A Long Minuet

Born to the Manor (Mildenhall, Suffolk), young Henry William Bunbury left St Catharine’s College, Cambridge in 1769 to travel and experience life. From an early age, he showed a talent for drawing and by 1776, Bunbury was exhibiting his work at the Royal Academy. Although he never had much success as a serious painter, his satirical work was enjoyed throughout London. A day job with the army was the inspiration for Bunbury’s humorous books Hints to Bad Horsemen (1781) and An Academy for Grown Horsemen (Princeton has editions 1787, 1788, 1791, 1792, 1796, 1808, 1809, 1825).

 

Also around that time, Bunbury drew a series of dancers attempting a minuet, which were pasted together to form a five-foot satirical panorama. The original drawing, now at the Yale Center for British Art, was engraved and published by William Dickinson under the title A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath.


William Dickinson (1746-1823) after Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath, June 25, 1787. Stipple engraving on four attached plates, approximately 5 feet long. Published by Dickinson, London. Inscribed upper center: “Bos, Fur, Sus atque Sacerdos.”; lower center: “A Long Minuet As Danced At Bath. Longa Tysonum Minuit , Quid velit & possit rerum concordia discors. Horace.” Graphic Arts Collection GAX Oversize Rowlandson 1787.2f

 

Thanks to the British Museum we know who many of the dancers represent, beginning at the left:

The 1st Mrs Lewis Teissier; much like Anthony Aubert for whom it was done; Miss Vine; The Lord Mair; The Lady Maress; Lord North; Lady Guilford; Monsr Pereg… Bauquier of Paris… 1st Comm… chez Monsr Peuchant [?]; Miss North; Monsieur Pengtcent [?] private envoy to the P. of W. from the King of France; Lady North; Monsieur Grant a Banker at Paris; Miss Dyke; qry [query?] Stephen Teissier; Mrs Laste [?]; qry [query?] Mr. Matthew Purling. my son J Lewis says this however was intended for the Revd. Henry Bate. of turbulent political memory; [unidentified]; [unidentified]; Mrs. Bunbury. Mr. B_s Wife; Tyson – Master of Ceremoni[es].

So loved was Bunbury and his humorous work that when he sat for a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), he was asked to pose holding “The Long Minuet.” And if that were not enough, Lawrence’s pastel, now at the National Portrait Gallery, London, was engraved by Thomas Ryder (1746-1810) and distributed by multiple print sellers.

Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Henry William Bunbury, ca. 1788. Pastel. National Portrait Gallery, UK 4696

Thomas Ryder (1746-1810) after Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Henry William Bunbury Drawing His ‘Long Minuet’, April 24, 1789. Stipple engraving with hand coloring. Published by S. Watts, London. National Portrait Gallery, London, D15022

 

 

 

Female Equitation

Mrs. Stirling Clarke, The Ladies’ Equestrian Guide, or, The Habit & the Horse: a treatise on female equitation, with illustrations lithographed by Messrs. Day & Son, from photographs by Herbert Watkins (London: Day & Son, [1857]). 9 plates, tinted lithographics by Day & Son after photographs by Herbert Watkins (1828-1916). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage 2021- in process.

Nannie Lambert Power O’Donoghue (1843-1940) and A. Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920), Riding for Ladies, with Hints on the Stable (London: William Clowes & Sons for W. Thacker & Co., Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, & Co., and Bombay, Thacker & Co., 1887). Woodburytype frontispiece. Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage 2021- in process

 

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired two works by female authors concerning horsemanship for upper class women in the 19th century. It is unfortunate that the earliest by a Mrs. Clarke cannot be identified with her own name but only by her husband’s. Written in 1857, Clarke’s book comes a full twenty year before that of Nannie Power O’Donoghue’s work. It is a thorough discussion of horsemanship including notes on stabling, training, shoeing, and doctoring, by and for women.

Mrs. Stirling is a mystery beyond her marriage, she even leaves her name off the title page, preface, or introduction. Her preface begins by assuring any man reading the book that he need not worry. She has no desire to “trench upon ground hitherto trodden by the more privileged sex” nor does she offer “any suggestion for their enlightenment.” So, if you are of the male sex, shut your computer and stop reading.

