, he was caught because he used a pigment called titanium white in a painting that had been made, supposedly, before titanium white was invented and so that's what gave away the game. But on the other hand, there are forgers who intentionally insert anachronisms in order to be able to reveal themselves later on.

On master art studios

We tend to think of artists as individuals creating the work of art in their entirety and that is not the way it has been for many centuries. That's a very romantic notion of how art is created. ... All of the great old masters ran art studios and depending on how much you paid them, they would create themselves a relevant proportion of the work of art.

If you want a Rubens, for example, you pay him the maximum amount then he paints everything himself and he designs it, too. You pay him the minimum, it's still called a Rubens, but he supervises and designs the object, but it might be entirely painted by his pupils and, in practice, it's usually a mixture. Faces, eyes and hands are almost always done by the master because they're the more difficult (if you're talking about portraits). But backgrounds, architectural elements, still lifes -- those were almost never painted by the master. And yet anything coming out of the master studio is considered the work of Rubens.

So when people get upset about artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst -- who design works and supervise it, but they have a team of people in a factory making it for them -- that's actually in keeping with a centuries-old artistic tradition.

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/23/412244490/could-the-masterpiece-be-a-fake-profit-revenge-and-the-art-of-forgery?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart

What Right Do Muralists Have To The Buildings They Paint On?

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A Philadelphia mural titled You Go Girl by Jetsonorama and Ursula Rucker. This is just one of many murals that the city's Mural Arts Program helped create.

Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

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Staircases and Mountaintops: Ascending Beyond the Dream by Willis Humphrey.

Steve Weinik/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

It took artist Katherine Craig about a year to create her nine-story mural on 2937 E. Grand Blvd. in Detroit. Most people who drive around the city have seen it -- one side of the Albert Kahn-designed building is covered in a blanket of electric blue, and a flowing waterfall of multicolored paint splatters descend from the roof line. It stands in stark contrast to the rest of the landscape of low buildings and muted Midwestern colors.

It's called "The Illuminated Mural" and it's become emblematic of Detroit's North End neighborhood.

This week, it was also on the auction block.

Katherine Craig painted Illuminated Mural in Detroit with the help of neighborhood children. The building it's on was auctioned this week.

BB and HH/Flickr

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BB and HH/Flickr

Katherine Craig painted Illuminated Mural in Detroit with the help of neighborhood children. The building it's on was auctioned this week.

BB and HH/Flickr



Well, the building is. But what does that mean for Craig's mural? What rights does a muralist have to the wall she painted on?

That's a question that echoes throughout the country right now, as muralists try to lay claim to their artwork under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990.

A Massive Loss, A Huge Win

California muralist Kent Twitchell was in a hotel room in Sausalito, Calif., when he got the call -- his six-story mural of Ed Ruscha in Los Angeles had been painted over. It was June 2, 2006, a date he remembers vividly because it was the day he lost his mural, and also the day of his daughter's wedding.

Kent Twitchell's Ed Ruscha Monument, located on the side of a building in Los Angeles, was destroyed in 2006.

Melba Levick/Courtesy of Kent Twitchell

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Melba Levick/Courtesy of Kent Twitchell

Kent Twitchell's Ed Ruscha Monument, located on the side of a building in Los Angeles, was destroyed in 2006.

Melba Levick/Courtesy of Kent Twitchell

Twitchell had worked on the mural over the course of nine years, and it was ruined in one day.

"It's hard to describe," he says. "It's like being kicked in the stomach, I guess. It takes the wind out of you."

So he took the case to court. He sued the U.S. government, which owned the building, and 11 other defendants for damages under the Visual Artists Rights Act, which prohibits the desecration, alteration or destruction of public art without giving the artist at least 90 days' notice.

He won $1.1 million, which is regarded as the largest win under VARA.

"If the work is destroyed, it's like part of your resume being destroyed," says Eric Bjorgum, the lawyer who won Twitchell's case, and the president of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles.

Many disputes surrounding murals have a lot to do with advertising, Bjorgum explains. When an area of a city is downtrodden, muralists choose highly visible walls for their works to spruce up the space. But when that area is developed, large spaces that are seen easily from the street are ideal real estate for advertisers.

Money is always a motivator -- in one of Bjorgum's cases, a brewing company was paying $18,000 per month to have a beer ad on a wall, covering up a mural.

Muralist Robert Wyland knows how that goes all too well. In 27 years, he painted 100 whale-themed murals, called Whaling Walls, in cities around the world. With that many murals, it makes sense that he's run into problems. Some of the murals were painted over, relocated or destroyed.

