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Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News Fall 2000 from the DIRECTOR

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Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News Fall 2000 from the DIRECTOR PROFILE Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery News Fall 2000 From the DIRECTOR At every meeting of the National Portrait Gallery Commission, each candidate for inclusion in our collec- tion is measured for the impact of his or her career on American society. There is only one category of American achievement in which every individual automatically qualifies for acceptance: the presidency. By definition, an American President, whatever the extent of his (and, one day, her) achievement, has a profound effect on our society and our history as a people. That’s why the National Portrait Gallery has set aside its grandest space for our Hall of Presidents. And that’s why we take particular pleasure in launching our tour of the greatest treasures in our collection with the opening of the “Portraits of the Presidents” exhibition at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, on October 6. By the time you read this, we will all be deep in our latest presidential season. What the Portrait Gallery offers the nation is historical perspective on this most fundamental of our activities as a nation. At the Bush Library, we are hosting a panel on the history of presidential campaigns, moderated by our Commissioner, the distinguished broadcaster Roger Mudd. This is the first activity we have undertaken with the generous support provided by the National Portrait Gallery’s Paul Peck Fund for Presidential Studies. Mr. Peck’s generosity will also allow us to contribute to an examina- tion of the presidency at our sister institution, the National Museum of American History. I have hopes (no guarantees yet) that I may have the opportunity to interview there one or more former Presi- dents as part of our “Living Self-portrait” series. The Gallery has always made a contribution to the American understanding of the presidency by providing great images of the Presidents, which tell us not only what they looked like, but, per- haps more important, what each artist and each era thought they represented for the nation. Through portraits we can feel Washing- ton’s majesty, Lincoln’s tragedy, and the charm of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We can also stare in perplexity at those who have faded from current memory, wonder about the varieties of presidential character, and wonder, too, whether it is the times that make for greatness. Anyone not able to visit these great portraits in Texas or later in Independence, Missouri, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Los Angeles, California, will still be able to see them in our improved presidential Web site, which enables visitors to see all the spaces in our Virtual Hall in 360 degrees. Take a look at www.npg.si.edu/ exh/hall/index-hall2.htm and see whether you can take the measure of presidential greatness. We’ll all be making our best guess this November at the polls. 2 PROFILE Contents Vol. 1 No. 3. Fall 2000 ELECTION SPECIAL 4 12 Presidents and Collecting the Presidents Q&A the Presidency Interview with Linda Thrift 6 of the Center for Electronic Then & Now Research and Outreach Presidents’ sons and Services Vice Presidents 14 8 NPG on the Road Historian’s Choice Smithsonian Affiliations Abraham Lincoln Program Cover: This image of Abraham Lincoln 9 15 was part of a series of pho- NPG Schedules & tographs taken at Alexander Curator’s Choice Gardner’s Washington studio Gertrude Vanderbilt Information on February 5, 1865, a month Whitney before his second inauguration. 16 Gardner shot the image using 10 Portrait Puzzlers a glass-plate negative, which Presidential wannabes cracked before it could be pro- Acquisitions cessed. Nevertheless, he man- Samuel Griffin: unraveling a aged to make one print from it. mistaken identity In the next issue 11 A special report from the George Bush Presidential Hard Hat News Library and Museum: the Skylight restoration opening of “Portraits of the Presidents” and the panel discussion “Presidential Cam- paigns: From the Trenches,” moderated by Roger Mudd. PROFILE National Portrait Gallery Marc Pachter Director Smithsonian Institution Carolyn K. Carr Deputy Director Eloise Baden Chief Administrative Officer Eighth and F Streets, NW Washington, DC 20560-0213 Editor Phone: (202) 357-2700 Brennan Rash Office of Public Affairs Fax: (202) 786-3098 E-mail: [email protected] Editorial Committee Web site: www.npg.si.edu Dru Dowdy Office of Publications Marianne Gurley Office of Photographic Services Sidney Hart The Charles Willson Peale Family Papers Readers’ comments are welcome. Leslie London Office of Design and Production Ellen G. Miles Department of Painting and Sculpture Frances Stevenson Office of Publications © 2000 Smithsonian Institution Available in alternative formats. Frederick Voss Department of History Printed on recycled paper. Carol Wyrick Office of Education 3 Collecting the