Browse Exhibitions

Spring approximately 1938: Miss Marion Winter of the Federal Music Project is collecting materials for an exhibition of Illustrated Sheet Music Covers and Titles to be held next October at the Brooklyn Museum under the auspices of the Division of Prints and Drawings, Carl O. Schniewind, Curator. Although celebrated artists have often designed cover papers and titles for sheet music and in the days when printing was always a fine art such covers and title pages were especially interesting, the history of this type of illustration has never before been thoroughly surveyed and a quantity of unforeseen discoveries in the course of Miss Winter’s investigations has already secured valuable materials for the projected exhibition.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1937 - 1939. 03-04_1938, 043. View Original

January 5, 1939: Representatives of the press and press photographers are cordially invited to preview the exhibition, Art Scores For Music, at the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday, January 10 from 10:00 to 5:00 or on any other day thereafter between the same hours.

The exhibition opens to the public Saturday, January 14 to run through February 26. Refreshments will be served to representatives of the press previewing the exhibition.

Mr. Laurence P. Roberts, Director; Mr. Carl O. Schniewind, Curator of Prints and Drawings; and Mr. Grant Code, Editor, will be hosts to the press.

This is the first international exhibition of historic scores for cabaret and concert hall music with pictorial decorations by old masters and now ones. The items in the exhibition range from rare 16th century books lent by private collectors and the governments of foreign countries, through American documents which serve picturesquely the political and social history of the United States, to compositions by contemporaries.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939. 01-03/1939, 002. View Original

Date unknown, approximately 1939: Representatives of the press and press photographers are cordially invited to preview the exhibition, Art Scores For Music at the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday, January 10 from 10:00 to 5:00 or on any other day thereafter between the same hours.

The exhibition opens to the public Saturday, January 14 to run through February 26. Refreshments will be served to representatives of the press previewing the exhibition.

Mr. Laurence P. Roberts, Director; Mr. Carl O. Schniewind, Curator of Prints and Drawings; and Mr. Grant Code, Editor, will be hosts to the press.

This is the first international exhibition of historic scores for cabaret and concert hail music with pictorial decorations by old masters and new ones. The items in the exhibition range from rare 16th century books lent by private collectors and the governments of foreign countries, through American documents which serve picturesquely the political and social history of the United States, to compositions by contemporaries.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939. 01-03/1939, 092. View Original

January 13, 1939: Members and guests of the Brooklyn Museum will preview the exhibition Art Scores for Music at a reception tonight. The exhibition will open to the public tomorrow, Saturday January 14th. This is the first international exhibition of scores for cabaret and concert hall music with pictorial decorations by old and modern masters. The exhibition has been collected by Miss Marian Hannah Winter of the Federal Music Project and installed by Carl O. Schniewind, Curator of Prints and Drawings, of the Brooklyn Museums.

The Madrigal Singers, Lehman Engel, conductor, accompanied by an eighteen piece orchestra will perform at the reception some of the music from the scores exhibited. Compositions by Orlando di Lasso (1532–1594), William Costeley (1531–1606), John Dowland (1563–1626) and Thomas Morley (1557–1603) will be included in the program. In addition to the 16th Century songs, American 19th Century popular songs by H. S. Thompson, Cool White and Breceson Treharne will be sung.

