America's Pastime Saved by Beer

It is October and the World Series is on the minds of fans, especially here in Washington D.C. For many people baseball revives memories of sitting in the stands drinking an ice-cold beer on a hot Sunday and watching the game from the cheap seats. To the fans, this is paradise and a way to enjoy America’s national pastime. But as American as this seems, there was a time when Sunday baseball, beer, and the cheap seats not only did not exist, they were banned.

Rewind to the early 1870’s, a time when the future of baseball looked bleak. Stadium attendance was low and fans were leaving the game. Corrupt and drunken players on the field and gambling in the darkest corners of the stadiums were running off baseball’s fan base. It was not uncommon for players to throw games for gamblers or not show for games with teams refusing to finish tournaments or seasons. This behavior threatened the end of an American sport.

The game’s salvation came in the form of William Ambrose Hulbert, in 1875. Hulbert, owner of the Chicago White Stockings, had enough of the chaos, dysfunction and corruption of baseball. Desiring a change, Hulbert started a new league that we know today as the National League. Not only did he take his team with him, but he took some of the wealthiest teams for his league. From the start Hulbert used an iron fist to institute rules. Most notably, the league controlled the teams and the players, instead of the other way around as it had been. If teams or players failed to heed the rules, Hulbert showed no mercy expelling the violators for life.

Baseball Score Counter, Peter Doelger Brewing, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977, Beer Series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Keeping in line with his crackdown, Hulbert banned alcohol at stadiums. The fans had to quench their thirst with something other than beer and whiskey. Today this seems unbelievable: who would ban beer at the ballpark? But times were different. The Temperance Movement during the 1870’s was in full swing throughout the United States, and banning alcohol fell within the societal norms.

Baseball Score Counter, Pfaff's Brewery, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977, Beer Series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Lastly, Hulbert wanted to clean up the sport’s riffraff fan base. He raised ticket prices to 50 cents, which at the time was a stiff price to pay. Hulbert believed this would prevent the lower classes from attending games, making games more inviting to women and families.

But then a German immigrant came along to throw a wrench, or actually a mug of beer, into Hulbert’s best-laid plans. Christian von der Ahe pictured baseball for the working man. He and several other team owners formed the American Association baseball league in 1881. Many of these owners were connected to alcohol in some form, whether by owning breweries or saloons, or being based in beer cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

This American Association presented an immediate challenge to the National League in that they allowed beer in the parks, sold tickets for 25 cents, and held games for the first time ever on Sundays. Sunday games were extremely important in that for the average American laborers, Sundays were their only day off. The effects of the American League’s changes were swift. In the beginning Hulbert did not view the new league as a threat to his more puritanical National League, but within the first year the wet American league saw more than four times the profits of Hulbert’s dry league. Von der Ahe’s league quickly was nicknamed the “Beer and Whiskey League.”

By the early 1890’s the National League began to see the errors of its ways. In 1891, as the American Association folded, the National League not only absorbed many of the American Association teams and players, but also the practices of Sunday games, 25 cent tickets and beer in the park.
         
In the end, the National League’s strict rules attempted to save the floundering sport, but it was the development of the American League that laid the founding traditions that truly saved baseball: cold beer. So while we cheer our favorite team this October, we cannot forget that these traditions we have known and loved were instituted by people who made and sold our beer.

Joe Hursey
Reference Archivist
Archives Center
National Museum of American History

Soaring through the Archives of Air and Space with Transcription Center

Have you ever wondered what you should pack for a trip to the moon? Or what female aviator clubs were like in the 1930's? How about the history of grape soda and its relationship to America's first transcontinental flight?

                             Inflight Coverall Garment, Jacket, Apollo,                     Items taken aboard Apollo 11, NASM Archives.
                                 D19791187000, National Air and Space Museum.

Well you're in luck! The answers to these questions -- recorded in the pages of diaries, letters, and scrapbooks held in the Archives of the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) -- are now more easily discoverable thanks to volunteer transcription.

Vin Fiz Art Poster, Armour & Co., 1911,  A1935044000, National Air and Space Museum.

Since 2015, staff in the NASM Archives have launched (pun intended) over 200 projects in the Smithsonian Transcription Center--including stowage lists from six different Apollo missions, records from Calbraith (Cal) Perry Rodgers' 1911 transcontinental flight (which was sponsored by the makers of the popular grape soda, the Vin Fiz), and the scrapbook of female pilot, Manila Davis Talley, containing multiple photographs and  news articles on twentieth century women's aviation clubs and flying competitions. 

