Two Art Exhibits in Washington Tell Stories About American Culture
”1934” tells about the first federal arts program. And ”The Americans” by Robert Frank is one of the most important series of photographs in modern art. Transcript of radio broadcast:
21 March 2009
VOICE ONE:
Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Barbara Klein. Today we visit two art exhibits in Washington, D.C. that tell about life in America during two different periods. “1934: A New Deal for Artists” tells about a government- supported art program started during the economic period known as the Great Depression. The exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum shows paintings made during this period.
At the National Gallery of Art, visitors can see black and white photographs taken by Robert Frank during the nineteen fifties. All eighty-three photographs from his famous book “The Americans” have been grouped together for the exhibit.
(MUSIC)
“Baseball at Night” by Morris Kantor
VOICE ONE:
In nineteen thirty-four, Americans were living through a severe economic crisis. The administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a federal arts program as part of an effort to improve the economy. The Public Works of Art Program was the first national effort by the United States government to support artists.
The program was important because it helped provide work for more than three thousand seven hundred professional artists who were unemployed. They created more than fifteen thousand paintings and sculptures designed to lift the spirits of Americans during a difficult time. The art was placed in schools, libraries, museums, post offices and government offices around the country.
VOICE TWO:
Artists taking part in this program were asked to create works that showed “the American Scene.”
The Smithsonian’s show includes fifty-six public works paintings. They are organized by different subjects such as Nature, Leisure, Industry, and the City. They show natural beauty, city life and Americans at work and play.
For example, an artist named Ray Strong created a large painting called the “Golden Gate Bridge.” It shows this huge bridge in San Francisco while it was being built. President Roosevelt had this painting hung in the White House as a celebration of American art and engineering. Mister Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor chose a total of thirty-two Public Works of Art Project paintings to be displayed in the presidential home.
VOICE ONE:
Some paintings show how Americans had fun. For example, Morris Kantor painted “Baseball at Night.” You might guess from the title that the painting shows people enjoying a baseball game at night. In nineteen thirty-four it was still rare to have lighting in a baseball field.
In Julia Eckel’s painting “Radio Broadcast” a group of actors and musicians gather around a large radio microphone. You can almost hear the lively radio theater program they were broadcasting.
“Coal Tower” by Max Arthur Cohn
VOICE TWO:
Several paintings in the exhibit show Americans working. Max Arthur Cohn’s painting “Coal Tower” shows the dark form of a coal tower against a light sky. Under the building, a boat is delivering coal that will help power the city of New York.
“Gold is Where you Find It” by Tyrone Comfort shows a man deep inside a gold mine. The muscular man is working hard to control a powerful drill that is cutting through the rock that surrounds him.
VOICE ONE:
The Public Works of Art Program only lasted six months. But it led to the development of another art program called the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. The paintings in this exhibit tell an important story about American life during the nineteen thirties. And, the exhibit is especially meaningful during today’s economic crisis. It shows the results of a creative government program.
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VOICE TWO:
In nineteen fifty-eight, the Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank published a book of eighty-three photographs called “The Americans.”
It was first published in France. A year later, the book was published in the United States. This book is widely considered one of the most important books of photographs published since World War Two.
“The Americans” shows the country and its people in a boldly honest way. Robert Frank showed the effects of racism, social inequality and poverty. But he also showed a beautiful side of America’s people and places. The book was revolutionary for the inventive style of taking photographs that show immediacy and emotional honesty. “The Americans” was also different from other photography books because Frank organized the images according to similar emotions, forms or subjects.
VOICE ONE:
To create his book, Frank traveled across more than thirty American states for nine months starting in nineteen fifty-six. He took more than twenty-seven thousand pictures. He spent another year choosing the best pictures and placing them in a meaningful order.
Frank asked his new friend, the American writer Jack Kerouac, to write the introduction to his book of photographs. Kerouac had just published his own book, “On the Road.” Kerouac correctly predicted that Frank would be praised as a great artist.
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VOICE TWO:
At the National Gallery exhibit, “The Americans” is divided into four parts. Each part shows a different side of American culture. Each begins with a photograph that includes an American flag.
