TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover Story: OHP

Currently Showing/Coming Soon

First Saturday Tour

Saturday Speaker Series

Out in the Gardens: Gardenias

Tips from Kip: Growing Tomatoes

Emily on Education

Voices from the Archives:
Dr. Richard Campbell

From the Library: Notes on the State of Virginia

Featured Artist:
Harry Jackson

Featured Artwork:
Verdict of the People

Did You Know?

From the Vaults

A Note on Museums

Worth the Trip

Worth Quoting

Norton Information

Veterans Record Stories of Service, Sacrifice
In R.W. Norton Art Gallery's Oral History

Late last spring, James O’Gwynn, a native of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and former member of Shreveport’s “Louisiana Hayride,” sat with our audio recording equipment, and for nearly two hours told his life’s story. When he finished the museum’s Oral History Project (OHP) had notched its 500th interview.

OHP was created in 2002 to assemble an archive database of oral histories of men and women whose lives helped shape the destiny of the area, state and nation, Already, the project has gathered an amazing archive for its breadth of human experiences of men and women (most of them Louisianans) in war and peace. Who are these who pause in their lives and sit down for interviews? They are soldiers and civil rights workers, and sometimes both. They are women who rolled up their sleeves and went to work in industries in World War II. They explored earth and oceans for energy. They leaned into microphones, creating the “Shreveport sound” in recording studios and on stage. All, whether community leaders or common citizens, built the nation we now know.

In finding possible interviewees, and recording and archiving their stories, two persons do the lion share of the work. Phil Lynch has guided the project since its inception. Loren Culver joined him in 2004.

In the beginning of the program, the museum reached out to veterans clubs, churches, community organizations, and others to spread the word about the program. The first interview was conducted on December 21, 2002.

While a few others have conducted interviews “in the field,” Phil, working mostly in our museum offices, has listened to hundreds of voices. Many have been veterans of our nation’s conflicts from World War II to the present. Often walking a little slowly with age, they arrive at the museum front door where they are greeted and ushered into the privacy of a quiet room. There, in sessions that range from little more than an hour to a day, they re-live their lives that may span eight or nine decades.

As the red recording light glows, Phil finds himself engrossed in a person’s stories, especially those who lived through the Great Depression and World War II.

He listened as Roy Buckner, a Marine, battled the Japanese in the South Pacific in World War II, and held his twin brother in his arms as he lay dying on Guam. He heard Sam Loeb speak of the suffering of men in sub-zero-degree weather in the harsh winter of 1944-45 while serving as a U.S. Army infantryman, fighting across Europe. He learned from Louis and Rose Van Thyn, former residents of Holland, how European Jews struggled for life itself in Nazi concentration camps.

Drew Willingham, co-pilot of a B-17 bomber, told him how he was shot down, but eluded German captors and escaped into Switzerland, where he found the love of his life. Taka Flippo, explained how she survived American bombing raids as a teenager in Japan, then married a GI after the war and came to her new home in Louisiana. Katherine Brakhage showed him how she held a rivet gun as a seventeen-year-old worker in an airplane factory in Wichita, Kansas, where she literally built the wings of victory.

“I never tire of listening to them,” he says of his subjects of that generation. He adds, “It continues to amaze me how these men and women survived the Great Depression, won the war, and built such a great economy. They do not speak so much of rights as of responsibilities. The veterans of later conflicts are no less dedicated. And they all relate these remarkable stories with both humility and humor.”

Each interviewee is asked to arrive with photographs, documents, commendations, and military records as pictorial representations of their lives. During the interview, Loren scans those images into the museum’s computer database. She then copies the interview on a CD, or DVD, and sends it in an specially designed jewel case to the participant as a complimentary gift.

Next, the interview goes into written word. The audio of the recording session is sent to a museum transcriber who creates a transcript of the interview to accompany the audio in our database. Then, Gary Ford, staff writer for the Norton, reads each transcript (some reaching well over 100 pages) and writes a synopsis that is posted on the Norton’s website.

Ford has written stories about fourteen of the men and women who fought World War II on the battlefront and the home front. They will appear in the forthcoming book, Heroes Next Door, to be published soon by Dockery House Publishing.

The program already is helping to flesh out both historical record and family lineage. Historians and independent researchers in fields such as genealogy have read synopses on our web site and requested in writing (as OHP requires) copies of interviews.

Meanwhile, the Project continues to capture, literally out of the air itself, voices that will speak again to generations yet unborn.

--Gary Ford, Staff Writer

OHP seeks to interview veterans of American’s conflicts, pioneers of the area’s oil and gas industry, eyewitnesses in Shreveport’s civil rights struggles, and those who worked on “Louisiana Hayride” and in other aspects of the music business.

To prepare for an interview, participants are sent a list of sample questions about their early lives, their schooling, service, and later careers and are asked to bring photographs, correspondence, and, if they fought in a conflict, service-related ephemera such as awards and discharge papers—all for scanning. Loren returns the originals to the owner before they leave the building.

To schedule an interview, call us at (318) 865-4201, ext. 122, or you may email us at ohp@rwnaf.org.

