Turkish Women

As an Archivist it is one of the pleasures of my job to work with the photographs in our collections. I catalog what information we can find, work with the digital files, and match up the images to the catalog records. Albumen prints specifically have always held a soft spot in my heart for their ability to exude romantic warmth. This quality, in part, can be attributed to the creation process of using an emulsion composed of light-sensitive salts of silver suspended in albumen (egg white) on paper. It is unfortunate to note that due to their creation process, they are inherently prone to deterioration exacerbated by light sources.

There are certain precautions you can take to slow the speed of deterioration, but most result in these beautiful prints being sentenced to spend the rest of their life spans in closed boxes. Only to rarely be pulled out for work, as opposed to being leisurely viewed by the throngs of admirers they deserve.

Although even I admit that a digital derivative of an albumen print is not an ideal replacement; at least it allows us to frequently look upon these poignant portraits and landscapes that encourage us to fondly daydream of eras long gone.

SIRIS (Smithsonian Institution Research and Information System) currently has 2,787 albumen prints digitized and available online. The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives currently is the third largest unit represented, having 510 albumen prints digitized and cataloged for online consumption.

These two images are by Abdullah frères (Abdullah brothers). Vichen, Hovsep and Kevork Abdullah were a family of Ottoman Armenian photographers, known by their French name Abdullah frères, who operated a studio in Istanbul from 1858 to 1900. In 1863 they became official royal photographers to the Ottoman Sultan. Take a look at Abdullah frères photography available from both the Freer+Sackler Archives and our sister unit the National Anthropological Archives.

Due to the limited information on both the prints, they share the same title; identifying the nationality of the sitters, their gender, and the approximate date of the photograph being taken.

Turkish woman, circa 1860-1870.
Turkish woman, circa 1860-1870.

I hope you enjoy perusing the albumen prints in our collections. Maybe next time you take a picture with your digital camera you can switch it to Sepia mode, capturing some of your own modern day, romantic images.

Rachael Cristine Woody
Archivist
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
woodyr@si.edu

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

In honor of April 30's Hairstyle Appreciation Day, I started to reflect on how helpful hairstyles and color are for a historian in analyzing historic materials. Often, I am looking through a box of primary sources and stumble across an image that lends insight to the materials that I am working with. After checking the back of the image for a date, one of the next thoughts I have is what is the person wearing and how is their hair styled. In addition to giving away an approximate date to when the person posed for the picture, hairstyles can also help in constructing an analysis of the individuals personality, social class (or the class they tried to emulate when being photographed), customs they followed, and what occupation they may have been involved in.


For example, when looking at the images of William Henry Holmes, artist, geologist, anthropologist, and long time Smithsonian employee, below, it is easy to identify the evolution of his hairstyles and what each style implicated.



The first image shows Holmes, age 27, during the Hayden Survey of Colorado expedition in 1873. In this image Holmes (highlighted) has full, dark hair and a small mustached and sole patch. His hair is unkempt since he is out in the field and more interested in science, than style.










The second image jumps to 1902, where Holmes, age 57, is participating in a meeting of geologists at the Smithsonian Institution. Recently promoted to Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Holmes' hairstyle is a closer cut when compared to the previous image. His style is that of a gentlemen and professional, not of a young naturalist in the field. He has also lost more hair on the top of this head, but has grown a fuller beard and longer mustache.








No date was known for the third image. However, when comparing the images that we have dates for, we were able to fit the image into the sequence. In this third image, which we have dated around 1915, Holmes is nearing seventy years of age and is serving as Director of the Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art, NGA, (now known as the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and Curator of Anthropology. His hair has grown white, but hints of the darker pigment can be seen in his eyebrows and beard when carefully looked for. His mustache extends out past his cheeks and the hair on the sides of his head is longer.




The final image shows Holmes at age 74. Still working at the Smithsonian both as Director of the NGA and Curator of Anthropology, (he retires at the age of 86!), Holmes is now sporting a much more trimmed hairstyle. His hair as grown whiter, and receded further. The sides of his head are brushed back into a tidier look. He has ever trimmed his moustache and beard, giving him a more dignified style.







By quickly analyzing the changes, subtle as they sometimes are, a host of information can be unveiled or used as supportive evidence in the research process. For some other fun images of people with interesting hair-dos check out this Collections Center search. And remember...

"Those curious locks so aptly twin'd, Whose every hair a soul doth bind."
~Thomas Carew



Courtney Esposito, Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives

Research & Scholars Center Newsletter

What do George Caleb Bingham (a 19th-century Missouri artist of portraits and genre paintings) and Will Barnet (a 20th-century painter and printmaker whose style ranged from realist to abstract) have in common?