Page from Scrapbook of Manila Davis Talley, NASM.XXXX.0041, National Air and Space Museum.

The Archives' collections span the history of flight, from ancient times to the present day, and include materials from military officers and personnel, NASA astronauts, Smithsonian staff, civilian pilots and engineers, astrophysicists, nineteenth-century balloonists, flight attendants, and more. Over the past four years 1,062 volunteers (or 'volunpeers' as we say here in TC) have transcribed close to 13,000 pages from the archival collections at NASM. These TC projects only constitute a small portion of NASM's archival collections, yet the work of digital volunteers transcribing and reviewing these materials increases accessibility and awareness of the rich information held within every page. (Want to learn more about how volunteer transcription makes Smithsonian collections accessible and text-searchable? Head to our About page and follow us on Twitter for ongoing updates, discoveries, and behind-the-scenes sneak peeks!)

Here's some highlights from NASM TC Projects:

Apollo 11 Flight, Crew, Training, NASM Archives.

• Sound recordings from the Apollo 11 launch. 
• Correspondence, flight logs, and notes from Orville and Wilbur Wright. 
• Materials from the Papers of General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.- Commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron, the first unit of the "Tuskegee Airmen" during WWII and the first African American General in the U.S. Air Force (1954). 
• The World War I diary of U.S. Army Air Service Officer Arthur Raymond Brooks
• William J. Eck's scrapbook, "To Europe By Air," documenting his trip on Pan American Airways' (PAA) first transatlantic passenger flight in 1939.
• Scrapbook of Velma Maul Tanzer, Stewardess and Chief Stewardess for American Airlines, 1933-1936.

Velma Maul Tanzer, NASM.2005.0036, NASM Archives.

• World War II diaries and scrapbooks from Harold Raskin (Army Airways Communications System, 7th AACS Wing Ground Control Approach (GCA) unit), William Jones (aerial photographer in the Army Air Corps), and a Japanese man named Yamada (much information on him is still unknown). 

                           General Benjamin O. Davis,                                   William Jones, NASM.2006.0067,  NASM Archives.
                          NASM.1992.0023, NASM Archives.                                              

Click here to explore all of the completed and ongoing Transcription Center projects from NASM. And keep an eye out for more projects coming soon, including a letter from astronaut John Glenn, Jr., diaries from WWI Pilot Zenos Miller, and collections documenting the groundbreaking work of female aviators Rubye Berau, Mary Charles, and Helen Richey.

-Caitlin Haynes, Transcription Center Coordinator

Archives Contextualize Artist's Work for Conservator

As a textile conservator I am trained to search for clues in textiles; a small label, a repair, or the structure of the fabric help me to understand the history of an object. Much like a detective I sometimes have to dig deeper to solve an object’s mysteries. This past year I had the opportunity to conduct in-depth archival research on a set of quilts in the AnacostiaCommunity Museum’s collection (ACM).

Several quilts that are part of an artwork titled The Shroud Series  incorporates fabric patches with photographic images printed on them. The artist Fay Fairbrother designed the quilts based on traditional patterns, and kept them “simple in order for the photographs to speak.”  The quilts juxtapose historic photographs of early twentieth century lynching and gatherings of the Ku Klux Klan with period portraits of African American and white families. This harrowing subject matter made me want to know more about the artists’ life and sources.  

A quilt from The Shroud Series, 2002.0011.0001 Courtesy of Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson.

I started my research on Fay Fairbrother by surveying the National African American Museum Project (NAAMP) files in the Anacostia Community MuseumArchives.  The Shroud Series appeared in NAAMP's 1994 inaugural exhibit Imaging Families: Images and Voices. Reading the documents in the files was eye-opening! My archival discoveries include an artist statement and resume, and installation notes and correspondences between the artist, staff members and close friends. From these documents, I learned that the artist studied art history and earned her master's degree in photography at the University of Oklahoma. Installation notes provided important details about how the series was displayed. Through the letters I was able to locate a close friend of Fairbrother and a former professor of hers at the University of Oklahoma. Through interviews with them I learned about the artist’s sources of inspiration, challenges, and working practice.

The research also led me to locate the family photographs and several of the KKK images in the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.  Several of the lynching images are held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and the Allen-Littlefield Collection at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Detail of a quilt from The Shroud Series, 2002.0011.0001
Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson.