Stirling continues, “I write exclusively for the guidance of my own sex, well knowing the vast importance to the fair novice of a manual which brings her acquainted with that equal pride of prince and peasant—the horse—and with the fascinating and elegant science which teaches how to guide and govern him, and how to guide and govern herself with respect to this noble creature.” Riding well needs training, as Stirling quotes, “True knowledge comes from study, not by chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

 

 

Riding was in the mid-nineteenth century a regular activity among women, as she comments: “Some years ago, riding was by no means general amongst the fair sex; then ladies on horseback were the exception and not, as now, the rule, but “grace à notre charmante Reine,”

“Whose high zeal for healthy duties
Set on horseback half our beauties,”

there is now scarcely a young lady of rank, fashion, or respectability, but includes riding in the list of her accomplishments; and who, whether attaining her end or not, is not ambitious of being considered by her friends and relatives, “a splendid horsewoman.’ Yet how few can really claim this envied appellation! Habit may do much, and, coupled with science, a great deal more; but good riding, with very few exceptions, is neither a habit nor an instinct. Dancing we all know to be an instinctive motion, a natural expression of joy ; but mark the dancing of the rustic milkmaid, and that of the educated and accomplished lady; the one is an untutored, clumsy bound, the other the very poetry of motion ; and the latter should riding be.”

 

The second acquisition by a woman for women is Nannie Lambert Power O’Donoghue‘s Riding for Ladies [top] with illustrations by A. Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920). Perhaps it was her athleticism that allowed Power O’Donoghue, also known as Ann Stewart Lyster Lambert, to live to be 97 years old. While she wrote many books, she was best known for Ladies on Horseback, followed a few years later by Riding for Ladies (1887).

Originally published in a series of articles in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and Lady’s Pictorial, Riding for Ladies brought her writing together in a book so popular it is recorded as selling “more than 94,000 copies.” Unlike Stirling, her name is proudly announced on the title page and the book is filled with her many achievements and personal stories.

 

 

 

Meekly Obstinate Pious VS The Fejee Islanders, January 1858

Unidentified artist, Rev’d Meekly Obstinate Pious vs. the Fegee Islanders. January 1858 [England, mid-19th century]. Fourteen watercolors in oblong album. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a pictorial narrative set on the island of Fiji and dated January 1858. It tells the story of a British missionary known as Rev. Meekly Obstinate Pious and his wife, who sail to Fiji in order to convert the indigenous people to Christianity. Through a series of events, they build a church and make friends with their neighbors but ultimately are killed and eaten. When British sailors arrive in search of Rev. and Mrs. Pious there is a battle and everything on the island is destroyed.

The story is told through fourteen watercolors and brief captions. It is unclear if the sequential narrative was meant to be reproduced and published, nothing similar can be traced. Some images are disturbingly racist and only a selection are reproduced here.

The presentation of savage cannibals in the South Seas was routinely found in English books, newspapers, and theatricals, such as in the 1831 Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden performance Neuha’s Cave, or, The South Sea mutineers, partly based on Lord Byron’s poem “The Island, or, Christian and his comrades” (1823).

 



Actual missionaries might have served as the basis for this parody. From 1838 to 1856, James Calvert (1813-1892) and his wife Mary Fowler Calvert (1814-1882), along with John Hunt (1812-1848) lived in Fiji, promoting Christianity. Calvert quickly learned the native language and over time, published religious books in Fijian as well as Fijian dictionaries for English speakers. Hunt published a Memoir of the Rev. William Cross, Wesleyan missionary to the Friendly and Feejee islands (1846) and after Hunt’s death in 1848, the missionary Thomas Williams wrote a memoir of Hunt’s life and work, also know under the Fijian title: Tukutuku kei Misa Oniti (1848).

 

Walter Lawry’s 1850 book Friendly and Feejee Islands: a missionary visit to various stations in the South Seas, in the year 1847 emphasized the practice of cannibalism and painted an unflattering portrait of a primitive society. Here is a section:

Their cannibal propensity is well known. They do not attempt to disguise it. The eating of human flesh is not confined to cases of sacrifice for religious purposes, but is practised by them from habit and taste. There can be no question that, although it may have originated as a sacred rite, it is continued in the Feejee group for the mere pleasure of eating human flesh as food. Their fondness for it appears from the custom they have of sending portions of it to their friends at a distance, as an acceptable present; and the gift is eaten, even if decomposition has begun before it is received. So highly do they esteem this food, that the greatest praise they can bestow on a delicacy is to say, “ It is as tender as a dead man.”

