Speaker 1 (00:00): Coming up on Art Palace, Speaker 2 (00:02): But as it happens, this is the earliest mention of Art Palace of the West that I've been able to verify. Speaker 1 (00:20): 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 Jeff Edwards, the museum's archivist and records manager at the Marr Schiff Library and Archives. So how did you end up at the art museum? Speaker 2 (00:50): It's quite a convoluted path. I actually started out as an archeologist back in the uk specifically Egyptology, Speaker 1 (00:59): But Speaker 2 (00:59): I kind of specialize myself out of a job because there's not that much call for Egyptologists fun as it was to study and to go and get to dig in Egypt. Speaker 2 (01:13): I kind of found myself not having a job and I ended up going into doing something which was fine, but not exactly what I wanted, and I kind of rethought about what I was going to do and I kind realized I enjoyed the filing side of things as it were kind of going through the old papers and trying to sort them out and make them more easily accessible, and I thought, hang on. I think there's a job that involves something like that, and that's when I looked into archives and I eventually retrained to become an archivist, and so I started working in the UK in archives over there. I eventually moved over here, I followed my wife over. She was over in the UK working and I followed her back. So Speaker 1 (02:01): You met there. Was she just there for work or study or Speaker 2 (02:04): She was teaching? She was teaching in London where I was living. She was actually teaching English, and Speaker 1 (02:13): That's usually not the can, right? I mean, you hear that story all the time. I was in Thailand teaching English, but it's like I think they've got it under control, Speaker 2 (02:25): So we just kind of, our paths crossed and eventually I followed her back over here, spent a while in Indiana working at the state archives in Indianapolis. Then we moved down to this part of the world. She's from Fort Thomas originally, so we ended up back down here and I sort of cussed around for opportunities and I was volunteered at several local museums and archives and the art museum was one of them. So I started off volunteering. Eventually my predecessor left the position and I was able to slide on in there, and I've been here since 2013 now, Speaker 1 (03:07): So Speaker 2 (03:07): Over five years. Speaker 1 (03:08): Are you still passionate about Egyptology in any way or is it just sort of totally gone at this point? Oh Speaker 2 (03:14): No, I'm still really interested in what's going on. I keep my eye on the field. I'm still friends with people who actually did manage to find employment in that world, so I do keep my eye on what's going on, the latest discoveries, and I always look back on the time that I got to go to dig there with great sort of fondness. It was quite a harsh sort of month at a time. I went for a few years in a row and spent a month out on the Egyptian coast quite near the Libyan border, digging up a fort from the time of Rames ii. Speaker 1 (03:50): Wow. Speaker 2 (03:51): But it was quite shock to the system. It was quite a hard month, Speaker 1 (03:56): Just physically grueling Speaker 2 (03:57): Physically in the heat and the toiling in the trenches. Speaker 1 (04:03): I mean, that's what you see in movies, right? Is that part of it, the dig, but then you kind of forget like, oh yeah, that has the potential to be also the most grueling part of the job. Oh, Speaker 2 (04:13): Yeah. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I mean, there were a group of students from Liverpool University. I was one of them. It was good sort of world building experience and getting to see what it was like to live in that part of the world. Speaker 1 (04:28): You said you did other archivist jobs before this, right? You said were you working for other institutions as old as this one or older or Back Speaker 2 (04:38): In the uk the place where I worked principally was the Ggl Morgan Archives, which was based in Cardiff In Wales. They are, I guess it's the closest equivalent here is a state archive. So it holds everything really. So official records, personal records, business records, it's a bit of everything, and it was probably founded about the same time as the art museum here, but the actual records, they go back to medieval Speaker 1 (05:07): Times. Speaker 2 (05:08): So the actual institution, same sort of age, but the actual records, they go back much older, a thousand years or so. Speaker 1 (05:15): So Speaker 2 (05:16): It was a bit different. Coming to work here, you have to adjust your perspective a bit on. Speaker 1 (05:22): Yeah. When you're looking at something like that, does the sort of scale of time affect what is considered important? Speaker 2 (05:29): Yes, I think it does. Anything that survived a thousand years gained some kind of importance, even if it's just the medieval equivalent of a shopping list or a text message, just something transitory and not terribly significant in the grand scheme of things, but the fact that it's survived that many years gives it a certain cache. Speaker 1 (05:57): So you've been working on a book about the art museum and you brought a copy of it here. It's just called Cincinnati Art Museum. Yes. Speaker 2 (06:08): We didn't go, we didn't think too much about the title too, Speaker 1 (06:11): Too crazy a title, but this is part of a certain, well, you describe it more because Do a better job. Speaker 2 (06:17): Okay. It's published by Arcadia Publishing. It's one of their Images of America series, so there are hundreds of titles in the series. You see them everywhere. Every community or aspect of a town's history seems to have a copy. The zoo here has got one. There's one on the Cincinnati Brewing History, all those sort of topics, and I don't quite know how they came to contact us, but they did get in touch and say, would you like to do one? And we said, oh, yes, please. Because in the archives, we've got some fantastic images of the museum of the Art Academy, everything that's happened over here over the past 140 odd years, and we're always keen to try and make those more widely available, make them accessible to people. So this seemed like a great way to do it. The book is primarily photographs. It's 