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Major Picasso exhibition to open in New York City

NEW YORK (AP) – Pablo Picasso fans, rejoice.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will soon be exhibiting its complete holdings of the Spanish artist’s paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics, plus 200 works on paper. And auction powerhouses Sotheby’s and Christie’s are offering two rare Picassos in early May not seen on the art market in decades. One could surpass the current $104.17 million record.

The expansive Picasso exhibit, starting April 27, will be a first for the museum. It will include The Actor, which underwent conservation after being accidentally damaged at the Met in January.

In preparation, conservators used X-rays and infrared reflectography to closely examine all of the museum’s Picasso paintings and discovered that he more frequently painted over other paintings than originally thought, said exhibition curator Gary Tinterow. The practice, known to art specialists, is not widely familiar to the public.

All the compositions in the exhibition “show traces of revision and correction,” he said. Some have earlier works by Picasso underneath while others are painted over the works of other artists.

In creating La Coiffure, for instance, Picasso painted over at least four compositions and several beginnings of compositions, said Tinterow.

The practice saved Picasso money “at a time when he was very poor … when he wasn’t selling very much,” added Tinterow.

In the case of The Actor,” which depicts an acrobat posed dramatically against an abstract background, the museum discovered that Picasso had painted the image on the back of a previously painted canvas after covering the earlier work with heavy paint. The painting on the reverse side appears to be a landscape and could have been painted by him or another artist.

The 1904-1905 oil underwent conservation after sustaining a 6-inch gash in the lower right-hand corner when a museum visitor lost her balance and fell on it.

The Met exhibition, comprising 34 paintings, 58 drawings and 12 sculptures and ceramics, represents every period of Picasso’s long career – from his self-portrait Yo, made when he was 19 years old to Standing Nude and Seated Musketeer when he was 87. Highlights also include the famous 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein, which was a bequest from the American writer in 1946 and the Met’s first Picasso acquisition.

Hundreds of Picasso’s works on paper, which have rarely, if ever, been shown at the museum, will be part of the exhibit. And a video of nine Picasso paintings will demonstrate how the artist revised his compositions, styles and themes in reworking specific paintings.

The exhibition could help draw even more attention to Christie’s and Sotheby’s sales.

The two paintings have an impeccable provenance, one belonging to President John F. Kennedy’s sister, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, and the other to California art patron Frances Lasker Brody.

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, a striking 1932 painting of Picasso’s mistress Marie-Therese Walker, is estimated to bring $70 million to $90 million at Christie’s on May 4. Exhibited only once in the United States in 1961 and coming on the heels of the Met’s exhibition, the work could potentially go even higher.

“Both thematically and formally, it’s a masterpiece of the highest order,” said Christie’s expert Conor Jordan. “There aren’t any Picassos like this remaining in private collections.”

Brody purchased the painting in the 1950s. Part of the sale proceeds will benefit the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., where she sat on the board.

At its May 5 sale, Sotheby’s is offering Femme au Chapeau, Buste, a 1965 work inspired by Jacqueline Roque, the last love of Picasso’s life. It hung for 50 years in the Manhattan apartment of Patricia Kennedy Lawford and is estimated to sell for $8 million to $12 million. The painting is being sold by Lawford’s estate.

The “work was not public knowledge until we recently published our catalog,” said Emmanuel Di-Donna, vice chairman of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art.

The current record for a work by Picasso is $104.17 million for Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice), attained in 2004 at Sotheby’s New York.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, citing a long-standing policy of not commenting on acquisitions, declined to say if it was interested in buying the works.

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On the Net:

Metropolitan Museum of Art: www.metmuseum.org

Christie’s: www.christies.com

Sotheby’s: www.sothebys.com

AP-CS-04-14-10 2005EDT

Moundville Museum reopens after $5 million update

Stone pallette with Southeastern Ceremonial Complex motifs, from the Moundville Site in Moundville, Alabama. Heironymous Rowe photo taken in 2005 appears by permission Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

MOUNDVILLE, Ala. (AP) – The “Big Apple of the 14th century” is back in action with the imminent reopening of the Jones Archaeological Museum at Moundville Archaeological Park.