 

 


50 years after: {39:2} Expectans expectavi. Dominum, et intendit mihi = I have waited expectantly for the Lord, and he was attentive to me.

Talking John Birch 1962

 

Beginning in February 1962, Agnes “Sis” Cunningham (1909-2004), her husband Gordon Friesen, and their daughters gathered around the kitchen table to mimeograph and then distribute a small magazine they called Broadside. Their friend Pete Seeger (1919-2014) provided the funds and served as a consultant. They used as their inspiration The People’s Songs Bulletin, which Cunningham, Seeger, Alan Lomax, Lee Hays, and others published twenty years earlier. The long period in between was due in part to the fact that Cunningham, Seeger, and the others were blacklisted by U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy and could not perform or publish.

The mimeograph machine they used was famously discarded by the American Labour Party and salvaged for this project. Included in issue no. 1 are the lyrics by a young folk singer named Bob Dylan, his first published and copyrighted song (still in copyright). Dylan’s recording of Talking John Birch can be heard on the Alexander Street database, presumably recorded at Cunningham’s home : https://search-alexanderstreet-com.ezproxy.princeton.edu/view/work/be%7Crecorded_cd%7Cli_upc_889176297359. This link is only for Princeton.

 

 

 

Also available online is The best of Broadside 1962-1988 [electronic resource]: anthems of the American underground from the pages of Broadside magazine / produced, compiled, and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, c2000.

Read: Sis Cunningham, Red dust and broadsides: a joint autobiography, Agnes “Sis” Cunningham and Gordon Friesen; edited by Ronald D. Cohen; foreword by Pete Seeger (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, c1999). Mendel Music Library ML420.C985 A3 1999

This story is often repeated: “Dylan was given the opportunity to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show and wanted to sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” on the program. CBS worried that including the song on the show could result in a defamation suit from members of the John Birch Society. Dylan refused to perform a different song on the show, and he walked off its set; the incident garnered publicity. The controversy surrounding the song caused Columbia Records to remove “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” from subsequent copies of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), though it was released on later Dylan albums. The song has been praised for its humor and deemed politically relevant decades after its release by both progressive and conservative publications.”

https://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2016/12/bob-dylans-honorary-princeton-university-degree/
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781942130369/bob-dylan
https://www.beachamjournal.com/journal/2021/02/sean-wilentz-princeton-university-historian-and-expert-on-bob-dylan-is-70-years-old-today.html

Graphic Arts Collection, in process

The National Picture Gallery in the Rotunda of the Capitol

The National Picture Gallery in the Rotunda of the Capitol: a collection of paintings illustrating the discovery of America and the early history of the United States / Executed expressly by order of Congress, by the most celebrated American artists (Washington : [s.n.], c1860). [4] leaves, [10] leaves of plates : ill., ports. ; 24 x 30 cm. Special Collections – Graphic Arts Collection. Oversize 2006-0279Q.

 

In 1859. eight large scale paintings filled the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. To document them, engravings were made by Robert Metzeroth after the works by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), John Vanderlyn (1775-1852), William Henry Powell (1823-1879), John Gadsby Chapman (1808-1889), John Trumbull (1756-1843), Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889), and Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). In this volume, Metzeroth’s engravings are accompanied by outlines with explanatory letterpress captions. **The names do not always correctly match the engraving.

If you go to the rotunda today, you will see eight historical paintings: four revolutionary period scenes were commissioned by Congress from John Trumbull in 1817 and placed in the Rotunda between 1819 and 1824: Declaration of Independence; Surrender of General Burgoyne; Surrender of Lord Cornwallis; and General George Washington Resigning his Commission.

Four scenes of early exploration were added between 1840 and 1855: Landing of Columbus by John Vanderlyn; Discovery of the Mississippi by William Powell; Baptism of Pocahontas by John Chapman; and Embarkation of the Pilgrims by Robert Weir.

