Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace. It's a very old timey gesture. Also the word ragamuffin, I feel like have not heard that used in a long time. I'm very impressed, and I've probably used it three times so far, I think. Yeah, it's very impressive. Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace. We meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Maxim Altar, host of the podcast here, Cincinnati from W C P O. Well, I have a little confession to make. I have lived in Cincinnati for almost six years now. Not from here, but I've never been to this museum and I feel so terrible about it. I'm actually now really excited to go look at a piece of art because I hear such great things. Well, don't feel too, too bad because I also live five minutes away. 

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Okay. These are piling up now. But I was going to say all the time I talk to people who have lived here their entire lives, not six years, but 30 years. And they're the ones who say, I've actually never been here. Or I was doing a program in the park down in Washington Park, and I was talking to somebody about what we had going on the program, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh, is this a new museum? And I was like, well, it depends on what you call new. I guess we've been founded in 1881. It's relatively new. And in the whole sort of timeline of the world, that's very new. All of history, all of culture, even. That's pretty new. I mean, there's plenty of art in the museum that's way older. So as an institution you go, it's pretty new. 

Speaker 1 (02:04):
But yeah, for the city, really. That's pretty old, I guess. And as far as museums in the city go, pretty old. Pretty old actually. As far as art museums go in the country, we're pretty old. There aren't a lot of older ones. Well, yeah. So you're from New York originally, right? I am from New York. I'm not from New York City, which I think a lot of people, whenever you tell someone you're from New York, they immediately assume it's New York City. It's not. And then you just go, oh, okay. And then you just start looking. No, it's fine. Nevermind. Everyone has this idea that New York City, well, maybe I'm imagining this, but everyone thinks New York City is great and romantic, whatever, because you see New York City in all the movies. Anyway, I'm from Woodstock, New York. Oh, okay. Which hopefully, well, I get upset when people don't know what Woodstock is because I got to tell you, the older I get, the younger people are around me. 

Speaker 1 (02:55):
They don't know what Woodstock is, but that's hilarious. I was thinking like, well, there's probably two other cities in New York besides New York City I know of apart from the greater the boroughs and stuff too, because it's like I know Buffalo and Rochester. Oh, that's true. Okay, nevermind. I know more New York City, I guess. But yeah, it's like I don't know anything about New York state, but Woodstock is like an hour, two hours north of New York City. Very pretty. I went to college at SUNY New Paltz, the State University of New York in New Paltz, which is the only way I can tell people for them to recognize that is it's kind of near the area where they found Hillary Clinton after she lost the election where she was in the woods. Right. That's where my college, yeah, there was a lady just walking in the woods, right, with her dog or something. And I can't remember if she had a dog or Hillary. I think the woman was walking her dog and just had a wild Hillary sighting. 

Speaker 2 (03:52):
So amazing. 

Speaker 1 (03:54):
I would love to just run into Hillary in the woods. I mean, she goes there because a really beautiful area. I do miss it a lot. It's gorgeous right now, this time of year in the Catskill Mountains. So yeah, that's where I'm from. Oh, well that's nice. So what brought you here? So I went to college for journalism and got a job somehow miraculously out of college in a station in West Palm Beach, Florida. And the station in West Palm is owned by Scripps, which is located in Cincinnati, and Scripps owns their station in Cincinnati is W C P O, channel nine, as many people will call it the A B C affiliate. So that's where I work now. So I was promoted out of the West Palm Station and they shipped me over to Cincinnati, and that was in late 2012. And yeah, I've been here ever since. I absolutely love it here. So what were you doing? So how did, I guess we'll get to a little bit. I haven't actually explained any of what you do because I was saying like, oh, this is how I run my show. We just start, I like it's loose and then we figure it out later. Mine is so much more structure read better probably. No. 