Visitors will see the results of the 10-year, $5 million renovation at the museum’s official opening on May 15. The newly renovated museum tells the story of one of the most significant Native American archaeological sites in the U.S. through modern technology and celebrated artifacts.

“When we started planning, we had two goals for the museum. First, we wanted to bring the Moundville culture to life through immersive experience,” said Bill Bomar, director of the Moundville Archaeological Park. “And we wanted to present artifacts in a way that shows their significance.”

The museum’s setup is the culmination of two years of collaboration between archaeologists, artists and Native American scholars. Exhibit designers Taft Design and Associates, made up of husband and wife team Geoffrey and Doris Woodward, were involved in the planning process from day one. The ultimate goal, Bomar said, was to provide a more up-to-date and in-depth interpretation of the Moundville culture.

“A key to interpreting the Moundville site is the Jones Archaeological Museum,’ Bomar said. ‘Yet because of the out-of -date condition of prior exhibits, the visiting public often left the site without developing a true understanding of the greatness of the Moundville culture.”

The renovated museum has been divided into three separate exhibit areas.

The front entrance, which is guarded by symbols of Native American culture, including the ivory billed woodpecker and the red-tailed hawk atop large wooden poles, introduces visitors to the museum. The museum’s first exhibit, ‘Realm of the Sacred Rulers,’ opens the museum’s Moundville storyline. The exhibit presents a group of Native Americans arriving in Moundville bringing the daughter of their tribe to marry the Moundville chief’s son. Each figure in the exhibit is modeled after Native Americans and adorned with regalia based on actual Native American artifacts. Surrounding the figures are replicas of and some actual Moundville artifacts that include pottery, baskets, shells, beads and tools.

The second exhibit, ‘Joining of Worlds,’ continues the story with the chief of Moundville and his wife, pictured with their son and the Moundville maker of medicine, awaiting the incoming tribe. In addition to representative figures, the second exhibit houses several Moundville artifacts that have been housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian for more than a century.

The Moundville duck bowl, what Bomar said is ‘arguably the most important prehistoric artifact in the U.S.,’ is included in the Smithsonian collection.

The 35 items on loan from the Smithsonian are significant, since they were first discovered in Moundville a century ago by Clarence Bloomfield Moore, credited as the first archaeologist to ever dig at Moundville. Moore, who traveled via steamboat from Philadelphia to Moundville, took up archaeology as a hobby and found “the best of the best” Native American artifacts. After taking the artifacts back with him to Philadelphia, they traveled from museum to museum and eventually made their way to the Smithsonian.

“When (the duck bowl) was found in 1905, it created a national stir,” Bomar said. “Harper’s Magazine, then the most popular magazine, did a major feature on Moundville.”

The third exhibit, ‘Portal to the Starry Sky,’ features a Native American medicine man, who is played by a Native American actor, in a three-dimensional presentation through a film process called Pepper Ghost. Throughout the film, the model performs ‘magic’ and talks about Moundville Native Americans’ beliefs in the afterlife. The key inspiration for this exhibit and traced in the other two exhibits, Bomar said, is linked to Moundville’s most important symbol, the hand and eye. This symbol, he adds, is interpreted to be a portal to the “path of souls.”

John Blitz, an associate professor of anthropology at UA, is confident the museum will generate greater interest in Moundville.

“It will bring Moundville into the 21st century,’ he said. ‘People with different interest levels will be able to enjoy the museum. It will make a connection to Native Americans who are still with us today.”

The renovated museum now features an expanded gift shop and cafe that overlooks the entire 320-acre park. The museum’s placement at the far end of the park, Bomar said, offers further explanation of the site.

“Our museum was built at the far end of the site but in the end it creates a unique visitors’ experience,” Bomar said. “Where else can you go and have a Native American flutist play while looking out at the Native American mounds?”

AP-CS-04-10-10 0000EDT

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama - view of site from top of Mound B, the tallest mound. Photo by Altairisfar. — Moundville Archaeological Site in Moundville, Alabama – view of site from top of Mound B, the tallest mound. Photo by Altairisfar.