Further research revealed the identity of the lynching victims Bennie Simmons, Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, and Claude Neal (Allen 2000 and the New York Public Library digital collections) but  the identity of the African American families remains unknown. I also found information about other exhibits of Fairbrother's work which helped to contextualize The Shroud Series.

Detail of a quilt from the Shroud Series,2002.0011.0001
Courtesy Anacostia Community Museum. Photo by Lisa Anderson

Copies of documents I gathered from all these archives are now within ACM object files as documentation for the quilts. The archival information I reviewed not only provided context to the quilts I was conserving but helped me to understand the intentions of the artist and how she intertwined her art with her personal experiences.

Annaick Parker

Textile Conservator

Anacostia Community Museum

The Interplay of Art, Music, and Portraiture

American portraiture captures rich conversations between artists, musicians, and singers. On the occasion of the Smithsonian’s Year of Music, this essay explores the interplay of art, music, and portraiture in the United States, from the Early Republic to today.

During the eighteenth century, artists were often inspired to portray individuals and groups in the act of playing instruments or singing. A popular theme was the informal family concert, which exemplified the harmony and personal values shared by the represented members. An example is the painting Family of Dr. Joseph Montégut (c. 1797-1800), which has been attributed to José Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza. It depicts a French surgeon who has settled in New Orleans. He is surrounded by his wife, great aunt, and children, who are about to play for their parents. Two hold flutes, while a daughter’s hands are poised on the pianoforte keys. This composition of a French Creole family in Spanish-governed New Orleans presents a vision of musical and domestic harmony, which had precedents in European art tradition.  https://www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-museum/collections/visual-art/artists/jos-francisco-xavier-de-salazar-y-mendoza

From the 1790s through the 1830s, theater and concert performances proliferated and by the mid-nineteenth century, music had become a public commodity. A leading European virtuoso, the Swedish singer Jenny Lind, toured the United States from 1850-1852, in part with the sponsorship of P.T. Barnum. Many American artists portrayed the popular “Swedish Nightingale,” including Francis Bicknell Carpenter, whose 1852 oil painting depicts Jenny Lind in costume, holding a musical score book.

Jenny Lind by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, oil on canvas, 1852. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Eleanor Morein Foster in Honor of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (NPG.94.123)

From 1892 to 1895, the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was director of the National Conservatory of Music in America. His famous symphony From the New World (1893) reflected his interest in African American and Native American music. He promoted the idea that American classical music should follow its own models instead of imitating European composers. Dvořák helped inspire our composers to create a distinctly American style of classical music. By the twentieth century, many American composers, such as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Charles Ives incorporated diverse musical genres into their compositions, including folk, jazz, and blues.

As a composer, pianist, and conductor, Leonard Bernstein made a profound impact on American music by collaborating with the performing arts. His interests ranged from classical music and ballet to jazz and musicals. In an oil portrait of 1960, René Robert Bouché portrayed Bernstein in a moment of reflection, with the papers of the musical score he is writing scattered across the desk in front of him.

Leonard Bernstein by René Robert Bouché, oil on canvas, 1960. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Springate Corporation. © Denise Bouche Fitch (NPG.92.3)

The composer George Gershwin and his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin, were also highly versatile, having collaborated on popular musicals and a folk opera. Both brothers also painted interesting self-portraits, which can be viewed in the Gershwin collection in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. In a 1934 oil portrait in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, George Gershwin represented himself in profile with a musical score and his hand alighting upon the piano keys.

Self-Portrait by George Gershwin, oil on canvas board, 1934. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Ira Gershwin. © Estate of George Gershwin (NPG.66.48)

The following year, the Gershwin brothers debuted Porgy and Bess, “an American folk opera,” which broke new ground in musical terms. Soprano Leontyne Price appeared in the 1952 revival touring production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which brought her first major success. Less than a decade later, in 1961, Price became the first leading African-American opera star when she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera. Bradley Phillips created this formal oil painting of Leontyne Price within a stage setting in 1963. It is one of several portraits he made of the singer. The artist expressed the admiration he felt for her immense talent when seeing her perform onstage.

