GIFT OF FRANCIS XAVIER LUCA AND CLARA PALACIO-DE LUCA

The materials pulled for the latter group included such items as French advertisements; catalogs, postcards, and rare portfolios from the various colonial and international expositions held in Marseilles and Paris; colorful pochoir plates showing off Art Deco interiors; and even some embarrassing children’s propaganda books glorifying Maréchal Pétain and the French Fascists who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War.

Some of the striking advertisements published by the Parisian wine distributors, Établissements Nicholas, and others designed by Paul Iribe, have since that visit been placed in the wall case of the library foyer as part of an exhibit put together by Associate Librarian Nicolae Harsanyi. Entitled Wine, Bubbly, and Their Merchants: Advertisements and Publications From the Wolfsonian Collection, the exhibit opened to the public this afternoon.

This last Tuesday, Professor Tori Arpad-Cotta made her annual “pilgrimage” to the Wolfsonian-FIU library with seventeen of her art installation students. The students had the chance to see a display of rare materials ranging from exhibition catalogs with color chromolithographic plates and illustrations to black & white stereograph cards. The works pulled highlighted exhibition design techniques and represented world’s fairs, colonial, and international exhibitions in England and the European continent.

On Wednesday evening, Dr. Harsanyi and I drove out to the Modesto Maidique Campus at Florida International University for a gallery opening in the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum of an exhibit put together by FIU School of Architecture Professor David Rifkind. A recipient of our Mellon grant, Professor Rifkind had been conducting research in our museum and rare books library on the subject of Italy’s colonial possessions in Africa. His exhibition, Metropole/Colony: Africa and Italy used selected items from the Wolfsonian collections to explore the important role African colonization played in shaping Italian national identity during the Fascist era (1922-1943).

GIFTS OF STEVE HELLER

Thursday, our main reading room tables were again covered with a variety of materials pulled for a group of scholars exploring the strengths of our Dutch materials for consideration in a future exhibition. After looking at the smaller decorative arts objects and larger Works on Paper items elsewhere in the collection, they came up to the library to see the finest collection of Dutch Nieuwe Kunst (or Art Nouveau) book bindings and printed ephemera held outside of The Netherlands.

Even before stepping into the back stacks to see the thousands of beautiful Art Nouveau book bindings, the Dutch scholars (accompanied by our curators, registrar, exhibition designer, and museum founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.) were treated to a sampling of printed ephemera. The materials set out included rare drawings, prints, and annotated proofs made by some of the most renowned Dutch graphic designers and artists produced for the publishing houses; calendar leaves with floral patterns, Socialistic images celebrating the workers, and Orientalist themes from the colonies; leaflets advertising the various industrial fairs held in Utrecht, promotional materials from several important Dutch shipping and cruise line companies, decorative packaging and paper bags, catalogs and postcards produced for Dutch colonial and international expositions.

Thanks to a grant by the National Endowment of the Arts some years ago, much of the Wolfsonian’s Art Nouveau book bindings, printed ephemera, and museum objects from the Netherlands can now be seen on the web in high resolution via PALMM (Publication of Archival, Library, and Museum Materials).

Although we might have begun earlier, our own discussions of civil rights began with the First World War and the campaign to recruit African Americans as soldiers. Woodrow Wilson’s administration produced propaganda that promised that once Black men proved their patriotism and utility in the crucible of the war to safeguard democracy, a grateful nation would recognize their human rights.

As African-Americans debated whether or not to enlist in the war overseas, N.A.A.C.P. official and editor of the organization’s journal The Crisis, W.E.B. Du Bois framed the debate by arguing “first your Country, then your Rights!” Author Kelly Miller also framed the war against the Kaiser and German autocracy as a war for human rights and assumed that victory abroad would help promote civil rights at home.

Hundreds of thousands of Black Americans did sign up and serve in the country’s two segregated infantry divisions, the 371st and the 93^rd Infantry earning high praise for their combat fighting in tandem with France’s 4th Army.

Ironically, returning African-American veterans more often encountered fear and loathing than respect, and the war abroad was followed by a “savage peace” at home punctuated by a rash of ugly racial incidents and violence. After the war, Du Bois prodded African-Americans to demand their rights, arguing that “By the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that the war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.” Serious racial strife and rioting occurred in the summer of 1919, and a report made to a U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary noted 38 race riots in various cities, and described attacks in which white mobs lynched, hanged, shot, and burned at the stake at least 43 African-Americans. State government proved powerless (or unwilling) to prevent or to prosecute the perpetrators.

The 1920s saw a revival and precipitous growth in membership of the Ku Klux Klan, especially in the southern states, and the perpetuation of horrible racial stereotyping that remained pervasive throughout the 1930s.

