Holiday Gifts

 

As the winter holiday season of 2018 rapidly approaches, in addition to hosting visits by FIU classes and Art Basel visitors, the librarians of The Wolfsonian–FIU Library have been preparing gift letters to acknowledge the many gifts we have received throughout the year. This post will be the first of several to be published through the year’s end recognizing the many generous donations received that have helped us build on strengths and fill in gaps in our rapidly growing collection of rare books, periodicals, and ephemera.

Not long ago, Modern Languages Professor Maria Antonieta Garcia arrived with a group of FIU students and Francophiles at The Wolfsonian for a presentation of French-language materials in the library, and a brief tour of the galleries.

On this particular occasion, Professor Garcia asked us to lay out some rare materials dealing with the topic of France’s overseas possessions and colonies and Francophone countries and cultures.

Wolfsonian founder Mitchell “Micky” Wolfson, Jr. spends much of the year traveling the world on the hunt for materials to add to our holdings, but also has an apartment in Paris and regularly frequents the many fine antiquarian bookshops of France. He recently packed up and sent to us the contents of his apartment there, a gift that included many items on the subject of France’s colonies. In preparing for the student’s visit, I prioritized accessioning, cataloguing, and having these new materials digitized so that the students would have the opportunity to see them during their visit, but also so that our online visitors might also have the chance to see something new.

The French-language materials donated by Mr. Wolfson included items from the international and colonial expositions organized in France to show off new technologies and inventions, new artistic and architectural styles, and to introduce Parisians and fair visitors to the peoples of foreign lands and French colonial possession.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Colonial pavilions and midways like the famous “Streets of Cairo” were designed to entertain and well as educate fair-goers through interaction with exotic architecture and the inhabitants of “human zoos.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Another recent gift from Mr. Wolfson’s Paris apartment was a children’s book celebrating the martyrdom of “Le Père de Foucauld,” a French Catholic member of the Poor Clares missionary order who established a religious retreat among the Tuareg people in the Saharan region of southern Algeria.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Foucauld lived among the Berbers, learned their language, and was working on a manuscript dictionary and grammar rich with descriptions of their culture and traditions when he was kidnapped and killed by armed bandits connected with the Senussi Bedouin. The juvenile history of Foucault’s life and martyrdom was intended to inspire young French Catholics with missionary zeal and fervor for converting the peoples of North Africa.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Two more recent gifts from Mr. Wolfson focused on French expeditions from coastal Morocco and Algiers down and across the Sahara desert.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Unlike earlier explorations employing native guides and camel caravans, the French expeditions of the late 1920s and early 1930s described in these books had crossed the great desert in automobiles to demonstrate the superiority of European technology.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Finally, a portfolio also donated by Mr. Wolfson highlighted France’s metropole and colonies in a collection of photographic plates. This particular item was published just a year prior to the 1937 Paris Exposition, the last to prominently feature France’s overseas empire before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Promised gift

As the professor and her students were also interested in the impact of the colonial peoples on French culture, I also pulled some plates from Le Tumulte Noir, a portfolio of color pochoir prints by Paul Colin, recently donated to The Wolfsonian by Daniel Morris. The plates celebrate the influence of African “primitivism” in the dance culture and nightlife of 1930s Paris, paying particular tribute to the famous African-American performer, Josephine Baker. Capitalizing on the French fascination with African “naturalism” and “primitivism,” Baker created exotic and erotic personae for the French revues (such as the Folies Bergère) and film industry (as in such movies as Princess Tam Tam).

Following that class visit, more than two hundred Art Basel visitors descended on the library during our Friday night open house to peruse a selection of highlights from the collection. In addition to the “usual suspects,” we added an entire table of recent acquisitions that included donations from Louis Miano, Leonard Finger, Jim and Martha Sweeny, Daniel Morris, Lisa Green and Jean Sharf.

Stay tuned for further posts this December providing more information and images of these recent gifts to The Wolfsonian–FIU Library.

William H. Helfand: A Tribute

In commemoration of the recent passing of William H. Helfand (1926–2018), I thought that I would take this occasion to present to my readers a few of the vast collection of display cards, prints, and other ephemeral items he collected, some of which were generously donated to The Wolfsonian–FIU library.