Currently Showing

Moonlight Cypress

Alex Dzigurski:
Poet of Land and Sea
April 27 - August 1, 2010

If you’ve long admired the two works in our permanent collection by seascape artist Alexander Dzigurski, you’ll love our special exclusive exhibit coming April 27. Alex Dzigurski (1911-1995): Poet of the Land and Sea showcases eighteen paintings representative of the artists’ work. Dzigurski painted for more than sixty years. While his body of work documents his journey from Serbia to America, it also reflects his passion both for his native land as well as for America--a haven of peace for an artist, his art, and his family. Some have likened his work to the soaring strings of symphony, with Dzigurski using his brush like a conductor’s baton. His subjects include the deep, blue fjords of Norway, the walled city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast, the soar of Glacier National Park, and other mountains, shorelines, and shrines found throughout Europe and America. “He was such a great, gregarious person,” Alex Dzigurski II, of Mountain View California, an artist in his own right, comments of his father. “He loved this country very much. He was joyful about what he did. That desire and passion comes through in his work.”

--Gary D. Ford, Staff Writer

My Darlings

Under the Magnifying Glass:
Fifty Miniatures by Wes and Rachelle Siegrist
May 4 - July 25, 2010

Two of the finest living practitioners of the art of miniature painting are represented in the first solo exhibition by husband-and-wife team Wes and Rachelle Siegrist. As modern miniaturists, their subject matter encompasses a variety of genres, including wildlife, portraiture, and still-lifes. Miniature art is defined as works consisting of fewer than 25 square inches drawn at what is usually a one-sixth scale; however, most of the works by Wes and Rachelle are less than 15 square inches, or smaller than 4 inches by 4 inches and designed on a one-twelfth scale. Rachelle has won Best of Show in two of the Miniature Art Society of Florida’s Annual International Exhibitions, as well as the Robert and Leslie Starks Memorial Award three years in a row, while Wes has won First Place in Opaque Watercolor in the 2004 Annual International Miniature Show among other awards. The Siegrists tell us, “We aspire to be remembered not as much for the artwork we left behind as we do for the impact we made on our world and peers in elevating and establishing the genre of miniature art of the Revival Period.”

--Gary D. Ford, Staff Writer

Arts in Medicine:
The Colors of Courage
June 9 - July 18, 2010

Colors of Courage: Patients Who Paint, on view through July 18, consists of 23 paintings created by patients on the mend at Shreveport’s Feist-Weiller Cancer Center. In the center’s program, Arts in Medicine, outpatients of a chemotherapy clinic paint grids that, when placed with others, form new interpretations of famous works.

AIM, an eight-year-old program located at LSU Health Sciences Center, offers patients the opportunity to re-create these art works while they receive treatment in an outpatient clinic. Jane Crandell-Glass, founding director who coordinates both artists and volunteers, reports that the art activity helps reduce stress and produces beautiful paintings. They are displayed in hallways, clinics and lobbies of the Cancer Center and in the Hematology/Oncology unit of the University Hospital. The Norton is very proud to partner with AIM, and present this exhibit of art that heals.

--Gary Ford, Staff Writer

Coming Soon

Ansel Adams:
The Masterworks
August 17 - December 31, 2010

In his later years, Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) chose a selection of his photographs that he felt represented the best of his life’s work. Called “The Museum Set”, the collection reveals the importance he placed on the drama and splendor of natural environments that might not have otherwise revealed their secrets to the casual passer-by. These forty-seven photographs represent a substantial portion of that collection. This is the third exhibition of Adams’s photographs the Norton has featured.

George Washington
Jane Stuart

From that conflict, visitors step into an adjacent gallery where much of the Norton’s 389-piece collection of Charles M. Russell’s works depicts the American West. In bronze and paint resound the fading echoes of the Old West as a wild country. Most poignant are Russell’s depictions of Native Americans, including members of the Blackfoot tribe, with whom this working cowboy-turned artist once lived.

Although he lived in the East, Frederic Remington, a Russell contemporary and amateur cowboy, traveled extensively in the West. In the Remington Gallery, featuring much of the Norton’s 155-piece collection of his works, gleaming bronzes and paintings celebrate cowboys, cavalry, and Indians in the last decades of the 19th century.

--Gary Ford, Staff Writer

Frontiersman
Artist Unknown

In the early 19th century, northwest Louisiana was emerging with farms, settlements and towns. In the month’s Saturday Speaker Series at 2 p.m. on July 10, Marty Young, director of the Pioneer Heritage Center, will discuss the culture and social history of these northwestern parishes, including the every day life that blended the cultures of natives and newcomers—the European and African-Americans. The center, located at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, preserves seven buildings such as the 1856 Caspiana House, an 1885 blacksmith shop, a double pen log house, and other structures.

One Saturday each month, the Norton will host a local, regional, or national expert speaking on a variety of subjects in formats ranging from formal presentations to informal seminars to walking tours. Upcoming speakers will cover a broad range of subjects including gardening, popular literature and film, influential historical and cultural figures, musical history and interpretation, and food in art. Like the Norton itself, these events are free to the public. Please check the calendar of events regularly for the next in our Saturday Speaker Series.