275 images. I think. Speaker 1 (07:16): They've Speaker 2 (07:16): Each got a little caption that goes with them that tells a story, and it's basically a photographic history of the museum back from the 1880s to very recently to last year, basically. Speaker 1 (07:28): Oh, nice. Did you have to write all those captions? Speaker 2 (07:31): Yes. Speaker 1 (07:33): That's why this is your book. Yeah. Speaker 2 (07:35): I mean, when you look at them, the captions, they're not very long. They're not more than a couple of hundred words, but that was part of the difficulty ly Speaker 1 (07:45): Because Speaker 2 (07:46): That were very strict editorial guidelines as to how long each caption could be. Some of them. There was so much I wanted to say, I had to kind of be quite brutal in what I could and couldn't say. Speaker 1 (07:58): Yeah, succinct writing is very challenging. Why writing a good label is hard Speaker 2 (08:04): Too. I empathize a lot more with the Speaker 1 (08:06): Curators Speaker 2 (08:07): When they have to write their labels. Now, I wanted to make sure I included the big events, the important parts of our history, but I also wanted to get in as much of the small details and the more personal touches that I came across as I was researching it. So it's a mixture of the big events in the museum's history, the opening, the various wings and some of the major exhibitions we've had over the years, but it also tells the stories of some of the individuals who've been part of the staff over the years. It tries to put the museum in the context of the community and show it's not just a big building full of pictures or statues. It's been having classes for children here since the early 20th century. Part of the founding mission of the museum was to bring art to the community here, so that's what I've tried to, Speaker 1 (09:04): Is that actually what's on the cover? The image is one of those classes, Speaker 2 (09:10): Like I said, back in the 1920s, we started holding classes at the Museum for Children free Saturday morning classes so anyone could come along, and the cover image shows one of those classes from the 1920s, the kids sitting on the original front steps of the museum, Speaker 1 (09:28): Which Speaker 2 (09:29): Are now buried behind, what is the Adams Emery Wing, where the Cincinnati wing is now, but those classes, people flocked in from miles around, come and be part of them. The kids would walk for a couple of hours to get here, and Speaker 1 (09:47): It was, I think they continued at least some variation of that for quite a while because I've talked with older people who tell me, oh yeah, I used to take classes here as a kid, so I know it continued for a while Speaker 2 (10:01): At least. Oh yeah. I mean I think they went through through in that form until maybe the early eighties. But yeah, I've spoken to a lot of people who even decades later still talk very fondly of their time coming up to the museum on the streetcar for the Saturday morning art classes. Speaker 1 (10:21): It shows you how important those kinds of experiences are for people. Those people make a real connection with the building, with the museum, and it becomes a part of their memories and a part of what they connect to in the city. And so it can have this really, when I hear people tell me about these classes that they took as children and they're now in their seventies, and you go, oh, wow, you remember this? That's really interesting. Speaker 2 (10:47): It has an impact, definitely. Speaker 1 (10:49): I Speaker 2 (10:49): Know that John Fin was one of the, Speaker 1 (10:51): Well, Speaker 2 (10:53): I met him at an event a year or so ago, and one of the first things that he mentioned on here and out I was the archivist here, was to tell me about his experiences as part of these classes, how much he enjoyed them and how fresh they were still in his memory and how they helped make him the artist that he would later become. Speaker 1 (11:13): Yeah. Were there any images or things you discovered while putting together the book that surprised you? Speaker 2 (11:19): I did discover a lot of things about individuals who have worked here in the past. That was a revelation to find. There's a lot of stories out there I'd like to be able to tell more of because there just wasn't room in the captions in this book. But our third director water cycle who was here through the 1920s, through the 1940s, I discovered a letter that somebody had written to us about him describing how he'd originally started off as an actor, and he was sort of described as darkly brooding, and you can see that in the photographs, but he apparently found that life as an actor too tough, too, sort of demanding on him, and he decided to retrain in art history and eventually ended up being the museum's director. And I'd like to, that's a story I'd like to follow up on a bit more. Yeah, Speaker 1 (12:13): That's a weird career path. Definitely. I don't think a lot of people have followed that. I mean, I guess you do have to just do a total about face, not like you could really walk in as an actor and just start like, well, I'm here for the museum director job. You have to work your way back up. But that is interesting. Speaker 2 (12:31): And our first conservator was a guy by the name of Wilson Stamper. He started here in the 1930s. He also taught at the art academy. He split his time between conserving and teaching at the academy during the second World War. He became a photographer for the Navy, and he was there during the fighting for Iwo Jima, so he was one of the photographers there who recorded images of that. I don't think he recorded the flag, the flag raising, but he was one of the people there recording the fighting, and there's so many little stories like that. I'd like to follow up on some of those. They might be blog posts in the future where I can expand a bit more. Speaker 1 (13:26): Well, and I know you've seen every once in a while you'll have a picture, something that will be sort of shocked by maybe the museum's behavior at times. That's Speaker 2 (13:37): True. That's Speaker 1 (13:37): Sort of like things that were museum sanctioned events that you just look at and you go, well, we would never do that today. That kind of stuff always makes me laugh. Speaker 2 (13:46): Yeah, there are quite a few