The Guggenheim Effect: New York City Reunions and the Circle of Life

Elissa and I at the Guggenheim, November 2016. Thrilling. The
glass dome and a painting from the exhibit that was up.
My photo, a rare good one.

The Guggenheim was in the news recently for getting another grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to continue to digitize its collections, and the news brought me full circle to some wonderful memories. 

The circular, curved architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan continues to draw comments good and bad as it did when it first opened in 1959. A unique architectural style, iconic, Wright took 16 years to draw up its various plans and died before it was finished. So did its founder Solomon Guggenheim. Wider at the top than at the bottom, Wright wanted it to be "a temple of the spirit." It housed all kinds of impressionist and modern art at one time, but we thought it looked rather bare in November 2016 when we wound our way up the curved ramps to the top and fixated on the dome skylight.  

Natalia and me, together, joyful.

My daughter Elissa and I were in New York City to reunion with my dear friend Natalia from Ukraine. She was visiting her son Ivan, who had an IT job in NYC, and his family.  They lived across the river in Jersey City, New Jersey, which turned out to be a fabulous sight for viewing the new World Trade Center.

I lived with Natalia at the end of my Peace Corps service in Starobilsk. She later moved to Kyiv to be closer to her children. I didn't think I'd see her again when I left Ukraine, and the language barrier was the worst with Natalia because she was a soulmate. We both felt it, we knew it through pantomime, efforts at understanding, and laughter, lots of laughter. Not being able to communicate fully, to become immersed in those long intimate conversations among friends that bring comfort and joy, was almost painful.

Seeing Natalia in New York brought tears of joy.  She gave me a beautiful work of art she had created, but seeing her again was the best gift of all. It was a fantastic, emotional reunion, and we repeated it when she and Ivan visited us in Sylvania a month later.  That was the best Christmas gift ever! Thank goodness that Ivan was our translator.

Natalia & son Ivan in Sylvania, Ohio. How fantastic that was!
On Main St, with my family, at Wildwood, a tour of Toledo.
December 2016

It felt like life coming full circle. It felt like being in the Guggenheim, strolling up pathways to meet old friends and loved ones, finding surprises along the way. The circle of life. A temple of the spirit, what Frank Lloyd Wright wanted it to be, what he bequeathed to future generations.

The Guggenheim effect! This New York visit brought even more reunions on top of the precious visit with Natalia. Elissa and I came full circle with several friends whom we hadn't seen for years.

I got to see my friend Alice Twombly after many years doing our own things, living our lives. It was as if we had never been apart. We carried on where we  had left off, a seamless narrative between forever friends.  She remembered her father's business in Jersey City, we reminisced about our time together in Madison, Wisconsin, took a slow walk up memory lane, up and down the ramps of our lives' experiences.  

Me with Natalia, Alice, and Christine and Elissa with Eric at the
Guggenheim. Powerful experiences, happy moments.

We met world-traveler Christine Comerford, who lives on Long Island, a friend my sister Andy and I made on a fabulous Gate I tour in Sicily. We shared a beer at a pub on the East River, near the new World Trade Center, just like we had done in Taormina. 

It was, however, bittersweet to visit the new glass tower that replaced the Twin Towers tragically destroyed on 9/11. The view from Jersey City across the river was amazing, moving, and it was even more so when we got up close and could touch the mementos, salvaged pieces of metal, the names of first responders and the thousands lost.  We were standing on sacred ground.

And finally on this trip, Elissa got to see her friend Eric, from her Maumee Valley high school class, whom she had lost touch with. In fact we met up with Eric, who had long lived in NYC, at the Guggenheim. He and Elissa reminisced about mutual friends and high school antics as they went full circle to the top.  I remembered Eric's father, a Math professor at the University of Toledo when we were there, and his mother, a great cook. 

Being at the Guggenheim. It was a passage in the present through time, the stuff memories are made of and that sustain us as we move up and down the ramps of life. Coming full circle.  

