A VIRTUAL VERSION OF ALPHABET SOUP !

FIU STUDENT-CURATED EXHIBIT NOW ONLINE

Thanks to the efforts of Digital Library Specialist David Almeida, a Florida International University student show exhibited in the Green Library on the Modesto Maidique campus in the winter months of 2009/2010 can now be viewed online. Seven undergraduate students studying the Great Depression and New Deal Era researched and selected materials from the Wolfsonian-FIU library and from the Mitchell Wolfson Study Collection in downtown Miami. They displayed those items in an exhibition about the New Deal programs of the Roosevelt Administration. Now that show lives on in a virtual display format which can be viewed by anyone using the internet anywhere around the globe.

The display is arranged according to the themes chosen, researched, and curated by the students. Mariana Clavijo covered President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s earliest New Deal programs: the NRA (National Recovery Administration) and AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration). Maria Aliano and Miriam Kashem gathered artifacts from our own rare books library as well as items in Mr. Wolfson’s private collection to examine how the New Deal aimed at solving the issues of problem youth during the Great Depression. Ms. Aliano honed in on the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) while Ms. Kashem also explored government-produced pamphlets from the WPA (Work Projects Administration) and NYA (National Youth Administration) aimed at showing how the government was taking care of its younger citizens. Jessica Tejeiro chose items related to the FAP (Federal Arts Project), focusing on federally-funded galleries and community art centers while Kevin Pineiro looked at Federal One projects including: the FTP (Federal Theatre Project), FMP (Federal Music Project), and the FWP (Federal Writers’ Project). Michelle Zavala and Christie Vina teamed up to explore the FWP (Federal Writers’ Project), looking at the American Guide Series of books published to promote travel and tourism to all 48 states and territories of the United States.

ALL THE WORLD’S A FAIR!

This past Monday, Dr. Lara Kriegel and eleven FIU students enrolled in her senior seminar: World’s Fairs, Exhibitions, and History, came up to our rare books and special collections library to meet the librarians and learn how to access the collection via our web catalog and how to schedule research appointments. Following the brief orientation, the students were treated to a presentation of original international exhibition materials aimed at giving them a chronological overview of the world’s fairs while simultaneously introducing them to themes that might serve to inspire their final research paper topics.

The library’s holdings of world’s fair materials is particularly rich with regard to the fairs ranging from the first major international exhibition—(the so-called “Crystal Palace” exhibition in London, 1851)—through the San Francisco and New York World’s Fairs in 1939-1940. Although we do have some materials from some of the later fairs, our collection is far less comprehensive for the post-World War Two period. Our rare books cataloguer, Dr. Nicolae Harsanyi, having recently delivered a paper dealing with Romania’s pavilions at various world’s fairs, addressed the students about the importance of the fairs in terms of national self-representation. It was also evident from the original materials laid out on the table how important certain fairs were in terms of promoting and disseminating new artistic and architectural styles.

Although we often think of the fairs in terms of education and entertainment, we also wanted to impress upon the students the idea that there was also a darker side to these expositions as the nations participating in the early exhibitions used the occasion to propagandize the audiences. In addition to the ubiquitous nationalistic “chest-beating” and games of one-upmanship played by rival countries, the West also used the fair to sell the attendees on the legitimacy of colonial and imperial projects. Many colonial expositions lauded the achievements of civilized nations and the “white man’s burden” of Christianizing and civilizing pagan “primitives” around the world. Many of these fairs shared the Orientalist tendencies of the age and “represented” colonial peoples as “others” in order to justify their economic imperialism under the guise of humanitarian campaigns. Other popular exhibits in these early fairs were those which glorified war by showcasing the latest military technological weaponry and warships. Even the entertainment provided in the Midways was far from politically-correct by today’s standards, perpetuating stereotypes with exhibitions of human oddities and zoos where “freaks” and “primitives” could be gawked at by “civilized” spectators.

World’s fairs organized during the worldwide depression were often courted by cities anxious to provide work for the idle and unemployed, to stimulate tourism, and to provide at least some temporary boost to the economic doldrums. The corporate presence and pavilions at these later fairs often rivaled those sponsored and built by many smaller nations and reflect their growing influence in modern society, economy, and life.

RECEPTION FOR FIU STUDENT-CURATED EXHIBIT IN GREEN LIBRARY

Last evening, the student curators of a New Deal exhibit installed on the second floor of the Green Library on the Modesto Maidique campus were treated to a reception hosted by FIU Dean of Libraries Laura Probst and head of Special Collections Vicki Silvera. There the students had the opportunity to speak with Steve Sauls, Wolfsonian museum founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., museum director Cathy Leff and other library, history, architecture, and Honor’s College faculty and students in attendance about their curatorial experience and their displays. All of the items in the exhibits were selected by students taking my Great Depression and New Deal Era in Film and History class this fall semester, and utilized rare books and ephemera from the Wolfsonian-FIU library as well as items on loan from the Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Private Collection in Miami.

