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February 12, 2010 Grants to digitize Art Images and Oral Histories awarded to the State Historical SocietyThe State Historical Society of Missouri is pleased to announce the receipt of two grants that will greatly enhance access to collections. The grants are supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the Missouri State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.Nearly $40,000 was awarded for the digitization of art images, including paintings, drawings, lithographs, photographs, and editorial cartoons. Twenty-eight portraits and scenes painted by George Caleb Bingham, and over 300 paintings, drawings, and lithographs created by Thomas Hart Benton are covered by the project. Works were selected based on their historical value and continued popularity with researchers and the general public, and will include the well-known Bingham Civil War picture, Martial Law, or Order No. 11, and Missouri River scene, Watching the Cargo. Benton’s illustrations for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi, which have not been widely seen since their initial use in the Limited Edition volumes of the 1930s and 1940s, are also part of the project. Over 3,500 photographs from various collections covering a variety of Missouri topics, including railroads and depots, courthouses, political rallies, and additional subjects will also be made available. Included are the Otto and Joe Kroeger Collection, the Maximilian Schmidt Collection, and Charles Trefts Collection. The Kroeger collection is comprised of images centering on Jefferson City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Schmidt collection was created by Boonville jeweler Maximilian Schmidt who picked up photography as a hobby at the beginning of the 20th century and documented his everyday life and surroundings. Charles Trefts was a professional photographer whose works include coverage of the St. Louis area over much of the 20th century and a focus on the Ozarks region during the 1930s. All of these collections were donated to the Society by descendents of the photographers. The Society’s Editorial Cartoon Collections include the majority of works, both press proofs and original drawings, created for the St. Louis Post Dispatch by Pulitzer Prize-winning artists Daniel F. Fitzpatrick, from 1917 to 1958, and Bill Mauldin during 1958 to 1963. The works graphically, and often poignantly, reflect attitudes and opinions of the artists and Missourians from the early days of the 20th century through World War I, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and subsequent mid-twentieth-century events that reflected America’s development as a world leader. A second grant of $2,800 will convert recorded interviews with forty Missouri political leaders and activists to digital audio format. The audio portions and written transcripts will be made accessible online. This grant furthers the work of the “Politics in Missouri Oral History Digitization Project” which is a joint resource of the Society and the University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscript Collection. posted @ 3:25 PM February 03, 2010 Keith Crown (1918 – 2010) Keith Crown, nationally renowned painter, educator, and arts advocate, died on January 31, 2010, at the age of ninety-one. Crown had a reputation as one of America’s premier watercolorists, with works exhibited in over one hundred galleries and museums throughout his career. For the last twenty-five years, he made Missouri his home. During this time, he and his wife were good friends and supporters of The State Historical Society of Missouri, donating three beautiful paintings to the art collection. The institution shared these and other artworks with the public last year in the exhibition Keith Crown: A Retrospective (June 6, 2008, to February 6, 2009). This show featured artwork in the Society’s collection as well as works lent by the artist’s wife, Patricia Dahlman Crown, and other collectors. Visitors had the opportunity to view examples of paintings, drawings, prints and ceramics that the artist created over his sixty-year career. Although in poor health, Crown visited the exhibition several times. Born May 27, 1918, in Keokuk, Iowa, Crown studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and served as a regimental artist with the U.S. Army during World War II. He provided artwork for Yank magazine and was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery. Much of Crown’s wartime art is in the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. After returning to the states, Crown took a position as professor of art at the University of Southern California, where he taught for thirty-five years. In 1983, he moved to Columbia, Missouri, and the landscape of the Show-Me State became a frequent subject of his artwork. Crown’s life and art are the subjects of the monograph—Keith Crown Watercolors—by Sheldon Reich, published by the University of Missouri Press in 1986. Additional information is available at keithcrownpaintings.home.mchsi.com. posted @ 2:27 PM February 02, 2010 State Historical Society Returns to 6-Day WeekThe State Historical Society of Missouri announced today that the Society’s Board of Trustees has voted unanimously to return the organization to its normal hours of operation, 8:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. This new schedule is effective Friday, February 5, 2010. The Society has been closed on Fridays and Saturdays since November 1, due to a 25% reduction in its FY 2010 state appropriation that occurred in late October 2009.The State Historical Society is able to return to a six-day week due to the more than $90,000 in private funds which has been raised to support its public purpose. This amount is enough to supplement the Society’s state appropriation for at least four months. In making this announcement, Executive Director Gary Kremer emphasized that the Society’s governing board understands that money raised thus far represents less than one-third the amount needed to restore the Society to the level of activity it was engaged in prior to the budget cut. The fund-raising effort will need to continue if the Society is to remain open six days a week. Kremer further emphasized that the announcement that the Society will return to its normal hours of operation does not mean all Society programs have been restored. For example, there are still no funds for the Society’s popular Missouri History Speakers’ Bureau, and its newspaper microfilming project will be only partially funded. Likewise, there are no funds to restore the four full-time positions eliminated over the past year. posted @ 4:26 PM |
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