SOURCES: 

* https://www.guggenheim.org/news/guggenheim-neh-grant & https://www.guggenheim.org/library-archives/library-archives-projects/guggenheim-listening-project-reel-to-reel-collection-digitization

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_R._Guggenheim_Museum.  There's a Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain too, designed by renowned Canadian architect Frank Gehry. Amazing isn't it? Frank Gehry also designed a Center for the Arts building closer to home, next to the Toledo Museum of Art. 

Guggenheim in Bilboa.

This is the University of Toledo's Center for the Arts,
a Frank Gehry building built next to the Toledo Museum of Art

..

Actually, He Never Stopped Hiking: Loren's Paths

                                       

A lovely green tree-lined path at Broadstairs, England,
one of Charles Dickens' favorite vacation spots, and
also my friend Edward Sellick's, who took this photo.
I think his husband Jim is on this path with Loren. 

On one of Loren's favorite paths,
at Shenandoah National Park. 
 photo, Eric Trefney. 

My brother Loren would have been 75 years old on November 12, but age doesn't matter a whit where he is now, on some path or another beyond the horizon. 

He died while hiking along the Aucilla River in northern Florida.  I used to call it his last hike.  But actually, I see it now, it wasn't his last hike. He just kept on going, hiking into the unknown toward the moon, on paths inspired by the Goddess, by the natural beauty of our planet, the endless vastness of space.   

He's still hiking. I try to imagine the paths he's on, the paths he's exploring, wherever his curious mind takes him. The works of artists and photographers help me imagine it. They inspire Loren too.

He travels the world, free as a bird.  He's in eastern Europe now and then. I remember seeing him on morning walks and evening moon rises in Starobilsk when I served in Ukraine with the Peace Corps. He was curious. He wanted to know everything. He died when I was there, in May 2010, suddenly took off on a new journey, although I knew only grief at the time, devastating grief. 

Barbara Fox, New York State watercolor artist.

Sometimes he stops in Toledo, Ohio. My daughter Elissa and I thought we saw him when a red cardinal followed us along a hiking path we were on at Wildwood Metropark. He flew alongside us, stopped on a branch when we stopped, tilted his head and listened to us. "I think it's Uncle Loren," Elissa smiled. We had a nice conversation. Loren's at peace.

I've felt his presence in Michigan too. At the secret enchanted forest in Osseo, on Bird Lake. Chase and a friend were there too, examining lovely stones placed there by visitors. Wouldn't surprise me if Loren left a few of those stones, the ones with "peace" written on them.  

Autumn in Teton National Park.

William Shaftner takes off!

Our sister Andy thinks Loren was on that Blue Origin space flight with Star Trek actor William Shaftner a few weeks ago, that's how far his paths take him. 

I wondered if Loren would like the idea of "Tourist Rockets" by  the likes of ultra-billionaire Jeff Bezos, but our sister Andy thinks Loren would have been on that ride for sure.  "Are you kidding me, sis? It was one of his dearest wishes. He dreamed about it!"           

That's true. He was the biggest fan of space exploration early on, inspired by Star Wars and his endless research. He followed NASA like a hawk. He was one of the founders of the Greater Orlando Space Society when he lived there, because he wanted to get people excited about space exploration and its benefits. He was at most space launches. Yep, Andy's right. He was cruising along on that space flight.

Loren returns to Florida a lot, too. He lived there for a long time, became a booster and enthusiastic environmental volunteer. From Orlando he moved to Tallahassee in 2009. Our mother was not doing well, and he joined Andy in caring for her.  

Loren knew a lot about Florida's natural environment, worked hard to preserve it.  He took that Aucilla River hike with the Florida Trails Association. He volunteered at St. Marks and Birdsong. He was a faithful member of the Sierra Club. I have a feeling he was down at the Loxahatchee Nature Preserve recently when a full moon reflected its awesome glory. 

The moon shines on the Loxahatchee Wildlife Preserve, part of the northern Everglades near Jupiter, Florida. That's where the Moon and the Earth meet. Loren is its witness.

