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As we all surely have noted, things are a-changin’ around Reynolda House. We now have iPads placed in strategic areas to help us interact with visitors by showing the indoor/outdoor map and other important things. The look of publications has changed, as have such identifiers as logos and signs. Works of art have reappeared after being in storage for a while, or are on different walls from where they had been. Grant Wood’s Spring Turning certainly does “pop” on Thomas Cole’s wall!

I don’t recall ever having seen Agnes Denes’s Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space—Map Projections: The Cube (1986), which was recently on view in theMaster Bedroom. Denes is a conceptual artist and a Hungarian-American who is fascinated by mathematics, among other things. She calls her work Visual Philosophy and has said that moving

to new countries while she was young—from Hungary to Sweden after the Nazi occupation of her homeland and from Sweden to the United States in the mid-1940s—made her focus on visual forms of language because the verbal forms had changed so quickly.

Now in its second century, Reynolda has adopted a new brand identity that contains a larger self: not only our—sorry, Katharine’s—beloved house, but also Reynolda Gardens, and Reynolda Village. As we know, it was all part of the original Reynolda, from country home to employees’ houses, to dairy, to church, to farmland.

Beginning in 2016 with the centennial logo, the Winston-Salem-based Device Creative Collaborative studied what a new brand needed to attract visitors. The new brand

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made its debut in June 2018 with the launch of Reynolda Revealed app and the beginning of the visual identity - that’s new colors, logos, and fonts - being implemented. If you haven’t already done so, check the Reynolda Revealed app for more information.

Part of the “reveal” was the look of the Fall Guide, with a more open appearance. The appearance of Docent Dateline has changed, too. Oh, and I am the new editor, starting a two-year (four-issue) term and attempting to follow Jeremy Reiskind’s considerably talented presence.

This is an opportunity to encourage all docents to consider contributing to Dateline, writing and/or suggesting a topic that you have wondered about. Has a visitor ever asked a question that flummoxed you? Have you

wanted more detail on an object but haven’t gotten around to researching it? How about the history of a work of art, or the “school” in which experts have placed it? Of course there is the history of the house as well as of the works of American art on view in it.

Being prone to going off on tangents, I have found myself admiring the frame on a painting that I am viewing, wondering about it, and about frames in general—why is a particular one chosen for a work of art? Has it always had that frame? (Okay, I’ve got dibs on this subject.)

Enjoy this issue! Now is a great time to start thinking of what you would like read, or write, for the Fall Dateline. Let me know: gcarr333@gmail.com.

A note from the editor

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Early Technology at Reynolda, 1906-1924 Comfort & Convenience

B A R B A R A M I L L H O U S E

In 2015, Sherold Hollingsworth and I began looking into the advanced technology that Katharine Reynolds herself had investigated when her big country house was being planned. The result of that research is a 150-page book, Comfort and Convenience, Early Technology at Reynolda, 1906–24, which hit the Museum Store shelves in February. The book includes photographs and advertisements from numerous magazines, including Country Life in America, a popular high-end periodical to which Katharine Reynolds subscribed.

The idea for this book began when a visitor to Reynolda House inquired about an obscure hole in the wall of the northeast sleeping porch. A similar one, but with a lidded opening, was discovered in another porch. Although at first their function was a mystery, these holes turned out to be outlets for the stationary vacuum cleaning system, which was installed when the house was under construction. Since it was the most up-to-date cleaning system available at that time, it revolutionized housework and eliminated the need for the arduous task of annual spring-cleaning.

Thus began a search for documentation on Reynolda’s early domestic and farm technology—much of which was hidden from view or had vanished altogether. Architectural plans, specs, photographs, invoices, telegrams, letters, newspaper clippings, oral histories, and the Internet provided a comprehensive and accurate picture of the new technologies that brought about a more comfortable, convenient, and healthy existence for the Reynolds family, residents of Reynolda, and the thousands of visitors it has attracted since its inception.

The availability of electricity in rural areas was rare at that time, but for Katharine Reynolds it was essential in order to meet her aspirations. Not only did it keep the house dust-free, but it also illuminated rooms and garden paths. The electric Aeolian organ filled the house with orchestral music, and the electric Victrola introduced the voices of opera singers into everyday life.

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In the pantry, electricity ran the dumbwaiter and powered new appliances such as the percolator, toaster, and chafing dish. In the main hall, it drove the trunk elevator from the basement to the attic. In the bathroom, it activated the hair dryer and curling iron. In the sewing room, it ran the sewing machine. In the laundry, it ran the washing machine and dryer, and heated the iron. The milking machines, cream separators, and bottle washers were all operated by electricity on the farm.

