Artist Books

The Book as Stage, the latest exhibition at the Yale Haas Arts Library, features artist books. Artist books use books as the form and can vary wildly depending on the artist’s vision. This show focuses on theater and theatrical presentations using the book arts.

So much fun are the books that look like stage sets in miniature or mock ups for the real thing. Here’s the tunnel book format, with pages layered so we’re tricked into seeing depth.

Laura Davidson. Tunnel Vision. 2001.

Look at how this accordion-pleated book creates a construction site stage set, fronted with a nude in contrapposto. Weird and fun juxtaposition.

What you see in the back of the below image is the mirror reflection of the book. Notice the complicated intersections and weavings of strings. Aren’t the doorways of this sculptural book appealing? We can walk right into a Medieval world and join in with the characters.

Susan Collard. Geschichtliches. 2011.

The book is meant to be architectural, just as during the Medieval period, interest in Gothic architecture peaked (all puns intended). Susan Collard, the artist, purposefully included women in contemplation and learning, arenas occupied by men at the time.

This book focuses on the theater of war. It opens up to create the stage set, as you see. The pages are cut out to create theater scrims, layering the space. Newspaper clips and maps are collaged in, focusing on Middle East conflicts.

Maria G. Pisano. Theater of Operations. 2006.

Of course, what I see is the tie-in to the flag and American imagery. And I think of the Southern Connecticut State University students in my class “Shaping the American Identity.” Each made a page, mostly collaged, about their understanding of American identity at the end of the semester. The pages were then assembled into a class artist book. It was a powerful experience for us all, coming after their first election.

Hon 298 Fall 2016 and their Artist Book

Their energy, passion, and political intelligence is an inspiration, as powerful as any of these professional artists.

Advanced Style

Feeling 18 without all the burdens.  That’s the assessment of her life by one of the older women featured in “Advanced Style.

No matter your sense of style, no doubt you will love these New York women who dream and live out those dreams. 

Whether you are feeling creaky or don’t recognize yourself when you look in the mirror because you feel so young, give yourself a treat with this documentary.  Maybe you’ll want to sign up for the blog for that ocassional pick-me-up!

 

Elected Dads Elect Fathering Styles

Father’s Day is here, perfect timing for the launch of Joshua Kendall’s book First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama.  I heard his highly entertaining and insightful talk at the New Haven Museum.

Grant and family

Grant and family

President Grant fell into the ‘Sweet Dad’ category, one of six Kendall used to group the 43 Presidents, all of whom had children (5 adopted).

No surprise that Mr. Obama also falls in the Nurturer category.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so did Truman.  When Margaret was criticized for a concert she gave in 1950, Truman turned ferocious with the media.  The mail that came in overwhelmingly supported the father standing up for his daughter.  Kendall suggests that this fierce, fatherly protectiveness led Truman to make the decision to drop the bomb–to protect American boys from harm.

Just so you know, George Washington was apparently very sweet to Martha’s children, whom he adopted.

The Preoccupied Dads will come as no surprise to you.  Those ambitious politicians focus all on career and little on family.  Linda Johnson had to read the Congressional Record to get LBJ’s attention.

 

Carter and Amy, 1974

Carter and Amy, 1974

Surprisingly, Carter was tough on his three sons, reflecting his own upbringing, his military training at Annapolis, and the practice of spanking.  Jack didn’t speak with his father for two years, but when he did tell his father of his pain, to his credit, Carter reflected and learned from what he had done:  passing on harsh parenting that he received, without thinking.  We consider Carter a Peacemaker now, and Kendall makes the case linking the personal growth that came from learning about his parenting.

You know I like the Playful-Pal Dads.  Grant loved playing with his children, and Kendall attributes his alcohol problem to missing his children when he was stationed in California.  Teddy Roosevelt was a playful dad, and Alice was frisky right back.  With lifelong asthma, TR couldn’t tolerate cigarette smoking and told his daughter, “no smoking under my roof.”  Alice complied, by smoking on the roof.

Having three daughters may have swayed Woodrow Wilson to finally relent on Suffrage.  I don’t know though.  He was verbally brutal about the protesters, that he found so annoying when he was trying to deal with ‘weightier’ matters.  Kendall also suggests a Freudian interpretation (he does psychiatric research), when one of his daughters married the best dancing bachelor, to mimic her father’s dancing prowess.

Double-Dealing Dads had children outside their marriages.  One of LBJ’s secretaries said the president offered to set her up in an apartment in New York.  While she turned him down, others didn’t.  Harding apparently had sex in a White House closet in 1928.  Careful where you hang your coat!

An older Grover Cleveland married his young ward, not a pleasant thought, and then cheated on her, fathering a child with a mistress.  He verbally slammed the mistress as ‘a drunk and a slut’ when he was the alcoholic with loose morals.  He won the election anyway.  Being promiscuous doesn’t necessarily mean being a bad president.  ‘Grover the Good’ was an honest politician, known for his integrity with a budget.

Now, what’s really cold are the Antebellum cheaters.  Tyler and Harrison both had slave children, and Kendall has tracked paperwork showing Tyler sold his own children, including Sylvanius Tyler, who recorded that Tyler had 52 children.

Tiger Dads are authoritarian, and the tendency seems to get passed down.  John Adams told John Quincy he would be a failure if he didn’t become president.  John Quincy Adams told his son George Washington Adams that JQ wouldn’t attend his Harvard graduation unless he was among the top five.  At age 28, GW committed suicide, likely from mental illness, no doubt exacerbated by parental badgering.

Jefferson was so controlling, he gave his daughters lists of what clothing to wear.

The Bush family, 1964

The Bush family, 1964

The challenge of losing a child either makes or breaks a president, per Kendall.  The grief Lincoln felt over losing beloved Willy made him step up as a war leader, while Piece suffered a breakdown from the loss of his third son, while in office.

As a side note, when Robin Bush died, Barbara, in her late 20s, suffered from depression, and her hair turned white overnight.  George W. turned into a clown to cheer her up.  At least we know the source of that behavior now….

