PA Museum exhibit announcement

[Michael Mutmansky]

Folks,

For the past 6 months or so, I have been feverishly slaving away in the digital darkroom realm for a substantial exhibit at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, located in Harrisburg, the state capital.

Now that I am done with my part in the exhibit, I figure I have the time to make an announcement about it here on the forum... of course, what they don't say in the public announcement on the PA museum site is the most important part; the modern photographs are all 4x5 color work, taken by me over the course of the last four years. There are also some archival photos from the National Archives in Washington DC, and there are some artist's original pieces and documents as well.

Many of the images are very large, with several being life-size, which puts them at about 14' wide.

A COMMON CANVAS:
PENNSYLVANIA'S NEW DEAL POST OFFICE MURALS

Opening November 23, 2008 through May 17, 2009

In 1933, the administration of newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt launched an ambitious program to place murals and sculptures in post offices across the country. To coincide with the national 75th anniversary of the New Deal, The State Museum of Pennsylvania brings together these same artworks for the first time in this special exhibition to offer a common canvas of Pennsylvania that has faded from the landscape, but not from memory.

This exhibit includes photographs, color studies, archival images, and original artwork associated with some of the 88 artworks commissioned for Pennsylvania post offices between 1933 and 1942. Although the artworks are widely dispersed across Pennsylvania, they represent a treasure trove of public art and a unique portrait of Pennsylvania society and culture circa the Great Depression. Each artwork, whether a mural or sculpture, aimed to capture something intrinsically important about the Pennsylvania community in which they were to be installed. Given the Commonwealth’s legacy as a manufacturing state, industries such as coal and steel are recurring motifs, but the collection also reflects other traditions as well: agriculture, glass making, lumbering, historical events/individuals, Native Americans and a variety of town and streetscapes.

This exhibition, co-curated by the State Museum's Dr. Curt Miner, Senior Curator of Popular Culture, and by State College native David Lembeck, represents the first public exhibition of Pennsylvania’s collection, and will offer visitors a rare opportunity to glimpse, in one venue, what it likely the Commonwealth’s largest public art collection.

http://www.statemuseumpa.org/common-canvas.html

There will be a reception on Sunday the 23rd, and I will be there to attend. Anyone nearby is invited to come up to see the exhibit.


---Michael

[John Powers]

Congratulations Michael,

I am so glad you have been able to put this together. It was wonderful to hear you tell of your adventures traveling to and capturing these images. Have a great show as a cap to a long and rewarding project.

John

PS: the link to the pdf flier is not working tonight.

[Don Wilkes]

I poked around the website a bit, and found the correct file location for that flyer:
http://www.statemuseumpa.org/Assets/...mon-canvas.pdf
I shall drop a note to the webmaster.

I hope the show has a zillion happy visitors, Michael! I must have been a heck of a lot of work.

Cheers,
\donw in Victoria

[Michael Mutmansky]

It's working now, so they must have gotten it back up to the right place...


---Michael

[Don Wilkes]

As a matter of fact, I just had a note back from Brady Seitz, the webmaster there, who promptly fixed it after hearing from me.

One thing that's pretty disappointing, though, is there's no evidence of what *your* images look like, Michael. I was really hoping to see a bunch of them there, since travelling to Pennsylvania's pretty much out of the question from here (VIctoria, BC)!

Cheers,
\dw

[Michael Mutmansky]

Don,

Well, there's an interesting story behind that...

The USPS is attempting to privatize the artwork. They have taken a position that since they are in possession of the physical object, they own the rights to the images, and they are causing a lot of trouble because of this position. So the image on the flyer is actually from a federal courthouse that was part of the arts project as well, and was photographed by the GSA.

Basically, the museum is a little wary about using the images from the post offices in any way that might be considered 'marketing' since the USPS is doing a bunch of saber-rattling over the whole thing.

Here is a link to a PDF from Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine from this summer. A handful of the images in there are mine. The rest in the article are archive images.

Link Here

[Mike Castles]

Congratulations Michael...It's been a long time coming, hope everyone enjoys your work as much as I have.

[Kirk Gittings]

Congratulations, It looks great. I know you worked long and hard on this project. Its good to see the final fruition.

[Keith Pitman]

These are really fascinating and fun objects.

There is one from a post office that was torn down --complete with a period door-- in the Portland (ME) Art Museum. There is also one in a post office on South Broadway in Denver.

Congratulations on the exhibit. Wish it was closer.

[Michael Mutmansky]

Keith,

I've seen the one in the museum in ME. Very nice installation. There was one in Longmont (my new hometown), but it disappeared long ago. There's one in Loveland. Colorado has 11 if I recall correctly. There was a couple of people out here working on a book project on this as well who were stopped by the USPS just as we were.

One mural in PA was painted over years ago (we believe; we're trying to determine if it's under the paint) because the postmaster objected to the nudity of the Greek god portrayed in the mural...

We got 41 of the 82 extent installations photographed before the USPS became uncooperative. After the exhibit ends, we will be working on turning the images and research into a book. We will use National Archive images for the remainder.

Kirk,

Thanks. Your help and advice over the years has been very much appreciated.

From a photography point of view, I've learned a lot photographing these things. They are almost always end-wall installations, so the lighting can be very tricky. Reflections are all but unavoidable. I've developed a few lighting approaches that resolve the problems reasonably well, with relatively little hoop-jumping.


---Michael