photographs of people sitting around in the galleries, smoking, drinking. One of the primary culprits is Philip Adams, who was a director from the 1940s through to the 1970s. He always seems to have had a cigarette in his hand in all of the photos. So yeah, that was not something that I think we would condone today. Speaker 1 (14:12): I mean, it's just sort of so funny. You would imagine the conservator you just mentioned would just be thinking, stop it. Or maybe they're just like, well, I've got a job security. Speaker 2 (14:24): Yeah. There are several photographs of him sitting around sort of casually leaning against the plints of statues Speaker 1 (14:32): Or Speaker 2 (14:33): With a cigarette in his hand chatting away, or, yeah, he seems to have been quite a character. Was Phil Adams, I Speaker 1 (14:39): Feel like there was, I saw a picture one time you maybe showed us of a sort of large banquet or something that was set up also in one of the galleries in the Dutch Gallery maybe. Was that something where they actually served food in the Speaker 2 (14:53): Place of the gallery? Yeah, I'm sure they did it multiple times, but I think when it opened, they set out a big lavish table with elaborate silverware and they've had a banquet in there, and I think that was one of the main kind of event spaces of the day. Speaker 1 (15:12): Right. Speaker 2 (15:13): Yeah. That's not something I think, Speaker 1 (15:16): No, we would definitely not be Speaker 2 (15:16): Allowed to do that. We would not do that anymore. Speaker 1 (15:20): I'm sure there'd be people who would really love to do that. Speaker 2 (15:21): Oh, no, it'd be a great space, I'm sure. I'm Speaker 1 (15:23): Sure there'd be a lot of weddings who Speaker 2 (15:24): Would be Speaker 1 (15:24): Delighted if we would let them have a dinner in there. Speaker 2 (15:29): That would be Speaker 1 (15:30): Something. Well, is there anything else you'd like us to know about the book? Speaker 2 (15:35): It's basically arranged chronologically, so it covers, like I said, the entire history of the museum from its founding through to a brief kind of resume of the last 20 years or so. The focus is the historical images with a final chapter that brings it up to date, but it also does, there's also a chapter dedicated to the art academy because we have a lot of their records Speaker 2 (16:05): Down in the archives because we were associated so long, we still retain a lot of materials relating to the academy, to the students, photographs, student records, that sort of thing. So there's a chapter in there which contains some really nice shots classes back from the 1880s of the Bozart's balls. There are some fantastic shots of those from back in the day. I really enjoy putting it together, and it's the quality of the images, it's never looked better. They've come out really well, so I'm really pleased with how it looks. I only know of one mistake so far. It was an honest mistake. I went by the information that was on the back of the photo, and it only came to light afterwards that the way the name was spelled was wrong. Speaker 1 (16:53): Oh, wow. Okay. I think that's quite forgivable. Speaker 2 (16:57): Yeah, I think that's too Speaker 1 (16:58): Bad, Speaker 2 (16:59): But it was still frustrating. Speaker 1 (17:00): Yeah. I always have a lot of questions about the building. People ask a lot about the building's history and people are pretty fascinated by just the architecture itself and seeing it in its sort of different configurations over the years is I think really interesting to people. So I'm sure people will just get a kick out of just that alone. You get used to even seeing certain phases of the building, and then every once in a while I'll see a new picture of it in some new configuration where like, oh, this wing was built, but this one wasn't yet, and it's taken from this angle I'd never seen before. You go, oh, whoa, that's really crazy looking. I would never imagine. It's just, I don't know. It's just really interesting to see the space that you walk through so often and how different it used to be. Speaker 2 (17:46): Yeah, there is a handy diagram at the front of the book, which shows the layout of the museum and each of the wings and when it was added, so you can trace how it evolved, and there were plenty of photographs that go through that show, how it was originally just the original building standing alone on the top of the hillside, and then you can trace through the additions of the various Speaker 1 (18:09): Wings Speaker 2 (18:10): Over the years, and you can see the Adams Emery wing go up in the sixties and the original facade disappear, which is something I wish I could have seen in the flesh as it were, Speaker 1 (18:20): Because Speaker 2 (18:22): It's a shame we lost that at the time, I think. Speaker 1 (18:25): Yeah. Well, and that's something I've always feel about walking underneath the building sometimes in the underground tunnels and things that we use to get around is that sometimes those edges of history are a little more obvious almost because they're not public spaces, so they haven't been sort of tidied up or polished. So you see those sort weird joints and things that butt up against each other, and doors are a really dead giveaway of We don't tend to change doors out too often in this place. So you'll go through this really old wood door at one point, and then you get to this sort of sixties metal door, and then you get to one of these newer wooden doors and you can just tell by the fixtures and stuff roughly when these were put in, and you kind of go, oh, okay. I'm in this part of the building. I'm a really old part of the building now. Speaker 2 (19:17): You can see down in the basement, you can see the massive blocks of the original building, the huge Speaker 1 (19:23): Stone Speaker 2 (19:27): By one of the old service entrances there, where there's also the cobbled, the cobbled floor down in the Speaker 1 (19:33): Basement, which Speaker 2 (19:35): It was originally an open courtyard that was later covered over with galleries above, but that was where they used to bring in deliveries of coal and whatnot. It used to be coal-fired boilers here until the forties at least. Speaker 1 (19:52): So Speaker 2 (19:54): Coal dust used to be things were still being cleaned of coal dust