- National Portrait Gallery

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News
Winter 2001
From the
DIRECTOR
PR
Con
Vol. 2 N
I write this director’s letter with a divided
mind—but not a divided spirit. Like so
many other Americans, I am permanently
affected by the terrible events of September 11 and am trying to comprehend
their consequence for ourselves and for
the world, even as I go about my many
activities and commitments. The late Barbara Tuchman, a remarkable historian and, I am proud to say, a longtime commissioner of the National
Portrait Gallery, reminded us some years ago that the nineteenth century
did not end in 1900. It ended in 1914 with the Guns of August. Thereafter
the world was permanently altered. We may later conclude that the twentieth century ended not with the millennial hoopla we all remember (along
with the false alarm of Y2K), but with September 11, 2001. We have
simultaneously seen our sense of security threatened but also our sense of
national purpose reinvigorated. The America we took for granted, we now
commit ourselves to preserve. What seemed trivial in aspects of our culture
is evaporating; what has always seemed important is reasserting itself.
The National Portrait Gallery has a central role in the Smithsonian’s commitment to the nation to embody its fundamental values. It was in that spirit
that we took our determination to save the great “Lansdowne” portrait of
George Washington to the nation, and it was in that spirit that the Donald
W. Reynolds Foundation gave us the means to do so. Just as important, we
have been provided the resources to bring the portrait to Americans who
live far away from Washington before returning it to our refurbished building. This tour (launching in February 2002), which reminds us all of the
nation’s founding principles and its tumultuous origins, has taken on added
importance after September 11. George Washington rallies us again.
With this issue of Profile we also rededicate ourselves to tell our nation’s
history by looking at the remarkable individuals our culture has produced.
In our collections, a plethora of professions and personalities show the
diversity of American life, but in this case we take pleasure in focusing
on the literary tradition. Imagine a gathering that features Dorothy
Parker, Dashiell Hammett, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Langston Hughes sharing with you their lives and interests, and you have the
experience that we have provided to our readers. Understand that this is
the tip of the iceberg. Our collection includes perhaps hundreds of American writers, from the first African American published poet—the eighteenth century’s Phillis Wheatley—to James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Arthur Miller. We are, more
than we sometimes think, a people of the word.
I will resist telling you about the members of our staff who are also writers, although you will sense the extent of their talents from the articles
in Profile. I will also resist telling you in detail about my own two writing children. But what’s important to say is that the Portrait Gallery here
celebrates America’s creative spirit. In that we invest our hope.
2
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PROFILE
Contents
Vol. 2 No. 4 Winter 2001
4
The Real “Thin Man”
Cover: February 1, 2002,
marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of poet
Langston Hughes. See feature
article on page 6.
Dashiell Hammett
In the next issue
• NPG opens “George
Washington: A National
Treasure” at The Museum
of Fine Arts, Houston
• Inauguration of the Paul
Peck Presidential Awards
• Conservation of miniatures from the collection
Children, Cameras,
Community
In Search of Heroes
5
Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss,
circa 1920; gift of W. Tjark Reiss
in memory of his father, Winold
Reiss
12
The Dark Side of a
Literary Light
13
Dorothy Parker
NPG Takes America’s
First Hero on Tour
6
14
Langston Hughes in
Washington, D.C.
8
CivilWar@Smithsonian
New Website
10
The Dolphin and the
Fish
NPG on the Road
15
NPG Schedules and
Information
16
Portrait Puzzlers
Robert Lowell and
Elizabeth Bishop
PROFILE
National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
750 Ninth Street, NW
Suite 8300
Washington, DC 20560-0973
Phone: (202) 275-1738
Fax: (202) 275-1887
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.npg.si.edu
Readers’ comments are welcome.
©2001 Smithsonian Institution
Available in alternative formats.
Printed on recycled paper.
Marc Pachter
Carolyn Carr
Eloise Baden
Director
Deputy Director and Chief Curator
Chief Administrative Officer
Editor
Carol Wyrick
Office of Education
Review Editor
Sidney Hart
Editorial Committee
Anne Christiansen
Dru Dowdy
Marianne Gurley
Leslie London
Patrick Madden
Ellen G. Miles
Frances Stevenson
Frederick Voss
The Charles Willson Peale
Family Papers
Office of Public Affairs
Office of Publications
Office of Photographic Services
Office of Design and Production
Office of External Affairs
Department of Painting
and Sculpture
Office of Administration
Department of History
Commission
Barbara Novak, Chair
Anthony C. Beilenson
Vice Chair
Jeannine Smith Clark
Joan Kent Dillon
Stephen Jay Gould
David Levering Lewis
R. W. B. Lewis
Jon B. Lovelace Jr.
Joan A. Mondale
Robert B. Morgan
Roger Mudd
Constance Berry Newman
Daniel Okrent
Ex Officio Members
Earl A. Powell III
William H. Rehnquist
Lawrence M. Small
Honorary Commissioners
Julie Harris
Bette Bao Lord
Fred W. Smith
3
The Real “Thin Man”
Sarah Loffman
knowledge of the streets lent the genre a gritty realism and tangible characters that had been previously lacking.
Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) only wrote five
Hammett’s real-life persona was intricately tied
novels, but by the time the last of these, The
to his writing, and he was viewed as the living
Thin Man, was published in 1934, his contempoembodiment of his characters. Edward Biberman’s
raries had already credited him with expanding
portrait of the author, painted just shortly after the
the boundaries of literature to include the detective
two men met in Hollywood in 1936, captures the
story. Distancing himself from flowery language and
many facets of this persona. Biberman found the sixcomplicated capers essential to popular drawingfoot-tall Hammett to be a svelte, striking figure
room fiction of the time, Hammett’s austere writing
who “was, himself, in appearstyle aligned him with literance, the ‘Thin Man’ of his
ary figures such as Ernest
novels.” On one level, the
Hemingway. He had no interportrait reveals hard-boiled
est in writing for an audience
characteristics of Hammett’s
of what admirer Raymond
personality associated with
Chandler called “flustered
characters such as Sam Spade
old ladies . . . who like their
or Ned Beaumont in
murders scented with magnoHammett’s 1932 novel The
lia blossoms and don’t like
Glass Key. The vertical lines
to be reminded that murder
in the background emphasize
is an act of infinite cruelty.”
Hammett’s impressive statBlending psychological
ure. He holds himself erect,
studies of character with
without being rigid. His dark
the formulaic aspects of the
eyes, intensified by the
detective story, Hammett
contrasting pale tone of his
created heroes appropriate
skin, confront the viewer
for his era. These protagwith a hard, unyielding gaze.
onists are solitary private
His well-manicured appearagents who aren’t afraid to
ance and the ever-present
walk down mean streets and
cigarette are reminiscent of
deal with brutal criminals
Nick Charles, the suave,
or widespread corruption.
Dashiell Hammett
sophisticated protagonist in
Yet they run no risk of
by Edward Biberman, 1937
The Thin Man. The artist
being corrupted themselves
extends this connection by drawing attention to
because they live by a strict code of ethics that
Hammett’s large but delicate hands, implying that
only they define. Cynical and sarcastic, these hardno matter how tough a character he might be, there
drinking, hard-hitting tough guys seem emotionis a softness somewhere beneath.
less but inevitably encounter a femme fatale in this
Like his characters, Hammett also lived by a
labyrinthine world, a mysterious woman who will
self-defined code of ethics. By the time Hammett
either be their salvation or their demise. Hammett
sat for this painting in 1937, he had already been
introduces the most notable of these characters,
a dedicated Communist for several years. His
Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon, published
adherence to leftist politics eventually landed him
in 1930. The author described him as “a dream
on the infamous Hollywood blacklist. In 1951,
man, . . . for your private detective wants to be a
Hammett and two other trustees of the radical
shifty fellow . . . able to get the best out of anyone he
Civil Rights Congress were jailed for six months
comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent
when they refused to reveal the names of contribbystander, or client.” And Hammett would know.
utors to the bail-bond fund. In truth, Hammett
Eight years as an agent at the Pinkerton Detechad never set foot inside the office of the congress,
tive Agency gave Hammett an intimate knowledge
and did not know the name of even a single
of the world he later depicted. Although he had
contributor. The night before he was to appear in
no intention of leaving the detective business, the
court, his longtime companion Lillian Hellman
lingering effects of tuberculosis contracted while
asked, “Why don’t you say that you don’t know
serving as an ambulance driver in World War I
the names?” “No,” Hammett said, “I couldn’t
forced him to work behind a typewriter, as an
say that.”
author of detective stories. Hammett’s insiders’
Curatorial Assistant
4 Dashiell Hammett
Tess M
Editor
Family
During
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Tess Mann
instead called on her experience of World War
I, and the memory of her first husband’s departure for service, to write articles for Mademoiselle and Vogue about the contributions women
During the 1920s, New York’s famous social set
could make to the war effort and the emotional
of literary lights came to be known as the Algonsupport of servicemen. And she contributed to
quin Round Table, after the New York hotel that
the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 film
was their favorite meeting place. Less well rememSaboteur, a cautionary suspense thriller about
bered is the name that critic Franklin P. Adams
terrorism on the home front. But overall, Parker
gave his peer group, the Thanatopsis Pleasure
remained frustrated and began a steady decline
and Inside Straight Club. The morbid humor of
into depression, inactivity,
this alternate name (“Thanand alcoholism. Lynes
atopsis” means the contemmanaged to capture Parker
plation of death) directly
in mid-descent, somewhere
referred to a social group in
between the beauty of her
Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street,
youth and the dissipation
but it also is particularly
of her later years, caught
fitting in regards to one of
between the earnestness of
the group’s most celebrated
her professional striving and
members, author and poet
the increasing futility of the
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967).
fight.
At the height of her career,
However, in keeping with
Parker unsuccessfully attemptthe tone of Parker’s poetry,
ed suicide three times. And
Lynes’s dramatic, even meloalthough her poetry often
dramatic, portrait does not
reflected her personal desponso much confront Parker’s
dency, Parker favored cynidescent as satirize it. Her
cism over sentimentality, as in
arms wrapped around her,
her infamous rhyme Résumé,
head tilted back, Parker telewherein she lamented the
graphs the hallmark despershortcomings of various methation of Greta Garbo in any
ods of suicide, concluding,
number of films, most nota“You might as well live.”
Dorothy Parker
bly Grand Hotel, which
by George Platt Lynes, 1943
By the time George Platt
featured her famous plea, “I
Lynes photographed Parker
want to be alone.” As Parker disparaged most
in 1943, she had resigned herself to “this living,
this living, this living,” but was tiring of her repu- work in Hollywood as insubstantial (including
her own), Lynes tended to discount his own work
tation as a witty raconteur and was eager for
as a fashion photographer. (He destroyed most
meaningful accomplishments. During the 1930s
of his fashion negatives before he died.) Conseshe had raised funds for the Socialist cause in the
quently, underlying this rather glamorous photoSpanish Civil War. As the United States plunged
graph, one suspects a tacit complicity between
into World War II, she felt even more keenly a
photographer and subject in creating a portrait
desire to contribute something more substantial
that tempers Parker’s own apparent vulnerability
to her country than the rhymes and witticisms
with her trademark cynicism.
for which she was famous.
In her short stories, Parker had a talent for scruParker’s husband, Alan Campbell, eleven years
tinizing the outward gestures that both masked
her junior, enlisted in the Army Air Forces as
and betrayed the interior worlds of her characa lieutenant. Parker herself tried to enlist in the
ters. Similarly, Lynes’s portrait puts a mask of
Women’s Army Corps, but could not persuade
dry sarcasm over Parker’s genuine pain, which in
the Corps to waive the age limit. Her bid for
turn was already so famous as to be yet another
accreditation as a war correspondent was also
mask. It was a vicious circle that Parker did not
rejected on the grounds that her Socialist leanknow how, or did not have the will, to escape.
ings made her a “possible subversive.” Parker
Editorial Assistant, Charles Willson Peale
Family Papers
© Estate of George Platt Lynes
tty realn previ-
The Dark Side of a Literary Light
Dorothy Parker 5
© Eakins Press Foundation and © Estate of Carl Van Vechten
Langston Hughes in Washington, D.C.
Langston Hughes by Carl Van
Vechten, 1983 print from 1939
negative
Arnold Rampersad
Stanford University
Late in 1924, twenty-two years
old, fresh from Europe, and thoroughly broke, Langston Hughes
arrived for the first time in Washington, D.C. He had come to live
with his mother, Carrie Mercer
Hughes Clark. Herself jobless,
Clark had thrown herself on
the kindness of prosperous but
distant cousins in Washington.
This was the family of her
father’s brother, John Mercer
Langston, one of the most celebrated African Americans of the
nineteenth century. Taking pity
on her, her cousins had invited
her—and then Langston—to live
awhile in their comfortable
house in the LeDroit Park district,
where the best of Washington’s
blacks were said to live.
Born in Joplin, Missouri,
Hughes had grown up in
Lawrence, Kansas, then lived for
a year in Illinois before moving
to Cleveland, Ohio, where he
attended high school and discovered his love of poetry. Sometimes he had lived with his
mother, sometimes not. While
she pursued jobs as an actress
and a teacher, his mother left
6 Langston Hughes
him with her own mother, a
quietly proud woman whose first
husband had died at Harpers
Ferry, fighting with John Brown’s
band. In Cleveland, Hughes had
even lived by himself for a while.
After an unhappy year at Columbia University, Langston had quit
school and worked as a delivery
boy and a gardener in New
York before finding work as a
seaman. In 1923, he traveled by
freighter to Africa, then made
two voyages to Europe. After the
second trip, he had jumped ship
and headed to Paris. There he
had worked for several months
as a dishwasher in a nightclub.
Hughes quickly found Washington a trying place. The city was
as grimly segregated as any southern town. The black middle class
kept to itself, away from whites
but also away from the masses of
the black community. Langston,
who refused to put on airs, saw
his cousins and their friends as
obsessed by notions of class and
skin-color superiority. Since 1921,
when he had published his first
poem in a national journal, he
had emerged as one of the most
gifted African American poets.
He wrote moving lyric pieces
about nature, loneliness, and
death, but his most powerful
work, such as “The Negro Speaks
of Rivers,” proclaimed his pride
in black culture and his love of
the black masses.
His first job in Washington
was quite respectable. Hughes
joined the staff of the black
weekly newspaper the Washington Sentinel, but he soon resigned
when he was asked not to write
but to hawk advertising space on
commission. His next job was
of a different sort altogether. For
twelve dollars a week he worked
in a wet-wash laundry. Far from
being ashamed of the job, he
celebrated it in a tributary poem,
“Song to a Negro Wash-Woman,”
which covered an entire page
in the January Crisis magazine,
edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.
Soon Hughes and his mother
were living on their own, in a
cramped two-room apartment
at 1749 S Street. His laundry job
ended when he caught a nasty
cold; the next, shucking oysters
in a restaurant, he gave up after
he ate too many and broke out
in a painful rash. He returned
to office work with his next job,
as an assistant to Dr. Carter G.
Woodson, editor of the Journal
of Negro History and a founder
of the Association for the Study
of Negro Life and History.
Woodson set Hughes to work
on his current project, the listing
of some thirty thousand persons
that would be published as
Free Negro Heads of Families
in the United States in 1830.
Hughes admired Woodson but
soon grew restless. “I personally
did not like the work I had to
do,” he would recall. “Besides,
it hurt my eyes.”
He loved to roam the city, but
his favorite place was unquestionably seamy Seventh Street, where
the poorest, least educated blacks
lived and loved and played and
sang the earthy blues without
inhibition. The grand symbols of
national power meant little to
them, according to Hughes; they
“looked at the dome of the
Capitol and laughed out loud.”
Hughes believed in music as the
true metronome of the African
American soul. “Like the waves
of the sea coming one after
another,” he would write, “like
the earth moving around the
sun, night, day-night, day-night,
day—forever, so is the undertow of black music with its
rhythm that never betrays you,
its strength like the beat of the
human heart, its humor, and its
rooted power.” As a poet, he
learned from the musicians and
those who loved them. “I tried
to write poems like the songs
they san
songs, b
or die;
couldn’
times. B
living a
Also
morale
by the
Georgia
1461 S
day eve
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who ma
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Nugent
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and Ala
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Carl Va
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city, but
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c as the
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e waves
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e, “like
nd the
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underwith its
ays you,
t of the
and its
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ans and
“I tried
e songs
they sang on Seventh Street—gay
songs, because you had to be gay
or die; sad songs, because you
couldn’t help being sad sometimes. But gay or sad, you kept on
living and you kept on going.”
Also helping to keep Hughes’s
morale afloat was the salon run
by the lovable maternal poet
Georgia Douglas Johnson at
1461 S Street, NW. Every Saturday evening she opened her home
to the writers, young and old,
who made up the black Washington literary community. There,
Hughes mingled with fellow
artists such as Richard Bruce
Nugent, Lewis Alexander, Marita
Bonner, Clarissa Scott, and Hallie
Queen, as well as older talents
such as Angelina Weld Grimké
and Alain Locke, a professor at
Howard University. They and
other writers and artists were
increasingly conscious of themselves as members of a new
movement—the Negro Renaissance. Indeed, in March 1925
the national magazine Survey
Graphic had published a special
number, edited by Locke, devoted
to this unprecedented upsurge
in African American culture and
the arrival on the national scene
of “The New Negro.”
The center of this movement
was decidedly New York, and
Hughes was determined to keep
in touch with Manhattan even as
he lived in Washington. On May
1, he was there to attend a dinner
sponsored by the black Opportunity magazine to cap a heralded
literary competition that highlighted the work of the younger
artists. With his jazzy piece “The
Weary Blues,” Hughes took first
place in the poetry section. One
highly impressed guest was the
white novelist and bon vivant
Carl Van Vechten, who decided
to take up Hughes’s cause. Before
the month was over, the young
poet had signed a contract with
Van Vechten’s own publisher,
Knopf, for a
volume of verse.
The promise of
a book buoyed
Hughes, but his
future remained
uncertain.
He
decided to try to
return to college.
This time he
would attend, for
the first time in
Langston Hughes by Carl Van Vechten, 1932;
his life, a predomigift of Prentiss Taylor
nantly black school.
Howard University
hoisting a tray of dishes. The
in Washington seemed ideal;
story made the newspapers from
however, to his keen disappointment, Howard would not prom- Maine to Florida.
The incident brought publicise him a scholarship. Then one
ity but no money. Then, on a
day, on a city bus, he met
trip to New York, Hughes spoke
a young man who talked to
to Amy Einstein Spingarn, the
him about prestigious Lincoln
wealthy wife of Joel Spingarn,
University in Pennsylvania, the
one of the leaders of the NAACP,
oldest black college in the North.
about a loan to go back to
Hughes applied there and was
school. For a long while he
promptly admitted. But where
heard nothing from her. Then,
would he find the money?
late in November, she agreed
Carl Van Vechten had urged
to help him. Overjoyed, Hughes
him to start work on an autothanked her profusely and
biography. Such a book might
prepared to leave the city.
bring him a handsome advance,
Early in the new year, the first
but Hughes worked only fitfully
copies of his book, The Weary
at the task. He found dwelling
Blues, arrived. Astride the red,
on the past a painful exercise.
black, and yellow dust jacket, an
Instead of writing his life story,
angular black bluesman played
he signed on as a busboy at
the piano. The reviews were favorthe fashionable Wardman Park
able, and sales were brisk. On
Hotel on Connecticut Avenue.
January 15, 1926, at the PlayHughes was there one day when
house at 1814 N Street, NW, with
the celebrated troubadour poet
Alain Locke presiding, Langston
Vachel Lindsay, the author of the
read from his book to an admirbombastic Congo (1914), came
ing crowd of poetry lovers. Then,
to give a public reading. Copya few days later, he left Washinging three of his poems, Hughes
ton for good. He was on to a new
sidled over to Lindsay’s table in
adventure, as a student at Lincoln
the dining room, placed them
University in Pennsylvania.
before the poet, and hurried back
to the kitchen. That evening,
Lindsay—always a showman— Arnold Rampersad is the Sara Hart
Kimball Professor of English at Stanannounced his discovery of a
ford University. His books include
new poet, a Negro poet no less,
The Life of Langston Hughes (Oxford
working as a busboy in that very
University Press, 1986, 1988), and
hotel. The Associated Press sent
Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
a photographer to capture the
(Knopf, 1994). In 1991 he was awarded
a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
image of the Negro busboy poet
© Estate of Carl Van Vechten
agazine,
u Bois.
mother
n, in a
artment
dry job
a nasty
oysters
up after
oke out
eturned
ext job,
arter G.
Journal
founder
e Study
History.
o work
e listing
persons
hed as
Families
n 1830.
son but
rsonally
had to
Besides,
Langston Hughes 7
History at your fingertips:
James G. Barber
Historian
Imagine being able to peruse the Smithsonian’s
vast Civil War collections with the click of a
mouse! CivilWar@Smithsonian, a newly created
institution-wide website, is designed to do just
that. Conceived in the summer of 1999, the site
at http://www.civilwar.si.edu is being produced
by the National Portrait Gallery. Curators from
half a dozen Smithsonian museums are examining
their Civil War holdings for objects of interest. To
date, approximately 250 items have been identified,
researched, and photographed for the site’s debut on
January 4, 2002. Dozens of additional artifacts will
be included in the months and years ahead.
The National Portrait Gallery, not surprisingly,
houses the Smithsonian’s largest collection of Civil
War portraiture, with its images of leaders and
luminaries numbering in the hundreds. In fact,
Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant,
and Stonewall Jackson are four of the best represented subjects in the Gallery’s collection. Portraits
of these leaders and dozens of others are displayed
online, in every portrait medium of the period—
paintings, sculpture, prints, and photographs. They
include one of the last studio photographs of President Lincoln taken, as well as the monumental
painting Grant and His Generals, the largest painting owned by the National Portrait Gallery. Moreover, the Gallery’s building, the Old Patent Office,
is itself the Smithsonian’s single most unique Civil
War monument and landmark and is the subject
of special focus in the website. It was used as a
soldiers’ barracks, as a hospital, and as a reception
site for President Lincoln’s second inaugural ball.
Other Smithsonian museums house an extraordinary array of Civil War artifacts; the National
Museum of American History is in fact the primary
repository for the Civil War at the Smithsonian.
For instance, its collection of Yankee small arms
and uniforms, transferred from the United States
War Department after the Civil War, is one of the
most comprehensive of its kind in the country. Its
other artifacts are varied. Many of them belonged
to individuals, such as the black beaver top hat
President Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theatre the night
he was assassinated, and the famous war-horse
Rienzi that carried Union cavalry general Philip
H. Sheridan to victory in the Shenandoah Valley
campaign of 1864. Dozens of other artifacts, such
as uniforms and firearms, are mass-produced army
issue. Still other relics are unique, such as the offi-
8 Civil War Website
Confe
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Histo
Instit
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Ulysses S. Grant by Ole Peter Hansen Balling, 1865
Robert E. Lee by Mathew Brady, 1865
cer’s di
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chairs t
terms o
The
CivilWa
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slavery
cotton
simple h
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include
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dead or
tion. Th
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Civil
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first sec
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open an
was tw
War dia
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and exc
updates
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Confederate national flag.
National Museum of American
History, Smithsonian
Institution; on loan from John
McLean Hazen
1865
Stars and stripes quilt. National
Museum of American History,
Smithsonian Institution; gift of
Eugene A. Teter and Martha
Brown Teter
cer’s dishtowel that was used as a flag of truce
by Lee’s army at Appomattox and the table and
chairs that Grant and Lee used when signing the
terms of surrender.
The objects that comprise the start-up of
CivilWar@Smithsonian are organized into ten sections
pertaining to such aspects of the war as soldier life,
weapons, leaders, the war at sea, and the surrender
at Appomattox. A section on the crusade against
slavery examines a demonstration model of the
cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1794. This
simple hand-held device was a boon to cotton growers in the South and was a catalyst for the growth
and expansion of slavery, arguably the root cause
of the Civil War. A section on Abraham Lincoln
includes the inkwell that he used when he drafted
the Emancipation Proclamation and a “wanted”
poster offering a $100,000 reward for the capture,
dead or alive, of the conspirators in his assassination. The images of Lincoln also visually document
how the cares and sorrows of four years of war
deeply creased his humble face.
CivilWar@Smithsonian includes an introductory section that places the Smithsonian and its
first secretary, Joseph Henry, centrally within the
turbulent times, as he tried to keep the institution
open and functioning. His daughter, Mary Henry,
was twenty-seven when the war began. Her Civil
War diary offers an inside perspective on the city
of Washington and the Lincoln administration,
and excerpts of it will be made audible in future
updates of the Web site. The initial phase of the
site will also contain a timeline and a guide to
resources. Education components and new subject
material are being planned for the future. It is
our goal to keep CivilWar@Smithsonian a work
in progress.
Flag of the 84th Regiment of
Infantry, U.S. Colored Troops.
National Museum of American
History, Smithsonian Institution; gift of David K. Lander
Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, 1865
Union drum. National
Museum of American
History, Smithsonian
Institution; gift
of John S. Kyle
Unless otherwise noted,
images are from the
National Portrait Gallery.
Civil War Website 9
Elizabeth Bishop by Rollie McKenna, 1951
David C. Ward
Deputy Editor, Charles
Willson Peale Family Papers
Robert Lowell (1917–1977) and
Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
are the two most important postwar American poets. Lowell was
a scion of Boston society, albeit
of a minor wing of the famous
Lowell family, while Bishop was
a Canadian orphan with no
social advantages. Despite their
difference in background, the
two became great friends (they
joked, half-seriously, about marrying each other), were critics and
collaborators on their respective
poetic projects, and wrote verse
that was almost totally different
from each other’s. Their relationship was based on their common,
serious commitment to the craft
of poem making. Their only
major quarrel arose on the professional issue about how personally revelatory a poet should
be in the material he uses for
10 The Dolphin and the Fish
© 1951 Rollie McKenna
© 1951 Rollie McKenna
The Dolphin and the Fish:
Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop
Robert Lowell by Rollie McKenna, 1951
his poems. I use the masculine
pronoun here because Lowell and
Bishop reversed the usual gender
stereotyping of the male sensibility being directed outward to
the public while the woman’s is
focused on the private or personal.
Lowell’s verse, especially as
he developed his own distinct
style, always reflected his desire
to connect with others, while
Bishop’s relied on an objective
style, which tended to layer
emotions with a deep lacquer
of description.
Truth be told, Lowell was
always something of a bully;
his lifelong nickname “Cal” was
given to him as a youngster
by schoolmates who compared
him to the viciously capricious
Roman emperor Caligula.
Lowell’s rambunctious charisma,
the drama with which he
invested his life, was only
permitted because of his undeniable poetic genius; without that
genius he would have been just
another WASP misfit. Lowell
was diagnosed at an early age as
a manic-depressive. The disease
seemed to get worse as he
aged; he suffered several hospitalizations when his mania
became uncontrollable. After
one commitment, he wrote in
“Waking in the Blue” about the
beached lives of the men (“a
Harvard all-American fullback”
and “‘Bobbie,’/Porcellian ’29”)
of his class, “These victorious
figures of bravado ossified young.”
Lowell’s courage came by writing
his way out of the ossuary. To
do so, his writing, which always
relied heavily on history, transformed itself by treating his own
personal history as a subject for
excavation. By this he hoped
to express himself more clearly
while connecting on a deeper
emotional level with his audience. In “Epilogue” he wrote, “I
want to make/something imag-
ined, no
It wa
“person
Bishop
Lowell,
quarrie
an ext
objectio
Lowell
letters i
Lowell
quarrel
ship. W
the evo
sional s
the cou
and 19
the olde
William
“No idea
ways, B
way in
descrip
was a g
Robert L
Winslow
Marcella
Philip L
© 1951 Rollie McKenna
een just
Lowell
y age as
disease
as he
l hospimania
After
rote in
out the
men (“a
ullback”
n ’29”)
ctorious
young.”
writing
ary. To
always
y, transhis own
bject for
hoped
clearly
deeper
is audirote, “I
g imag-
ined, not recalled.”
It was on the problem of how
“personal” a poet could be that
Bishop and Lowell quarreled.
Lowell, in The Dolphin (1973)
quarried his personal life to
an extent that Bishop found
objectionable, not least because
Lowell recycled bits of Bishop’s
letters in his verse. Bishop and
Lowell had been heading for this
quarrel throughout their friendship. While Lowell exemplified
the evolution of a more confessional style of poetry suited to
the counterculture of the 1950s
and 1960s, Bishop adhered to
the older modernist tradition of
William Carlos Williams’s credo,
“No ideas but in things.” In many
ways, Bishop resembles Hemingway in the compression of her
descriptive imagery. Hemingway
was a great admirer of Bishop,
Robert Lowell by Marcella Comès
Winslow, 1974; gift of friends of
Marcella Comès Winslow and the
Philip L. Graham Fund
especially of her most famous
poem, “The Fish.” Part of the
poem reads, “He was speckled
with barnacles,/fine rosettes of
lime,/and infested/with tiny
white sea-lice, and underneath
two or three/rags of green weed
hung down.” The fish is like
one of Hemingway’s boxers,
and it becomes evident as you
move through the poem that
the fish’s obstinate fight is not
only admired by Bishop but
that she may by the end have
become the fish itself.
Like Lowell, Bishop found in
her writing a way to control
the contingencies of modern life.
Writing was a lifeline for both
poets. Where Lowell tended
toward an abundance that
poetically descends from Walt
Whitman, Bishop had the metaphysical concision of the other
great nineteenth-century poet,
Emily Dickinson. Bishop and
Lowell patched up their quarrel
over The Dolphin: for both writers poetry was always more
important than personality.
The National Portrait Gallery
owns eleven revelatory portrait
photographs taken by Rollie
McKenna in the early 1950s.
Bishop and Lowell were among
her subjects, as were Wallace
Stevens, Anne Sexton, and
Randall Jarrell. McKenna (who
found Bishop scarily formidable) is especially good at using
shadow to allude to the conflicted
depths of her poets’ lives.
Further reading: All of Bishop’s and
Lowell’s poetry is in print (a new
collected edition of Lowell’s has just
been published by Farrar, Straus and
Giroux) and accessible as well in any
good anthology of modern poetry
such as those published by W. W.
Norton; both writers’ verse belie the
notion that poetry is intentionally
obscure or difficult. Ian Hamilton’s
Robert Lowell: A Biography (New
York, 1983) is the standard life.
While there is no complete biography of Bishop, her letters (Robert
Giroux, ed., One Art: Elizabeth
Bishop, Letters [New York, 1995])
make a wonderfully readable introduction to her life.
Elizabeth Bishop by David Levine,
1977
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice, and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
—Elizabeth Bishop
The Dolphin and the Fish 11
Children, Cameras, Community:
In Search of Heroes
NP
Tia Powell Harris
photographed their subjects, but always
with dignity and creativity. Finally,
they captured their own communities and heroes on film with
Our goal in this Community
disposable cameras donated in
Heroes program was simple: to
part by FujiFilm, Penn Camera,
help students learn about their
and MotoPhoto. Images of
communities and the heroes
people, playgrounds, friends,
that reside in them. But where
flowers, street signs, and
would we begin? We looked
blue skies were the stuff of
to the Portrait Gallery’s own
their world!
collection and discovered
And what did we learn
that we held the key to
of heroes? The camera
understanding.
and in-class adventures of
The NPG collection
the students led them to
contains works by accomdiscover that often what
plished photographers James
makes a person heroic is
VanDerZee, Gordon Parks,
some
tiny act of kindness
and Addison Scurlock. These
Camilla Queen and her“heroic” sister
that
touches
the heart. Such
photographers distinguished
at the Community Heroes
a
discovery
suggests
that somethemselves in their contributions
award ceremony
times the people closest to us are
to community and the determiPhoto by Tia Powell Harris
the real heroes. Furthermore, by
nation to always photograph their
the program’s end, most students realsubjects with dignity.
ized that they were our future community
National Portrait Gallery staff led two
heroes. “I don’t know what kind of hero I might
hundred students attending DCPS 21st Century
be, but I know that I will be one to someone who
Community Learning Centers at Terrell Junior
might need me,” responded one student.