Light-filled building opens at NC Museum of Art

North Carolina Museum of Art, 2005 photo by Justin Doub.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – The North Carolina Museum of Art’s new building marries light and white in a way that designers say shows off the works to their best advantage, leaving nothing to color visitors’ view of the art.

The 127,000-square-foot expansion opens to the public April 24, but reporters got to see the approximately 750 works in their new home on Tuesday. The lightness and airiness of the museum are meant to emphasize the art, yet are as important to the building as the works themselves.

“We wanted to push it to the limit,” Dan Gottlieb, the museum’s director of planning and design, said of the lack of color.

If the design had included color on any wall, “we would have been compromising the singular notion of having this as an experience of light and art. … This building is about making a pure experience so that whether it’s a Renaissance painting or contemporary art, you’re bringing natural light and the absence of color so that all that’s left is the art work.”

Even the museum’s curator of European art – who was accustomed to seeing Old Masters hanging on deeply colored walls and was skeptical of the all-white concept – said he accepted the whiteness.

“I tell you, when you see them here, when you see the daylight coming in from the side, these pictures sing, and they look so different,” curator David Steel said. “It’s a different way of experiencing this collection. Even for me as a curator, who has lived with these pictures for more than 25 years, it’s a revelation to see them in this kind of light.”

New York-based architects Thomas Phifer and Partners designed the building, using light in a way that designers say has never been seen in a museum. The design includes protective elements such as ultraviolet filters, louvers and three layers of curtains. Sensors tell shades to drop when the sunlight is too bright.

The open floor plan – a sculpture hall serves as an axis from which 40 exhibition galleries feed – allow the museum to display casts of sculptures by Auguste Rodin in the middle of the floor, rather than up against the wall. The museum has more than 30 Rodin casts, some inside the building and others in a courtyard off the Rodin gallery and accessible from that gallery.

The design has allowed the museum to exhibit new large works – such as an 18-foot-by-25-foot contemporary piece by El Anatsui of Nigeria, made of bottle caps and pieces of liquor packaging – and small, older works, such as Triumph of Chastity,” from the workshop of Apollonia di Giovanni. It had never been exhibited at the old building with both sides visible because it hung on a wall.

The building was funded with $67 million in public money, continuing a tradition that began 1947, when the Legislature appropriated $1 million to purchase art.

“It’s a long tradition,” museum director Larry Wheeler said of the government support for the arts. “It’s pretty peculiar, considering how poor North Carolina was in the ’40s, pretty much an agrarian state, small towns. For them to believe that a mark of progression and civilization and good education was having the arts made available … It’s remarkable, really.”

AP-ES-04-06-10 1710EDT

Museum’s medieval manuscripts going digital

Interior view of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo by wallstreethotrod, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

BALTIMORE (AP) – Medieval manuscripts from the Walters Art Museum are going digital.

The museum announced Monday that 105 medieval manuscripts will be digitally photographed, cataloged and distributed by 2012. A $315,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities is paying for the project.

Curator Will Noel says some of the greatest works of art from the Middle Ages that have never been seen will become available. People will be able to access the images for free on the museum’s Web site and other online outlets.

The project will include documents from Central Europe, Ethiopia and other regions.

The museum has 38,000 pages in its medieval manuscripts collection.

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Information from: The (Baltimore) Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com

AP-ES-04-06-10 0846EDT

Jennifer Russell to rejoin Metropolitan Museum as associate director

NEW YORK – Jennifer Russell will return to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as Associate Director for Exhibitions effective April 26.

Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced the hiring March 10. Russell is currently senior deputy director of exhibitions, collections and programs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She had worked at the Metropolitan Museum as associate director for administration from 1993 to 1996.

“I am delighted to welcome back a colleague with extensive experience in the New York museum community and in exhibition planning on a local as well as national and international scale,” said Campbell. “She brings significant managerial experience, sound sense and wide-ranging contacts, all of which are essential to sustaining and developing the encyclopedic breadth, scale and quality of the Met’s unique and world-renowned exhibition program.”