The difference between the public and private man, of course, can be striking.  FDR was like a father for so many.  He saw people through the Depression, through war.  He seemed so strong.  But he leaned on his own son, needy, yet also preoccupied.  His younger sons had to make appointments to see him.  Eleanor was distracted with her many involvements.  Perhaps as the result of their own parenting, the five Roosevelt children had 19 marriages among them.  Chaos!

The Roosevelts, 1939

The Roosevelts, 1939

Kendall said that Hillary Clinton has a male parenting style, whereas Obama’s approach resembles female parenting.  You know, nurturing, involved, inclusive.  Bill and Hillary told Chelsea about disparaging remarks being made about her philandering father.  She was 6.  Chelsea still relates to her parents via politics.  Kendall described Trump’s children as “more normal than he is,” and they are involved in his business as Vice Presidents.  Both sets of children meet their parents on the parents’ turf.

Toward the end of his talk, Kendall differentiated between fathering and mothering.  Traditionally, mothering is about nurturing; fathering is about procreating.  He assured us that things have shifted since the 19th-century origins of those gendered distinctions.

Here’s to all our fathers – human, fallible, foibled, and doing the best they can!

 

 

 

Vassar Delights

If I could have my favorite day, it would include like-minded people exploring art, literature, music, history.  Wait?  That happened today!

The intrepid New York Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America traveled to Vassar for an almost unbelievably pleasant and stimulating day.  This was my first trip to the 150+ year old campus.  No surprise, it’s lovely.

2016-04-09 12.03.20We first met in the art history building where refreshments were in a room that resembled a little, red schoolhouse, only really the little, red-chair school room.

But the lectures that kicked the day off were in a very comfortable, modern auditorium.  We would have to travel into history in our minds.

Marilyn Francus, a Professor of English from West Virginia University, regaled us with her work from Chawton House, a research center on early women’s writings.  She admitted to geeking-out on manuscripts and books that Jane Austen wrote in, sussing out from that her mentoring relationship with young writers, particularly her nieces.  She investigated the family’s charades and riddles and shared how the love of language was reinforced in everyday life in the Austen home.  More about that below.

Francus wrapped by deciphering the advice Jane Austen would give to new writers.  Essentially, know the canon (read, read, read), write what is real, and practice your craft.  Good advice indeed.

And that got put into action with our next set of presenters.  Susan Zlotnick, a Professor of English at Vassar, is currently teaching a course on The Gothic Novel (including Austen’s parody Northanger Abbey).  She gave us an introductory talk, then invited seven of her students to read us their “3-Minute Gothic Projects,” reflecting their learning on the tropes of the genre.

What you need to know is that Gothic novels draw upon the philosophical underpinnings of the Romantic Sublime, by Edmund Burke–the awe of God, nature, and our emotional selves that fuels literature, music, and art of the period; Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ centering on re-surfacing unconscious desires, the return of the repressed, and the Self confronting itself; and the female Gothic, which penetrates patriarchal power by using male villains to threaten the heroines.

The latter is an intriguing take on the genre.  Zlotnick suggests that when men labeled strong women, with challenging and uncomfortable ideas, as ‘mad’, the woman would be imperiled in a number of thematic, violent ways.  The woman reader could become aware of how women lacked personal power and rights, when male domination is threatened.

There was much more to these ideas, beyond the scope of a blog, but clearly offering very fresh ways to understand detective fiction, thrillers, and Gothic romances.

The students were tasked with writing Gothic stories that take place on the Vassar campus, not necessarily today.  The results ranged from exceedingly clever to outright hilarious.

I loved Christian Lewis’ story about the mysterious disappearance of Meryl Streep (an esteemed Vassar grad) from a production of “The Cherry Orchard” that is repeated by a contemporary in the current production, literally on campus now.  He is playing with early detective fiction with his funny, funny “The Mysteries of the Martel” and its sly references to Streep films that show up as ghostly Meryl hauntings.

Jennifer Ognibene, an English major who is pre-med, read her “Demolition of Mudd Chemistry,” referring to the current tear-down of the chemistry building.  Her fantastical story of a woman student who is a chemist murderer would even make Edgar Allen Poe laugh.  The trouble starts when the student runs an experiment, injecting herself with black widow spider venom, and it all does downhill from there.  Seriously, it’s ready to be filmed.

Lexi Karas’ clever “A Strong Girl Displaced” was more serious, delving into notions of the Self and doubling from Freud’s theories.  The plot twists and taut writing would make Austen proud.

None of these students is a creative writer per se.  They put into action Austen’s code–know the canon first.  They have read a lot of Gothic novels.  Candidly, better them than me!  I can leave the Bronte’s and Bram Stoker on the shelf.

Concert in the chapel

Concert in the chapel

After lunch, we were serenaded by the Vassar College Women’s Chorus, with madrigals and other traditional British songs.  But noteworthy were the two sets of Austen writings put to song.

The Three Prayers by Jane Austen have been put to music by Amanda Jacobs, who wrote a wonderful Pride and Prejudice musical I saw in 2011.  Today, Jacobs directed the chorus in the US premiere of these works.  Here’s a tiny sliver.

What tickled me were the parlor game songs, commissioned by Vassar College Music Department for the Women’s Chorus and put to music by Eleanor Daley.  The three poems survived when Austen copied them into a letter in 1807.

Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their mother played a game where they devised poems where every line ended in a rhyme with the word rose, in “Verses to rhyme with ‘Rose’.”  Jane’s was clever, Cassandra’s romantic, their mother’s so funny.  Here’s her poem:

This morning I woke from a quiet repose,
I first rubb’d my eyes, and I next blew my nose;
With my stockings and shoes I then covered my toes,
And proceeded to put on the rest of my clothes.
This was finished in less than an hour, I suppose.
I employ’d myself next in repairing my hose.
‘Twas a work of necessity not what I chose;
Of my sock I’d much rather have knit twenty rows.
My work being done, I look’d through the windows,
And with pleasure beheld all the bucks and the does,
The cows and the bullocks, the wethers and ewes.
To the library each morning the family goes,
So I went with the rest though I felt rather froze.
My flesh is much warmer, my blood freer flows,
When I work in the garden with rakes and with hoes.
And now I believe I must come to a close,
For I find I grow stupid e’en while I compose.
If I write any longer my verse will be prose.

She seems destined to be a model for the Twitter-verse!