High School, MacFarland Middle School, Kramer
The resulting images were judged for expresMiddle School, and Francis Junior High School on
sion and skill, prizes were awarded, and an
a journey . . . through the camera lens. Students
exhibition of the best photographs was held at
participated in a variety of creative writing
and arts activities that increased both their self- Martin Luther King Jr. Library from August 6 to
October 26, 2001. More important, these young
awareness and their appreciation of photographic
people discovered a new voice, a new vehicle
portraiture. After defining “hero” in their own
through which to record history and celebrate
terms and identifying qualified candidates in
their lives.
their own homes and neighborhoods, the students
Education Outreach
Program Manager
Patrick
Extern
and An
Public
In sprin
Nationa
its mo
“Lansdo
Washing
from be
block.
Reynol
Vegas,
a gener
Gallery
for futu
cans, gi
Award-winning photograph taken by Kramer Middle
School student Dianna Cunningham of her hero Mr.
John Walker, former security guard at the school
12 Community Heroes
Photo by Key Kidder
The Mu
Februar
Community Heroes exhibition banner of student
photographs on display at Martin Luther King Jr.
Library
Las Veg
June 28
Los An
Californ
Novem
Seattle
March
NPG Takes America’s First Hero on Tour
always
Finally,
commum with
nated in
Camera,
ages of
friends,
ns, and
stuff of
we learn
camera
tures of
hem to
n what
eroic is
indness
t. Such
at someo us are
ore, by
nts realmunity
I might
ne who
Patrick Madden
External Affairs Director
and Anne Christiansen
Public Affairs Specialist
In spring 2001, the Smithsonian’s
National Portrait Gallery rescued
its most treasured image—the
“Lansdowne” portrait of George
Washington by Gilbert Stuart—
from being placed on the auction
block. When the Donald W.
Reynolds Foundation of Las
Vegas, Nevada, stepped in with
a generous $30 million gift, the
Gallery was able to save the work
for future generations of Americans, give the public the opportu-
nity to see the painting—the most
important visual document from
the founding of the nation—on
its first-ever national tour, and
restore a space for it in the
Old Patent Office Building, the
historic home of the museum.
“George
Washington:
A
National Treasure” will open in
Houston on February 15, 2002.
The exhibition will rekindle the
public’s interest in the Father
of Our Country through this
quintessential image. Visitors will
learn about the powerful American symbolism in the 205-yearold painting and how it delivers
George Washington’s timeless
story. Through educational interactives, video, films, family days,
and brochures, “George Washington: A National Treasure”
allows the public to reflect on
Washington’s leadership, hero-
ism, and self-sacrifice; his definition of the role of the presidency;
and his life, career, and times.
The tour will visit seven
other cities besides Houston
during the next three years:
Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle,
Minneapolis, Oklahoma City,
Little Rock, and New York
City. Those who are unable to
visit the exhibition in person
can experience it online at
www.georgewashington.si.edu.
Teachers, students, and families can participate in online
interactives, download information, and order educational
materials as part of this exciting electronic companion to
the exhibition.
Experience George Washington and the historic tour of this
great painting—the founding
image in the American album!
t
r.
Photo by Key Kidder
expresand an
held at
ust 6 to
e young
vehicle
elebrate
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
February 15–June 16, 2002
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota
August 1–November 30, 2003
Las Vegas Art Museum, Nevada
June 28–October 27, 2002
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma
December 12, 2003–April 11, 2004
Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
California
November 8, 2002–March 9, 2003
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock
April 23–August 22, 2004
Seattle Art Museum, Washington
March 21–July 20, 2003
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York City
Fall 2004
Lansdowne Tour 13
NPG on the Road
NATIONAL
Danville, California
Blackhawk Museum*
NPG will add several original
objects to the panel version
of its exhibition “Red, Hot
& Blue” at the Blackhawk
Museum, including Rosemarie
Sloat’s full-length portrait of
Ethel Merman as Annie from
Annie Get Your Gun and a pink
marble bust of Ginger Rogers
by Isamu Noguchi. On view
through March 2002.
Baltimore, Maryland
B&O Railroad Museum*
As part of a Baltimore-wide
celebration of 175 years of
railroading in America, NPG
has joined with the B&O
Railroad Museum to present
“Portraits of American Railroading from the National
Portrait Gallery.” Comprising
significant individuals in the
history of the railroad industry,
the exhibition will include
portraits of Peter Cooper,
William Ogden, and George Pullman, among others. On view
February 27, 2002, through
July 2003.
Arlington, Texas
Legends of the Game Museum*
Twelve portraits of baseball
immortals will remain on view
through January 2003.
Houston, Texas
The Museum of Fine Arts
Through the generosity of the
Donald W. Reynolds Foundation,
NPG has been able to forever
save for the public trust the original grand-manner “Lansdowne”
portrait of George Washington by
Gilbert Stuart. The foundation
is also the sponsor for an eightvenue tour of the painting—
“George Washington: A National
Treasure”—of
which
The
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
is the first venue. On view February 15 through June 16, 2002.
Richmond, Virginia
The Virginia Historical Society
Thirty-three paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs of important Virginians, including Arthur Ashe, Ella
Fitzgerald, Robert E. Lee, and
Martha Washington, are on view
through January 2003.
*Smithsonian Affiliate Museum
Among the NPG images being lent to Baltimore’s
B&O Railroad Museum is this cartoon billing
railroad mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt as “The
Colossus of Roads.” He is caught here hosing
down the tracks of his transportation empire—an
action meant to pun the term “watered stock.”