Leontyne Price by Bradley Phillips, oil on canvas, 1963. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Ms. Sayre Sheldon (NPG.91.96)

Artists Thomas Eakins and George P.A. Healy also created portraits of singers and musicians. In the medium of painting, these artists were able to convey the intensity and precision of the musicians in their performances. Thomas Eakins asked his model Weda Cook to repeatedly sing a particular phrase from Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, so he could explore the position and movement of her mouth and vocal chords for his portrait Concert Singer (1890-1892). In this manner, he recreated the immediate sense of a formal concert with the contralto singing on the stage and the conductor’s hand and baton raised in the lower corner. https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/42499.html

George P.A. Healy visited virtuoso Franz Liszt in Rome and created this 1868-1869 oil portrait of him playing the piano in an inspired moment. Healy even convinced the composer to allow Ferdinand Barbedienne to cast his hands in bronze, an artifact Healy later kept in his studio. https://callisto.ggsrv.com/imgsrv/FastFetch/UBER1/ZI-9HFT-2014-JUN00-SPI-142-1 Both artists not only portrayed the physical characteristics of musicians and singers but also the inner passion and mental concentration they brought to their performances. As such, they recreated the emotional spirit of the music for viewers.

James McNeill Whistler thought about his paintings in terms of musical titles and themes. He created not only portraits of musicians but also discussed the subtle tonalities of his more abstract urban scenes and landscapes in musical terms. In 1878, Whistler defended the titles of his paintings: “Why should not I call my works ‘symphonies,’ ‘arrangements,’  ‘harmonies,’ and ‘nocturnes’?...As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour.” This analogy between music and painting was Whistler’s primary means for defending his paintings against criticism. Indeed, he published this defense in the journal The World during his libel lawsuit against critic John Ruskin, who referred to Whistler’s 1875 oil painting of fireworks in London, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, as “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/nocturne-black-and-gold-falling-rocket-64931 Whistler’s use of music as a metaphor for painting was intended to build support for the concept that color, form, and painterly technique were the primary elements of an artwork. Whistler brought this correlation of painting and music to public attention with his artworks, which in turn influenced other artists and musicians.  

Regional painter Thomas Hart Benton praised “James McNeill Whistler[’s art]...tone, colors harmoniously arranged…Whether you can distinguish one object from another or not, whether the thing painted looks like a man, woman, or dog, mountain, house or tree, you have harmony and the grandest artistic aim, it is the truly artistic aim.” Benton was a self-taught and performing musician who invented a harmonica tablature notation system used in current music tutorials. He was also a cataloguer, collector, transcriber, and distributor of popular music. He had musical gatherings for family and friends at his home in Kansas City. These sessions were commemorated on a 1942 recording by Decca Records called Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s, which featured chamber and folk music. Benton’s friend, the popular actor and singer Burl Ives, shared his passion for American songs. During the Great Depression, Ives traveled the country gathering and playing folk songs, and Benton made sketches of folk musicians in different regions. In a 1950 lithograph titled the Hymn Singer or the Minstrel, Benton portrayed Ives playing the guitar. 

Burl Ives by Thomas Hart Benton, lithograph on paper, 1950. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY (NPG.85.141)

In 1973, Benton was commissioned to paint his last mural, The Sources of Country Music, for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. He decided the mural “should show the roots of the music–the sources–before there were records and stars,” and he created a lively, flowing composition of country folk musicians, singers, and dancers.   https://www.arts.gov/about/40th-anniversary-highlights/thomas-hart-bentons-final-gift

Artist LeRoy Neiman featured Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Benny Goodman, and other famous jazz performers in his group portrait Big Band (2005), which is held at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. It took Neiman ten years to complete this mural-size tribute to eighteen jazz masters, which the LeRoy Neiman Foundation presented to the Smithsonian after the artist’s death in 2012. Neiman frequented jazz clubs, where he befriended and sketched these performers. In 2015, the LeRoy Neiman Foundation donated funds to the Smithsonian towards the expansion of jazz programing during the annual celebration. See the following two part guide to this group portrait of jazz greats:  https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/neiman-jazz and https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/neiman-jazz-2

One can discover further portraits and biographies of notable composers, musicians, and singers in the Catalog of American Portraits (CAP). In 1966, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery founded the CAP, a national portrait archive of historically significant subjects and artists from the colonial period to the present day. The public is welcome to access the online portrait search program of more than 100,000 records from the museum’s website: https://npg.si.edu/portraits/research/search

The Smithsonian is celebrating the Year of Music with a wide variety of collection highlights and programs. To learn more, please visit: https://music.si.edu/smithsonian-year-music

Patricia H. Svoboda, Research Coordinator

Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Bibliography:

Cheek, Leslie Jr., Director. Souvenir of the Exhibition Entitled Healy’s Sitters. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1950.

