Check out these visual art images:
Anna Packwoods100th Birthday guests
Image by ocean.flynn
In the mid-1990s Anna Packwood’s family and friends came from across continents to celebrate her 100th birthday. This was the culmination of research on the Positive Presence of Absence: a history of the African Canadian community through works in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. I can honestly say that of the ten years working at the NGC, this impromptu gathering — which almost did not happen because of security concerns over the large numbers and the last-minute arrangements — this was the high point of a decade of work there.
One of the catalysts for my research in the early 1990s was a conversation with Fritz Benjamin, a Haitian-Canadian who was working at that time as a security guard. He asked me who Tommy Simmons was, the man portrayed in the larger than life bronze bust prominently displayed in the water court. I didn’t know but once I started looking there were more questions about more works of art. After sharing my interests with Mairuth Sarsfield, author of No Crystal Stairs and her sister Lucille Vaughan-Cuevas they became my mentors. Lucille in particular spent hours with me clarifying histories. I eventually met other members of the Montreal community and wove various fragments together so I could present this walking tour to friends, then to fellow graduate students and finally to the public. It was a personal project that the Gallery promoted from 1995-1997 when they advertised it and offered it as a contract tour.
The image is my first experiment in using Adobe Photoshop to create transparent .png images. I needed to learn .png for my new Google Earth community.
The Adobe Photoshop layers include Anna Packwood on the lower left, with a bronze of her daughter, Lucille Vaughan, an activist, educator and librarian. Beside them is Dr. Carrie Best, pioneer Nova Scotia journalist, activist and author. To the right of the water court is Jennifer Hodge Sarsfield, Anna Packwood’s granddaughter ,a pioneer in Canadian film narratology and beside her is the cover of Mairuth Sarsfield’s book entitled No Crystal Stairs, which was on the short list for Canada Reads. A photograph taken in that part of Montreal Mairuth called ‘burgundy city’ shows Mairuth, Susan and Lucille, Anna Packwoods, daughters in the 1940? The collage of the family and friends from across the States, Canada and the Caribbean wasn’t large enough to include them all.
In the 1920’s awareness of black culture spread from Harlem in New York across the continent and the ocean. During this Renaissance African American arts and literature reached new pinnacles of celebrity. Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong inspired Canadians. Visual artists in Canada attempted to reverse negative stereotypes of black subjects. This sculpture of Tommy Simmons, which celebrates both his blackness and his individuality, gave the emerging artist Orson Wheeler a sense of accomplishment. Simmons was a Montreal sleeping car porter for forty-three years. Work conditions were difficult. The transcontinental trips meant days away from home. Severe employment limitations were placed on black workers. Many, including those with higher education, even doctors and lawyers, were obliged to become porters. Sleeping car porters became the economic elite and catalysts of change in African Canadian communities. Tommy Simmons was a dedicated coach of winning teams. His integrated baseball teams which included girls of African, French and Italian descent, were unprecedented in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Because he was bilingual he entered tournaments in French and English communities from Chicoutimi, Québec to St. John, N.B. [Interviews with Carl Simmons and B. Jones, 1995]
Visit my blog for more reading on African Canadian history
Woman in a Striped Dress
Image by cliff1066™
Woman in a Striped Dress, 1895, oil on canvas by Edouard Vuillard
Vuillard belonged to a quasi-mystical group of young artists that arose in about 1890 and called themselves the Nabi, a Hebrew word for prophet. The Nabi rejected impressionism and considered simple transcription of the appearance of the natural world unthinking and unartistic. Inspired by Gauguin’s work and symbolist poetry, their paintings evoke rather than specify, suggest rather than describe. Recognizing that the physical components of painting — colored pigments arranged on a flat surface — were artificial, they considered as false the traditional convention of regarding paintings as re-creations of the natural world.
Woman in a Striped Dress is one of five decorations Vuillard painted in 1895 for Thadée Natanson, publisher of the avant-garde journal La Revue Blanche, and his wife Misia Godebska, an accomplished pianist. The five, which differ in size and orientation, are intimate, self contained interiors, Vuillard’s principal subject. All display rich harmonies in a restricted range of color and densely arranged in intricate patterns. The introspective woman arranging flowers here perhaps represents the red-haired Misia, whom Vuillard admired greatly. Vuillard adopted the symbolist idea of synesthesia, whereby one sense can evoke another, and in Woman in a Striped Dress the sumptuous visual qualities of Vuillard’s reds may suggest the lush chords of music that Misia performed.
www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?object=61388&detail=none
Malvina Hoffman, American sculptor 1885-1966 (at right), and Anne Morgan, philanthropist, standing in front of relief of St. Francis of Assisi.
Image by Smithsonian Institution
Description: Malvina Hoffman is best known for her commission to sculpt a head of each race of man by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. She spent 5 years traveling the world, getting frostbite on the island of Hokkaido modeling Ainu tribe members and adventuring in the jungles of Bali where she sculpted the lovely temple dancers. In all, over 100 ethnographic types were sculpted for the installation called the Hall of Man. She had a gift for capturing the essence of movement in her other works and specialized in sculptures of dancers as well. Outside of art, she was passionate about seeking aid for refugees, and worked for Yugoslavian relief after World War I.
Creator/Photographer: Peter A. Juley & Son
Medium: Black and white photographic print
Dimensions: 8 in x 10 in
Culture: American
Date: 1930
Persistent URL: http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx?id=5826
Repository: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Photograph Archives
Collection: Peter A. Juley & Son Collection – The Peter A. Juley & Son Collection is comprised of 127,000 black-and-white photographic negatives documenting the works of more than 11,000 American artists. Throughout its long history, from 1896 to 1975, the Juley firm served as the largest and most respected fine arts photography firm in New York. The Juley Collection, acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1975, constitutes a unique visual record of American art sometimes providing the only photographic documentation of altered, damaged, or lost works. Included in the collection are over 4,700 photographic portraits of artists.
Accession number: J0001710
