March 18, Friday, 4:00, Showing of the film The Beauty of Damage: The World of Christopher Pekoc, film by Tom Ball, written by Henry Adams and Tom Ball, based on the catalogue The Beauty of Damage by Henry Adams, Cleveland International Film Festival, Tower City Cinemas, Tower City, Downtown Cleveland
March 22, Monday, 12:00, second showing of the film “The Beauty of Damage,” Cleveland International Film Festival.
April 24, 2010, “Grant Wood Reconsidered,” Symposium on Grant Wood, Department of Art and Art History, University of Iowa, 619 Seashore hall, Iowa City, IA 319-335-1771
April 25, 2010, 2:00, “What’s In a Name? Jackson Pollock’s Mural for Peggy Guggenheim,” The Figge Art Museum, 225 West 2nd Street, Davenport, Iowa, 52801, 563-326-7804
see may to dec 2010 events
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Here I am with Ken Burns on a crane, photographing Thomas Hart Benton’s Missouri mural in Jefferson City, for the film on Benton that came out in 1989, the centennial of Benton’s birth. |
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Around 1990 Barbara Streisand was interested in buying a painting by Thomas Hart Benton and called me to ask for information and advice. I sent her a long letter listing Bentons that were on the market at the time and enclosed my two books on Benton and a copy of the Ken Burns film. She replied with this nice note. I’m a huge admirer of her, both as a singer and performer, and as someone who has been active in worthy political causes.
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I also once spoke on the phone with Oprah Winfrey, when she was in the process of purchasing this painting Water Boy, 1946, which is now in her home in Hawaii. It’s interesting that Oprah also has a major Benton in her home in Chicago. Benton had a deep understanding of the hard work that is done by working-class people. |
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Most museum professionals end up giving tours to wealthy Republicans such as Barbara Bush, but I seem to have some curious affinity with beat poets and radicals, like William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Pete Seeger. While William Burroughs had some rather unusual qualities, on the whole they all impressed me as more like college professors than wild-eyed anarchist. I first met the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti when I was at the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville and later saw him again in San Francisco, at the Café Trieste. For many years he shared a studio with a San Francisco friend of mine, the very gifted painter Stephanie Peek. Like the composer Charles Ives, Ferlinghetti has combined a successful business career (as a small publisher, and as the owner of the City Lights bookstore) with his work as an artist. |
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I’m surely a bit twisted, but the first thing I did when I saw a photograph of Ralph Lauren’s library was to study the shelves to see what books he had. I was startled and pleased to discover that he had my two books on Thomas Hart Benton. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has studied both of them, since Benton had a wonderful sense of the rough-hewn “American look,” something that Ralph Lauren has brilliantly perfected. One of the interesting things about the library is that while it looks very casual, all the books are arranged in alphabetical order. I get the sense that underneath Ralph Lauren’s seeming casualness, is an iron sense of organization and discipline. |
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Dear Mr. Adams—Your article about my drawing in the American Artist Spring 2004 was deeply moving to me. Bless you always for your interest in my work
—Andrew Wyeth.
In 2004, when I wrote an article on Andrew Wyeth’s drawings for American Artist, I was startled and pleased to receive this note. I later wrote a catalogue on his drawings for the Brandywine Museum and he was an generous and enthusiastic supporter of my book on Thomas Eakins, which stirred up controversy in many quarters. I regret that it never occurred to me to get a snapshot of the two of us together. The one memento of our contact is a toy soldier that he gave to my son Tommy when we visited him in Chadds Ford. |
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One of my students spotted my biography of Benton on Christie Brinkely’s coffee table, when she was thumbing through a fashion magazine. |
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In 1994, the Cummer Museum in Jacksonville, where I was director, received a Museum Service Award from the Institute for Museum Services for being the museum that had done most over a three-year period to improve its outreach to the community. I went to Washington to pick up the award from Hillary Clinton, in a White House ceremony, and the event coincided with the awards of the Presidential Medal of Arts. At a party at the Canadian embassy I had a long talk with Pete Seeger, one of those being honored, who had known Thomas Hart Benton as a young man and learned some folk songs from him. Afterwards I sent him my Benton book and he sent back this nice note, which includes a real leaf and a little sketch of a banjo. |
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The late Viktor Schreckengost of Cleveland was as versatile as Leonardo da Vinci. One of the founders of American industrial design, he was also a remarkable sculptor, potter, painting, and sculptor. And he was a truly lovely man. Here’s my son Tommy (with Marianne) shaking hands with him when he celebrated his 100th birthday. |
May 4, 2010, Tuesday, 10:00, tour for the docents of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, of the American paintings in the Cleveland Museum of Ar.
May 25, 2010, “Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock.” The Kansas City Public Library, 14 West 10th Street, Kansas City, MO 64105
July 8, 2010, “Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock, and America Today,” AXA-Equitable, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York, 212-314-2099.
July 11, 2010, “Jackson Pollock’s Relationship with Thomas Hart Benton,” Pollock-Krasner Home and Study Center, 830 Springs-Fireplace Road, East Hampton, New York, 631-324-4929.
October 2, 2010, Saturday, “Thomas Hart Benton and The State Historical Society of Missouri,” The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, MO 65201-7298, (573) 882-7083
October 20, 2010, “Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock,” The Rowfant Club, Cleveland.
Friday, November 5, 2010: Study day in the Princeton University Art Gallery for the exhibition, Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints.
Saturday, November 6: Study day in the Yale University Art Gallery for the exhibition, John La Farge’s Second Paradise: Voyages in the South Seas 1890-1891.
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