We wrapped the day with a visit to the campus art museum.  Much too short.  Lots of great works.  I’ll share just one, in honor of the day.  A woman artist, of course.  Adele Romany, a French artist, and her 1804 “A young person hesitating to play piano in front of her family.”  Shame on her!  No Austen heroine every would!

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Disapproval!

Disapproval!

What is Papa thinking? Paintings like this could be used to put a young lady's advantages forward. Hung in a pre-modern version of match.com

What is Papa thinking? Paintings like this could be used to put a young lady’s advantages forward. Hung in a pre-modern version of match.com

What is she thinking?

What is she thinking?

 

Brontemersion

Riffs on the Bronte novels seem to be everywhere at the moment.  What’s a reader to do?  Get reading!

Madwoman Upstairs by an impossibly young, talented writer Catherine Lowell reads like a book by an impossibly young, talented writer.  It’s raw, over-the-top, and Romantic-ally intellectual.  That last phrase makes no sense, of course.

What I mean is that the author can’t resist giving us some heady stuff she probably first discussed in a college lit course.  Here, intellectual. literary discussions between her two protagonists forges the path for falling in love.  That’s what our author knows at this point in her life.

Better though is the literary mystery that allows Samantha, the last living Bronte, to learn about herself, her relationship with her father, and the nature of reality.  Yes, the book goes to these heady places by the end, as Sam understands that “The fiction is more real than the reality.”

Telling you how she comes to this conclusion would spoil the mystery, and the fun.  Let’s just say it has something to do with living in an unheated tower at Oxford, a haunting painting, a long-lost diary, reading Bronte novels, and falling in love.  To take any of it too seriously would be just too postmodern.

25938397Gothic and witty?  Not two words that usually go together.  Unless you’re thinking of Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye.

Instead of Jane Eyre’s “Reader, I married him,” a line repeated in The Madwoman Upstairs, here, it’s “Reader, I murdered him.”

And so, we get the story of this Jane that parallels the fictional Jane Eyre (another postmodern riff).  How she loses her mother and goes to live with Aunt Patience, who is anything but.  How she’s told to control her passions and becomes surrounded by death.  The loathsome cousin and loathsome boarding school.  You remember it all, I’m sure.

The recalling of the plot structure is less interesting, until…the plot takes a big turn onto its own adventure.  That first murder–the loathsome cousin–was justified, the Feminist would say, and we’re off to the races.  No, no, I won’t tell you more!

This book does quite a bit of nodding to Charles Dickens, as well as Charlotte Bronte.  I also think it owes something to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, for its adherence to plot while simultaneously borrowing contemporary sensibilities.  And the fun (even moreso the better you know the source material) comes just watching it all happen.  What if Jane’s ‘true nature’ were…to murder with good intention?  That’s certainly one way to deal with life’s problems!

Another big part of the fun here is the writing, approrpriating the Romantic style.  With exuberance.  When’s the last time you read a book that included the word ‘delinquitorious”?

Nelly Dean by Alison Case is my least favorite of the three, perhaps because Wuthering Heights is my least favorite Bronte novel.

Still looking at a well-worn plot, as over-the-top ridiculous as it is, can be fun from the perspective of another character.  Here, it’s the miserable, but loyal, servant Ellen Dean.  If you like the below-stairs perspective and jive on “Downton Abbey,” this book might just be for you.

Yes, Nelly basically narrates the original.  Now, you can get more of her first-hand account and the story of her life, including her devotion to Hareton.  The role of Heathcliff?  His arrival ended Nelly’s childhood.

Her account, as imagined by the most mature author of the three and an English professor inspired by her students’ inquiring minds, will win you to Nelly’s side.  Was that a convoluted enough sentence to be worthy of the Bronte’s?

The book I haven’t gotten from the library yet is Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre.  After years of Jane Austen-alia, it’s been fun to immerse in some Bronte-mersion.  Now back to the 21st century…

The Cold War has its moment

Right now, it seems like the creative culture, in all its forms, is about the Cold War.

There are the two Oscar contenders: Stephen Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies” and “Pawn Sacrific”e about Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky when chess mattered.  Both films are gray-washed, cold things, as if we need some kind of visual reinforcement of the plots.  Both are very fine films, the former marginally warmed by Tom Hanks; the latter not at all.

The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor tells the woeful story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg from the viewpoint of a neighbor.  It’s a harrowing piece of fiction based on the facts.  I dare you to put it down.

I just finished the novel when surprise, the new play with Linda Lavin has a doozy of a plot twist.  Spoiler alert ahead.  Absolutely stop reading now if you’re going to see “Our Mother’s Brief Affair.

 

Lavin’s character had a long-ago affair, to the shock and discomfort of her adult children.  Turns out, she had that affair with David Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, who named names all the way to the electric chair.

Or did she?  That’s the question we’re left with, as she states she has a moment–a moment when she was really seen.  So what if he was a spy responsible for the gruesome deaths of his family?  She and he had a moment.  Or did they?

The play is clearly the weakest of all these works.  But I was affected by the idea of the importance of moments, in it and them all, and the ramifications those moments can have.

Now, emerging, I hope, from this Cold War moment, I’m really ready for some color and warmth!

 

P.S. I initially forgot to mention the very fine “Trumbo” in the listings of Cold War movies this season.

 

Celebration of Love and Joy

Time for a pause-and-refresh during this busy, busy season.  Here are some eye-treats from contemporary artist books of “The Song of Songs”–that lyrical book of wisdom in the Bible that centers on love, ecstasy, and joy.  These are now on display downstairs in the Yale Art Library.

Zeev Raban, 1923, Art Nouveau style

Look at the beauty of the script and border illustrations…

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…and the elegance of this script.  It looks Arabic and comes from Jerusalem.

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Typeface: Yits’hak Pludwinski, 1999-2001

“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.”

https://i0.wp.com/campuspress.yale.edu/judaicacollection/files/2015/10/fgfhfghg-1ryu0iy.jpg?resize=584%2C389&ssl=1

Ronald King, 1968

The bold, inky lines.

Hanns H. Heidenheim

Hanns H. Heidenheim

A linear style that adds up to a powerful woman.