Speaker 1 (05:05):
So 

Speaker 1 (05:08):
How did the podcast at W C P O start and maybe actually tell people what it's called? I haven't done that since I haven't done my job. No, it's fine. Also, my title at W C P O is also really confusing, kind of like yours. Everyone in news has weird titles too, especially in tv, but it's digital content manager. You think I manage digital content, which I do, but there's more to it than that, right? Yeah. Anyway, so the podcast is called Here Cincinnati, and the idea about it is it's a collection of the, I say the best journalists in Cincinnati, and I can say that completely unbiased, the best journalist in Cincinnati. We just talk about the biggest news of the week, mostly Cincinnati Regional, tri-state news. We'll sometimes pop a little national stuff in there just because of course, so much national news now has Cincinnati involved in it in some way, whether it's the auto warm beer story or even pretty much everything somehow has a connection here. 

Speaker 1 (06:08):
But anyway, so we'll talk about that. And then I usually do two separate segments in the podcast where I will either interview someone who was in the news that week, or a reporter who did just a really great story that we want to get more detail on. And I'll talk to 'em about the behind the scenes of the story, we'll talk about why they did it, and then we'll kind of go into what kind of information they found. We have a lot of investigative reporters that to talk about their big stories of the week. And then for example, someone who's in the news, I interviewed a local pastor who was housing undocumented immigrants, and that was kind of a big controversial story, and he was explaining to me why he was doing it. I interviewed a woman who was inside of Cameo nightclub when that shooting happened and kind of described to me what happened. 

Speaker 1 (06:58):
So yeah, those are some of the episodes I probably do the best too, because they're a little bit more breaking news oriented. So you have, I've listened to the podcast a little bit, and you have some other folks on with you who work in the news and how do they feel about being on a podcast compared to, I don't know, is it a break from their regular news style, or do they get to let their hair down a little bit? So yeah, there's two answers to that question. So the first answer is I think they love it. Well, here's the thing, I think half the newsroom loves it because each week it's pretty much my job to figure out what the heck I'm going to put on this podcast. And I have to wrangle up journalists who have extremely busy and unpredictable schedules. And so they are kind of hard to nail down. 

Speaker 1 (07:53):
If Tom McKee, who's a reporter, who's on TV every day, is working on these big stories all week, and I really want him to come on the podcast and talk about what he's doing. He may be like, okay, I'll try to record with you tomorrow at 11. And then tomorrow at 11, there's this huge news conference he has to go to or there's breaking news, and he just, that's it. He's not on the podcast that week. So that's one thing. But when they are on it, it seems that because podcasting, even though podcasting isn't really new in the sense that people have been doing it for a while, it's new. I think for TV stations. I don't know a lot of TV stations. I've worked for two and have visited six others in my career so far. And I think we're the only ones that have our own podcast, at least right now. 

Speaker 1 (08:36):
I'm sure that's changing every day, but they're not really used to that format, and it's kind of freeing. It's just like a conversation. I try to keep it loose like this with a little structure, but we have just a conversation and I have questions. I prepare for them. But the way that the conversation goes, that usually never sticks to whatever I wrote down. And so I also have, with the panel, I have regulars who host the panel of where we talk about the news of the week, Lucy May, who's an amazing digital reporter, Megan Wesley, who's our digital editor, and we usually swap between two different nine on your side, anchors who you see on tv, Catherine Niro and Chris Riva. And then we have guest hosts too. Scott Kaiser hosts the station, has a few podcasts. We have one called The Fifth Mascot, and we have one called the Flying Pigskin, one for the Bengals and ones for the Reds. 

Speaker 1 (09:34):
And Scott Kaiser hosts those. So he'll come on and do the here Cincinnati panel with us, do a little crossover. So yeah, we're really experimenting in podcasting. And the second answer to the question is, so Scripts, which is again located in Cincinnati. And I feel like I want to hammer this in because a lot of people don't realize, and this is why I really like working for W C P O, and I'm not just saying that because I'm being recorded right now. A lot of people don't realize when you watch a local TV station, the company that owns that station 99% of the time isn't in your community. Hearst isn't here. GT's not here. Sinclair's not here. But Scripps is located downtown, and that's where all the decisions are made, and the people who work for the headquarters are watching on the news and they're part of this community. 