Early each summer morning, I arrive at work and follow my nose into another gardenia day.

Our botanical gardens are fragrant with those creamy white blossoms of the gardenia, or cape jasmine as some call it, crowning soft, shiny, evergreen leaves. Here in the South, the scent of gardenias trail from garden and into both home and ceremony. Perhaps your grandmother, too, cut the blossoms and floated them in bowls of water. Before refrigeration gave us so much choice in floral decoration, gardenias filled bridal bouquets and were woven into wreathes for funerals.

They accented fashion, too. One bloom behind the ear often topped off women’s coiffures. The famous blues singer Billy Holliday never appeared on stage without a gardenia in her hair.

Gardenias, native to the Far East, have brightened summer gardens in America since the 18th century. The flower was named for Dr. Alexander Garden, a Scottish physician and naturalist, who immigrated to Charleston in 1752. English merchant John Ellis, who often corresponded with Garden, persuaded Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, to name a scented jasmine for his Carolina friend. Linnaeus agreed and named the plant Gardenia jasminoides. In 1762, Dr. Garden planted the first gardenia in America among his other Charleston flowers.

We’ve long enjoyed the sight and scent of gardenias in our botanical gardens. You might guess that some are located in our Fragrance Garden. They also grow around our pond and in our Woodland Garden in the northeast corner of our property.

We grow two selections of Common Gardenia: August Beauty and Frost Proof. Both produce flowers May through August, although some began blooming in mid-spring and don’t fade away until fall.

Want to step out into your own garden and fill your lungs with the aroma? You should know that growing gardenias can be a challenge, but they should do well if you live in USDA Hardiness Zones 8-11. You’ll need acid soil, full sun or partial shade, and night temperatures of 50° to 55° F in winter and spring. The bushes grow tall and thick. Both August Beauty and Frost Proof reach four to six feet high and spans three to four feet wide. Again, they’re difficult to establish, and may struggle a bit, but once they catch on, they’ll just bloom, bloom, bloom!

I have really come to like Frost Proof, which can also grow in zones 6 and 7. It’s a newer selection, and it really does well here in Louisiana with our cold and our heat. It doesn’t matter when the calendar turns from August into September. Even in cooler fall weather Frost Proof blooms remind us of summer.

It’s really difficult to grow gardenias inside, so my advice would be to keep them outdoors. Plant them near the front porch, so the sweet aromas may drift through your windows and fill summer days with scent and memory.

When your nose leads you to our gardenias, stop and sniff, but please don’t snip. We want all our visitors to enjoy the gardenias throughout the summer.

--Kip Dehart, Landscape Director

We call them “sink sandwiches.”

There’s no easier recipe for such a delicious summer treat. First, gather tomatoes from the garden, wash, slice them onto bread slathered with mayonnaise, and salt and pepper to taste. Then, stand over the kitchen sink, eat, and let the drain catch the excess juice.

We’ve been enjoying sink sandwiches, as well as other salad treats, from the tomatoes grown in our demonstration vegetable garden by our staff with the help of some very young gardeners. Members of YAB (Youth Advisory Board), who consult with Education Director Emily Meyers about museum programs for kids, help us plant and maintain the garden.

The YABs will have a chance to grow another crop of tomatoes soon, and so may you. Here in Louisiana and other Southern states, we can enjoy two seasons of tomatoes well into fall. Here’s how:

1. Select good, heat-tolerant varieties.
I like the ones that LSU Ag Center suggests. Some that do well in mid-summer are Florida 91, Heat Wave II, Solar Set, Sunchaser, Sunmaster, and Sun Leaper.

2. Plant deeper.
You’ll want to nestle young tomato seedlings about six inches deep, so roots will reach cooler, wetter soil.

3. Be sure to mulch.
Mulching keeps roots cool and helps spread the moisture more evenly. Be sure and select mulches in light colors. Dark colors are too warm for summer.

4. Water early in the morning.
I’m a big believer in watering when you wake up. That’s when plants are waking up, too. Give them a good soaking to help them get through our hot, dry mid- to late-summer days.

5. Don’t forget insecticidal soap.
Along with organic sprays, insecticidal soap will help control aphids, cutworms, and other pests. Patrol your plants daily. You can pick off some worms, but don’t let the infestation get out of hand.

With a little more care, you can enjoy a second season of tomatoes. In fact, I’ve known people who grow tomatoes up to Thanksgiving. Even if your growing season is shorter than that, you’ll still enjoy the fresh, summer taste of tomatoes in the middle of winter.

--Kip Dehart, Landscape Director

Family art at LACMA

The first museum we toured was The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where The Family Gallery immediately caught my attention. Staffed with volunteers who monitored supplies and offered suggestions, the room was adorned with examples of art work and set with tables and supplies for families to explore the art of Korean brush painting. Another nice “family” touch was the presence of picnic table-type benches set up in the foyer areas between galleries. Various art books were spread across the tables inviting families to sit and read together.

The Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens in Pasadena were extraordinary! The highlights for children include The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science, the Helen and Peter Bing Children’s Garden and the Associated Foundations Teaching Greenhouse. All serve as delightful hands-on discovery centers for children and families. At numerous stations, set up in the teaching greenhouse, activities included measuring sugar content in flower nectars, demonstration of how seeds travel, and a plant petting zoo, including herbs with delightful textures and smells.

The time spent at The Getty Villa and the Griffith Observatory was sensational! I took numerous pictures at both of these places, as my words didn’t seem to do them justice.

The seminars I attended were filled with exciting ideas and information. In the first of these, I learned about an environmental education program called The Fairchild Challenge. This standards-based, environmental education outreach program was a brainchild of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida. It offers interdisciplinary challenge options for middle and high schools, and attracts students of diverse interests, abilities, talents and backgrounds. The Fairchild Challenge fosters interest in the environment by encouraging students to appreciate the beauty and value of nature, develop critical thinking skills, understand the need for biodiversity and conservation, tap community resources, become actively engaged citizens and recognize that individuals make the difference. Students are given opportunities to research, write, compose, create, dream, perform, and engineer as they utilize the environment as the context for increasing engagement in science.

Another seminar outlined a School in the Park program in San Diego’s Balboa Park. This multi-visit museum program blends formal and informal learning by utilizing the rich resources of museums and educational institutions in Balboa Park. The program is designed with standards-based curriculum to integrate what is learned at school with authentic learning connections from the Park institutions. Students are engaged in real world problem solving scenarios. For example, they might be asked to help design an exhibit, working with staff members to figure out specific problems about spacing and placement. They know their ideas are important and will be taken into consideration. One the greatest benefits of School in the Park is the development of rapport between students and museum professionals.

No trip to LA would be complete without a visit to The Farmers Market, a drive down Rodeo Drive and a snapshot of the “Hollywood” sign on the hill. We were able to incorporate several of these “tourist” events, but the most meaningful parts of the trip were museum visits and behind-the-scenes tours granted AAM members. We’re in the “digesting it all” stage and will reap huge benefits from having attended. And, it certainly didn’t hurt that that it all took place in a “happenin’” city like LA!

--Emily Meyers, Education Director

After graduating from Louisiana Tech, Richard, a native of Minden, Louisiana, served a year in the Vietnam War as a first lieutenant and platoon leader in the famed 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. Unlike many sent to Vietnam, he was happy about his assignment.

Campbell: They gave me just exactly what I asked for, you know, once I got to Vietnam.

Interviewer: That’s got to be a first!

Campbell: As I said many times, it was a first! In fact, the lady that I might have married at the time, when she knew that I had some chance of avoiding going over there but still elected to do it, she said, “I think I need to find somebody else.”

Interviewer: Oh, my goodness.

Campbell: That left me a little bit more foot-loose and fancy-free at the time. I mean I certainly never wanted to die but I was somewhat fatalistic about it. If it happens, it happens. I knew that chances really weren’t that good because of what I was doing, but the Lord looked out for me. I had cause—here the guy in front of me dying and I not get a scratch or something, or blow up beside me, and I never get a scratch. Or just have something to tell me, “Don’t walk down this trail,” and we find out that the next day there were a thousand—I mean believe it or not—a thousand enemy were down there when just something made me take a turn to the right instead of the left. So I thought that the good Lord certainly looked out for me. I never lost an American casualty. Had a scout get killed once but I was so fortunate that none of my guys were ever killed.

Back home, Richard completed dental school, and in Minden set up a practice he still maintains. He also leads teams of dentists and doctors on missionary trips. He is among nearly 500 men and women from the Shreveport area who graciously gave their time to tell us their life stories of service and sacrifice. We’re presenting these stories as part of our Oral History Project, an ongoing effort to interview veterans of conflicts from World War II to the present. We also continue to collect interviews from eyewitnesses to the civil rights struggle, pioneers of the energy industries, and those who created “the Shreveport sound” in music.

Click here to view additional photographs and to listen to the audio of the interview with Dr. Campbell. If you or someone you know would like to share stories with us, please call (318) 865-4201, or contact ohp@rwnaf.org.

--Gary Ford, Staff Writer

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
to others . . . Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

While Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly remains most famous as a writer for the Declaration of Independence, his book, Notes on the State of Virginia has been called the “first truly American piece of writing”. The only full-length book by Jefferson to be published during his lifetime, Notes was originally written as his formal response to inquiries about the state from the French ambassador to America, M. Barbe Marbois. Consequently, they treat a variety of subjects, including topography, climate, boundaries, population, government, commerce, agriculture, Native Americans, natural history, and other topics. Jefferson, truly one of America’s “Renaissance men”, also included his own chart of the “Birds of Virginia,” identifying them with both popular names and “Catesby’s designations”. (The British naturalist Mark Catesby had published The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects and plants: Together with their descriptions in English and French in subscription form from 1731 to 1743. Two first editions of this groundbreaking work are included in the Norton’s Rare and Antiquarian Book Collection.)

