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John Tuohy's MY WRITERS SITE: WELCOME! Step right in!: WELCOME! DON’T WORRY-BE H APPY ABOUT THE AUTHOR John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an M...
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HIDDEN HISTORY: ART DECO IN THE TRADE LITERATURE COLLECTION
BY ERIN RUSHING
This post was written by Katie
Martin, Summer 2016 Art Deco Trade Literature Research internat the National
Museum of American History Library.
For six weeks in June and July,
my task was to research and identify materials from the trade literature and
world’s fair collections housed at the National Museum of American History
Library that showcase the Art Deco period in Chicago.
I earned bachelor’s degrees in
History and American Studies from Purdue University and am currently working
toward a master’s in Library Science with a specialization in Archives and
Records Management from Indiana University. With my background, I could not ask
for a better place to complete my required internship credits than the National
Museum of American History Library.
I began researching the Art Deco
period in Chicago before I left Indiana for the summer. Art Deco style stemmed
from the exhibitions of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et
Industrials Modernes held in Paris in 1925. Following the exposition, the style
made its way into the US and pervaded all aspects of design including
architecture, fashion, interior design, and household accessories. Art Deco
reflected advances in technology and industry by incorporating geometric
details, bright colors, and clean lines. At its height in the years between the
two World Wars, the style was referred to as modern, modernistic, or art
moderne. The 1933-1934 Chicago World’s
Fair, known as “A Century of Progress International Exposition,” was the peak
of the Art Deco movement in the Midwest. The Fair was held to celebrate the
city’s centennial and to illustrate progress in the fields of science,
engineering, social science, transportation, public health, and business. The
organizers decided to utilize an Art Deco motif because it was functional,
modern, simplistic, and served as a visual representation of progress.
Owens-Illinois Glass Company,
Toledo, OH. Owens-Illinois Glass Containers 1934 Chicago World’s Fair, 1934,
first pages of World’s Fair brochure.
When I arrived for my internship,
I was glad I started the research process early. The trade literature
collection consists of over 460,000 items that might include catalogs,
advertisements, price lists, company histories, manuals, and other related
materials representing over 36,000 companies.
Because the collection is so varied, it offers valuable insight into the
history of business, design, and consumerism. Six weeks is a short period of
time to look for materials in such a vast collection, so I tried to stick to a
research plan from the beginning.
I started by looking at the
library’s secondary source materials on Art Deco architecture, jewelry, appliances,
and décor to create a short list of Chicago companies with promising
connections to the 1933-34 World’s Fair. This was a great place to start and I
succeeded in finding catalogs featuring neon lighting, chandeliers, and
futuristic exhibitions for the Fair in my first week. After I completed this
list, I waded through 144 pages of search results from theCollections Search
Center. I searched for the term “Chicago” in the trade literature and looked
for companies with descriptions related to architecture, interior design,
household products, and general wholesale. This process kept me busy for weeks.
The collection has a minimum level of description in the online catalog because
it would be difficult to create an item-level description for companies that produced
hundreds of catalogs. The Westinghouse Electric and Mfg. Co., for example, has
over 9,000 individual pieces from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. In this
case, I searched through several boxes and found one catalog related to modern
lighting for movie theaters.
Joseph Hagn, Co., Chicago, IL.
Annual Counter Catalog No. 39, 1938, page 682, juvenile wagons.
Throughout my internship, I found
beautiful illustrations and pictures of interior and exterior lighting,
decorative glass, jewelry, and furniture that showcased the modern style in
Chicago. Interestingly, modern-style products were often mixed in alongside
items crafted in traditional styles. I expected to find architectural and
interior design elements; however, I was surprised to see Art Deco toasters,
waffle irons, wallets, and even baby carriages in my research! My favorite find
was a catalog called “Vitrolite Bathrooms – Kitchens” from the Vitrolite
Company that featured high-end Art Deco bathrooms described as “the dream come
true of many whose tastes have been hard to satisfy.”