Speaker 1 (10:26):
So they get to let us really go crazy and experiment, and they just kind of let us throw ideas on the wall and just go nuts. So we wanted to do podcasts, we got a podcast studio. They let us do these things and spend the budget on it. So it's been really great. So we decided to do the podcast. I started doing here, Cincinnati, I want to say a year and a half ago, maybe two. I don't know how long I've been doing it, but, and so everyone's just kind of really excited to just try something different. Well, and podcasting is relatively cheap too, and especially I would imagine if you're already in a news studio, it's like you probably have most of the equipment already there. The broadcast side likes to hog all the equipment we actually have, we call, you can't go borrow them. 

Speaker 1 (11:12):
They're always bring this back. That's true. I mean, I don't know what you have. This is pretty cool. Honestly, I don't do any of the equipment stuff. I should mention Brian Neese, who's the podcast, Cincinnati's podcast producer, who's a brilliant, brilliant person, and he does all the technology portion of it, which is not me. But yeah, we have a studio and we film live stuff in there. They do something called Lounge Acts in there. That is amazing. It's basically like a live music show, and we do it, I don't know how often we do it, maybe once a week, but whenever there are bands playing in Cincinnati, whether their local bands are really popular national bands that are coming through Cincinnati, we'll get them on lounge acts to perform five or six of their best songs and we'll stream it on Facebook. And then we turn that into a podcast too. 

Speaker 1 (11:59):
So that's called Lounge Acts. So it sounded like you did not start in Cincinnati with the goal of starting a podcast. You were just managing other digital content, and then this was sort of like, Hey, what if we did this? I'm a very busy person, so my actual position is basically a ton of, we have a huge digital staff. It's very different than most TV stations. There are 33 people on our digital staff, and most of those are digital reporters that just focus on a beat. There's a business reporter and we had an education reporter and a bunch of stuff like that. So I manage the digital breaking news reporters. There are seven of them. I also oversee all our social media stuff. So Instagram, Facebook, and we have a social media producer named Libby who's fantastic. And so that's mostly what I'm doing all day. And then I like to try to take on as many different projects as possible, crazy and a masochist. But the moment we decided we were going to just be experiment and try a bunch of different things, I mean, the podcast was one of the first things that kind of came up and how do we do this? 

Speaker 1 (13:12):
What kind of podcasts do we want to have and how does that mix in with what our goals are as the reporters and the news and local news? And we're still kind of experimenting with it. It's the format of here. Cincinnati has changed three times. I think what we have right now is the best version of it. I'm always really excited to do it. I was on vacation last month, so I missed three. And Megan Wesley, our digital editor, hosted in my place. So if you listen to this after it, you're going to be like, who's, this isn't Max, this is why. 

Speaker 1 (13:44):
What were the changes? What were the differences from the start to now? So when we first started it, the whole thing was just a panel and it was a couple reporters and maybe a digital editor, and I would all just talk about the news of the week and then have more of a group conversation about the stories that we were most excited about. We shortened that to just the intro, which is about 15 minutes long. And then I just for timing and scheduling, and also I just thought it was just a little bit more, a little better for conversation, was to then sit down and have two separate segments that are focused on one specific story. And then we could produce it up a little bit more if we have time, whether it's including sound from an interview that a reporter went out and did. 

Speaker 1 (14:32):
So they'll be talking about their story and then they can hear, for instance, this week, Henry at the Cincinnati Zoo died Fiona's father sad story. And so we were, Evan Millward, our television reporter, interviewed Thay Maynard, the president of the Cincinnati Zoo, and they discussed what happened with Henry and how Fiona and Bibe are handling it and all that. So Evan was able to come on the podcast and kind of talk about what he learned, but then we were able to just let people listen to THA and have that interview. Maybe next time tha will come on the podcast. So that's just experimenting and that's how it's evolved. So were you a big podcast fan before and was that why did you have the passion for it? Yeah, I'm addicted to podcasts. It's all I do, which is insane. I don't know how I have time to listen to all the podcasts that I do, but hours and hours, whether I'm just driving in the car or folding laundry or cooking breakfast, the first thing I do in the morning is listen to the New York Times podcast, the Daily. 