Jefferson was perhaps especially interested in natural history as he wrote to Marbois, if only to demolish the theories of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who had claimed that both the animals and Native Americans of America were degenerate in comparison to those of Europe. Thus, Jefferson also included a folding chart listing Indian tribes and eight full-page charts of flora and fauna as well as charts listing local industry. Most of the book was written in 1781 after he declined re-election to the governorship of Virginia and retired to Monticello to focus on his estate and his ailing wife. When Martha Jefferson died in 1782, he fell into a deep depression, but responded to the call of his country when George Washington tapped him in 1784 to serve as trade commissioner with France and then to take Benjamin Franklin’s place as ambassador to France in 1785. He had Notes on the State of Virginia first published in Paris in 1785, but only arranged for 200 copies to be disseminated among colleagues and friends in the intellectual community. A French translation appeared in 1786, and then in 1787, John Stockdale published an English version in London. All of these editions are quite rare today.

Scholars return repeatedly to Jefferson’s Notes, not merely for their value as scientific and historical information, much of which remains viable today, but also because it presents one of the clearest expressions of Jefferson’s views on contentious subjects including freedom of religion and slavery. While he was clear on the need for separation between church and state - . . . it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg – his opinion of slavery and racism in general was far more ambivalent, as he wished to end slavery, but feared a race war - I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach [slavery] . . . but, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. Taken all in all, Notes on the State of Virginia undoubtedly gives us the clearest picture of the mind of one of the most profound of America’s Founding Fathers as he struggled with the issues that beset both the statesman and the man.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

The Range Burial

In 1942, Jackson joined the U.S. Marine Corps and became a General Intelligence Sketch Artist in Major General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith’s Fifth Amphibious Corps. The youngest Marine Corps Combat Artist (only 18 when he began), he received special mention as the “best” in the November 20, 1943 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Jackson participated in battles for Tarawa, Roi-Namur, and Saipan-Tinian. He was wounded at both Tarawa and Saipan and earned several decorations.

After the war, Jackson studied abstract art in New York City, becoming a personal friend of Jackson Pollock and a well-respected abstract expressionist in his own right. On a trip to Europe in 1954, however, he was inspired to pursue more classical methods of painting and sculpting. After spending seven years there to absorb realistic and classical art, his work changed profoundly. Often, he blended two, seemingly opposing art philosophies to create his works, citing both Raphael and Jackson Pollack as points of inspiration. His return to America made him familiar with great American realists Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and most particularly, the western artists Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell, who provided him with a new subject and medium. By 1958, he had begun sculpting, focusing on realistic and detail representations of cowboy and Native American Life.

The Norton displays a fascinating comparative study of Jackson’s works: both a sculpture and a lithograph based on the same scene and subject matter,The Range Burial. Jackson was inspired to make these pieces after a trip to the Louvre in Paris, where he admired a painting by Gustave Courbet entitled Burial at Ornans. Although the figures in the French painting were those of priests and French peasants, Jackson easily visualized a simple country burial on the open range rendered on the same sort of grand canvas as the Courbet work.

To help visualize his painting’s eventual composition on a massive 10- by 21-foot canvas, Jackson opted to sculpt his vision first. With the bronze, every gesture and movement is directed to the cowboy on the ground. The land curves up and around the black hole of the grave. As one critic stated, “This is not the still, open scene Jackson had visualized for the paintings, but an intense grappling with death.”

In the accompanying lithograph, Jackson wanted wide, open spaces. He wanted a quietness, stillness, and respect in a timeless scene. He did not make the faces of the cowboys so portrait-like as to distract from the scene. The land seems to stretch forever into the horizon, and this stark horizon line was completely intentional. The endless horizon directly parallels the dark grave. The horizon line even passes through three of the cowboy’s eyes. As with the bronze, all attention is focused on the deceased.

Jackson has exhibited worldwide in both public and private collections, as well as in the Vatican and the Royal House of Windsor. He has designed western and military themed sculptures for venues around the country and has exhibited at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and with the Cowboy Artists of America. He pleads with critics, however, not to pigeonhole him: “Don’t categorize me…as a cowboy or Western artist or abstract expressionist artist. I’m an artist.” Those who have seen his remarkable work from abstraction to neo-realism would certainly agree.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

Possibly no other American artist was able to combine his passions for politics and painting as successfully as George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879). Certainly few other artists painted such lasting and loved works depicting the lives of the uncommon common folk who settled the early American West. The most popular of these, including Verdict of the People belong to a group of paintings known as the “Election” series in honor of their subject matter.

Bingham was intimately familiar with frontier politics. Though he was born on a prosperous farm in Virginia, he was only eight when his family moved to the Missouri Territory and only twelve when his father died. By then, the young Bingham had developed a taste for art while working as an unpaid assistant to artist Chester Harding as he painted his famous portrait of the aged Daniel Boone. Although his family apprenticed him to two cabinetmakers, Bingham had launched himself as a self-taught portrait painter by 1834.