A detail from
A detail from “Charleston, South Carolina” in Robert Frank’s “The Americans”
In one photograph called “Charleston, South Carolina,” an African-American woman holds a white baby. Frank shows the woman’s dark skin next to the baby’s light skin. You can see the wisdom and experience in her face, which is very different from the baby’s wondering expression. Here Frank plays with contrasts, or opposing elements, as he does in many photographs.
The next photograph in the series shows a diner restaurant in Hollywood, California. Frank captures the tired and unhappy face of a server. Above her head is an advertisement with the smiling face of Santa Claus.
VOICE ONE:
“Trolley-New Orleans” shows a close-up image of people on a public transportation vehicle. Frank frames the photograph so that you mainly see the people looking out the windows of the trolley. There are white people in the front and black people in the back. This is a powerful image about racial separation in society at that time.
Robert Frank took the picture a few days after he was arrested and detained in the southern state of Arkansas. A policeman detained and threatened him because he was a foreigner driving a car from another state. Frank experienced for himself the discrimination that was present in his picture of New Orleans.
VOICE TWO:
National Gallery curator Sarah Greenough organized this show. Here she talks about a different section of the exhibit.
SARAH GREENOUGH: “Frank shifts his focus slightly from the American people to the physical character of the spaces they have constructed for themselves. In his photographs of gas stations, diners and cemeteries he found a beauty so simple but commonplace it was often overlooked, so unspeakably true but poignant it was rarely acknowledged.”
VOICE ONE:
In “U.S. 285, New Mexico” Frank photographed the dividing mark on a highway. The road seems to go on forever into the far horizon. Jack Kerouac described the image as a “long shot of night road arrowing forlorn into immensities.”
Two images are all the more striking because they are placed next to each other. “Covered Car — Long Beach, California” shows a car covered with a large cloth for protection. It sits under two large palm trees. The next photo, “Car Accident — U.S. 66, Between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona,” shows a body on the side of the road that is also covered with a cloth. Four people stand sadly near the body.
“Rodeo-New York City” in Robert Frank’s “The Americans”
VOICE TWO:
In “Rodeo — New York City” Robert Frank pictures a thin cowboy bending his head to light his cigarette. Because of his clothing, you might expect the cowboy to be in a rural environment with a horse nearby. But the image is surprising because he is standing on a crowded street in New York City.
VOICE ONE:
The last photograph in “The Americans” is one Robert Frank took of his car. His family members sit inside the car looking very tired. The image reminds us about the man behind this extraordinary collection of images and the effort required of him, his wife and two young children to make this project.
VOICE TWO:
Robert Frank once made this comment about his work: “I am always looking outside, trying to look inside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what is out there. And what’s out there is constantly changing.”
VOICE ONE:
The truth and energy Robert Frank captured in “The Americans” make the photographs as fresh today as they were fifty years ago.
(MUSIC)
VOICE TWO:
This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Barbara Klein.
VOICE ONE:
And I’m Steve Ember. You can see pictures of art from these two exhibits on our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.
Irish in America: Remembering Three Who Made Their Mark
The stories of labor organizer Mother Jones, photographer Matthew Brady and entertainer Bing Crosby. Transcript of radio broadcast:
14 March 2009
VOICE ONE:
Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Shirley Griffith. March seventeenth is Saint Patrick’s Day, a time to celebrate Irish culture. The Census Bureau says that in two thousand seven, thirty-six and a half million people in the United States claimed Irish ancestry. That was more than ten percent of all Americans — and more than eight times the number of people in Ireland itself.
VOICE ONE:
This week on our program, we remember three Irish-Americans: the labor activist Mother Jones, the early photographer Matthew Brady and the entertainer Bing Crosby.
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VOICE TWO:
That song is called “The Death of Mother Jones.” Gene Autry recorded it three months after she died in nineteen thirty.
Mary Harris Jones was one of America’s most effective labor organizers. Yet few people knew her real name. She rarely, if ever, used it. She was known as Mother Jones. Those on the other side of the labor struggle called her “The Most Dangerous Woman in America.”
