i headed uptown today for a visit to the new york historical society . .
when our neighbor visited with her daughter on wednesday to see the kittens, she invited me to a tour she was giving for a fellow neighbor of her current exhibit titled, life: six women photographers. she works part-time in the museum's center for women's history and i've been wanting to see her work since early summer, when i first heard about it.
the museum itself was designed in a roman style and has been at central park west and 77th since 1908.
abraham lincoln welcomes visitors on the steps in front . .
and frederick douglass stands on the steps at 77th street, welcoming everyone to the museum and also to the restaurant and cafe that opened in 2011.
we met in the cafe and i followed sarah and her husband and our neighbor carol (it was my first time meeting her) to the third floor.
six women photographers, the only female full-time employees out of a hundred men, of life magazine under henry luce from the late 1930's to the early 1970's, were featured. they took hundreds of photos for their assignments, but it was ultimately the editors of the stories being written that had the final say on which photos were used. i can imagine that this could be quite contentious for the photographers!
margaret bourke-white is the most well known to us (having covered the front lines during wwii). she was one of the original four photographers brought on by life magazine when it began in 1936, and her fort peck, montona, dam photo (above), graced the inaugural cover.
she took hundreds of photos of the workers and their families, in their homes, taking care of their families, working on the dam and in the mills . .
but it was the photos of the new deal townspeople partying at night that the magazine decided to focus on.
above is their "prospectus for a new magazine," in which they outlined which articles and photos they would emphasize.
here's sarah in front of her favorite photo taken by lisa larsen for an article about the 1956 visit of tito, president of yugoslavia, to the soviet union under khrushchev. she had photos of workers released from the factories to attend specific political events . .
and people hired to fix up the towns and cities that were visited by political delegates. the women above are planting flowers at a train station . .
and here a woman is painting the border of a fountain.
the article itself emphasized the meeting of the leaders and their wives, emphasizing the women's dresses . . fashion is endlessly fascinating to so many people. i always enjoy hearing the behind the scenes stories . .
above is martha holmes' photo of singer billy eckstine with his fans from the life magazine article of 1950. this photo proved too controversial and the magazine received a lot of hate mail, adversely affecting eckstine's career within the white world. you can read the wikipedia article about billy eckstine
here. this was my favorite photo of the exhibit. it's truly stunning. you can see a close up of it
here, on the museum's website. they also have a video up of him singing "everything i have is yours."
i really enjoyed hearing sarah talk about her process with the exhibit: deciding where to hang the photos, sorting through hundreds of photos, trying to understand who had jurisdiction of the photos - the life archives or the present corporation who bought life magazine, what angle to take with the photographers, which photos to enlarge and which to keep small . . to me, being a museum curator sounds like a challenging and fun career.
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after this exhibit i visited the tiffany glass exhibit in the museum:
in the photo above, you can see the faint outline of a woman sitting in a chair . . it's clara driscoll, who worked for louis c. tiffany and was put in charge of the women's glass department in 1888. she was a prolific letter writer and the exhibit's interactives showcase many of her observations and thoughts about the glass making process and her fellow workers.
there was so much more to read, but it was getting late and i was feeling a little tired and overwhelmed with information . .
prior to the tiffany exhibit, i had spent half an hour reading and listening to this wall exhibit sarah had worked on. you can press each word: read, see, hear and connect - in the photo above to go to another screen. it was very interesting.
the exhibit was called women's voices, and it was extensive!
there were interviews with fellow museum historians talking about women of nyc who had contributed to the community, and also with the women themselves. above is dorothy day, speaking about an important connection between activism and religion.
above is a museum historian speaking about frances perkins, u. s. secretary of labor from 1933 to 1945.
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and that was my visit to the historical society . . i leave you with a nighttime exploit of pluto and finn:
