Maine Antique Digest, December 2016

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12-B Maine Antique Digest, December 2016
- FEATURE -
12-B
At the landing of the stairwell on the second floor
of the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio, past
three brightly colored kites that seem to lead
the way, visitors step into An Ohio Childhood: 200
Years of Growing Up. Curators Andrew Richmond and
Hollie Davis, known to Maine Antique Digest readers
for “The Young Collector” column, have put together an
interesting assortment of objects designed to reflect the
life of kids from the early 1800s to today.
It’s befitting that the first few displays include a
juxtaposition of family photos that are as dissimilar as
they are alike. One is a daguerreotype of five children
of John and Persis Follett Parker. The other is a selfie
of Davis and her two children, Nora and Nat. The
19th-century monochrome image is formal and stiff,
depicting stoical faces staring from the plate. Behind it
is the modern self portrait, a large and colorful image of
two smiling children largely obscuring their mother, all
wearing knit stocking caps as they stop for a moment
before heading outdoors to play in the snow. Putting the
two images together, especially with the much larger size
of the vibrant selfie perched behind the daguerreotype,
is like witnessing the scene in The Wizard of Oz when
colors rush over the black-and-white film and transform
a make-believe world.
Yet this is an exhibition about fact, not fantasy. For
the curators, putting together that reality came with hard
choices, for how does one condense 200 years of Ohio
childhood into roughly 120 objects? In a way, that task
was made more difficult by the fact that Richmond and
Davis adopted the project after the first curator stepped
aside following a year of planning.
“Initially, Hollie and I weren’t at all involved,”
Richmond said. When the Decorative Arts Center of
Ohio turned to him to finish the exhibit, he did so in
partnership with Davis, who had worked behind the
scenes on two previous exhibitions that Richmond
curated for the house museum, Equal in Goodness:
Ohio Decorative Arts 1788-1860 and A Tradition of
Progress: Ohio Decorative Arts 1860-1945.
While Richmond and Davis had some ideas about
what they wanted to display in An Ohio Childhood ,
they also inherited material already earmarked by the
previous curator.
“When we took over, there were forty or fifty objects
requested and committed. Some would have been on
our list to choose. Some wouldn’t have been on our
radar,” Richmond said. In other words, some pieces
were a perfect fit for their vision of the exhibition, while
others they made fit.
The biggest challenge, regardless of who did the
picking, was to narrow down the selections to a
manageable number that told the story of children in
the Buckeye State. It was an impossible task, really. It
was also one easily scrutinized through whatever life
experiences (such as economic status) and collecting
preferences (such as toys or textiles) formed the lens of
the viewer.
A variety of objects work together to tell the story of
growing up in Ohio over the past two centuries. “It’s
more than just toys,” Richmond noted. From clothing
to children’s furniture, the options were as deep as they
were wide.
“It was a huge topic, and there was no way we could
do an exhaustive study of that whole subject in the time
and space allotted,” he said. The solution was to come
up with what he described as “a handful of conversations
that each addressed specific issues of childhood in
Ohio.” Those talking points included birth and death,
sickness and health, rich and poor, rural and urban.
In the end, the exhibition drew considerable strength
from two-dimensional objects, especially for its
representation of the 19th and early 20th century.
Paintings and photography are widely used in that
storytelling, but so too are textiles and folk art, from
samplers to fraktur. Throughout the exhibition,
reproductions of vintage black-and-white photographs
serve as a thread to stitch together the storylines being
told. They are a constant—snapshots that capture
various moments of time in children’s lives. There’s one
of a poor farm family posed outside their home, two
young boys in bib overalls, their sister in a ragged dress,
two younger children on their parents’ laps. Another is
a postmortem photo of an infant surrounded by three
siblings who stare blankly at the camera; two adults are
visible holding up a cloth backdrop. There’s a photo of
children outdoors, playing a game of spud. One image
depicts the McIntire Children’s Home baseball team
and another, the Oxford Panthers, an African American
basketball team. One photo shows two child laborers,
boys in the mining industry.
Between these stitches is the life of the exhibit, a fabric
of vintage artifacts that range from folk art portraits,
such as a Charles Soule Jr. (1834-1897) oil painting of
a boy with a dog, to a variety of toys, including an early
Star Wars Millennium Falcon and corresponding action
figures made by Kenner. Regardless of the object,
whether an 1886 graduation dress, a child’s pressed
glass tea set, or a pair of Art Deco pottery lamp bases
in the form of a dog and cat, each item has a connection
to Ohio.
An Ohio Childhood doesn’t stop short. It marches
the viewer through a long time line and into the present
with contemporary items, including Urban Exterior by
Michael Weisel (b. 1946), a 2014 painting of a father
talking on a cell phone while holding his daughter’s
hand outside a store, and a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, a
plaything so popular it outsold full-size cars produced
by American auto makers.
The modern side of the exhibition is emphasized
in another way, through the use of technology to help
tell the story. Several iPads are located throughout the
galleries, for use by visitors. Patrons are also encouraged
to download the TaleBlazer app to play an interactive
game, DACO GO.
Additionally, the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio is
hosting children- and family-related programs associated
with the exhibition. For youngsters who might tire of
the displays, there is also a special playroom with a
selection of toys.
One distinct aspect of the exhibit is the gallery guide,
which is actually two booklets in one. For each item
on display, there’s a description written for adults and
one crafted for children.That attention to detail helps set
the show apart, and also establishes why this isn’t just a
hodgepodge of loosely connected artifacts.
Indeed, there is an identity to An Ohio Childhood. It’s
part vintage, part selfie, and fully unique.
An Ohio Childhood remains on view at the Decorative
Arts Center of Ohio, 145 E. Main St. in Lancaster,
through December 31. Admission is free. For more
information, phone (740) 681-1423 or visit (www.
).
How does one condense
200 years of Ohio childhood
into roughly 120 objects?
An Ohio Childhood: 200 Years of Growing Up
by Don Johnson
Amodern selfie of co-curator Hollie Davis and her children,
Nora and Nat, is displayed above a daguerreotype of the
Parker children. The two images show the extremes
of photography during the years covered by An Ohio
Childhood.
Folk portraits include this oil on canvas of Rhoda Hildreth
with her youngest child, Harriet Eliza, who was born in
1826. Such works were affordable only by the wealthy.
Rhoda’s husband, Dr. Samuel P. Hildreth, was a physician
and scientist.
Death isn’t overlooked in An Ohio Childhood. Circa 1900, this photo by Albert J.
Ewing (1870-1934) shows a deceased child and three siblings. The gallery guide
notes that “such a photograph might be the only likeness a family had, enabling
them to keep a visual memento of their lost child.”
Worn by Margery Gundry during
her graduation in 1886, this dress was
made by Agnes Quentel, a dressmaker
in Cincinnati.