well into the eighties, nineties. I think Speaker 1 (20:01): That's crazy. Speaker 2 (20:02): But yeah, those little echoes are still down there, and when you know what you're looking for, you can spot them. Speaker 2 (20:08): And it's like even in the galleries, I've looked at so many pictures now. There's a bench up in one of the galleries, a big old wooden bench, and I noticed it in one of the older photos with Phil Adams standing leaning against it, and now every time I go by it, I just kind of gently touch it and I go, good morning, Mr. Adams. It's just one of those things I can't help. There are, it's just one of those a few things where there's a sort of, I can definitely see him standing there with it, and it's just a kind of a little link to the past, which I enjoy. Speaker 1 (20:49): When the c a C was celebrating their big anniversary a year or two ago, they were showing photographs of their original sort of space here in the building, and I immediately recognized the staircase and it was like, oh, I know where this is. Even though the rest of it was all very unrecognizable, Speaker 2 (21:07): There Speaker 1 (21:07): Was still this element that I'm like, oh, I know where those stairs are. It's so funny how as much as things change, there'll be just at least something in there that lets you identify where you are in the building. Speaker 2 (21:20): Yeah, those stairs are one of the few things you can trace way, way back, because there were photos from very early on when they used to be the galleries of archeology and ethnology down there. So there were Native American artifacts and artifacts from Africa. The collection that's now in our current African galleries, the Eckelman collection, it was down there in the basement originally. Speaker 1 (21:49): Interesting. So that was open to the public, or you just walked down those stairs all the way Speaker 2 (21:54): Down. It was wide open then Now it's kind the kitchen, the museum kitchen's down there and they've been subdivided. Back then it was open gallery space, but Speaker 1 (22:05): It makes sense too. I mean, we have to kind of fight to keep people from going down those stairs, which kind of is a sign that their original intention was public, because there's not a lot otherwise. I mean, just the other day I ended up, I could see people lost down there, and I sort of, Speaker 2 (22:23): They're inviting, Speaker 1 (22:25): And I mean, you can't go anywhere. You have to have a key to get anywhere. Really exciting. Anyway, so once you're down those stairs, it's really, we say it's for volunteers and because it's not high security or anything, but I ran into some folks just sort of looking, Speaker 2 (22:42): How did I Speaker 1 (22:42): Get, and they're trying to get out, and this was when the front door was closed, so I just was like, oh, here, just come through here. You'll be out in a second. You out. Yeah. So yeah, people still do wander down those stairs, so that makes a lot of sense that they were not always off limits. Speaker 2 (22:57): No, definitely not. I mean, after those galleries were moved it, there were classrooms down there for educational activities, and then the c a C was down in that space as well. So it's been used for a lot of things over the years, and I think there were galleries down there relatively recently where the staff sort of lounge eating area is now, that was galleries until relatively recently, really until the nineties. Speaker 1 (23:27): The Speaker 2 (23:27): Damascus room was down in the basement at one point. So every space has been used for multiple things over the years. It's always changing. Speaker 1 (23:39): Interesting. I guess the auditorium was built in the thirties or time around then, Speaker 2 (23:45): Or Yeah, the main auditorium was in the late thirties and then the other Speaker 1 (23:51): Lecture hall. Speaker 2 (23:51): Yeah, the smaller one was added in the sixties, Speaker 1 (23:54): Which if you've ever looked at its crazy lighting panel back there, it's very obvious it's from the sixties because it looks like something from 2001, I'm sure, high end technology for the day. But it is so hilariously weird and chunky and just all these switches and levers and knobs and things. Speaker 2 (24:17): Enterprise control pattern. Speaker 1 (24:19): Yeah, it's very that. Well, I thought we could, normally we go into the galleries to look at something on the show, but I thought since we're talking about the archives, if you don't mind taking me down to the archives and we'll look at some stuff there. Speaker 2 (24:32): Yep, I'd love to. Speaker 1 (24:33): Awesome. Thanks. We are now in the archives and you've pulled out some stuff to look at, and I'm assuming this is original floor plans here? Speaker 2 (24:54): Yes. This is the original first floor plan for the original museum building, which opened in 1886 by James McLachlan. You can see his signature down there, Speaker 1 (25:06): But Speaker 2 (25:07): This was the extent of the museum at that time. It was two floors, ground floor was sculpture gallery, the main entrance hall, which was also full of sculpture, most of which were casts at the time. Second floor was the painting galleries, but almost as soon as this building opened, they were complaining about lack of space. So it's not something that's a recent development? Speaker 1 (25:38): No, it's like the eternal museum complaint, I think, at all museums everywhere. So yeah, this is really interesting. The thing I'm most excited about is just to see ticket office and coat room where they are, which is basically where elevators and stairs are now, Speaker 2 (25:54): If I'm not Speaker 1 (25:55): Mistaken Speaker 2 (25:56): Today, when the main entrance is where you pass into the Cincinnati wing from the museum, great Hall, so that you can just see some elements of that original entrance as you passed that were exposed during the renovation of the Wing back in the nineties. But yeah, where the ticket office is, I think there's restrooms there now. Speaker 1 (26:19): Yeah. Oh, you're right, you're right. Those would be restrooms because the elevators and stairs I'm thinking of are here in front of the Speaker 2 (26:26): Stairs. Yeah, Speaker 1 (26:27): You're right. Yeah, I was mistaken. Yeah, because I'm thinking of where those, you can actually