Photo by Bill Kiert, Dept. of Interior. 

Bob Thompson, Artist: A Shooting Star in a Brief Life

I love this painting by Bob Thompson, which reminds me of Romare Bearden
and Jacob Lawrence, but whose inspiration is uniquely Thompson's. Thanks
to Peter Stebbins and the Studio House at Walbridge, DC, for sharing this. 

An important new traveling exhibition, "Bob Thompson: This House is Mine," is offering a rich reconsideration of a visionary African-American artist. 

Robert Louis Thompson (1937–1966), born in Louisville, KY,  earned critical acclaim in the late 1950s and 1960s "for his paintings of figurative complexity and chromatic intensity." He lived in New York, and travelled to and lived in Europe for long periods of time. Representation by the pioneering Martha Jackson Gallery in New York City while he was painting and creating his oeuvre, not only after he died, assured his recognition in the art world. 

These galleries deserve more recognition as well. Martha Jackson (1907-1969) was born in Buffalo, New York, attended Smith College, and opened her gallery at E. 65th Street in Manhattan in 1953.  She was far-sighted, ahead of her times.                 

"Blue Madonna." A unique figurative style.

Forever young.

 This House is Mine is the first museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than twenty years, organized by the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine.  The New England college museums are doing good work these days.* 

The Whitney Museum in New York held a retrospective of his work in 1998, important to mention because the Whitney, like Gallery owners such as Martha Jackson, pioneered in presenting black and women artists early on. Also worthy of acknowledgement is the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Chelsea, NYC, the owner of the Estate of Bob Thompson I learned. Thompson's works are in Rosenfeld's collection, and also in numerous private and public collections. 

I must say I am only now discovering him. What's amazing to me is how much wonderful art Thompson created in his too-brief life, dying from drug addiction and complications of gall bladder surgery when he was only 28 years old and living in Rome.  Thompson created more than 1,000 works in an eight-year career, and has influenced and inspired several generations of young African-American artists. A shooting star in the darkness. 

According to the Colby museum, the traveling exhibition is significant for several reasons: 

"This House Is Mine traces Thompson’s brief but prolific transatlantic career, examining his formal inventiveness and his engagement with universal themes of collectivity, bearing witness, struggle, and justice. Over a mere eight years, he grappled with the exclusionary Western canon, developing a lexicon of enigmatic forms that he threaded through his work. Human and animal figures, often silhouetted and relatively featureless, populate mysterious vignettes set in wooded landscapes or haunt theatrically compressed spaces. Thompson reconfigures well-known compositions by European artists such as Piero della Francesca and Francisco de Goya through brilliant acts of formal distortion and elision, recasting these scenes in sumptuous colors. On occasion, familiar individuals appear: the jazz greats Nina Simone and Ornette Coleman, and the writers LeRoi Jones (later Amiri+ Baraka) and Allen Ginsberg."

For me, an interesting aspect of Thompson's work is the source of his inspiration. I immediately associated his colorful expressionist works with fantastic African-American painters like Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson, Lois Mallou Jones, Beaufort DeLaney and so many others whose figurative paintings, depictions of African- American daily life and culture, and use of shapes and color stand out as distinctive and unique contributions to expanding the Western art canon.  Many of these artists, icons of the Harlem Renaissance, were around when the young Thompson was in NY, many still painting and exhibiting their art. 

And yet, everything I've read about Thompson's inspiration points to his love of the art of the Western canon, the Baroque and the Renaissance, Italian painters, the old masters. Still, he did riff off of these artists to create his own interpretation and images, a blend of traditions. I would like to know how he viewed the African-American art tradition, There seems to be some connection for sure. Thompson was good friends with jazz singer Nina Simone, saxophonist Ornette Coleman, the poet Amiri Bakara and Allen Ginsburg, all  precious and singular voices.  He must have known of the works of contemporary and older generations of Black artists. Maybe there's more to discover in his private collections and communications.  I checked to see if Thompson was included in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Art's fabulous catalogue, "Twentieth Century African American Painters," but he's not there. 