In this practice, Vanderbilt diverted revenue from
new-stock sales into his own pockets rather than
using it for expansion of his lines’ assets.
Lithograph by Currier and Ives, 1869
14 NPG on the Road
INTERNATIONAL
Paris, France
Hôtel du Sully,
Patrimoine Photographique
From the 1940s through the
1970s, Philippe Halsman’s
portraits appeared on the covers
and in the pages of major
picture magazines, such as the
Saturday Evening Post and Life.
Opened in Washington in 1998,
“Philippe Halsman: A Retrospective” began its international tour
at the NPG in London on
May 23 and has been in Paris
since October 4. The more than
seventy original photographs
include Marilyn Monroe, Marlon
Brando, Audrey Hepburn, and
Albert Einstein.
The Halsman show has been
joined in Paris by a second
NPG exhibition, “Hans Namuth:
Portraits.” Namuth, an eminent
photographer who gained recognition for his images of Jackson
Pollock actively painting, also
photographed significant artists,
architects, and writers from
1950 until his death in 1990.
Included among the seventy-five
works in this exhibition are
images of Andy Warhol, Louise
Nevelson, Willem and Elaine
de Kooning, John Steinbeck,
and Andrew Wyeth. Through
January 6, 2002.
For info
Departm
ment at
Portra
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Through
NPG Schedules and Information
Portrait of a Nation
Tour Itinerary
For information on available bookings, contact the
Department of Exhibitions and Collections Management at (202) 275-1777; fax: (202) 275-1897.
Portraits of the Presidents
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum,
Simi Valley, California
Closes January 21, 2002
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art,
Memphis, Tennessee
February 18–May 19, 2002
Additional venues include: North Carolina Museum
of History, Raleigh; Virginia Historical Society,
Richmond
Useful Contacts
New location is at 750 Ninth Street, NW, Suite 8300,
Washington, DC 20560-0973. Our main telephone
number is (202) 275-1738; other contact information is also posted on our website.
Catalog of American Portraits
Phone:
Web:
E-mail:
(202) 275-1840
www.npg.si.edu and click on Search
[email protected]
Library
Phone:
Web:
E-mail:
(202) 275-1912
www.siris.si.edu (for the library’s catalog)
[email protected]
A Brush with History
Office of External Affairs
The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
Closes January 27, 2002
Phone:
E-mail:
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama
February 23–May 5, 2002
Office of Education
Additional venues include: New Orleans Museum of
Art, Louisiana; National Portrait Gallery, London,
England
Eye Contact:
Modern American Portrait Drawings
Exhibition venues, beginning in May 2002, include:
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; Elmhurst
Art Museum, Illinois; Naples Museum of Art, Florida
Women of Our Time
Exhibition venues, beginning in summer 2003,
include: Old State House, Hartford, Connecticut;
Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; Sioux City Art
Center, Iowa
(202) 275-1764
[email protected]
For information about school and community programs, teacher
resources, internships, and upcoming events:
Phone:
Web:
E-mail:
(202) 275-1811
www.npg.si.edu and click on Education
[email protected]
Office of Rights and Reproductions
Phone:
Web:
E-mail:
(202) 275-1791
www.npg.si.edu/inf/r&r/index-intro.htm
[email protected]
Office of Publications
To order an NPG publication, contact the National Museum of
American History’s Shop.
Phone:
Web:
(202) 357-1527
www.npg.si.edu and click on Information
Visit www.npg.si.edu today!
We Want to Hear From You!
In an effort to continue making Profile enjoyable for
our readers, we are asking for your help. If you have not
yet done so, please fill out the survey included in the
fall 2001 issue of Profile and mail it to the address on
the front. The survey is also available on the National
Portrait Gallery website at www.npg.si.edu.
Thanks for your help!
Information 15
Portrait Puzzlers
1.
2.
3.
4.
Many in the Roaring
Twenties regarded this
secretary of the treasury
as a main source of
the era’s prosperity. An
art collector, he later
founded one of the country’s great museums.
The first female poet to
win a Pulitzer Prize in
poetry, she would not
have gotten high marks
for candle conservation.
This musician gave
Americans some of
their favorite standards
for patriotic occasions.
Marches were his
specialty.
He and his company
are said to be the latenineteenth-century
equivalent to Bill Gates
and Microsoft.
Washington DC 20560-0973
Official Business
Penalty for Private Use $300
Return Service
Requested
16
Photo by Gene Young
Photo by Christopher Lands
Photo by Emily McDonough
1. Andrew W. Mellon (1855–1937): Financier and founder of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Oil on
canvas by Sir Oswald Hornby Joseph Birley, 1923; gift of Paul Mellon. 2. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950): Poet
whose most famous pair of lines was, “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night.” Gelatin silver print by
Berenice Abbott, circa 1929. 3. John Philip Sousa (1854–1932): Marine band conductor and composer of such march
classics as “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Oil on canvas by Harry Franklin Waltman, 1909; gift of the Sousa Corporation.
4. John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937): Founder of Standard Oil and once reputed to be the richest man in the world. Plaster
by Paul Manship, not dated; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of the artist. All images are details.
In response to the tragedies of September 11, staff
members from the National Portrait Gallery and
the Smithsonian American Art Museum painted
the “Wall of Expression” outside of the Patent
Office Building. The mural is dedicated to those
who lost their lives and loved ones in New York,
Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., and to those
individuals who contributed to the relief effort. The
wall serves as a record of this moment in history
and a message of hope for the future.
Presorted Standard
U.S. Postage Paid
Smithsonian Institution
G-94