At the close of the reception, the student curators were presented with tee shirts from the museum gift shop and copies of the poster for the exhibit created by the Wolfsonian’s own art director, Tim Hossler.

The eleven display cases filled by these students were supplemented by a virtual display of the exhibits created by the previous year’s class which were shown on a continuous loop on a large flat-screen monitor in the same section. Two of the student curators of that exhibit, Al Pena and Robert Gueits, were also on hand to discuss their displays dealing with the radical response of Leftist critics of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the experiences of African Americans enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

My special thanks to Laura Probst and Vicki Silvera for their support in providing the display space for this exhibition and for putting this reception together and providing refreshments. We look forward to working together with Vicki in planning some new collaborative exhibition projects.

CCC GAME ON LOAN FOR AN EXHIBIT AT FIU’S GREEN LIBRARY IN NOVEMBER

Two Florida International University students currently enrolled in my America & Movies: the Great Depression and New Deal Era in Film and History class had the privilege of visiting the Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. private collection in downtown Miami earlier this month. While there, they selected a number of items to be included in a display of materials primarily culled from our own rare books and special collections library.

Both students have been looking at New Deal programs aimed at the young, and especially at materials relating to the Roosevelt administration’s Civilian Conservation Corps (or CCC). One item that caught their attention was The Forest Ranger Game, a 1930s game board designed by the Indoor Games Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota to capitalize on the popularity of Roosevelt’s CCC program. The students have also selected another item from the Wolfsonian library collection for inclusion in their display: All-Story Love Stories, a popular weekly featuring a romantic tale by Edna Gorman entitled, “C.C.C. Sweetheart.”

The CCC provided employment for millions of undernourished urban youths whose parents had been thrown out of work by the Great Depression; the program required enlistees to send the majority of their paychecks back home to help support their families. It was assumed that performing manual labor in the “great outdoors” would help restore American boys both in body and soul. Clothed in military-style uniforms and stationed in barracks located in rural areas and state and national parks, these youths were set to work on various conservation and natural resource development projects. Between 1933 and 1942, three million young men—(most between the ages of 18 and 25)—were enrolled in the CCC for terms of six months or longer. There they gained an appreciation for nature that later helped spawn the post-war conservation movement in the United States.

The game board, periodical, and many other New Deal artifacts selected by the student “curators” will on display at Florida International University’s Green Library in mid-November and December, 2009.

ROOSEVELT'S "BLUE EAGLE" CAMPAIGN AND ITS CRITICS ON THE LEFT

This fall semester I am teaching a history course at Florida International University in the evenings entitled, America & Movies: the Great Depression and New Deal Era in Film and History. Forty-five students are enrolled in the class which has been designed to get them to view Hollywood films with a more critical eye and to use other visual and non-literary primary source materials in their research projects. Half a dozen students have opted to work on a special curatorial project using the Wolfsonian's outstanding collection of New Deal era artifacts. The exibits they design will be made available via a link on this blog sometime in late November. Here is a teaser of some of the objects in our collection and the ideas and messages the students have taken from them.

LIBRARY OBJECT(S) OF THE WEEK

Within the first hundred days of taking the oath of office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempt to "jump-start" the moribund American economy back to life through the passage of the first of his "New Deal" programs: the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and the National Recovery Administration, (or NRA). The Roosevelt administration consciously promoted this program with patriotic symbols and colors. Charles T. Coiner designed the NRA's emblem, a "blue eagle." This "thunderbird" carried in its talons a cogwheel as the symbol of industry and lightning bolts representing the electrical power that would be generated through other New Deal programs like the REA (Rural Electrification Administration), and the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) tasked with building large hydroelectric dams. Although membership and compliance with NRA regulations was voluntary, businesses who refused to display the eagle were often subject to boycotts and in 1935 the conservative judges on the Supreme Court ruled the NRA unconstitutional.

But even before the NRA was challenged and defeated on constitutional grounds, the Left also criticized the program as a "businessman's dole" and a woefully inadequate and inappropriate response to the Great Depression. The Socialist Labor Party chose to attack the NRA in a pamphlet that lampooned its symbol by placing an elitist top hat on its head, and by having workers and industry helplessly suspended in its talons. The text also spoofs the NRA’s lightening bolt imagery, warning that "though an electric current may induce spasms resembling life even in a corpse–so it is utterly impossible to restore life to the corpse of capitalism.” The Communist Party of the United States was equally dismissive of the NRA's efforts on behalf of the working class, and on the cover of the October 1933 issue of the Labor Defender, they superimposed a swastika over, and filled in the hollow outline of the "thunderbird" emblem with sepia-toned photomontages of striking workers being beaten by police and soldiers.

For more information on the Wolfsonian Library's collection of New Deal materials, see:

http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/WPA/wpa.htm
http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/New%20Deal/NewDeal.htm
http://www.librarydisplays.wolfsonian.org/Great%20Depression/GD%20home.htm