This House is Mine exhibition will surely garner more public recognition of a shooting star who left an important legacy. Here is the current exhibit catalogue, which looks beautiful. There are also earlier catalogues of Thompson's work, like the one for the Whitney exhibit, that are still available.    

The Yale University Press Catalogue. The title of the exhibition

           is taken from this painting, which Thompson called "This House is Mine."

 "Thompson drew upon the Western art-historical canon to formulate a highly personal, expressive language. Tracing the African American artist’s prolific, yet tragically brief, transatlantic career, this volume examines Thompson’s outlier status and pays close attention to his sustained engagements with themes of community, visibility, and justice. As the contributors contextualize the artist’s ambitions and his unique creative process, they reposition Thompson as a predecessor to contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Kehinde Wiley. Featuring an array of artwork, and never-before-published poems and archival materials, this study situates Thompson’s extraordinary output within ongoing dialogues about the politics of representation." Yale University Press

 

Thompson, "An Allegory."

Sources:  

*  https://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/2174-reshaping-the-field-arts-of-the-african-diasporas-conference?  Bard is another NE college focusing on black art. This is a conference, "Reshaping the Field." So is the University of Vermont, Fleming Museum, which mounts regular exhibitions.  https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/fleming-opens-its-doors-visitors-and-conversations-about-institutional-racism.  And here's another, a Bowdon college collaborative exhibit of  photographer Marcia Resnick: https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2021/11/07/3623-first-museum-retrospective-of-martha-resnick-examines-the-photogr?  Thanks again to Peter Stebbins of the Studio House at Walbridge and the Earle and Lily Pilgrim Foundation in DC for keeping me posted. 

1. https://www.artfixdaily.com/news_feed/2021/11/01/8095-bob-thompson-exhibition-examines-his-brilliant-artworks-from-a-to?  

"Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine is organized by the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, and will travel after debuting at Colby (on view now through January 9, 2022) to: Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, February 10–May 15, 2022; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 18–September 11, 2022; Hammer Museum at UCLA , Los Angeles, October 9, 2022–January 8, 2023....Bringing together paintings and works on paper from more than fifty public and private collections across the United States, This House Is Mine centers Bob Thompson’s work within expansive art historical narratives and ongoing dialogues about the politics of representation, charting his enduring influence. The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue featuring scholars, artists, and poets, published in association with Yale University Press."

2.  https://americanart.si.edu/artist/bob-thompson-4784 

3.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Thompson_(painter)

4.  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/arts/design/bob-thompson-influence.html

5.  https://www.michaelrosenfeldart.com/about. This gallery is now in Chelsea. Hope to visit next time I'm in New York with Doris Wohl! 

6. https://www.albrightknox.org/art/collection/major-gifts-collection/martha-jackson-collection Martha Jackson was a Buffalo, NY native and a far-sighted gallery owner in NYC, ahead of her time in her time. Her own collection of artworks went to the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, NY, after she died, where she had maintained a long and close relationship. 

7.  https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/20th-century-african-american-art  - This exhibition is still travelling, going to Yonkers, NY end of 2021 to January 2022. I'd love to see it.

"This exhibition presents nearly 50 paintings and sculptures by 32 African American artists from SAAM’s collection. These artists came to prominence during the period bracketed by the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights movement. The means of these artists varied—from modern abstraction to stained color to the postmodern assemblage of found objects—and their subjects are diverse. Benny Andrews, Ellis Wilson and William H. Johnson speak to the dignity and resilience of people who work the land. Jacob Lawrence and Thornton Dial, Sr. acknowledge the struggle for economic and civil rights. Sargent Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, and Melvin Edwards address the heritage of Africa, and images by Romare Bearden celebrate jazz musicians. Sam Gilliam, Felrath Hines and Alma Thomas conducted innovative experiments with color and form."