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, me too. I get caught up. I think it's amazing. I don't know how they do it, but it sounds like they have 40 people doing it. I don't know either. I think about that this morning I was listening to it and they were reporting on what happened yesterday in Texas, and that was a little less produced. It was just a conversation. So I mean, that I can understand, but sometimes there's some episodes that are so highly produced and you're just like, how did they do this? This happened two days ago. Right? Yeah, I know. And it's just like they're intercut with interviews. There's music, and it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I don't know what kind of size team they have. And I also suspect that Michael Barbaro doesn't sleep, but Oh, that guy definitely doesn't sleep. Honestly, I'm super jealous every time I listen to the Daily. 

Speaker 1 (16:14):
It's pretty much what I wish your Cincinnati could be, but we don't have the staff for the time. So we do a light version of the Daily, and it's obviously Cincinnati Tri-State Focus. So if you want your local news, you come to us, then you can do your national, the daily stuff. That's why, gosh, there's a new podcast from W N Y C and I brought it up before on the show, so sorry if it's starting to sound like I have a thorn in my side if you've listened to multiple ones. But W N Y C has this podcast called A Piece of Work, and it's the same kind of thing. It's in conjunction with MoMA, but they do these interviews and I'm always like, ah, they have so much more resources. They're a radio station. And it's like, I can always tell when I listen to it, I'm like, this is at least three full-time job. 

Speaker 1 (16:58):
And I'm always so jealous. I wish I could do something like this. I would love to do something like this, but I don't have the time or resources to do it. And there's things about the show. There are things I like and don't like, but I'm always just like, whenever I hear really nice production and stuff, we just don't have the time. I know. You get jealous. You get jealous. Yeah. Good for them. Maybe one day Good for you, MoMA with all your fancy paintings, with your Starry Nights and your Zel Dignon, your number, Jackson Pollock, number ones, all of that. And good for you. And now your cool podcast. We're not Bitter. And your RuPaul's as guests, you'll get RuPaul here one day. Don't worry about it. God, if only, man, that would be amazing. If you get RuPaul, can you please send him to his W P O studio so I can get him on here? Cincinnati. We'll have him do the local podcast. Sarah, just send RuPaul around? Yes. Oh my gosh. Alright. Well, you ready to go look at art? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Awesome. 

Speaker 1 (18:11):
We're in Gallery one 19 and we are sitting in front of Fountain Square pantomime by Joseph Henry Sharp. And what were your thoughts right away? I have not read the description on the wall, so I just see what it's called. But at first I want to say that I appreciate any piece of art with a dog in it. And what a dog, right? Cute dog. I love that dog so much. Yeah, it's the first thing I note. I feel like it's so, it's really stands out. It's the most eye grabbing part of the painting. And this is clearly local. This is Fountain Square, which is great. I like that you brought me to a local piece of art. Well, of course, I thought here, Cincinnati, you cover local issues. I mean maybe more heavy ones than there's a fun thing going on at Fountain Square, but I don't know, you guys probably talk about stuff that goes on at Fountain Square. Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, fountain Square is pretty popping during the summer and yeah, occasionally in the winter. 

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Is this a happy painting though? I feel like this is a police officer with some kind of baton, right? Yeah. It looks like he's aggressively pointing at someone. Well, I think what we're supposed to be getting from that is that see these three little ragamuffins here on the side? I think they're giving 'em a real hard time. I think we're supposed to think they're some real little troublemakers and a cute little rascal kind of way. And he's the sort of officer Rummm key of this to get a West Side story on it. Yes. I think he's not supposed to be maybe an oppressive force. He looks grumpy. He definitely looks grumpy. So when I first moved to Cincinnati, the first thing I wanted to do to really get to know the history and the city is I did this series on our website called Then and Now, where I went to the archives of uc and a couple other places and got old, really old photos of Cincinnati. 