Vitrolite Co., Chicago, IL.
Vitrolite Bathrooms – Kitchens, circa 1935, bathroom interior.
By the end of my internship, I
found more than 80 individual catalogs in the collection and looked through
materials from more than 150 companies. Ultimately, my list will be used to
determine a digitization plan for these materials in the future.
Although I spent a lot of time
digging into the trade literature, it was not all work and no play. I had the
opportunity to tour the Library of Congress with a Rare Book Cataloguer, go
behind-the-scenes at the National Zoo, and attend the annual staff picnic at
the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. My team even won the Smithsonian Intern
Scavenger Hunt! It was a wonderful experience and I’ll never forget my summer
in Washington, D.C. with the Smithsonian Libraries.
Sources consulted:
Ganz, Cheryl. The 1933 Chicago
World’s Fair: a century of progress. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2008.
Weber, Eva. Art Deco in North
America. London: Bison Books, 1985.
A tale of two fish prints in Julia Child's kitchen
By Paula J. Johnson, August 11,
2016
To mark what would have been
Julia Child’s 104th birthday on August 15, curator Paula Johnson shares new
information on two works of art in Julia’s kitchen. To keep up with all the
latest Food History information and programs, including our Julia Child themed
Cooking Up History demonstration on August 12, join our Food History email
list!
As a curator of food history and
fisheries, I’m always delighted when these realms overlap. This happened
recently with two objects in Julia Child’s kitchen, when I learned the real
story (and not just a fish tale!) behind the fish prints that hang high on the
kitchen’s walls. Several months ago, I received two email messages from Pat
Pratt, a dear friend of Julia’s, who set the record straight on these works of
art. And in so doing, Pat gave us a glimpse of Julia as an intrepid angler, an
enthusiastic friend, and a curious cook in search of an answer to the nagging
question, “what went wrong with that dish?”
The Bluefish
Measuring 40” x 12,” the first
print hangs above the doorway connecting the kitchen and the pastry pantry. Our
catalog record noted that the object was made of paper, ink, and wood, and that
it was not signed, but little else. We weren’t sure of the species of fish, or
anything about the print’s origins, until Pat wrote:
“I made the print of the bluefish
on the day when Julia caught it off our Herreshoff 12-1/2 foot sailboat while
sailing in Saco Bay near Prouts Neck [Maine]. Julia and I were with my husband,
Herbert Pratt, at the tiller. It was the morning of August 31, 1975. Julia and
I were fishing for mackerel with the usual small-hooked, multicolored mackerel
rigs, holding the lines by hand over the sides of the gunwales. Suddenly Julia
yelped that she had a huge bite. With considerable pulling she got what we
thought would be multiple mackerel wiggling on the line. Instead, to our
amazement, it was a big fish. When we got it into the cockpit and onto the
deck, we realized it was a bluefish—the first one we had ever caught, or seen,
in Maine. We were all astounded.
“Julia said with glee that she
had been eager to cook a whole fish in a new way. We went ashore and showed it
to Paul [Julia’s husband]. I had been making fish prints in the Japanese manner
that summer, using my regular Winsor and Newton watercolors, so I had all the
equipment to make one [fish print] of the bluefish. I cleaned and dried the
exterior of the fish and laid it on a flat surface. I covered it with Payne’s
Grey [paint color] using my 2” flat brush. Then I placed a sheet of rice paper
over the fish and carefully rubbed it to get all the details of the fish
including the fins and tail. I carefully lifted the paper off to have a nice
clean image of the fish.
“Our dining room table was made
of Cypress wood and through the years of being scrubbed it had a nice raised
grain. Paul said, ‘Why not make the fish look as though it were in water by
making a rubbing of the grain in greens and blues with wax crayons?’ We placed
the dried print on top of the table and with a whole Caran d’Ache crayon,
stripped of its paper wrapping we lightly rubbed over the print. ‘Voila!’ said
Julia, ‘It looks alive.’”