Coleman, Patrick, ed. The Art of Music. San Diego, CA, and New Haven, CT: San Diego Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2015.

Fargis, Paul, and Sheree Bykofsky, et al. New York Public Library Performing Arts Desk Reference. New York, NY: Stonesong Press, Inc., Macmillan Company, and New York Public Library, 1994.

Fortune, Brandon. Eye to I: Self-Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery. Washington, D.C: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2019.

Gontar, Cybèle, ed. Salazar: Portraits of Influence in Spanish New Orleans, 1785-1802. New Orleans, LA: Ogden Museum of Southern Art and University of New Orleans Press, 2018.

Henderson, Amy, and Dwight Blocker Bowers. Red, Hot and Blue: A Smithsonian Salute to the American Musical. Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of American History, in association with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

Kerrigan, Steven J. “Thomas Eakins and the Sound of Painting.” Paper presented at the James F. Jakobsen Graduate Conference, University of Iowa, 2012. https://gss.grad.uiowa.edu/system/files/Thomas%20Eakins%20and%20the%20Sound%20of%20Painting.pdf

Mazow, Leo G. Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2012: http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-05083-6.html .

Ostendorf, Ann. “Music in the Early American Republic.” The American Historian (February 2019): 1-8.

https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2019/february/music-in-the-early-american-republic/  

Phillips, Tom. Music in Art: Through the Ages. Munich and New York, NY: Prestel-Verlag, 1997.

Struble, John Warthen. History of American Classical Music: MacDowell through Minimalism. New York, NY: Facts on File Publishers, 1995.

Walden, Joshua S. Musical Portraits: The Composition of Identity in Contemporary and Experimental Music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Wilmerding, John, ed. Thomas Eakins. Washington, D.C. and London: National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.

    

Prove It on Me: Ma Rainey and the Queer Blues

"When you see two women walking hand in hand 

Just look 'em over and try to understand" 

             – George Hannah, "The Boy in the Boat"

In 1925, the Chicago police arrested blues singer Gertrude "Ma" Rainey in her home for hosting a so-called “lesbian party.” While Rainey had been married to a man for 21 years, she was known to take female lovers. It was even rumored that she was romantically involved with another famous blueswoman, Bessie Smith, who bailed Rainey out of jail the following day.

Ma Rainey and the Wildcats Jazz Band, 1923. Bernice Johnson Reagon
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Getting her start on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1900s, Ma Rainey made her mark as a blues performer just as the genre’s popularity hit its stride in the 1920s. By 1925, she was two years into a lucrative recording contract with Paramount Records, had worked with Louis Armstrong, and was in the middle of what would become a four-year musical partnership with Thomas Dorsey’s Wild Cats Jazz Band. Ma Rainey had earned the title “Mother of the Blues,” and she had no intention of giving it up.

Three years later, she would respond to the gossip about her sexuality sparked by her arrest with her “Prove It on Me Blues:”

“Went out last night 

With a crowd of my friends 

They must have been women 

Cause I don’t like no men”

Some have called the lesbianism and bisexuality among black female blues musicians the “open secret” of the Harlem Renaissance. While some blues singers, like Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters, were careful to bury rumors that they, too, might be “in the life,” many more, like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Clara Smith, and Lucille Bogan did little to conceal their relationships with women. Lucille Bogan even released a song in 1935, entitled “The B.D. Woman’s Blues” in which “B.D.” stood for “bulldagger,” a slang term for a butch lesbian. Referring affectionately to these lesbian women, Bogan sings: “They got a head like a sweet angel and they walk just like a natural man.”

Perhaps the greater secret was the blues club scene itself. The early 1900s saw a massive migration of black Americans from the South to cities in the North like Chicago and New York City. The Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York proved a particularly popular destination for many migrants, who helped contribute to a flourishing art, academic, and entertainment scene that would come to be known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” Amid this atmosphere of artistic and intellectual expression, gay and lesbian African-Americans found a spirit of social freedom and acceptance that allowed them to pursue same-sex relationships with greater openness than in many other parts of the country.