see, it's kind of funny because even on this little drawing, you can see those little columns, these little circles of those double columns that are on that archway. So yeah, it's pretty easy to identify. The other room over here. The fountain room kind of looks remarkably similar too with the two windows there. I guess there's more windows that are closed off probably it looks like, and these two galleries too. It's kind of crazy how much this looks exactly alike in some ways. Speaker 2 (27:01): Yeah, the central sort of artery then was the sculpture gallery. That's now where the Speaker 1 (27:06): Miro Speaker 2 (27:06): Miro hangs, Speaker 1 (27:07): And Speaker 2 (27:08): On one side there are galleries, and on the other side is where the cafe is today. That was open at the time, and an additional sort of that space was filled in and in the early 20th century and turned into galleries. And underneath there is where the cobbled courtyard that we were talking about Speaker 1 (27:27): Down Speaker 2 (27:28): In the basement is. That's what covered that. Speaker 1 (27:31): Okay, that makes sense. Speaker 2 (27:32): And there's the stack, one of the museum, one of few things you can still sort of see of the original museum building, which was originally for, it was a smokestack for the museum's coal fired boilers until the 1940s. When those were taken out, it purely became decorative. Speaker 1 (27:53): It Speaker 2 (27:53): Doesn't serve any function anymore other than to be Speaker 1 (27:57): One Speaker 2 (27:57): Of our noticeable features from the, and of course, back then the steps up to the second floor on the opposite side of the Speaker 1 (28:05): Hole Speaker 2 (28:05): To where they are now. When they added on the schmidlap wing back in 1907, they demolished the original staircase to create the opening for the gallery that runs from the Great Hall, and the stairs were rebuilt to create an archway over the entry to the wing, and that's where they stayed until the 1940s. And that's when, at that point, the staircase was demolished. The Great Hall was a floor was put in to separate it into two levels, and it was turned into gallery space. So for a long time, there was no great hall. There was no staircase Speaker 1 (28:42): Until Speaker 2 (28:42): It was reintroduced in the nineties in the big renovations at that point. So today, the staircase is on completely the opposite side of the hall to where it was originally. So in the archives we've got, it's a mixture, really. The main part is obviously the museum's records, so kind of it's operational records blueprints like the one we've just been looking at, correspondence from the director and Speaker 2 (29:10): Exhibition records, photographs. We also have, as I mentioned, records from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. The majority of what we have is dates from the very early time when it was the McIn School, so from the 1870s onward onwards, roundabout the 1950s. And we've also got, the third part of the archives are the Cincinnati Art and Artists Collection. So it's a mixture really, of material that has been collected by the museum over the years relating to local artists and collections of the original papers of artists that have been donated to us. So we're a great resource for anybody who's trying to research a Cincinnati artist. We've got artist files, we've got hundreds of boxes of artist files. So Speaker 1 (30:09): Someone Speaker 2 (30:09): Like Frank, we've got Speaker 1 (30:11): Many, many, many, many Speaker 2 (30:12): Boxes, others, other people. We may only have one clipping, for example, but if you're looking for somebody who has any connection to this part of the world, get in touch, and we might have something. And we're always adding new material as well, so we're still collecting nowadays. Speaker 1 (30:30): Yeah. Well, did you have anything else under here to look at? Speaker 2 (30:32): These are from the Art Academy of Cincinnati Speaker 1 (30:35): Connection Speaker 2 (30:35): In the archives. So a large part of that is photographs of students and faculty members. We've got photographs going back to the late 19th century through to the sixties, seventies. It's interesting to see how the students change over the years. Speaker 1 (30:52): Yeah, these ladies, this photo we're looking at, there's this group of women who are all doing a aire painting, and I mean, they appear to be dressed to us at least looks very well-dressed for what you would think you would wear to go painting. Speaker 2 (31:10): Maybe they warned them that they were going to be photographs taken that day. Speaker 1 (31:13): That's true. And maybe told Speaker 2 (31:14): 'em to put on their best hats, but Speaker 1 (31:16): Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, this lady, it looks like she has some sort of covering maybe to protect her, and she is painting right now where maybe the others look like they're maybe still sketching or something, so it makes sense. She's doing the dirtier work, so she's covered up a little bit better. But yeah, these hats, everyone's got a big fancy hat on, and we'll have links to these images on the website, which is Cincinnati art museum.org/podcast, and it will be right below this episode's player. Speaker 2 (31:52): But yeah, there were some great shots from this period of classes in action. And this one is from, this is one of the few that I can actually date precisely 1896 showing Thomas Noble, who was the first director of the academy and his class, you can't really see it on the original photo, but if you zoom in, you can just make out the date of 1896 hanging, sort of painted onto the pallet that's hanging in the background. Speaker 1 (32:18): Okay. Speaker 2 (32:19): Most of these, it's just, we have to take a guess at the dates, but this one's one of the few that we can actually say it was taken in a specific year. Speaker 1 (32:26): Did students also model, because I'm just guessing this guy down here who's mostly naked with a clarinet or whatever, is probably a model. Speaker 2 (32:35): I've never seen anything that said the students modeled. They seem to have been usually recruited in Speaker 1 (32:43): Specifically, Speaker 2 (32:44): But I don't know if Speaker 1 (32:45): They model Speaker 2 (32:46): For each other. Speaker 1 (32:46): It just