Guest Blogger: George Bassi

The summer months are upon us at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, and that means lots of visitors traveling through the area, including people from Ireland, Zimbabwe and the Netherlands just this past week. Summer also brings lots of children and adults taking part in art classes either here at the Museum or in outreach activities throughout the community.

One of our more popular summer art activities is Free Family Art Day, which will be held on Wednesday afternoons, June 4 through July 2. At any time from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m., children and their families participate in free “make and take” hands-on art activities with different themes each week, including origami, animals, collages and printmaking. No registration is required for these Wednesday afternoon classes, which attracted more 150 people each week last summer.

Of course, summer at LRMA would not be complete without our popular Blues Bash, which will be held on Friday, June 6, from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. It is hard for me to believe that this will be our 15th annual event, which we have moved from mid-August to early June this year.

Blues Bash started in 1994 as a way for LRMA to celebrate Mississippi’s blues heritage and attract younger audiences to the Museum. Held in conjunction with the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the first few events brought in blues musicians from around the Mississippi Delta. Originally staged on the Museum’s front lawn, the event now encompasses the front lawns of LRMA and the Rogers-Green House as well as the closing of 5th Avenue.

Past performers include a who’s who of blues talent, including James “Super Chikan” Johnson, Blind Mississippi Morris, Kind Edward and Walter “Wolfman” Washington. This year should prove to be another crowd-pleaser with Mississippi blues guitarist and singer Bill “Howl-N-Madd” Perry. Born in Abbeville, Mississippi, Perry has 35 years of entertainment experience, including performances at the Apollo Theater in New York City and the Palladium in Hollywood. A regular at Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Perry hosts a weekly blues television show, Blues Trekkers, in Oxford, Mississippi.

Tickets to this year’s Blues Bash are on sale now for $20 each at the Museum (601-649-6374). Besides a night of soulful blues music, you also get a barbecue dinner by The Smokehouse of Laurel and beverages from Southern Beverage Company and Coca-Cola of Laurel. Other sponsors are BancorpSouth, Cellular South, Ellis & Walters Dental Care, Gholson Burson Entrekin & Orr PLLC, Kim’s Chrysler Toyota, The Koerber Company, Stinson Petroleum Company, Laurel Leader-Call, Rock 104, and WDAM-TV.

I hope you will bring a blanket or lawn chair and join us for a night of Mississippi Delta Blues under the oak trees of the Laurel Historic District.

Blues Bash, now in June!

We've had Blues Bash in August for quite a few years now, and with rare exceptions, it's just way too steamy-sticky-hot in August. So, we're trying a June date. June 6, to be precise, which is just a few weeks away.

Here's the 411:



The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will hold its 15th Annual "Blues Bash" Friday, June 6 from 6:30 - 10:30 p.m. on the Museum front lawn.

This year’s event will feature blues guitarist and singer Bill "Howl-N-Madd" Perry of Tupelo, Mississippi. Perry’s 35-year career has taken him across the United States and abroad. He has played venues such as the New York City’s Apollo Theater and the Palladium in Hollywood, California and was one of the first singers to appear on Soul Train.

Tickets are $20 per person and include a barbecue dinner from Smokehouse of Laurel. Tickets may be purchased at the Museum or reserved by calling 601-649-6374 by Wednesday, June 4. Guests should bring a lawn chair or blanket to enjoy the fun. In case of rain, Blues Bash will be held at the Cameron Center.

Blues Bash is sponsored by Southern Beverage Company, BancorpSouth, Cellular South, Ellis and Walters Dental Care, Gholson Burson Entrekin & Orr, PLLC, Kim’s Chrysler Toyota, The Koerber Company, Stinson Petroleum Company, Coca-Cola of Laurel, Laurel Leader-Call, Rock 104, and WDAM-TV.

Proceeds from Blues Bash support the Museum’s education program. To purchase a ticket for Blues Bash or for more information, call LRMA at 601-649-6374.



Anybody who's been to Blues Bash knows it's one of the best entertainment values in Laurel.

See you there!

The Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints from the Wallace B. Rogers Collection

Our latest Gallery Walk, courtesy of WDAM TV:

Guest Blogger: Mandy Buchanan

At the Museum --

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art Education Department has a busy summer art program planned with a variety of classes for all ages.

"Free Family Art" will be offered Wednesdays June 4 - July 2 from 1 - 4 p.m. in the Museum Annex. These classes will feature a variety of free art experiences for children and families. No reservations are required for these make-and-take summer classes.

LRMA will provide free art activities at the Townley Center as part of the Laurel Housing Authority’s summer program. These classes will be offered from 11 a.m. -1:30 p. m. on Mondays and Wednesdays June 2 -July 30.

"Summer Art Camp" will be held July 15 - 18. Children in K5- 3rd grade will meet from 10 a. m. - noon and 4th - 6th graders will meet from 2 - 4 p. m. The theme for this year’s camp is "Around the World with Art." Students will explore artwork from around the world and experiment with a variety of art materials. Projects will include batik, printmaking and clay. Registration is required.

We are excited about the new LRMA Seventh Street Art Studio which will open in June. In the new space we will offer pottery for children and adults and studio art classes for middle school, high school students and adults.

Pottery classes will be offered Tuesdays and Thursdays June 17, 19, 24, and 26. Children in K5 - 3rd grade will meet from 10 a.m. - noon and 4th - 6th graders will meet 2 - 4 p.m. Adults will meet from 5 - 7 p.m. Participants will create functional and sculptural pottery using hand-building and wheel-throwing techniques.

Two new studio classes will be offered for ages middle school students to adult.

"Basic Drawing" will be offered in the Seventh Street Studio Tuesday mornings from 10 a.m. until noon. Students will be introduced to basic drawing techniques using different drawing media. Supplies are included. Registration is required for these classes.

"Introduction to Painting" will be offered Wednesdays July 2 - 30 from 10 a.m. until noon in the Seventh Street Studio. Students will be introduced to basic painting techniques and different paint materials including watercolor, acrylic and oil paint. Registration is required.

LRMA has art programs for everyone in the family. Also, a tour of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is a great way to beat the heat on a summer afternoon!

For more information, please contact Mandy Buchanan or Angie King at 601.649.6374.

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street in historic downtown Laurel and is open 10:00 a.m. until 4:45 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:00 until 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is free.


Mandy Buchanan is the Curator of Education at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

Guest Blogger: Donnelle Conklin, Librarian

At the Museum

Beginning on Tuesday, April 15th, LRMA Library will again host its video series featuring a new addition to the collection, “Craft in America”. The series is divided into three categories: “Memory”, “Landscape” and “Community”, and together they explore the variety and history of American craftsmanship through the work of artists working in a variety of media across the country.

One video from the series will be offered each week on Tuesdays, April 15, 22, and 29 at 2:00 p.m. in the Museum Reading Room. Each video lasts approximately 60 minutes. The Library will replay each week’s video by request for those unable to attend the Tuesday 2:00 p.m. sessions.

Additionally, books from the Library’s collection of Japanese print books will be on display in glass cases during the Museum’s exhibit, The Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints from the Wallace B. Rogers Collection. The two cases will be located in the Museum Reading Room, and will run for the duration of the print exhibition.

For more information, please contact Librarian Donnelle Conklin at 601-649-6374 or dconklin@lrma.org.

not the usual

This is a little out of the ordinary for us here at Live from LRMA, but Cole Pratt was a good friend of the museum and an essential member of the arts community in New Orleans and the Gulf South. He was a Mississippi native, too.

Cole Pratt, 53, art gallery owner
Monday, April 21, 2008
By Doug MacCash
Staff writer

Cole Pratt, the affable owner of Cole Pratt contemporary art gallery on Magazine Street, died Saturday at Touro Infirmary as a result of a heart attack April 13. He was 53.

Born in Greenwood, Miss., Mr. Pratt was a lifelong art lover. His mother, Rita Pratt, recalled that "when he first picked up a pencil, he started to draw." Though Mr. Pratt studied studio arts at Delta State University, he never considered himself talented. He once jokingly told his longtime companion, Roy Malone, that after five years the university agreed to "give him a degree if he promised not to paint."

Instead of creating art, Mr. Pratt's talent lay in selling it. After working at Bryant Galleries in Jackson, Miss., and New Orleans in the 1980s, and Wyndy Morehead Fine Arts in New Orleans in the early 1990s, Mr. Pratt struck out on his own, opening a gallery in a corner storefront at 3800 Magazine St. in December 1993.

The space was small, but sunny, with a welcoming, neighborhood feel -- a contrast with the cooler tone of many Julia Street galleries.

"Cole consciously chose not to be on Julia," said Erika Olinger, the director of Cole Pratt Gallery for 14 years. "He believed Magazine was a great shopping street. He wanted the gallery to be amidst other stores. He didn't want art buying to be intimidating. He wanted an environment where the average customer could be walking by the store and be enticed to come in."

Mr. Pratt dedicated his space exclusively to Southern artists, but he did not restrict the style of art he showed. Everything from the traditional plein air paintings of Phil Sandusky to the illusionistic abstractions of Richard Johnson was welcome.

Artist Randy Asprodites said that Mr. Pratt was unusual among art dealers in that he made himself an authority on each artist he represented.

"The first day he wanted to know everything about me," Asprodites said. "It was rare. He asked real questions about my work and me as an artist."

Collector and friend Jim Lestelle said that Mr. Pratt's interest in his individual artists was matched by his interest in individual clients.

"He was good at recognizing what your interests were," Lestelle said. "He would show you art that you'd like and would be meaningful to you."

Cole Pratt was one of the first art galleries to reopen after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mr. Pratt sold a painting to a collector on Oct. 8, while there were still National Guard patrols in the streets. He was among the first to recognize the unexpected art-buying boom that followed the storm, making 2006 his best-selling year.

Mr. Pratt is survived by his mother, Rita Pratt. Memorial arrangements are pending. Contact Cole Pratt Gallery at (504) 891-6789 for information.

. . . . . . .

Click here for the original link to Doug MacCash's obituary.

Emerging Artists: High School Clothesline Show

These images are from our Emerging Artists: High School Clothesline Show which took place on Thursday afternoon, April 17. This show allows area high school students to showcase their work on the front lawn of the museum. Local students played their music during the show, adding to the festive atmosphere. This show is held every spring near the end of school, and it is a great opportunity for people from the community to see what talented local students are doing.

A few installation photos of The Floating World

For the opening reception, we have borrowed a lovely 45-year-old juniper bonsai for the night, which you see in the photos. The reception is from 7-9, and the galleries are looking gorgeous.

The Floating World

Our latest exhibition, The Floating World: Ukiyo-e Prints from the Wallace B. Rogers Collection opens tomorrow, April 10! We are going to have some great educational activities in the gallery for kids and adults, including origami. The exhibition will be open until July13, and we have a beautiful exhibition catalogue that is hot off the press. Be sure to stop by on Friday, April 11 for our Symposium from 10-12 in the American Gallery.

a little local art-related news

News from the Mississippi Arts Commission:


The top four contestants at the 2008 Poetry Out Loud Mississippi Finals.

Pictured from left: Winner Grant Cochran from Washington School, Verneshia Heidelberg from Laurel High School, David Hudson from Ridgeland High School and runner-up Shaniqua Wesley from Water Valley High School.

Created by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud is administered in partnership with the State Arts Agencies of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. By encouraging high school students to memorize and perform great poems, Poetry Out Loud invites the dynamic aspects of slam poetry, spoken word, and theater into the English class. This exciting new program, which began in 2005, helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.

More information at the MAC website.

Two More Birthday Tiaras

Tommie's birthday was back in December, but her picture kind of got lost in the shuffle for a while there.



Angie K. is our new Education Outreach Coordinator and, lucky lady, got red-velvet cupcakes from Theresa's Bakery! We LOVE red velvet cake, but red velvet cupcakes! Delicious AND cute! (note: cupcake at bottom left corner)

Guest Blogger: Tommie Rodgers

At the Museum: Spectacular Achievements

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is proud to feature an exhibition of hand-colored lithographs by artist and naturalist John James Audubon. Spectacular Achievements: Audubon’s Animals of North America is certainly one of accessibility for all visitors. The images are beautifully executed and naturalistic in their representation. While a self-taught artist, Audubon thrived on presenting his animal and bird paintings as realistic as possible.

Born in 1785, Audubon departed his childhood home in France and moved to America at the age of eighteen. To escape his involvement in Napoleon’s war, he was sent to care for his father’s farm in Pennsylvania. Interestingly, he had no ambition to care for the farm but instead spent most days studying and watching birds. Birds became an obsession. His bedroom walls were filled with drawings that he made of the local birds. Every year on his birthday, he would take a visual inventory of the drawings and burn the ones that he considered to be poor examples. Of course, as his quality increased, he destroyed fewer and fewer drawings.

Audubon was not a wealthy man and was actually destitute most of the time. But his passion and determination to document the birds led him to be the first person in America to tag baby birds before they left their nest for the winter. He was excited to find the same baby birds returned to the area the next spring to build nests of their own and the adults returned to the same nests they inhabited the previous summer.

Drawn late in his life and completed by his son after his death, the seventy hand-colored lithographs featured in this exhibition showcase the quadrupeds west of the Mississippi River. Small animals such as rats, moles, weasels, rabbits and squirrels are drawn to show the animals with their families and in their natural setting. Large animals such as cougars, bears, deer and fox are featured in their hunting or grazing habitat.

The labels contain scientific information such as the animal’s Latin name along with a description of its hunting or nurturing habits and its general location on the continent. This exhibition is a combination of science and art and can be used to enlighten us about animals that may be extinct or endangered.

Audubon did not become aware of his own contribution to the extinction of some birds until late in his life. He regretted the fact that he killed as many as several hundred birds in one day of hunting. His notes describe the sky as being completely black with the abundance of birds as they flew south for the winter. It’s interesting to note that we never see the sky filled with that many birds today.

Audubon made artistic and scientific contributions that have not been surpassed in the study of birds. His name continues with organizations that now protect animal existence such as the Audubon Zoo and the National Audubon Society. And, of course, his prints are held in many museum collections worldwide.

To learn more about Audubon’s life and work, come by and visit the exhibition between now and March 26th. You can access WDAM’s Midday Gallery Walk featuring Thomas Jones, director of the Museum of the Southwest, from our web site www.LRMA.org or here on the blog.

Come by on Tuesday, March 11th and visit with the Audubon Zoo’s Zoomobile. Their staff will be on the front lawn to introduce their animals to children and adults.

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is open to the public Tuesday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4:45 p.m. and on Sundays from 1-4 p.m. The Museum is closed on Mondays.

Tommie Rodgers is the registrar at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

At the Museum: Sculpture on the Museum Grounds

Now that the weather is getting better, it’s a good time to come visit the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art and stroll around the grounds viewing the numerous sculptures on display outdoors. Five works are in the sculpture garden, and eight more are distributed around the building.

On the north side of the North Garden is the “Torso of a Young Woman” by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). Rodin is perhaps the best-known figurative sculptor of the modern era. This small bronze torso was created in 1909, just a year after he moved to the Hôtel Biron in Paris, which is today the Musée Rodin. It was, like many of his sculptures, not cast until after his death; in this case the Torso was cast in 1959.




On the east side of the garden is “Eve”, by the American sculptor Laura Ziegler (b.1927). Ziegler clearly works within the figurative sculptural tradition she shares with Rodin. However, Ziegler seems interested in expressing a particular emotion on the part of the subject - the anguish Eve felt on being banished from the Garden of Eden. Rodin’s work, on the other hand, is expressive of the artist’s interest in form and content; in other words, it is more about the artist than the subject. In Eve the viewer is drawn into the emotional world of the subject, not the artist.




Nearby, the visitor will find Donald DeLue’s “Spirit Triumphant” (1971), a one-third size model from the State of Louisiana memorial at the Gettysburg battlefield. This bronze represents the survival of the spirit; the split laurel tree represents the South and the North, which are eventually united by the dove of peace spanning the two branches.





Recently, we added Atlanta artist Andrew Crawford's "Fiddlehead," a steel sculpture donated in 2002. It evokes both the curve of a violin and the organic quality of the fiddlehead fern.



Eight sculptures by David Hayes are on display outdoors at LRMA until August 31, 2008. Hayes has developed a unique formal vocabulary of biomorphic forms. The surprisingly organic-looking assemblages contrasts with the material: flat plates of unbending industrial-strength steel. The works in the “Screen Sculpture” series are painted solid black, while the rest of the sculptures on the Museum grounds are painted. The scale of the steel works is comfortably human; ranging from about 4' - 8' high. The works do not tower over and dominate the average person, but are not so small they can be deemed inconsequential. Repeated viewing over the course of the next year, in different seasons, times of day, walking or driving by, and under varying skies, will result in different experiences with the sculpture. Don’t forget to walk all the way around the back of the museum to see “Grenouille,” which faces 4th Street and the LRMA parking lot.

In the Museum Annex courtyard is Bruce White’s stainless steel “Untitled” (1972). White, a New Jersey native, now lives and works in Chicago. Bruce White's work has been described as "an elegant union of ancient symbolism and contemporary science." His preferred materials are stainless steel and aluminum, although he has created works in bronze and granite--essentially materials which lend themselves to permanance. In addition to sculpture for residential and commercial interiors, he has done numerous large scale exterior public works.

Finally, on the South side of the front lawn is Arthur Silverman’s “Cor-Ten Duo #3” (1981). Silverman is a New Orleans-based sculptor who has long been fascinated with the mathematical and aesthetic qualities of tetrahedrons. This sculpture may be familiar to mall-goers, as it was in display at the Sawmill Square Mall for several years. I’d advise giving it a second look in a natural setting, however, as the expansive space and natural light really work to the sculpture’s advantage.

The loan of the Rodin and Zeigler sculptures from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. was made possible by the Museum Loan Network - a national collection-sharing program funded by the John. S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, and administered by MIT’s Office of the Arts. The Sculpture Garden is open during regular LRMA hours: 10:00 am to 4:45 pm Tuesday through Saturday, and 1:00 to 4:00 on Sunday; the rest of the sculptures are accessible year-round. For more information about museum programs and exhibitions, call (601) 649-6374 or check our website at www.lrma.org.

One step forward for LRMA-kind

We now have a Youtube account, thanks to Librarian and WebMaster Donnelle Conklin, and our first video is an interview with Thomas Jones, director of the Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas. Our director, George Bassi, interviewed him about Spectacular Achievements: Audubon's Animals of North America, the exhibition featured in our Lower Level Galleries through March 23, 2008. The video was shot by WDAM for their Midday show, so thanks are due to WDAM.

Guest Blogger: Holly Dodd

AT THE MUSEUM: Calling All Gardening Enthusiasts

February is not only the time for valentines and candy but also an opportunity to look forward to warm days, spring planting, and all things that bloom. In celebration of that theme, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will host an event for those who are avid gardeners and those of us who wish we were.

LRMA will present its annual Garden Lectureat 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 7, in the Museum’s American Gallery. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Laurel Garden Club, a member of The Garden Club of America.

The speaker for the event will be Rebecca Frischkorn of Washington, D. C. A graduate of Princeton University, Frischkorn has designed gardens professionally for more than 30 years and lectures widely on landscape design. She is a trustee of The Cultural Landscape Foundation and the Shenandoah National Park Trust.

Frischkorn’s talk will focus on a ten-episode series for the Public Broadcasting System titled Garden Story: Inspiring Spaces, Healing Places, for which she is executive producer and host. The series explores how gardens create positive social change and explains the need for stewardship of our natural environment. Garden Story examines how community gardens reduce crime and renew cities, how gardening can promote healing, and how gardens teach children to care for the natural world.

The garden lecture will be followed by a luncheon at the Rogers-Green House. Tickets for the event are $35 per person. To purchase a ticket or for more information, call the Museum at 601-649-6374.

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Seventh Street in historic downtown Laurel and is open 10:00 a.m. until 4:45 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:00 until 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is free. For more information, call LRMA at 601-649-6374 or visit the Museum’s website, www.LRMA.org.

-- Holly Dodd is the Director of Marketing at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

Well, THAT was unexpected

We had a real snow here in Laurel last weekend! It stuck for a couple of days, kids built snowmen galore, and I, for one, had to dig deep in the closet for my winter boots, which are a relic of my years in Kansas at grad school.

At the left, you see two sculptures by David Hayes which are inhabiting the jasmine beds through August.

Guest Blogger: Donnelle Conklin

At the Museum: LRMA Library Offers Spring Activities


Beginning January 27th, The Lauren Rogers Museum will present the exhibition, Spectacular Achievements: Audubon’s Animals of North America. LRMA Library will offer a glass case exhibit showcasing the volumes of Audubon’s books from the Library’s collection, which will be located in the Museum Reading Room. The exhibit will run through March 23rd. During this time the Library will also present the video, John James Audubon: The Birds of America, a 30-minute video on loan from the National Gallery of Art. Using his journal writings and illustrations interwoven with nature photography, the video traces Audubon’s development as an artist and his efforts to publish The Birds of America.

In April, LRMA Library will host its annual Video Series featuring a new edition to the collection, Craft in America. The series is divided into three categories: “Memory”, “Landscape” and “Community”, and together they explore the variety and history of American craftsmanship through the work of artists working in a variety of media across the country.

One video from the series will be offered each week on Tuesdays, April 15, 22, and 29 at 2:00 p.m. in the Museum Reading Room. Each video lasts approximately 60 minutes. The Library will replay each week’s video by request for those unable to attend the Tuesday 2:00 p.m. sessions.

For more information, please contact Librarian Donnelle Conklin at 601-649-6374 or dconklin@lrma.org.

back from oblivion

Or, really, back from the holidays. We've all been in and out quite a bit over the last few weeks. We've recovered from Gala, installed paintings in the Stairwell Gallery and travel posters in the Lower Level Galleries, taken down the Christmas decorations, and had our annual staff retreat. skets.

So, it's back to work, where it's just one darn thing after another. Our Native American basket exhibition, which had traveled to nine venues during 2006-2007, came back, and now we have to find a place for a lot of custom-made crates, not to mention proper storage for the baskets.

My next project is installing Spectacular Achievements: Audubon's Animals of North America. We've got a lot planned around this exhibition: a visiting speaker & reception, the Audubon ZooMobile will be here during Spring Break, a teacher workshop, and more. We also have Board and Committee meetings coming up on the double, so we are hitting the ground running this week.

Until I have pictures to post, I thought I'd point interested parties to this useful tool:

Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States

This chart lays out the extent of copyright and conversion to public domain for published works, sound recordings, and architectural works. When it comes to artworks, several copyrights are in play: both that of the artist (or her estate), and that of the photographer. If you wish to publish an image of an artwork, you must get permission from the artist and the photographer. Even if you take your own picture, you need the artist's permission. (Fair Use for educational purposes is exempt from this permissions process). Museums generally control access to reproductions of work in their collections, so if you are looking for a poster or print of a work of art you're fond of, find out who owns it and get in touch with that museum. The museum will have sorted out the reproduction rights already.

The LRMA Gift Shop doesn't do much trade in posters or reproductions, but we do have prints of several works available for sale: Millet's First Steps and Winslow Homer's The Fisherman's Wife.

Mommy & Me

The Education staff at LRMA had a free family art day on Thursday, December 6. Children and parents worked together to create original holiday wrapping paper and beautiful paper poinsettias. Our "Holiday Art Class" is going to be this Thursday, the 13th, where kids will create Santa cookie plates and other fun holiday crafts. The class costs $15 for museum members and $20 for non-members. Please call Pam at the museum at 601-649-6374 to register now!

At the Museum: Travel Posters

At the Museum: The Poster Collection
by
Jill R. Chancey, PhD

One of the little-known collections of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is our selection of travel posters and war propaganda posters of the 20th century. The first director of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Miss Ella Bradley, began the collection, which ultimately reached nearly a thousand total. War-related posters came to the LRMA Library from the government as a public service, and the travel posters were also sent out free to public organizations. Rather than using them and throwing them out, Miss Bradley saved them, and even stored many of the larger ones under the rug in what is now the Reading Room. Eventually this enormous collection was retrieved, moved to safer storage, and inventoried.

By 1999, a full inventory was completed with the assistance of Nicho Lowry of Swann Galleries in New York City, and the Museum determined to keep and frame a representative selection of those posters which were of high quality and in good condition. A number of duplicate copies and posters of lesser quality or worse condition were sold at auction to benefit the Museum’s Acquisitions Fund. These posters have always been part of the library collection, and are not accessioned into the art collection. The lesser restrictions on the library collection allow us to lend them to institutions that are not museums, such as the Saenger Theater in Hattiesburg or the Historical Society in Columbia.

Starting this week, a selection of the Museum’s travel posters will be on display in the Lower Level Galleries. In the wake of the first World War (1914-1918) and before the Great Depression, European nations had been left in a state of chaos and depression, while the United States had become one of the richest countries in the world. The following decade saw an industrial boom in America. The automobile became a symbol of prosperity and mobility, and a rapidly growing middle class had the means to travel for leisure. During this boom, posters were one of the most effective tools for selling travel. Art Deco, a geometric style of the 1920s and 1930s, quickly emerged as the most popular style for designers in the United States and Europe. The Art Deco style can be found in graphics, architecture, product design, and the fine arts throughout the period. Some graphic designers, however, were more strongly influenced by Cubism, which emerged in Paris around 1908 and continued to have an enormous influence through the 1940s. The Museum’s selection of posters reflect a variety of graphic design trends, and serve to remind us that travel was once glamorous and luxurious, particularly aboard ocean liners.

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. and on Sunday from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Check the website for upcoming Summer events and classes. For information about LRMA exhibitions and programs, call (601) 649-6374 or check our website at www.LRMA.org.