Speaker 1 (20:17):
And then I went to the same spots where the photos were taken and I took the same photo and then I did, you could swipe back and forth on the site to see the same thing in the 18 hundreds and today. So when I did that, I learned that I guess it's been a while, so if I'm wrong, I'm going to feel really dumb. But I did this when I first started, but I think Fountain Square was not always where the fountain is. The fountain has not always been in the same spot, which I learned quickly when I was taking the photos. Yeah, you were correct that, and I think Fountain score has changed a lot. So this is what date 1892, and I think we are to assume this is of its time. He's painting what it was like to be there now or at the time, and yeah, you're correct actually. 

Speaker 1 (21:04):
You can see one kind of hint of the difference of the Square is, well, from the viewpoint of us, it's like we are standing in the street and then you can see the new streetcar behind there is a streetcar, which, so it's one of the things I love about this painting is that it's a weird reflection of now, because at the time that street car would've been pretty new as well. Yes, I bet they all didn't like it either. I don't know. No, that's very cynical. I bet these people probably love the street. I bet there was just constant bickering over whether or not somebody who was like, we don't want to pay for this, but look, I bet these people love the streetcar. They could take it to this event that they're going to. Actually, the streetcar used to come here, so it used to come up the hill and That'ss, part of why the art museum is built where it is, is because the streetcar used to take people to Eden Park, it would go up or something else. 

Speaker 1 (22:03):
We had the incline too. The incline. So yeah, we did have inclines up Mount Adams. So yeah, I think between the streetcar and the inclines, there was quite lots of public transportation to get up here. And I don't know the exact streetcar route, so I don't know. It might've taken you probably maybe more to the bottom of the park, but it took you into the, it was an easy way to get to Eden Park and then you could get to the museum pretty easily. So actually the old streetcar is even really a part of our history as well. Yeah, I mean, are we supposed to assume, so the hat that's in the street, you think he's collecting money? No, I don't think so. I am assuming so. See this little blonde boy here who's pointing at it? I think he's lost his hat. Oh, you are so much better than me interpreting hat. 

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Well, if you just look and it's like everybody's wearing a hat except that kid, kid except for him. He's like the only one. It's cold out. Maybe we haven't done a great job of actually describing the whole scene's, so that's my fault. We're like, no, no, no. You had thoughts and I wanted you to get 'em out before you lost them, but maybe we should just kind of describe the scene for everybody. I don't know. You can start. Sure. There's a gathering of some sort in Fountain Square. It's very packed, very, very whatever's going on. There's a lot of people that are there. And it looks like it's sometime in the winter, everyone's very bundled up and wearing hats. And you can finish. Yeah, I can finish. Well, I sort of hinted at, we were looking at it actually from the street's view, so it's like they're all looking at something, but we can't see what they're looking at. And then we have just the tiniest little hint of the fact that it is a fountain square because you see part of the fountain, but just it's on the left hand side of it and just the edge of it. So one of the things I love about this painting is it doesn't hit you over the head with its location. 

Speaker 1 (24:02):
It would be very tempting to paint this scene, I think in a way that really showed off the fountain and made it about that, but it really doesn't like the focus is the people. And then the streetcar that I mentioned is also just this tiny little, I didn't even notice it until you brought it up. We just see the top of it kind of over the crowd's head in the background. And it's obviously sort of receding in the background. It's kind of much foggier looking in the back. It's not as clear. So we have all these people dressed up, you dress up in 1892. And actually, so what they're looking at, and you were kind of talking about actually the differences in fountain square's location. And actually one of the things, because of that streetcar in the back, you can kind of tell it used to be surrounded by, there were streets on both sides. 

