Elegy for a Museum Director

How many of us get to (or think to) write our own obituary? Daniel R. Porter, who was the Director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program when I first came to Cooperstown in 1981, and later became Director of the Fenimore Art Museum's parent organization, made sure he had the final word. The result is pure folk literature, witty and self-deprecating and a joy to read.

Dan Porter was a real piece of work, but he supported my career when I was just starting out and I owe him the honor of having his last words read by my readers here. Please take the time to read the obit he wrote for himself and left in the care of his younger brother, with instructions to simply fill in the date of death when the time came. We should all be so organized.

Daniel R. Porter III

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. - With trumpets blaring, Zeus, god of gods, called Daniel Reed Porter III to His Heavenly Pantheon on Nov. 21, 2006.

He (Porter, not Zeus) was the second White child born in the new maternity ward of Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton (Mass) on his father's birthday July 2, 1930. His mother Eleanor (Parsons) needed all the help she could get.

Porter was reared on a small farm with his siblings in Worthington. Sickly as a child, his parents often contemplated drowning him in Watt's Brook that flowed (trickled in summer) behind the house into which (the brook, not the house) they deposited other trash, sewage and cow manure.

After being partially educated in local schools, Porter matriculated in the class of 1952 at UMass, formerly Mass Aggie. Here he failed to distinguish himself in any meaningful way, and managed to alienate a number of his classmates and professors. Upon graduation without honors, Porter was drafted into the Army and served in Korea before and after the armistice. There he learned more than at college - never volunteer, be cowardly to survive, don't circulate petitions and keep away from indigenous females.

Returning home ill-prepared for an occupation, he was strangely accepted by the University of Michigan Graduate School where he tried to prepare for an acceptable if not respectable occupation.

A 35-year career as a museum and historical agency administrator and museum director followed. He moved from state to state five times to keep ahead of his reputation. He completed his career ignominiously in Cooperstown in 1992. On his demise, he was a member of no organization, club or charity.

Porter was not survived by his parents and sister, Janice Leroux. But surviving him are his relict, Joan (Dornfeld); a daughter, Leslie, her husband, Edward Easton III, and their daughters, Erika, Caitlin, and Allison, of Coudersport (God's Country), Pa.; his son, Andrew, and his wife, Amy (Pens), and their heir, Reed; a brother, Edward, and his wife, Shirley (Smith), on Watt's Brook; a brother-in-law, Al Leroux, and his Buick sedan of Northampton; and numbers of nieces and nephews.

There will be no final rites or any mumbo-jumbo. He will not lie in state at the The Farmers' Museum. His cremated remains will be scattered on Watt's Brook. Memorial gifts will not be accepted and cards are a waste of money.


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A Fireplace Fantasy

Okay, so blogging while also being President is harder than I thought. I can't believe it's been nearly a month since my last post. What's even harder to believe is that, if my Followers gadget is correct, I have actually gained followers during that time. Thank you to everyone who has signed on and held on. Here's another little tidbit from the storage racks for you.

This fireboard has been in the collection since 1950, when we acquired it from Jean Lipman. That's sixty-one years, and I cannot recall it ever being on view. It's relegation to storage is probably owing to the lack of information about it, but it is intriguing onetheless and beautiful to behold.




A fireboard, in case you don't know, is an portable enclosure usually made of wood or canvas and used to cover the unsightly fireplace in the summer months. We have a number of these, the most famous of which is our great "Bear and Pears," also from Lipman.

This piece is more enigmatic, as the scene it depicts is exotic and mysterious, possibly based on a print or number of prints of foreign lands that so intrigued New Englanders in the nineteenth century.




It belonged to a Connecticut collector named Titus Geesey, who felt strongly that it was of Connecticut origin, mainly because the painted decoration along the borders resembled the painted tin designs of local decorators. Other than this theory, we have no information as to its history.

But that never stops us from speculating. As I was researching the piece for this post I came across a gem of an interpretation in an old graduate student report. Back in 1968 a student in the folkore program at Cooperstown, clearly exasperated at being unable to find any solid information on this painting and needed something to say, offered this statement for posterity:




"An attempt to interpret this particular pastiche in terms of the life of the time leads me to conclude that limners ate opium on the job; that there were lions large and relaxed roaming (or at least posing) with Amazon women near castles with Mansard roofs; that somewhere in New England there existed a culture in which people came in a variety of sizes."

I just love this interpretation. It captures the whimsey of the piece like no academic study could do. And it is a reminder that a fireboard was one of the few art forms that was always displayed at child height. What flights of fancy would have been taken in this parlor.


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Counting Sheep

In my new position as President I never know where the day will take me. This morning I was working on an exhibition for the summer of 2012 on the subject of American Impressionism when I was called away to The Farmers' Museum (our sister institution of which I am also President) to watch young oxen being trained. On my way to the farmyard I noticed a co-worker hovering near the sheep's pen.

When I walked over to see what she was looking at, I saw a sheep with her brand new baby lamb. Naturally, I took out my iPhone and snapped the first picture of this new addition to the museum staff. Within the hour a second lamb was born, much to the delight of the families that happened to be nearby.

Any time something like this happens I am reminded of the original vision of the two museums here in Cooperstown -- The Farmers' Museum and the Fenimore Art Museum -- and how much they were always meant to complement each other. Folk art and paintings of everyday life at the Fenimore, living history and real animals at the Farm. This time was no exception.

When I saw the new-born lamb I thought immediately of the painting we have tucked away in storage, depicting a Cotswold ram at the Van Wagenen farm in Lawyersville, New York in the 1860s. It was painted by Thomas Kirby Van Zandt, and the note in our files indicate that the original owner thought it was a remarkable likeness of an animal known for its personality. Now we have another living example of an ongoing livestock tradition in upstate New York to give this artwork meaning and immediacy.

There's even another connection: Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., whose father owned the ram in the painting, wrote the classic book 'The Golden Age of Homespun" for us back in the 1950s. His descriptions of the era depicted in the painting, and recreated at The Farmers' Museum, have enthralled generations of readers. But even he would admit that you can't beat the real thing.

The Eyes Have It

On my recent trip to Dallas to attend the opening of the Fenimore Art Museum's Thaw Collection of American Indian Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, I came across this curious painting at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. It struck me as another fine example of an itinerant folk artist's penchant for depicting sitters as they were, rather than as an idealized version of themselves.

Ammi Phillips was a prolific painter in the valleys and towns of eastern New York State and western New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. He is well known for employing stock poses in order to speed up production of his portraits. But he did so with such fluid and graceful brushwork that the paintings are elegant and refined even in their sameness. And his sitters didn't seem to mind that they looked like so many others' portraits that they must have seen in their villages.

Yet despite this sameness, Phillips often captured something unique to each sitter. In this case, it was an obvious crossed eye. This young girl and her parents must not have seen this condition as a major flaw, for by all indications they accepted this finished portrait and it descended in the girl's family.

It's entirely possible that some might look at this painting, not having seen Phillips' work before, and attribute the crossed eye to a lack of painting skill. That view is problematic for many reasons, chief among them is this: the cat's eyes are perfect.