That is also the name of a book from two thousand one by Elliott Gorn, a professor now at Brown University in Rhode Island. His research produced new information about Mother Jones.
For example, she said she was born in Ireland in eighteen thirty. She was born in Ireland but Professor Gorn found that the year was eighteen thirty-seven. In other words, she was seven years younger than she claimed.
VOICE ONE:
Mary Harris was a schoolteacher in the state of Tennessee when she married an iron worker named George Jones. They had four children.
But in eighteen sixty-seven her husband and all four children died of yellow fever.
Mary Jones moved to Chicago and became a successful dressmaker. Then everything she had was destroyed again — this time, in the Great Chicago Fire of eighteen seventy-one.
After that she became involved in the labor movement. Mary Jones seemed to appear whenever and wherever there were labor problems.
She often worked with coal miners. They began calling her “mother,” and she started using the name Mother Jones. Sometimes she was called “the Miner’s Angel.”
VOICE TWO:
Coal was produced mostly in six states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia and Colorado.
In eighteen forty, the United States had seven thousand coal miners. They dug about two million tons of coal from the ground.
By nineteen hundred, the number of miners had reached almost seven hundred thousand. And that year they produced three hundred fifty million tons of coal.
Accidents killed thousands of mine workers. Miners were low paid and generally lived in towns owned and operated by the mine owner. Under this system, the company paid the miners, then the miners paid the money back to the company in return for goods and rent.
VOICE ONE:
Mine workers who attempted to organize met fierce opposition, and sometimes violence. Mother Jones believed that unions represented the best hope for coal miners and other workers to improve their lives.
She spoke out against child labor and unsafe working conditions. “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living,” she would say.
She worked for an early union called the Knights of Labor. Later she became an organizer for the United Mine Workers union. She was also a founder of the union known as the Industrial Workers of the World.
And for several years she traveled as a speaker for the Socialist Party. But, in the end, she found that she liked the ideas of Socialism more than the party and its supporters.
Mother Jones led protests to further the cause of unions. Many of the protests involved women and children. She led a march of miners’ wives in western Pennsylvania in nineteen hundred. And three years later she led a children’s march to President Theodore Roosevelt’s New York home to protest child labor.
VOICE TWO:
Mother Jones was arrested many times. In West Virginia in nineteen twelve, violence connected to a miners’ strike led to her trial and conviction for conspiracy to murder.
The state governor freed her, but only after the United States Senate ordered an investigation into conditions in the West Virginia coal fields.
In nineteen thirteen, she was kept under house arrest for nine weeks after helping to organize mine workers in Colorado.
Mother Jones died after celebrating, supposedly, her one hundredth birthday in nineteen thirty. Professor Gorn says she was really ninety-three. But her place in labor history is undisputed. Mother Jones is recognized in the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the United States Labor Department’s Labor Hall of Fame.
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VOICE ONE:
Now, we move on to an American whose father was born in Ireland. Matthew Brady documented the American Civil War in pictures. He has been called the father of photojournalism.
He was born near Lake George in New York State around eighteen twenty-two. His father was a farmer.
Matthew Brady moved to New York City where he learned about photography, still a new technology then.
He began taking pictures of famous people in eighteen forty-four. Among his subjects were Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe.
He wanted to photograph more political leaders, so in eighteen forty-nine he moved to Washington, D.C.
VOICE TWO:
The Civil War began in eighteen sixty-one. Matthew Brady decided to document the conflict. Yet he suffered from poor eyesight. So he put together teams of photographers to help him.
Brady took some of the battlefield pictures himself. But he got credit for all the photographs because they were made by his teams.
People could now see battlefield deaths as captured by a camera rather than an artist’s pen or paintbrush. But Brady could not sell enough pictures to pay the costs of taking and processing them. He had to sell his offices to pay his debts.
In eighteen seventy-five, Congress bought all of his Civil War pictures for twenty-five thousand dollars. But even that was not enough to save him from financial ruin.
Matthew Brady died a poor man in eighteen ninety-six. But the pictures that he and his photographers made left a wealth of history for all future generations to see.