Speaker 1 (24:55):
So that's when you look at old photos, you can see that you could drive on either side of it, but the Maybelline and Caru department store was across the street, right? And there was this big window and they would stage children's performances there. And so they would do Christmas shows or fairytales, and then all these crowds would gather to watch them. That was the pantomime is the show. So that's why it's called Fountain Square pantomime. And so that's why most of the people we're seeing are kids up front so they can see over the heads of people and then all their mothers and nannies and people who are looking after them in the background. So do you think that the artist drew this from an actual event that they were witnessing? No, I don't. And I think there's pretty good evidence that they didn't. Okay. One thing, and one of the things I've noticed about this painting after repeated viewings is a lot of these people's faces look like a lot alike. You're right. Oh my God, I was going to say that. Especially those three boys next to the top, they are the same 

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Person, 

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Not super specific. There's a lot of, and even the lady, this woman above them in the sort of whitish dress, I feel like her face looks a lot like their faces too. There's just something about all their faces that to me feels a little like, this is how I paint a face. This is my generic person face. Sometimes when you're just like, you can only, you're really good at hands and that's it. Maybe he just was really good at this one phase. 

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, 

Speaker 1 (26:37):
I've always suspected, and I've looked at pictures of them and it's kind of true, is that they kind of look like him a little bit. Oh really? This is Joseph Sharp. Joseph Henry Sharp. Yeah. I mean a little bit. It's something people do when they draw and they tend to make their subject look a little bit like them. That's interesting. So one of the things, if you're in a drawing class, men tend to make women's shoulders too big. Interesting. So when men draw women, they almost always make their shoulders too big, and women do the opposite. When they draw men, they tend to make their shoulders too small. So it's like, and that's they're just putting a little piece of themselves in the art. Yeah, it's just their own intuition is like, well, this, their default is themselves. It's like the person they've looked at the most and the way. So I think he might've been trying to make distinct faces, and I can see in certain ways they're somewhat different, but I feel like they all kind of snap back. Whereas if you look at these men with the top hats and the adults in the background, a lot of those are based on specific people and they look a lot more specific. Yes. So do we know who any of these people are? Somebody does. 

Speaker 1 (27:55):
I can't remember what's interesting too, if you didn't, and maybe I'm totally off base here, but if you didn't have that little hint of the streetcar and that little hint of the fountain statue, this could really be, this could be London, this could be right. It could be really any major city during that time period. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, there wouldn't be a lot to distinguish it other than the fountain. That's almost like someone was eating like a cheese coney or something. Don't know the history of that. I don't know when the cheese coney appeared. Actually, it was probably not that much later. No, it was probably around this time actually. The chili itself was, I feel like it's probably like 1910 at the latest or something like that. But I mean, that's just me guessing. I'm sure. We actually did a whole thing about the history of chili. 

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Our editorial cartoonist did a cartoon out of it. I'm being the worst right now for not remembering when it started, but yeah. Yeah, that would be amazing. If it had aone in it's fine. I even wanted to say, but I don't know if it's true that the guy with this guy here with the mustache and the goatee in the kind of mustardy color suit, I think that is the artist. Oh, wow. It's like a Where's Waldo situation, but I don't know. It's the most art I know. I don't know if that's true, so I might be wrong. So I've done a bad job at remembering you're fine who these people are, but they were sort of notable and some of his friends and things actually. So he taught at the art academy here, and he was from Bridgeport, Ohio. Is that a place? I think that's a place. 

Speaker 1 (29:46):
I said that because near Wheeling, West Virginia, I think that's why it's called Bridgeport. And so he's kind of from this area, but what he's most known for are western scenes. So actually just a few galleries over, I can walk you over there and show you, but we have lots of his scenes of Native Americans. That was what he was known for. He was commissioned by Teddy Roosevelt to paint all of these portraits of Native Americans, and he was kind of part of this school called the Taos School from Taos, New Mexico. So he was, that's really what a huge chunk of his work is, all sort of western Native American art. We have quite a few in the collection, so this is kind of a fun, odd little piece of his work to have this piece that's so focused on Cincinnati because so much of his work focuses on the other side of the country. 