Mr. Helfand received a degree in pharmacy from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science in 1952.

Over the course of his long life, he demonstrated a keen interest in pills, potions, and medical quackery; the manner in which pharmaceuticals were peddled to the public; and even how the imagery of inoculation and vaccination were deployed in nineteenth century editorial cartoons and other political parodies.

Not only did Mr. Helfand collect and preserve such materials; he became an internationally-recognized authority on the subject. For decades he served as a member of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, and as that body’s secretary and president for several years. He penned nearly seventy articles for Pharmacy in History, and published five well-illustrated books, including Pharmacy: An Illustrated History (1990), The Picture of Health (1991), and Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera, & Books (2002).

We, here at The Wolfsonian, mourn his passing, but celebrate his life’s passion and legacy.

 

 

 

War and Remembrance

Earlier this month, approximately twenty Miami-area veterans came to The Wolfsonian–Florida International University in the company of FIU Assistant Professor of History and Health Policy and Management Jessica L. Adler. The group visit to the museum galleries and library was a part of a War and Healing program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Dialogues on the Experience of War initiative. The program aims to explore the process of post-service reintegration into civilian society through an examination of texts, primary sources, and visual arts dating from the First World War to the present. Museum educator Zoe Welch led the veterans on a guided tour of the museum galleries, stopping at various war-related museum pieces on display to initiate dialogue and discussion by the visitors. Harold Engman’s Human Pyramid, a painting with subtle jabs at the Nazi-occupation of his native Denmark and an implicit call for U.S. intervention, proved popular with the group.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The veterans also spent considerable time debating the meaning and message of Italian artist Egeo Venturi’s untitled work from 1932 depicting two Italian cherub-like youths wearing military hat and playing with guns. Some of the male veterans saw nothing sinister in the painting as playing with guns and emulating their fathers is often typical behavior for young boys. Some of the female veterans, however, were disturbed by the image, noting that the boys appeared to be leveling their toy guns directly at the viewer—a subtle criticism, perhaps, by the artist of the consequences of the militarization of youth in Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The group also paused in the portrait gallery to ponder the significance of an oil painting by Otto Beyer created in 1919, and titled Revolution. The painting depicts a soldier in the foreground armed with a handgun, with looters and the flames of arson in the background. While Professor Adler and I focused on the historical context of the work of art—i.e. the political and social upheaval and unrest that the German soldiers returning from the front lines confronted on their homecoming—the veterans were moved more by the facial expression of the soldier in the foreground. Most commented on the soldier’s mask of war-weariness, and another thought he betrayed a shocking realization of impending death, as they pointed out what appeared to be a bullet hole in his helmet.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection
Revolution (1919) detail

After concluding the tour of the galleries, the group came up to the library to view Wit as Weapon: Satire and the Great War, an installation curated by three FIU undergraduate students, one of whom is a veteran of war.

After talking about the nature of war propaganda and the use of satire to villainize and ridicule the enemy, the group entered the main reading room, where the tables were laid out with a variety of materials.

The items on display ranged from First World War recruitment posters, war art by servicemen and photographic depictions of the front taken by Austrian soldiers, graphic social critiques by anti-war activists in the immediate wake of the war, view books picturing war memorials and other commemorative objects, to representations of veterans in the post-First World War period. The veterans were asked to deconstruct and critically analyze the artifacts on the tables, after which we provided some more information about the historical context of the items.

The veterans were invited to closely examine a set of First World War recruiting posters and to ponder the similarities and differences in the imagery and approaches between those targeting prospective white and African-American recruits.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian’s library possesses a number of books, periodicals, and portfolios of plates illustrated by artists or photographers at the front. C. R. W. Nevinson, for example, published several books reproducing the Vorticist-influenced paintings he made of the front lines. While many capture the camaraderie and heroism of the common soldiers on the march and their experiences in the trenches, several also depict the horrors of war with images of wounded and “shell-shocked” soldiers.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Italian, German, and Austro-Hungarian troopers also produced images of the war with charcoals, paints, and cameras that were reproduced as postcards, portfolio plates, and periodical illustrations intended to bolster morale on the home front, but which sometimes also hinted at the horrors of war.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Promised gift

Most every nation participating in the war found it necessary to establish institutions intended to help seriously wounded veterans find therapeutic work to ease their transition from war to peace and make them feel like productive members of society once more.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