Others were covered with gigantic, multistory advertisements.

That's what happened in his hometown of Detroit. Whale Tower, painted in 1997, is on the back side of the 34-story Broderick Tower. The Grand Circus Park area wasn't very populated when he painted the mural, Wyland explained, so when the new stadium, Comerica Park, went up next door in 2000, the wall his mural was on became a hot commodity for advertisers.

In 2006, a gigantic vinyl ad for Chrysler's Jeep Compass was put up over the mural. Verizon Wireless followed suit. Wyland was angry, but knew that even if he sued the companies under VARA, it would only be a "drop in the bucket" in comparison to the ad revenue they were getting from the space. They'd pay him off and keep his mural covered.

"The art doesn't belong to the owner of the building," Wyland says. "It belongs to the community. So it's outrageous that people think they can do whatever they want with public art."

He doesn't always fight back when his works are ruined or covered up. Lawsuits under VARA mean a lot of time and money spent that mural artists like Wyland or Craig don't necessarily have.

"It's harder to save the walls than it was to paint them," Wyland says.

Finding Compromise In A Changing City

In Philadelphia, murals reign supreme. Around most corners there are huge, colorful paintings of people, places and things that serve as a walking art tour of the city's culture.

Jane Golden of the Mural Arts Program is the engine that has powered Philly to become the mural mecca it is today.

Golden started painting murals in the 1970s and worked with Kent Twitchell in Los Angeles on her first mural. She moved back to her hometown of Philadelphia because of health problems, and joined in on Mayor Wilson Goode's anti-graffiti effort in the Mural Arts Program. She reached out to graffiti writers in the city and started creating murals with them.

"People started to fall in love with the murals," Golden says. "It was like a mirror held up to them that said, 'Your life counts, you matter.' "

These murals snowballed from collaborations with taggers, to collaborations with truant kids, then entire communities. Under Golden's care, the Mural Arts Program has created nearly 4,000 works of art since 1987. She's seen the city undergo a lot of change in the past 30 years, and she has been striving to have the program change along with it.

A big part of that change is the development of lots that were vacant or empty -- spaces that were once prime placement for murals are now also ideal for condominiums and parking garages. And when land is bought that could jeopardize a mural, Golden says the first step is to communicate with the developer. That's what she did when she found out that Joe Zuritsky of Parkway Corp. was going to build a high-rise directly in front of the Legacy mural.

The Legacy mural will be adjusted when construction begins in the neighboring lot. The mural was done in 2006 by Josh Sarantitis and Eric Okdeh.

Jack Ramsdale/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

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Jack Ramsdale/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program

The Legacy mural will be adjusted when construction begins in the neighboring lot. The mural was done in 2006 by Josh Sarantitis and Eric Okdeh.

Jack Ramsdale/Courtesy of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program



"No one would ever give a wall for a mural if they thought they could never build and cover it up," Zuritsky says. "That would be giving away the right to the real-estate with no compensation."

And that's just not good business, he says.

Zuritsky and the Mural Arts Program agreed that the Legacy mural shouldn't be completely obscured. The developer plans to install columns in front of portions of the mural, but the mural will be wrapped around the columns, so as to not disrupt the flow of the work.

When To Fight, When To Say Goodbye

But sometimes compromises can't be reached. Wyland has a Whaling Wall in Philadelphia as well, on the side of the Marketplace Design Center. The building is slated for renovation this month -- a renovation that could destroy the East Coast Humpbacks painting.

Golden explains that losing murals comes with the territory of creating art in a city that is rapidly growing. Occasionally the Mural Arts Program invokes VARA, but it became clear over time that the program couldn't fight for every mural. Sometimes it had to say goodbye.

"Every time we lose something, we try to create lemonade out of the lemons," Golden says. "The memory of it should be so profound that it continually reminds us that art is important in our lives."

So what is a mural artist to do after the loss of a piece?

Keep painting. That's what Kent Twitchell is doing. He's planning a new Ed Ruscha mural for LA's arts district.

"I'm really enjoying this recovery, this new lease on life," Twitchell says. "To have something lost and then recovered is always a good thing."

Back in Detroit, Katherine Craig is waiting anxiously. The auction on 2937 E. Grand closed on Thursday. She hopes that the winning bidder is a fan of murals.

Otherwise, she'll be looking for a lawyer.

Paige Pfleger is an intern with NPR Digital News.

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/27/417204222/what-right-do-muralists-have-to-the-buildings-they-paint-on?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=fineart