The election and inauguration of New Yorker, Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president during the worst depths of the Great Depression brought some relief to African-Americans. While Americans in general were experiencing 24-25% unemployment rates, approximately half of all Black American breadwinners were out of work—a condition explained by attitudes held by persons like those who paraded in Atlanta, Georgia carrying signs that read, “No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job.” To his credit, President Roosevelt saw to it that the federal government provided emergency relief to needy Blacks, mandated that 10% of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) positions were reserved for Black enrollees, and tried to ensure that federal work projects paid American-Americans the same wages as whites.

Fearing that he would alienate the conservative southern “Dixiecrat” wing of the Democratic Party, however, Roosevelt failed to throw his support behind an anti-lynching law, and left it to his outspoken wife, Eleanor, to raise awareness of and support for such causes. The Federal Arts Project program below is one such example of the First Lady’s commitment to civil rights, announcing her visit to the opening ceremonies for the South Side Community Art Center serving Chicago’s African-American community.

Federal Theatre Project director, Hallie Flanagan was an especially strong advocate for Civil Rights. Not only did she enforce provisions for equal pay for African-American workers in the FTP, but she also insisted that audiences for Federal Theatre Productions be integrated and cancelled shows when communities demanded segregated seating. Such enlightened and progressive attitudes were not appreciated by many conservative Southerners like Martin Dies, a Texas Democrat who served on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Dies and other “Dixiecrats” considered such moves to be proof of “Communist” infiltration of the Federal government and his public “investigations” helped discredit the program–the first WPA program to lose its Congressional funding in 1939.

GIFT OF CHRISTOPHER DENOON

Even as Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany in the same period on an unapologetic platform of racial bigotry and hatred, Americans were forced to re-examine their own country’s less than admirable history of racial intolerance as they confronted the threat to world peace posed by Fascism and Nazism. African-American athletes such as Jesse Owens, (the “world’s fastest man”), helped repudiate the myth of the Aryan superman and master race at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, while Heavyweight boxer Joe Louis knocked out Hitler’s champion, Max Schmeling in the ring in 1938.

GIFT MADE BY FRANCIS LUCA AND CLARA PALACIO-DE LUCA IN HONOR OF WOLFSONIAN MUSEUM FOUNDER

MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR.’S BIRTHDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

When the United States entered the war, Joe Louis enlisted, telling reporters that in spite of segregation and racial prejudice at home, he knew that the world would not be a better place for persons of color should Hitler’s forces prevail. Many of the African-American veterans who returned home after victory in the Second World War continued to fight for human rights at home and helped propel the Civil Rights movement forward in the postwar period.

Our own rare book and special collections library, of course, has great holdings on the subjects of gender and sexuality in France (including many limited edition books published in the aftermath of the First World War). In fact, some of these materials were showcased in a library exhibit put together some year’s ago entitled “Fashion and Passion: Deluxe Pochoir Editions.” In the so-called roaring twenties, publishing houses in France began to produce deluxe edition books and portfolios for collectors that made use of the pochoir (or “stencil work”) technique for producing vibrant color prints. Fine pochoir editions combining Orientalist themes with erotic illustrations proved popular among upper middle class male book collectors in France—that is, of course, until the Stock Market crash of 1929 and onset of the Great Depression rendered these time and labor-intensive and financially expensive projects unaffordable.

Ms. Surkis seemed particularly taken with the stencil work portfolio Elphie et son éléfant, an obvious parody of the popular Babar the Elephant series of French children’s books. This particular work, however, was designed for adults, as its eleven color pochoirs by Wynn Holcomb chronicled the affair of Elphie and an adulterous elephant.

The visiting scholar was also shown a very small sampling of the Wolfsonian Library’s extensive holdings of rare books and ephemera originally printed to inspire pride in France’s overseas empire in the interwar period. The library, for example, has a wealth of works produced for the many colonial expositions held in Europe, and some years ago I had put together a display of colonial materials for use by a class I taught at FIU on the subject. Thursday’s impromptu display for Ms. Surkis focused exclusively on works documenting the French colonial presence in North Africa, and primarily included materials from the Exposition nationale coloniale held in Marseilles 1922 and the Exposition coloniale internationale in Paris 1931.

Color plate from Eight Days at the Colonial Exhibition at Marseilles, depicting a simulated native loom in front of Orientalist building

LOANED BY MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR.

There is an abundance of materials on the representation of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and other colonies of the Maghreb region, whose post-colonial states have recently returned to the spotlight in wake of the year-old “Jasmine Revolution” that rolled across the region.

LOANED BY MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR.

In addition to vintage postcards and photographic portfolio plates depicting the “Orientalist” buildings designed by French architects for the Paris 1931 Colonial Exposition, the library also possesses a unique portfolio of watercolors with Pierre Falké’s imaginative renderings of “colonial encounters” at the fair grounds.

