arkansashumanitiescouncil.org · arkansas delta, while on a project funded by the arkansas...
TRANSCRIPT
REFLECTIONS
A R K A N S A S H U M A N I T I E S C O U N C I L
H U G O A N D G A Y N E P R E L L E R ’ S
HOUSE OF LIGHT
GRANTS AWARDED48 ORGANIZATIONSRECEIVE FUNDING
PG. 14
ARKANSAS’ NEWEST CULTURAL TREASURE
FALL 2014
FOR THE LOVE OF MUSICTHE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME
SUMMER TEACHERS INSTITUTE
PG. 10
ARCADE EXHIBITUALR’S NEW
EXHIBITPG. 8
VOL. 38, ISSUE 3
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Carole Adornetto, Conway
Kenneth Barnes, Conway
Paul Custodio Bube, Batesville
Mark Christ (Chair), Little Rock
*Jamie Darling, Tuckerman
John Kyle Day (Vice-Chair), Monticello
Ann Early, Fayetteville
Allyn Lord, Fayetteville
Steven Harthorn, Walnut Ridge
Cherisse Jones-Branch, Jonesboro
Felicia R. Smith, Fort Smith
Merlina McCullough, Salem
Freeman McKindra, Little Rock
*Barbara Moody, Salem
Rex Nelson, Little Rock
Justin M. Nolan, Fayetteville
Stan Poole (Treasurer), Arkadelphia
*Wanda Roe, Pea Ridge
Olivia Sordo, Fayetteville
*Marlane Stakemiller, Little Rock
*Linda Tabor, Monticello
*Judy Tenenbaum, Little Rock
Clark Trim, Little Rock
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* Governer’s Appointee
STAFF
Paul S. Austin, Executive DirectorLavona Wilson, Associate Director-DPD�%HVW��6HQLRU�3URJUDP�2ɝFHU
5RELQ�3KHOSV��)LVFDO�2ɝFHU�2ɝFH�0DQDJHUNewsletter Designer, Hannah Thomas
Reflections - Page 3
2014BOARD OF DIRECTORS
SITTING ON MOTHER’S DECK
Recently, my companions and I sat on my Mother’s deck overlooking the Spring River at Imboden enjoying cof-fee and Earl Grey tea along with cinna-mon scones, sausage balls, and home-made wild cherry jelly, made by Mother and my sister Cherie. Our discussions ranged from the notion that Heming-way visited Imboden while he and Pau-line were at the Pfeiffer’s in Piggott and that several passages in A Farewell to Arms were clearly inspired by the beau-ty of the Spring River and the charm of Imboden, to the finer points of porcine husbandry and…well… turning boars into barrows. The quote of the day came when Bob Lewis, who along with Bro. Joe Loghry were the lead architects and carpenters of the deck, said “Son, after a year of working with these pigs you’ll be able to cut’em with one hand and eat a hamburger with the other!”
That same day we visited three sites, getting our Civil War passports stamped at Jacksonport, Pocahontas, and Piggott. After this wonderful day of Arkansas history, scenery, and culinary delights (the Dalton Store and Who Dat’s in Bald
Knob) it became clear that we needed to share these kinds of experiences with the multitudes!
Want to go on a Civil War day trip? I have devised a schedule to visit all 23 Civil War Stamping Stations in 7 one-day trips! AHC Chair and noted Civil War historian Mark Christ has agreed to host. All we need is interest and a van or maybe a bus. A completed passport gets you a lovely commemorative coin or an exciting patch from the Department of Arkansas Heritage’s Arkansas Civil War Sesquicentenniel Commission!
As the we left Imboden, crossed the Spring and headed to Ravenden, I was reminded again of why the humanities matter: we know who we are, where we are from, and where we are going, through our histories, our literature, and our culture. When we left Imboden, we headed for adventure! Would you like to join us?