Presidents Frederick Voss Adams expressed doubt that Bingham’s portrait Senior Historian would turn out to be “either a strong likeness or Much as the presidency is the focal point of Ameri- a fine picture.” Bingham proved his subject wrong can politics, presidential likenesses occupy a place of on both counts. The resulting picture was a compel- eminence in American portraiture. Replications of ling testament to the subject’s stony New England presidential images are to be found everywhere in tenaciousness, and posterity is mightily grateful for our daily life, from our coined and paper currencies, Adams’s willingness to pose for a painter in whom to advertisements, to classrooms. It would, in fact, he had so little faith. be no overstatement to say that familiarity with When we think of presidential portraiture, the at least certain presidential likenesses—most nota- image that most readily comes to mind is a for- bly Washington’s and Lincoln’s—is one of the few mally posed three-quarter or full-length composi- aspects of our heterogeneous cultural heritage that tion, where the emphasis is on magisterial dignity. most Americans have in common almost from tod- The Gallery, of course, has that brand of portrai- dlerhood on. But from the Portrait Gallery vantage ture in ample supply, but also in its collections point, perhaps the most telling indication of the spe- are some fine examples of presidential imagery cial niche that presidential imagery holds in this where respectful gravitas is decidedly in short country’s portrait tradition is the lively interest that supply. Among them is a drawing by the famed visitors have invariably taken in the museum’s Hall nineteenth-century editorial cartoonist Thomas of Presidents. Since the Gallery’s opening in 1968, Nast, depicting his favorite White House target, no aspect of its permanent installations has been Andrew Johnson, as the mean-spirited “King Andy more frequented and generated more commentary. I” facing down an equally absurd donkey that In the face of this abiding interest in presiden- sports the laurel wreath of a Roman emperor. tial images, it should come as no surprise that Another image short on gravitas is a drawing one of the Gallery’s collecting priorities has long of Calvin Coolidge by caricaturist Miguel Covarru- been likenesses of the individuals who have occu- bias. To me, one of the most interesting things pied the White House. In addition to the more pre- about this wonderfully acerbic portrayal of the dictable formal portraits in oil, bronze, and stone, ascetic, taciturn “Silent Cal” is how closely it par- the museum’s presidential collections contain news allels a written portrait of Coolidge penned by a photographs, commemorative medals, campaign Harvard professor in a private letter. Coolidge, the prints, drawings, and caricatures. Today, the Gal- professor observed, was “a small hatchet-faced, col- lery’s presidential collections include more than orless man, with a tight-shut, thin-lipped mouth; twelve hundred pieces and are constantly growing. very chary of words, but with a gleam of under- Some of the Gallery’s presidential likenesses standing in his pretty keen eye.” Covarrubias was bespeak an effort to obtain the best in portraiture never privy to that comment, yet to look at his that a given era could offer. That certainly is intepretation of Coolidge, it is almost as if the the case with the museum’s unfinished portrait good professor had stood over the drawing board of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, which directing his pen. despite its unfinished state possesses a fleshlike A few of the Portrait Gallery’s most satisfying vitality that ranks it among the finest works by one presidential portraits, interestingly enough, were of the early republic’s most able artists. Another only preliminary studies for far more ambitious por- case is the portrait of Grover Cleveland by Swed- traits. One such likeness is Douglas Chandor’s por- ish artist Anders Zorn, where the loose brushwork, trait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was meant to relaxed pose, and natural lighting coalesce to make serve only as a template for a large, never-realized it a fine example of the impressionistic portraiture tableau depicting Roosevelt with Winston Churchill that was the height of fashion in the last years of and Joseph Stalin at Yalta in early 1945. As with the nineteenth century. most works of this sort, the picture looks obviously One President who sometimes did not worry unfinished. Still, when combined with the studies too much about the proven talents of his portrait- of FDR’s hands in the canvas’s lower portion, the ist was John Quincy Adams, who in his old age likeness has all the weight of a good finished por- seemed willing to sit for just about any painter trait, and one cannot help but think that if the sketch who asked him. One of those artists was George had been taken to a greater state of completion, its Caleb Bingham, and shortly after consenting to sit, impact would have been substantially diminished.
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