Mordechai Beck, 1999-2001

Mordechai Beck, 1999-2001

…and here, too.

Tamar Messer, 2006

Tamar Messer, 2006

Simple, pleasing lines that are nonetheless fresh.

Angelo Valenti, 1935

Angelo Valenti, 1935

Contemporary, sweet.

Rita Galle, 1990

Rita Galle, 1990

A more graphic approach.

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Inspired by Goethe’s color theory with “The Song of Songs” text in German.

Robert Schwarz, 2012

Robert Schwarz, 2012

Your moment of joy and love.

Native Connecticut

I started my Native Connecticut experience today at the Pequot Museum of the Mashantucket tribe.  My first impression was, this is a lot of museum for the experience.  The excess of architecture was even more exaggerated by the long walk through open space–“follow the paw prints”– to the long ramp going down to the exhibits.  I was already a bit visually exhausted.

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Then there were the generic exhibits on the Ice Age, the arrival of the People, tools, medicine, agriculture, you probably know the drill.  And I was the only person for miles.
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When I wandered into the Pequot Village, with its sounds of birds, crickets, and rushing water and the smell of the fire and cedar, everything changed.

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I won’t say I suspended my disbelief enough to really immerse.  After all, there’s something about fake humans that just doesn’t send me.  But this experience was much livelier and more interesting, plus it’s apparently what draws visitors and puts this museum in the ‘gem’ category.

 

 

 

So enter into late summer of 1550, to the uninterrupted, idyllic, daily life of the Pequot.

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­­­­­­­­­­­ My interest was captured by the wigwam.  I liked being able to go inside one and site down to contemplate life is such a small space.  I liked how the newlyweds were shown, 2015-08-06 16.36.14building their new home together.  How they bent saplings to create the structure, then covered it with bark, as you see here.  A vertical log cabin.  No windows, but the People spent very little time inside.

One to two families would share a wigwam, with the hearth at the center and sleeping platforms around the periphery.  The beds were covered with pelts of red fox, mink, skunk (yes, really), and the rare black wolf.  Deer skin would cover the open doorway, and when it rained, the smoke hole was covered with a piece of bark.

No space was wasted, and this wigwam had drying corn, hemp for twine and fish net, snow shoes, antlers ready to make into tools, arrow wood for the shafts of arrows, and a fish spear with a 3-pronged head.

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2015-08-06 16.44.42Until Europeans arrived, there were about a dozen Pequot villages.  With white people and more aggressive Native tribes (that led to the disastrous Pequot War) came fortress-like fences.  At least the Europeans did some trading, bringing bronze tools, pots, and jewelry.

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In the years after, we witness their lifestyle disappearing.  The housing style changed, became Anglicized, as did the clothing.

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I enjoyed the sense of pride of the tribe today, with several galleries devoted to its life today.  The gallery-wide oral histories added a personal touch, too.

So the museum is a funny mix of oooold stuff and new museum technology.  A bit curious.

 

 

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I must admit to being completely puzzled by these items in the gift store.  Expensive at $180, these dresses represent…what?  I don’t want to speculate.

Hmmm.  There’s even one in the front window.  So I’m clearly missing something.

But time waits for no traveler, so I left my puzzlement behind and moved on to the next Native Connecticut adventure–an author reading in the tiny town hall of Voluntown, an event that was part of the Connecticut Authors Trail.  Some people there were serious Trail groupies, traveling around the state to hear local authors speak about their work.  Others, like me, were attracted to this particular reading.

Wabanaki Tribal member Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel brings New England Native stories to life with her young-adult/crossover book Wananaki Blues.

This standing room only crowd knew the Tantaquidgeon family, an old Wabanaki name, and many knew Melissa’s great aunt, a revered herbalist (read Medicine Woman).  They oooh’d and ahhh’d about the Tantaquidgeon Museum of “Indian traditions” in Uncasville, which darn it, I learned about too late to visit today.  Thank goodness for tomorrow.  This was a bit of a love fest for Melissa, which was delightful.

Here’s an important bit of hierarchy I learned.  Wabanaki is the umbrella name for all the New England tribes, Pequot, Mohegan, etc.  Waba means east or dawn and naki means land.  So People of the Land of the Dawn.  Nice, eh?

Mona Lisa (yes, really), Melissa’s main character learns about her New England native heritage through the course of the book, while also solving a cold-case murder.  Way to go, Mona!  The book is a chance for us to learn, too, about the woods of the ‘North Land” and the history, mysteries, and culture of these People connected by canoes and toboggans on the superhighway that is and was the Connecticut River.

So much of this is new to me, so I’m adding Wabanaki Blues to my reading list to fill in my Native New England gaps!

 

 

Go Set a Watchman

Don’t let other people’s biases take this book away from you.  I think it’s wonderful.  The last line may be the best close of a book I’ve read in a long, long time.  Go Set a Watchman is a true bildungsroman.  Scout comes of age.

You may not like what you read.  You may not agree with the reasoned justifications provided by three different, central characters.  By the end, you may not agree with what Jean Louise does.  But I think you’ll be so glad you read it.

Me?  I wanted to dissect so many sentences.  To compare them to what I knew of To Kill a Mockingbird.  To think about how an author responds to pressure to change her story.

Actually, I think Watchman may be a better book than Mockingbird, so burdened with the confused narration of adult ideas put in a six-year-old’s mouth and a digressive, tension-shattering style.  This one is clearly from the point-of-view of a young woman and gives us a leisurely stroll into Maycomb, before building tension that doesn’t stop.

I have no problem reconciling Mockingbird’s Atticus and Watchman’s Atticus.  As he and Uncle Jack clearly state, Scout had mixed her father up with God.  Well, so did America.  Atticus is a man living through a confusing, pressure-filled time of change.  The points he makes Scout face in herself and in her country are not easy–for her, for him, for us.

If we are really so post-racial today, we wouldn’t have had the tragedies of the past year.  So don’t be afraid to read about cognitive dissonance–how one man faces himself and his community and makes choices.  He does the same in Mockingbird, maybe in a way you can more easily applaud.  But what Atticus does in Watchman is no less believable or genuine.  Perhaps it’s even more true.