The patrons for the exhibition include Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mayor and Mrs. LaGuardia, Boro-President and Mrs. Ingersol. The complete list of patrons is as follows: Dr. and Mrs. Frank L. Babbott, Mr. and Mrs. Edward C. Blum, Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Blum, Mrs. Henry Breckinridge, Mr. and Mrs. Francis T. Christy, Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers Clifton, Mr. and Mrs. George Crandall, Mr. Walter H. Crittenden, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney W. Davidson, Mrs. Mary C. Draper, Mrs. William P. Earle, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Edwards, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth A. Frazier, Judge and Mrs. Edwin L. Garvin, Mrs. William H. Good, Mrs. A. Augustus Healy, Boro President and Mrs. Raymond B. Ingersoll, Mr. and Mrs. Henry A. Ingraham, Mr. and Mrs. Allyn R. Jennings, Mr. Lincoln Kirstein, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Kellogg, Honorable Fiorello H. LaGuardia and Mrs.LaGuardia, Mr. and Mrs. Luke Vincent Lockwood, Dr. and Mrs. John L. Loftus, Mr. and Mrs. James G. McDonald, Mrs. Frances McFarland, Professor and Mrs. A. Philip McMahon, Dr. Arthur Pritchard Moor, Professor and Mrs. Douglas Moore, Honorable Robert Moses and Mrs. Moses, Mrs. and Mrs. Thomas E. Murray, Mrs. Dean C. Osborne, Mr, and Mrs. Frederic B. Pratt, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred H. Schoellkopf, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton Sprague Smith, Dr. and Mrs. Nikolai Sokoloff, Col. Brehon Somervell, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Steinway, Miss Mary C. Tinney.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939. 01-03/1939, 015. View Original

Date unknown, approximately 1939: Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln at a skating party; Charles Dickens at a ball in New York; West Point comrades of Cadet James Abbott McNeil Whistler; General Harrison in the Battle of Tippecanoe; Bret Hart Heathen Chinee and other celebrities parade across the pages of music in a pageant of American life at the exhibition Art Scores for Music, opened at the Brooklyn Museum last night (Friday, January 13th) with a reception and pre-view for members and guests of the Museum and a concert by the Federal Music Project’s Madrigal Singers, led by Lehman Engel.

In other sections of the exhibition woodcuts by unknown German, Italian and French masters of the 16th Century, woodcuts, engravings and lithographs and by well known masters from Cranach to Manet, Millet and Toulouse-Lautrec, illustrate the covers, title pages and sometimes the scores themselves. The European music includes solemn church services by Martin Luther and others, light songs that Louis XIII, King of France used to carry about in his pocket, operas, sentimental ballads for debutantes, revolutionary campaign songs, and naughty songs for Paris cafes. There are portraits of celebrities from Henry Clay to Yvette Guilbert, scenes from life, the comical old fellow with his wheelbarrow by Winslow Homer, the burning of the Brooklyn Theater, a ride on a Nostrand Avenue trolley car. There are scones from theatrical history, Jenny Lind, General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, the daring young man on the flying trapeze at Niblo’s garden, the even more startling aerial artist Lulu, resplendent in a quilted green costume like a modern bathing costume, only somewhat more liberal. In fact there is much that illustrates the history of costume, even a charming girl in charming bloomer designed by the great Amelia Jenks Bloomer herself. And there are creatures quite remote from life, angels and cherubs playing musical instruments, Apollo, the Muses and the Elector of Bavaria presiding over the concert.

The exhibition illustrates very well the history of the different techniques used at different periods for this purpose.

There were first the woodcuts, pictures and decorative borders contemporary with the invention of printing itself, and imitating the former miniatures and illuminated borders of manuscripts. Then there was the fine flowering of early woodcut illustration of printing in the 16th century. With the 17th century same the triumph of engraving on metal plates, adapted and elaborated to suit the changing tastes of the 18th century. Finally came the invention of lithography in color and black and white to transform the pages of 19th century music. And in the latter days of the century lithographs  "after photographs" announced the appearance of the new process, "photography", which in the form of photo-engraving, line cut and allied techniques was to push the best artists out of the business of illustrating music altogether.

The exhibition was assembled by Miss Marion Hannah Winter of the Federal Music Project and installed by Carl O. Schniewind, Curator of Prints and Drawings of the Brooklyn Museum.

Items have been lent by private collectors and by groat museums and libraries in this country and abroad.

Trustees of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, officials of the Federal Music Project, and other distinguished patrons of art and music welcome guests to the opening of the exhibition. Refreshments were served and Lehman Engel’s Madrigal Singers performed some of the music exhibited, including American songs popular in the 18th Century and some of the fine old music, by Lully, Orlando di Lasso and others.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1939. 01-03/1939, 016-7. View Original 1, View Original 2