They are both featured in the Spring 2010 issue of the American Art Museum’s Research and Scholars Center Newsletter: http://americanart.si.edu/research/newsletters/

To supplement your reading, you can view many works by George Caleb Bingham in the Smithsonian museum’s collections; in the Art Inventories representing his works in other public and private collections; in the National Portrait Gallery’s Catalog of American Portraits; and in the collections of the libraries and archives.

Will Barnet is also represented in the Smithsonian museum collections, archives, and libraries. Of note is an oral history interview with the artist in the Archives of American Art.

Pictured, top: George Caleb Bingham Self-Portrait in the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum, listed in the Inventory of American Paintings, IAP 28110045.

Pictured, bottom: Silent Seasons—Winter by Will Barnet, color lithograph on paper, collection of the American Art Museum, 1969.2.28

--Nicole Semenchuk, Research and Scholars Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

National Parks: “America’s Best Idea”

Last week (April 17-25) happened to be National Park Week and hopefully, many of you were able to get out to one of the nation’s great parks. Before the National Park Service was established in 1916 these majestic spaces were maintained under various jurisdictions including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Army. The lands were considered “open” to the grazing of livestock and there was no consistent management of the land. Thanks to the foresight and efforts of men and women over the last century, the parks are now protected at the national level. One such person who led the effort to establish the National Park Service was J. Horace McFarland who coined the phrase that America’s parks were “America’s best idea” which fittingly serves as the title of Ken Burn’s recent PBS documentary.

J. Horace McFarland looking over Mary Wallace roses in his garden at Breeze Hill
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, J. Horace McFarland

Dr. J. Horace McFarland (1859-1948) was a man of many talents and interests. He was a rosarian, civic reformer, preservationist, writer, printer, horticulturist and photographer. His early success as a printer allowed him the financial freedom to devote his life to advocate for urban beautification in his hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He eventually set his sights across the United States as President of the American Civic Association. McFarland staunchly advocated for the preservation of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades, and the Glacier Bay and Jackson Hole National Monuments. He also rallied against the New York power industry to save Niagara Falls from commercial exploitation.

McFarland began advocating as early as December 1911 for a bureau for the national parks at an American Civic Association Conference in Washington, D.C. In 1912, President William Howard Taft sent a letter, written by McFarland, to Congress urging legislators that the adoption of a bill to create a federal bureau for the parks was “essential to the proper management of those wondrous manifestations of nature, so startling and so beautiful that everyone recognizes the obligations of the Government to preserve them for the edification and recreation of the people.” On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Act. After the Act’s passing, McFarland remained influential as a member of the National Park Trust Fund. His advice on new appointments to the agency was sought out even into the 1930s by Harold Ickes, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior.



McFarland’s archival papers are located at the Pennsylvania State Archives; many of the letters McFarland wrote during his lifetime are highlighted in Ernest Morrison’s biography, “A Thorn for Beauty.” The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens includes over 3,500 photographs and glass lantern slides of gardens throughout the United States dating from 1900 to 1962 in the J. Horace McFarland Collection. These include a substantial number of images of his home and garden, Breeze Hill, in Harrisburg which was designed by landscape architect Warren Manning (another supporter of the National Park Service Bill).



--Kelly Crawford, Museum Specialist
Archives of American Gardens
Smithsonian Gardens

CSI: Smithsonian, part II

Did you know April 24th is National Pigs-in-a-Blanket Day?"

For a truly gross take on this epicurean delight see Jerry Payne's 16mm silent, color film Decomposition of a Baby Pig. A strange acquisition for the Human Studies Film Archives? Not really. According to NMNH's own forensic anthropologist and curator of Physical Anthropology Douglas Ubelaker, Dr. Payne's film "... was the very first to examine arthopod succession in the process of post mortem change." In other words, it was the first to document the role of insects in body decomposition. Because a pig's body resembles a human body (scientifically speaking !) the data gathered in the study could be used in modern forensic science to approximate the time of human deaths.



Dr. Payne's film uses time lapse photography to reduce 4 days of feasting into a faintly nauseating but strangely compelling 6 min. piece. The film has also been set to music and posted on YouTube where it has gotten over a million hits. Bon Appetit!

Daisy Njoku, Human Studies Film Archives

Douglass Dwellings: Collection Spotlight

Anacostia Community Museum Archives recently acquired two collections relating to the Frederick Douglass housing projects: Henry Bazemore Collection of Frederick Douglass Dwellings Photographs and the Frederick Douglass Dwellings Collection. The Douglass Dwellings were built in Southeast Washington, D.C., as World War II-era temporary housing for African American workers. Celebrated African American architect Hilyard R. Robinson designed the complex, and renowned photographer Gordon Parks documented the community for the Farm Security Administration.

