Budget Cuts Hobble Library of Congress

 

(NYTimes) ... Just as military contractors, air traffic controllers and federal workers are coping with the grim results of a partisan impasse over the federal deficit, the Library of Congress, whose services range from copyrighting written works — whether famous novels or poems scribbled on napkins — to the collection, preservation and digitalization of millions of books, photographs, maps and other materials, faces deep cuts that threaten its historic mission. Continued

Drawings by a long-dead soldier to assist Camp Security fundraising efforts

York, PA (YDR) Friends of Camp Security are hoping that a man who's been dead for 183 years will help them raise money to purchase the site of the Revolutionary War prison camp.
Sgt. Roger Lamb, an Irishman who served with a regiment of Welsh riflemen during the Revolutionary War, was captured at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 and eventually -- two escapes later -- wound up incarcerated with other British prisoners at Camp Security.
Lamb wrote about his incarceration in his memoirs. His notes -- or perhaps manuscript -- include drawings of the camp and depictions of his eventual escape. Continued

George Caleb Bingham

 

(Wikipedia) George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 – July 7, 1879) was an American artist whose paintings of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s. By the time of his bicentennial in 2011, he was considered one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. That year the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement Of Paintings & Drawings announced the authentication of ten recently discovered paintings by Bingham; like all but about 5% of his works, they are unsigned. Continued

Titian Peale

(Wikipedia) - Titian Ramsay Peale (November 2, 1799 – March 13, 1885) was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Peale was first exposed to the study of natural history while assisting his father on his many excursions in search of specimens for the Peale Museum. The family moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where he began collecting and drawing insects and butterflies. Like his older brothers, Peale helped his father in the preservation of the museum's specimens for display, which included contributions from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Continued 

 

Zelda Fitzgerald

(Wikipedia) - Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (July 24, 1900–March 10, 1948), born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". After the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise, the Fitzgeralds became celebrities. The newspapers of New York saw them as embodiments of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties: young, rich, beautiful, and energetic. Continued

Photo: Zelda and Scott's grave in Rockville, Maryland (Wikipedia).

Howard Pyle

(Wikipedia) Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator and writer, primarily of books for young audiences. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.
In 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University), and after 1900 he founded his own school of art and illustration called the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The term the Brandywine School was later applied to the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region by Pitz (later called the Brandywine School). Some of his more famous students were Olive Rush, N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, and Jessie Willcox Smith. Continued  

Raphaelle Peale

(Wikipedia) Raphaelle Peale (sometimes spelled Raphael Peale) (February 17, 1774 – March 25, 1825) is considered the first professional American painter of still-life.
Peale was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the fifth child, though eldest surviving, of the painter Charles Willson Peale and his first wife Rachel Brewer. Continued

William Fox Talbot

(Wikipedia) William Henry Fox Talbot was a British inventor and a pioneer of photography, born on February 11, 1800 and died on September 17, 1877. He was the inventor of calotype process, the precursor to most photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium. His work in the 1840s on photo-mechanical reproduction led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process, the precursor to photogravure. Talbot is also remembered as the holder of a patent which, some say, affected the early development of commercial photography in Britain. Additionally, he made some important early photographs of Oxford, Paris, and York. Continued

Mathew Brady

 

(Wikipedia) Mathew B. Brady (1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and the documentation of the American Civil War. He is credited with being the father of photojournalism. Continued

Photos: Library of Congress

Tiffany-designed church interior a Baltimore landmark candidate

Louis Comfort Tiffany

(Baltimore Sun) More than a few East Coast buildings contain a Tiffany stained-glass window or two. But one structure in Baltimore can boast much more — a complete interior created by the famed designer, Louis Comfort Tiffany.
St. Mark's Lutheran Church on St. Paul Street is considered such an exceptional example of Tiffany's work that it has been recommended for designation as a Baltimore landmark. Only one other city building — the Senator Theatre — has an interior that was singled out for landmark status.
"St. Mark's is one of only a few intact Tiffany-designed interiors left in the world," said Lauren Schiszik, preservation planner and landmarks coordinator with Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation. "It's a glorious example of Tiffany's vision, and it's all there." Continued

Haussner's film shot in 1961

From the digital tour at the Baltimore Museum of Industry and the DVD, The Port that Built a City a short piece that includes an interview done by Helen Bentley in the stag bar at Haussner's and 16mm film footage of food being prepared and served.