Russell began her museum career in 1974 at the Whitney Museum of American Art as a curatorial assistant. She served as an assistant curator from 1976 to 1978; as special assistant to the director for curatorial affairs from 1978 to 1980; and as assistant director from 1980 to 1986. She worked as associate director and secretary from 1986 to 1990, returning to that post in 1992 after a year’s service, from 1990 to 1991, as the Whitney’s acting director. She was also deputy director for internal affairs and secretary to the board of trustees until her departure from the Whitney in 1993. Over her years there, she organized a number of exhibitions, including American Art, 1900-1940, in 1976; American Folk Painters of Three Centuries in 1980; Celebrating Calder in 1991; and Selections from the Permanent Collection, 1938-1946 in 1993.

As associate director for administration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1993 to 1996, she was the administrator for all departments reporting to the director, including curatorial, conservation, publications and the libraries. During this time, she worked with curatorial and many other departments across the museum to coordinate a wide range of projects, including construction and space planning for major gallery renovations and other capital project and the computerization of collection data.

Since 1996, she has worked at the Museum of Modern Art, first as deputy director for exhibitions and collections support, and since 2005 as senior deputy director for exhibitions, collections and programs. She currently oversees MoMA’s exhibition program of approximately 30 exhibitions per year, develops collaborations with other museums and works with museums on jointly organized exhibitions. She was a member of the staff planning and design team for the 2004 expansion of the museum and oversaw the move of the collection to and from MoMA Queens. She also planned the schedule for reinstallation in the new building in Manhattan.

At the Metropolitan, Russell succeeds Mahrukh Tarapor, who served in the position for more than 15 years.

Smithsonian accepts Harriet Tubman collection

Abolishionist Harriet Tubman led many slaves to freedom. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

WASHINGTON (AP) – Harriet Tubman, who operated the Underground Railroad to help slaves escape to freedom, will have a prominent place at the Smithsonian’s future black history museum.

On Wednesday, the National Museum of African American History and Culture added about 40 objects from Tubman’s life to its collection.

Curator Jacquelyn Serwer said the items are personal and include Tubman’s favorite hymnal and a shawl given to her by Queen Victoria.

The collection was donated by Charles L. Blockson, founder and curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection at Temple University.

Tubman was born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After escaping in 1849, Tubman led countless slaves out of the South to freedom. Tubman was active in the women’s suffrage movement after the Civil War. The donation coincided with the anniversary of her death, March 10, 1913.

AP-ES-03-10-10 0403EST

Western Reserve Historical Society defends selling donated antiques

CLEVELAND (AP) – A cash-strapped historical society sold antique cars and other rare artifacts to pay off debt, embittering many supporters who say the sales have been shrouded in secrecy, The Plain Dealer reported Sunday.

The Western Reserve Historical Society won’t go into much detail about what it has sold or even how much it money it has received, the newspaper said.

That secrecy hasn’t pleased former donors, including B. Scott Isquick, who was angry last year when the society sold a 1949 Indy race car that he had donated. The society also sold the only surviving “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” car of novel and movie fame.

Isquick said he and his friends are finding other museums to support.

CEO Gainor Davis defended selling the artifacts to bring down bank debt that reached $7.2 million at its height. The society’s revenues are back on track, she said.

The Plain Dealer, which reviewed auction sales and records obtained from former society members, said the organization has about $2.6 million remaining in debt. Most of its financial problems are left over from failed expansion efforts in the 1990s, when previous society officials sought to build a grand transportation museum at the city’s Burke Lakefront Airport.

Sales of many items, such as guns, Indian artifacts and furniture, have been kept private and quiet, the newspaper said.

Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati has sold American Indian art and artifacts for the society since 2002. The society defended the sale of approximately 400 lots at the time, saying that its mission was to serve as a repository for significant collections relating to the history or northern Ohio. It considered its Indian art, much of it donated prior to 1942, as an “orphaned accumulation.”

A search of Web sites of auction houses turns up numerous artifacts attributed to the Western Reserve Historical Society, including a rare early type of mechanical machine gun called the Gardner Gun, Confederate money and Eskimo-carved figurines.

Davis said the society has been advised by auction houses not to release the list of items since it would likely hurt sales. However, the auction houses regularly tout the society’s ownership when highlighting the items’ provenance.

For the sake of the donors and their heirs, it is difficult to publicly discuss what items are being sold, Davis said. It’s a sensitive topic.