LOANED BY MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR.

We only hope that this will be the first of many more visits by Professor Surkis and that other scholars focused on such themes and our collecting period will also be inspired by this post to come to the Wolfsonian to research these materials.

While we have only just begun to review, process, and accession these materials, I thought that for my last blog post of the year I would share with you a few samples from the Victory Gold Levi Collection. All of the items are small format paper products that we collectively categorize as ephemera—vintage postcards, packaging, cigar labels, paper plates, playing cards, pamphlets, and sheet music covers never really intended to be preserved. Fortunately for us, Vicki did collect and preserve such items which come to us in pristine condition.

The victory “V” figures prominently in most of the materials we pulled out of the box thus far. Most often the V is literally figured in the artwork; in other of the items the victory V might be symbolically represented, for example by planes flying in a V formation. There are even several items which incorporate the Morse Code for the letter V.

We are thrilled by Vicki’s donation of her Victory collection to our rare books and special collections library. And I know that next semester’s students—and scholars and researchers for many generations to come—will benefit greatly from her generosity.

Playwright, poet, essayist, dissident, human rights activist, and statesman are but a few of the monikers that have been used to describe Václav Havel, the first post-Communist president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992), and the Czech Republic (1993-2003) who died in his sleep this past Sunday after a protracted illness. Havel first stepped into the spotlight of the world stage in 1977 when he co-authored the human rights declaration known as Charter 77. His outspoken opposition to the Soviet-dominated Czech police state led to persecution, constant police surveillance, and repeated imprisonment. Undeterred, Havel continued to inspire the opposition until the 1989 Velvet Revolution brought an end to the one-party state and ushered the former dissident into the presidency of the new multi-party democracy.

While the era in which Havel made his mark in the transformation of Czechoslovakia into a multiparty democracy falls outside the parameters of the Wolfsonian Library collection, we do have an abundance of Czech language materials that document the traditional culture, tumultuous history, and contentious political aspirations of the Czech people during the early to mid-twentieth century. I thought it might be a fitting tribute to Havel to show off just a few of these items.

Ultimately, historians of Eastern Europe will likely rank the role Havel played second in importance only to that of the country’s founder and first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. The Wolfsonian library holds a number of works documenting the life and political influence of Masaryk including several photographic books, postcards, and other works.

Ironically, although Havel was known for his fearless fight against the Communist regime which dominated the country in the wake of the Second World War, our own collection includes much material produced by idealistic Socialist theoreticians and utopian thinkers who sought to break from Czechoslovakia’s traditions to forge a radically new and modern identity. Czech modernists like Karal Teige were inspired by Socialism and internationalism. Their own ideas drew heavily on radical Constructivist thought and art coming out of the Soviet Union before Stalin condemned the movement in favor of Socialist realism. Some years ago, MIT Professor Eric Dluhosch unexpectedly dropped by our library enquiring whether we might have any Czech materials in our holdings as he was finishing up a book on Teige, “l’enfant terrible of the Czech modernist avant-garde.” To our mutual delight, we discovered that we possessed a wealth of materials, some of which he had not been unable to locate in the land of his birth! Eric returned to the Wolfsonian as a fellow, helped us translate and catalogue much of our Czech language works, and as guest curator put together an exhibition entitled: “Dreams and Disillusion: Karel Teige and the Czech Avant-Garde.”

Of course, the cultural clashes between traditionalists and modernists, nationalists and internationalists all dissolved in 1938 with the Nazi annexation and partitioning of Czechoslovakia in the lead-up to the Second World War. The Wolfsonian library also possesses a number of important works from this dark period of Czech history. Some works nostalgically picture the cultural traditions threatened in the period, while a portfolio of pictorial maps created by Czech exiles in London angrily respond to the betrayal at Munich and the subsequent partitioning and occupation of the country by the Nazis.

ITEMS LOANED BY MITCHELL WOLFSON, JR.

Czechoslovakia’s history in the postwar period was no less tumultuous and tragic. Reduced to a Soviet satellite state in the aftermath of the war, it was not until the liberalizing reforms began in January 1968 that Czechs began to hope for a more independent future. While the euphoria of the “Prague Spring” and the reform movement was crushed as Soviet tanks invaded the country that August, the desire for freedom remained as intellectuals like Havel were spurred to action and non-violent activism.

For those interested in learning more about the life and influence of this important figure, I invite them to check out the Václav Havel library website.

In advance of their visit, we had laid out a number of rare Futurist materials ranging from vintage postcards, proofs, manifestos, and exceedingly rare books and exhibition catalogs. The work of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), Tato (1896-1974), Antonio Sant’Elia (1888-1916), Bruno Munari (1907-1998), and other Futurist agitators, artists, architects, and designers were well represented.

