On African Safari, Off the Beaten Path in Kansas

THE story of Martin and Osa Johnson, an American couple whose documented journeys to places like Africa transformed them into national celebrities in the first part of the last century, has faded with time. Even in some parts of Kansas, where the couple grew up before setting off on their adventures, mention of the Johnsons can now draw looks of puzzlement.

But here in the rolling hills of southeastern Kansas, in the town where Osa Johnson grew up, their memory is alive and well. Inside an old train depot, the halls of the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum are filled with photographs from their trips, copies of their books and the possessions they carried — film splicers, licenses to fly airplanes, a waffle iron, even Mrs. Johnson’s zebra skin shoes.

Occupying these halls, too, is the double challenge of a small museum off the beaten track: How to explain the significance of a once-famed couple to an audience now accustomed to glancing at African scenes with the click of a mouse; and how to do that from a town that sits about two hours from the nearest major city (Wichita, Kansas City and Tulsa, Okla., are each about the same distance away.)

The museum in Chanute, home to fewer than 10,000 residents, draws 5,000 or 6,000 visitors a year, said Conrad Froehlich, the director, who notes that small facilities, though often overlooked, actually make up the vast majority of the nation’s museums. “That’s peanuts compared to the Field Museum,” Mr. Froehlich said of attendance here, referring to the natural history museum in Chicago. “But for where we are, that’s not bad.”

The museum draws its share of Osa and Martin Johnson devotees from far and wide. But other visitors, Mr. Froehlich acknowledges, have never heard of them.

“Some people just see the sign and stop in, and you can watch those visitors getting excited as they learn about the Johnsons for the first time,” he said. “That reminds me why we’re here. What we’re doing is keeping their legacy alive.”

By the 1920s and 1930s, Martin and Osa Johnson were household names and faces — as famous in their era, according to one Johnson historian, as Michael Jackson. Their comings and goings made headlines and, in perhaps the modern measure of celebrity, Mrs. Johnson had a stalker.
They were ordinary Kansas kids, as museum officials put it, without wealthy backgrounds or lengthy educations. Martin Johnson, a lanky boy raised in Independence, Kan., not far from here, was expelled from school for a photography prank that made fun of the school principal, the museum notes, though the episode is not emphasized before the busloads of Kansas schoolchildren who travel here on field trips.

At a young age, Mr. Johnson yearned for adventure and managed to travel with Jack London on his 1907 voyage on the Snark. After marrying when Osa was 16 (another fact not emphasized for school groups), the pair set off on their exploits, spending years in Africa and the South Pacific and documenting the animals, people and scenes they saw in a series of films. Mr. Johnson captured the images. Mrs. Johnson, who was also a photographer and filmmaker, starred.

The films were successful. Tours and talks followed. So did books.

“They projected the ideal American couple, and they really debunked a great deal of the previous imagery of Africa at the time,” said Dr. Pascal James Imperato, dean of the school of public health at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, who edited Mrs. Johnson’s final book, published after her death; co-wrote a biography of the Johnsons; and is an honorary trustee of the museum. “They made Africa a place of beauty and tranquillity that was accessible almost as if it were a backyard in Kansas.”

But in 1937, Mr. Johnson died in a commercial plane crash in the United States. Mrs. Johnson, whose 1940 autobiography, “I Married Adventure,” became a best seller, died in New York in 1953.

In the years that followed, some forgot about the Johnsons, whose films now seem dated. Some in new generations never heard of them. And travel — and travelogues — shifted, both in technology, style and reason for being.

The museum opened in 1961, thanks to contributions and efforts from Osa Johnson’s mother, Belle Leighty, who still lived in Chanute at the time. It has expanded to include objects of African art and an ethnographic collection of masks, tools and musical instruments. It also developed traveling exhibitions and moved to its current, more polished setting.

The museum’s 10,000 square feet (including a storage facility and space shared with a library) house a cozy theater and a gallery with statues of the Johnsons — Martin before his camera — at the center. The gallery guides the uninitiated through the Johnsons’ story, featuring childhood clothing and personal memorabilia and photographs from their trips.

Survival for any small nonprofit museum is hard, not least of all during a recession. With two full-time employees and one part-time worker, Mr. Froehlich said, the museum “stretches things as far as we can” to manage its $150,000-to-$200,000 annual budget. Since the 1970s, the museum has entered into licensing deals for the images of the Johnsons, a way to make ends meet.

But those efforts have picked up sharply in recent years, and a larger campaign is under way, according to a lawyer who has been hired to lead the museum’s licensing efforts. American Eagle Outfitters had a licensing agreement with the museum in connection with the retailer’s Martin + Osa stores. The stores, which American Eagle recently decided to close, used the museum archives for “design and lifestyle inspiration,” according to the clothing line. A Hollywood producer is developing a movie.