“We’d rather not slap them (donors) in the face with it,” Davis said.

Officials hope a balanced budget and a new financial plan will persuade the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission to issue a $2.8 million grant, which will help the society pay for badly needed roof, electrical ceiling work and other upgrades.

Irving Jensen Jr., a former board member, said the society is on the road to recovery.

“They had to get the debt down, they had to save the institution,” he said.

Jensen recently bought a 1928 Rolls-Royce that he donated to the society in the 1970s, partly because he worried the organization would sell it, and partly to help the society. He supports the society’s latest artifact sales, he said.

“Your duty is to preserve, not to dissipate,” he said. “But sometimes you have to make choices you don’t like.”

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Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

AP-ES-03-07-10 1402EST

Factory of Dreams: History comes to bat at Louisville Slugger Museum

The world’s biggest baseball bat marks the entrance to the museum. It’s 120 feet tall and weighs 68,000 pounds. The bat is hand-painted steel. Image courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – Grabbing a bat once swung by Johnny Bench brought a rush of cherished memories for James Montgomery during a visit to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory – where baseball memorabilia mixes with a close-up look at how the famed bats are crafted.

Just touching the bat used by the Hall of Famer had Montgomery reliving excursions to the ballpark with his father decades ago to watch his hometown Pittsburgh Pirates try to outslug the Cincinnati Reds and their “Big Red Machine” lineup that included Bench.

“That was pretty neat holding that bat,” Montgomery said after touring the museum and factory with his wife and in-laws. “It brings back those childhood memories.”

Hillerich & Bradsby Co. – a fifth-generation, family-owned company – has been crafting bats since 1884 and currently churns out about 1.8 million Louisville Sluggers each year.

About six in 10 big-leaguers currently use Louisville Slugger bats.

The sights and smells can tantalize visitors to the museum and factory – a must-see for baseball fans if they happen to be anywhere near Kentucky’s largest city. Towering outside is a 120-foot-tall steel bat that looms as a landmark in downtown Louisville.

Inside, visitors stroll through the heart of the factory – where fast-churning machines turn cylinder-shaped billets of wood into bats used from recreational leagues to the big leagues. The factory is enveloped by the smell of the wood and the whirring sound of the equipment.

“You’re really in the factory,” said Montgomery, of suburban Dallas, whose family was in town for a swimming competition. “That was really cool. A lot of times you’re like on a sky bridge and they’re all the way down on a lower level.

“You’re right there – you hear it, you smell it, you see it.”

Next to the factory is the museum, which features a treasure trove of bats once gripped by a “Who’s Who” of baseball greats. There are lots of photos and interactive displays.

The most eye-catching display might be a bat used by Babe Ruth in 1927, when he hit 60 home runs. The 40-ounce bat has 21 notches carved along the top of the Louisville Slugger logo – one for each round-tripper that Ruth slugged with the bat.

Another display shows the Louisville Slugger that Hank Aaron used for his 700th home run on his way to surpassing Ruth on the career home run list. Opening a drawer in the same case reveals bats used by such greats as Cal Ripken Jr., Eddie Murray, Mike Schmidt and Tony Gwynn.

Just a short toss away is a bat used by Ted Williams late in his fabled career, and a nicked bat once swung by the tragic “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who was banished from baseball along with several teammates after being accused of conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series.

All those wooden treasures are under case, but visitors can take hold of baseball history in a popular display featuring bats used by Bench and New York Yankees great Mickey Mantle, plus two contemporary sluggers – David Ortiz and Evan Longoria.

After donning white gloves, visitors in the “Hold a Piece of History” exhibit can clutch the bats, pretending they’re sending a fastball soaring over the outfield fence. They’re asked not to swing the bats, but it’s OK to slowly move the bat around to get a feel for it.

Holding the Mantle bat brought one visitor to tears, said Anne Jewell, executive director of the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.

“The day before his father died, he and his father saw Mantle play, so that had always been a special memory for him,” she said.

There’s a batting cage where visitors can take cuts at 10 pitches for $1. Hitters can swing replicas of models used by Babe Ruth, Derek Jeter or other stars, or can use the company’s line of aluminum bats. Nearby is a 17-ton glove sculpture carved from Kentucky limestone.

