October 19, 1940: The Brooklyn Museum’s plans for the greater part of the 1940-41 season and the first part of the 1941-42 season have just been announced.
The principal exhibitions of the year begin with “Art Finds a Way,” a graphic comment on the subject of skilled work, about which there is so much discussion today, and will demonstrate the great skills man has developed through the years in producing useful objects that have become recognized as objects of art. This exhibition, arranged under the direction of Dr. Herbert J. Spinden, Curator of the Department of American Indian Art and Primitive Cultures, will be made up principally from the Museum’s collections augmented by several loans. It will run from November 1 through January 2.
Also opening in November is an exhibition of Children’s Clothing, showing the development for the last 125 years and the emergence from slavish copying of adult costume into special designs for the younger generation. Materials for this exhibition will also come principally from the Museum’s collection, enhanced by a few loans. This show is being arranged by Mrs. Michelle Murphy, Supervisor of the Department of Education, and will extend from November 9 through January 12.
On the 23rd of January, “Paganism and Christianity in Egypt - The Art of Egypt from the First to the Tenth Century,” will open. It will be the first purely Coptic showing arranged in this country. This is being prepared by the Museum’s Department of Egyptology. The exhibition will close on March 9.
A show for which the Museum is internationally famous, the Biennial Water Color Exhibition, will open on March 27 and close May 11. It will be arranged under the supervision of John I. H. Baur, Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture.
Another exhibition arranged from the Costume collections will be a showing of millinery, past and current, from March 8 through April 20, which will also be arranged by Mrs. Michelle Murphy, Supervisor of the Department of Education.
The last large exhibition of the season will be made up of art from the printing press, to demonstrate the problems of those who are producing art every day, week and month for the great public, and the process involved in doing so. This exhibition is being arranged by a committee composed of Ralph Halker, architect, George Welp, art director, and Edward A. Wilson, illustrator, together with representatives of the Museum.
Following the Silk Screen Prints exhibition, arranged by the Print Department, which opened September 20 and will run through October 20, is “The Stage is Set”, running from October 4 through November 17, made up of reproductions of theatre, opera and ballet subjects selected from Library material. As the result of the continual work which is going on in the Photographic Department at the Museum of the printing of negatives from the George B. Brainard Collection of 2,500 views of this part of the country, a third showing of prints will be put on view October 11 and will continue through November 3.
On the 24th of October the Print Department will hang an exhibition of Current Campaign Cartoons by artists well known in this field, which will continue through December 1. During the same period but opening a day later, October 25, a gift in the form of a group of pressed glass, collected by Mrs. William Greig Walker and presented to the Museum as the result of a subscription fund, will be shown for the first time. The 138 items are all impressed with subjects relating to persons and events that held public interest in the United States, and to some extent in Europe, between 1820 and 1940. The title of the exhibition is “History in Pressed Glass.
“The Nativity in Art,” made up of reproductions of 15th Century woodcuts and medieval manuscripts, will be put on view November 22 to continue through January 5. This exhibition was arranged by Miss Alice Ford, a member of the Art Reference Library staff. A showing of Recent Accessions will open on December 5 and extend through January 12. In this same period the exhibition called “Forever Young” will be shown. The latter will be composed of illustrations for children’s books, arranged by the Print Department. January 18 through February 2 the annual showing of the work of Brooklyn artists, restricted this year to water colors, will be arranged by John I. H. Baur, Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, and there will be another exhibition in January of other views of Brooklyn and Long Island from the George B. Brainard Collection, from January 9 through February 9.
For the 1941-42 season the following exhibitions are already planned: Paintings by John Quidor (1801-1881), and also a collection of works by William S. Mount (1807-1868), both arranged by John I. H. Baur, Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture; and “Colonial Art of Latin America,” prepared under the supervision of Dr. Herbert J. Spinden, Curator of the Department of American Indian Art and Primitive Cultures.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939 - 1941. 10-12/1940, 181-3.
March 5, 1941: An exhibition entitled “Hats Unlimited” is nearly ready to open at the Brooklyn Museum, March 8. The show will be composed of fabulous and functional headgear taken from the Museum’s extensive collections, that include a wide variety of examples made up of all kinds of materials in this class of costume accessories, from all parts of the world.
There will also be a section of forecast creations, now being prepared by Sally Victor, in which hats from the Museum will be used in part as direct inspirations. This will help to demonstrate the great wealth of practical source material available for modern designers in the Brooklyn Museum’s collections. It is for this reason that the Industrial Division on is staging the show.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939 - 1941. 01-03/1941, 049.
Spring approximately 1941: An exhibition of fabulous and functional headgear entitled “Hats Unlimited” will open at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, March 8, to continue through April 20. The exhibition, arranged by the Museum’s Industrial Division, will for the most part include specimens from the Museum’s diverse collections, supplemented by forecast creations of a leading designer in the field of millinery.
The main purpose of the exhibition is to bring to the attention of millinery designers the great wealth of source material in the world-wide range of the Brooklyn Museum’s millinery collections, which are said to contain the greatest variety of specimens to be found in any such collections in the United States.
From the earliest times, headgear has fallen into two principal categories: the protective and the ceremonial. In the first there are three general sub-divisions; protection against the elements, protection against physical enemies, and protection against spiritual enemies. The ceremonial group is split into such general sub-divisions as headgear denoting civil or social rank, and religious headgear. The last sub-division of each group has an obvious inter-relation. Examples of all these classifications will be included in the exhibition.
In addition the exhibits will show the effect of economic and social progress upon the development of headgear, from the early importance of male millinery, which still maintains its leadership in the Near East and the Orient, to the present importance of female millinery in Occidental countries.
The wide scope of the collections will be demonstrated by the variety of materials, techniques and silhouettes to be exhibited. Materials will include lacquered papier-mache, textiles, felt, feathers, wood, semi-precious stones, metals, straw and bast fibres. The variety of techniques in the use of these materials will include needlework, weaving and applique. Silhouettes will range from the simple horizontal or vertical to the most complex combinations of simple forms. In size the specimens will run from the monumental super-structure of a ceremonial headdress from New Guinea to the flimsy wisp of a Victorian dinner hat.
The forecast creations will be designed by Sally Victor, based on the Museum’s collections, and will show the inspiration which a creative designer may draw from the Museum’s material in the production of modern millinery which is neither a replica nor a mere adaptation of an older form.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939 - 1941. 01-03/1941, 050-1.