The founding member and lead spokesman for the movement, F. T. Marinetti saw Italy’s provincialism and preoccupation with history and tradition as holding Italy back. He and his avant-garde disciples, on the other hand, embraced the revolutionary technologies that promised speed and progress and a break with the past. In his “Manifesto of Futurism,” (published in Le Figaro of Paris on February 20^th, 1909), Marinetti declared his scorn for the past and his allegiance to a future “enriched by a new beauty; the beauty of speed.” For Marinetti and his cohorts, the past was as burdensome as a cemetery—or worse, a museum—which he ridiculed as “absurd abattoirs of painters and sculptors…” To his sensibilities, a “roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot” was infinitely more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace—the 2nd century BC marble sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike (Victory). Marinetti and his young cultural revolutionaries declared their intention to “glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women.” They also vowed to “destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind” and to “fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.” Reading this manifesto, it becomes easy to see how much these cultural revolutionaries had in common with Mussolini and the fascist revolutionaries coming to power in the early twenties.

The library possesses two especially rare and innovative book bindings by important futurist designers. We have, for example, Tullio D’Albisola’s futurist poetry L’anguria lirica (The Lyrical Watermelon) featuring illustrations by Bruno Munari. What made this limited edition especially interesting is that it the book’s binding and pages were made from tin and steel rather than paper.

We also hold a copy of Fortunato Depero’s infamous Depero Futurista (popularly known as the “bolted book.” In true futurist tradition, Depero decided to avoid a traditional sewn binding and celebrated the machine age by fastening his work together with industrial aluminum bolts. The interior pages of his work were equally innovative, as he used typography in such a manner as to force the reader out of passivity and into an interactive experience.

Some of the visitors were particularly taken with our collection of proofs designed by Fortunato Depero. These images were intended for use as chapter vignettes for a two-volume work describing each of the provinces of Italy.

Others were intrigued by some of our vintage postcards—details taken from the paintings of Tato in an attempt to capture speed and movement. Several of his postcard illustrations celebrate war and conflict (as in L’Assalto) and the fascist march on Roma and seizure of power (La Marcia su Roma).

We also had on display some exhibition catalogs highlighting the work of Antonio Sant’Elia, who was cut off in his prime at the World War I battles of the Isonzo in 1916.

In 1914 Sant’Elia reputedly was responsible for the publication of the manifesto of Futurist Architecture.

His inspired architectural drawings for a Città Nuova continue to inspire architects today and his renderings of skyscrapers rival anything dreamed up by artists and designers creating work for modern science fiction fantasies.

I only hope that the students that return with these teachers in the near future will be inspired with the bold and revolutionary imagery of the Futurists, even as we hope that they will also be repulsed by the fascistic values and agendas to which so many of these designers dedicated their art.

It came as no surprise to those of us who had a change to meet with Ginger even in her sunset years that this Brooklyn beauty took pride in her personal appearance and managed to keep “perfectly manicured and coiffed at all times.” Nor was it difficult to imagine that she might have given Imelda Marcos competition in her love for fashionable shoes. But what came as a shocker (to me at least) was finding out that before getting married and settling down in the sunset state, Ginger had apparently worked as the personal assistant to the director of the OSS–(the predecessor of the CIA). And before that assignment, Ginger had served on the staff of some of the key generals involved in the top-secret Manhattan Project during the Second World War. As her granddaughter jokingly noted, “We all knew that somehow or other Ginger was responsible for the development of the A-Bomb!”

Much like many other young, single, and independent women of the World War Two generation, Ginger had answered the nation’s call and played an important part on the home front. To commemorate her life and service, a couple of us here at the museum decided to donate some items that mirrored Ginger’s pride in her appearance and fashion-sense, and also reflected her commitment to her country during the war years.

GIFT OF JEFFREY G. FISCHER AND MICHAEL SMITH

GIFT OF MARTIJN F. LE COULTRE

Wolfsonian accountant Larry Wiggins donated a couple of books that deal with the contributions of women to the war effort. The first one, More Cuties in Arms, is a collection of wartime cartoons drawn by E. Simms Campbell–the first African-American cartoonist to be published in nationally syndicated glossy magazines. Campbell’s humorous “cuties” series were syndicated by King Features and appeared in more than 145 newspapers.

GIFT MADE BY LARRY WIGGINS IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

The images collected in this wartime anthology blend humor, glamour, and the “call to duty” in a volume that implies that even as women moved into jobs traditionally associated with or reserved for men, they never sacrificed their sense of femininity.