For this man can believe one thing for himself and still value justice, still fight injustice.  Do you hold any contradictory beliefs or values?  This book makes you consider yourself, too, if you’re willing.  Who are we to judge a man of his time from the lens of our own, without walking in his shoes?  This book asks you to walk in Atticus’s shoes.

And while the kerfluffel is all about Atticus, the book is really about Jean Louse.  About her growing up, finding her identity, discerning who she can be in relation to a father she idolized and a town she nostaligized.

Read it for it’s laugh out loud, hilarious recollections that aren’t in Mockingbird and the cast of characters as quirky as any from the golden age of Southern literature.  It’s a page turner I read in a few short hours, even as I lingered over idea after idea, sentence after sentence, of Jean Louise wrapping her head around a new reality.  Read it for that, too.

Watchman gives us an honest assessment of race in America, putting Scout in the cherished role of heroic-thinker that Atticus claimed in Mockingbird.  She just doesn’t have her edges polished yet.  I loved every page, laughed, loved, and got sick with Scout, and am ready to talk about it all with anyone who dares.

 

Chast on aging

Chast-BWThe International Festival of Arts & Ideas has unleashed on New Haven again, and on this second day, Penny and I stood in a loooooooooooong line to get in to hear Roz Chast talk about Memoir and Cartoons.  Of course, she told the story of her aging parents through images and her award-winning graphic novel Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? 

Check this out for a taste.

There is some genius in the book, as evidenced in the Q&A that followed.  People suffering through the passing of their parents commented on how much the book helped them, more than anything else they had found.  Chast does pull apart all the complexities of thoughts and feelings at this fragile time through the simplicity of line drawing.  It is brilliant, funny, sad, uplifting, wistful, and true, true, true.

I especially loved hearing how she got started as a New Yorker cartoonist in 1978 and laughing along with the throngs at her truthful twists on tropes.

Like this one:

 

and…

plus:

and her commentary on values:

For all her success, Chast comes across as nice, self-aware, and self-deprecating.

Asked if her parents understood and appreciated the humor in her cartoons, she said they were so proud of her.  Very Jewish-y parents.

 

Separately she told the story of how her father interpreted this New Yorker cover she did.

She was showing the evolution of ice cream.  He thought is was about a doctor telling people all the bad things they shouldn’t eat.  Very Jewish-y parents.

 

 

 

 

I leave you with this bit of wisdom from Chast:

Seize the day!

 

Heroes and a heroine for all time

indexDione Longley has written Heroes for All Time: Connecticut Civil War Soldiers Tell Their Stories by compiling their words from letters and diaries.  She quipped that writing this book took longer than the war.  But clearly she never lost the heart of the storytelling, as she shared with us at the New Haven Museum with her book signing.

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She recounts how Connecticut farmers, factory workers, and college students rallied as Citizen-Soldiers, as called upon by President Lincoln the day after the firing upon Fort Sumter.

Longley follows one fighting regiment in particular, through the painfully evocative writing of Nathan Taylor, a tinsmith, who described the rush to training camp, the inexperience of the recruits, and the details of battles throughout the war.  Unlike so many others, Taylor made it through the war with only one minor injury.

What Longley does in the book is bring familiar skeleton facts to life.  Taylor describes the fear he felt while on watch.  He heard a noise and was sure it came from a Confederate soldier.  Turned out to be a hog.  The next day, the battle at Bull Run began.  The juxtaposition between an ordinary experience and colossal chaos and fear become alive in the solder’s words.

It was a long war for the Connecticut troops.  The house painter Lucius Bidwell, from the Connecticut 14th, fought from 1862.  He was wounded at Fredricksburg, then went on to fight in 8, yes 8, more engagements before he died at Wilderness.

Captain John Griswold’s gravestone in Old Lyme, CT

From a different point in the soldier spectrum, Captain John Griswold came from a famous family and was a Yale grad.  When he was fatally shot at Antietam, he didn’t die right away.  A classicist and a gentleman, he apologized to those who had to care for him, “sorry to be a bother,” and spent his last hours quoting poetry with another officer.  He recalled the “flash of sunlight off Antietam Creek.”  Has anyone else capture that kind of remembrance of Antietam?

Henry Wing, in the 27th Color Guard, made clear how dangerous carrying a regimental flag could be.  In the noise and confusion and smoke of battle, when an order couldn’t be heard, the flag was essential for helping soldiers find their own.  The flags were huge, often 6′ x 9′, proudly displaying the regimental colors.  Consequently, they became a target.  On both sides, the ultimate pride came from capturing an enemy flag.

Wing wrote they’d all willingly die before giving up a flag.  That’s why 12 men were needed to carry 2 flags.  The death rate was appalling.  During one battle, he wrote, he was “proud for a minute” before the “murderous fire of rebel artillery” threatened the flag again.  After being shot in the leg, he crawled around looking for the flag, noting “ten of my fellows were dead.”  He wrote there’s “no romance, no glory.  Just disgust for those who planned such slaughter.”

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull

I was completely surprised by the image this story makes.  Reverend Henry Clay Trumbull of the 10th Connecticut Regiment described the small pleasures of watermelon.  Not at camp, but in battle.  “What could be more refreshing under fire?”  He described officers “carrying slices, taking a bite between each command.”

The stories go on and on.  They are so terribly personal, while also sociological.  What kind of people are we that we fought this kind of war?  Toby Kellogg was captured and put at the notorious Andersonville prison, where the men had no shelter through the winter and were starved.  Meager rations were brought in on the same carts that carried out the dead.  He wrote, “it takes no great courage to die in battle, with fame undying and comrades to care and cheer for you,” while POWs “gain no sympathy” and “are dying by inches.”

And then there were the Wadham brothers from Litchfield County.  Headed toward a battle for Richmond, the three fought in different regiments, coming at the battle from three different directions.  Luman wrote of riding off to visit his brother Henry, only to learn he had just been killed.  Luman, Henry, and Edward all died within a two week period.  Imagine being that mother.

You’ve been waiting for me to mention women.  Longley only told us about one.  But oh what a story she had!  Harriet Ward Hawley, an abolitionist and cousin to Harriet Beecher Stowe, followed her husband Joseph Hawley after he joined up.