(MUSIC: “Too Rah Loo Rah Loo Rah”)
VOICE ONE:
Bing Crosby was a singer and actor whose mother’s family came from Ireland. He was born Harry Lillis Crosby in nineteen hundred and three in the northwestern city of Tacoma, Washington.
There are different stories about how he got his nickname. One version says his friends started calling him Bingo, and later Bing, after characters in a local comic strip, the Bingville Bugle. Another story goes that when he was a boy playing cowboys and Indians, he shouted “bing” instead of “bang” after a make-believe gunshot.
VOICE TWO:
Bing Crosby started to sing professionally in the nineteen twenties. His group the Rhythm Boys joined the famous Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. When the group broke up, Bing started singing alone in nightclubs and on the radio. And he started appearing in movies.
He made more than sixty films. He won an Academy Award for best actor for the nineteen forty-four movie “Going My Way.” He played an Irish priest, Father O’Malley. Later, he had his own radio and television shows.
As a singer, Bing Crosby’s biggest recording success came from a nineteen forty-two movie. In “Holiday Inn” he sang a new song by Irving Berlin. That recording of “White Christmas” has sold more than one hundred million copies. That puts it among the best-selling singles of all time. Bing Crosby died in nineteen seventy-seven.
(MUSIC: “White Christmas”)
VOICE ONE:
Our program was written by Nancy Steinbach and produced by Caty Weaver. I’m Steve Ember.
VOICE TWO:
And I’m Shirley Griffith. You can find our programs with transcripts and MP3s at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.
American History Series: Brigham Young Leads His Mormons to a New Home
Forced out of Illinois, they settled by a great salt lake in what would become Utah. But before long, the federal government accused the church of open rebellion. Transcript of radio broadcast:
03 June 2009
Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.
In the eighteen twenties, in the state of New York, a man named Joseph Smith started the Mormon religion. Smith based it on what he said were God’s words to the ancient people of America.
Many people became members of the new church. Others, however, laughed at some of the beliefs of the Mormons. This led to trouble. Smith had to move his people many times. For a while, they settled in the state of Illinois, in a town they built and called Nauvoo.
The church split when Joseph Smith said that Mormons could have more than one wife. The split led to violence and public opposition to the Mormons. Smith was arrested and put in jail. A mob attacked the jail and killed Smith and his brother. The governor of Illinois ordered the Mormons to leave the state.
This week on our series, Sarah Long and Richard Rael discuss relations between the Mormons and the federal government.
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VOICE ONE:
Brigham Young became the new leader of the Mormons. He told his people that he had seen their new home in a dream. He said it was a wide, beautiful valley in the West. He said he would recognize it when he saw it.
The Mormons left Illinois in the spring of eighteen forty-six. There were more than fifteen thousand people, and many wagons and farm animals. The trip west was hard. Many of the people died. After months of slow travel, they stopped to make their winter camp.
VOICE TWO:
Explorers visited the camp. They told Brigham Young about a great salt lake in a wide valley on the western side of the Rocky Mountains. From the way they described it, young believed it was the valley of his dream.
He started to move his people toward the Great Salt Lake as soon as the winter snows melted. They arrived in the summer of eighteen forty-seven. Brigham Young looked out over the valley. “This,” he said, “is the right place.”
VOICE ONE:
The Mormons wasted no time. Two hours after arriving, they began to prepare the ground for planting. The lake water was too salty to use. So they built a system of canals to bring water down from the mountains.
The first few years were difficult. Cold weather and insects destroyed their crops. Yet the Mormons continued to work hard to make their settlement a success. They refused to think of leaving.
VOICE TWO:
At first, the Mormons were ruled only by the laws of their church and by their leader. Then gold was discovered in California. Many non-Mormons passed through the Salt Lake area on their way to the gold fields. Some of them stayed. It soon became clear that new laws were needed to govern the growing population.
The Mormons asked Congress to approve a territorial government for their land. They called the land Deseret. That was a Mormon word meaning honeybee.
The Mormons claimed a large area. It stretched from the mountains of Colorado west to the mountains of California; from Arizona north to Oregon.