A poster by the French artist Jean Carlu was not shy about reminding his countrymen of “the debt” they owed to the seriously disfigured victims of the industrial war.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchased with Curatorial discretionary funds

Other artwork produced during and in the immediate aftermath of the Great War by German artists focused on the loss experienced by bereft mothers and widows, as in the work of Käthe Kollwitz, or George Grosz, who was openly critical of a society that could ignore the burdens borne by veterans maimed and horribly disfigured by the horrors of industrialized warfare.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Promised gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Other items on display for the veterans date from the 1930s, as anti-war movements were active, as ascendant Fascist and Nazi leaders rattled their sabers and preached the benefits of war as “nature’s hygiene,” and as democratic countries struggled with issues of compensating the services of the First World War veterans under the constraints of the Great Depression. In the United States, 40,000 or so veterans and their families marched on Washington as members of a “Bonus Expeditionary Force” determined to lobby Congress and press them for much-needed war service compensation promised but deferred. The Senate ultimately voted down the bonus bill, and the Army was dispatched to disperse the protesters and burn down the “Hooverville” they had established on the Anacostia Flats outside the capital.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

A lithographic print by Irving Marantz captures the sense of anger and frustration felt by many wounded warriors in America that were disregarded and disrespected after the war.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

In the same decade, the Italian government erected monuments and inaugurated the Largo dei Mutilati and Invalidi di Guerra in Rome and the Australians erected a magnificent memorial to commemorate the sacrifices of the soldiers of the Great War with Art Deco architecture, bas relief, mural paintings, and sculpture.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Our thanks go out to our partners at Florida International University, the Combat Hippies, the Florida State University Institute for World War II and the Human Experience, the Miami Vet Center of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and to the NAH for their support of this program.

Weaponized Wit: WWI Lampoons of Kaiser Wilhelm

Last spring semester, I taught an undergraduate history class at Florida International University on the topic of the First World War as depicted in film and interpreted by historians. Three of the students in the course, Christopher Stotts, Stephanie Diaz, and Ayme Cameron, opted to work on a library installation for their final project. The result of their selection, research, and interpretive and descriptive label writing came to fruition last month as the art handlers installed the works and we opened the show Wit as Weapon: Satire and the Great War.

This installation includes a few clips from such First World War propaganda films as Charlie Chaplin’s The Bond (1918) and Shoulder Arms (1918), the latter humorously depicting life in the trenches.

It also includes short clips from My Four Years in Germany (1918), a film based on the memoirs of the American ambassador to Germany, and from Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919), a satire starring the famous cross-dresser Bothwell Browne as a Mata Hari-like spy sent to seduce the Kaiser and steal his war plans.

The pièce de résistance of the installation is Ye Berlyn Tapestrie, a satire inspired by the medieval Bayeux Tapestry, which recorded episodes in the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066.

Ye Berlyn Tapestrie closely follows the tapestry it parodies, substituting German war atrocities in Kaiser Wilhelm’s invasion of Flanders, pictured by John Hassall (1868–1948) and published in London in 1915 by “Ye Studio Offices.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Ye Berlyn Tapestrie required the creation of a new wall case designed especially to display the piece, which folds out accordion-style to a length of 196 inches. We are grateful for the support of Wolfsonian board member Henry Hacker, who not only donated 225 posters from the First World War to The Wolfsonian in 2010, but has been providing funds to support our library installations, including the new case designed especially for this lengthy satire.

The installation also includes a unique drawing by Louis Raemaekers (Dutch, 1869–1956) picturing Kaiser Wilhem II as a spider on a web

 

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

Raemaeker was a Dutch cartoonist so outraged by the German invasion and occupation of Belgium that despite his own country’s neutrality, he published such scathing satires of German atrocities that the Military Command put a price on his head, prompting him to move to England to carry on with his campaign. Raemaekers’ cartoons were so popular that he made a tour of the United States once they entered the war, and his images were picked up by hundreds of newspapers with circulations in the millions. Many of his illustrations were reproduced as postcards and even as cigarette collecting cards.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

 

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

Once the installation opened, the student curators and the public were invited to a reception to see the finished product, and to peruse a display in the main library reading room of other satirical works dating from the Great War.