There’s a theater where visitors can hear anecdotes on hitting from top players past and present. Other fan favorites are life-size mannequins of Ruth, Williams and Ken Griffey Jr. in the middle of the spacious exhibit area. Many visitors pose for pictures next to the sluggers.

Elsewhere is an exhibit showing the tremendous skills needed to hit big league pitching. The “Feel the Heat” exhibit shows how fast a 90 mph fastball travels from the mound to the plate. The ball pops with a loud thud into a dummy catcher after a lightning-quick trip to the plate.

Another room is devoted to special exhibitions. From April 25 through Sept. 6, it will feature a collection of paintings and sketches chronicling the Negro Leagues.

The approximately 30-minute factory tour gives visitors another hands-on experience. They move past cylinder-shaped wood billets shaped into bats – one every 30 seconds or so.

An employee demonstrates how bats used to be made on hand-turning lathes. Tiny wood chips fly as he shapes a bat using a process that used to produce one bat every 25 or 30 minutes.

Along the production line, visitors hold bats fresh off the production line, with nubs still on each end to help hold the bats in the machinery.

Nubs cut off the bats can be taken home by visitors as mementos.

The tour passes piles of bats that are bound for use by major leaguers, who generally order 100 to 120 bats each season. Visitors watch rows of bats being dipped in various finishes.

At the end of the tour, each visitor is given a complimentary mini-Louisville Slugger. A spacious gift shop offers a wide range of T-shirts, sweat shirts, caps and other apparel. Visitors can also pick up personalized bats, complete with their favorite team’s logo.

At the front of the museum is “Signature Wall,” containing the signatures of more than 8,000 big leaguers who had contracts with Hillerich & Bradsby, from Hall of Famer Honus Wagner – who agreed to the first contract with H&B – up to today’s players.

The museum and factory are a short stroll from such other downtown attractions as the Muhammad Ali Center, a science center and the Frazier International History Museum.

The city’s performing arts center is down the street and Churchill Downs – home of the Kentucky Derby – only a short drive away.

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If You Go…

Louisville Slubber Museum & Factory: 800 W. Main St., Louisville, Ky.; http://www.sluggermuseum.org or 502-585-5226 (toll free 877-775-8443). Admission: adults $10; seniors (60+) $9; children (6-12) $5; children 5 and under free. Open Monday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays noon-5 p.m. Check Web site for details on bat production schedule, which varies.

AP-ES-03-03-10 0934EST

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Ted Williams is pictured selecting Louisville Slugger bats at the factory. With him are Rudy York (left) and Bobby Doerr (right). The photo was likely taken in 1946-47 when the three were Boston Red Sox teammates. They combined for 1,021 home runs over their careers. Image courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.

Company founder J. Fred Hillerich is second from the left in this late 1800s photo of the factory crew. His son, Bud Hillerich, stands in the doorway holding a bat on top of a butter churn. Bud made the company’s first baseball bat in 1884. Image courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.

Wood chips fly as a factory worker demonstrates how bats were turned on a lathe. At one time all Louisville Slugger bats were made this way. Workers are still trained to turn bats by hand for demonstration and educational purposes. Image courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.Wood chips fly as a factory worker demonstrates how bats were turned on a lathe. At one time all Louisville Slugger bats were made this way. Workers are still trained to turn bats by hand for demonstration and educational purposes. Image courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. — Wood chips fly as a factory worker demonstrates how bats were turned on a lathe. At one time all Louisville Slugger bats were made this way. Workers are still trained to turn bats by hand for demonstration and educational purposes. Image courtesy Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.

Robert Frank photo exhibition recalls ’50s Detroit

Robert Frank, ‘Assembly Plant, Ford, Detroit,’ 1955, gelatin silver print. Detroit Institute of Arts. © Robert Frank.

DETROIT – An exhibition of more than 50 rare and many never-before-seen photographs taken in Detroit by Robert Frank a half century ago will run at the Detroit Institute of Arts through July 3.

Detroit Experiences: Robert Frank Photographs, 1955 showcases more than 50 black-and-white photographs taken in Detroit by legendary artist Robert Frank. The exhibition is free with museum admission.

