DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (NPG) -- Exhibit: Recent Acquisitions (2012):
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Description of Pictures: Recent Acquisitions
November 9, 2012 – October 27, 2013
On view are works recently aquired by the museum, including paintings of Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Adolph Ochs; a bronze of Ethel Waters; photographs of Marjorie Merriweather Post, Mary Pickford, and Muhammad Ali; and prints of George Washington and Samuel Adams.
A commissioned portrait of General Colin Powell by artist Ron Sherr goes on view outside the exhibition entrance on December 3, 2012.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SIPGRE_121215_002.JPG: David Alexander Payne, 1811-1893
A leader of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church for more than half a century, Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne contributed substantially to its growth and advocated for the formal education of its clergy. A free person of color, Payne opened a school for African Americans in Charleston in 1828, but was forced to close it in 1834 when South Carolina outlawed the education of blacks. Moving to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he attended the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Payne became the first African American minister ordained by the Franckean Evangelical Lutheran Synod (1839). He joined the A.M.E. Church in 1841 and although some members of that denomination opposed his call for a standardized course of study for its ministers, his viewpoint prevailed, and he was elected a bishop in 1852. After purchasing Ohio's Wilberforce University in 1863, Payne served as president of the nation's first African American–administered institution of higher learning.
Frederick Gutekunst, c 1888
SIPGRE_121215_012.JPG: Laura Bridgman, 1829-1889
Laura Bridgman, who lost her sight and hearing at the age of two as a result of scarlet fever, would become the first blind and deaf American child to achieve an education. Unable to function at home, in 1837 she entered the care of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. Despite the common belief that little could be done to help Bridgman, Howe taught her to read and write. Bridgman spent the rest of her life at the Perkins Institute, where she assisted with other patients and sold examples of her sewing to visitors. Through her, Americans became aware of a class of people critically in need of assistance. She became an inspiration to many, notably to Helen Keller's mother, who hired a former pupil and teacher at the Perkins Institution to become her daughter's instructor.
Charles F. Conly, c 1883
SIPGRE_121215_020.JPG: John Ford, 1894-1973
John Ford was one of the most accomplished figures in Hollywood history. He spent fifty years acting, producing, and most notably directing both silent and sound films. He is best known for such Westerns as Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956), and his use of panoramic vistas in Monument Valley, Utah, became a hallmark of his work. One of the twentieth century's greatest directors, Ford completed most of his editing on camera and left very little film on the cutting room floor. He won four Academy Awards for Best Director and one for Best Documentary. During World War II, he worked with the United States Navy to train a documentary film unit, which he commanded throughout the war.
This photograph by Hollywood portraitist Roman Freulich shows Ford in his naval uniform. He continued to serve as a naval reserve officer after the war and attained the rank of rear admiral.
Roman Freulich, c 1944
SIPGRE_121215_031.JPG: Muhammad Ali, born 1942
Few American sportsmen have ever possessed athletic talents comparable to those of boxer Muhammad Ali; none with such abilities have ever equaled him for charisma and bravado. Born Cassius Clay, he first made national headlines after winning a gold medal at the 1960 Olympics. Turning professional, he began his assault on the boxing ranks, attaining the heavyweight crown in 1964. But as powerful as he was in the ring, it was his words and actions outside the ring that made him a larger-than-life figure. His outrageous boasts -- often in poetic verse -- won him a large following. However, when he joined the Nation of Islam in 1964 and changed his name, controversy ensued. His refusal to serve in Vietnam further angered many Americans and led boxing officials to strip him of his crown. After being reinstated, Ali would reclaim the heavyweight crown, lose it, and regain it again before retiring in 1981.
Michael Brennan, 1977
SIPGRE_121215_042.JPG: Keith Haring, 1958-1990
Artist Keith Haring stands before Unfinished Painting (1989), one of the last works he completed before his death from the AIDS virus. The painting serves as a poignant statement about a life cut short at the age of thirty-one. In this and other works during a meteoric career that lasted just over a decade, Haring demonstrated a commitment to various political and social causes, including apartheid, nuclear disarmament, and especially the AIDS crisis. He vaulted to public prominence initially as a graffiti artist whose comical and enigmatic cartoons started appearing in New York City's subway system. This success led him to mainstream fame in the art world. Although some critics expressed concern about his efforts to market his work to a mass audience, Haring believed that art should be as accessible as possible: "You can't just stay in your studio and paint; that's not the most effective way to communicate."
Wouter Deruytter, 1989
SIPGRE_121215_070.JPG: Henry Leland, 1843-1932
A pioneer in automobile manufacturing, Henry Leland demanded high quality and exacting specifications. In 1902 he was hired by Cadillac, and within two years he took over the firm. His use of precisely made, standardized interchangeable parts made it possible to mass-produce a high-performance luxury automobile. Leland's other advances included closed sedans, electric ignition -- which replaced dangerous hand cranks -- and the V–8 engine with thermostatic control. In 1917 he founded Lincoln Motor Company to build airplane engines during World War I. After the war he retooled the factory to produce the Lincoln luxury car. Distrustful of labor unions, Leland treated and paid his workers fairly to prevent discontent.
