You’re Invited “Inside The White House” Posted by on November 9, 2010 at the White House blog.
Thousands of visitors tour the White House each day. It’s been a long time in the making and today, we’re pleased to invite you on our new interactive White House tour.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts exhibited first major retrospective surveying Jones’ wide array of subjects and styles in January 9, 2011.
“It is a privilege to posthumously honor this iconic Washington artist who left her mark on generations of Howard University graduates and had such stature in the national art scene from the 1930s to the 1990s,” said NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling.
The myriad themes explored by Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) over the impressive length of her career makes for a dynamic exhibition of more than 70 works, including paintings, drawings and textile designs. The retrospective begins with her early textile designs and sketches from the Harlem Renaissance. After graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, at a time when racial and gender prejudices pervaded society, Jones began her career as a textile designer. She sold her bold fabric creations to department stores until a decorator told her that a colored girl wasn’t capable of producing such beautiful designs. This incident prompted Jones to shift her artistic focus to the fine arts so she could sign her name to her works.
A key step in readying exhibitions is preparing objects for display. An item that had been under review by the preservation staff of the Smithsonian’s American History Museum during its renovation earlier this decade was First Lady Caroline Harrison’s 1889 inaugural gown.
In keeping with the America First economic policy of her husband, Benjamin Harrison, Caroline’s gown was an “All-American” creation, made in New York City by William Ghormley’s firm, Ghormley, Robes et Manteaux. The Logan Silk Company in Auburn, New York, produced the fabric for the dress, while Indiana artist Mary Williamson designed the brocaded silk fabric in a pattern of Burr Oaks in tribute to Benjamin Harrison’s grandfather, President William Henry Harrison.
The Harrison dress was on display for more than a half century until the Museum closed in 2006. When the new First Ladies exhibition opened in 1992, the light level was measured to be less than 2 foot candles. Three to five foot candles are the recommended maximum light specifications for textiles since they are so sensitive to light. Natural light can be hundreds foot candles. Although the dress was kept in such a low light level, the exposure to natural and bright artificial lights over many years caused irreversible deterioration of the fabric and fading of the colors. The portion of the skirt made with weighted silk became so weakened over time that it breaks nearly any time it is touched. This is not unusual as many nineteenth-century dresses with weighted silk have the same serious problems.
When the Museum reopened in 2008, the Caroline Harrison dress was a new addition to The American Presidency exhibition instead of First Ladies. The dress was mounted originally on generic fiberglass mannequins. With the opening of The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden exhibition in 2000, the Museum started to use a new type of support form which is constructed of Ethafoam, so it was important for the Harrison dress form to have a similar look.
Sunae Park Evans, senior costume conservator, decided to remount only the bodice, since the skirt needs to remain untouched due to its fragile condition. Fortunately, a muslin mock-up of the bodice is available from a previous project, which Evans used instead of the actual bodice to prepare the form. Once completed, the mounting matched the others in The American Presidency exhibition.
Evans, along with curator Harry Rubenstein, faced a tough decision in determining whether or not Harrison’s dress should be put back on display. Since they knew that the dress will deteriorate whether it is on display or is placed in storage, they decided to continue to exhibit the dress, especially since it will continue to be exhibited in an ideal environment. Decisions such as this one are made on a daily basis and conservators and curators must take into account what is in the best interest of the exhibition, the object, and the public.
The text for this Museum project was taken from their release. We did discover, though, the additional information about the inaugural gown prepare for the Harrison’s daughter. See below:
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Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s early life growing up on a ranch were perhaps unusual, though in some ways a fitting start to her pioneering future as the first woman Supreme Court justice. When she foraged her career there was a paucity of women in the law like there was little water in the desert. Indeed, as she describes in her autobiography,
Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest by Sandra Day O’Connor, H. Alan Day, she “eeked out an agricultural living in a dry environment.” The future Justice read profusely in her early years and engaged in many ranch activities. She learned to drive at age seven and could fire rifles and ride horses proficiently by the time she turned eight. Her dad was a gruff but loving perfectionist and her mother was a college educated beauty who cooked and cleaned in a dress and stockings every day.
by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein
They are among pharma’s most successful speakers, featured at dinner after dinner promoting companies’ favored pills to their peers. Each has earned at least $200,000 since 2009 from this moonlighting.
A review of the highest-earning physicians in ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs database offers insight into why some medical professionals are drawn to this lucrative sideline — and into the diverse qualifications that drug companies are willing to accept to boost sales.
We’ve decided upon practical and appealing gifts for the holidays, things that the recipients will use and not disappear into closets and drawers. Annie’s Blue Ribbon General Store seems to match those requirements. For instance:
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery presenting the first major museum exhibition showing how questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture will be on view at the museum through Feb. 13, 2011.
Long before the advent of today’s gay and lesbian movement there were many examples of art — paintings, sculptures, water colors, prints and photographs — that acknowledged a variety of sexual identities. This exhibition features artists and sitters with a range of identities, from exclusively same-sex to exclusively heterosexual.
Janet Flanner, 1927, ©Berenice Abbott, Commerce Graphics LTD, Inc
The miniature world of Faith Bradford
Meet the Dolls. This miniature family consists of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Doll, their 10 children, two visiting grandparents, five servants, and 20 pets. The Dolls have lived in their house at the Smithsonian since 1967.
The Doll family in their house. Can you spot all the family members?