In 1955 and 1956 Robert Frank traveled the United States taking photographs for his groundbreaking book The Americans, published in 1958. With funding from a prestigious Guggenheim grant, he set out to create a large visual record of America, and Detroit was one of his early stops. Inspired by autoworkers, the cars they made, along with local lunch counters, drive-in movies and public parks such as Belle Isle, Frank transformed everyday experiences of Detroiters into an extraordinary visual statement about American life.

First editions of The Americans, published by Grove Press, have sold at auction in recent years for $4,600 to about $5,800.

According to Frank, The Americans included “things that are there, anywhere, and everywhere … a town at night, a parking lot, the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none … the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights … gas tanks, post offices and backyards.”

The exhibition includes nine Detroit images that were published in The Americans as well as, for the first time, an in-depth body of work representative of Frank’s Detroit, its working-class culture and automotive industry.

Frank was drawn to Detroit partly by a personal fascination with the automobile, but also saw its presence and effect on American culture as essential to his series. Frank was one of the few photographers allowed to take photographs at the famous Ford Motor Co. River Rouge factory, where he was amazed to witness the transformation of raw materials into fully assembled cars.

In a letter to his wife he wrote, “Ford is an absolutely fantastic place … this one is God’s factory and if there is such a thing – I am sure that the devil gave him a helping hand to build what is called Ford’s River Rouge Plant.” Frank spent two days taking pictures at the Ford factory, photographing workers on the assembly lines and manning machines by day, and following them as they ventured into the city at night.

Whether in the disorienting surroundings of a massive factory or during the solitary and alienating moments of individuals in parks and on city streets, the Swiss-born photographer looked beneath the surface of life in the United States and found a culture that challenged his perceptions and popular notions of the American Dream.

Further accentuating his view of America, Frank developed an unconventional photographic style innovative and controversial in its time. Photographing quickly, Frank sometimes tilted and blurred compositions, presenting people and their surroundings in fleeting and fragmentary moments with an unsentimental eye.

Beat poet Jack Kerouac expressed the complex nature of the artist and his work in a passage from his introduction to The Americans stating, “Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”

Born in 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland, Frank emigrated to the United States in 1947. He worked on assignments for magazines from 1948-53, but his photographic books garnered the highest acclaim. After publishing The Americans, he began filmmaking and directed the early experimental masterpiece Pull My Daisy, in collaboration with Jack Kerouac in 1959.

Frank continues to work in both film and photography and has been the subject of many traveling exhibitions in recent years. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., established Frank’s photographic archive in 1990 and organized his first traveling retrospective, Moving Out, in 1995 as well as a 2009 exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans.”

Frank lives in Mabou, Nova Scotia, and New York City with his wife, artist June Leaf.

On the Net:

Detroit Institute of Arts: http://www.dia.org

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

‘Drive-In Movie,’ Detroit, 1955, gelatin silver print. Detroit Institute of Arts. © Robert Frank, from ‘The Americans.’

‘Drugstore, Detroit,’ 1955, gelatin silver print. Detroit Institute of Arts. © Robert Frank, from ‘The Americans.’

Purdue library launches Amelia Earhart exhibit

Amelia Earhart set numerous flying records before she disappeared on a Pacific flight in July 1937. Image courtesy Signature House and Live Auctioneers archive.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) – Documents, photographs and other items exploring the life of aviator Amelia Earhart have gone on public display at Purdue University.

The Purdue Libraries opened the exhibit chronicling Earhart’s accomplishments and her advocacy of women’s rights on Monday to coincide with the start of Women’s History Month.

Purdue has what it bills as the world’s largest collection of papers, memorabilia and artifacts about Earhart. She was a Purdue career counselor from 1935 until her death in 1937.

She and navigator Fred Noonan were attempting to circumnavigate the globe when the Lockheed Model 10 Electra she was flying vanished over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island on July 2, 1937.

Earhart was the subject of the 2009 film Amelia starring Hilary Swank.

The display on the fourth floor of the Humanities, Social Science and Education Library in Stewart Center is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each weekday. Shortened summer hours take effect May 10.

AP-CS-03-02-10 0706EST

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