He also taught himself law and became involved in local politics. While he ran unsuccessfully for office several times, he also served as a representative in the state legislature, as Missouri’s state treasurer, as president of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, and as the state’s adjutant-general. These experiences doubtless contributed to his painting of the political life of the Western frontier as it exemplified the American political process – democracy in all its messy, chaotic glory. The “Election” series was so successful in public exhibitions that Bingham commissioned engravings of them which sold by the hundreds across the country.

The Verdict of the People, like another famous work in the series, The County Election, involved dozens of carefully organized and intermingled characters. To create these, Bingham relied upon his portfolio of drawings of a wide variety of characters exhibiting many different physical types, ages, expressions, and positions. He didn’t clean up democracy; some of his characters are drunk, some boisterous, others indifferent. He was also one of the rare, early American painters to realistically depict African-Americans in the town life of the early frontier. He selected among these drawings for each particular painting, then modeled them onto the canvas, usually sketching them first and then painting. However, his landscape and architectural elements seem to have been painted directly onto the canvas without preliminary drawing.

Given his political genre, Bingham, who had traveled in Europe, was likely influenced by the great English artist and early political cartoonist William Hogarth (1697-1764). Though his works lack Hogarth’s satirical thrust, they share deeply populated scenes that show real, imperfect, and even melodramatic people interacting in the turbulence of political gatherings with elements both noble and ignoble. Because he painted it as he saw it, Bingham’s works, probably more than those of any other American artist, accurately depict the rough-hewn political life found in frontier towns and other early bastions of “civilization”.

After a rough and tumble life of travel and politics, an increasingly frail Bingham was appointed the first Professor of Art at the University of Missouri’s School of Art in Columbia in 1877. Weakened by pneumonia, he died on July 7, 1879 at age 68.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

Many people are aware that during World War II the Nazis systematically looted art treasure from across Europe and North Africa, most notably for the collection of Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering who fancied himself an art connoisseur. Fewer, however, are aware of the “Monuments Men”, a small band of 350 art historians, museum curators, professors, soldiers, and sailors gathered into the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section of the U.S. armed forces. Assembled in May of 1945, they were given the job of finding, securing, and returning to rightful owners millions of paintings, sculptures, books, jewelry, furniture, tapestries, and other cultural treasures stolen by German troops. Charles A. Goldstein, lawyer for the Commission for Art Recovery, has called such plundering “the largest theft of cultural items in history”.

Certainly the Nazi leaders had approached the looting as systematically as they pursued other heinous goals. They organized a special squad of art advisors called the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), which created 80 special leather-bound volumes with descriptions and photographs of important works. These were provided to the Wehrmacht before they invaded the country housing them. Working from the list, they shipped millions of priceless artifacts back to Germany.

Some iconic treasures went on the lam to evade capture even before the Nazis arrived. The Mona Lisa was evacuated by ambulance from the Louvre in September of 1939 and hidden in a succession of no fewer than six country chateaux during the war. As the conflict was coming to an end, the Germans tried hiding artwork as well, hoping to prevent its being either looted or expatriated. The prized bust of Queen Nefertiti was taken from Berlin and hidden in a potash mine at Merkers along with thousands of crates of Nazi-looted treasure from other countries. Jan van Eyck’s 15th century Ghent altarpiece, originally from Belgium, accompanied other works into the mines of Alt Ausee, Austria.

The first job of the Monuments Men was to locate these mines, send the art topside, then sort through the works, arranging them by country of origin, making emergency repairs, and assessing claims by delegations who came to retrieve their countries’ lost bounty. Among the more surprising finds was a set of stained glass windows actually stolen out of the cathedral of Strasbourg, France. By order of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, these, all 73 cases worth, were the first objects returned to their original home. Private Harry Ettliner, who worked as an interpreter for the division when only 19, pointed out years later: “That’s what made our war different. It established the policy that to the victor do not go the spoils. The whole idea of returning property to its rightful owners in wartime was unprecedented. That was our job.”

Once they’d cleaned out the mines, the Monuments Men still had thousands of pieces to recover from the German citizens who had pilfered Nazi hoards during the time between Germany’s collapse and the Allies’ arrival. Lt. Bernard Taper, who joined the squad in 1946, reported, “There were probably thousands of pieces in this second wave, the looting of the looted . . . We looked for stuff on the black market, made regular checks among the art dealers, and went out into the countryside to follow up promising leads.” Among the works recovered in this way were a Rogier van der Weyden painting, a 13th-century Limoges reliquary, and several Gothic statues tracked to the house of a woodcutter named Roth. Taper says, “Herr Roth said he wasn’t a thief. He said these statues were lying on the ground in the rain with people stepping on them. He said he took pity on them and took them home.” Another time, Taper discovered that local women had argued over a 15th-century Aubusson tapestry, finally settling the matter by cutting it into four pieces, one for each. “One of the pieces was being used for curtains, one for a kid’s bed,” Taper reported.