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah. Do you think that when he painted this, I know you're saying he included people he knew, but do you think he purposely included a lot of different classes? You can tell there's people that are wealthier than there's people that don't look wealthy at all. It seems like there's a very large mixture of middle class, upper class, and poor. Right. And I mean, I'm not super great at reading maybe period class, but I think if you look at this kid in the front, he's got the little hole in his stockings. I feel like that's a little bit of a hint there. Totally intentional. Yeah, I assume so. I mean, it's hard not to look at these men in the tall top hats and not assume they are wealthier, and then some of the people feel a little more modestly dressed and Yeah, I agree. I think that must be intentional again, because I don't think he was ever painting a totally real scene. 

Speaker 1 (31:48):
First of all, you don't go out in 1892 with a canvas and get this many people to stand still for that long. So the most he probably did was go do some sketches from life, maybe get some ideas, and then compose this idea and worked on it afterwards. And he probably, with certain figures, he's basing them on real people so he could do sketches from them. It's definitely a composition composited from multiple things. I wonder if, so there's only one African-American person in this, as far as I can tell. It's the woman in the front. And I wonder if she's based on someone real, just because she seems to also stand out as someone who's so dramatically different than everyone around her. She's in green. It's like she's just like, do you see that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Possibly. I have no idea. And no way of knowing, honestly. 

Speaker 1 (32:43):
I mean, maybe there's some notes somewhere in the files deep that maybe points out who she is, but I've never heard anyone mention it, but she might be known. I'm just not sure. There's also the little boy. There's a little boy on the right side all the way in the right. Is he making a silly hand gesture? Yeah. What I've assumed, and I don't know if this is true, but I kind of always feel he's kind of part of the little ragamuffins gang down here, and he is sort of doing this kind of behind the police man's back almost. Even though it's almost like a stage trick. It's like he's cheating in real space. That doesn't make any sense as far as he's to his side really in behind him. But in these guys wouldn't really see that. But it's almost from the stage perspective where you kind of excuse that we see him as behind there. 

Speaker 1 (33:41):
And I think, yeah, he's kind of poking fun at the police officer. I think that's why we're supposed to get an idea that these kids have been given him a hard time. Yeah, he's making that old timey gesture. Yeah, it's a very old timey gesture. Also, the word ragamuffin, I feel like have not heard that used in a long time. I'm very impressed, and I've probably used it three times so far, I think. Yeah, it's very impressive. Look, I am always ready to use Ragamuffin and just waiting for the, we're talking about something in the 1890s, so I feel like it's appropriate, man. I love old timey slang. That is just my bread and butter. I remember in high school when we were studying the roaring twenties, they handed us a flyer full of twenties slang and like, oh my gosh. We were obsessed with it. So my friends and I would just, great Gatsby. Exactly. That's a load of banana oil. Stuff like that got worked into our vocabulary very quickly. And the expression, gams for legs, that was a big favorite or getaway sticks. That's pretty good. I'm going to start doing that too now, actually. 

Speaker 1 (34:53):
But yeah, overall, it's a beautiful painting. I really like it. It's a great one for us to have, obviously just because of its connection to the city and the connection with the artist and it's history. Yeah, it, it's fun to see. And I thought you would enjoy it just because you focus on the daily life of Cincinnatian, and so it's kind of fun to look at it in the past and think about how kind of, in a way, not much has changed. I kind of wish people still dress like this to be honest with you, but you, it's like we still gather in Fountain Square to watch stuff and to come together, and it's a very optimistic piece ultimately to me, just because even the kind of class issues you were talking about of a place where people all sort of gather together. It doesn't matter what class they're in, they're all gathered in the same spot, which is what I kind of liked. Yeah. So I think it's maybe us at our best here. When you decided to show me this, what did you think I was going to notice first, I didn't think you would zero in on the dog. The dog caught my eye. 