FIU student curator, Christopher Stotts

The library holds a significant collection of children’s books, games, puzzles, and postcards published during the Great War. While Wit as Weapon included works that lampooned various leaders and their armies, the majority of the items targeted the German Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Pamela K. Harer

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

The satires, often published as picture books for children and adults, express outrage over his invasion and occupation of neutral Belgium, and the atrocities committed by his armies against civilians on land and by his U-boat commanders on the high seas.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

Many of the American propaganda works depict the Kaiser as in league with, or surpassing in inhumanity, Satan and his demons.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

Another book selected by the student curators vilified the Italians for repudiating their alliance to the Central Powers and for instead joining the allies prompted by promises of the Austrian provinces of Trento and Trieste at the war’s end. In this children’s book Maledetto Katzelmacker, pictured on the cover as a pop-eyed bandito with a bloody dagger, conspires with a Frenchman, an Englishman, and a Russian to break into the house of Austria to steal a parrot named, appropriately enough, Trento-Trieste. A German and an Austrian soldier catch the burglars in the act, frighten off the others, and hang the Italian.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Pamela K. Harer

The Wolfsonian–FIU Library is a rich resource for materials on the Great War, including vintage propaganda postcards, sheet music covers, and numerous rare books.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

We welcome all of our local readers and those of you planning a visit to Miami to come to the museum to see the installation, on view through January 13, 2019.

Long Live the King: The Italian Liner, the Rex

Today’s post comes to you courtesy of Dr. Laurence Miller, former director of libraries at Florida International University, and, since his retirement, our most dedicated volunteer cataloger at The Wolfsonian–FIU. In 2008, Dr. Miller donated his extensive collection of post-Second World War cruise line and ocean liner ephemera to The Wolfsonian’s library, where it perfectly complemented Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s collection of prewar materials. Earlier this month, Maurizio Eliseo, an expert on the Rex, paid a visit to the museum and was introduced to our holdings by Dr. Miller and our curators. Here is Dr. Miller’s report:

Recently, the staff of The Wolfsonian were honored to receive a visit from Maurizio Eliseo, the well-known author of several notable books concerning famous Italian liners and the maritime tradition that they represent. Thanks to his efforts, the liner Rex may be the best-documented liner in the history of North Atlantic travel. The 51,062 gross ton liner, completed in the summer of 1931, won the coveted Blue Riband, the transatlantic speed record in 1933, and held it until 1935 when bested by the French Line’s Normandie.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Maurizio’s books each provide nearly 300 pages of documentation and contain virtually every known photographic illustration of the Rex. A forthcoming third volume on the vessel will be translated into English and accessible to most liner enthusiasts.

The highlight of Mr. Eliseo’s visit came during his visit to the library, where he had the opportunity to peruse two of the largest books in the collection. Both of the oversized tomes include detailed drawings of the décor and fittings, and specifications of materials and finishes to be used in the design of the interiors and furnishings of the second and third-class public areas and staterooms of the Rex.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Rex’s aristocratic profile commanded respect and it was as imposing in external appearance as it was beautiful in its interiors.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Many of the brochures, deck plans, menus, and other ephemera in The Wolfsonian’s library collection focus more on the first-class accommodations aboard the Rex. 

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

While photographic images capture the reality of the ship, artists’ renderings prepared for advertisements published by the Italian Line during the Fascist era tended to exaggerate the size and scale of public rooms and decks.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The illustrated brochures are useful, however, in providing an idea of the colors used and of the general elegance of Italian interior ship design in this period. The brochures focusing on first-class public areas also depict the formal dress and attire of the era. Adjusted for inflation, first-class fares for the Rex are comparable to first and business-class fares today, making these accommodations the exclusive preserve of the elite. With the divisions between classes of accommodation strictly enforced on the Mediterranean route, affluent passengers could expect to be surrounded by “the better sort.” The experience for first-class passengers aboard Rex was akin to being a temporary resident in a palace.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

If some passengers loved the majestic feel of sailing aboard the Rex, others preferred the more modern interiors of the Conte di Savoia, with its elegant, innovative designs by Gustavo Pulitzer.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Conte di Savoia’s first-class smoking room probably provided the inspiration for the ballroom on board the Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2. The writer was asked to choose a few interior illustrations that he thought worth replicating in the modern liner, and took an illustration of this space to the Ft. Lauderdale offices of those working on interiors for the new Cunard ship. Working within the strictures of current fire safety regulations—which limit the longitudinal size of interior spaces—the designers tried to capture the elegance of an earlier era of Atlantic travel. Touches of the Normandie can also be identified aboard QM2.