GIFT MADE BY LARRY WIGGINS IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

Another of Larry Wiggin’s donations is Girls at Work in Aviation, a more realistic look at some of the demanding jobs women assumed in the wartime aircraft industry.

GIFT MADE BY LARRY WIGGINS IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

Again, even as women are photographed wearing coveralls and doing all manner of maintenance work, one cannot help but notice the attention paid to makeup and hairdos.

GIFT MADE BY LARRY WIGGINS IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

I myself found an issue of Curtiss Fly Leaf whose cover and content captured the sense of the times. Even as the issue lauded the concrete contributions of women engineering “cadettes,” one cannot help but notice their “coiffed” hairdos, and how much the shots reflect the culture’s preoccupation with “glamour.”

GIFT MADE BY FRANCIS LUCA IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

Hollywood films of the era also reinforced America’s obsession with feminine beauty even in wartime. In Meet the People (1944), for example, Lucille Ball plays a glamorous actress who learns to appreciate the contributions of real women war workers when she “volunteers” for welding work in a shipyard to prepare for a part in a Broadway play. Even the U.S. government’s Office of War Information weighed in on the issue with its production of Glamour Girls of 1943. Who says that war work and glamour don’t mix!

One of the items purchased through the generosity of Mr. Wolfson is a collection of four German Communist Fairy Tales for Workers’ Children translated into English and published in Chicago by the Daily Worker Publishing Company. The children’s book is illustrated with drawings and color plates by Lydia Gibson, a frequent contributor to The Masses, The Liberator, and other left-wing publications.

Mr. Wolfson’s generous donation also enabled us to purchase a number of depression-era magazines produced by the Communists to enroll the nation’s youth in their Pioneer movement. These magazines employed stories, comics, crossword puzzles, and other devices to inculcate the values of Socialism in America.

A number of the items purchased at the fair were produced at the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s, including a collection of Ballads of the B. E. F., or Bonus Expeditionary Force.

Many of the men who had served the nation during the First World War were in dire financial straits by 1932. Organized by former Army sergeant Walter W. Waters, some 43,000 veterans and family members descended on Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer months of the presidential election year of 1932. They aimed to lobby Congress and press their demands for early payment of compensation passed in 1924, but not scheduled to be paid out until 1945. Perhaps fearing that the “occupy Washington” movement and the marches and demonstrations by the veterans might result in the overthrow of democratic institutions—as had Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922—President Herbert Hoover refused to meet with the leaders. And while the House of Representatives approved the Patman Bonus Bill, it was ultimately voted down in the Senate. After the Attorney General’s order that the “squatters” vacate government property met with resistance, President Hoover authorized General Douglas MacArthur to clear the demonstrators from Pennsylvania Avenue. Cavalry units, infantry armed with fixed bayonets and tear gas, and six tanks were deployed to rout the veterans, and MacArthur decided to exceed his orders by driving on across the river to burn down the shanty town established by the veterans and their families on the Anacostia flats.

 Needless to say in the wake of the over-reaction by the government, the incumbent Republican president lost by a landslide to his Democratic challenger Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even the right-learning publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst was so disgusted by Hoover’s callous treatment of the veterans that he financed a film Gabriel Over the White House that rewrote history by depicting an activist president refusing to send the army against the “Army of the Unemployed,” and instead winning them over and converting them into an “Army of Construction.”

With the world capitalist system looking as if it had completely broken down in the thirties, Communists gained more than a modicum of credibility with their claims that the system was moribund and that the future belonged to the new economic order of Communism. With twenty-five percent of the workforce in the United States jobless in 1933 and with plenty of closed factories, some American engineers and entrepreneurs and blue-collar workers went so far as to emigrate to the Soviet Union to lend their industrial know-how and expertise to the Stalinist regime’s Five Year Plan!

Émigré American engineers appear in several scenes of Mission to Moscow, the 1943 film based on the memoir of former Ambassador to Russia, Joseph E. Davies.

Those interested in their true life experiences can turn to the 1999 documentary, Yanks for Stalin that aired on the History Channel, or, for a “rosier” recounting of the experiences of some of these guest workers, read their accounts in Those Who Built Stalingrad: As Told by Themselves.

Published by the Co-operative Publishing Society for Foreign Workers in the USSR and introduced with a foreword by Maxim Gorky, the book is illustrated with drawings by Fred Ellis, the famed staff cartoonist of The Daily Worker, the American Communist Party’s official newspaper. The work also contains an excerpt from Comrade Stalin’s greeting to the Stalingrad workers on the opening of the tractor plant in 1930 in which he equated the 50,000 tractors to be produced each year as “fifty thousand shells blowing up the old bourgeois world and paving the way to the new socialist order in the countryside,” and congratulated “our teachers in technique, the American specialists and technicians who have rendered help in the building of the Plant.”

