February 20, 2015 by rness | Comments Off on February
With the heavy snowfall and bitterly cold temperatures we have been experiencing this month, there is something that doesn’t quite ring true about John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “February.” Suffice to say that the snow-plumed Angel of the North has Not dropped his icy spear. Until such time, we offer Whittier’s words as a gentle reminder that beneath the winter’s snow lie germs of summer flowers!
Polygons on Triangle, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, Brown University, c.196-?
In preparation of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library celebrating its 50th year this past November, Digital Production Services scanned many photographs of the building during construction, and after its dedication in November of 1964. A photograph of a large metal sculpture on the steps of “The Rock” piqued my curiosity, resulting in A Public Art Mystery: part 1. After reading the post, a recent graduate of the Public Humanities Program here at Brown commented that he could distinguish a large “C” on the center panel. Was the work by Alexander Calder? I searched the internet for an example of how Calder signed his monumental metal sculptures, known as “stabiles,” and found a signature and date from a piece executed in 1960. The signature is from a work titled Gallows and Lollipops and is, interestingly, installed on the plaza adjacent to the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Using my loupe, I closely examined the photograph of the work at Brown. The “CA” above the “63”, and the similarity of the signatures, convinced me that the sculpture was, indeed, executed by Alexander Calder.
Detail, with boosted contrast, from photograph
I searched the Calder Foundation website by period, 1963-1976, and there it was! Polygons on Triangle, 1963, Sheet metal, bolts and paint, 289.6 (h) x 185.4 x 243.8 cm. But what were the exact circumstances of its installation at Brown? Was it loaned to the University for the grand opening of its new library? How long did it remain there? What were the reactions of the public to the art? (other than the serious contemplation and head scratching documented in the photograph), and where is the piece now?
Polygons on Triangle, 1963, Sheet metal, bolts and paint, 289.6 (h) x 185.4 x 243.8 cm, Calder Foundation, New York
I have been able to determine that from 2001-2003, Polygons on Triangle was exhibited at the Storm King Art Center as part of Grand Intuitions: Alexander Calder’s Monumental Sculpture, and in 2004 the work was part of an installation on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia. Calder on the Parkway featured a group of ten black sheet metal sculptures and the 21-foot tall “Ordinary” that already occupied the site. The installation was intended to draw attention to the site of a proposed Calder Museum, a museum which ultimately was never built. In 2007, Polygons on Triangle traveled to Dublin and was featured in an exhibit at the Irish Museum of Modern Art that highlighted Calder’s relationship with Joan Miró.
Polygons on Triangle, Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, 2001-03
In preparation for the commemoration of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library’s 50th year, Digital Production Services facilitated the digitization of a collection of photographs documenting the construction and opening of the Library. As I was producing metadata for one of the images, I paused…What was this? I’m pretty familiar with the public art on the Brown University campus, but this was a work I had never seen. I checked the University’s Public Art website…nothing.
Perplexing.
Two students consider a piece of public art at the entrance to the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, c.1964-69.
The number “3” is legible on the right side of the center panel of the piece – and before it, I imagine I see the ghost of a “6”. Was the piece perhaps created in ’63, for the Library’s opening in November of ’64? Was this piece of art on the steps to the Rock fifty years ago today, as a temporary installation? Who created the sculpture and where is it now?
With many questions, and little information, I create an unsatisfactory description for the cataloging record. By crowdsourcing this mystery, perhaps the description will blossom with greater accuracy.
November 5, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on The Battle of Borodino
Detail from Battle of Borodino. Steel engraving by J. B. Allen (1803–1876).
Just over a decade ago, a box of prints depicting French battles from 1811 and onward was selected from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection for digitization. Looking back, we see that on September 13th, 2004, a print from this box was entered into our internal tracking system, assigned the digital object ID of askb000001, and was digitized.
Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, explains that the engraving, by James Baylis Allen and printed by Gad and Keningale of London in 1850, is based on a large painting (4ft x 7ft) by the noted British Royal Academician, George Jones. Jones painted and exhibited numerous battle scenes throughout his career, especially those depicting the Battle of Waterloo, for which he earned the sobriquet ‘Waterloo Jones’. Here, Jones has captured a moment in the Battle of Borodino, fought in Russia on September 7th, 1812. Now part of London’s Tate Gallery collection, the original oil painting was probably commissioned by Robert Vernon and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1829. The Tate’s display caption reads:
“The battle of Borodino was fought outside Moscow on 7 September 1812. It was the last action before Napoleon’s army entered the city on 14 September. Here, Napoleon stands in the right foreground, alongside his famous horse, Marengo. His cavalry commander, Marshal Murat, commander, is to the left. In the distance, the French attack Kutuzov’s Russian army. Their triumph was short-lived as Moscow was burned by the Russians and the French would soon endure their terrible retreat through the winter snows.”
Battle of Borodino by George Jones
The steel engraving, part of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, was executed at the behest of the proprietors of the Vernon Gallery, where the oil painting once hung, and was published in The Art Journal on August 1, 1850 (vol. 12, pg. 308).
A decade ago, we would have had difficulty imagining digitizing, cataloging, and publishing over 25,000 objects from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection. And yet, on Friday, October 31st, 2014, a 19th century sheet music series featuring lithographs of uniforms from various countries was published to the Brown Digital Repository, bringing the number of digitized Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection to 26,639.
For more information on the the works of George Jones, see Peter Harrington, ‘The Battle Paintings of George Jones, R.A. (1786-1869), Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. LXVII, Number 272, Winter 1989, pp. 239-252.
September 15, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí
Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí by Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela
Colonel George Earl Church (1835-1910) was commander of a Rhode Island regiment during the Civil War, an engineer, and well known for his explorations into South America. In 1912, the John Hay Library was left his personal library of over 3,500 volumes of economic, historic, geographic, and descriptive studies of South America. One of these volumes, an 18th century manuscript purchased by Church from a Parisian book dealer in 1905, is perhaps the most important item in the collection.
Representation of astronomical phenomena from the mine of Asiento de Porco, Bolivia. January 13, 1553.
The Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí chronicles life in the Bolivian “Imperial City” of Potosí, once the largest city in the New World and home to its most lucrative silver mine.[1. Special Collections of the Brown University Library : A History and Guide.] The manuscript is the “primera parte” of the complete work and records the dramatic social and political unrest of the city, the incomparable riches of its famous hill, greatness of its magnanimous people, its civil wars and memorable cases. Potosí has been vividly described as a “riotous and gaudy civilization” [2. Lewis, Statement concerning the contents of the « Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí. Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 1936; pp. 401-404.], “proud and opulent, pious and cruel, torn asunder by dissension.”[3. Phelan, The History of Potosi of Bartolome Arzans y Vela. The Hispanic American Historical Review, Duke University Press, 1967.] Illustrations included in the manuscript portray the metallurgy work of the city, its topographical features, and historic events.
In 1965, in celebration of the bicentennial anniversary of the University, the 1,200 page manuscript was published for the first time in its entirety and in the original Spanish. Now, as the University marks its 250th year, we are pleased to announce that the rare Libro Primero of the Historia de la villa imperial de Potosí has undergone treatment at the New England Document Conservation Center, and a digital version is now available in Brown’s Digital Repository, as part of the Latin American Travelogues collection.
Prior to treatment, the leather binding was degraded and the boards were detached. The pages of the manuscript were dirty and many pages were torn, especially along the edges. The paper was heavily stained and marks in ink and pencil appeared throughout the text. Once the volume was collated and disbound, the pages were washed in a solution of ethanol and filtered water, and sized with gelatin. The fly leaves were deacidified, tears were mended with Japanese kozo paper and wheat starch paste. After digitization, the volume was sewn on linen cords with linen thread, bound in goat leather, and housed in a drop-spine box.
Treatment photos courtesy of NEDCC
July 17, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Inside the Lost Museum
Detail of an interior view of Brown University’s Museum of Natural History, c.1871-1894
This year, visitors to the Brown University campus have the opportunity to visit a museum that no longer exists; a museum that was systematically dismantled when the cabinet of curiosities approach to the display of natural history fell out of vogue, and after its founder, John Whipple Potter Jenks (1819-1894), dropped dead on the building’s steps. In 1891, the museum was viewed as a “showpiece of the University,” [1. Wilson, J. Walter, The Jenks Museum at Brown University. Books at Brown, Vol. XXII, 1968; Brown University Library, p.41] but this sentiment would not last. In his 1905 plea for University funds to support the museum, Professor Albert D. Mead, added that “the reasonableness of spending money for the dusting and rearranging of the miscellaneous curios of a university junk shop for the gratification of a few straggling sightseers is, we readily admit, not obvious.” [2. Ibid, p.54] Over time, the orphaned objects of the museum were scattered and forgotten; the majority of the collection was eventually discarded in the University’s dump by the Seekonk River.
John Whipple Potter Jenks
Today, the Jenks Museum of Natural History and Anthropology (1871-1894) has been resurrected and re-imagined by “The Jenks Society for Lost Museums,” a group comprised of students from the Center for Public Humanities at Brown, students from RISD, faculty advisors, and the artist Mark Dion. During the spring semester, the society tracked down remaining fragments of the original collection, re-envisioned Professor Jenks’s office, commissioned art objects based on lost artifacts, and installed the exhibit at the museum’s original home in Rhode Island Hall. At the project’s core sit questions about the permanence, or rather impermanence, of collecting and preservation.
Photographic evidence of the museum, as it was, can be found in the Brown University Archives. The Images of Brown collection holds seven interior views of the museum’s floor-to-ceiling displays, offering a window inside its eclectic space. The detailed image viewer allows for zooming in on a plethora of zoological specimens. The collection also includes a carte de visite of Jenks himself, taken in Florida where the naturalist collected many artifacts for the museum at Brown.
The Lost Museum will be on display in Rhode Island Hall (Brown University, 60 George Street, Providence, Rhode Island) through May 2015.
Read more about The Lost Museum:
http://hyperallergic.com/136402/bringing-back-a-lost-museum/
http://250.brown.edu/jenks-museum
https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/05/jenks
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/3720/32/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2010/04/28/the-wonders-rhode-island-hall-once-held/
June 12, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Images of the Great War
Over 25,000 prints, drawings, and watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection have been digitized and added to the Brown Digital Repository, a portion of which feature World War I subject matter. Events surrounding the centennial of World War I (1914-1919) mean that some of this artwork will be displayed in public exhibitions. In April, an exhibit titled “Images of the Great War: The European Offensives – 1914-1916, World War I Prints and Drawings from the Anne S.K. Brown University Library” opened at the President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington D.C. The exhibit presents multiple perspectives on the war, and was co-curated by Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, and Stephanie Daugherty, curator at the President Woodrow Wilson House. Peter Harrington feels that the significance of the thirty-five prints and drawings on exhibit is that “they offer an interesting contrast between those produced for the home front, often for commercial purposes, and the images created by the soldiers themselves.” Among the prints created for commercial purposes is this colored plate after the Dutch propaganda cartoonist Louis Raemaekers, depicting three French infantrymen guarded by a German soldier. The image was published in London for the British Weekly “Land and Water” and can be viewed in The “Land & Water” edition of Raemaekers’ cartoons.
Read more about the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection prints highlighted in the exhibit (on view through August, 2014) here and on the Brown University Library News blog.
French Prisoners of War, c. 1914-1915. Louis Raemaekers.