The bluefish print.
2001.0253.0754.
“While Julia and I prepared the
fish in her new way, Paul and Herbert set the table and chose the white wine
for lunch. The new way was: Place the cleaned but not scaled fish on a baking
sheet. Oil the fish. Bake in a 400 degree oven for about 20–25 minutes. Skin
the fish and place the cooked fish on a platter to serve.
“Licking our chops in delightful
anticipation, we sat at the table with a wide view of the sea from which the
fish came. Julia served our plates and just before taking the first bite, we
raised our glasses in joy. We all took our first bite and, to our horror and
dismay, the fish was tough as leather. It was basically inedible! We were
utterly disappointed, as we had thought what perfection it would be to have a
spanking fresh fish. We had no idea what was wrong.
“At eight o’clock one morning 10
years later, Julia called me. ‘Pat, Pat,’ she said, ‘I just found out why our
bluefish was so tough. I’ve just been talking to John, in Seattle, who deals
with all sorts of fish big time at the fish pier. . . . He said it is very
important that fish be out of rigor mortis when you cook it, otherwise it will
be ‘tough as leather,’ it may be a matter of days for big fish like salmon and
tuna.’ Julia was a bird dog in always wanting to find answers to questions and
problems. This time, it took 10 years!"
Unsure what to make of this, I
consulted an article on rigor mortis in fish, which suggests that if Julia and Pat
had put the fish back on ice and waited a few hours, it would have passed
through rigor, at which point the muscles would have softened again and the
fish would have been edible when cooked.
The Rock Cod
This 25.5” x 17.7” fish print is
more straightforward because it is signed by Paul Child, an artist in his own
right. While we do not know the exact date for Paul’s fish print, we know that
he used the same techniques described by Mrs. Pratt. She speculates that Paul
made the wavy water by hand “as he was not near our dining room table for the
raised grain.” The rock cod print hangs above the refrigerator and is a bit
more difficult to see; a menagerie of ceramic and wooden cats, chickens, and
miscellaneous kitchenware partially obscure the view of the print.
The rock cod fish print.
2001.0253.0747.
The lesson of the fish prints
meshes with Julia’s attitude toward cooking: never stop asking questions
because you might learn something new!
You can read more about Julia’s
kitchen and recipes on our blog!
Paula Johnson is a curator in the
Division of Work and Industry. She has also blogged about cooking with Julia
Child in Washington, D.C.
John Tuohy's MY WRITERS SITE: Happiness ...................
John Tuohy's MY WRITERS SITE: Happiness ...................: ABOUT THE AUTHOR John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood Unive...
Paint and Switch? Did Alec Baldwin Pay $190,000 for the Wrong Picture?
The Ross Bleckner Sea and Mirror at Alec Baldwin’s Manhattan office. CreditSantiago Mejia The New York Times
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Ten years or so ago, as the actorAlec Baldwin remembers it, the
gallery owner Mary Boone sent him an invitation to a show of work by the
painter Ross Bleckner, an artist whom she represented and he had befriended.
The card featured a reproduction of Mr. Bleckner’s “Sea and Mirror,”
a work from 1996, when the artist was at the height of his popularity.
So began Mr. Baldwin’s love affair with the painting — an
infatuation that has ended with Mr. Baldwin, who occupies a central role in New
York’s cultural life, now pitted in a bitter dispute with two formidable
players in the city’s rarefied world of art and money — Ms. Boone, a prominent
art dealer, and Mr. Bleckner, one of her notable talents.
This has, to say the least, become awkward.
For years, Mr. Baldwin said he carried the image of “Sea and
Mirror” in his shoulder bag, alongside a picture of one of his daughters and
his father. In 2010, he asked Ms. Boone to find the collector who owned it and
pry it away.
“There was a kind of beauty and simplicity” to the work, Mr.
Baldwin recalled in an interview this month.
Happily, she reported back, the collector would sell — but at a
premium.
Mr. Baldwin put up the $190,000.
“I love this thing so much,” he said in a 2012 speech about
support for the arts at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, proudly
recounting his quest. “Three months later it was hanging in my house, in my
apartment in New York.”
But Mr. Baldwin said that something about the painting always
gave him unease. The colors weren’t quite the same. It smelled, somehow, new.
In fact, he said, just a few months ago he discovered that he had not bought
the painting he pined for. Instead, he said, for reasons that remain disputed,
Ms. Boone sent him another version of the painting. He claims she passed it off
as the original.
“I thought she had made my dream come true,” Mr. Baldwin said.
Instead, he said he believed that Ms. Boone, frustrated that the collector
would not agree to sell, persuaded Mr. Bleckner to take an unfinished work from
the same series, finish painting it and sell it to him without saying a word.
Mr. Bleckner’s office said he could not be reached for comment.
Ms. Boone, through her lawyer, disputed Mr. Baldwin’s account, asserting he was
never misled about the identity of the work.
“He’s wrong that the painting is a copy; it’s an original and
very fine work of art by Ross Bleckner,” Ms. Boone’s lawyer, Ted Poretz, said
in a statement.
Mr. Baldwin, however, has emails that buttress parts of his
account. The Boone gallery also stamped a number — 7449 — on the back of the
painting it sold to Mr. Baldwin, the same number it had listed next to the work
it had said it was pursuing from the collector.
Mr. Baldwin said he met with the Manhattan district attorney’s
office this summer but was told that a criminal case could not be made.
Ms. Boone’s lawyer declined to address in full the issues raised
by the emails or the number next to the painting.
“The gallery never likes to have unhappy clients,” Mr. Poretz
said in his statement, “and it has turned cartwheels to try to satisfy Alec
Baldwin. It has repeatedly offered Alec Baldwin a full refund, among other
things.”
The interaction is hardly the first to end badly in an opaque,
largely unregulated art market. It raises questions about why works created in
one era by an artist, operating under one set of motivations, are sometimes
different in value and reputation, compared with works that were perhaps
created by the same artist in another era.
But to Mr. Baldwin, the concerns are not nearly so esoteric: He
contends he was betrayed.
“Ross was a kind of friend of mine,” Mr. Baldwin said.
He continues to be a Bleckner supporter. Mr. Baldwin’s
foundation helped to underwrite an exhibition this month on Long Island that
featured Mr. Bleckner’s paintings. He owns five of Mr. Bleckner’s works.
Mr. Baldwin said that the flamboyant, outspoken Ms. Boone, from
whom he sometimes bought art, admitted this year that she had switched the
works.
“She said, ‘I didn’t want to disappoint you,’” he said.
Mr. Baldwin, who met Mr. Bleckner at parties in the Hamptons,
where the actor owns a home, became an admirer of his work in the 1990s. Mr.
Bleckner, who had a Guggenheim retrospective in 1995 at 45, had been an
ascendant art star of the 1980s. He belonged to a stable of young artists who
helped Ms. Boone build her reputation in the ’80s, though two of her stars from
that time, Eric Fischl and David Salle, have since left for rival dealers.
Mr. Baldwin bought his first Bleckner from Ms. Boone in 2010,
and during that transaction mentioned that he really wanted “Sea and Mirror.”
The painting had sold at auction at Sotheby’s in 2007 for
$121,000. Ms. Boone told Mr. Baldwin in an email that the collector now sought
$175,000 for it.
“The Gallery normally charges ten to twenty percent for this
kind of transaction,” she wrote. “To make this a friendly deal, we would charge
you even less — $190,000,” before adding, “I know Ross is so thrilled for you
to have a painting and so am I.”
Mr. Poretz said that shortly afterward Mr. Baldwin was told that,
in fact, he was getting a different version of “Sea and Mirror.”
“By the time Alec Baldwin paid for the painting and it was
delivered to him, he should not have misunderstood what he purchased,” Mr.
Poretz said in his statement.
Mr. Baldwin denies he was ever told he would be receiving a
different work. He said that when he received the canvas, he noticed the
composition lacked a feathery quality in the brush strokes he had admired in
the photos of the work sold at Sotheby’s, and seemed brighter.
Ms. Boone told him, he said, that it had been newly cleaned as a
courtesy.
This year, his suspicions growing, he sent emails to Mr.
Bleckner and Ms. Boone inquiring about the collector from whom he had bought
the painting and about the cleaning.
According to copies of the emails, Mr. Bleckner responded that
he did not know the name of the collector. Mr. Baldwin says Mr. Bleckner did
not point out that that transaction had never gone through. Mr. Bleckner also
discussed how he might have done the cleaning.
“I would usually do
that,” he wrote to Mr. Baldwin, “although I don’t actually remember.”
Mr. Baldwin finally had a Sotheby’s expert compare his painting
to a catalog image from the 2007 auction.
The expert said, “This is not that painting,” Mr. Baldwin
recalled.
He then confronted Ms. Boone and Mr. Bleckner. He said they
acknowledged having given him another work. Mr. Baldwin has an email in which
Mr. Bleckner is deeply apologetic but does not directly address about what.
“im so sorry about all of this,” he wrote. “I feel so bad about
this … what can I do to make this up to you?”
He said Mr. Bleckner told him that he had started the painting
in 1996 and finished it in 2010, though he had dated it 1996.
“I don’t know what Ross knew,” Mr. Baldwin said. “Ross may have
been instructed to make a copy. I don’t know.”
This summer, as Mr. Baldwin complained to Ms. Boone, he gave her
an ultimatum.
“Deliver to me the painting that I bought. The one you sold me,”
he wrote in an email.
Ms. Boone again asked Sotheby’s to contact the owner of the
painting sold at auction in 2007, according to an email supplied by Mr.
Baldwin. The collector, whose identity remains a mystery, was still not
interested in selling.
Ms. Boone’s lawyer, Mr. Poretz, also contacted Mr. Baldwin to
try to settle the matter.
In an interview, Mr. Baldwin acknowledged that the work he has
was created by Mr. Bleckner and that it looks quite similar to the painting he
coveted. But he said it was not the work he had fallen in love with — not a
painting, in his view, created when the artist was at the peak of his fame.
Still, he told Ms. Boone in a recent email, he did not want to
hurt Mr. Bleckner. “I’m less worried about you, Mary,” he wrote, “as you are
more of an armadillo and I’m sure you have been blasting your way out of
corners like this on more than one occasion.”
Ms. Boone wrote back to say that she was working to get him the
work he wanted.
“I am not an Armadillo however,” she added.
John Tuohy's Year One, 1955: Jack Davis
John Tuohy's Year One, 1955: Jack Davis: Jack Davis has passed away. While he is rightly remembered for his MAD era celebrity caricatures, the piece that has the most profound per...
John Tuohy's MY WRITERS SITE: Cool
John Tuohy's MY WRITERS SITE: Cool: ABOUT THE AUTHOR John William Tuohy is a writer who lives in Washington DC. He holds an MFA in writing from Lindenwood Univers...
“The Raymond Rembrandt”
Anthony Amore
One of a number of famous stolen
Rembrandts
A year or so ago, I received an
uncharacteristically quick response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request I had filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It seemed that my application for all FBI
records pertaining to Raymond L.S. Patriarca would be granted, and rather soon,
because another organization had filed the same request and the information was
readily available. Since I was happy to
receive the files in the form of a compact disk, I would have my information
within weeks.
When the disk came, I could
hardly wait to read its contents. The size of the data was huge, consisting of
thousand of pages of scanned FBI documents about the man who ran organized
crime in New England from a small, understated business office on Federal Hill,
just a block away from the corner of Federal and Albro Streets where my father
grew up and where I once played with my brother on my grandmother’s front
stoop.
As I started to read the
documents, I was taken aback by how much was redacted. The Bureau is careful not to release the
names of people who are still alive or to divulge information that remains
pertinent to criminal investigations. It
seemed like every other sentence contained a blocked-out name. How could this
many people from the 1950s and ‘60s still be within this mortal coil? Could the
water in Providence be that good?
I wasn’t quite sure what I hoped
to find in the files. I certainly wanted to learn more about organized crime,
and Patriarca’s reign was so long and so impressive that anyone interested in
true crime, as am I, would undoubtedly be mesmerized by the Bureau’s
files. As an investigator and writer,
the Patriarca FOIA files represent a veritable anthology of mafia activity in
New England from the 1950s through the early 1980s. But when I started to dig in, I became
disheartened by the volume and put off a comprehensive review.
The Patriarca Papers feature has
been a godsend, doing the heavy lifting for me by culling out the important
topics by heading and thereby creating a helpful index. I found myself on this
site more often than my own FBI-produced CD.
And one day, a particular heading jumped out at me: PAGE 49: Looking for
a half a million Rembrandt.
I’ve been looking for a
Rembrandt--actually, three stolen Rembrandts taken from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston--for more than a decade. I also wrote a book about
Rembrandt thefts and had never heard of a Raymond Patriarca nexus. I read the
FBI document and found that an unidentified individual had asked him if he knew
“the thief from Boston who has the Rembrandt worth a half a million dollars. He
stated that he has a guy who is willing to pay fifty to seventy-five thousand
dollars for it. Raymond told him no, but he will try to find out who he is.”
The conversation took place in
July of 1962, so it had nothing to do with the three I seek--those were taken
in 1990. Still, I was curious: what Rembrandt was it, and where is it now?
My first step was obvious. Myles
Connor is the world’s greatest art thief and a notorious criminal in the Boston
area during the relevant period (and for many years thereafter). He certainly
sounded like the perfect suspect. So I
checked his autobiography, The Art of the Heist. Within, he tells of all of his criminal
exploits. But there’s not a whiff of a 1962 Rembrandt to be found. In fact, he
doesn’t mention a Rembrandt heist until he swiped a magnificent work from the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1975. I don’t believe he’d have left out a
theft from more than fifty years ago.
My next suspect was Florian “Al”
Monday. Al was the mastermind of a Rembrandt theft in Worcester in 1972. Though
he wasn’t thought of as a Boston thief, he was from Rhode Island and had ties
to the Patriarca organization at the relevant time. I went over the voluminous notes I had kept
from my interviews of Monday over the years and, again, there’s no mention of a
stolen Rembrandt ten years prior to his biggest crime.
Still curious, I pored over old
newspapers and found some Rembrandt heists from the period. There were
masterpieces taken in Berlin and Holland, among others. But not only were they
not in the half-million dollar range, they had all been recovered. In the
United States, a painting believed to be a Rembrandt titled Tobias and His Wife
was stolen in San Francisco, but that was only worth about $9,000.
So, I’m left perplexed. It’s one
thing to know a painting is stolen. It’s an entirely other thing to know an
unknown painting is stolen.
I began to wonder if maybe the
mysterious man who approached Patriarca knew only one great artist’s name and
referred to a stolen painting as a “Rembrandt” because he had never heard of,
say, Frans Hals or Gerard Dou. In other words, a valuable painting equals
“Rembrandt.” Or, as a colleague posited, perhaps there wasn’t really a painting
available. Maybe it was just the criminal echo-chamber at work.
I should probably just
dismiss it as meaningless chatter. As
far as I can see, it didn’t come up again. But I’m not the sort who can just
forget about a stolen masterpiece. So, as is the case with so many missing
paintings, the search continuesArt-Loving Mobster’s Private Collection Goes on Private View
Rosie Scammell/Reggio,
Italy@rosiescammell
July 1, 2016
Gioacchino
Campolo's assets were seized by Italian police. He was believed to be linked to
the Calabrian mafia
In his personal life, Gioacchino
Campolo was renowned for extortion and usury but in private he was an avid art
collector. It is not clear if he ever intended his collection to be viewed by
the public, but that decision was taken from him when Italian authorities
seized his assets, worth more than $400 million.
Campolo’s art collection was
among his assets, and four years later, it has gone on display at the Palace of
Culture in the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria.
It includes works by Raphael,
Dali and one by Lucio Fontana, the father of the Spatialism movement, valued at
more than $1.67 million
“The collection was amassed with
money which was stolen from the people. We are giving back to the people that
which was taken,” says Eduardo Lamberti-Castronuovo, the local councillor for
heritage.
Campolo amassed his fortune by
supplying gambling machines and other activities. His assets were seized after
he was found guilty of criminal association, usury and extortion in 2011. and
sentenced to 16 years of house arrest. Police said he was also believed to be
associated with the Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta.
Antonella Aricò, a guide at the
museum, says the art works which were found in Campolo’s kitchen, bathroom and
under his bed, served a dual purpose in the criminal’s mind, “To recycle the
dirty money and affirm his social status. He thought that in buying these
works, he would become noble and raise his social status,” she says.
Campolo sent his associates to
auctions and galleries to build his collection, with each of the 125 art works
coming with a certificate of authenticity. But numerous times he was tricked,
including the occasion he believed he had purchased Pablo Picasso’s “Jacqueline
in Black Hat.” The original instead hangs in New York’s MoMA, while a “not
authentic” note is marked below the copy in Reggio.
Within the collection there are
85 proven originals, while some have been marked as fakes and others are still
to be studied.
Lamberti-Castronuovo says a
mobster being duped is a powerful way to show young people criminals are not as
tough as they appear. “This man, who was considered a kind of king, a powerful
man, in effect was not powerful, because he was also cheated. In fact this
‘king’ has been titled, ‘the cheated cheat’,” he remarks.
The councillor also hopes the
museum will show young Calabrians that the riches earnedd by crime are easily
confiscated: “It’s as if we are saying to young people, ‘Look, if you steal, if
you are a mobster, sooner or later the state will come and take away everything
you’ve amassed.’ This is a great lesson,” he said.
Since opening in May up to 1,000
people a day have visited the Palace of Culture. In addition to the seized
artworks, the building also displays paintings by local artists, a series of
mosaics made by prisoners and a museum of religious artefacts.
The transformation of the palazzo
—which was built in the 1930s as the city’s orphanage —was funded by the
province and supported by volunteers who cleaned the building and hung the
pictures.
Around 10 museum guides now work
daily for free. Lamberti-Castronuovo says he is trying to get funding to pay
the multilingual guides. “It doesn’t make sense for this art gallery to exist
if there isn’t someone to explain. If you go there and see the art works and
you don’t know what it’s about, then it’s not a cultural exchange, it’s just
curiosity,” he says.
Finances aside, guide Antonella
Lanteri says the museum is proving a success among locals. “They’re coming and
contemplating, because something is finally happening here,” says Lanteri, who
emigrated from Australia to Calabria 24 years ago. “When we read in the
newspapers and we see on the telly that there has been a confiscation they are
really happy. They are trying to destroy organized crime and this is a very
strong symbol.”
John Tuohy's Child of the Sixties Forever: 60s Art
John Tuohy's Child of the Sixties Forever: 60s Art: Your Portrait, Tetsumi Kudo, 1963- Andrea Rosen Gallery Wayne Thiebaud (American, b. 1920), Hamburger Counter, 1961. Oil on canvas...
When I stand before a canvas,
When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I’ll do, and I
am the first one surprised at what comes out. Joan Miro
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