In the mid to late 1930s, the Communist Party of the United States of America (or CPUSA) tried to move from the margins to the mainstream by abandoning their “go-it-alone” tactics and by making common cause and creating a united front with other leftists, socialists, and progressive liberals active in the struggle against war and fascism. As part of their new Popular Front strategy, the Party began to portray itself as the most dynamic organization fighting the forces of fascism, and sponsored propaganda pamphlets like the one published by the National Office of the Friends of the Soviet Union in 1935. The cover of this piece was possibly inspired by the work of committed German Communist John Heartfield, whose Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung set the standard for excellence in producing powerful photomontages.

Other materials recently added to the collection include a number of works by or about the labor movement published during the depression years, including Dynamite: the Story of Class Violence in America.

Written by Louis Adamic and published by The Viking Press in 1934, the book chronicles the tumultuous history of labor agitation and repression in America from industrialization through the Great Depression. Illustrations depict the clashes that developed during the Great Railroad Strike and riots of 1877; the 1886 demonstrations and bombing in Haymarket Square, Chicago; the textile workers’ strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912; the nationwide steel strikes of 1919; the demonstrations on behalf of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s, and the subsequent labor violence that continued to divide the country along class lines.

Similarly, Men and Ships: A Pictorial History of the Maritime Industry also stresses the violence perpetrated against stevedores and other maritime dock workers fighting for better wages and working conditions. Issued by San Francisco Bay Area Council No. 2 Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast, this union-sponsored pictorial magazine focused on police violence and management-sponsored vigilante attacks on picketing workers all along the Pacific Coast during the Longshoremen’s Strike between 1936 and 1937.

A former Wobbly and life-long-time maritime union organizer and labor leader, Harry Bridges was intimately involved in this and other strikes by the Pacific Coast dock workers.

The 1949 Hollywood film, The Woman on Pier 13, or, I Married a Communist introduced American audiences to a sinister and shadowy Communist cell leader named Vanning, a ruthless villain who uses blackmail and murder to orchestrate a crippling strike for secretive and sinister purposes—a less than subtle attempt by Hollywood to smear Harry Bridges.

In real life, the government unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute and deport Bridge as a suspected crypto-Communist for decades. Bridges shifting political positions during the Popular Front period (1935-1939), the “Little Red Scare” (1939-1941), the U.S.-U.S.S.R. wartime thaw (1941-1945), and the full-blown Red Scare that developed during the Cold War (1945-1991), as well as archival evidence that surfaced after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. does seem to indicate that he did have some ties to the CPUSA.

Other materials from the recent batch of new acquisitions also dealt with labor issues, but from the perceptive and point of view of Roosevelt’s New Deal administration. Migrant Farm Labor: the Problem and Some Efforts to Meet It is typical of the Roosevelt Administration’s approach: documenting the problems with Farm Security Administrations photographs to build support for their programmatic solutions. This particular pamphlet reprinted photographs most likely taken by Dorothea Lange during her years working for the FSA.

Another recent acquisition, Seven Stranded Coal Towns: A Study of an American Depressed Area used documentary photographs backed up by graphs, tables, charts, and other statistical evidence to make its point.

Like other of the series of works published by the United States Government Printing Office during the Depression, this book was bound within modest softcover wrappers intended to demonstrate that the federal government was being frugal with taxpayer money.

Of course, farm laborers and industrial workers were not the only people laid off during the Great Depression. The economic meltdown also had a disastrous effect on the arts and entertainment industry, and FDR’s head of the Work Progress Administration, Harry Hopkins saw to it America’s artists weren’t reduced to starvation during the crisis. As part of the New Deal for the arts, Hopkins appointed Hallie Flanagan as director of the Federal Theatre Project. This federally funded arts initiative—the first in U.S. history—put actors, costume and set designers, stage hands, ushers, and other theatrical workers back into theaters in cheap or free public productions. Although Hopkins promised Flanagan that she would be allowed to produce “free, adult, uncensored” plays, some of the more controversial productions of the FTP and the director’s policy of promoting racial equality and desegregated seating provoked the ire of conservative members of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and ultimately resulted in its demise in June 1939 after Congress voted to cancel its funding. Thanks to Mr. Wolfson’s generous donation of funds, our library has now acquired an exceedingly rare bulletin for the Detroit Federal Theatre production of the Merry Wives of Windsor. The production typescript includes fabric swatches and original watercolor drawings of costumes, mounted photographs of costumed players and set designs, and clippings and press reports on of this play—one of the last Federal Theatre production in the Midwest.

The son of the politically outspoken Methodist minister, Harry F. Ward, young Lynd was drawn to art early on, reputedly when he discovered in the first grade that his last name in reverse spelled “draw.” Ward followed through on that early dream of becoming an artist by studying the fine arts at Columbia Teacher’s College in New York. After graduation, Ward and his new bride traveled to Europe in 1926, where Ward studied printmaking and book design at the National Academy of Graphic Arts, Leipzig.  It was there that Ward encountered a book designed by Belgian engraver Frans Masereel that was to inspire him to publish the graphic novels for which he won fame.

Ward’s first “wordless novel,” God’s Man, is the story of a struggling young artist’s Faustian bargain with Death told entirely through pictures made by the artist’s wood engravings.

Published in the same week as the Stock Market Crash in October 1929, the black and white images detailing the corrupting influence of money must have struck a chord with many ordinary Americans still reeling from the revelations of the economic disaster on Wall Street. The Wolfsonian possesses copies of this and the five other graphic novels he produced over the course of a lifetime, and a couple of dozen other books and ephemeral items featuring his designs and illustrations.

Always eager to find and add other works with Ward illustrations to the library, I happened to discover a few such items to complement our collection. The first is North Star Shining, a “pictorial history of the American Negro” written by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward. Like his father, Ward was left-leaning in his politics and very much interested and involved in the progressive causes of combating economic and racial injustice during the Depression years and beyond. I was personally struck by the similarity of the African-American pictured on the dust jacket to President Obama, and decided to purchase it and donate it to the museum to commemorate the birthday of museum founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.

Although he traveled in Socialist circles, and remained deeply concerned with labor and class issues throughout his life, Lynd Ward never felt that this in any way contradicted his love for his country. In fact, it was that love for country that impelled him during the dark days of the depression and war years to contribute artistically to works that demanded that America live up to her cherished ideals of liberty, equality, and opportunity for all.

GIFT MADE IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

Many of the dust jackets, decorative lining papers, and illustrations he produced for books published in the 1940s reveal his love and admiration for the democratic culture, institutions, and revolutionary war heroes of the young republic.

GIFTS MADE IN MEMORY OF GINGER LEFF

During the war years, when the United States and the Soviet Union became allies, Ward lent his talents to the cause of promoting cordial relations with cover illustrations for his father’s book lauding The Soviet Spirit, and for the cover of Soviet Russia Today.

GIFTS OF FRANCIS XAVIER LUCA & CLARA HELENA PALACIO-DE LUCA

Of course, almost immediately after the war was won, the two uneasy allies once again began to look at one another through jaundiced eyes. Although Franklin Roosevelt’s former Vice President and later Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace advocated maintaining a friendly rapport with the Soviets, his new boss President Truman called for his resignation and his Progressive Party candidacy in 1948 failed to win the support of the American people. That same year found the committed social activist Lynd Ward providing illustrations for a pamphlet entitled, How to End the Cold War and Build the Peace. It, too, received a rather chilly reception outside the constricting circles of the Socialist faithful.

GIFT OF FRANCIS XAVIER LUCA & CLARA HELENA PALACIO-DE LUCA

While many Socialists, Communists, and “fellow travelers” were hounded, blacklisted, and harassed during the “Red Scare” that followed, Lynd Ward appears to have continued to practice his art unabated.

GIFT OF FRANCIS XAVIER LUCA & CLARA HELENA PALACIO-DE LUCA

Last year I bought a gold “Unisphere” charm on Ebay. I’d been searching for one for a long time. The original structure made its debut as the enormous centerpiece for the 1964 World’s Fair of New York.

The piece of jewelry, I discovered, is a perfect little three-dimensional replica of the Flushing Meadows landmark.

My mother worked in the Alaska Pavilion at the fair back then; to commemorate this, my grandparents bought my mom a mini Unisphere for her charm bracelet. Unfortunately, the bracelet, with the tiny globe dangling on it, was stolen a few years later when criminals burglarized my parents’ apartment in Queens. The fair, the Unisphere, and New York City at the time represented the best of everything to my mother—new-fangled inventions, an international community, possibility for peace, career opportunities. Even Bobby Kennedy, suspected carpetbagger, brought a brand of hope and excitement to the city in his pull-out-all-the-stops Senatorial campaign.

The fair’s extensive food vendors, souvenir stations and exhibits might strike us modern urbanites as naively constructed. Kitschy though the “It’s A Small World” ride may seem to those of us who’ve been to Disney World and slowly floated past the musical arrangements dozens of times, the display was first seen at my mother’s fair. The animation of characters in the traditional costumes of their countries made a positive impression on her as a young college woman. Likewise, in world’s fairs from the past, the host country embraced the seemingly stereotypical expressions of the exhibited culture with unabated pleasure and open hearts.