If that all sounds contrary to the academic work of a museum, Mr. Froehlich says that it is quite in keeping with the way the Johnsons themselves got by. Some view them as pioneers in the notion of product placement in film. They used items like Hershey candy bars and Bisquick in their movies and elsewhere in order to pay for the next adventure, he said.

In any case, Mr. Froehlich said, none of it clashes with the museum’s goal: “Introducing the Johnsons’ story and lives to a younger and more diverse group.”

Jacquelyn Borgeson, the museum’s curator, says she sees signs that their story is re-emerging. In different decades, different fields of study have focused in on the Johnsons, finding relevance in their work.

In the 1960s, she says, the Johnsons were rediscovered by conservationists. Then in the 1970s, anthropologists found them, followed by scholars of women’s studies in the 1980s and aviation specialists in the ’90s. During the last decade, those in the fashion world found Mrs. Johnson (who had her own clothing line and was once voted one of America’s best-dressed women).

“They’re slowly coming back, niche by niche,” she said. “It’s a slow process.”

Others, too, are finding them, perhaps accidentally along the quiet road through this town. On an afternoon this year, the halls were mostly empty, but for a few of the curious.

In a museum this size, there is time and space for visitors’ journals. A recent entry gushed, “Osa Johnson is a woman who knew how to live.”

Source: The New York Times
By: Monica Davey

Maastricht Treasure Hunt Lures Collectors, From New York Times

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — This small Dutch city may be known for its winding cobblestone streets, quaint town square and a church dating as far back as the sixth century, but it is also home to a cavernous convention center where, every March, about 70,000 art lovers flock for the European Fine Art Fair. A supersize event in many ways, this year’s edition has been notable for a few standout sales amid the absence of big-ticket items.

The fair is larger than ever: 263 exhibitors (24 more than last year) from 17 countries showing nearly $3 billion worth of art in every collecting category from ancient times to the 21st century. While there are examples of brand names — drawings by Rubens and Tiepolo; paintings by Gauguin, Giacometti and Picasso; even one of Damien Hirst‘s dead animals — that is only part of what draws crowds. It is that sense of discovery that keeps crowds returning: a 1796 portrait of Countess Tolstoy, the writer’s grandmother, by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun hanging in a closet at Robilant & Voena, dealers from London and Milan (price: about $4 million), or a Samuel Palmer landscape secreted in a small nook in the stand of the London dealer Lowell Libson.

Giacometti's “Three Walking Men,” for sale for $25 million.

On Thursday, two hours after the opening festivities began, there were seven minutes of drama. The caterers turned on their ovens and caused an electrical overload, plunging a portion of the convention center into darkness. Nobody panicked, and, fair officials said, nothing was stolen. “I saw a man who calmly got out his flashlight and continued shopping,” said Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, who was making his annual pilgrimage here along with a group of trustees.

People watching is part of the fun. Although the fair runs through next Sunday, during the first few days scores of museum directors and curators cruised booths. Some high-profile collectors were here too, among them: A. Alfred Taubman, the former chairman of Sotheby’s, with his wife, Judy; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art trustees Leon D. Black, the financier, and Mark Fisch, a real estate developer.

“There are no blockbusters, no $30 million Rembrandts of years past, but is that what these fairs are all about?” Mr. Fisch asked. “Is it really relevant to anyone’s collecting experience? There are so many wonderful things to see.”

Big-ticket paintings were noticeably absent this year, dealers said, because inventories are low. When the economy took a nose dive two years ago, most galleries suffered and, being cash-strapped, were not able to replenish their stock. As soon as things started to pick up, dealers found that the best works tended to be too expensive to buy for resale.

But there are still plenty of unusual things to see here, including objects making a public appearance for the first time in centuries.

From Daniel Katz, a plaster statuette by Jean-Pierre Dantan of Paganini.

Daniel Katz, a London dealer, for example, filled a wall of his booth with 30 intricately carved plaster statuettes (1831-44) whimsically depicting musicians and other famous personalities in the arts. Made by Jean-Pierre Dantan (or Dantan the Younger), a French sculptor who was known for his amusing caricatures, he captured the likenesses of Paganini and Berlioz, Strauss and Liszt. “It’s a Who’s Who in the world of Paris in the 1830s,” Mr. Katz said. Despite the $1 million asking price, the suite of statuettes sold to an unidentified American collector in the first 24 hours of the fair’s opening.

Word of the most alluring works spread quickly. Crowds could be seen gasping when pearls began to drop from the mouths of dragons surrounding a fantastical neoclassical clock once belonging to Prince Charles Alexander, governor general of the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium), for sale at Pelham, the London gallery. Alan Rubin, Pelham’s founder, said the $2.5 million gilt metal, bronze and silver clock had not been displayed in public in 100 years.

The section devoted to modern and contemporary art keeps changing. Last year a number of heavy hitters like Acquavella Galleries of New York and Leslie Waddington of London dropped out. Collectors could be heard grumbling that the offerings were not as strong as they have been, but there were some new dealers, like L&M Arts of New York, which was offering a Giacometti painting.

