Jesse Jackson at the Ebenezer Baptist Church

Franklin McMahon (1921-2012), Reverend Jesse Jackson, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga. 1988. Graphite, charcoal, and acrylic paint on paper. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2015- in process

ATLANTA, March 6— “The Rev. Jesse Jackson came to Ebenezer Baptist Church today to preach from the pulpit that once belonged to Martin Luther King Jr. and to cloak his Presidential campaign in the glory of the movement that Dr. King led. It was a rich mix of God, politics and history, of civil rights movement veterans, political leaders and average churchgoers, all crammed into the narrow wooden pews of Ebenezer Baptist, two days before the Super Tuesday primaries across the South.

Mr. Jackson, whose relations with Atlanta’s black establishment have often been prickly, seemed to revel in the day. The former lieutenant to Dr. King now stood in his mentor’s church on the brink of a political triumph unimaginable a quarter century ago. It was, undeniably, a religious service, with a pastor noting at one point, ‘It’s not Martin, nor is it Jesse, who’s going to get you to Heaven.’ But after the choir sang ‘God Give Us Faith’ and ‘I’m So Glad I Got My Religion in Time,’ after the reading from the Book of Ezekiel and the communion service, the church moved on to the matters of the world. ‘Bloody Sunday’ Anniversary The Rev. Joseph L. Roberts, senior pastor at Ebenezer, brought the congregation to its feet as he introduced Mr. Jackson ‘as one who hopes to break a barrier that’s never been broken before, but ought to be broken, a barrier that has stood for too long, depriving our people of their rightful due.’

Then Mr. Jackson took his place at the simple white pulpit. He noted that it was the 23d anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday,’ when civil rights demonstrators were beaten on a bridge in Selma, Ala., as they tried to march for the right to vote. He then paid tribute to John Lewis, now an Atlanta Congressman, who had led that march and been savagely beaten and on this Sunday morning was in a front pew. Mr. Jackson went on to present Super Tuesday as the outgrowth of the bloodletting on that Selma bridge. ‘Tuesday, 23 years later, we can transform the crucifixion,’ he said. ‘And on Tuesday roll the stone away, and on Wednesday morning have a resurrection: new hope, new life, new possibilities, new South, new America.’

‘I’m proud of the the New South,’ Mr. Jackson said. ‘No more governors standing in the school house door, no more dogs biting children.’ But, he continued, ‘It’s not enough to have kind governors and tame dogs. It’s not enough.’ He argued that ‘the fight for economic justice’ was the principle challenge before the South and the nation. It was a fight for the economic rights of garbagemen, Mr. Jackson noted, that drew Dr. King to Memphis, where he was assassinated in 1968. When Mr. Jackson had finished, the congregation sang him on his way with ‘I’m on the Battlefield for My Lord.’ And Mr. Roberts adlibbed, ‘And I promise not to serve him just ’till Super Tuesday but until I die.'”–Robin Toner, “Hosannas to God and Votes for Jackson,” Special to the New York Times, March 7, 1988.

This event was captured by Franklin McMahon, of whom the Times noted, “With sketch pads in hand, Mr. McMahon covered momentous events in the civil rights struggle, spacecraft launchings, national political conventions and the Vatican, turning out line drawings for major magazines and newspapers. Many were later colored by watercolor or acrylic paints, and most rendered scenes in a heightened, energetic style. ‘His goal,’ he said, ‘was to step beyond what he considered the limitations of photography to see around corners.’”–Douglas Martin, “Franklin McMahon, Who Drew the News, Dies at 90,” The New York Times, March 7, 2012.

Holdup

Emmett Williams (1925-2007) and Keith Godard (born 1942), Holdup (New York: Works Editions, 1980). Graphic Arts Collection 2016- in process

This is a book of famous thumbs.

Both printer Keith Godard and visual poet Emmett Williams had been collecting pictures of thumbs of friends and famous people for years and so, for their first collaboration, they combined their collections for a book of visual humor and visual poetry.