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VOICE ONE:
Congress rejected the large claim of Deseret and made it a much smaller territory. It also refused to accept the name Deseret. Instead, Congress called it Utah, after the Ute tribe of Native American Indians that lived there. As a compromise, Brigham Young was named governor of the new Utah territory. Most of the new territorial officials were Mormons, too. Four were not Mormon.
VOICE TWO:
Governing the territory would not be easy. There were disputes during the administrations of several American presidents. As a result of one dispute, the four non-Mormon officials returned to Washington. The Mormons then formed their own territorial government with a legislature and courts.
Other federal officials were sent to Utah. Some of them were not prepared for the job. Usually, they did not stay long.
VOICE ONE:
Some of the officials made many charges against Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders. They said Mormons refused to recognize the power of the federal government. They said Mormons put the words of Young above the laws of Congress. They said the church had a secret organization to take the lives and property of those who questioned the power of the church.
There were charges that Mormons had burned the papers of the Supreme Court of the territory. And there were charges that Mormons were responsible for Indian attacks on some officials.
President Franklin Pierce decided he should make someone else governor of Utah. The man he chose, however, did not want the job. Instead, he urged the president to let Brigham Young remain. President Pierce agreed.
VOICE TWO:
Relations between the Mormons and the government did not improve in the next three years. Territorial officials resigned. They charged that the Mormons were in open rebellion against the federal government.
The next president, James Buchanan, dismissed Brigham Young as governor. He ordered more than one thousand soldiers to go to Utah to put down the rebellion. He also sent a new governor, Alfred Cumming, with the soldiers. The Mormons prepared to fight.
A small group of Mormon men attacked and destroyed the army’s supply wagons. They forced the soldiers to stop for the winter before reaching the Salt Lake Valley. The soldiers could do nothing until spring.
VOICE ONE:
In Washington, efforts were made to settle the dispute. A man named Thomas Kane asked President Buchanan to let him go to Utah. Kane was an old friend of the president. He also was a friend of the Mormons. He had spent much time with them during their long trip to Utah ten years earlier.
Kane feared what might happen to his Mormon friends if fighting started. He told President Buchanan that he did not want a job or money. He only wanted a chance to be useful. The president agreed to let him try to settle the dispute.
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VOICE TWO:
Thomas Kane arrived in Salt Lake City, the territorial capital, early in eighteen fifty-eight. He found that the Mormons had decided not to fight. Instead, they were preparing to search for a new home. They talked of moving to Mexico or perhaps to an island in the South Pacific.
Kane talked with Brigham Young. Then he went to the army camp to talk with Governor Cumming. The governor agreed to go to Salt Lake City with Kane. The two men went alone, without any soldiers.
VOICE ONE:
The Mormons welcomed Cumming, but continued their preparations to leave. Cumming called a public meeting.
He said he was in Utah to represent the federal government. He said he was there to make sure the people of the territory obeyed the constitution and the laws of the United States. He said he would not use military force until every other way had failed.
Above all, said Cumming, he would not interfere with the Mormon religion. He urged the Mormons not to leave the land they had worked so hard to build.
Brigham Young agreed to stay.
VOICE TWO:
Governor Cumming returned to the army camp. He told the commander that the Mormons had accepted him. He said military force would not be needed. A few days later, two representatives of President Buchanan arrived. They brought news that the president would not act against Mormons who accepted the rule of the United States government.
Brigham Young and the other Mormon leaders made a statement. They said they wished to live in peace under the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
The dispute was over. Brigham Young continued to lead the Mormon church. But the governor ruled the territorial government. The two jobs were separate and would remain that way.
VOICE ONE:
Congressional elections were held in the United States in eighteen fifty-eight. One political race created national interest. It was for one of the two Senate seats representing the state of Illinois. The candidate of the Democratic Party was Stephen Douglas. He was running for re-election. His opponent was a lawyer and member of the Republican Party. His name was Abraham Lincoln.
That will be our story next time.
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ANNOUNCER:
Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Sarah Long and Richard Rael. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION — an American history series in VOA Special English.
This is program #87 of THE MAKING OF A NATION