The Wolfsonian has a particularly fine collection of post-Second World War Costa and Sitmar brochures in the Laurence Miller Collection that Mr. Eliseo also had a chance to examine.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

My first ocean-going voyage took place in 1957 on board Sitmar’s Castel Felice, a student and emigrant ship, which sailed from Montreal to New York in four days for the very reasonable rate of $55.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

Mr. Eliseo wrote an excellent history of the company, The Sitmar Liners and the V Ships, published by Carmania Press in 1998, in the wake of another beautiful book about the Costa Liners published the previous year and co-authored by Paolo Piccine.

 

 

Through a Glass Darkly: Colonial Views of Africa

On the last Saturday of June, two dozen Mandela Washington Young African Leader fellowship recipients came to The Wolfsonian–Florida International University for a guided tour of the galleries and a presentation of primary source materials conducted by associate librarian Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi in our rare book and special collections library. The group included persons from nineteen African nations including: Ethiopia, Cameroon, the United Republic of Tanzania, Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Malawi, Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Namibia, Guinea, Liberia, Madagascar, and Zambia.

The Wolfsonian’s collection focuses primarily on the period 1850 to 1950, a time when much of the African continent was under European hegemonic control. Consequently, most of our holdings of Africa and Africans present the regions and peoples through the distorted prism and perspective of colonialism and tourism. The visitors had the opportunity to see how European “explorers” and imperialists viewed the continent and represented it in colonial expositions.

The Wolfsonian possesses considerable propaganda relating to Italian and German colonial ventures in Africa. The Italian colonization of Eritrea and Ethiopia are well documented in the library collection, with numerous rare books, periodicals, and ephemera dealing with the First (1895–1896) and Second (1935–1939) Italo-Ethiopian wars.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

Most of the materials laid out for our guests were produced by the Italian Fascist regime to “educate” the population about the region, to justify the invasion in 1935, and to promote patriotic pride in the establishment of the Italian Empire.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

Aside from overtly “heroic” and “romanticized” depictions of Italians overcoming retreating Ethiopian warriors, most of the publications designed for home consumption tended to focus on women and children to make light of combat and to insinuate that most of the native people welcomed Italian intervention and colonial rule.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Steve Heller

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

The library does have some anti-Italian propaganda related to the Second Italo-Ethiopian war as well, including a number of issues of Akbaba, a Turkish publication with covers highly critical of Mussolini and the Italian invasion.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Carl Weller published a portfolio of 48 color photographic illustrations of Germany’s colonial possessions in Africa.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

After coming to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists began publishing a flurry of books and pamphlets designed to create nostalgia for and indignation over the African colonies lost by Germany after the First World War. The Kraft durch Freude (or, “Strength through Joy”) leisure program was established by the Nazis as a means of popularizing their National Socialist agenda and elevating the German government to become the largest tourism operator in the world. The KdF provided class-free, subsidized cruises for Germans as a means of stimulating the economy, promoting German-flag shipping, and encouraging trips, especially to former colonies in Africa.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Other European colonial powers also promoted travel to their respective colonies in Africa.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

While touring the galleries, the visitors had the opportunity to see art objects such as La Barre à Mine (Mining Bar), a statue created by Arthur Dupagne for the Belgian Congo Pavilion at the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques, in Paris. While the painted plaster statue depicts a well-proportioned, muscular African male using a crowbar to break rock, it implies that Belgians would have to supply the brain power.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Printed materials from various world’s fairs and colonial expositions in Europe demonstrate how even architecture was used for propaganda purposes. Parisian architects erected African vernacular structures as pavilions, giving them a modern twist.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. loan

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchased with funds donated by Vicki Gold Levi

Postcards and children’s coloring books were often distributed at expositions to “educate” and excite interest in African colonies among adult and younger fair visitors.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. promised gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