Both collections contain photographs of social activities in the community sponsored by the local recreation center. Among the charming activities for the children were "Tom Thumb Weddings," where children played the roles of bride, groom, minister, wedding party, and guest. Other activities documented in the collections are dance recitals, sporting events, hobby shows, and the annual soap box derby. The images challenge perceptions of life in public housing during the 1940s by illustrating the positive aspects of life in the projects.

Pictured: Tom Thumb wedding at the Frederick Douglass Recreation Center, Frederick Douglass Dwellings Collection, gift of members of the Southeast Voices.
Jennifer Morris, Archivist, Anacostia Community Museum

Bessie Potter Vonnoh and Lost-Wax Casting

I recently read Julie Aronson’s Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Sculptor of Women (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008), one of only a handful of books devoted to women sculptors of the early 20th century. Aronson takes us through Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s (1872-1955) life as a sculptor, from her development through her successes, and the works that she produced in each stage of her career. Unlike some of her peers, (for example see blog post on Evelyn Beatrice Longman), Vonnoh was proud to produce stereotypical “women’s sculpture” with feminine subjects such as mothers with their children and girls dancing. Most of her works are small bronzes, and many are statues for gardens and fountains. Aronson writes in her introduction, “Although [Vonnoh] dwelt on the themes of American women and children found in abundant contemporary paintings, Vonnoh was recognized as the first in the nation to render such everyday themes in sculpture and was thought to have brought to them her own exquisitely sensitive approach.”

As a supplemental chapter to Aronson’s discussion on Vonnoh’s life and work, author Janis Conner (“After the Model: Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s Early Bronzes and Founders”) takes a unique approach and examines in detail the bronze statues that were cast by three founders employed by Vonnoh. She explains and illustrates how each cast is unique due to the founder’s “casting process and finishing technique.”

Unlike painting, where you can pick up a brush and some paint and produce something fairly quickly, the process of creating bronze sculpture is more complicated. Although there are several different processes, most of Vonnoh’s works were cast using the lost-wax method (or cire-perdue). Vonnoh would have created a clay or plaster model, and employed a founder or foundry to create the bronze sculptures from the artist’s model. (Roman Bronze Works, a large New York foundry established in 1899, cast many of her works using this method.)

Essentially, the founder makes a negative space of the artist’s model using a multi-step process. First, a rubber mold is made around the model, and a more sturdy, plaster or fiberglass, mold is made around the rubber mold. These are made in halves, so that it can then be opened and the original model removed. The rubber mold will retain all the features of the model. The halves are then put back together and molten wax is evenly poured into the mold to create a copy that will retain all the characteristics of the rubber mold. Once the wax copy hardens and is released from the rubber mold, the artist can retouch the wax and the founder can remove signs of the process. Next, a ceramic shell is made outside the wax copy and fired, during which time the wax melts out. This is the point where the negative space is the original artist’s model. Next, the ceramic shell is re- heated and placed in a tub of sand. Heated metal is then poured into the shell. After it cools, the shell is hammered away, and the bronze version of the artist’s model is revealed. At this point the bronze is polished and patina is applied.

I’ve simplified the explanation of the process and there are many variations in materials and techniques that are employed. The lost-wax process became popular because it was thought to provide greater detail in retaining the artist’s original work, and it allowed (at relatively low-cost) multiple casts to be made from one mold. Vonnoh’s small bronze statues are a good example of this new trend in America in the late 19th to early 20th.

Imagine Vonnoh’s In Arcadia going through the lost-wax casting process. Neither the idyllic and popular subject matter (Pan playing a flute for a nymph), nor the fact that the artist is a woman, diminish the value of the artistic composition or the complicated process of casting it in bronze.

For a fantastic history of bronze casting in America, see Michael Shapiro’s Cast and Recast: The Sculpture of Frederic Remington (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981). Part one includes descriptions and illustrations detailing both sand- and lost-wax casting and it is much more enlightening that my own paragraph summary.

Pictured, top: Clay model for Vonnoh's Girl Reading, photographer unknown. American Sculpture Photograph Study Collection. (A bronze cast is in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

Pictured, center: Clay model for Vonnoh's Girl Dancing, photographer unknown. American Sculpture Photograph Study Collection.

Pictured bottom: Bronze cast of Vonnoh’s In Arcadia in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Another cast is owned by the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Chicago, Illinois.)

For further research on Bessie Potter Vonnoh:

The Archives of American Art has digitized the entire collection of Bessie Potter Vonnoh Papers, circa 1860-1991 bulk 1890-1955.

Sculptures by Bessie Potter Vonnoh listed in the Inventory of American Sculpture.

Slideshow of historic photographs of Vonnoh’s sculptures in the American Art Museum's Photograph Archives.

--Nicole Semenchuk, Research and Scholars Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum