William Blake’s Paintings Come to Life in Two Animations

in Animation, Art, Museums, Poetry | September 4th, 2020

The poet and painter William Blake toiled in obscu­ri­ty, for the most part, and died in pover­ty.

Twen­ty some years after his death, his rebel­lious spir­it gained trac­tion with the Pre-Raphaelites.

By the dawn­ing of the Age of Aquar­ius, Blake was ripe to be ven­er­at­ed as a counter-cul­tur­al hero, for hav­ing flown in the face of con­ven­tion, while cham­pi­oning gen­der and racial equal­i­ty, nature, and free love.

Reclin­ing half-naked on a “a fab­u­lous couch in Harlem,” poet Allen Gins­burg had a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry encounter where­in Blake recit­ed to him “in earth­en mea­sure.”

Dit­to poet Michael McClure, though in his case, Bob Dylan’s “Gates of Eden” served as some­thing of a medi­um:

I had the idea that I was hal­lu­ci­nat­ing, that it was William Blake’s voice com­ing out of the walls and I stood up and put my hands on the walls and they were vibrat­ing.

Blake’s work (and world view) con­tin­ues to exert enor­mous influ­ence on graph­ic nov­el­ists, the­ater­mak­ers, and cre­atives of every stripe.

He’s also a dab hand at ani­ma­tion, col­lab­o­rat­ing from beyond the grave.

The short above, a com­mis­sion for a late ‘70s Blake exhi­bi­tion at The Tate, envi­sions a roundtrip jour­ney from Heav­en to Hell. Ani­ma­tor Sheila Graber parked her­self in the Sculp­ture Hall to cre­ate it in pub­lic view, pair­ing Blake’s line “Ener­gy is Eter­nal delight” with a per­son­al obser­va­tion:

Whether we use it to cre­ate or destroy—it’s the same ener­gy. The prac­tice of art can turn a per­son from a van­dal to a builder!

More recent­ly, the Tate gave direc­tor Sam Gains­bor­ough access to super high-res imagery of Blake’s orig­i­nal paint­ings, in order to cre­ate a pro­mo for last year’s block­buster exhi­bi­tion.

Gains­bor­ough and ani­ma­tor Renald­ho Pelle worked togeth­er to bring the cho­sen works to life, frame by frame, against a series of Lon­don build­ings and streets that were well known to Blake him­self.

The film opens with Blake’s Ghost of a Flea emerg­ing from the walls of Broad­wick Street, where its cre­ator was born, then stalk­ing off, bowl in hand, ced­ing the screen to God, The Ancient of Days, whose reach spreads like ink across the grit­ty facade of a white brick edi­fice.

Sey­mour Mil­ton’s orig­i­nal music and Jas­mine Black­borow’s nar­ra­tion of excerpts from Blake’s poem “Auguries of Inno­cence” seem to antic­i­pate the fraught cur­rent moment, as does the entire poem:

Auguries of Inno­cence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heav­en in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infin­i­ty in the palm of your hand 

And Eter­ni­ty in an hour

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heav­en in a Rage 

A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons

Shud­ders Hell thr’ all its regions 

A dog starvd at his Mas­ters Gate

Pre­dicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse mis­usd upon the Road

Calls to Heav­en for Human blood 

Each out­cry of the hunt­ed Hare

A fibre from the Brain does tear 

A Sky­lark wound­ed in the wing 

A Cheru­bim does cease to sing 

The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight

Does the Ris­ing Sun affright 

Every Wolfs & Lions howl

Rais­es from Hell a Human Soul 

The wild deer, wan­dring here & there 

Keeps the Human Soul from Care 

The Lamb mis­usd breeds Pub­lic Strife

And yet for­gives the Butch­ers knife 

The Bat that flits at close of Eve

Has left the Brain that wont Believe

The Owl that calls upon the Night

Speaks the Unbe­liev­ers fright

He who shall hurt the lit­tle Wren

Shall nev­er be belovd by Men 

He who the Ox to wrath has movd

Shall nev­er be by Woman lovd

The wan­ton Boy that kills the Fly

Shall feel the Spi­ders enmi­ty 

He who tor­ments the Chafers Sprite

Weaves a Bow­er in end­less Night 

The Cat­ter­piller on the Leaf

Repeats to thee thy Moth­ers grief 

Kill not the Moth nor But­ter­fly 

For the Last Judg­ment draweth nigh 

He who shall train the Horse to War

Shall nev­er pass the Polar Bar 

The Beg­gars Dog & Wid­ows Cat 

Feed them & thou wilt grow fat 

The Gnat that sings his Sum­mers Song

Poi­son gets from Slan­ders tongue 

The poi­son of the Snake & Newt

Is the sweat of Envys Foot 

The poi­son of the Hon­ey Bee

Is the Artists Jeal­ousy

The Princes Robes & Beg­gars Rags

Are Toad­stools on the Misers Bags 

A Truth thats told with bad intent

Beats all the Lies you can invent 

It is right it should be so 

Man was made for Joy & Woe 

And when this we right­ly know 

Thro the World we safe­ly go 

Joy & Woe are woven fine 

A Cloth­ing for the soul divine 

Under every grief & pine

Runs a joy with silken twine 

The Babe is more than swadling Bands

Through­out all these Human Lands

Tools were made & Born were hands 

Every Farmer Under­stands

Every Tear from Every Eye

Becomes a Babe in Eter­ni­ty 

This is caught by Females bright

And returnd to its own delight 

The Bleat the Bark Bel­low & Roar 

Are Waves that Beat on Heav­ens Shore 

The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath

Writes Revenge in realms of Death 

The Beg­gars Rags flut­ter­ing in Air

Does to Rags the Heav­ens tear 

The Sol­dier armd with Sword & Gun 

Palsied strikes the Sum­mers Sun

The poor Mans Far­thing is worth more

Than all the Gold on Africs Shore

One Mite wrung from the Labr­ers hands

Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands 

Or if pro­tect­ed from on high 

Does that whole Nation sell & buy 

He who mocks the Infants Faith

Shall be mockd in Age & Death 

He who shall teach the Child to Doubt

The rot­ting Grave shall neer get out 

He who respects the Infants faith

Tri­umphs over Hell & Death 

The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Rea­sons

Are the Fruits of the Two sea­sons 

The Ques­tion­er who sits so sly 

Shall nev­er know how to Reply 

He who replies to words of Doubt

Doth put the Light of Knowl­edge out 

The Strongest Poi­son ever known

Came from Cae­sars Lau­rel Crown 

Nought can Deform the Human Race

Like to the Armours iron brace 

When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow

To peace­ful Arts shall Envy Bow 

A Rid­dle or the Crick­ets Cry

Is to Doubt a fit Reply 

The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile

Make Lame Phi­los­o­phy to smile 

He who Doubts from what he sees

Will neer Believe do what you Please 

If the Sun & Moon should Doubt 

Theyd imme­di­ate­ly Go out 

To be in a Pas­sion you Good may Do 

But no Good if a Pas­sion is in you 

The Whore & Gam­bler by the State

Licencd build that Nations Fate 

The Har­lots cry from Street to Street 

Shall weave Old Eng­lands wind­ing Sheet 

The Win­ners Shout the Losers Curse 

Dance before dead Eng­lands Hearse 

Every Night & every Morn

Some to Mis­ery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to End­less Night 

We are led to Believe a Lie

When we see not Thro the Eye

Which was Born in a Night to per­ish in a Night 

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 

But does a Human Form Dis­play

To those who Dwell in Realms of day

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Images Are Sub­lime, and in High Res­o­lu­tion

William Blake Illus­trates Mary Wollstonecraft’s Work of Children’s Lit­er­a­ture, Orig­i­nal Sto­ries from Real Life (1791)

William Blake’s Mas­ter­piece Illus­tra­tions of the Book of Job (1793–1827)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take Immersive Virtual Tours of the World’s Great Museums: The Louvre, Hermitage, Van Gogh Museum & Much More

in Art, Museums | September 2nd, 2020

Can you remem­ber when you last vis­it­ed a muse­um? Even if you did­n’t much care for them before the time of the coro­n­avirus, you’re prob­a­bly begin­ning to miss them right about now. At least the inter­net tech­nol­o­gy that has kept our com­mu­ni­ca­tion open and our enter­tain­ment flow­ing — and, regret­tably for some, kept our work meet­ings reg­u­lar — has also made it pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence art insti­tu­tions through our screens. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured many such online art spaces, dig­i­tal gallery expe­ri­ences, and vir­tu­al muse­um tours, and today we’ve round­ed up some of the best for you.

Most every­one who had a trip to France sched­uled for this spring or sum­mer will have can­celed it. But thanks to these three high-def­i­n­i­tion, first-per­son videos, you can still tour the Lou­vre, Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple, the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, and even I.M. Pei’s rooftop pyra­mid and all. Per­haps you’d planned to spend part of 2020 trav­el­ing Europe more wide­ly, in which case you’d almost cer­tain­ly have gone to Italy and seen Forence’s Uffizi Gallery as well. Luck­i­ly, that most famous col­lec­tion of Renais­sance art has gone dig­i­tal with a com­plete “street view” tour as well as an archive of 3D sculp­ture scans.

Of course, no art-ori­ent­ed trip to Italy would be well spent only in gal­leries and muse­ums: it would also have to include St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, the Sis­tine Chapel, and oth­er sacred spaces of the Vat­i­can, in whose vir­tu­al ver­sions you can now spend as long as you like. And while some tourists in Europe face time or mon­ey con­straints too tight to allow vis­its to small­er coun­tries like the Nether­lands, inter­net trav­el is sub­ject to no such lim­i­ta­tions. So go ahead and take a sev­en-part tour of the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K, or have a look at Rem­brandt’s The Night Watch down to every last brush­stroke.

You won’t find every Dutch mas­ter­piece in the Nether­lands. Take Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Ear­ly Delights, for instance, cur­rent­ly held by Spain’s Pra­do Muse­um, which has also made a vir­tu­al tour of the grotesque and spec­tac­u­lar paint­ing avail­able online. As for the work of Spain’s own artists, you can go even deep­er into the work of Sal­vador Dalí with this 360-degree vir­tu­al-real­i­ty video of his paint­ing Archae­o­log­i­cal Rem­i­nis­cence of Millet’s ‘Angelus.’  Those who’d like to spend some time off the con­ti­nent and back down on Earth can view an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent 360-degree video, this one of Shake­peare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don — and have a look at the trea­sures of the British Muse­um while they’re at it.

The ongo­ing pan­dem­ic hav­ing put a tem­po­rary stop to not just most trav­el to Europe but most inter­na­tion­al trav­el of any kind, hope­ful trav­el­ers to and with­in North Amer­i­ca have also been forced to change their plans. If this describes you, con­sid­er tak­ing a vir­tu­al tour of the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry, Frank Lloyd Wright’s stu­dio Tal­iesin, or the Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um in Mex­i­co City. But while you’re online, why not mount an even more ambi­tious world­wide art jour­ney: to the Her­mitage in Rus­sia, the Ghi­b­li Muse­um in Japan, and street art (as well as stolen art) from all over? It’s a big world of art out there — some­thing we can’t let our­selves for­get before we can see it in per­son again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

The Stay At Home Muse­um: Your Pri­vate, Guid­ed Tours of Rubens, Bruegel & Oth­er Flem­ish Mas­ters

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

Chi­nese Muse­ums, Closed by the Coro­n­avirus, Put Their Exhi­bi­tions Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Home Movies Starring Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, Colette & Other Early 20th Century Luminaries

in Art, Film, History, Life, Museums | September 1st, 2020

Léonide Mas­sine may not be not the most famous name to grace socialite Eliz­a­beth Fuller Chapman’s home movies.

In terms of 21st cen­tu­ry name brand recog­ni­tion, he def­i­nite­ly lags behind art world heav­ies Sal­vador Dali, Mar­cel Duchamp, Con­stan­tin Brân­cuși, Hen­ri Matisse, com­pos­er Igor Stravin­sky, nov­el­ist Colette, play­wright Thorn­ton Wilder, the ever-for­mi­da­ble poet and col­lec­tor Gertrude Stein, and her long­time com­pan­ion Alice B. Tok­las. Such were the lumi­nar­ies in Mrs. Chapman’s cir­cle.

But in terms of sheer on-cam­era charis­ma, the Bal­lets Russ­es dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er def­i­nite­ly steals the col­lec­tive show, above, cur­rent­ly on exhib­it as part of the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s Pri­vate Lives Pub­lic Spaces, an exhib­it explor­ing home movies as an art form.

Massine’s unbri­dled al fres­co hip-twirling, pranc­ing, and side kicks (pre­ced­ed by a slow-motion run at 1:55) exist in stark con­trast with Matisse’s stiff dis­com­fort in the same set­ting (11:11) One need not be a skilled lipread­er to guess the tone of the com­men­tary Mrs. Chapman’s 16mm cam­era was not equipped to cap­ture.

Stein (12:00), whose force­ful per­son­al­i­ty was the stuff of leg­end, appears relaxed at the sum­mer home she and Tok­las shared in Bilignin, but also hap­py to posi­tion their stan­dard poo­dle, Bas­ket, as the cen­ter of atten­tion.

Georges Braque (14:50), the intro­vert­ed Father of Cubism, clings grate­ful­ly to his palette as he stands before a large can­vas in his stu­dio, and appears just as wary in anoth­er clip at 20:10.

The Sur­re­al­ist Dali (21:50), as extro­vert­ed as Braque was retir­ing, takes a dif­fer­ent approach to his palette, engag­ing with it as a sort of com­ic prop. Dit­to his wife-to-be, Gala, and a paint­ed porce­lain bust he once acces­sorized with an inkwell, a baguette, and a zoetrope strip.

Dali serves up some seri­ous Tik-Tok vibes, but we have a hunch Colette’s strug­gles with her friend, pianist Misia Sert’s semi-tame mon­key (4:35), would rack up more likes.

As the cura­tors of the MoMA exhi­bi­tion note:

Chap­man Films is immense­ly pop­u­lar in the Film Study Cen­ter for the rare and inti­mate glimpses of their lives it pro­vides, from a time when the famous were not read­i­ly acces­si­ble. Yes, there were gos­sip columns, fan mag­a­zines, and juicy exposés in the 1930s and ‘40s, but many notable fig­ures care­ful­ly curat­ed their pub­lic per­sonas. We know these fig­ures through their paint­ings, music, or words, not their faces, so to see them at all—let alone in real life, doing every­day things—is remark­able.

Also charm­ing is the fresh­ness of their inter­ac­tions with Chapman’s camera—many of her sub­jects were celebri­ties, but their fame was in no way teth­ered to the ubiq­ui­ty of smart phones. Hard to go viral in 16mm, decades before YouTube.

Though danc­ing, as Mas­sine, and his close sec­ond Serge Lifar (8:50) make plain, is an excel­lent way to hold our atten­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Con­tributed “Noth­ing” to Art (1986)

Vin­tage Film: Watch Hen­ri Matisse Sketch and Make His Famous Cut-Outs (1946)

Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so’

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take a Virtual Tour of Frida Kahlo’s Blue House Free Online

in Art, Museums | August 26th, 2020

No first trip to Mex­i­co City is com­plete with­out a vis­it to the Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um. Locat­ed in the vil­lage-turned-bor­ough of Coyoacán south of the city’s cen­ter, it requires a short trip-with­in-a-trip to get there. But even for trav­el­ers who know noth­ing of Kahlo’s art, it’s worth the effort — espe­cial­ly since they’ll come away know­ing quite a bit about not just Kahlo’s art and life but the cul­tur­al­ly rich place and time she inhab­it­ed. For the build­ing occu­pied by the Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um was, in fact, the home in which the artist was born and spent most of her life, mak­ing her one of Coyoacán’s many notable res­i­dents. (Oth­ers include writer Octavio Paz, icon­ic com­ic actor Mario “Can­ti­n­flas” Moreno, and actress-singer Dolores del Río.)

Though I’ve long want­ed to return to the Blue House, as the Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um is col­lo­qui­al­ly known, I some­how haven’t made it back again on any of my sub­se­quent trips to Mex­i­co City. And giv­en the state of world trav­el at the moment, I doubt I’ll get the chance to make anoth­er vis­it any time soon.

For­tu­nate­ly, the Muse­um has become vir­tu­al­ly explorable online, with 360-degree views of all its rooms as well as its grounds. Even vir­tu­al­ly, writes Vogue’s Manon Gar­rigues, “Frida’s spir­it can be felt every­where. In her ate­lier are care­ful­ly arranged pig­ments fac­ing her easel, while in the kitchen, which once wel­comed the couple’s friends to the house, includ­ing their renowned neigh­bor, Trot­sky, who lived next door with his wife, are play­ful ceram­ics.”

For those with com­pat­i­ble head­sets, all of this is also view­able in Web­VR mode —  even Kahlo’s bed­room, where “an urn in the form of her face lies on her bed, hold­ing her ash­es. Beside is the mir­ror in which Fri­da, bedrid­den, observed her­self to paint her famous self-por­traits, such as The Two Fridas and Fri­da y la cesarea, now on dis­play in the vil­la.”

The home-turned-muse­um’s ten rooms dis­play a great deal of Kahlo’s art, of course, but also works by her hus­band, the painter Diego Rivera, as well as the cou­ple’s cloth­ing and per­son­al effects. You’ll find paint­ings by oth­er artists of Kahlo’s day like Paul Klee and José María Velas­co, and also hand­craft­ed items from oth­er regions of Mex­i­co. The only thing miss­ing in the vir­tu­al Fri­da Kahlo Muse­um expe­ri­ence is the req­ui­site cafe de olla enjoyed after­ward, back out on the streets of Coyoacán. Enter the vir­tu­al tour here.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

Watch Mov­ing Short Films of Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the “Blue House”

Artists Fri­da Kahlo & Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co: Vin­tage Footage from 1938

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The British Museum is Full of Looted Artifacts

in History, Museums | August 21st, 2020

As crit­ics and fans wrote excit­ed­ly upon its release, Marvel’s Black Pan­ther did an excel­lent job of cre­at­ing sym­pa­thy for its vil­lain. Many found Erik Killmonger’s rad­i­cal­ism more appeal­ing than the hero’s mod­er­a­tion for some spe­cif­ic rea­sons, begin­ning with the heist at the “Muse­um of Great Britain,” a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized British Muse­um. “In one scene,” writes gal­lerist Lise Rag­bir at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “the block­buster super­hero movie touch­es on issues of prove­nance, repa­tri­a­tion, diver­si­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and oth­er debates cur­rent­ly shap­ing insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices.”

As a gallery direc­tor who is also black, I was awed by Killmonger’s dec­la­ra­tion to an over­con­fi­dent cura­tor that she was mis­tak­en. When the cura­tor con­de­scend­ing­ly informed Kill­mon­ger that items in the muse­um aren’t for sale, my hands began to sweat. And I was down­right thrilled when the vil­lain blunt­ly con­front­ed her: “How do you think your ances­tors got these? You think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it like they took every­thing else?”

He does not exag­ger­ate. The scene “describes a cen­turies-old truth,” artist Deb­o­rah Roberts remarks”—“colonialists rob­bing black cul­ture to put on dis­play for Euro­pean con­sump­tion.” The issue, in oth­er words, is not only who gets to tell the sto­ries of African and oth­er non-Euro­pean peo­ple, but who gets to see and hear them, since so many non-white peo­ple have been exclud­ed from muse­ums and muse­um cul­ture.

As Casey Haugh­in wrote in the Hop­kins Exhi­bi­tion­ist, the film “pre­sent­ed [the muse­um] as an ille­gal mech­a­nism of colo­nial­ism, and along with that, a space which does not even wel­come those whose cul­ture it dis­plays.” So-called “dis­put­ed muse­um trea­sures,” the Vox video above shows, are essen­tial­ly stolen arti­facts, with claims of own­er­ship that elide, omit, or fab­ri­cate the his­to­ry of their acqui­si­tion.

Some loot­ed trea­sures have been returned, but when it comes to the major­i­ty of the Museum’s “dis­put­ed” col­lec­tions, “so far, it isn’t giv­ing them back,” Vox explains, despite calls from for­mer­ly col­o­nized nations. It’s easy to see why. If they were to hon­or his­tor­i­cal claims of own­er­ship, the British Muse­um would lose some of its most cel­e­brat­ed and sig­nif­i­cant hold­ings, like the Roset­ta Stone or the Benin Bronzes, “some of the most con­tentious items in the muse­um.”

These bronzes, from the wealthy King­dom of Benin, locat­ed in mod­ern-day Nige­ria, were “loot­ed by British sol­diers dur­ing an 1897 raid,” Sarah Cas­cone writes at Art­net. Faced with calls from Nigeria’s Nation­al Com­mis­sion for Muse­ums and Mon­u­ments to return them, the British Muse­um held meet­ings that lead to more meet­ings and a “dec­la­ra­tion” that “out­lined an intention”—all stalling tac­tics that have not pro­duced results. Learn why these arti­facts are impor­tant to Nige­ri­ans and how the 19th-cen­tu­ry “scram­ble for Africa” cre­at­ed so much of the muse­um cul­ture we know today, one still heav­i­ly mired in its colo­nial­ist roots.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Thomas Jefferson’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson Poses for a Presidential Portrait

in Art, Current Affairs, History, Museums, Photography | July 6th, 2020

We hold these truths to be self-evi­dent: that all men are cre­at­ed equal; that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able rights; that among these are life, lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness…  —Thomas Jef­fer­son, 3rd Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca

He was a bril­liant man who preached equal­i­ty, but he didn’t prac­tice it. He owned peo­ple. And now I’m here because of it. —Shan­non LaNier, co-author of Jefferson’s Chil­dren: The Sto­ry of One Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly

Many of the Amer­i­can par­tic­i­pants in pho­tog­ra­ph­er Drew Gard­ner’s ongo­ing Descen­dants project agreed to tem­porar­i­ly alter their usu­al appear­ance to height­en the his­toric resem­blance to their famous ances­tors, adopt­ing Eliz­a­beth Cady Stanton’s lace cap and sausage curls or Fred­er­ick Dou­glass’ swept back mane.

Actor and tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Shan­non LaNier sub­mit­ted to an uncom­fort­able, peri­od-appro­pri­ate neck­wrap, tugged into place with the help of some dis­creet­ly placed paper­clips, but skipped the wig that would have brought him into clos­er vis­i­ble align­ment with an 1800 por­trait of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand­fa­ther, Thomas Jef­fer­son.

“I didn’t want to become Jef­fer­son,” states LaNier, whose great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand­moth­er, Sal­ly Hem­ings, was writ­ten out of the nar­ra­tive for most of our country’s his­to­ry.

An enslaved half-sis­ter of Jefferson’s late wife, Martha, Hem­ings was around six­teen when she bore Jefferson’s first child, as per the mem­oir of her son, Madi­son, from whom LaNier is also direct­ly descend­ed.

She has been por­trayed onscreen by actors Car­men Ejo­go and Thandie New­ton (and Maya Rudolph in an icky Sat­ur­day Night Live skit.)

But there are no pho­tographs or paint­ed por­traits of her, nor any sur­viv­ing let­ters or diary entries. Just two accounts in which she is described as attrac­tive and light-skinned, and some polit­i­cal car­toons that paint an unflat­ter­ing pic­ture.

The mys­tery of her appear­ance might make for an inter­est­ing com­pos­ite por­trait should the Smith­son­ian, who com­mis­sioned Gardner’s series, seek to entice all of LaNier’s female and female-iden­ti­fy­ing cousins from the Hem­ings line to pose.

While LaNier was aware of his con­nec­tion to Jef­fer­son from ear­li­est child­hood, his peers scoffed and his moth­er had to take the mat­ter up with the prin­ci­pal after a teacher told him to sit down and stop lying. As he recalled in an inter­view:

When they didn’t believe me, it became one of those things you stop shar­ing because, you know, peo­ple would make fun of you and then they’d say, “Yeah, and I’m relat­ed to Abra­ham Lin­coln.”

His fam­i­ly pool expand­ed when Jefferson’s great-great-great-great-grand­son, jour­nal­ist Lucian King Truscott IV—whose fifth great-grand­moth­er was Martha Jef­fer­son—issued an open invi­ta­tion to Hem­ings’ descen­dants to be his guests at a 1999 fam­i­ly reunion at Mon­ti­cel­lo.

It would be anoth­er 20 years before the Thomas Jef­fer­son Foun­da­tion and Mon­ti­cel­lo tour guides stopped fram­ing Hem­ings’ inti­mate con­nec­tion to Jef­fer­son as mere tat­tle.

Now vis­i­tors can find an exhib­it ded­i­cat­ed to her life, both online and in the recent­ly reopened house-muse­um.

Truscott laud­ed the move in an essay on Salon, pub­lished the same week that a year­book pho­to of Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Ralph Northam in black­face pos­ing next to a fig­ure in KKK robes began to cir­cu­late:

Mon­ti­cel­lo is com­mit­ting an act of equal­i­ty by telling the sto­ry of slave life there, and by exten­sion, slave life in Amer­i­ca. When my cousins in the Hem­ings fam­i­ly stand up and proud­ly say, we are descen­dants of Thomas Jef­fer­son, they are com­mit­ting an act of equal­i­ty…. The pho­to­graph you see here is a pic­ture of who we are as Amer­i­cans. One day, a pho­to­graph of two cousins, one black and one white, will not be seen as unusu­al. One day, acts of equal­i­ty will out­weigh acts of racism. Until that day, how­ev­er, Shan­non and I will keep fight­ing for what’s right. And one day, we will win.

Watch a video of Jef­fer­son descen­dant Shan­non Lanier’s ses­sion with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Drew Gard­ner here.

See more pho­tos from Gardner’s Descen­dents project here.

Read his­to­ri­an Annette Gor­don-Reed’s New York Times op-ed on the com­pli­cat­ed Hem­ings-Jef­fer­son con­nec­tion here.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Trumbull’s Famous 1818 Paint­ing Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence Vir­tu­al­ly Defaced to Show Which Found­ing Fathers Owned Slaves

Meet “Found­ing Moth­er” Mary Katharine God­dard, First Female Post­mas­ter in the U.S. and Print­er of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence

Hamil­ton Mania Inspires the Library of Con­gress to Put 12,000 Alexan­der Hamil­ton Doc­u­ments Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Iggy Pop, David Byrne, and More Come Together with Bedtime Stories (For Grownups)

in Art, Audio Books, Museums | May 25th, 2020

Many friends have expressed a sense of relief that their elder­ly par­ents passed before the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hit, but I sure wish my step­fa­ther were here to wit­ness Iggy Pop cross­ing the rain­bow bridge with the heart­felt valen­tine to the late Trom­ba, the pooch with whom he shared the hap­pi­est moments of his life.

Iggy’s paean to his adopt­ed Mex­i­can street dog, who nev­er quite made the adjust­ment to the New York City canine lifestyle, would have made my stepfather’s grinchy, dog-soft heart grow three sizes, at least.

That lev­el of engage­ment would have pleased con­cep­tu­al artist Mau­r­izio Cat­te­lan, who launched Bed­time Sto­ries under the dig­i­tal aus­pices of New York City’s New Muse­um, ask­ing friends, fel­low artists, and favorite per­form­ers to con­tribute brief read­ings to foment a feel­ing of togeth­er­ness in these iso­lat­ed times.

It was left to each con­trib­u­tor whether to go with a favorite lit­er­ary pas­sage or words of their own. As Cat­te­lan told The New York Times:

It would have been quite depress­ing if all the invit­ed artists and con­trib­u­tors had cho­sen fairy tales and chil­dren sto­ries. We look to artists for their abil­i­ty to show us the unex­pect­ed so I am thank­ful to all the par­tic­i­pants for com­ing up with some gen­uine­ly weird stuff.

Thus­far, artist Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon’s smut­ty Bat­man rever­ie is as close as Bed­time Sto­ries comes to fairy­tale.

Which is to say not very close

Artist and musi­cian David Byrne (pic­tured here at age five) reads from “The Three Christs of Ypsi­lan­ti” by Mil­ton Rokeach. As part of its series of new dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, the New Muse­um presents “Bed­time Sto­ries,” a project ini­ti­at­ed by the artist Mau­r­izio Cat­te­lan. Invit­ing friends and oth­er artists and per­form­ers he admires to keep us com­pa­ny, Cat­te­lan imag­ined “Bed­time Sto­ries” as a way of stay­ing togeth­er dur­ing these days of iso­la­tion. Read more at newmuseum.org. #New­Mu­se­umBed­timeSto­ries @davidbyrneofficial

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Musi­cian David Byrne picked an excerpt from The Three Christs of Ypsi­lan­ti by social psy­chol­o­gist Mil­ton Rokeach, who detailed the inter­ac­tions between three para­noid schiz­o­phren­ics, each of whom believed him­self the Son of God.

Artist Taci­ta Dean’s cut­ting from Thomas Hardy’s poem “An August Mid­night” speaks to an expe­ri­ence famil­iar to many who’ve been iso­lat­ing solo—an acute will­ing­ness to ele­vate ran­dom bugs to the sta­tus of com­pan­ion.

Rashid John­son’s choice, Amiri Baraka’s “Pref­ace to a 20 Vol­ume Sui­cide Note,” also feels very of the moment:

Late­ly, I’ve become accus­tomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog

…

Things have come to that.

Lis­ten to the New Museum’s Bed­time Sto­ries here. A new sto­ry will be added every day through the end of June, with a line­up that includes musi­cian Michael Stipe, archi­tect Maya Lin, and artists Takashi Muraka­mi and Jeff Koons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dol­ly Par­ton Will Read Bed­time Sto­ries to You Every Week

An Ani­mat­ed Mar­garet Atwood Explains How Sto­ries Change with Tech­nol­o­gy

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take a Virtual Tour of the Mütter Museum and Its Many Anatomically Peculiar Exhibits

in Biology, History, Museums, Science | May 11th, 2020

A few months before Philaelphia’s Müt­ter Muse­um, exer­cis­ing now famil­iar COVID-19 pre­cau­tions, closed its doors to the pub­lic, it co-spon­sored a parade to hon­or the vic­tims to the pre­vi­ous century’s Span­ish Flu pan­dem­ic, as well as “those who keep us safe today.”

The event was part of a tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion, Spit Spreads Death: The Influen­za Pan­dem­ic of 1918–19 in Philadel­phia.

Anoth­er tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion, Going Viral: Infec­tion Through the Ages, opened in Novem­ber, and now seems even stronger proof that the muse­um, whose 19th-cen­tu­ry dis­play cab­i­nets are housed in the his­toric Col­lege of Physi­cians, is as con­cerned with the future as it is with the past.

For now, all tours must be under­tak­en vir­tu­al­ly.

Above, cura­tor Anna Dhody, a phys­i­cal and foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist and Direc­tor of the Müt­ter Research Insti­tute, gives a brief intro­duc­tion to some of the best known arti­facts in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion.

The muse­um’s many antique skulls and med­ical odd­i­ties may invite com­par­isons to a ghoul­ish sideshow attrac­tion, an impres­sion Dhody cor­rects with her warm, mat­ter-of-fact deliv­ery and respect­ful acknowl­edg­ment of the humans whose sto­ries have been pre­served along with their remains:

Mary Ash­ber­ry, an achon­droplas­tic dwarf, died from com­pli­ca­tions of a Cesare­an sec­tion, as doc­tors who had yet to learn the impor­tance of ster­il­iz­ing instru­ments and wash­ing hands, attempt­ed to help her deliv­er a baby who proved too big for her pelvis. (The baby’s head was crushed as well. Its skull is dis­played next to its mother’s skele­ton.)

Madame Dimanche is rep­re­sent­ed by a wax mod­el of her face, instant­ly rec­og­niz­able due to the 10-inch cuta­neous horn that began grow­ing from her fore­head when she was in her 70s. (It was even­tu­al­ly removed in an ear­ly exam­ple of suc­cess­ful plas­tic surgery.)

Albert Ein­stein and the con­joined twins Chang and Eng Bunker are among the house­hold names grac­ing the museum’s col­lec­tion.

One of the most recent addi­tions is the skele­ton of artist and dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness advo­cate Car­ol Orzel, who edu­cat­ed the pub­lic and incom­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia med­ical stu­dents about fibrodys­pla­sia ossi­f­i­cans pro­gres­si­va (FOP), a rare dis­or­der that turned her mus­cle and con­nec­tive tis­sue to bone. She told her physi­cian, Fred­er­ick Kaplan, below, that she want­ed her skele­ton to go to the Müt­ter, to join that of fel­low FOP suf­fer­er, Har­ry East­lack… pro­vid­ed some of her prized cos­tume jew­el­ry could be dis­played along­side. It is.

Get bet­ter acquaint­ed with the Müt­ter Museum’s col­lec­tion through this playlist.

The exhib­it Spit Spreads Death is cur­rent­ly slat­ed to stay up through 2024. While wait­ing to vis­it in per­son, you can watch an ani­ma­tion of the Span­ish flu’s spread, and explore an inter­ac­tive map show­ing the demo­graph­ics of the infec­tion.

h/t Tanya Elder

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Take a Long Vir­tu­al Tour of the Lou­vre in Three High-Def­i­n­i­tion Videos

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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