At the 1935 international exposition in Belgium, architectural planners deliberately sited and juxtaposed impressive modernist structures next to simple grass and palm thatch huts and “human zoos” to remind visitors of the contrast between “civilized” and “savage” peoples.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The interiors of these colonial pavilions reinforced the message of the exteriors with displays that implied that educational, religious, and humanitarian missions outweighed economic motives.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

In spite of the obvious biases and ethnocentricities inherent in the European-produced material about Africa, they are not without historical value. The reader can read diaries, journals, and peruse collecting cards as well as sketch and scrapbooks to catch a glimpse of “authentic” African dress and customs in the artwork and photographs that grace their pages.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection

 

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

 

 

Graphic Art Selling Revolution, Jewelry, and War

Although the Wolfsonian librarians have been extraordinarily busy this summer processing, accessioning, and cataloging a flood of new acquisitions and gifts, this last month we had only a small trickle of visitors. The first group included Charlotte Camille, Ludovic Houplain, and Maxime Vandenabeele, members of the H5 Group based in Paris who will be working with us on a project for the next Art Basel Miami Beach event in December. Dr. Harsanyi provided our guests with a personalize tour of the library installation he curated on early Soviet Constructivist art.

As the group was particularly interested in graphic art, typography, and logo designs, we brought them into the main reading room to peruse a number of works pulled from our rare book and special collections holdings.

The materials ranged from a 1908 deluxe reprinting of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra [Thus spake Zarathustra] designed by Henry C. Van de Velde (1863–1957) with typeface designed by Georges Lemmen (1865–1957);

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

… type specimen booklets and broadsides, and guides and handbooks on the theory and practice of layout design;

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Steve Heller

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

…an ABC gem box with alphabetical designs by Kurt Hans Volk (1883–1962); typeface and photographs of exhibitions designed by Bauhaus artist, Herbert Bayer (1900–1985);

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

…unusual and celebrated books designed by Italian Futurists, Fortunato Depero (1892–1960), Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944), Tullio Crali (1910–2000), and Raoul Cenisi (1912–1991);

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

 …brochures and plans for pictogram-like game pieces created by Ladislav Sutnar (1897–1976);

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Rad Sutnar

Later in the month, Dr. Harsanyi and I hosted eighteen visitors from Richline Group, a jewelry manufacturer dedicated to the establishment of an internationally recognized, vertically-integrated corporate branding, production, marketing, and distribution strategy throughout the jewelry supply chain.

While The Wolfsonian’s library does not specialize in period jewelry, we did have a plethora of reference books on the subject, numerous rare catalogs highlighting the work of European and American gold and silversmiths, as well as a portfolio of plates advertising Art Deco jewelry.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The library also holds the Victory Gold Levi Collection, which, in addition to ephemeral paper and print materials documenting the U.S. propaganda campaign, also includes a number of “V for Victory” pins designed to be worn by patriotic women on the home front.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Victory Gold Levi Collection

Not unlike our earlier French visitors, others in this group were as interested in the logos, branding, photography, and display strategies used in various advertising industry publications also laid out on the tables for them to peruse.

Finally, Wolfsonian director Tim Rodgers stopped by on a Saturday with Eric and Svetlana Silverman, their daughter, and their guest, Tamao Watanabe, the executive officer and director of Kyowa Kirin.

The Silvermans were the lenders to Constructing Revolution, Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s Soviet propaganda poster exhibition now on display in our galleries.

Our own resident expert on the Soviet Union, Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi, curated a library installation, Red and Black: Revolution in Soviet Propaganda Graphics. This installation complements Constructing Revolution by exploring how books, periodicals, and portfolio plates also experimented with Constructivist imagery and Soviet symbols to promote the Socialist revolution.

As their guest was also interested in getting a sense of our Japanese holdings, I pulled out some highlights, including: vibrant color chromolithographic proofs for greeting cards published in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War;

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

…historical bindings from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection;

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf

… color prints depicting the Great Japan Earthquake of 1923;

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

… an accordion-style binding with pochoir (stencil work) modernist designs for perfume and cosmetics packaging (alas, not yet digitized); and Second World War-era Japanese propaganda prints designed to be fashioned into patriotic fans.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

We always feel privileged to be able to share our holdings with VIPs and groups visiting the museum, and to be able to provide our online fans with a digital sampling of the same.