Speaker 1 (35:58):
I think the dog is the most innocent one in this. He's just like, I'm here just hanging out. He's looking at us too, by the way. Yeah. Well, it's so fun to pretend dogs are watching things too. So my dog will lay on the couch sometimes and just face the tv, and it's just always fun to pretend like he's really watching the Bachelor or whatever. Maybe he is. Yeah, maybe he's really invested. He's like, oh man, this row ceremony is a tense one. But yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if I had any idea of what you would pick out. I figured you would pick out that it was found square pretty quickly, so I don't know. That would probably, that would've been bad if I didn't. Glad I didn't fail that I was just talking about. So really the main part of the fountain that you see, you kind of see the top of the basin, and then one of these boys who are writing the different sea creatures around the edges. 

Speaker 1 (36:54):
And one of my favorite details about those is if you look, one of them is writing what is a supposed to be a dolphin, but really, dolphins in the 19th century are just crazy looking. Why? Because nobody saw dolphin. You don't have photo. It's true. Photography is new at this point. You're mostly basing it on the accounts of mythos sailors and other artists drawing. So it's like a little bit of a game of telephone, of aquatic life. And so yeah, sea creatures, that's kind of fascinating. Before photography is sort of everywhere just looks so weird in art. There's always these really strange dolphins. They'll get the fins wrong. They'll kind of put, because dolphins, fins are different than a shark in the back. They go different ways because mammals, and so they'll get that wrong a lot of times, and it'll have gills. That'll be the big thing is dolphins will have gills and stuff. 

Speaker 1 (38:00):
So interesting. They just mess up things. Because if you imagine if all you ever saw of a dolphin, was it occasionally popping out of a water for a few seconds? It'd scare the crap out of me. I already don't like dolphins just because they look too similar to sharks. I don't trust them. Yeah. What's really funny, we also, we have a lion in the Antiquities gallery, but where does an artist go to look at a lion at that time where they can see one just in captivity where they'd have to either look at someone else's painting or they'd have to have traveled to Africa. So you can tell that the lion is kind of modeled on a dog. Its body is more doglike and its face is just like, that's not really what a lion looks like. But you don't have photos, so you're basing it on other people's art and other people's descriptions of it. But then there's a cow nearby and the cow is perfect because you can go out and look at a cow. A cow doesn't come to eat you. 

Speaker 1 (39:02):
You can get a good look at a cow without having to fear for your life. You're probably stand still for you long enough to paint it too. Absolutely. Yeah. What else is there? There's a random baby in the background. Did you see that one? Yeah. Hat? Yeah. It's very, if someone's holding her up, unless she just has a really long legs, I'm going to guess it's the former that's now I'm trying to imagine that baby with these giant legs, really long legs. I've noticed that right away too, but I didn't want to bring it up. Well, I also like this guy who's decided to cheat the system who's climbed the tree a little bit to get a better view. I like there's always one of them, isn't there some wise inheimer who thinks he's going to get up there and there's somebody really annoyed behind him right now too. Oh yeah. For sure. For sure. But this is a cool time period. I like it a lot. Well, thank you so much for being my guest today, max. Thank you. This was a pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Great. Thanks for coming. 

Speaker 4 (40:13):
Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We never mentioned it during the conversation, but Max's podcast here, Cincinnati, is spelled h e a r, in case you want to check it out. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and to have conversations about the art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free barking special exhibitions on view right now are Iris v Urin transforming fashion, Ana England Kinship William Kentridge. More sweetly Play the Dance and opening November 17th is Alrich Durer, the Age of Reformation and Renaissance. If that exhibition excites you, join us for a free symposium, the Reformation in Cultural Perspective, on November 17th from 9:30 AM to 6:00 PM Explore multiple perspectives on Alrich DURs era through panel discussions, lectures, and musical performances in this partnership with the University of Cincinnati. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and join our Facebook group. Our theme song is Aron Mu by Blau. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend or go and give us a nice review on iTunes? It really helps us find new listeners. I'm Russell, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.