Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News

PROFILE
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News
Spring/Summer 2007
From the
DIRECTOR
© fotobriceno
Many things have gone into making my National Portrait Gallery tenure
an immensely rewarding experience, but chief among them has been the
privilege of working with such an extraordinary staff. The reimagining of
the Portrait Gallery would have been impossible without the commitment,
energy, and intelligence that every single staff member brought to the
process. We challenged each other again and again, and the result is a
museum that we all can be proud of and for which we all share a profound
sense of ownership. Every director dreams of experiencing the kind of
community that I have been fortunate to work with here at the Portrait
Gallery, and I am confident that whoever succeeds me will come to feel as
I have about this truly remarkable group of public servants. Marc Pachter and Lilly Koltun, interim director of the Portrait Gallery of Canada, dance at the opening of the
“Great Britons” exhibition in April.
Cover: Marc Pachter speaks to the
crowd at one of NPG’s reopening
events in June 2006. Photograph
© fotobriceno
PROFILE
Contents Vol. 8, nos. 1–2. Spring/Summer 2007
4
Marc Pachter Bids
NPG Adieu
6
Commissioning Fund
Established in Honor of
Marc Pachter
7
The National Portrait
Gallery
A Poem by Robert Pinsky
8
Historian’s Choice
Carlton Fisk
9
Curator’s Choice
Rachel Carson
12
Brett Cook in
Residence at
Duke Ellington
School for the
Arts
13
About Face:
Seeing Yourself
in NPG
13
“Face to Face”
Beyond the Label
14
NPG Exhibitions
15
NPG Outreach
10
Art Meets Chemistry
and Preserves History
16
Portrait Puzzlers
12
Book Review
Walt Disney: The Triumph
of the American Imagination
by Neal Gabler
Marc Pachter
Carolyn Carr Director
Deputy Director and
Chief Curator
Editor
Dru Dowdy Office of Publications
Associate Editor
Ann M. Shumard Department of
Photographs
Editorial Committee
Bethany Morookian Bentley
Office of Development and External Affairs
Lizanne Garrett Office of Photographic Services
Ellen G. Miles Department of Painting
and Sculpture
Jewell Robinson Office of Education
David C. Ward
Department of History
Editorial Support
Curatorial Assistant
Amy Baskette
George Parlier
Program Assistant
Caroline Wooden Graphic Designer
Design
Leslie London, London Graphics
Commission
Daniel Okrent
Chair
Anthony C. Beilenson
Vice Chair
John Boochever
Sally G. Chubb
Jeannine Smith Clark
H. P. “Pete” Claussen
Joan Kent Dillon
Ella Milbank Foshay
Michael Harreld
Jill Krementz
Jon B. Lovelace
Joan A. Mondale
Robert B. Morgan
Roger Mudd
V. Thanh Nguyen
Barbara Novak
W. Dean Smith
R. Ted Steinbock
Mallory Walker
Jack H. Watson Jr.
John Wilmerding
Ex Officio Members
Earl A. Powell III
John G. Roberts Jr.
Cristián Samper
Honorary
Commissioners
Julie Harris
David Levering Lewis
Bette Bao Lord
Fred W. Smith
PROFILE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
This issue is dedicated to the memory of graphic
designer Leslie London. While on staff at the National
Portrait Gallery, Leslie developed the initial look of
Profile. She continued to design NPG’s magazine after
setting out on her own. Leslie died in June after a brief
illness. We will miss her enormously.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
750 Ninth Street, NW
P.O. Box 37012, MRC 973
Washington, DC 20013-7012
Phone: (202) 633-8300
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.npg.si.edu
Readers’ comments are welcome. To
receive Profile, please send your name,
home address, and e-mail address to
[email protected] or the post office box
listed above.
Unless otherwise noted, all images are from
the National Portrait Gallery collection.
©2007 Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved.
Marc Pachter Bids NPG Adieu
David C. Ward
“I view my life in chapters, and it is time for me to
begin to write a new one.” With these words, Marc
Pachter announced his retirement from the Smithsonian Institution after more than thirty years of
a career that has been intertwined with the history of the National Portrait Gallery. Looking
backward, Pachter feels tremendously fortunate
to have “fallen into” the Smithsonian, since it provided him with the venue for both thinking about
and “doing” public culture. Just out of graduate
school, he began his career in 1974 as NPG’s chief
historian and, showing bureaucratic and collegial
skills rare for an academic, rose through the Smithsonian’s ranks to close his career by serving as the
Portrait Gallery’s director (2000–2007). In that
position, he headed the Gallery during the years
in which the Patent Office Building was closed for
renovation, a period in which he kept the Gallery’s
mission alive by insisting that “while the building is closed, the museum is still open.” Signal
achievements of his tenure were obtaining funding from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation to
purchase Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne” portrait
of George Washington, maintaining a vigorous
traveling exhibition program, and reorganizing the
Portrait Gallery, as evidenced both visually and
conceptually in its stunning renovated quarters in
what is now known as the Donald W. Reynolds
Center for American Art and Portraiture. Among
his other innovations, Pachter promoted the “One
Life” exhibition space, in which a curator would be
given a free hand to offer a new take on a selected
person. Pachter will leave NPG after having championed the exhibition “Great Britons: Treasures
from the National Portrait Gallery, London,” in
honor of the first national portrait gallery. The
opening was attended by portrait gallery directors
from around the world.
As he prepares to retire, Pachter sat in his
creatively disheveled office and answered some
questions both about himself and the place of the
National Portrait Gallery in American culture.
Pachter is famous among the staff for refusing to
admit that there were problems, only “challenges
that have yet to be surmounted.” In particular, as
a cultural historian, Pachter always insisted to both
the staff and the public that the Gallery must widen
the variety of modes of portrayal that it uses to depict
estimable lives; indeed, while Pachter is cognizant,
and appreciative of, the visual tradition of portraiture, he believes that the Gallery should be renamed
the “National Portrayal Gallery” to better exem-
4 Marc Pachter Bids NPG Adieu
Sherri Weil
Historian & Deputy Editor,
Peale Family Papers
Marc Pachter sits for his portrait by Robert Liberace
in one of NPG’s galleries.
plify the full range of methods—from oil painting
to biography to artistic performances—that it uses
to bring historic subjects to life. An unabashed technophile, Pachter is a fervent advocate of developing
and using new information delivery systems—from
handheld computers to holographic imagery—to
broaden and deepen the visual and textual information that can be imparted to the Gallery’s visitors.
As a student of biography and the intersection of the individual with culture, Pachter is an
unabashed democrat and a populist (in the good
sense!), a firm believer in the individual and the
society’s capacity for creative curiosity. “I would
have been involved in the conversation about public
culture regardless of my career, but the advantage
of being at the Portrait Gallery is that you are in a
direct conversation with the American people about
their heritage.” When asked whether the Smithsonian “trusts” its audience, he responds with a firm
“Yes,” but with a wry acknowledgement that work
needs to be done to break down the hierarchies and
categories of academic life. “I’m absolutely optimistic about public culture in America. We have proven
at the Smithsonian that democracy is compatible
with the highest aspirations of culture. I never worry
that democracy degrades culture; I never worry that
popularity is a problem. What I worry about is that
people will be narrow in their appreciation of what
culture represents. Quality is not a consideration
foreign to democracy.” So while retaining the Gallery’s traditional mission, Pachter has overseen the
broadening of the definition of who has contributed to the history of America. One of Pachter’s
accomplishments as director was to eliminate the
“ten-years dead” rule for admission to the permanent collection, which thereby gives a more contemporary feel to the Gallery’s assemblage of worthies.
And in the Gallery’s exhibition spaces, modern
means of portrayal, including video portraits, are
explored alongside likenesses in more traditional
media. Pachter’s favorite word is “conversation” to
describe how the museum interacts with the public.
“We need to tap into all the arts; this is not just a
museum of visual culture. The concept of portrayal
needs to broaden through the arts, and through that
I hope we can engage the public in a conversation
about what greatness means.”
When asked whether he had ever expected to
be named director of the National Portrait Gallery,
Pachter responded that he hadn’t focused his career
on gaining the directorship but that his long-held
affection for the Gallery and its mission made him
accept the job when it was offered. He thought that
the Gallery’s viability was at stake and that his skill
set and experiences, both academic and personal,
would be useful. Pachter finds it ironic that he, “who
was a child of the sixties,” would have developed an
appreciation for bureaucracy over the course of his
career: “Sure, bureaucracy can be maddening, but
you grow to respect it, and learn to operate within
it, because it’s only through it—and organizational
memory—that you can keep valuable, complex institutions alive and flourishing. The problem happens
when bureaucracy becomes the point of an institution
rather than a means to achieve its higher goals.”
“The National Portrait Gallery treasures its
autonomy within the family of the Smithsonian
and treasures, too, its association with portrait
galleries around the world. We share a mission
to present history through the arts. I hope nothing will compromise that independent mission in
the future.” Having steered the NPG through one
remaking, Marc Pachter has a bittersweet sense of
awareness that it will be up to a new director to
write the next chapter in the Gallery’s history. Marc’s Favorites:
Hero: Abraham Lincoln Motto:
Living well is the best revenge Favorite food: Fresh apricots Favorite place
I’d like to be right now:
Sydney, Australia, at the Art
House Hotel Best meal I ever had:
Sixtieth birthday party: roast
suckling pig with family and
friends in a grand London
restaurant
Favorite portrait:
Thomas Eakins’s painting of
Walt Whitman (Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts) Favorite album:
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band Favorite movie: Everything Is
Illuminated Favorite play: A Streetcar
Named Desire Favorite actor: Derek Jacobi Favorite TV program:
Family (ABC, by Mike Nichols) Favorite book:
David Copperfield by Charles
Dickens
Favorite historic period:
1880–1914— the era of
cosmopolitanism Most influenced by: Novels
of Henry James Mark Gulezian
Secret vice: “Well then it
wouldn’t be secret, would it
now?” At the invitation of Marc Pachter, directors of
portrait galleries throughout the world convened in
Washington in April. Pictured with Pachter are (left
to right): Andrew Sayers (Australia), Lilly Koltun
(Canada), Pachter, Avenal McKinnon (New Zealand),
and Sandy Nairne (Great Britain).
Least favorite trait:
Deviousness Favorite trait:
Trustworthiness Achievement: Saving the
“Lansdowne” portait of George
Washington for the NPG and
the nation
Marc Pachter Bids NPG Adieu The National Portrait Gallery is pleased to
announce a new initiative to expand and enhance
its collection with the establishment of the Marc
Pachter Fund for commissioning portraits. Appropriately named in honor of the Gallery’s retiring
director, whose vision has broadened our overall
collecting efforts, the fund will provide NPG with
a new opportunity to commission portraits of
living subjects for our permanent collection.
The Gallery celebrates the lives of individuals
who have made a difference in our nation’s history.
The works in our collection not only speak to a subject’s particular achievements but also help us tell his
or her story. Poets and presidents, visionaries and
villains, actors and activists — all enter the Gallery
through generous donations, judicious purchases,
or, in the future, commissions. During his tenure
as director, Marc Pachter has had a strong desire
to establish a commissioning process and expand
NPG’s definition of portraiture from the traditional
media—painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, and
photography—to include such new media as video,
as well as the performing arts. Pachter has often
talked about the Gallery as a “dinner party with
history” that showcases all the ways in which lives
are portrayed.
The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition has provided one vehicle for commissions:
the winner of the triennial competition receives a
commission to create a portrait for the Gallery’s
permanent collection. The first such work, by
2006 OPBC winner David Lenz, is expected to be
unveiled in 2008.
Pachter’s vision is to build upon NPG’s current
efforts by making it possible to annually commission other portraits of individuals. This will enable
us to expand our representation of contemporary
leaders in a variety of fields. For example, the Gallery has found it difficult, for various reasons, to
locate images of certain types of subjects, including scientists, environmentalists, educators, and
business leaders. Commissioning will allow us to
address those gaps. But it also presents an exciting
opportunity to broaden the collection by presenting the work of younger artists and increasing our
range of media. It is the creation of the Pachter
fund that allows this to happen.
The commissioning process is always a balancing act between artist and sitter. Matching an individual with a suitable artist—the most important
part of the process—takes time. By experimenting
with new media, such as video, encouraging young
artists, or approaching more established artists
Commissioning Fund
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Commissioning Fund Established in Honor
of Marc Pachter
Alexander Raho’s 2004 portrait of Judi Dench is the
result of a commission by the British National Portrait
Gallery.
who may not normally undertake portrait commissions, new and exciting projects can be born. Commissioning portraits brings vitality to the collection
and also helps ensure that portraiture remains a
vital force in contemporary art.
We have learned from our sister institution in
London how successful this process can be. Our
current exhibition, “Great Britons: Treasures from
the National Portrait Gallery, London,” includes
a number of important examples from the British Portrait Gallery’s own commissioning program—now in place for more than twenty-five
years. “Great Britons” includes portraits of Salman
Rushdie, Sir Ian McKellan, Thomas Ades, Dame
Judi Dench, and David Beckham. Artist Alexander Raho, for example, has captured Dench in a
way that allows the viewer to imagine her in any
role. She is portrayed in everyday clothes, and the
subtlety and simplicity of her full-length portrait
has an immense visual effect.
Establishing this new fund will honor Marc
Pachter’s vision of the National Portrait Gallery. If you would like to learn more about the
Marc Pachter Fund, please contact Sherri Weil at
[email protected] or (202) 633-8297. The National Portrait Gallery
A Poem by Robert Pinsky
I
n every face some trace of the enigma that causes
Foliage brief atop the long rootstalk that plunges
Straight down through the tangled, mineral dark.
(Who was the wounded soldier, who was the nurse?)
In any tenement or tower, that same underforce:
The spaces and uses vary, as the visible withers but
The frame keeps rigid, the foundation reaches for bedrock.
(Who were the waltzers, what was the cause?)
Implicit in every portrait the concealed, vertical taproot
Suckles the beauty or ingenuity, the exploits and devisings
Of war or statecraft, tributes and poses—Walt Whitman
(What was the wound, what was in the glass cases?)
Photographed with a fake butterfly alit on his knuckle:
His token of natural harmony contrived, with purposeful
Industry like a caterpillar’s, from painted cardboard.
(What was the place, what was it for?)
The Union soldier was D. F. Russell, shot in the bladder.
The nurse Whitman was more of a social worker.
The place was the old Patent Office Building—
An improvised military hospital and morgue, the cots
Among glass cases holding thousands of miniature
Models of inventions. In the same hall hundreds waltzed
At the second inaugural ball of Abraham Lincoln.
The models, mahogany and brass, were lost in a fire.
Blood from the lash paid for by blood from the sword.
Gallery of inventors, soldiers, dancers, slaveholders,
Slaves, all stepping into the jaws of memory—and To thee
Old cause! he wrote, Thou peerless, Passionate
Good cause, Thou stern remorseless, sweet
Idea, Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands
. . . I think all war through time was really fought,
And ever will be really fought, for thee.
Robert Pinsky, three-time poet laureate of the
United States and author of many books, including
The Figured Wheel, was commissioned to write
a poem celebrating the history and reopening of
the National Portrait Gallery in July 2006. The
poem has also been published as a fine art, limited
edition broadside. The poem and the broadside
were underwritten by a grant from the Reva and
David Logan Foundation. For further information,
contact David C. Ward at [email protected]. HISTORIAN’S CHOICE Carlton Fisk
Oil on cotton duck by Susan Miller-Havens (born 1944), 1993,
gift of Peter C. Aldrich, in memory of Duane C. Aldrich of Atlanta, Georgia
Historian’s Choice
© Susan Miller-Havens
A prominent baseball expert has ranked Hall-ofFame catcher Carlton Fisk (born 1947) as the sixthgreatest major-league catcher of all time, behind only
Yogi Berra, Johnny Bench, Roy Campanella, Mickey
Cochrane, and Mike Piazza.
Fisk’s offensive statistics and
his longevity are remarkable.
He holds the record for the
number of games played as
a catcher (2,226), and is second only to Piazza in home
runs hit as a catcher (351).
A major leaguer for twentyfour seasons—first with the
Boston Red Sox, then with
the Chicago White Sox—Fisk
made the All-Star team eleven times. In 1972, he was the
first player to be unanimously
chosen Rookie of the Year, a
year in which he won a Gold
Glove and was tied for the
lead in triples (9), the last
time a catcher led the league
in that category. Fisk hit seventy-two home runs after the
age of forty, a major-league
record, and in 1991, at the
age of forty-three, he was the
oldest player to get a hit in
the All-Star game. Fisk hit
twenty or more home runs in
eight seasons, with a career
high of thirty-seven in 1985.
Although statistics are important in baseball,
Fisk is much more than the sum of his numbers.
The catcher’s position in baseball is physically the
most demanding, but Fisk’s longevity and his ability to come back from serious injury mark him as
a tough guy even among catchers. He played the
game hard, demanded a lot from his teammates,
and even expected the opposition to play the game
the right way. In one memorable episode, Yankee
player Deion Sanders, a talented football player
who thought he could play baseball, hit a pop fly
and, with Fisk yelling at him to run it out, refused
to run to first base. When Sanders next came to bat,
Fisk angrily told him, loud enough to be heard on
the Yankee bench, “If you don’t play it [the game]
right, I’m going to kick your ass right here in Yankee
Stadium.” The shocked Sanders later apologized.
There is one game, however, which many fans
consider the defining moment in Fisk’s career: game
six of the 1975 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox. The Sox were
a very strong team that year, and the “Red Sox
Nation” was hopeful that the “curse”—allegedly
dooming Boston in World Series competition after it sold
Babe Ruth to the Yankees in
1919—would be broken. But
Cincinnati had its “Big Red
Machine,” boasting one of
the most powerful batting
lineups in baseball history. In
the eighth inning of game six,
the Reds, with a 3–2 game
advantage in the series, had
a 6–3 lead, but the Sox tied
the game up with a threerun pinch-hit homer in the
bottom of the inning. In the
ninth, the Sox had the bases
loaded and no outs. They
failed to score, however, and
the game went into extra
innings. Only a spectacular
catch by Boston outfielder
Dwight Evans prevented
Cincinnati from scoring in
the top of the eleventh. At
12:33 a.m., Fisk led off in the
bottom of the twelfth and
blasted a ball high and deep
down the left-field line. It
was unquestionably a home
run, if it stayed fair. All those in Fenway Park and
watching on TV will never forget Fisk at home plate,
jumping wildly up and down, frantically waving the
ball to the right side of the foul pole, using all his
body language and willpower to direct the ball fair.
Mind may have triumphed over matter, because the
ball hit the foul pole for a game-winning home run.
The “curse” would hold, as the Reds went on to take
game seven and the series, but Fisk expressed it best:
“The Red Sox won that series, 3 games to 4.”
Susan Miller-Havens, who works out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in sports figures,
and painted this portrait and three others of Fisk
from video sources. Sidney Hart
Senior Historian and Editor,
Peale Family Papers
For further reading: Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2003).
CURATOR’S CHOICE Rachel Carson
Gelatin silver print by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1962
Frank H. Goodyear III
Assistant Curator of Photographs
In a 1962 Life magazine profile of Rachel Carson
(1907–1964), the former government biologist claimed “no wish to start a Carrie Nation
crusade” with the publication of her new book,
Silent Spring. A private and soft-spoken individual,
Carson possessed a temperament wholly different than
that of the famous hatchetwielding temperance leader.
Yet in envisioning a future
where the sounds of spring
are absent, Silent Spring
provoked a heated controversy about the unrestricted
use of chemical pesticides.
Her writings—and later
congressional testimony—
would lead not only to the
banning of DDT and other
poisonous agents, but would
precipitate broad changes
in the public’s understanding of and appreciation for
the delicate relationship
between mankind and the
natural environment.
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s
portrait—published alongside Carson’s Life profile and recently acquired by the National Portrait
Gallery—shows the fifty-five-year-old Carson
behind a microscope at her Silver Spring, Maryland, home. Although it was her lyricism as a
writer that made her books national best-sellers,
Carson was always proud of her work as a scientist. In 1936, when she accepted her first fulltime job, as a marine biologist at the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, she was one of only two
female professionals at the agency. Throughout
her career, Carson remained dedicated to field
research and ever curious about the natural world
around her.
Although she was an acclaimed writer before
the publication of Silent Spring, having won a
National Book Award in 1951 for The Sea Around
Us, it was her investigation into the harm of manmade pollutants in Silent Spring that placed her at
the center of a national battle between the chemical industry and a growing legion of environmental supporters. Likening the effects of pesticides
to those of atomic radiation, she stated, “I wrote
the book because I think there is a great danger
that the next generation will have no chance to
know nature as we do—if we don’t preserve it the
damage will be irreversible.”
Adversaries soon lined up to contest her findings. Despite fifty-five pages of scientific endnotes,
many characterized her as
a “hysterical woman” and
accused her of lacking scientific credentials; a former
Department of Agriculture
secretary even labeled her a
Communist. Yet President
John F. Kennedy took notice
and called for a further
investigation of the issues the
book raised. Before a Senate
subcommittee, Carson reiterated that environmental
pollution is one of the “major
problems of modern life.” A
subsequent special report
confirmed her findings and
helped pave the way for dramatic changes in the use of
pesticides. DDT— developed during World War II
and widely used in domestic
agriculture—was eventually banned in the United
States, in 1972.
“It’s always so easy to assume that someone
else is taking care of things,” Carson reflected
about her experience. “People say, ‘We wouldn’t
be allowed to use these things if they were dangerous.’ It just isn’t so. Trusting so-called authority
is not enough. A sense of personal responsibility is what we desperately need.” While Carson
never anticipated becoming a nationally renowned
figure, her search for truth highlighted the ecological impact of new technologies and provoked
others to action. Tragically, Carson died of breast
cancer only eighteen months after Silent Spring’s
publication. As this year marks the one-hundredth
anniversary of her birth, the National Portrait
Gallery salutes her remarkable contributions to
the environmental movement that she so modestly
helped to nurture. For further reading: Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness
for Nature (New York: Henry Holt, 1997)
Curator’s Choice Art Meets Chemistry and Preserves History
Julie Heath
10 Art Meets Chemistry
NPG paper conservator Rosemary Fallon studies a
portrait print at the light table.
Eugene Young
“When an art conservator tries to make her work
invisible to the museum visitor—but identifiable
to other conservators—how does she decide what
materials to use?” This was just one of the thoughtprovoking questions asked by a sophomore from
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and
Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia, during
a recent visit to the Lunder Conservation Center
in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American
Art and Portraiture. Nineteen students, most from
an advanced placement chemistry course, participated in a cross-disciplinary program on March
27 in which they visited the shared conservation
laboratories of the National Portrait Gallery and
the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The conservation staff encouraged students to
consider the ethics of art conservation while demonstrating techniques used for examining artwork.
After donning safety goggles, one group looked
on as paintings conservator Lou Molnar darkened the room and directed two ultraviolet lamps
toward a portrait of a young woman. Areas of
inpaint, imperceptible in ambient light, absorbed
ultraviolet radiation and appeared as dark spots
under UV. The conservators explained to the students that the paint chosen by the conservator
for the inpainting treatment fluoresces differently
from the artist’s material so future conservators
will be able to readily distinguish the conservator’s
work from that of the artist. The conservator’s
medium was also chosen for its ease of removal,
a conservation concept known as “reversability.”
Other examination techniques—including the use
of raking light, infrared light, and X-radiography—filled the remaining thirty-minute visit to
the Paintings Lab. Before moving on, one student
lingered, seemingly transfixed by the X-ray film
revealing painted layers beneath a Matthew Pratt
portrait.
The Thomas Jefferson–Lunder program resulted
from seven months of planning between the Lunder
staff and two enthusiastic educators. Milde Waterfall, a humanities teacher, and Kendal Orenstein,
a chemistry teacher, saw in art conservation an
opportunity to teach about the intersection of art
and science. Each identified concepts that students
should take away from the experience. Waterfall
wanted students to see how conservators formulated
questions as a means of problem-solving. Orenstein
wanted the students to witness applied chemistry in
the arts. As part of the preparation, they scheduled
Jim Waterfall
Lunder Conservation Center
Programs Coordinator
NPG paintings conservator Lou Molnar points to a
detail in a X-ray.
a pre-visit lecture in which the students were introduced to terms and concepts of art conservation.
This gave them a base from which to build their
knowledge in each of the labs.
In the Objects Lab, the students learned about
corrosion and patination. They watched the application of patina on a bronze sculpture and discussed
the importance of understanding the chemical stability of materials. They learned how conservators
conduct material-corrosion tests (called Oddy Tests)
through increases in temperature and humidity to
approximate acceleration of degradation in materials that may come into contact with artwork—such
as those used in mounts and display environments.
During the visit to the Paper Lab, conservator Rosemary Fallon walked the students through an examination of a hand-colored print. She queried them on
what condition problems they observed as she set
the print on a light table to talk about the use of
transmitted light in the examination process.
All of us in the Lunder Conservation Center
hope to use our new glass-walled venue to raise
public awareness about conservation. Creating
strong cross-disciplinary programs for students is
one objective. The Thomas Jefferson students provided a great prototype for a high school art/chemistry program. With any luck, these students will be
part of the next generation of chemists, engineers,
and materials scientists who will collaborate with
our conservators and conservation scientists. Book Review
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American
Imagination by Neal Gabler (Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 2006), 851 pp.
Historian
Walt Disney’s 1966 New York Times obituary
described him as America’s “dream merchant” and
the “fantasist of our times.” Others noted that his
legacy of pure-hearted heroes and awesome villains
was “a part of growing up for every human being
on this earth.” His reinvention of the amusement
park at Disneyland “wrought a minor revolution in
American family life”—not to mention an international incident in 1959, when Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev, denied a tour of the park for security
reasons, threw a rocket-rattling tantrum.
Neal Gabler has written such previously wellreceived books as An Empire of Their Own: How
the Jews Invented Hollywood and Winchell:
Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity. For
this biography, he was the first writer to be given
complete access to the Disney Archives, and he
spent seven years meticulously exploring Disney’s
life and career, from his years as a pioneer of animation to his evolution into a mogul overseeing an
empire encompassing film, television, theme parks,
music, book publishing, and merchandise. In this,
Disney was the last of the one-man studios that
had created Hollywood.
Gabler’s depiction of Disney (1901–1966) is rich,
as he follows his journey from an unhappy, smalltown Missouri boyhood into the world of animation that he helped to invent—an act, Gabler writes,
that was “the creation of a wounded man . . . devising a better world of his imagination.” The journey
that began with seven-minute
cartoons and the emergence of
Mickey Mouse morphed into
feature-length animated films
such as Snow White and ultimately led to television and
movies using live actors. Along
the way, Mickey was joined by
Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy,
Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella,
Pinocchio, and the Sleeping
Beauty. In the early 1930s,
The Three Little Pigs provided
bright relief in the Depression, and the theme—“Who’s
Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf”—
became a musical antidote to
hard times. In the early days of
television, ABC
owed its success
as a network to
the popularity
of Davy Crockett—“the king
of the wild frontier.” And who
else but Walt
Disney could
have corralled
such a beacon
of high culture as Leopold Stokowski
to collaborate on Fantasia?
The personal Disney is less knowable, and less
interesting: he was a man obsessed by his work.
Retreating into his own imaginative world “set a
pattern. His life would become an ongoing effort
to devise . . . an invented universe that he could
control as he could not control reality.” For Gabler,
Disney’s essence was that “he kept attempting to
remake the world in the image of his own imagination.”
Gabler’s lengthy work is a good balance to Richard Schickel’s classic 1968 biography, The Disney
Version, a far more negative character study that
located Disney “in all his two dimensions.” Steven
Watts had begun to revise this critical view with
his 1997 study The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney
and the American Way of Life, in which he charted
Disney’s move from the “sentimental populism”
of the Depression to a celebratory “sentimental
libertarianism” of the Cold
War. Gabler continues this
positive revision, portraying
Disney as a leading figure in
establishing “American popular culture as the dominant
culture in the world.” This is
an extremely detailed, occasionally entertaining, and
often revealing study that
will appeal to those interested in animation and Hollywood history. © The Condé Nast Publications, Inc.
Amy Henderson
Walt Disney by Edward
Steichen, 1933; bequest of
Edward Steichen
Book Review 11
Brett Cook in Residence at Duke Ellington
School for the Arts
Jobyl A. Boone
12 Brett Cook in Residence
William Harris (left) and Ellington students with Brett Cook (back center)
with some form of meditation or
mental exercise to encourage the
students to let go of the day’s distractions and focus on the present
moment. One day they peeled an
orange and chewed each section
twenty times, thinking of flavor,
smell, and taste. On other days,
they practiced rudimentary yoga
poses in the hallway.
Over the course of his residency, Cook, together with the
students, implemented the various elements that in the end
came together to form the content of the murals. The students
took photographs of each other,
and of teachers, as well as group
portraits of their peers throughout the school. They traced and
colored the portraits and also
conveyed their ideas about “community” and “peace” onto the
murals in transcribed phrases
and sentences. On the final day
of the project, the entire population of the school was invited to
participate in coloring the words
and images that were the result
of Cook’s collaboration with the
students, and of the students’ collaboration with each other.
On the last afternoon, the
students were asked to contribute some final thoughts about the
project. As a recorder was passed
around the room, it became
evident that the students were
changed by their encounter with
Brett Cook. New friendships had
formed, a new respect for one
another had taken root, and the
students were sincere enough to
record their words of gratitude for
the experience. Those who had
spoken quietly and infrequently
during the previous nine days had
substantive things to say, and the
more outspoken in the group did
not interrupt their classmates as
they had formerly. Cook succeeded in revealing the power
and value of collective endeavors
to the Ellington students, and if
asked, he would certainly relate
a litany of things he himself had
learned from the collaboration.
“Portraiture Now: Framing
Memory” opened on May 25,
2007, and features the work of
Alfredo Arreguín, Brett Cook,
Kerry James Marshall, Tina
Mion, and Faith Ringgold. Jobyl A. Boone
In the spirit of the National
Portrait Gallery’s new focus on
contemporary portraiture, artist
and educator Brett Cook spent
ten days in January with twentyfive students at Washington,
D.C.’s public magnet school, the
Duke Ellington School for the
Arts. William Harris’s first- and
second-year visual arts students
were guided through a curriculum designed by Cook to inspire
creativity and reveal what can be
accomplished through collaboration. The students created four
18 x 4-foot murals featuring selfand group portraits, which were
then transferred onto highly
reflective Mylar sheets. Two
of the murals are displayed in
NPG’s exhibition “Portraiture
Now: Framing Memory”; the
other two works have been given
to the Duke Ellington School.
Brett Cook believes that life
is a collaborative endeavor in
which we should contemplate
the lessons others may teach us,
while being aware of what we
may offer to others. His work has
included self-portraits as well as
portraits of recognizable individuals—including Martin Luther
King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi—
whose works or teachings have
had a positive impact on society.
Committed to social change,
Cook also seeks to give an image
and a voice to those groups who
are often overlooked, and has
completed projects that focus
on homelessness, the impact of
gentrification, and police brutality. In his many public and collaborative ventures, the faces he
wishes to capture are the participants themselves—those he calls
“the regular folks.”
Cook captured the Ellington
students’ attention immediately.
Each day, he began his class
Jobyl A. Boone
Research Associate, Office
of the Deputy Director
Omotayo Akinbolaja and Clarence
Anderson trace their projected
portraits onto mirrored paper.
About Face: Seeing
Yourself in the NPG
“Face to Face”: Beyond
the Label
Ian Cooke
Aileen Kelleher with her photograph by Dawoud Bey
Chicago resident Keith Kelleher got the surprise of
his life last winter when a friend called from Washington to say that he had just seen a photograph
of Keith’s daughter, Aileen, in an exhibition at the
National Portrait Gallery. When a business trip
brought Kelleher to Washington in January 2007,
he headed to the Gallery’s “Portraiture Now” show,
where he saw his daughter’s larger-than-life portrait
by photographer Dawoud Bey for the very first time.
Eager to learn how Aileen’s portrait had found its
way to the Gallery, Kelleher stopped at the Reynolds
Center’s visitor services desk. There, a volunteer put
him in touch with NPG’s curator of photographs,
Ann Shumard, who recounted how Bey’s portraits
of Aileen and ten other Chicago teenagers had been
selected for the Gallery’s inaugural “Portraiture
Now” exhibition.
In March, Aileen Kelleher and her parents made
a special trip to Washington to see her portrait. Welcomed to NPG by Shumard, Aileen (now a student
at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois) recalled that
Bey photographed her, along with several other
program participants, during a 2001 summer photography workshop in Chicago. She enjoyed her
encounter with Bey but never saw his portrait of
her and later assumed that he had not been pleased
with it. While Aileen stood talking not far from her
portrait, visitors to the Gallery did double-takes as
they recognized her as the subject of the photograph.
Somewhat embarrassed by all the attention, Aileen
gamely posed for several pictures beside her portrait before she and family headed off to explore the
Gallery’s other exhibitions and to look for portraits
by Aileen’s favorite artist, Andy Warhol. One-hundred forty words. That’s the maximum
our historians and curators can use in exhibition
labels describing the fascinating, accomplished, and
influential people represented in our portraits. To
offer the public some of the stories that won’t fit
that format, the Gallery presents “Face to Face,” a
series of portrait talks by museum staff and special
guests. “Face to Face” goes beyond the label to
explore provenance and personalities, giving our
staff a welcome chance to talk with visitors.
Historian Amy Henderson gave her first “Face
to Face” presentation in March, about Isamu
Noguchi’s portrait bust of Ginger Rogers. What
the label doesn’t say is that Noguchi created the
bust while held in a Japanese American internment
camp in Arizona during World War II. Henderson brought copies of Noguchi’s letters to Rogers,
which had been given to the Gallery in 2003.
Just as the staff hoped, “Face to Face” has
become a Thursday-evening meeting place for
people who share an interest in history, art, or
people. On their way from work to the Penn Quarter nightlife (or our Portico Café), visitors can spend
half an hour with Josephine Baker, Robert Oppenheimer, or Elvis Presley. “I’d rather get to happy
hour with a new tidbit about Andy Warhol than
with a head full of work,” said visitor Lisa Baker.
One of our frequent presenters is Ann Shumard,
curator of photographs and a lifelong baseball fan.
Shumard recently brought a group “face to face”
with Russell Hoban’s portrait of Mickey Mantle
and Roger Maris, painted during the 1961 battle
for the single-season home-run crown. As the conversation evolved, Ann learned that her audience
included witnesses to Maris’s fifty-second and fiftyninth home runs that year!
The stories that enliven connections among artists, subjects, staff, and visitors do not always fit on
a label text. One great way to see into the lives we
collect at the National Portrait Gallery is “Face to
Face,” on Thursdays from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Amy Baskette
Amy Baskette
Public Program Producer
Frank Goodyear discusses Chief Joseph in a “Face to
Face” talk.
About Face / Face to Face 13
NPG Exhibitions
Opening Soon
Félix Colón de Larriátegui by
Francisco de Goya, 1794. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, bequest
of Mr. and Mrs. Herman C. Krannert
© 1983 The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Legacy: Spain and the United
States in the Age of Independence,
1763–1848
Second floor
Through portraits and authentic documents, this exhibition
demonstrates Spain’s key role
in the Revolutionary War and
the founding of the new nation.
Figures represented include
Carlos III, the Count of Floridablanca, George Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, and even
Davy Crockett. Organized by
the National Portrait Gallery,
Sociedad Estatal para la Acción
Cultural Exterior (SEACEX),
Smithsonian Latino Center, and
the Fundacion-Consejo EspañaEstados Unidos. The exhibition
has been made possible by a
generous grant from the Walt
Disney Company. Additional
support has been provided by
BBVA, Grupo Barceló, Iberdrola,
and Iberia. September 27, 2007,
through February 10, 2008. Let Your Motto Be Resistance:
African American Portraits
Second floor
African Americans have been
inspired by the words of abolitionist and clergyman Henry
Highland Garnet, who advocated action when speaking at
a gathering of free blacks in
1843: “Strike for your lives and
liberties. . . . Let your motto be
Resistance! . . . What kind of resistance you . . . make you must
decide by the circumstances that
surround you.” The photographs
in this exhibition, which are all
from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, illuminate the
variety of ways that African
Americans resisted, redefined,
and accommodated in an America that needed but rarely accepted its black citizens. Organized
by the newly established National Museum of African American
History and Culture, the exhibition will go on a national tour in
spring 2008. October 19, 2007,
through March 2, 2008. Jessye Norman by Irving Penn, 1983
(printed 1985), gift of Irving Penn
Currently on View
Great Britons: Treasures from the National
Portrait Gallery, London Second floor
Organized by the British National Portrait Gallery,
this exhibition represents five centuries of history,
from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II. Through September 3, 2007.
Portraiture Now: Framing Memory First floor
“Framing Memory” highlights five artists—Alfredo
Arreguín, Brett Cook, Kerry James Marshall, Tina
Mion, and Faith Ringgold—who create remembered
likenesses of significant personalities to make broader
explorations of identity. Through January 6, 2008.
Harry Benson: Being There Second floor
For more than fifty years, photographer Harry
Benson has mapped the worlds of politics and culture, sports, and celebrity. This exhibition includes
images of the 1964 arrival of the Beatles in New
York and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in
1968. Organized by the Scottish National Portrait
Gallery, Edinburgh. Through September 3, 2007.
The Presidency and the Cold War
Second floor
Beginning with Yalta and ending with the collapse
of the Berlin Wall, this exhibition explores how U.S.
presidents dealt with the global struggle between the
United States and the Soviet Union. Through February 24, 2008.
Portraits of Sandra Day O’Connor
First floor
In October 2006 former Supreme Court Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor sat for a group of New York artists.
The exhibition shows the twenty-five resulting likenesses. Through October 8, 2007.
14 NPG at Home
New Arrivals First floor
“New Arrivals” features twenty-eight works that
have been acquired through gift or purchase over
the last seven years, and includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters, prints, and photographs of
subjects ranging from Louis Armstrong to Jefferson
Airplane, Susan Sontag to Lenny Bruce. Through
March 16, 2008. NPG Outreach
Useful Contacts
NPG’s main telephone number is
(202) 633-1000. The main
administrative telephone number
is (202) 633-8300.
NPG continues its domestic and international loans
with the following highlights:
Alice Neel’s 1980 self-portrait has made another international voyage
and is included in “The Naked Portrait” at the Scottish National
Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, through September 2, 2007.
Native South Dakotan Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer will be celebrated
with a retrospective exhibition at the South Dakota Art Museum in
Brookings, from August 22, 2007, through March 2, 2008. NPG
is lending two oil portraits by the artist: Dwight D. Eisenhower
and Edward Stettinius.
“Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist,” the first retrospective
dedicated to the work of Douglas, will open at the Spencer Museum
of Art at the University of Kansas on September 8. Included are
NPG’s portraits of Douglas by Betsy Graves Reyneau, Roland
Hayes by Winold Reiss, and the Scottsboro Boys by Douglas.
Portaits of and by Miguel Covarrubias will be included in “Mexican Treasures of the Smithsonian,” part of the Smithsonian Latino
Center’s 2007 celebration of Mexico, which will be on view at the
S. Dillon Ripley Center International Gallery in Washington, D.C,
from September 4 through November 11, 2007.
© Center for Creative Photography
The four-hundredth anniversary celebration of the founding of
Jamestown, Virginia, continues. From October 2007 through
mid-January 2008, the painting of Pocahontas after Simon van
de Passe—which rarely travels because of its importance to our
installation and its delicate condition—will go on view in “The
World of 1607.”
Miguel Covarrubias by Edward
Weston, 1926
Catalog of American Portraits
phone:
web:
(202) 633-8260
www.npg.si.edu and
click on “Research”
e-mail: [email protected]
Office of Conservation
Conservation consultations are available
for the public on Thursdays from 10:00
a.m. to 12:00 p.m. by appointment only.
phone: CindyLou Molnar
(for paintings and sculpture)
(for art on paper)
e-mail:
phone:
e-mail:
[email protected]
Rosemary Fallon
(202) 633-5810
[email protected]
Office of Development
Sherri Weil
(202) 633-8297
e-mail: [email protected]
phone:
Office of Public Affairs
Bethany Bentley
(202) 633-8293
e-mail: [email protected]
phone:
Office of Education
phone: (202) 633-8500
(school and community programs,
teacher resources, and internships)
phone: (202) 633-8520
(information and reservations for
public programs)
web: www.npg.si.edu and
click on Education
or Events & Programs
e-mail: [email protected]
Office of Photographic Services
phone:
web:
(202) 633-8320
www.npg.si.edu
and click on Rights & Reproductions
Office of Publications
Visit the NPG website to order NPG
publications
phone: (202) 633-8340
web:
www.npg.si.edu and Aaron Douglas by Betsy Graves
Reyneau, 1952, gift of the Harmon
Foundation
(202) 633-5822
e-mail:
click on Publications
[email protected]
See other exhibition-related web features at www.npg.si.edu
NPG Outreach 15
Portrait Puzzlers
2.
Nominated for ten
Academy Awards, this
cinematographer had
a career that stretched
from Drums of Fate
(1923) to Funny Lady
(1975).
3.
4.
The basis for the onehundred-dollar bill,
this portrait features
a subject who is one
of only two non-presidents portrayed on U.S.
paper currency.
This foreign poster for
The Scarlett Empress
features one of Hollywood’s screen legends,
a German-born actress
known for her sultry
voice and smoldering
sensuality.
© Ryan McGinley
© George Hurrell Jr.
1.
This swimming phenomenon made a splash
at the 2004 Summer
Olympics and recently
set five world records
in five days at the 2007
World Championships in
Melbourne, Australia.
Answers: 1. James Wong Howe (1899–1976) by George Hurrell, gelatin silver print, 1942 2. Michael Phelps (born 1985)
by Ryan McGinley, chromogenic print, 2004 3. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, oil on canvas, c. 1785, gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation 4. Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) by W. Palle, color
lithographic poster, 1934. All images are details.
Catch NPG on TV!
What do Tom Selleck, Gary Sinese, Lynn Whitfield, and Beau Bridges have in common?
All have portrayed on film people who are also represented in NPG’s collections. These
fine actors will soon be featured in public service announcements (PSAs) that invite
people to visit the National Portrait Gallery. The PSAs will be airing across the country on both television and radio stations. In addition, you will soon be able to watch
the PSAs from www.npg.si.edu.
The National Portrait Gallery is grateful to the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation,
Whidbey Island Films, and these actors for their generous support of this project.
Washington DC 20013-7012
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Penalty for Private Use $300
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