 

Because this volume of engravings is so rare and so fragile, the book has been digitized and is available online for viewing and downloading: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/4736119

More information about the Capitol can be found here: https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/buildings-grounds/capitol-building/rotunda

“How a Presidential Rally Turned Into a Capitol Rampage” By Lauren Leatherby, Arielle Ray, Anjali Singhvi, Christiaan Triebert, Derek Watkins and Haley Willis. New York Times January 12, 2021:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/12/us/capitol-mob-timeline.html

March 26: Mithila Art in 2020: Life, Labor, and COVID-19 in South Asia

Don’t forget to register for Mithila Art in 2020: Life, Labor, and COVID-19 in South Asia, Friday morning at 10:00 am Eastern Times. This live webinar will highlight representations of the pandemic in South Asian art that were recently acquired by the Princeton University Library.

The panel discussion will include Amanda Lanzillo, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows; Lina Vincent, art historian and curator based in Goa, India; and Peter Zirnis, curator and collector of Mithila art; hosted by Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator and Ellen Ambrosone, South Asian Studies Librarian.

Throughout 2020, artists in India have been engaging with pandemic-related themes that reflect the vast inequity with which the pandemic has manifested in the lives of South Asians. While some have managed to maintain safety and stability, many more have experienced food insecurity, displacement, disease, and loss of income. The Mithila art in Princeton’s collection expresses moments of both serenity and sorrow in the midst of the recent crisis. Panelists will discuss and reflect on the particular expressions of COVID-19 in this art, as well the impact of the pandemic on artisan labor and art markets.

Register by clicking here.

Date:
Friday, March 26, 2021
Time:
10:00am – 11:00am
Campus:
Virtual
Audience:
Public

This webinar is part of the Special Collections Highlights Series. Recordings of previous webinars are available. To request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact pulcomm@princeton.edu at least 3 working days in advance.

The Supreme Court and Paper Collars

Isaac Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856), Dandies Dressing, November 2, 1818. Hand colored etching. From Dandies series published by Thomas Tegg. Graphic Arts Collection. I.R.Cruikshank prints

 

High white collars came into fashion for men in the 18th century, at a time when the shirt, collar, and cravat were all washed and bleached together, causing considerable time and trouble for wives and maids. The invention of the removable collar has been claimed, at least in the United States, by Hannah Montague of “Collar City” (Troy, NY). As early as 1827, Montague came up with the idea of cutting one collar off her husband’s shirt that could be laundered separately and then buttoned back onto various shirts. See also:
https://hoxsie.org/2012/02/06/how_the_collar_city_got_its_name/

Most histories agree the first patent for a disposable paper collar was granted to the New York inventor Walter Hunt (1796-1859) on July 25, 1854 (who was also responsible for an early sewing machine and the first safety pin). In Philadelphia, William E. Lockwood established his own collar company a few years later but it wasn’t until the US Civil War and a cotton shortage that the sale of paper collars exploded.

 

In 1863 Lockwood bought or otherwise acquired the patents held by Solomon Gray and Andrew Evans. He then gathered 19 paper collar manufacturers together to form The Union Paper Collar Company, presuming they would control the market. The company placed warnings in local newspapers around the country telling people not to buy from any firm other than Union Paper Collar Co. Lawsuits were threatened.

For Christmas 1865, the New York Times ran a promotional story of a shopping trip a reporter took with an out-of-towner called O’Leum. Various shops and their merchandise were described, including S.W.H. Ward’s paper collars: “O’Leum has heard of WARD’s perfect fitting shirts and WARD’s handsome paper collars and cuffs for ladies and gentlemen. He therefore insists upon a visit to Mr. S.W.H. WARD, at No. 387 Broadway. The only wonder is that O’Leum, who appears to be an incorrigible traveler, and has almost wearied our reporter, does not also propose a trip to WARD’s other store, at Nos. 323 Montgomery-street, San Francisco. WARD sells O’Leum a gross of India-rubber enameled collars and cuffs and we are off … “–NYT December 21, 1865.

 

Ward was among the companies that did not want to join the Union Paper Collar Co monopoly and so, in 1866 they formed their own collective known as the United States Paper Collar Manufacturers’ Association.  Ward published his own advertisement [at the top], offering $20,000 if Lockwood or any member of the Union Paper Collar Company went forward with a lawsuit.

Only years later did several small suits move forward, one as far as the United States Supreme Court: the Union Paper Collar Co VS Van Dusen in October 1, 1874, which Lockwood lost.

The transcript is a wonderful document, with full descriptions of how the paper for collars was made, how it was cut and fashioned, as well as the machines used for these processes. The Court said new machines could be patented but not the original concept of a removable paper collar, which had already been created. Here’s a short section:

“After the “stock” — best rags or what else — is sorted and cut, it is generally cleaned by boiling, and finally put, with the requisite quantity of water, into the “beating engine,” where it is beaten or ground into pulp. The beating engine is simply a vat divided into two compartments by a longitudinal partition, which, however, leaves an opening at either end. In one compartment a cylinder revolves, called the “roll,” its longitudinal axis being at right angles to the length of the vat. In this cylinder, and parallel with its axis, are inserted a number of blades or knives which project from its circumference. Directly beneath the roll, upon the bottom of the vat, is a horizontal plate, called the bed-plate, which consists of several bars or knives, similar and parallel to those of the roll, bolted together. The roll is so arranged that it can be raised or lowered, and also the speed of its revolutions regulated at pleasure. The vat being filled with rags and water, in due proportion, the mass is carried beneath the roll, and between that and the bed-plate, and passing round through the other compartment of the vat, again passes between the bed-plate and roll, and so continues to revolve until the whole is beaten into pulp of the requisite fineness and character for the paper for which it is intended. When the beating first begins, the roll is left at some distance from the bed-plate, and is gradually lowered as the rags become more disintegrated and ground up. The management of the beating engine is left to the skill and judgment of the foreman in charge. The knives may be sharp or dull, the roll may be closely pressed upon the bed-plate or slightly elevated, the bars and knives may have the angles which they make with each other altered, so that they either cut off sharply, like the blades of scissors, or tear the rags more slowly as they pass between them. The duration of the beating also varies according to the nature of the pulp, the length of fiber required, the condition of the knives &c.; and the speed of the revolutions given to the roll is varied in like manner.

 

One of the many companies saved by this ruling was the Reversible Collar Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose factory building is still standing at 25–27 Mt. Auburn & 10–14 Arrow Streets, although no paper collars are being produced.

Croquet

Henry Martin (Class of 1948, 1925-2020) Man playing croquet (no date). Graphic Arts Collection GA 2011.00360. Gift of David Reeves, Class of 1948.

 

A simple question about James Tissot’s Croquet drypoint today [see below], led down a rabbit hole to many other croquet references.

According to The Lewis Carroll handbook (1962), Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), wrote Croquêt Castles. For Five Players in May 1863 while the Christ Church Mathematical Lecturer. He was also a founding member of the Overland Mallet Club and an avid croquet player. In Dodgson’s version of the game, each player has two balls, which are maneuvered through eight arches and four pegs. Unlike Alice in Wonderland, players take turns rather than playing simultaneously. More rules can be read here: https://www.spudart.org/chicagocroquet/rules/castle/index.html


This copy of Dodgson’s pamphlet (one folded sheet) is from the Morris L. Parrish library, now at Princeton rather than Oxford, where it was “decided that the items constituted a shrine rather than a comprehensive collection of original artifacts. They turned [Parrish] down, declaring that theirs was an educational institution rather than a museum.” – Alexander Wainwright, “The Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 62, no. 3 (Spring 2001)

 

Croquet achieved enormous popularity in the 1860s, first mentioned at Princeton in 1868 when a student wrote, “Croquet has lately been brought into the campus and become quite fashionable. Games may be seen at any time during the day, surrounded by a little crowd of admiring spectators.” —Nassau Literary Magazine June 1, 1868.

Nassau Literary Magazine June 1, 1870

Daily Princetonian April 30, 2015

The National Croquet Association (NCA), founded in 1879, held its first national tournament in 1882. By April 30, 2015, the Daily Princetonian noted their club was playing in a national tournament.

 

Horace Elisha Scudder (1838-1902), The Game of Croquet: its Appointments and Laws; with descriptive illustrations by R. Fellows [psued.] (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866). Frontispiece by Augustus Hoppin (1828-1896). Graphic Arts Collection Hamilton 883

 

 

 

In 1936, H.G. Wells (1866-1946) wrote a ghost story called The Croquet Player, illustrated by Harold Jones (1904-1992). Goodreads describes it:
“This allegorical satire about a man fleeing from his evil dreams was written under the influence of the Spanish Civil War. The croquet player, comfortably sipping a vermouth, listens to the strange & terrible tale of the haunted countryside of Cainsmarsh–a horror which broadens & deepens until it embraces the world.as told to a cocktail drinking croquet player.”
Published London: Chatto & Windus, 1936). Ex 3982.95.3275 1936.
 