Let’s talk about it. I can be reached at 501-320-5761 or [email protected]
-Paul S. Austin, Executive Director
C O M I N G E V E N T S
Cave Region Review: A Celebration of the Humanities, an event celebrating the people and culture of the Ozarks by promoting writing and art produced by residents of the region with the publication of Cave Region Review, will be held Saturday, Novem-ber 8 at North Arkansas College in Harrison, AR.
An exhibit of historic photographs titled “Johnny Cash: The Arkansan as American Icon,” and its accompanying humanities programming will be on display November 1 – January 24, 2015 at the Arkansas Studies Institute Underground Gallery in Little Rock, AR.
The Arkansas Holocaust Education Committee will host “The Holocaust…..Why?” a conference scheduled for Friday, No-vember 14 at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale, AR in collaboration with the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
“Meet The Funders”, October 22, Ron Robinson Theater, River Market District, Little Rock. A panel of Arkansas based funders will discuss types of projects funded, best practices and national trends in grant making.
Page 4 - Reflections
T H E P R E L L E R C O L L E C T I O NArkansas’ Newest Cultural Treasure
Chris Engholm discovered the Preller Collection, one of the earliest and largest archives of vintage photographs to emerge from the Arkansas Delta, while on a project funded by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. Gayne Preller LV�QRZ�FRQVLGHUHG�WR�EH�WKH�UHJLRQV�ȴUVW�SURIHVVLRQDO�ZRPDQ�SKRWRJUDSKHU��:LWK�UHFHQW�H[SDQVLRQ�RI�WKH�FROOHFWLRQ�IURP�����WR�������photographs, artworks and artifacts, the archive has earned its reputation as “Arkansas’ newest cultural treasurer.” A grant from AHC
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Tying up my canoe at Chickasaw Crossing—the origi-nal name for Augusta, Ark.—I wanted to find a family de-scendant of the photographer Hugo Arthur Preller before paddling on. The Delta river town of Augusta is about 80 miles north of Little Rock and got its start as a cotton depot. Perched on the shores of the White River, the town had the attraction of being the highest ground on the east side of the river south of Batesville. Enjoying a heyday in the steamboat era, its glory faded with the coming of the railroad, and like so many Delta towns, its decline steepened with the advent of farm machinery.
Crossing a street hemmed in by listing brick facades, I caught a glimpse of a sign on a building that read: PRELLER
TV. Inside the shop, I spoke to a young man who told me that the granddaughter of the Prellers still ran a dress shop on Main Street.
That first day, I remember asking Gayne Preller Schmidt about the Preller photos. “Oh, they’re here somewhere,” she half-joked, rummaging in a water-stained box. When I saw that the box was filled with glass plate negatives, my heart raced and I asked her if I could digitize them for posterity. She needed no convincing that what she had shown me was historically significant, and we soon became partners in an effort to preserve “The Preller Collection.”
Hugo Arthur Preller came from Germany in 1882 and spent eight years in America before meeting 16-year-old
Portraits of Hugo and Gayne Preller, probably made in their studio in the early 1900s in Columbus, Kentucky. Hugo is about 35 and Gayne 25 years of age.
Reflections - Page 5
Gayne Laura Avey in Columbus, Ky., a small town at the con-fluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Her father owned the only mercantile store in town and had recently remarried. Seeing the writing on the wall, Gayne began planning her es-cape from a domestic future of helping in the Avey household.
Hugo and Gayne were kindred spirits; both were thirsty for adventure and saw river travel as a road to freedom. They married soon after and took up residence on a houseboat. Hugo ventured to St. Louis and Memphis looking for work and acquired skills while Gayne tended to their first child. Deciding to head further south, they built a larger houseboat, replete with a photo studio, and began to float down the Mis-sissippi River.
The Prellers’ “floating gallery” could be seen docked at dif-ferent river towns for weeks at a time as Hugo repaired guns and clocks, and the couple made studio portraits of local peo-ple onboard the boat. Eventually they anchored at the mouth of Wolf River, next to the city of Memphis, and lived there for three years while their son attended school. Memphis was a rough and racially conflicted city, and soon the Prellers headed further downriver. By 1910, they sailed up the pris-tine White River and settled in the port town of Augusta, Ark. Here they put their floating studio and repair shop on dry ground.
When we finished copying the plates, Ms. Schmidt recalled that two years before she had lent a large album of her grand-parents’ photos to a friend. Luckily, we got the album back later that day because it was brimming with photographs dat-ing as early as 1895. Once we had scoured all of Ms. Schmidt’s cupboards and closets, and retrieved pictures that had been lent to people over the years, we had amassed over 2,400 im-ages, only a few of which had ever been published. When I returned to my studio in Bentonville, Ark., I restored and printed a selection of the pictures on canvas, and they were instantly recognized as works of photographic art. The Preller images are little windows into another time, but they have a spontaneity that makes them modern and alive.
Then came the shells. Hugo painted realistic river scenes on huge mussel shells from the White River, ten of which survive. Ms. Schmidt had also safeguarded some of Hugo’s oil paintings and watercolors. She told me about how Hugo’s ancestors in Germany were well-respected landscape artists, and that, “you can look them up on Wikipedia.”
As my enthusiasm grew, Ms. Schmidt was also able to re-trieve Hugo’s watchmaker’s desk, filled with his jeweler’s tools and watchmaking parts. She had even saved the wicker sitting chair seen in many of the portraits shot in the Preller studio 100 years ago. Scavenging in a steamer trunk, we found a cache of family documents and memorabilia. When I tran-scribed Hugo’s letters it was like a window thrown open on their world. Now I could see what they were seeing. “There is no money in the country,” Hugo wrote to Gayne from the
mouth of the White River in 1894, “but we could make a life here and live off the fat of the land.” The words felt holy, like having a dialog with Steinbeck, Dreiser or Twain.
Well into the process of archiving the collection, up in a damp attic above Ms. Schmidt’s dress shop, we discovered two long-forgotten boxes full of Preller photographs. Gayne Preller had become an engaging businesswoman in the com-munity, and people came from all over the region to be pho-tographed by her, including African Americans whom she photographed with great artistry.
Over 400 of the 1,800 Preller studio portraits that survive, depict African Americans, most made in the early 1900s. This unique body of work represents a fascinating aspect of the collection in light of the history of tenant farming and the bat-tle for civil rights in the South.
For me, the Prellers were as talented, adventurous and cou-rageous as any couple in the history of American photogra-phy. Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Professor Taylor—none of them had anything on Hugo and Gayne Preller. Though Hugo and Gayne had passed away be-
Two unidentified men pictured in the “House of Doors” studio, circa 1915. Augusta filled with visitors on Saturday, many of whom were African-Am- er- ican farm workers and their families. This day was Gayne Preller’s most active and probably her most lucrative.
Page 6 - Reflections
fore I was born, as I studied the archive and listened as Ms. Schmidt shared their life story, I became deeply connected to them. The connection became a bond when we were filming actress-painter Melissa Garrison for the living history com-ponent of the exhibit, inside a replica of Mrs. Preller’s original studio. Ms. Schmidt remarked that Melissa’s resemblance to her grandmother was eerie and wonderful: “It’s bringing back all sorts of memories of being in the House of Doors with my grandmother.”
When two people come together in union, their relation-ship can become more than the sum of its parts. They pursue a notion, a dream or some higher objective that fuels their lives and results in something majestic. I think Hugo and Gayne discovered in their bond this sort of triumph, and thus, this exhibit is at its core a rendering of their creative powers work-ing in union.
Amidst the old panels of Mrs. Preller’s original studio, Melissa’s hands held up century-old glass negatives to can-dlelight. Having climbed aboard Hugo and Gayne’s floating gallery, we felt the momentum of the river take hold. I imag-ined Hugo’s impassioned words in a 1924 letter: “Go! Write the vision, and make it plain!”
We had embarked.
Hugo and Gayne Preller’s House of Light, A traveling exhibit funded by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Old Independence Regional Museum, opened in Batesville and has since traveled to Des Arc and Jacksonport and will be featured at the Historic Arkansas Museum in 2016.
Steamboat passengers pose for the photographer on the top deck of a steamboat bound for adventure. Photo by Hugo Arthur Preller, likely using his Pocket Autograph Kodak camera, circa 1905.
Chris Engholm is an author, photographer and curator who lives in Bentonville, Ark. Please visit the website for this exhibit at www.facebook.com/HugoArthurPreller.
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Reflections - Page 7
Thanks to a planning grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock created a massive exhibit that spans two walls in the new Arcade Building in the River Market Disctrict.
The permanent exhibit tells the story of the Arcade’s name-sake. The original Arcade was located on Louisiana and Cen-ter Streets and Sixth and Seventh Streets. At its grand opening on June 25, 1914, thousands gathered to celebrate. The rapid-ly growing city sorely needed a marketplace, and the Arcade served as a one-stop place where shoppers could buy grocer-ies, purchase household furnishings, send letters, or conduct banking.
Designed by architects George R. Mann and Theodore M. Sanders, the building was also one of Little Rock’s most un-usual structures. The building sprawled across an entire city block, and an open-ended tunnel bisected it. This tunnel, an architectural feature called an arcade, is how the building re-ceived its name. The arcade allowed shoppers to walk through the building from Louisiana to Center Street.
The Arkansas Catholic newsletter proclaimed the Arcade “a thing of beauty and a joy forever.” Forty-five years later, however, the building was demolished. It was replaced by the Downtowner Motor Inn as part of the city’s urban renewal efforts. With downtown Little Rock’s resurgence in the River Market, the city is now focused on remembering a past that was often destroyed.
The exhibit’s creation involved UALR faculty and staff from across disciplines, including research from the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture; design from the Department of Art; and planning assistance from the Emerg-ing Analytics Center in the George W. Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology.
The UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture ap-plied for the planning grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council. As part of the grant’s requirement, a committee was formed. The committee included project leader, Deborah Baldwin, Associate Provost, UALR Center for Arkansas His-tory and Culture; project organizer Shannon Lausch; retired architect and consultant Charles Witsell; fiscal agent Kimber-
A T H I N G O F B E A U T Y :
Page 8 - Reflections
LITTLE ROCK’S CITY MARKET & ARCADE
ly Kaczenski; humanities scholar Stephan McAteer; and au-dience representative Kristin Mann, an assistant professor of history at UALR.
The committee crafted a narrative that not only traced the building’s beginning and ending but also examined the over-all development of the city’s downtown. The grant funded the committee’s mock-up, which attracted additional funding from Moses Tucker Real Estate.
Thomas Clifton, chair of the Department of Art at UALR, then spent several months creating a large-scale design that incorporated the committee’s work. UALR’s new Emerging Analytics Center allowed Clifton’s design to be previewed as a full-size model on their 10.1-foot-tall and 34.4-foot immer-sive wide screen.
The final product runs across two walls in the Arcade’s lobby. It features photographs of the building’s construction, information about its founders and architects, images of the original Arcade, and details about neighboring buildings.
Lines stream through the design to represent the life of the city and the flow of the Arkansas River. An original blueprint
drawing of the building serves as a backdrop image, uniting each display within the exhibit. A timeline at the base of the exhibit shows Little Rock’s population growth through the years.
The new Arcade building is a joint venture between the Central Arkansas Library System and Moses Tucker Real Estate. Like its predecessor, it houses a variety of offices and retail stores. It is also home to the Ron Robinson Theater and Cache Restaurant.
The exhibit officially debuted on Jan. 24, 2014. Visitors can view the exhibit from Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Arcade Lobby: 100 River Market Avenue, Little Rock, Ark., 72201.
There is also a virtual exhibit available at this link: http://ualrexhibits.org/arcade.
-Shannon Lausch, Archivist, UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture
Reflections - Page 9
FOR THE LOVEOF MUSIC
Michael Jackson. The Beatles. Bon Jovi. Katy Perry. Motown. Big names, with a big sound and an even bigger influence on generations. The faces in classrooms today also have a love of music, and since most of them have par-ents my age, they recognize the names I mentioned, too. Music is a connector, a bridge, a hand to hold and a place of memories and fun, and it can bridge students, teachers, curriculum and learning.
In 2012 a postcard came across my desk from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and its Summer Teachers Institute in Cleveland, Ohio. While it sounded exciting, I never thought I would have the means to make it to Cleveland for a week for professional development. Around that same time, I had been reviewing the Arkansas Humanities Council REACH grant and what I could try and do with that grant through the Arkansas Department of Education Distance Learning Center and then ev-erything aligned and I wrote the grant for the Rock Hall institute, and in July of 2012, I was flying to Cleveland.
The week in Cleveland was a whirl-wind, and I shared a classroom with people from not only the United States
but Australia and Canada, too. We had classes on the history of Rock and Roll and mini lessons on ways to utilize it in the classroom. The instructors at the Rock Hall are some of the most energet-ic and eclectic group of educators I have ever seen. They presented lessons on the roots and history of Rock and Roll from the ’50s to modern day. It was exciting to see presenters so in tune with teach-ers and music and students and passing that energy onto the group.
As a music lover, I was in awe of what I was being able to see. Our days con-sisted of a lesson in the morning and
then a field trip, breakout sessions or a chance to move throughout the muse-um. My main focus seemed to be eating lunch as fast as I could (or not at all), so I could spend my lunch time in the giant circular room with the biggest screen I had ever seen and view each decade of inductees and their music. This encom-passed several hours, but it was mes-merizing. Remembering songs I loved, performers I had forgotten and sounds created from magic.
Coming back from such a trip, I pon-dered all of these wonderful things, but how could I “make it work” in my
Page 10- Reflections
“Music is a connector, a bridge, a hand to hold and a place of memories and fun, and it can bridge students, teachers, curriculum and learning.“
classroom and really let it teach my kids something? I know things can become the new and shiny thing, and I did not want this experience to become some-thing that was fun and cool but did not really serve a purpose in the classroom.
One of the most productive things I have found to use music for in the En-glish classroom is to teach literary de-vices. Any song is usually applicable, provided it is school appropriate, but Katy Perry has some great stuff out there and lessons are already out there using her music to teach simile, metaphor, extended metaphor, allusion, figurative language and more. Once students can apply it to something, they start to do it even when they are not in the class-room, and then it really becomes some-thing they have learned, and it becomes concrete for them.
As I progressed with music I found different ways to integrate it into the classroom. It can add elements of his-tory, societal progress, pop culture, and fashion—much as poetry does but with something familiar to the students. Stu-dents hear it on a daily basis and begin to apply the things they learn in class even outside the classroom; bringing in songs they find interesting and want to discuss the songs in class!
One of the most fun and beneficial things I did with the music is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame “Voice Your Choice” activity. This was a project at the end of the year synthesizing multi-ple lessons in argument, research, and bringing in technology to produce the project. Students choose a band or sing-er to be inducted into the Rock Hall, students research and develop an argu-ment for this individual or group to be inducted, and students synthesize the information and develop a presentation based on their findings. It encompasses
MLA, technology, and argumentative writing, and teachers can even imple-ment this into a group project if they want to utilize that aspect. Students must follow the guidelines for inductees and it does not have to be someone el-igible now; it could be a current group and it could be for a future induction. Teachers are encouraged to submit these to the Rock Hall and some may even be displayed on the Rock Hall website.
Sadly, 2013 was the last year the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame did a Teachers Institute on site; now they offer more throughout the year via distance learn-
ing, which was how I came to them in the first place, so I am excited to see how all of this develops.
I hope to go back one day and see the new exhibits and bask in the wonderful things to hear and see there, and I still tap into the lessons via distance learning whenever those come around. These are really great, and they have several free ones for the classroom (students includ-ed) throughout the school year.
-Cindy Green, AP Literature Instructor,
ADE Distance Learning Center
Reflections - Page 11
“[Music] can add elements of history, societal progress, pop culture, and-fashion—much as poetry does but with something familiar to the students.”
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