March 14: The John F. Kennedy Gravesite

On this day in 1967, the remains of President John F. Kennedy were moved from a temporary site in Arlington National Cemetery to a permanent location nearby. The work of architect John C. Warnecke, the simple modernist gravesite consisting of flagstones, flat bronze markers, and an eternal flame, immediately became a place of pilgrimage. (See the excellent article at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Eternal_Flame)

Like most of the nation, I was fascinated with the idea of an eternal flame, which had been a feature of the president's temporary resting place as well. It is this element, as well as the radical simplicity of the place ("monument" is not the right word) that stays in mind. This is especially true if one has not visited Arlington, which I had not until the 1990s. As these images suggest, the site is not very photogenic. It can be, however, a rewarding architectural and emotional experience.

Even before I had seen the gravesite, on an especially peaceful and beautiful plateau in the cemetery, it fascinated me. I was 8 years old at the time of the assassination. My grandmother lived near a cemetery, and I was already aware that graves, and the people in them, got less and less attention over time, until no one had any active memory of those dead. Surely this would not be the case with a president; and an eternal flame made that doubly sure.

This fascination has accrued with other experiences--notably my accidental discovery of the inappropriately glorious Warren G. Harding burial place--to generate big plans. I designed, but didn't get to teach, a course on the architecture of death. And I have barely begun a book on all the presidential gravesites. I continue to wonder about the ways we use architecture to make memories permanent.

September 3: Feast of St. Gregory the Great

Today is the feast day of St. Gregory the Great. If you can't make it to his church in Rome any time soon to see the gorgeous ceiling fresco of The Trinity with Saints Gregory and Romuald completed by Placido Costanzi in 1727 (on the left), then maybe you can run by the Toledo Museum of Art and see the only known modello for the work, made the year before. And you can see it up close!

Usually right across the gallery from this work is David's reduced autograph copy (I disagree with the scholars who think it's by a student) of the great Oath of the Horatii. If David did indeed paint this, he painted it in Rome, in the same space that had been Costanzi's studio. How wonderful, then, that these two works painted many years apart but quite literally in the same light and ended up in the same American art museum. Way to go, TMA.

August 19: Birthday of William Jefferson Clinton

As a former architectural historian and museum educator living in Little Rock, Arkansas, I find it wholly a pleasure and delightful obligation to write about the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park on the occasion of the 64th birthday of the former leader of the free world.

Opened in November 2004 with Silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification under the United States Green Building Council LEED for New Construction program, the Polshek Partnership-designed building later earned Platinum Certification under LEED-EB (LEED for Existing Buildings) in 2007. This puts it in the forefront of a trend that another favorite institution of mine, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, has bolstered: http://www.artmuseumgr.org/home/page/Video%3A+GRAM%27s+Green+Design

Not without political and aesthetic controversy--which is somehow fitting--the Clinton Presidential Center and Park has transformed Little Rock into a tourist destination. Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Architecture: see http://www.ennead.com/#/projects/clinton-presidential-center for wonderful photos) designed the building as a cantilevered structure that strives toward the proximate Arkansas River in a gesture that embodies the President's goal of "building a bridge to the 21st Century." The views in every direction are stunning, and the Great Hall--generously rentable for community events, including the Arkansas Symphony's chamber music series--has become one of the city's signature spaces.

The permanent exhibits in the library, which Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed (more good photos: http://www.raany.com/html/proj_04/portProj_Clinton.html) are an engaging combination of artifact, reproduction (e.g. the Oval Office replica) and interactives. In recent years the Center has brought in a variety of changing exhibitions, from motorcycles to Peter Max to art by Islamic women, with artistic quality sometimes taking a back seat to novelty and relevance to the "post-presidential agenda." In this way, however, it fills a role as kunsthalle that already established institutions such as the Historic Arkansas Museum (http://www.historicarkansas.org/) and the Arkansas Arts Center (http://www.arkarts.com/) cannot and should not attempt to fill.

The building was dedicated in a pouring rain on November 11, 2004. I will always remember sitting in that miserable deluge, entertained by Bono and The Edge (playing a piano that was later refurbished and donated to the Arkansas Arts Center, where I worked at the time--still grateful) and seeing all the surviving U.S. Presidents cheerfully sitting with rain pouring down their collars, enjoying the rare if bone-chilling moment when politics is set aside and history begins.

July 3: Feast of St. Thomas, REVISED

On this day the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of St. Thomas, one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus. As the story is told in John 20:24-29, Thomas was absent on a fateful day when the Risen Christ appeared to the other disciples. His response to their claim, "we have seen the Lord," is to insist on visual and tangible evidence before he will believe. A week later, Jesus appears again and offers Thomas the proof he requires.