Maryland House's historic art to be preserved, but won't return

(Aegis) The Maryland House on I-95 near Aberdeen may be known more for its fast food and bevy of bathrooms than for fine artwork, but its murals portraying Maryland history, that have adorned the travel plaza for more than 40 years, have a significant history of their own.
When the Maryland House went into what will be at least a one-year hibernation this past weekend, so did the mural pieces done by artist William A. Smith that depict significant events in Maryland's history and have long hung around the building.
The Maryland Transportation Authority says it is working to ensure the mural panels will survive the plaza's demolition and reconstruction. They will not, however, be a part of the new Maryland House. Continued

Lampooning the Union

(NYTimes) Early in the summer of 1862, Abraham Lincoln carved out time to sit quietly and craft the principles of the Emancipation Proclamation. He would reveal his plan to the cabinet on July 22, and announce it to the world on Sept. 22, after the Battle of Antietam. In those long, early days of summer, however, he told no one of his plan.
But he must have discussed it with a devil.
That was the conclusion of Adalbert Johann Volck, the most incisive Confederate political satirist. And he drew the proof: President Lincoln, hand to his head, deep in thought, a portrait of John Brown with a halo hanging nearby, the Constitution underfoot and a painting of the bloody Haitian slave revolt on the wall. And, of course, an impish little demon helpfully holding the president's inkwell.
Volck was hardly a typical pro-Southern, anti-Lincoln propagandist. Like many of his fellow German-Americans, he had left his native land because of his involvement in the revolution of 1848. After a few years in St. Louis and California he settled in Baltimore, where he worked as a dentist. He became politically active, and, like the renowned Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler (founder of Puck), he expressed his views in biting political cartoons. Continued

Photo: “Marylanders Crossing the Potomac to Join the Southern Army,” by Adalbert Volck 

Group hopes to restore Peale Museum into history, architecture center

(Baltimore Sun) After being closed to the public for nearly two decades, a new day may be dawning for the Peale Museum on Holliday Street if its planned restoration as the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture comes to fruition.
"I think it has lots of significance to Baltimore. It had been the city's first City Hall, an African-American school and where gas illumination was used by a company that eventually became BGE," said Walter Schamu, a partner in the firm of Schamu, Machowski, Grego Architects, which prepared restoration plans with consulting architect James T. Wollon Jr.
... Rembrandt Peale, the son of Maryland-born artist, naturalist and inventor Charles Willson Peale, commissioned Robert Cary Long to design a home for Peale's Baltimore Museum so he could display for the public his collections of paintings; American Indian and military artifacts; and stuffed birds, animals and fish.
The opening of the museum couldn't have come at a worse time — scarcely a month before the British bombardment of Baltimore on Sept. 13 and 14, 1814. Continued

Herbert Vogel, Fabled Art Collector, Dies at 89

(NYTimes) New York City teems with questionable urban legends. But the fable about the postal clerk and his wife, a Brooklyn librarian, scrimping to amass an astounding collection of modern art, cramming all 5,000 pieces in a rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment, then donating the whole kit and caboodle to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and galleries in all 50 states, is true. Continued

Take a trip through the Grateful Dead Archive Online

(boingboing) UC Santa Cruz launched the Grateful Dead Archive Online last Friday with tens of thousands of items. But it wouldn't be a Grateful Dead archive if all you could do was look at stuff, so you can also:
• Add your own photos and stories - you can even tell us a story over voicemail.
• Use the map to search for things related to a particular Dead show and venue - like photos, backstage passes, and envelopes that fans sent in to request tickets, and tapes from performances hosted at archive.org. Continued

Photo of Jerry Garcia by Susana Millman

Walters donates artwork images to Wikipedia

(Baltimore Sun) The Walters Art Museum is donating more than 19,000 images of artworks from its collection to the organization running Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that is created and edited by users.
The images will be available for Wikipedia articles in any language, and can be downloaded free of charge. Continued

A Movable Feast for the Eyes

(NYTimes) Like the family it chronicles, “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is fragmented and contentious, with flashes of brilliance.
The exhibition, which comes to the Met by way of the Grand Palais in Paris and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, explores the closely intertwined collections of the siblings Leo, Gertrude and Michael Stein (and Michael’s wife, Sarah). It casts these wealthy American expatriates as ahead-of-the-curve art patrons, whose tastes and social networks shaped Modernism as we know it. (They introduced Matisse to Picasso. Enough said.) Continued

Mrs. Lincoln, I Presume?

(NYTimes) For 32 years, a portrait of a serene Mary Todd Lincoln hung in the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Ill., signed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a celebrated painter who lived at the White House for six months in 1864.
The story behind the picture was compelling: Mrs. Lincoln had Mr. Carpenter secretly paint her portrait as a surprise for the president, but he was assassinated before she had a chance to present it to him.
Now it turns out that both the portrait and the touching tale accompanying it are false. Continued

Robert Hecht, Antiquities Dealer, Dies at 92

(NYTimes) Robert E. Hecht, an American expatriate antiquities dealer who skipped in and out of trouble for much of his career, weathering accusations that he trafficked in illicit artifacts, including a 2,500-year-old Greek vase that he sold for more than $1 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died on Wednesday at his home in Paris.
... Robert Emanuel Hecht Jr. (his wife was unsure whether his middle name was spelled with one m or two) was born in Baltimore on June 3, 1919, into the family that owned the Hecht chain of department stores. He graduated from Haverford College and served in the Navy during World War II. Fluent in German, he worked after the war as a civilian translator for the United States Army. Continued