 

Laterna magica. Magic Lantern. Lanterne Magique ([Germany?] : E. P. [i.e. Ernst Plank], [1900?]). Metal lantern with 12 glass slides, col. ill. Cotsen Children’s Library Opticals 22898.

 

 

James Tissot (1836–1902), Croquet, 1878. Etching and drypoint. Museum purchase, Felton Gibbons Fund (2013-112) Princeton University Art Museum

 

An Outline of Society in Our Own Times


When asked recently whether George Cruikshank’s print “An Outline of Society in Our Own Times,” from his rare four volume Our Own Times (1846), was an etching or a glyphograph, we pulled both of the sets in Graphic Arts, as well as a scrapbook of Cruikshank illustrations. The plate is a glyphograph, one of 34 in the whole book, with a single etching in each volume and 6 woodcuts throughout.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), “An Outline of Society in Our Own Times,” from Our Own Times ([London]: Bradbury & Evans, 1846). No. 1 (Apr. 1846)-no. 4 (July 1846). Graphic Arts Collection Cruik 1846.2

 

How can you tell an etching (intaglio) from a glyphograph (relief)? Look for the absence of a plate mark. On poor or cheap printing, you will also see some ink in the white areas, where the pressure has pushed the paper below the metal relief line.

 

The print features four women, beginning at the top center, personifying Science, Industry, Folly (seen above blowing bubbles), and Crime, with children of the various attitudes surrounding each. Cruikshank was still a heavy drinker in 1845-46—signing a vow of abstinence in 1847—and so the lower portions of society ruled by folly and crime still seems quite appealing.

 

We are fortunate to have a number of scrapbooks holding illustrations, proofs, newspaper clippings, letters, and more Cruikshank material. The one pictured here “Scrapbook of illustrations, 1839-1865” has 394 p. in a half morocco binding 57 x 38 cm. It was a gift from Alex van Rensseler, Class of 1871. The spine lists a few of the books contained inside. Unfortunately the paste used to fix the print to the album page is in many cases eating into the sheet and leaving intrusive marks.

Here are some additional pages from the scrapbook of Cruikshank illustrations.

Note in “The Triumph of Cupid” not only several self portraits of Cruikshank but enslaved European, African, and Middle Eastern men in chains at the bottom of this imaginary scene.

 

Valor y Cambio

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a set of bank notes from Valor y Cambio. The directors of the project, Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Sarabel Santos-Negrón, had worked together in a range of projects before but this is their first artistic collaboration.

“Valor y Cambio is a story-telling, community-building, and solidarity economy project started by artist Frances Negrón-Muntaner and visual artist Sarabel Santos Negrón. Started in Puerto Rico amidst the economic crisis and currently [back in Puerto Rico], Valor y Cambio is out to spark a broad conversation about what is a just economy and how to foster collective empowerment in the face of austerity and neoliberal policies locally and nationally.

The project has encouraged participants to consider the question of how a community can create different conceptions of wealth —one that promotes values such as accessible education, a clean environment, creativity, self-governance, solidarity, food security, and gender, labor, and racial equity.” —https://www.valorycambio.org/

The first and only edition of Valor y Cambio features seven people and one community: Puerto Rican athletes, activists, writers, and community members that have acted on their values to enrich peoples’ lives and demonstrated that “change is in your hands” over the last centuries. In the first printing, each peso includes bills in 1, 2, 5, 10, 21, and 25 denominations.

All of the iconic figures that appear on the Puerto Rican pesos experienced the impact of forced migrations in their lifetimes, and several —such as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Julia de Burgos and Luisa Capetillo— share a deep connection to New York City or the Puerto Rican diaspora.

•El peso Maestros Rafael (b. 1790), Celestina (b. 1787) and Gregoria Cordero y Molina (b. 1784), all born in San Juan https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/thecorderosiblings

• El peso Ramón Emeterio Betances (b. 1827, Cabo Rojo) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/ramon-e-betances/

• El peso Luisa Capetillo (b. 1879, Arecibo) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/luisacapetillo

• El peso Julia de Burgos (b. 1914, Carolina) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/juliadeburgos

• El peso Roberto Clemente (b. 1934, Carolina) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/robertoclemente

• El peso Caño Martín Peña https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/comunidad-cano-de-pena