My friend Fr. Fred Ball points out that Caravaggio's graphic description of this encounter, while it is what most of us imagine happened, goes a step beyond the scriptural account. We are only told that, in response to Jesus' invitation to touch his wounds, Thomas responds, " my Lord and my God." As Caravaggio depicts the episode, Thomas seems already to be comprehending without touching, as he stares straight ahead, or perhaps within. The other two apostles, meanwhile, have a keen curiosity about the corporeality of the event.

So did the early church. A relic purported to be a fragment of the bone of the index finger of St. Thomas which touched the wound of the resurrected Christ is housed in the reliquary chapel of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome. I wrote my dissertation on this church (see September 14, below), have contemplated this relic many times, and have saved a black-and-white postcard image of it, displayed in the monstrance to the left of the crucifix, for almost thirty years. Si non e vero, e ben trovato.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Croce_in_Gerusalemme#Passion_relics).

July 1: Birthday of John Singleton Copley

Painted in 1767, this work by America's first truly American painter has earned its place in the splendid new (2009) volume, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks. My former colleague Paula Reich, author of the entry on Young Lady with a Bird and a Dog, has found a letter to Copley pointing out its mixed reception at the London Society of Artists Exhibition: "you have been universally condemned in the choice of your Subject, which is [of] so disagreeable a Character as to have made the Picture disliked by every one but the best Judges who could discern the Excellence of the Painting."

Indeed, for some 240 years now, viewers have found the expression of the unnamed little girl in this portrait inexplicably unpleasant. One gets the feeling that she and Copley did not enjoy the many hours they spent confined together during the making of this picture. I have always wished I could like her, but I don't.

What I have always liked is her lovely pink satin dress with the lace and blue ribbon trim on the sleeves. And I came to like it even better when I sewed a replica of it for the TMA's "Halloween Fantasy" event, when staff members and volunteers dressed up and brought the paintings to life in the galleries. And I liked it better still when I was able to convince my daughter, then about 10, to wear it and hand out prizes (not candy!) to the children coursing through the museum.

There is more to say about Copley, of course, and about this painting. But I will end here with a birthday salutation to the artist, born on this date in 1738, and congratulations to Brian P. Kennedy, who was named TMA's ninth director just yesterday (www.toledoblade.com/article/20100630/NEWS16/6300310).

June 30: Birthday of Henry Moore

I can add little to Allen McMillen's excellent entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, which I commend to you:

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2131#

I can't recall how many times during my 7 1/2 year tenure at the Arkansas Arts Center someone suggested, or even insisted, that the museum purchase this 1976 Henry Moore sculpture, Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge and move it to our site in MacArthur Park. Even more often, others assumed that we already owned the piece and were doing it a great disservice to leave it in an unfelicitous spot in front of the Sterns Agee Building, where it was moved when the Capitol Avenue pedestrian mall reverted to a conventional roadway.

While, as the article suggests, semi-abstract sculpture still puzzles a great many people, a great many more seem to understand that this is a wonderful work of art, albeit badly sited, and certainly the best public sculpture in the city. The last I heard it was valued at something like 27 times its original cost, out of the price range of most small museums. Little Rock is lucky to have it, no matter where it is and no matter who owns it. Please have a look. But look both ways before you cross the street.

April 23: Birthday of J.M.W. Turner

James Mallord William Turner (1775 -1851 ) made many visits to Venice and painted some of his best-known works there. This 1842 view is of the city's back door--in contrast to the usual scenes of the Grand Canal, the Basin of S. Marco, and the Rialto Bridge (all of which Turner also painted). It looks onto the Campo Santo--literally "holy ground"-- on the right, the walled cemetery island of San Michele. Venice actually occupies 117 tiny islands, prone to flooding, saved (partially) from the ravages of the Adriatic tides only by a long barrier island, the Lido. Given this watery environment, burials in residential areas are especially unwise, and ancient Italo-Roman tradition is to isolate cemeteries from the city proper. On the left are buildings of the Cannareggio district, partly deliniated in pencil. (A work of about the same date in the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College treats the architecture in the same way). In the foreground, working gondolas--rather like trucks--take piles of goods across the water.
Even this alley view conveys the magical quality of Venetian light and the romantic allure of the city called La Serenissima, the most serene. The angelic, double-sailed boat, reflected in the still water, is a bright and poetic focal point among the softly blurred, low horizontals of the distant architecture. Sky occupies the majority of the canvas, with gathering wispy clouds that read simultaneously as landscape elements and the self-conscious tracks of the artist's hand.
This is my favorite painting at the Toledo Museum of Art. When I worked there, I visited it often--when I was stuck, frustrated, uninspired, often after the galleries closed to the public and it was lit with only the indirect glow of the laylights above. Had the building caught fire, I would have run to retrieve it. While I could say even more about it, for reasons I can't explain it comforted me, then as now, beyond words.