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“I wish I could enlist,” she wrote.  She got on-the-job training as a nurse, tending the soldiers.  “They suffer terribly.  You do not dream of what these men undergo.”  Berating herself because she always considered herself good in an emergency, she fell into despair.  “45 dead today.  A piece of my life went with each one.”

After the war, her husband became governor of Connecticut.  And she had a bizarre cart accident with a recovery that involved staying in a darkened room for two years.  Now that would make you nuts.

But Hawley never forgot the soldiers.  She advocated for their pensions.  The wounded often could not work after the war and yet had no recompense for the devastating results from their service.  Hawley never stopped fighting for these men, even at the end of her life, when she was frail and walked with crutches.  When she died in 1886 at age 54, she received a “soldiers burial,” with a ritual flag-draped coffin and decorated headstone.

What soldiers they all were.  Ordinary, heroic.  To be remembered.

 

 

Connecticut courage

Here’s a Connecticut heroine no one has heard of–Prudence Crandall.  Yes, she’s in the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.  Yes, she took an activist stance, before anyone would have done so, perhaps influencing social reform strategies through the next hundred years.  But she is little remembered.

Until now, maybe.  Connecticut State Senator Donald Williams has written a book on her legacy, with the law in particular.  Let’s hope she gets some recognition.

Williams passionately and elegantly told Crandall’s story before a packed house at the New Haven Museum this MLK week, celebrating her as a beacon during the long struggle for equal justice in Connecticut and the United States.  He has turned up a remarkable amount of information, in what he called his “eight year hobby,” which I know first hand isn’t easy to do.  His particular interest is how her story influenced national law before the Civil War and since.

So what is her story?

Crandall came from a wealthy, Quaker family that moved from Rhode Island to Canterbury, Connecticut, where her father Pardon Crandall bought a farm house and taught school.  He believed all his children, including his daughters, should have an education, unusual for his day.  Quaker values of equality and opportunity for all shaped Prudence’s own, further inculcated as she attended a Friends boarding school in Providence.  She went on to teach herself and to become involved in Quaker-supported causes like Temperance.

Her parents helped Crandall buy a house in Canterbury, which she opened as a school for the daughters of the burgeoning middle class.  She had day students and boarders, too, and not as a finishing school, but also teaching math, science, English, history, and art.  The Town Fathers were proud of her accomplishments and delighted by the local economic boom the school created.

Academy opened on the Canterbury Green in 1831

Academy opened on the Canterbury Green in 1831

 

All was fine.  Remarkable even.  In the 1830s, single women were rare property owners, and married women could not.  Here Crandall was, the Headmistress of her own school, successful enough to have servants and several teachers to help her.  To give you a sense of the times, at the Temperance meetings she attended, only men were allowed to speak.

Mariah Davis was one of her servants, and her friend Sarah Harris and she liked to sit in the back of the classroom and take in the lessons.  Harris then approached Crandall and asked to be a student.  Harris was African American.  She knew she was asking the headmistress for a lot, and Crandall didn’t respond right away.

In the intervening years, Crandall became a Baptist, which in New England were abolitionists.  But despite her beliefs, Crandall also provided the financial support for her sister, and she had a mortgage to pay.  But Harris won her over, after introducing her to the most famous abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which even published articles by women!  Abolitionists believed in the necessity of education to lift up black men and women.  Harris herself wanted to become a teacher.

Sarah Harris, many years later

Some weeks later, in 1833, Crandall agreed that Harris become a student.  The other students knew Sarah and her family, worshiped with them in the Congregational Church.  They accepted her.  But.  Their parents did not.  Crandall, her father, and her brother were threatened, and white parents tried to bully Harris out of the school.

Crandall had to face a new reality.  If Harris stayed in the school, then all the white girls would withdraw, and the school would fail.  Crandall would not capitulate.  She had never met the publisher of The Liberator William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, but she wrote him, and he agreed to meet her.  She took a 9-hour stage coach ride up to Boston.

What did she do?  After discussing her plan with Garrison, she kicked out all the white girls and turned her school into an academy for black girls and women.  How did she make this happen?  Garrison’s paper told her story, reaching out to advocates throughout New England and New York to find 20 to 25 families who could afford Crandall’s tuition.

For perspective, in New Haven, abolitionists had already attempted a college for black men, with a proposal shot down by the Connecticut legislature 800 to 4.  Yikes.  Garrison didn’t want a similar failure and suggested that Crandall meet with activists in person.  She met with black ministers and families.  She got their commitments.

In April 1833, the school reopened, and by summer, she was full-up, with black women learning all the arts and sciences.  That’s when the trouble really started.

Threatened, state legislator persecuted and prosecuted Crandall.  The “Black Law” passed through the House and Senate.  It prohibited educating any African Americans from other states, and 85% of Crandall’s students came from outside Connecticut.  As a woman, Crandall was unable to speak out in her defense, and the minister-allies were unsuccessful.  The Governor signed the law which called for criminal penalties and excessive fines–for educating children.

After discussing the risks with other teachers and her family, Crandall committed an act of civil disobedience and kept school open.  She and sister Elmira were arrested.  Elmira was only 20 years old, so she was released.  Crandall was taken to the Brooklyn CT jail.

The Town Fathers were not amused.

Arthur Tappan many years later, in 1870

And Prudence Crandall had made the national news.  A wealthy advocate Arthur Tappan funded her attorney’s fees.  Good thing, because three trials and a trip to the Connecticut Supreme Court were in store.

With her case, attorneys worked together in new collaborative ways.  They made arguments about how the “Black Law” was unconstitutional.

David Daggett, one of the founders of Yale Law School, used political influence to become a judge.  He was also a prominent racist.  In a just-how-things-were way, when his conviction of Crandall was appealed to the state Supreme Court, guess who also was a Justice?  Yep.

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David Daggett, 1764-1851

Not wanting to embarrass their colleague, another Justice found a technicality to make the prosecution complaint incomplete.  The case against Crandall would have to be dismissed.

Lest I forget, all the publicity attracted to Crandall the attentions of an evangelical minister, and after a whirlwind in the middle of controversy, they were married.