seems odd that you would take a photo with the model. That's the only reason I'm asking, just because it seems a little personal for something that is usually you're just hired somebody to be a model and you don't say like, oh, jump in the group photo. Speaker 2 (33:01): Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not sure. Speaker 1 (33:04): So that's why I was curious about it just it seemed a little odd, but maybe he was modeling every day with him and they just were like, you're one of the gang. Who knows? It's possible. Now, I couldn't help but notice that this class is entirely men, and this class seems to be entirely women. Were classes segregated like that between the genders or Speaker 2 (33:28): On the whole, I don't think so. I think maybe life modeling classes were split by gender, but I don't think the sort of general classes necessarily were, but maybe they just kind of split that way coincidentally. But I don't think there were actual restrictions segregating men from the women across the board, but it just seems to be the way it fell Speaker 1 (33:58): Somehow. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if you're right, if life drawing classes had some sort of propriety built in where, okay, that makes sense. Speaker 2 (34:07): Some of our archival materials are currently part of the Art Academy one 50. Speaker 1 (34:14): Yeah, I was going to say, I think I remember definitely seeing this image in the middle here published with materials around the 150th anniversary. Speaker 2 (34:25): We helped a lot with the academies, preparations for their celebrations, and some of these materials, like you say, are part of the exhibition that's currently going on here at the art museum, including this photo of the faculty in the 1960s. So Herbert Barnett was the dean at that point. Standing behind him is Charlie Harper, Arthur Helwig, Paul Chilo, Charles Cutler, this guy here at the front. The older gentleman is Fritz Van Hooten Raymond, who was the, he taught photography at that point, but he'd been working for the museum since the 19 hundreds. He was our first photographer. So he took a lot of the photographs, early photographs of the museum. Speaker 1 (35:10): How common was that? I'm guessing there probably was a lot more overlap of people sort of doing work for both institutions. Is that pretty normal, do you think, or? Speaker 2 (35:18): Yeah, I think so. I think it was pretty, people would just go backwards and forwards. A lot of the faculty at the Art Academy were the original museum curators. There were no full-time curators until the thirties. Prior to that, Clement Barn horn who taught sculpture at the art academy, he was our honorary sculpture curator. And Louis Meek Kim was the honorary curator of paintings. Just, it was something they did the goodness of their heart for the museum basically. Speaker 1 (35:56): Interesting. It was like the museum was there just like a side hustle basically. The school was really their full-time job more. Speaker 2 (36:05): Our first print curator was a guy by the name of Herbert Greer French, and he didn't work at the academy, but he was a local collector. He was an important print collector where they couldn't find somebody on the faculty staff to help out. They would recruit local Speaker 1 (36:22): Collectors Speaker 2 (36:22): In to help curate the collections. I like this photograph particularly because shortly after the exhibition opened, I got an email from a lady Speaker 1 (36:37): Who'd Speaker 2 (36:37): Been to visit with her mother, and her mother turned out to be this lady sitting in the Speaker 1 (36:42): Center Speaker 2 (36:43): In the front row. I had no idea who she was. I knew the name. She was called Carol Strub, but I couldn't find any record of what she actually did at the art academy. Speaker 1 (36:55): So Speaker 2 (36:55): I was like, okay, well, I'll put the name in the caption, but I couldn't figure out what her role was. So when I got an email from her daughter saying We were really so excited to see the photograph of my mother in the exhibition, I was very excited to get that as well and said, so can you tell me a bit about her and what she did? And it turns out she was secretary to Dean Herbert Barnett. She came in a couple of weeks ago and we spent a couple of hours chatting and looking through some of this material, some of the letters that she typed up for the dean at the time, and telling me some of the stories about Charles Cutler and some of the wild antics that went on at the academy in the late fifties and early sixties. But that is the one mistake that I know of in the book so far, is the spelling of her name. Speaker 1 (37:51): It was S Speaker 2 (37:51): Spelled wrong on the back of the photograph, but now I know how it should be Speaker 1 (37:56): Spelled. Speaker 2 (37:56): So hopefully when it's reprinted, it'll be corrected. Speaker 1 (38:01): So what else are we looking at over here? Speaker 2 (38:03): So these are some of the examples of some of the student records that we have from the Art Academy. These are Charlie Harper's original application cards to come to the Academy. Speaker 1 (38:17): Oh, wow. Speaker 2 (38:17): So we've got those that stretch back to the 1870s. So Speaker 1 (38:24): I didn't realize he came from West Virginia, Speaker 2 (38:26): And obviously he went from being a student to a faculty member. So we've got records from his time as a student and as a faculty member as, so I pulled out, this is a 35 millimeter film print of a documentary that was done in 1971. It was about the museum collection. It was hosted by then director Philip Adams, and it's called Art Palace of the West. Speaker 1 (38:55): Oh. Speaker 2 (38:56): Because of course, art Palace of the West. It is one of those phrases that seems to have been around since time immemorial. Speaker 1 (39:03): Right. Speaker 2 (39:05): But as it happens, this is the earliest mention of Art Palace of the West that I've been able to really verify. Speaker 1 (39:10): So that's the oldest record of it that we know of. Speaker 2 (39:14): Yeah, it's one of those things that was supposedly said in the press at the time the museum opened in 1886, but nobody's ever been able to find the exact source of that quote. I did some research when I was writing the book, and I found a file of