Financial difficulties and a postwar economic downturn forced Leland to sell his company to Henry Ford in 1922.
Leland was a striking figure with a shock of white hair and goatee, as shown here in this etching by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens.
Joseph Pierre Nuyttens, c 1909
SIPGRE_121215_082.JPG: Helene Sardeau, 1899-1968
Belgian-born artist Hélène Sardeau, who moved to New York as a young teenager, first gained attention while still in art school with a series of expressive, long-limbed doll portraits of actors and socialites modeled from life. Rudolf Valentino ordered 160 of his portrait dolls to display in movie theaters, and the press took notice. Subsequently Sardeau focused her career primarily on sculpture and large-scale bas-reliefs and her work was exhibited around the country and abroad. Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield praised her ability "to combine the classical form with modern thought and modern sensibility."
Marguerite Zorach's striking pencil portraits of friends and family, with their broad, stylized faces and almost surreal emphasis on heavily outlined oval eyes, suggest the influence of both Henri Matisse and Diego Rivera, whose work she would have seen during her early studies in Paris.
Marguerite Zorach, c 1935
SIPGRE_121215_091.JPG: George Biddle, 1885-1973
The Philadelphia-born social realist artist George Biddle was a strong advocate of government support for the arts. With the backing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a former classmate at Groton School, Biddle helped organize the Public Works of Art Project, which led to the formation of the Federal Art Project, a program of the Works Progress Administration. Among the thousands of artworks the program produced was Biddle's own mural, The Tenement, which he completed for the U.S. Department of Justice's building in Washington. During World War II, Biddle presided as chairman over the War Department's Art Advisory Committee, and in 1950 he was appointed to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. These portraits of Biddle and his wife, Belgian-born sculptor Hélène Sardeau, were drawn by their close friend Marguerite Zorach shortly after their 1931 marriage. They are a gift from the Biddles' son.
Marguerite Zorach, c 1935
SIPGRE_121215_108.JPG: Charles Willson Peale, 1741-1827
This meticulously rendered portrait depicts the accomplished artist, naturalist, engineer, and museum-founder Charles Willson Peale. Committed to the Revolutionary cause, Peale, who fought alongside George Washington, painted more than a thousand portraits of major American political and cultural figures. Peale's museum, which included the skeleton of a mastodon he helped exhume, attained scientific recognition and international fame. Late in life, Peale even became a dentist, pioneering in America the use of porcelain for false teeth.
The delicate details of this drawing were copied from an 1807 profile engraving by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin. The artist is most likely Peale's youngest son Titian Ramsay Peale II (1799–1885). Like his siblings, Titian expanded upon the scientific and artistic pursuits of his father and, as a budding naturalist and illustrator, demonstrates here the close observation and precise hatching that would characterize his ornithological and entomological sketches.
Attributed to Titian Ramsay Peale II, c. 1810-20
SIPGRE_121215_150.JPG: Henry Louis Gates Jr., born 1950
The author of numerous books, including Life Upon These Shores (2011), Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates is one of today's most prominent public intellectuals. He has cast a wide net of influence across generations with a variety of publications about African American history and culture, combined with frequent public appearances. Yugi Wang's portrait refers to 1975, when Gates "decided to become an academic." During that year, Gates was on a fellowship at Cambridge University, where he encountered professors Wole Soyinka and Anthony Appiah, whose books are included here on the table along with W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The sculpture next to them represents the Yoruba god Esu-Elegbara. Gates's analysis of the relevance of this god to black literary theory appears in his influential Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism (1988). Wang balances the composition with purple freesia, a reminder of springtime in Cambridge, England, and Gates's pivotal year there.
Yugi Wang, 2011
SIPGRE_121215_184.JPG: Colin L. Powell, born 1937
The son of Jamaican immigrants, retired four-star general Colin L. Powell decided on a military career while at City College of New York. He served in Vietnam, earning a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. A White House Fellowship brought him to the attention of Caspar Weinberger, who made Powell his aide upon becoming President Reagan's secretary of defense. While there, Powell helped to coordinate the invasion of Granada and bombing of Libya in 1986. Powell became national security advisor in 1987 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1991 and helped plan Operation Desert Storm. There, he enunciated what became known as the "Powell doctrine" of using "decisive force" to maximize success and minimize casualties, a reformulation of strategy resulting from the army's unhappiness with the way in which the United States fought the Vietnam War. In 2001 President George W. Bush appointed Powell to be the first African American secretary of state.
After visiting a number of sites relevant to Powell's career, artist Ronald Sherr placed him in front of Theodore Roosevelt Hall at National War College at Fort McNair in Washington.
Ronald N. Sherr, 2012
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2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired.
Trips this year:
three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA),
a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean,
another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and
my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc).
Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else..
Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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