Showing posts with label Snow White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Snow White. Show all posts

Monday, February 19, 2024

Bruce Guthrie reflects on Childhood Favorites: 100 Years of Children’s Book Illustration exhibit

by Bruce Guthrie

 Recently,  I drove up to Hagerstown's Washington County Museum of Fine Arts museum to see the opening day of "Childhood Favorites: 100 Years of Children’s Book Illustration".  The exhibit runs until March 17.

The signage within the exhibit had some inconsistencies so I'm not entirely sure how many original works are present (the website says 140) or how many different artists are present (a sign in the exhibit says 62) but it's a bunch!  The printed signage is detailed and they made the effort to show you which of the pieces involved Newbery and Caldecott winners.

There is no catalog for sale and the exhibit brochure is mostly for kids activities so it's not that informative.  The exhibit is a traveling one and it has been making the rounds -- Google "Art Kandy Collection".  (Yep, that's apparently a real name.)

At some point, I'll have Google read the sign text for me and everything will be filled out better but I haven't had time for that.

Who's in the exhibit?  Oooh, it's extensive!  It does not have things like comic strips -- you won't find Sparky Schulz or Winsor McKay or Rose O'Neill in here.  These are the artists you'll see original works from -- I'm ignoring lithographs and copies of books.  By my count, there are 55 but I might have screwed up a couple:

 * Sarah Noble Ives -- pieces from c 1910-15
 * Peter Newell -- a drawing from c 1915
 * Anton Loeb -- the text describing his Wizard of Oz drawings mentions that the book was banned in some jurisdictions because of (1) anthropomorphized animals, (2) a strong female characters, and (3) no witches can be good
 * Campbell Grant
 * Feodor Rajankovsky
 * William Henry Bradley
 * Gustaf Tenggren
 * Tibor Gergely
 * Wesley Dennis
 * Theodor Seuss Geisel
 * Marc Simont
 * Garth Williams -- LOTS of Garth Williams...  Including a study sketch from "The Rabbits' Wedding" (1958) which was banned in places because a white rabbit was marrying a black rabbit
 * Michael Hague
 * Felicia Bond
 * Floyd Cooper
 * Tom Pohrt
 * David Wisniewski -- these were my FAVORITE pieces in the whole exhibit.  He did all of these with cut paper, mentioning he would go through as many as a thousand X-Acto knives per book.  These were great!  I've never heard of the books they were from ("Hand of the Fire Demon" and "Fire that Burns Forever", both from 1988) but he won a Caldecott Medal in 1997 for "Golem" -- if you view the book on Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/Golem-David-Wisniewski/dp/0618894241 ), you can do the [Read Sample] option and see how that one was done as well
 * William Stout
 * Richard Egielski
 * S. Saelig Gallagher
 * Deborah Nourse Lattimore
 * Audrey Wood
 * Dennis Nolan
 * Don Wood
 * Patricia Polacco
 * Karen Barbour
 * Mercer Mayer
 * Rosemary Wells -- again, LOTS of Rosemary Wells
 * James Marshall
 * Gerald McDermott
 * Maria Kalman
 * William (Bill) J. Dugan
 * Jerry Pinkney
 * Barry Moser
 * Tomie dePaola
 * Arnold Lobel
 * Anita Lobel
 * Edward Frascino
 * Jules Feiffer
 * Joan Walsh Anglund
 * Hillary Knight
 * David Shannon
 * Gary Baseman
 * Chris Raschka
 * Mark Teague
 * Joe Cepeda
 * John Bemelmans Marciano
 * Maurice Sendak
 * Mel Crawford
 * Laurent de Brunhoff
 * Richard Scarry
 * Alice Provensen and Martin Provensen
 * Ted Rand
 * William Pene du Bois
 * Leonard Weisgard


There's also a fun "Freedom to Read" lithograph by Maurice Sendak which was done for an American Booksellers Association back in 1991 to develop awareness of book censorship and to aid the ABA's Legal Defense Fund.  It was signed by a bunch of people.  The main signature I noticed was Dan Rather -- top and center -- but you can also do the treasure hunt looking for other autographs.  The sign mentions a bunch of names including Harlan Ellison, Harrison Ford, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Goldblum, Mickey Hart, Barry Moser, Neil Simon, Gloria Steinem, Garry Trudeau, Robin Williams, and Don and Audrey Wood.

The museum's website is https://wcmfa.org/ .  It offers free admission and free parking.  Plus it's in a gorgeous park area of the town -- there's a lake across from it -- and you may notice a new memorial to Clara Barton that's about to be unveiled near the entrance.

It's definitely worth a visit.  There's also a new exhibit "Picasso on Paper" which runs until early March.  The free gallery brochure describes in a fair amount of detail his relationships with the women in his life -- pretty much the artist version of Donald Trump minus the coup attempt.

I of course photographed the hell out of everything.  The direct link to my exhibition pictures is:


But some of my favorites are below.