research that one of my predecessors has also done trying to figure out where this nickname came from, but nobody's been able to find exactly that. There were kind of similar terms of phrase, an imperishable palace of art and things like that, Speaker 1 (39:49): But Speaker 2 (39:49): Nothing ever quite the same as Art Palace of the West. So it kind of really became popularized after the Centennial exhibition, which was also called Art Palace of the West. And ever since then, it's become part of the museum's kind of image, and it's always quoted in press releases and histories of the museum, but can't find it before the 1970s. So I wonder if it was just a nice turn of phrase that Philip Adams came up with because he was quite a character. He was quite a wordsmith, and I can kind of imagine him casting around for a catchy title, and I wouldn't be surprised if maybe he just sort of tweaked something that he found or Speaker 1 (40:30): I like that though. He's maybe inventing a bit of a legend. Speaker 2 (40:34): Yeah, Speaker 1 (40:35): Maybe. I mean, we don't know, but I Speaker 2 (40:37): Would love to find out where it came from if we've got scrapbooks here of clippings that go back to the 1880s and it doesn't appear in any of those. So it just suddenly seems to have sprung into being Speaker 1 (40:51): The only thing that makes me seems a little bizarre. If he did invent it in as late as the seventies, is that, would he have still been thinking of Cincinnati as the West? That's the only thing that's true. It seems like such an archaic idea. Yeah, Speaker 2 (41:06): That is true. I was wondering about that. It maybe suggested it was coined somewhere Speaker 1 (41:12): In the past. Speaker 2 (41:12): Yeah, Speaker 1 (41:13): It does Speaker 2 (41:13): East somewhere further Speaker 1 (41:14): East. It does seem like, I mean, maybe if you were inventing a legend in that way, I guess it's an extra good job at doing it Speaker 2 (41:23): Because Speaker 1 (41:25): It does seem like that's one of the things I've always loved about that expression is just the West. It's so funny, nobody today would ever think of Cincinnati as the West. It's the Midwest, but it's certainly not the West. And so it definitely conjures a time of the country's very early days too. Speaker 2 (41:47): Yeah. So perhaps there is a genuine, perhaps there's an article out there somewhere where it appears, but unfortunately nobody seems to have made a note of that. The major benefactor of the museum that actually enabled it to go ahead was Charles West. So you do see it referred Speaker 1 (42:06): To as Speaker 2 (42:06): West's Art Museum occasionally. So maybe that is part of it as well. Speaker 1 (42:13): Interesting. Speaker 2 (42:14): Yeah, it's an interesting little story, and I'd like to try and trace it one day, but Speaker 1 (42:19): For Speaker 2 (42:19): The moment, it remains a bit of a mystery. Speaker 1 (42:21): Interesting. Speaker 2 (42:23): Talking of the opening of the museum. We've got a lot of materials that go back that far. This is our first minute book of the board of Trustees. So it starts with a copy of our articles of incorporation from 1881, and then it goes through into the minutes of the trustees into their sort of discussions on the creation of the museum and how it's going to be put together and formed and where it's going to be. Speaker 1 (42:55): What were some other places we could have ended up? Speaker 2 (42:57): Eden Park was one of the contenders, Washington Park as well, and Burnett Woods, they were all possibilities. I think Eden Park was Charles West's favored location, and he was the one who put up most of the money for the building. Speaker 1 (43:14): I guess Speaker 2 (43:16): He had a deciding vote on that. Speaker 1 (43:18): I mean, it is interesting to think how different it would be if we were downtown. That is an interesting question. Mean, obviously we ended up in Washington Park. Being so close to Music Hall could have been really interesting too for us. But expanding would've been very difficult Speaker 2 (43:35): There Speaker 1 (43:35): Too. So it's a really interesting alternate history to try to imagine. Speaker 2 (43:41): I think one of the reasons we ended up here was because up here in the park, we were above the sort of growing pollution that the city was suffering with at the time. So this was, it was a breath of fresh air to come up here and be out of the way. Speaker 1 (43:54): Well, and it is, I mean, it a nice thing about mean as two people who drive to work every morning in here, it's like, I really like going to the very nice place to visit too. So there is a benefit of it as well. It's like, well, it's in a beautiful location. You can also say, well, there is something very poetic about the idea of this museum in a park as well. Sort Speaker 2 (44:17): Of come and contemplate the art in a nice kind of serene space Speaker 1 (44:22): And Speaker 2 (44:23): Not be part of the hustle and bustle of the city. I think that was part of the thought. One of the most interesting amongst the museum's records are the correspondence that came in and went out of the director's office in the early days. We've got 70 odd boxes of letters that were sent and received by the director's office. There are a real sort of interesting snapshot of the times of the operation of the museum and the kind of things that were going on in those days. Speaker 1 (44:54): Can I ask a totally stupid question? Yeah. Did somebody just hand write another copy? What did they do? For the one they sent Speaker 2 (45:02): The outgoing correspondence, they're all, it's kind of like a carbon copy Speaker 1 (45:08): Of the Speaker 2 (45:08): Originals. They're all bound now into big volumes, and these carbon copies on incredibly thin sort of onion skin paper, and they're really fragile. So luckily we've got 'em all microfilmed, so we don't have to go back to the original volumes too often. Speaker 2 (45:24): But yeah, they're very fragile. There was basically a copy of every letter that was sent, but these letters, the director's correspondence contains the minutiae of the operation of the museum, which is quite interesting to look into. You get people writing, offering the director offers of mummified cats or a gun that had been used as part of the Hatfield McCoy Feud was