Photo by Aguilas

The Wolfsonian Library’s holdings contain an extensive selection of world’s fair and international exhibition materials. A recent donation by Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf includes a rare assortment of guidebooks for Japanese fairs from the early twentieth century. While perhaps these days we remain blasé about far-away countries and cultures in our everything-on-the-Net society, citizens of the past descended upon sprawling foreign exhibitions with excitement and delight. Especially during the latter half of the 19^th century and the early 20^th century, the Industrial Revolution provided a backdrop for a plethora of clever inventions showcased in these expositions from the unexpected sources of their origins.

The Fifth National Industrial Exhibition took place in Japan in 1903. The city of Osaka accommodated over four million patrons who filled the area hotels and boosted the local economy. Hosted just a few years after Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War, the exhibition constituted a mix of themed buildings and amusement areas, some of which became so popular—such as the Fine Art building–that they remained a permanent part of the landscape long after the event.

A city within the city, the exhibition complex of themed buildings boasted all the major industries of the day: agriculture and horticulture, mining, chemistry, textiles, manufacturing and machinery, and fine arts, to name a few.

Another point of pride for the host country was its extensive railway system. Convenient maps peppered souvenir guide-books, encouraging visitors to board the trains and explore their surroundings.

These guidebooks focused on the beauty and uniqueness of Japan’s people and products.

The allure of fascinating activities and sites extended travelers’ agendas beyond the exhibition grounds.

Still, a ticket to the exhibition guaranteed plenty of distractions. Participants could enter the Hall of Marvels, filled with x-rays, mirrors, microscopes, photographic lenses, and the like. The comforts of Japanese hospitality were offered in the Tea House. Professional dancers and “flower girls” wove in and out of appreciative crowds. Most importantly, products of every industry imaginable filled the themed buildings: grains, medicinal plants, silkworms, animals, sugar, hemp–-with all methods of processing and manufacturing demonstrated. Watches, sculpture, pearls, lacquer-work, electrical inventions–-everything of interest and on the cutting edge of development made for a display. Finally, a glow-in-the-dark fountain shooting colorful sprays of water into the night sky impressed Westerners and Easterners alike.

While the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition of 1903 brought visitors East to experience Japanese life in its own territory, the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 brandished Japanese products and culture in Shepherd’s Bush, White City, London.

Although Great Britain allied with Japan on matters of international relations, the English and Japanese still suffered from unease in the midst of each others’ politics and cultures. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 sought to create a “friendly” relationship, within the bounds of each country’s limitations of understanding. Thus the Japan-British Exhibition, held right in the heart of London, exposed any formerly construed “eccentricities” of the East as shrewd, inventive talents to the Brits.

Held in the same fairgrounds as its predecessor, The Franco-British Exhibition of 1908, the Japan-British Exhibition sported the usual amusement park rides, such as the “Flip-Flap.”

English presentation of Japanese exhibits often emphasized manicured gardens and attractive girls in native costume.

The British strove for authenticity when recreating these scenes. Although proud of their heritage, the Japanese wished to be perceived not just as one-dimensionally serenely bucolic, but as complex, forward-thinking and modern, too. Specializations such as fabric-dyeing and pottery-making set Japan apart both stylistically and in artistic prowess.

Kyoto Dyers

 Metalworking

 Embroiderers

Overall, the exhibition succeeded in leaving positive impressions of Japan on the European audience. The fair did not only showcase Japanese ingenuity, however. While it was called the Japan-British Exhibition to recognize a combination of both countries’ accomplishments, more emphasis was placed on Japan, as the lesser-known culture by Western standards.  Yet English industry of note made a splash at the fair as well.

The industrial acumen of the early twentieth century also brought advances in chemical manufacturing and medicine. Assembly line production benefited the pharmaceutical industry, where the British outfit of  Burroughs Wellcome & Company (BW&C) excelled in a newly trademarked form of “tabloid” (compactly administered) medications. The BW&C displays at the Japan-British Exhibition consisted of everything from portable first-aid kits manufactured for military use to Kepler malt beverages.

This guide to the company’s specialty exhibits also acts as a vendor catalogue for its products. A mini-brochure for “Hazeline Snow,” slipped into the guide, advertises a winter face-cream for wind-chapped skin.

Chemical manufacture began in the fields, with farming. Belladonna, the potent narcotic, went through several processing stages before becoming a “tabloid” medication.

These quirky guides give us a glimpse into the colossal exhibitions of the past during a time when two opposing societies sought to meet on equal ground. While heavily laden with propaganda and promotional opportunities for the hosting countries, the exhibits and entertainment thoroughly engaged the populace. People bought tickets and enthusiastically roamed through the fanfare. Ultimately, fair-goers gained a sense of hope for the future and a new, growing awareness of a significant, more peaceful connection to an international community.