Although it has been just over a month ago since “Walking Man I,” Giacometti’s six-foot-tall sculpture of a pencil-thin figure, became the world’s most expensive work ever sold at auction (fetching $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in London), prices for his works are already escalating. L&M Arts bought its Giacometti, “Portrait of Maurice Lefebvre-Foinet” (1964-65), depicting the noted Parisian art supply shop owner, at Christie’s in Paris in December for $3.3 million. After cleaning, it was being offered at around $6 million.

Landau Fine Art from Montreal was showing “Three Walking Men,” a sculpture that Giacometti conceived in 1948. The gallery bought it at Christie’s in New York two years ago for $11.5 million. Landau had it at the fair last year priced at $19 million; this year it was $25 million. “Everyone expected us to raise the price,” said Alice Landau, who runs the gallery with her husband, Robert. “The market has changed.”

It wouldn’t be an art fair without at least one work by Mr. Hirst. Haunch of Venison, a London gallery owned by Christie’s, was featuring “This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed at Home” his 1996 installation of a pig sliced from nose to tail and submerged in formaldehyde. The work caused a commotion when it first appeared in “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1997. With a price tag of about $12 million, the pig had not sold as of Sunday morning, officials at the gallery said.

But red dots could be spotted around a new works-on-paper section. Because the interest in drawings, prints and photographs has been steadily building in recent years, the organizers added a special second-floor space devoted exclusively to this section of the market. There was a booth of Irving Penn portraits at Hamiltons, a London photography gallery. There were also master drawings from all periods, including a 1788 Gainsborough drawing, “Figures in a Wooded Landscape,” that Lowell Libson was offering for about $412,000. The seemingly quick black chalk strokes appear almost contemporary in their execution.

As of Sunday afternoon Mr. Libson had not sold the drawing although he said he has had serious interest from an American museum and several collectors. Still, as a first-time exhibitor, he seemed unfazed. “This fair gives me a new opportunity,” Mr. Libson explained. “It’s a place to present British works in a broader European context.”

Source: The New York Times

By: Carol Vogel

NYTimes Write Up on Tribal Art Show

NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL TRIBAL & TEXTILE By KEN JOHNSON, KAREN ROSENBERG

More than 60 galleries and dealers from the United States and abroad — significantly fewer than last year’s 76 — are installed in the 69th Regiment Armory for the 15th New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show. Missing from the floor are some of the high-end European dealers in African art, and the English textile dealers, but there is still the usual bounty of lavish textiles, sculpture and statuary, exotic curios and jewelry.

An emphasis on extraordinary textiles from indigenous and precolonial cultures is a hallmark of this show. It is true again this year, with outstanding Central Asian material at Gail Martin Gallery; a selection of colorful Persian and Syrian carpets and utilitarian bags at Alberto Levi; and a pair of heavily beaded Northwest Coast Indian leggings at Myers and Duncan. It is all presented with deft professionalism and backed up with some useful educational material.

Not too many dealers have shipped big, expensive stone sculpture, given the economy, but there are one or two monumental wooden pieces. For a reminder of the role of religion in daily life in Africa, stop by Dave DeRoche to see a late-19th-century “rhythm pounder,” probably Senufo, from Ivory Coast. This imposing wooden sculpture of a woman was used to pound the earth each spring to enhance the soil’s fertility and ensure a good harvest.

As always, there is a small but fine selection of Pacific Island material. Lewis/Warra has an unusually ornate, possibly mid-19th-century Malagan ceremonial mask from New Ireland, a part of New Guinea, while the Thomas Murray display includes some top masks from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, one shaped like a bird’s beak. They are part of a group of a dozen beautiful Oceanic carvings from a single California collection put up for sale.

For pure fascination and enjoyment, visitors might like to check out the hand-painted wooden Egyptian sarcophagus lid, about 1069-702 B.C., at Arte Primitivo. It is in great condition. Equally enchanting is a minor retrospective of paintings by self-taught artists at Cavin-Morris, including a delightfully simple painting of a mule by Bill Traylor, the Alabama-born former slave and outsider artist, that was drawn on a Montgomery, Ala., sidewalk in the 1940s.

There is lots of other strange and wonderful stuff in the show, though some of it is hiding in cases, so you really have to take the time to look. Clam Galerie has a Mayan poison bottle that is close to 1,400 years old, while Kip McKesson has a carved divining staff used by a Tanzanian witch doctor to make the rain come, ward off evil spirits, see the future or even frighten enemies on the eve of battle. Who wouldn’t want to hold the staff?

Another revelation is the range and beauty of native jewelry in gold, silver, tin, shell, stone and other materials. What an obvious inclusion this material is, although there has not been so much of it at the fair in the last few years. The jewelry has an undeniable beauty, so I would not be surprised if more finds its way into future shows. Let’s hope so.

The show is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. onFriday; 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday; (212) 532-1516, caskeylees.com; $20.