one thing that sticks out in my mind, a part of a ship's wheel that had been destroyed in an explosion, and it still had traces of blood on it. And so people were keen to give us stuff, but not necessarily what we wanted. Always the stuff that we wanted, Speaker 1 (46:06): Those early days of the museum, it's like people were still trying to figure out what exactly we were and what we collected. So Speaker 2 (46:15): Yeah, they were keen to make it a museum of everything. We had fossilized tree trunks at one point, and stone tools and that sort of thing, most of which have been transferred to more appropriate Speaker 1 (46:30): Institutions Speaker 2 (46:31): Since. But back in the early days, it was, let's get a bit of everything and we'll see where it goes. Speaker 1 (46:38): It can be very easy to think that, to get seduced into thinking the way the museum has done things in your lifetime is just the way a museum has always been. But then when I seen pictures of the Great Hall just stuffed full of plaster sculptures and stuff, it's kind of like, well, this was never sacred. Was it? Really? I mean, and even just the way stuff is hung sometimes looks absolutely bananas to us. Speaker 2 (47:07): I love those early photos of The Great Hall where it's sort of contemporary, genuine sculpture, genuine contemporary sculpture, or mixed in with casts of classical pieces, or just, it looks kind of scattered randomly, and it's like, okay, what was it like to try and make your way through this space? And it Speaker 1 (47:27): Looks absolutely insane. I mean, just the way it's displayed. But then I feel like there are some times if you go to older museums that are maybe locked into those traditions. I don't know. I mean, I think there's parts of the Louvre that kind of look like that still. That's a little bit like, alright, we've got a room. Fill it with sculpture. Right. Why not? The other thing these letters just make me think about is how beautiful people wrote. Like, oh my gosh. I don't know if I've seen anyone with handwriting like this. Speaker 2 (48:02): No, that's the thing that anybody who looks through any of these ghosts, they remark on the handwriting how immaculate it all is. The minute books are all handwritten, obviously beautifully written in this purple link, all the correspondence handwritten. It's beautiful. Speaker 1 (48:19): I mean, yeah, this one too, shorn is just believable how precise it looks. Speaker 2 (48:27): Well, this one is from the President from Grover Cleveland, politely declining the invitation to attend the museum opening. Speaker 1 (48:36): Ouch. Speaker 2 (48:38): But then we go from something like that, this official correspondence to this, which is a letter that somebody wrote on behalf of their daughter, seeing if there was a position for her at the museum that she might be a good fit for from a Mrs. Hardacre of Walnut Hills. There's also, there's a lot of correspondence with locally and nationally important artists amongst that collection. So it's one of the stars of the archives. We used to have the annual exhibition of American art each year from the late 19th century and into the 20th century. And lots of well-known artists would submit works for that. So we've got letters from Whistler and Rockwell, and a lot of big names are represented there. So it's a real mixture, that collection of the day-to-day deliveries of coal and equipment and that sort of thing mixed in with these letters from major artists. Speaker 1 (49:48): Thank you for showing me this stuff and the stuff about the Art Academy, especially because we've only got about a week left to check out that exhibition. So if anyone's interested in seeing more things about the Art Academy's past, this would be a great way to connect it with the exhibition upstairs. They can check out. Well, it's always fun to poke around old files and records and things. I don't know. It feels, there's something about it that feels sort of adventurous, doesn't it? I guess that's why you got into it, right? Speaker 2 (50:20): Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a great job if you're a bit of a bit nosy because you get to look at a lot of stuff that other people don't see, can't see. You get a peek behind the scenes. It's fascinating. You never quite know what you're going to find when you open one of these boxes. It can seem pretty innocuous, but then you'll pull out a letter from the president, or you'll pull out some photograph of some part of the museum you've never seen before. And it's always a treat. I should just say that the archives are available for the public to see if there's anything that they think they might be interested in. Just get in touch with the library. We ask people, make an appointment before coming along to see it so we can pull out what might be relevant to somebody's research Speaker 1 (51:11): Inquiries. Speaker 2 (51:12): But yeah, the archives are available for the public, for researchers, so just get in touch if you think there might be something amongst all of this that you would help your researcher you might be interested in seeing. Speaker 1 (51:23): Well, thank you, Jeff, for showing me all of these cool things and bringing me down to the archives. Speaker 2 (51:28): You're very welcome. It's a pleasure. Speaker 1 (51:36): Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have your own conversations about the art. General. Admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. Special exhibitions on view right now are Paris 1900 City of Entertainment. And you only have until April 28th to see Art Academy of Cincinnati at 150, a celebration in drawings and prints. Opening April 26th is phase one of No Spectators, the Art of Burning Man. Join us Saturday, May 4th for a family first Saturday that celebrates the Art of Burning Man, and also for the opening of our newest installation in the Rosenthal Education Center featuring interactive art from artist and residents, Pam Kravitz. For program reservations and more information, visit Cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Fra Mu by Becca Lau. And as always, if you like what you heard today, why don't you write us a nice review on iTunes or Speaker 2 (52:42): Wherever you review Speaker 1 (52:43): Podcasts? I'm Russell Leig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.