And it was in the underground blues clubs of the 1920s and 30s where this sexual expression could thrive most freely. In seedy Harlem blues clubs, blueswomen like Gladys Bentley, who became famous for her masculine performances complete with cropped hair, tuxedo, and top hat, found their audiences and stage personas. For black women, who made up the majority of the popular blues singers at this time, these clubs offered an outlet to explore their sexualities and sexual desires onstage in a way that would have been denied them in their day to day lives. Blues clubs spread far beyond just New York City, and while blueswomen like Rainey and Smith tend to be associated with the Harlem Renaissance, many of these women had stronger ties to the South, Midwest, and California. Artists like Bentley toured blues clubs around the country, including San Francisco’s famous Mona’s 440 Club, a bar which marketed itself toward lesbians as the place “where girls will be boys.”

Some have suggested that it is important to not overstate the prevalence of these declarations of same sex desire in the music and performances of female blues musicians. Lesbian-themed songs make up but a small fraction of these singers’ bodies of work, the majority of which focuses instead on romances with men. Yet it is still important to acknowledge the significance of the blues club as a space where black women in the early 20th century were able to express their sexual and romantic desires without fearing for their safety. Using masculine clothing, provocative performances, and homoerotic lyrics, these blueswomen found unique ways to represent their sexuality onstage. More than that, black women blues performers were able to control how their sexuality was represented in their lyrics and performances and decide, for themselves, who they wanted to be onstage and off.

Bessie Smith, undated. Sam DeVincent Collection, African-American Music series, 
Archives Center, National Museum of American History

At the end of “Prove It on Me Blues,” Ma Rainey sings:

“Talk to the gals just like any old man 

Cause they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me 

Sure got to prove it on me.”

In these lines, Rainey coyly seems to say, “My sexuality is mine alone, and I am free to live how I please.” And perhaps this is the most important thing to remember when we talk about the lives and romances of these blueswomen. For women like Ma Rainey, the blues was a world where you could take control of your own story, where you could explore your sexuality and talk about it on your terms, where you could decide who you wanted to be and then become that person onstage each night.

For more on Ma Rainey and the other blueswomen mentioned here, watch T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s on Kanopy.

Erin Walsh, Intern
National Museum of American History, Archives Center

Plane Spotting: The Photography of Rudy Arnold and Hans Groenhoff

If you are an aficionado of aviation photography, then chances are you have seen the works of Rudy Arnold and Hans Groenhoff. In the 1930s and 1940s, you could open up almost any aviation magazine or mass circulation publication and find a photograph from one of these two men.  The photos of Arnold and Groenhoff have been part of the collections of the National Air and Space Museum Archives for many years, but now you can view their amazing work through the Smithsonian OnlineVirtual Archives (SOVA)!

Photographer Rudy Arnold posed looking through the viewfinder of his modified Graphlex Speed Graphic camera; probably somewhere in or near New York City, circa early 1930s.  NASM 89-20553

Photographer Hans Groenhoff, holding his Graflex Speed Graphic camera (a second camera, an Ikoflex twin lens reflex, is slung around his neck), poses leaning out of the right side of a Piper J-3 Cub camera plane with an unidentified US Army pilot at the controls, circa 1941. Here he demonstrates a hand signal to ask the pilot of a target plane to close the gap between the two aircraft in flight. Groenhoff's Speed Graphic is fitted with a shield around the bellows (seen here decorated with decals) to protect it from collapsing in the wind stream during flight.  NASM-HGC-1587

Rudy Arnold was born in 1902 and began his career by studying at the New York School of Photography. Around 1928, he started his own business, with a focus on aviation photography. He primarily worked out of Floyd Bennett Field, Roosevelt Field, and LaGuardia Airport in New York.

Sikorsky HO3S-1G on the ground outside a U. S. Coast Guard hangar at Floyd Bennett Field, New York, 1949. A Crosley convertible is parked in front of the helicopter; photographer Rudy Arnold (standing up in the automobile) has just arrived for a flight in the helicopter.  NASM XRA-6092

Arnold was known for his extensive use of air-to-air photography.

Distant right side aerial views of 9 U. S. Navy Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless, members of Scouting Squadron 5 from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Yorktown, flying in left echelon formation, ca. 1941.  NASM XRA-0490

Hans Groenhoff was born in Germany in 1906 and emigrated to the United States in 1927.  A glider pilot and amateur photographer, Groenhoff's photography career took off when he inherited two cameras following the death of his brother, Gunter, (a famous German glider pilot) in a glider accident in 1932.