Crandall continued to operate her school until September 9, 1834.  Then, with her full school of students all asleep, a group of men gathered at midnight armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, and at the signal of a whistle, smashed all the first floor windows.  Remarkably, no one was hurt, but this was the deciding moment.

At that time, there had been race riots Boston and Philadelphia, churches were attacked and organs burned in bonfires, Garrison’s life was threatened–all acts likely by poor whites threatened by the potential of economic competition by freed (much less educated) blacks.

The next morning after the vandalism, Crandall gathered the teachers and agreed that the students needed to be protected.  The school couldn’t guarantee their safety, so they decided to close and send the women home.

This was not the end of Crandall’s story.  She separated from her husband and moved on her own to Illinois, where she opened another school, teaching all races of children out of her house.  She supported abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage. I asked the Senator if her act of civil disobedience and jail time served as models for these other movement’s strategies.  He thought so.

In the last decade of her life, in the 1870s, Crandall moved to Kansas.  Before the Civil War, Kansas was the site in vicious racial episodes, but now it was considered progressive.  She lived the frontier life, eking out an existence in Elk Falls, now a ghost town.  She only left to nurse her husband at the end of his life.

The Senator traveled to the town to see her gravestone.  Her house had been destroyed by a tornado, but 87 year old Marjorie remembered where the house’s cellar hole was and  helped him find it, still there in a stony field.

He reminded us that the struggle for racial justice was northern as well as southern and sadly, still continues today.  The Crandall case was cited as case law in the awful Dred Scott decision in the 1850s and in the fight against Jim Crow, in Brown v the Board of Education, which also involved Crandall’s last home state of Kansas.

Information about Crandall’s students, both black and white has mostly been lost.  After all, they were only women.  Still, the Senator uncovered that some went on to other academies for further study, and some became activists.  And so I say, let’s study and act for justice, in the name of our fore sisters of courage!

Commerce, Cassino, and Loo

No, that’s not the name of a new rock band.  Commerce, Cassino, and Loo are all popular card games from Jane Austen’s time.  In celebration of her birthday today, we Janeites in Connecticut gathered for tea to celebrate her and the role of card games in her life and works.  What a hoot!

As you’ve no doubt noticed, the names of the card games are most evocative, and Austen used the inherent characteristics of the games to say something about the characters who were attracted to each.  A metaphor in the cards.

First, she acknowledges that not everyone was a game player (all levels of interpretation meant).  There were two spheres.  No. not the Public and Private Spheres that divided men and women.  But those who sat down to play and the “outsiders” who did not.  Of course, those outsiders might prefer a dance or two in the Assembly Room, versus heading to the Card Room at any ball or social gathering.  They weren’t necessarily stick-in-the-muds.

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The Card-room at Bath, by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne), April 1837, Steel Engraving, Dickens’s Pickwick Papers

So there were those who played games, ahem, and those who didn’t.  Anne Elliott from Persuasion declines to play cards in Bath, although Captain Wentworth reminds her it wasn’t always so.  Ahem.  Mary Crawford of Mansfield Park enjoys Speculation, a game that can be played by many.  Ahem.

Mr. Woodhouse from Emma definitely prefers Pique, because it can be played by only 2.  Much less change of spreading germs that way, you know.  Pride and Prejudice‘s Lady Catherine de Bourgh dominates the old-fashioned game of Quadrille, while reckless Lydia adored Lottery Tickets, a game of pure chance requiring no thought or strategy whatsoever.  When Elizabeth and Wickham play with her, Lizzie gets all the facts about Darcy wrong.  See the significance of a card game?

Then there’s class.  Lizzie opts out of playing Loo at Netherfield, when suggested by snobby Mr. Hurst.  She says she prefers to read, which kicks off a stream of hilarious digs all around.  But the real reason she declines is she can’t afford the high stakes of their play.  Austen herself avoided playing Commerce, when she couldn’t afford the 3 pence stake.

Instead Austen preferred Speculation, a gambling game.  She even wrote a poem about it, but sadly it was no longer played by the end of the 1800s.  She also enjoyed the board game Cribbage and a card game called Brag.

Fun facts.  Card games were played all over Europe, of course, but the same games might have different rules.  After all, a deck of cards wasn’t static.  The English played with 52 cards, but the Italians used only 40 and Russians 30.  In Spain, games were played with 48 cards.  There were no 10s.

Women, who had no other means of support, might convert their homes into card houses for games of chance.  Typically, they played Faro, named for Pharaoh, a game of chance where, for a change, the player has the best odds, not the House.  In the Western U.S. Faro houses were wildly popular, although apparently, there wasn’t a single “honest bank,” meaning you just couldn’t win against the House.

Two-penny Whist by James Gillray

Several of the games were precursors to popular games now.  Commerce and Brag for poker.  And there was a version of blackjack, known as 21.  Quadrille was so complicated that it phased out in popularity, and whist took over, morphing over time into today’s bridge.  Whist means quick, silent, and attentive, sharing a root with ‘wistful.’  This game requires thought and strategy to be played well, a wistful pursuit.

Others are quirky.  Named for a lullaby Lanterloo, Loo, which I found to be a bit silly and overly simple, involves playing with ivory-carved fish as the chits or counting pieces.  Special Loo tables were designed with fishponds (troughs) on all four sides, for holding your fish as you win them.  Loo was the most popular card game in England and was also the easiest game for cheating.  Trollope writes of a club member who cheats and when found out, gets away with it because the others were too gentlemanly to call him out.  Poor manners.  So if you plan to slip a card up your sleeve or palm another, do it in an English club.  They’d rather be cheated than rude.

Here we are, trying to make sense of Commerce

Here we are, trying to make sense of Commerce

 

Maybe you want to learn more, or get at the rules of these games.  My favorite was Cassino, and the rules are so complicated, you will definitely need a book.  Check out Helpful Sports for Young Ladies, where you’ll also learn more about other past-times.  Perhaps you already enjoy the athleticism of the seesaw and swinging outdoors.  Great forms of exercise for any one!

The Regency line-up

The Regency line-up

Balancing suffering with humor

After a longing to read it for many years, I finally dug into Stella Gibbons’ hilarious novel Cold Comfort Farm.  Yes, I was that person on the subway laughing to herself…

But really, the Starkadder horses are named Travail and Arsenic.  And witty Flora Poste changes all the Starkadder lives with good cheer and a dose of pragmatism.

Turned out to be the theme of the day.

Chris Burden tortured his body in the name of art, notorious in the 1970s for setting himself up to be shot in the arm and slithering naked over broken glass.  Well, he lived, and like most of us, he grew up, tempering the way he expressed struggle in his newer sculptural pieces.

I hadn’t really wanted to see the show at the New Museum, but I am in a Body Art class.  What I couldn’t anticipate is the humor in his work.  He erects a beautiful bridge with an erector set 2013-11-30 12.03.49(memories of my childhood that makes me want to see the new, erector set exhibit at the Eli Whitney museum in New Haven even more).  Then he points a cannon at it.  Creation and destruction.  And humor.

Even his 1981 Tale of Two Cities, destroying each other through war, has a wink in it–it’s a whole world made of miniatures and toys.  The binoculars posted nearby will help you see it better.  Burden and his team took three weeks to install it in the gallery.  Talk about suffering!

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My favorite is his 2013 work Porsche with Meteorite.  If you saw that title on a novel, wouldn’t 2013-11-30 11.55.57you want to read it?  As you can see, it’s enormous and playful, as if alluding to some vast teeter-totter or the Scale of Justice belonging to the gods.  It’s not as absurd as Big Wheel from 1979, which serves no functional purpose, despite appearances.  But that, you argue, is art!  Yes!

 

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Here’s a youtube video of how the Big Wheel gets going:

I appreciate anything that makes me laugh, so I forced myself to see Becoming Dr. Ruth.  I’m basically neutral about her, but her life is a celebration of choosing joy over suffering.  And the one-woman show about her life demonstrates just that.

Perhaps the ‘wisdom’ that comes with age is knowing that suffering is part of life.  The phrase Tikkun olam means ‘repair the world’.  That call is one of the ways I identify with being Jewish.  The way to repair the world for Dr. Ruth is through sex.  For me, it’s laughter.  Let’s do it!

Small Worlds

In the category of it’s-a-small-world-after-all, today’s lecture on Jane Austen’s Emma and the screening of the Israeli film “Fill the Void” I attended yesterday are completely related.  Both the novel and the film used “economy of means” — just a word or gesture is full of  significance.  Not much is needed to get a whole world across.

Emma paints a social canvas of a small community in the radius of greater London, which had surpassed a million residents in the early 1800s.  “Fill the Void” follows one Hasidic household in the teeming city of contemporary Tel Aviv.  Both accentuate the vulnerability of unmarried women in restrictive, rule-bound communities.  Neither suggest the possibilities of a wider world, in which characters have greater choice.

Given how relevant these issues are even in non-cloistered communities today, I needed some fresh air.  I decided to walk the 20 blocks to my crosstown bus.  And what a day for a walk through another set of small worlds.  The lecture took place at the Columbia University Faculty House, and the campus was breathtaking.

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I followed this bride for awhile before passing her.  She was marrying in a traditional Korean ceremony.

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Yes, there are temporary, tiny petting zoos in New York City.

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And enormous cathedrals for the ages.

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Cathedral of St. John the Divine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Children’s Sculpture Garden across the street from the cathedral has small works and giant monuments.

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Spanish Harlem is a small world of its own, full of taquerias, beauty shops, and barber shops.  I liked how the orange shirts of the barbers and the capes on their patrons were reflected in the mirror.  I was too self-conscious to go for a better shot, to show the diversity of young and older men getting their hair cut and heads shaved.

 

 

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And street fair season has started up again.  On Amsterdam above 96th Street, it’s quieter than those further downtown.  But all the usual suspects were there, including the booths with stuff that fell off the back of a truck, the jewelry stalls, food trucks, and this place which had attracted a crowd:

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What interested me was how many small worlds I walked through in just 20 blocks.  We all live in a small world of our own making.  What a difference stepping outside can make.

Room of Wondrous Things

The Art Librarians strike again.  No wonder there’s a Librarian Action Figure.

They are always on the go.

Tonight to the Grolier Club to see the Wunderkammer catalogue exhibit.  The Grolier Club was started in 1884 by nine people to promote books and book arts through exhibitions and publications. Interesting in our digital book world, the Grolier Club now has 800 members — collectors, dealers, antiquarians, librarians, fine artists, plus.  And not just in New York.  About 20% of members today are women, after the club gave in and admitted us beginning in 1976.

It’s in its third home, a townhome built by an architect-member in 1917, on 60th between Madison and Park.  The exhibits are open to the public, and if you like rare books, the exhibits at the club are worth a visit.

Wunderkammers are rooms of wondrous things: things of beauty, things of rarity, and things of artistic, scholarly, or financial value.  The exhibit features proud owners’ catalogues of their surprising objects from 1599 to 1899.  Inside a Wunderkammer

You can click on this image to make it larger, to see what a Wunderkammer in 1599 looked like.  As time progressed, Wunderkammers also became cabinets like this one below, for displaying art and natural science wonders.

A Wunderkammer

 

The exhibition includes a 16th century how-to manual for making your own Wunderkammer.  People did it all different kinds of ways.

 

 

 

 

Wunkerkammer, apothecary trade 1

 

A Dutch apothecary traded medicines for curiosities that sailors collected on their voyages for the Dutch East India Company.  Check out some of the oddities that the owner cataloged in this “sea book” and below in the slide show.

Famous people had Wunderkammers, including Peter the Great, who collected curiosities and put them in jars.  We saw these jars in a catalogue, on the whole second floor of the palace.  He also had one of his 7′ tall guards stuffed after his death.  Hmmm.PT Barnum lithograph, museum

Entertainers like P.T. Barnum made museums out of a collection of curios.  In the same tradition as Charles Willson Peale, who started the first U.S. museum in Philadelphia in today’s Independence Hall, Barnum displayed natural history and other wonders, as well as art.

Asian record of fossils, minerals, stones

 

 

Wunderkammers, as a 300 year fad, were not just created in Europe.  Here’s a Japanese cataloged record of fossils, minerals, and stones.  Pretty, eh?

 

So think about cataloging your own wonders.  Who knows, your record could end up in the Grolier Club!

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