Of the original 350 Monuments Men (about 20 of whom were actually Monuments Women), only nine are still living. Retired Texas oilman and philanthropist Robert M. Edsel, inspired by their amazing accomplishment, has written a book about them, Rescuing Da Vinci, co-produced a documentary, The Rape of Europa, and convinced Congress to pass resolutions recognized their special service. And he has produced his own monument to their memory: the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, which is devoted to safeguarding art in times of armed conflict for future generations. Edsel declares: “This group is an inspiration for our times. We know they returned around five million cultural items between 1945 and 1951. I would speculate that 90 to 95 percent of the high-value cultural objects were found and returned. They deserve the recognition they never got.” Now, perhaps, their reputation will be preserved as well as the art they saved.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

Faced with the ascension of Thomas Jefferson, formerly a personal friend and now a bitter political foe, to the presidency, John Adams sought to limit the scope of his successor’s power by packing the new nation’s judiciary with Federalist judges. Struggling with personal (his son Charles had recently died of alcoholism) as well as political woes, Adams’s judgment was undoubtedly clouded, and on the morning of March 4, 1801, the day of Jefferson’s inauguration, he ignominiously left Washington at 4 a.m. without extending any courtesies or ceremonies to the newly elected leader of the republic.

Some scholars, however, feel that the matter of the “midnight appointments” has been overstated. Adams and Marshall (whom Adams had appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in February) did use the final weeks of Adams’s presidency to stack the judiciary with Federalists, including openings for the new judicial districts created in February, a total of 23 appointments in all. However, historian Page Smith insists that Adams did not sit up late signing appointments into the wee hours of his final day. As for his early morning departure, that was simply the time he had to leave in order to catch his coach to Baltimore. There were as yet no protocols for outgoing presidents to welcome new ones, and Adams was simply vacating the presidential quarters to allow Jefferson to move in. The Jeffersonian-leaning press quickly denounced “The Duke of Braintree’s Midnight Judges” (Adams’s family home was in Braintree, Massachusetts), and the term “midnight appointment” became common political usage. It also became one of the first significant Supreme Court cases in 1803, when Chief Justice John Marshall used the matter involving one of the appointments he had approved in his previous office, Marbury vs. Madison, to assert the right of judicial review. In any case, if Smith is right and Adams signed few appointments on his final day in office, then this is an exceedingly rare document indeed.

This particular appointment was for Elijah Paine, then serving as a Federalist Senator for Vermont, thus allowing him to vote for his own approval as a federal judge! Paine had a distinguished public career. Born in Brooklyn, Connecticut in 1757, he served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and then studied law at Harvard. He was admitted to the bar in 1784. He worked as a lawyer, farmer, and entrepreneur (establishing a cloth factory and saw and grist mill in Vermont) before entering politics and serving in several positions. He was secretary of the state constitutional convention in 1786, a state representative from 1787 to 1790, and a probate judge from 1788 to 1791. He was Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1791 to 1795, resigning after his election to the U.S. Senate in 1794. Re-elected in 1800, he served until September of 1801, having received Adams’s nomination to the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont on February 24th of that year. He was confirmed by the Senate on February 25th, and received this commission on March 3, 1801. His judicial service ended on April 1, 1842, when he resigned as a result of illness, dying on April 28th. His son later served as the governor of Vermont.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

Hey, we knew museums were important, but even we were pleasantly surprised by some of the statistics gathered by the American Association of Museums. According to the program guide at the recent AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo (where Education Director Emily Meyers and I recently spent a week), here are some fun facts:

• American museums are visited more than 850 million times a year, more than all major league sporting events and amusement parks combined.

• The median cost of museum admission is less than a movie ticket, just $7, while 35% of U.S. museums (including the Norton) are free.

• More than 55 million students visited museums on field trips in 2007-08 . . .

• Probably because American museums spend more than $2 billion a year for education programming and events.

• U.S. museums preserve and protect more than 1 billion objects and employ nearly half a million citizens.

• While government sources provided an average of 39% of the funding of museums in 1989, today it offers just 24%.

• Meanwhile, museums directly contributed more than $20 billion to the U.S. economy (through salaries, expenses, purchases, etc.) in 2008 and indirectly contributed billions more, while the U.S. nonprofit arts and culture sector generates $166 billion worth of economic activity every year with a return on investment of more than $7 in taxes for every $1 in government appropriations.

• And, last but not least, Americans trust museums far more than they do the government:. 87% of Americans describe museums as trustworthy. Have you seen the latest figures for Congress?

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

Huntington Gardens

I would have to take over the newsletter in order to tell you about everything Emily and I saw and learned, so I’ll limit myself to two of my favorite L.A. venues: the Huntington and the Getty. In 1919, the private, non-profit Huntington Institution was founded by retired railroad magnate Henry Huntington (1850-1927). His interests included books, art, and botany, and during his lifetime, he collected in all these areas, and housed them in the lovely estate he built. Located just east of Pasadena in the residential area of San Marino, the Huntington today covers 120 acres and includes an art museum with three separate collections, a research library, and one of the country’s most amazing botanical gardens, complete with greenhouse conservatory and botanical laboratories.