The two worked together at Godard’s studio and publishing house, Works Editions, only once again in 1983 producing A Little Night Book.

“Emmett Williams, an American poet whose transposition of words into visual art and performances made him one of the founding artists of Fluxus, a performance-oriented avant-garde art movement of the 1960s, died on Feb. 14 in Berlin. He was 81 and had lived in Berlin for many years. . . . In 1966 Mr. Williams took a job as editor in chief of The Something Else Press, a publishing house in New York City founded by Dick Higgins, another pioneer of Fluxus. By 1967 Mr. Williams had edited The Anthology of Concrete Poetry and written Sweethearts, two of his most widely recognized works. “When I have exhibitions, I do not say I am a Fluxus artist, I say it is my work,” Mr. Williams said . . . “And that makes me very comfortable. And it’s nice to outlive descriptive titles like that.” –Roja Heydarpour, “Emmett Williams, 81, Fluxus-Movement Poet, Dies” The New York Times March 1, 2007.

For more of Keith Godard see: http://www.studio-works.com/
For more of Emmett Williams see: http://www.emmett-williams.com/start.html

Rijks

Having just moved a library collection ourselves, it is fun to see how someone else accomplished it. According to their publicity, the first Rijksmuseum opened in 1800 and eight years later, the new King Louis Napoleon moved the collections to the Royal Palace on Dam Square, the former city hall of Amsterdam. In 1876 the architect, Pierre Cuypers, was commissioned to design a new building, which remained basically unchanged since its opening in 1885.

From 2003 to 2013, the entire building and presentation of their collections was renovated. For the first time, the museum’s Special Collections are also displayed so that visitors can enjoy objects from the applied arts, science, and national history, including their collection of magic lantern slides, hold-to-light prints, and optical devices [see below].

Today

The building is also the home of the Cuypers Library, the largest and oldest art historical library in the Netherlands, holding 5,4 km (3 1/3 miles) of books. During their recent renovation, not only was the original study room updated but a viewing balcony for the visiting public was installed so non-researcher do not disrupt those actively using study materials.

The reading room is shared between the library and the print study collection, which holds more than 500,000 engravings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, and “sheets in other graphic techniques” dating from 1440 to the present. Fashion and ornament prints, maps, decorative papers, and popular prints are included alongside the Rembrandts, Picassos, and the other masterworks. More information about appointments can be found here: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/research/reading-room

A Rijksmuseum Special Collections hold-to-light slide. This link takes you to similar views in the Graphic Arts Collection at Princeton. https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2013/11/13/superbe-feux-dartifice/

Ralph Kirby’s Eccentric Museum Is Not a Place

In the summer of 1802, newspaper advertisements announced the first issue of Granger’s New Wonderful Museum and Extraordinary Magazine, to be published monthly beginning August 1802. William Granger was listed as editor and the stories “communicated by James Caulfield and others.” The magazine was a success but as the sixth issue was being prepared, a revised advertisement for Granger’s Magazine was printed in the form of a letter dated January 1, 1803, addressed “To the Booksellers of the United Kingdom.”

“Whereas last night the most shameful Imposition was committed by a person (Ralph Smith Kirby) who was employed to publish and sell the above work by the real proprietor, [Alexander] Hugo and for which he was liberally paid, but who having declined by Notice dated November 26th, publishing No. VI for January 1803, has unjustly printed a Number for the same Month . . . and establish a spurious one on its Foundation, calling it Kirby’s Original Wonderful Museum, New Series.”

Kirby falsely stated that Granger’s printer and editor had been changed and circulated a report that he was the new proprietor in the work. The two publications ran simultaneously for a few years and then, both were reissued in bound sets.

While Granger only printed a frontispiece etching, Kirby’s magazine was filled with portraits of the many characters whose stories he told. These exotic images were often cut out of the issue and collected separately by libraries and museums making the complete runs, such as the one in Princeton’s collection, rare even though the editions were large.

Kirby’s Wonderful and Eccentric Museum; or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters. Including all the Curiosities of Nature and Art from the Remotest Period to the Present Time, Drawn from every Authentic Source (London: R.S. Kirby, 1803-1820). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1803

William Granger, New, original, and complete wonderful museum and magazine extraordinary: being a complete repository of all the wonders, curiosities, and rarities of nature and art, from the beginning of the world to the present year . . . communicated by James Caulfield and others (London: M. Allen, Printer: Printed for Alex. Hogg & Co., 1802-1808)

The Impostor Unmasked; or The New Man of the People

Richard Brinsley Sheridan [above] says: “Gentlemen – I am proud on this occasion to pay you my respects – I will bring in a bill of rights – I will give your oppressors a ‘Check.”

The electors shout: “You know your Checks are worth nothing.”

Princeton is the only library in OCLC with a recorded copy of this thin volume with a folding frontispiece: The Imposter Unmasked; or, The New Man of the People; with anecdotes, never before published … inscribed, without permission, to that superlatively honest and disinterested man, R.B.S-R-D-N, esq. … (London: Tipper and Richards, 1806). Hand colored frontispiece by Isaac Cruikshank (1764-1811). Graphic Arts Collection Cruik 1806 Isaac

The scene is described by Dorothy George: “The Westminster election mob is seen from the hustings, where Sheridan, isolated from a group of supporters, is speaking. He tramples on a paper inscribed ‘Electors of Stafford’. From his pocket hangs a ‘List of Promisses’. A dog with a human head (Lord Percy), his collar inscribed ‘True Northumberland breed’, befouls his leg. A poll-clerk sits by an open poll-book but no one is voting.”

Thomas Rowlandson designed a satirical print a year or two earlier entitled “Ride to Rumford. Let the Gall’d Jade winch,” which may have inspired the title page quote here.

Savillon’s Elegies

Horace begins the Satires by examining the problem of desire, and in particular with Satires 1.1, on the desire for wealth and domination. This is the quote that the author, ‘a gentleman,’ chose for the epigram on his title page:

Qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem / seu ratio dederit seu fors obiecerit, illa / contentus vivat, laudet diversa sequentis? = How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one lives content with the lot that either planning has given him or chance has thrown in his way, but instead he praises those who follow other paths?

Catherine M. Schlegel notes that the answer Horace asserts at the end of the poem is that people live life as if it were a chariot race, aware only of who is ahead and discounting those they have overtaken, translating: “So I come back to where I began, how it is that no one can like himself, being greedy, but, rather, praises those with different lives; because his neighbor’s goat has an udder that stretches bigger, he’s eaten up with envy; and he wouldn’t compare himself to the bigger crowd of those worse off, but works only to get ahead of one after another. There’s always a richer man to stand in the way as he hurries—it’s the same as when the horses’s hooves sweep the chariots free of the gates, and the charioteer presses against the horses defeating his own, and takes no note of whom he passes and left among the stragglers.” — Catherine M. Schlegel Satire and the Threat of Speech (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005)

James Wallace (1766-1829), Savillon’s Elegies, or Poems, written by a gentlemen, A.B., late of the University of Cambridge … (London: Printed by T. Rickaby, for Hookham and Carpenter, 1795). All but one of the plates were designed by Isaac Cruikshank (1764-1811) and engraved by Burnet Reading (1749/50-1838). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1795 Isaac. Gift of Richard Waln Meirs, Class of 1888.

Last Chance to See “Remember Me”

Only a little more than a week left to see the exhibition “Remember Me” at the Princeton University Art Museum. Don’t forget.

Hamlet’s Ghost:
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love–

For more information, see: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/2127

The Pioneers of Photography

The Princeton University Library is extremely fortunate to receive donations from an international family of friends and supporters throughout the year and in particular during the winter holidays. One such offering arrived today from Patrick Montgomery and The History of Photography Archive, where they have created a very clever deck of cards featuring the men and women who established photography as an art form. It will be a good addition to our small but growing collection of playing cards.