Grumman G-21A Goose (r/n NC1294) in flight over suburban area, probably somewhere over Long Island, New York; 1938. NASM HGD-157-18

In his retirement, Groenhoff worked as an aviation tourism publicist for the Bahamas.  He founded the popular "Bahamas Flying Treasure Hunt" and the collection includes many photographs from this event.

Piper PA-24-260 Comanche C (r/n N9308P) in left bank passing Hope Town Lighthouse, Elbow Cay, Abacos, Bahamas. NASM HGC-1281

The two collections came to the Archives in many formats including print photographs, black and white and color film (sheets and rolls), color transparencies, etc.  The Arnold collection even contains glass plate negatives in varying conditions.

Amelia Earhart poses standing on the right wheel pant of her Lockheed Model 5C Vega Special (r/n NR-965Y) at Floyd Bennett Field, New York, June 30, 1933. [Cracked glass plate negative.] NASM XRA-8381

Although the arrangement varies slightly within the two collections, most of the images are arranged by format (black and white negatives, color transparencies, etc.) then by subject (aircraft, armament, biographical, etc.) then by name or manufacturer.  Negatives, transparencies, and slides are stored in labelled envelopes with captioning information, which can also be viewed in the collection.

What will you spot in the Rudy Arnold and Hans Groenhoff Collections?!

Aircraft spotter Elinore Leo at observer post holding telescope and looking up at sky, in New York area, 1942. NASM XRA-1453

Elizabeth Borja
Archivist
National Air and Space Museum Archives

Charlotte Cushman's Love With No Name

Language is slippery.

Take Charlotte Cushman, for example. Born in Boston in 1816, Cushman started a career in the opera to support her family after her father’s death. When her talent for singing and dramatic acting was recognized, she started touring with theater companies, performing Shakespeare around the United States and Europe. Her deep contralto voice allowed her to play both male and female parts onstage and she became best known for some of her male roles, including her performance as Romeo opposite her sister as Juliet. By mid-century, Cushman had become a household name, and she was easily one of the 19th century’s most famous actresses.

Miss Charlotte Cushman, undated. Warshaw Collection of Business Americana,
Theater series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Today, we might also look back on Charlotte Cushman’s life and call her the 19th century’s most famous lesbian actress. She sustained numerous monogamous relationships with women, including artist Rosalie Sully and actress Matilda Hays. She also garnered a large female following. Shortly before her death in 1876, she gave a farewell performance in New York City, which was followed by a massive parade and fireworks celebration attended by thousands of people, many of them female. These female fans, some of them also in same-sex relationships, wrote Cushman passionate fan mail, seemingly transfixed by her stage performances and public persona.

But in Cushman's day there was no such thing as a "lesbian," at least not in the way we think of the term or community today. Same-sex relationships were a behavior that one might engage in, with varying degrees of judgment projected onto that behavior, but they were not part of someone's identity.  

This was not because relationships between women were especially rare; they were actually surprisingly visible. Women in “Boston marriages” might live together, share a bed, caress one another, and speak of each other with affection in private and public like any other couple. Yet these relationships were seen as lacking the sexual and romantic desire of a heterosexual relationship, so they posed no threat to heterosexual society. “Romantic friendships” between women were therefore perfectly acceptable, even favorable in some cases. Presumably, these women would one day graduate from their Boston marriages to more serious unions with men.

But this idea that women did not have sexual desire did not apply to all women equally. Women in theater, which was still considered a lower tier art form, were branded as sexually promiscuous. With this in mind, the fact that Cushman exclusively pursued “romantic friendships” with women actually bolstered her career. Her disinterest in men and, to a certain extent, her masculine presentation on and offstage, established her reputation as a virtuous woman and lent a new kind of respectability to the role of women in theater.

Charlotte and Susan Cushman as Romeo and Juliet, undated. Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, 
Theater series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Even if the term "lesbian" had existed during Cushman's day, the concept would likely have been foreign to her. Then again, maybe not. Charlotte Cushman was notoriously careful about who saw her personal correspondence, asking many of her lovers to hide or burn her letters, sometimes even writing over her own diary entries to make them less legible to a stranger. Perhaps this was because Cushman and her partners had devised their own lexicon to describe their desire, even in the absence of the language we have today. We'll never know for certain how she might – or might not – have named her desire, such is the nature of the historical record. But that doesn't mean we should pretend it never existed.