We were especially fortunate that Laura Stalker, the head librarian of the Huntington, gave Emily and me a special tour of the library, including its conservation laboratories and exhibition halls. The library has seven million manuscripts and books in the collection, which specializes in English and American history and literature. In addition, it preserves more than a million photographs as well as thousands of maps and various ephemera and other printed materials. For a book junkie like me, it was close to paradise on earth.

After Laura’s tour, she arranged for us to visit the rest of the Huntington on our own. First stop was the Huntington Art Gallery, which was originally the family residence. It displays an astonishing collection of 18th and 19th century British and French art, most from the neo-classical period. The highlight, undoubtedly, is Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. From there, we moved on to the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, displaying works from the 1690s to the 1950s. We found pieces from many old friends from the Norton including Mary Cassatt and Frederic Remington. With time running short, we had to miss the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, which hosts changing exhibitions, to visit as many of the Botanical Gardens as possible. More than a dozen of these specialized gardens are arranged in a park-like setting with rolling lawns that allow one to blend pleasantly into the next. Among our favorite areas were the Rose Garden, the Chinese Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Children’s Garden. Had not the sun been setting and the guards issuing mandatory instructions to leave, I’m sure we could have spent many more hours wandering through or simply sitting and enjoying the beautiful vistas we found there.

From Pasadena on the northeastern side of Los Angeles proper, we moved west to the edge of Santa Monica and the J. Paul Getty Museum. It was also established by a wealthy entrepreneur, oil magnate J. Paul Getty (1892 – 1975). Once titled the “richest living American”, Getty was an avid collector of art who established the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. It operates the J. Paul Getty Foundation, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Research Institute, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, which consists of both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. We were fortunate to be able to spend an evening being wined and dined in the central courtyard of the Getty Center while touring the recently re-installed galleries of art ranging from the medieval period up to 1900. The Getty does not collect art created after 1900 with the exception of its amazing photography collection. Its galleries display themed exhibitions containing paintings, sculpture, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, and decorative arts from different periods. Most magical to me were the medieval galleries, which charmingly blended spectacular stained glass windows with carved ivory reliquaries and miniatures from books of hours, among other marvelous works.

A day or so later, we were given a special tour of the Getty Villa in Malibu by members of its curatorial staff. Recently renovated, the Villa was re-opened on January 28, 2006 and houses approximately 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities, 1,200 of which are currently on display. Getty opened this museum in 1974 as a re-creation of the famous Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum in southern Italy, which was preserved by the famous eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The Villa includes formal gardens and courtyards; each plant, tree, and shrub there is the result of careful research to insure that it accurately reflects what would have been found in a Roman garden in the first century. Inside the galleries of the Villa are some of the great works of antiquity, several of which have recently been the subject of controversy, an issue about which our guides were very open and informative. This is closest one can come in America to visiting the glories of the classical age. Here also one gets a brilliant lesson in the beginnings of Western civilization, as well as the opportunity for a philosophic discussion about the acquisition of art.

I could go on and on, but at the end what I have to say is simply this: Los Angeles is a great place for tourists, but they frequently devote their time to visiting Universal Studios, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, among other “tourist-y” attractions; however, if you really want some bang for your buck, try these fabulous museums and gardens. You’ll never regret it.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

FIRST SATURDAY TOURS
Regularly scheduled tours are offered on the first Saturday of every month at 2 p.m. No reservation is required for these First Saturday Tours. Groups of 10 or more are asked to call ahead so preparations may be made to accommodate the group on these particular tours. All tours, like admission to the Gallery, are free to the public. The next First Saturday Tour, The American History Tour, will be on July 2nd at 2 p.m.

GROUP TOURS
Eighteen group tours are offered at the Norton ranging from the 19th Century French Art History Tour to the Cowboy Artists Tour. Group tours are available by appointment year-round for groups of 10-30 and last approximately 45 minutes.

OUTREACH PROGRAM
The purpose of the community Outreach Program is to take art and art education to people through interactive presentations. Community Presentations consist of PowerPoint presentations to civic groups and assisted living facilities.

For more information on the programs offered or to schedule a tour or presentation, click here.

SATURDAY SPEAKER SERIES
One Saturday each month, the Norton will host a local, regional, or national expert speaking on a variety of subjects in formats ranging from formal presentations to informal seminars to walking tours. Upcoming speakers will cover a broad range of subjects including gardening, popular literature and film, influential historical and cultural figures, musical history and interpretation, and food in art. All events are free to the public. The next Saturday Speaker will be Marty Young on July 10th at 2 p,m. He will present Pioneering the Louisiana Frontier.

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
The R.W. Norton Art Foundation is pursuing interviews with those who were involved in America's effort to win World War II, whether in the military or on the home front. Each interview will be digitally recorded by the Gallery to be stored and used for historical purposes, and each interview subject will also be given a copy of this recording to share and preserve his or her memories for family and friends.

If you are interested in participating in or would like more information about the Oral History Project, please click here.

SUGGESTIONS AND IDEAS?
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GALLERY LOCATION AND HOURS:
4747 Creswell Avenue
Shreveport, LA 71106
318-865-4201
www.rwnaf.org
Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.
Closed Mondays and National Holidays

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