It must have been great fun deciding who was going to be a king or a queen or a joker in this deck. They seem to have made all the right choices, given the extent of their archive. Here is a short piece on Montgomery: http://shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com/2014/05/19/a-past-preserved-on-coecles-harbor/, and a look at their website: http://www.photohistorytimeline.com/

See also: Mercedes Grundy, An image of Jamaica : examining photographs by Valentine & Sons at the World’s Columbian Exposition, text by Mercedes Grundy; photo selection by Patrick Montgomery (Shelter Island, N.Y.: Archive Farms, 2011). Marquand Library (SAPH) Oversize TR33.J26 G78 2011q

John L. Sullivan, Pugalist and Model

Robert Tait McKenzie (1867-1938), Life mask of John L. Sullivan (1858-1918), pugilist, 1914 (cast 1913). Gift of Charles D. Hart, Princeton Class of 1892, presented March 27, 1919.

A trained physician and physical therapist, R. Tait McKenzie was appointed the first professor of physical education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1904. He was also a sculptor, specializing in portraits of male athletes. At the 1912 Olympics, his medallion, “Joy of Effort” was installed in the stadium at Stockholm.

His colleague Charles D. Hart was a physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital and president of the Philadelphia Council of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1914, Hart commissioned McKenzie to create a statuette of the “Ideal Boy Scout.” [http://scouters.us/TheBoyScout.html]

The same year, McKenzie helped Hart create his own copy of a life mask of John L. Sullivan from the original mould McKenzie made in 1913. The mustache, eyebrows, and ears were sculpted and added to the original cast. Five years later, Hart donated the mask to his alma mater.

“For many years there lived unmolested in Philadelphia a distinguished physician who often turned men to stone. Now and then, for variety, he would turn a man to bronze. The police never thought of interfering and the populace, or such section of it as took notice of his work, applauded the hard finish of his subjects. He was the late and truly lamented Dr. R. Tait McKenzie, Canadian-born, honored alumnus of the Medical School of McGill University, licensed practitioner in the United States, Head of the Department of Physical Education of the University of Pennsylvania, and a famous sculptor on the side. It was as a sculptor, of course, that he turned his visitors, by appointment, into stone or bronze. Those who came to see him on medical matters were treated with a softer touch.

… One day in his studio he was showing some death masks he had made. He held up one and said: “Give a guess, from the face, as to what profession this man followed.” Since it looked somewhat like William Howard Taft, the guess was that he might have been a lawyer or public official. “No,” said Dr. McKenzie with a smile, “He was formerly heavyweight champion of the world—John L. Sullivan.” John Kieran, “A Philadelphia Physician Who Turned Men to Stone,” JOHPER: Journal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Vol. 15 (1944).

The Admirable Crichton

J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), The Admirable Crichton with illustrations by Hugh Thomson (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1914). First edition. Copy 75 of 500 signed by Thomson. Graphic Arts Collection GAX2016- in process

Princeton owns three dozen volumes illustrated by the Ulster artist Hugh Thomson (1860-1920) with texts from Shakespeare, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and many others. We now add Admiral Crichton, a comic play written by J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), first performed in 1902.

Thomson was a favorite illustrator of the London public and of James Barrie, having illustrated Quality Street the year before. Art critics had a different opinion. A review in the December 1914 issue of Burlington Magazine begins:

Mr. Hugh Thomson’s illustrations to “The Admirable Crichton” are utterly unsympathetic and half-hearted. They have neither originality nor charm, and Mr. Thomson is apparently under the impression that the scenery in a South Sea island is precisely the same as that of Surrey. It is a great pity, as Sir J. M. Barrie’s incomparable play would make an ideal Christmas book in the hands of a capable illustrator. However, Mr. Thomson has many admirers who will be interested to know that the originals of the illustrations are to be obtained of Messrs. Ernest Brown and Phillips, Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square.

The largest collection of Thomson’s drawings can be seen in his hometown at the Coleraine Museum in Northern Ireland http://www.niarchive.org/coleraine/