Cushman as Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew, undated. Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, 
Theater series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Charlotte Cushman lived and died decades before the term “lesbian” would come into popular use, and still decades more before gay women would claim that word for themselves and wear it proudly as a sign of personal identity and community. The language we use, the communities we keep, the ways we understand our identities all may have changed dramatically from Cushman’s world. But in her day, Charlotte Cushman’s public defiance of gender and sexual norms represented something electric and inspiring to other women, especially women in same-sex relationships. Today, to a more defined community of lesbian women, she represents a woman who refused to give in to the pressures of a heterosexual society that did not even acknowledge the love she felt. We have no way of knowing how these concepts of gender presentation and sexual identity will change in the future – the only thing that seems certain is that they will continue to change.

And so, even almost 150 years after her death, I cannot say what Cushman's legacy will be. It's always changing. But for now, I can look to these archival images to illuminate Charlotte Cushman's legacy as I see it: a woman who loved women living as boldly as she could in a time before her love had a name. 

For more on Charlotte Cushman’s life, career, and relationships with women, check out Lisa Merrill’s When Romeo Was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators (University of Michigan: 1999).

For more on the Smithsonian’s collection of items related to Charlotte Cushman and LGBT history, watch Beyond Stonewall from The Smithsonian Time Capsule!

Erin Walsh, Intern
National Museum of American History, Archives Center

The Archivist as Marathoner

Paul Juley, Peter A. Juley’s partner and son, in their photography studio. Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum.  

The Juleys ran the most successful fine arts photography firm in New York from 1906 to 1975. Their clients included major artists, galleries, museums and private collectors. The collection provides a unique record of 20^th century art; sometimes the Juley photograph is the only visual documentation of altered, damaged or lost works.

In 1996, shortly after the Summer Olympic Games closed in Atlanta, Rachel Allen, the head of the Research and Scholars Center, wrote the following to describe the role of archivists in their organizations.

We are the distance runners. We are the keepers of the catalogues, the archivists, the librarians. We are the marathoners of the museum. Ours is not the race quickly won. Our work is measured by accumulation in thousands of records, numbers of books, linear shelf feet, and sometimes even the size of the backlog. Ours is to collect and catalogue, to compile and classify, to manage and preserve. We measure not in miles but in years, and decades, and generations. The finish line remains on an ever-distant horizon.

This "marathoner's refrain" formed part of an American Art article announcing the completion of printing archival study photographs for all 127,000 negatives in the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection. The effort to print every negative in the Juley Collection was tremendous, but it was just one of several hurdles archives staff had to overcome in the quest to make the collection accessible. Before printing began, museum staff moved the collection from Juley’s New York studio to Washington, D.C. Next, they faced urgent preservation issues such as deteriorating nitrate negatives and fragile glass negatives. Additional challenges included numbering the negatives, documenting the notations on the original negative sleeves and developing a computer system to store the collected data. At times progress seemed slow or paused due to lack of resources, but the knowledge that they were working on a collection of high historical kept the team moving forward. Allen’s metaphor describes this consideration of current and future students and scholars: 

Like the ancient courier Pheidippides, who ran from Athens to Sparta to seek help against the Persians, we to are messengers. We preserve the pieces of history -- the letters, photographs, bits of data, and ephemera -- and pass them on, from one generation to the next. Our work endures over time.

William Zorach in his studio, at work on the full-size clay model for The New State of Texas, photographed by Paul Juley.  Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Juley Collection holds more than 4,700 portraits of artists. The Juleys’s portraits have been reproduced in many exhibitions and publications, providing insight into the artists lives and artistic practices.

Work in the Juley Collection continues today. Archives staff and interns are researching the Juley photographs to identify the artworks depicted and expand the preliminary records. We are also digitizing the Juley images to make the collection more accessible. Although the finish line for these tasks seems far away, we have the example of the archivists who came before us, who set a goal and kept moving to achieve it.

Rockwell Kent, The Wall Street Runner, photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son. Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum. 
The Juley number assigned and inscribed by archive staff is visible in the upper left-hand corner. 

For more about the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, visit the Photograph Archives website at https://americanart.si.edu/research/photograph-archives or read the following articles:

"The Marathoner’s Refrain" by Rachel Allen in American Art, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), 76-82.

"A Photographic File Covers 80 Years of Our Artistic History," by George Kittle in Smithsonian, Vol. 13, no. 12 (March 1983), 114-124.

Alida Brady
Photograph Archives Coordinator
Smithsonian American Art Museum