Although few original appliances have survived, images of them have been retrieved from period photographs. For example, architectural plans show an ice-cream room near the kitchen, and magazines supplied a photograph of an ice-cream machine available at that time. The most exciting discovery, however, occurred in late 2017 when a wall was removed in the kitchen. Behind it stood the original cast iron coal-fueled range, which was too massive to move when the kitchen was renovated in the 1930s.

A steady flow of electricity was essential not only for the comfort and ease of living at Reynolda, but also for the electrified dairy and other farm machinery. The fact that the availability of electricity was dependent on the Fries Manufacturing and Power Company belies Reynolda’s reputation as a self-sufficient estate. In 1918, when the widowed Katharine wrote to the company to request stronger electric current, she was flatly turned down.

Owners of country houses did not want to sacrifice the conviviality they had enjoyed in town, so the telephone was an important factor in permitting country folk to keep in touch with family and friends. Nonetheless, we have retrieved letters from Katharine complaining to Southern Bell that no outside calls had come through for the first nine months since she moved to Reynolda.

The automobile also played a role. Not only did it permit the family to maintain contacts in town, but also encouraged friends to come calling—a habit that continued at Reynolda well into the mid-twentieth century. Automobile trips were hazardous, but newspaper clippings describing them reveal that in the South, automobile technology was more advanced than road technology.

Reproduced in the book is an advertisement of a Pierce Arrow assuring owners that the automobile will always deliver them to their destination on time, but the advertisement is accompanied by a snapshot showing the Reynoldses’ Pierce Arrow broken down on the side of the road, while the chauffeur changes a flat tire. Discrepancies between the advertisement’s optimistic assessments and reality provide the reader with an authentic depiction of the times.

Comfort and Convenience: EarlyTechnology at Reynolda, 1906–1924is now available for purchase in theMuseum Store.

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As we know, it took a long time for American artists to be viewed as true artists, like, you know, European artists. American artists were appreciated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries…until they weren’t.

Last fall we saw some delightful examples of American art done in the years before the astonishing Armory Show in 1913. Nine etchings by John French Sloan showed us realist views of New York City life. Sloan’s and others’ work didn’t all look alike—the loose lines and provocative figures in Sloan’s nine etchings did not bring to mind something like Thomas Eakins’s rower on the Schuylkill River. But Eakins and other American realists in the era strongly influenced later artists such as Sloan, Robert Henri and others in the Ashcan School of art.

Those artists didn’t much like their nickname. A 2007 exhibition review in The New York Times said, “In 1916 a staff member of the socialist magazine The Masses objected to the insufficiently high-minded ‘pictures of ashcans and girls hitching up their skirts on Horatio Street’ by Sloan, George Bellows and others of the [Robert] Henri circle that illustrated the magazine.”

Art-y-FactsG E N I E C A R R

Charles Burchfield (1893–1967), Hot Morning Sunlight, June 26, 1916.

Transparent and opaque watercolor with graphite on white wove

paper. 13 7/8 x 19 7/8 in. (35.2 x 50.5 cm.). Edward W. Root Bequest,

57.94. Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, Utica,

NY. Photography by John Bigelow Taylor and Diane Dubler.

The Ashcan artists began their careers as newspaper illustrators, learning to grab moments of city life in quickly drawn images that immediately told stories. Bucolic sights and careful brushwork were not their aim.

These realists captured urban grit in New York City, scenes seen through windows of apartments across the way, or people interacting in parks and on sidewalks. They focused on poor people, sometimes in dubious circumstances, depicting perhaps the difficulty of the subjects’ lives—but also the energy and pleasure those people could find in their lives. After all, the less-than-“high-minded” artists were fun-loving guys who recognized the plight of the poor but also enjoyed good food, fellowship, sports, and fun at Coney Island.

Sloan could draw a man, sitting on a park bench, apparently ogling a young girl on another park bench. Not nice. But that girl is with her family, probably enjoying a Sunday-afternoon outing in the fresh air and sunshine.

Then, a brick wall not of the urban variety fell on Sloan, et al., in 1913. Suddenly, Americans—Americans important in the art

world—were looking at European avant-garde art. American realists became rubble.

However, the “Ashcan” version of American realism had opened a path to change, including new kinds of art by Hopper and Stuart Davis. Paintings such as Hopper’s mysterious scenes of often-empty streets and buildings kept Americans’ eyes on the lights and darks of urban existence. Even his lighthouse in Hopper to Pollock—unpeopled, reflecting light, alone in a field—makes us wonder: Where did everybody go?

Of course, such “real realism” evolved dramatically as artists began looking inward, to their minds, and not in the life of others that surrounded them. Charles Burchfield’s trees didn’t look much like real trees. And Jackson Pollock’s drips are a view of life from another direction. Real life doesn’t go away; nor do the ways and means of depicting it.

Thomas Eakins, American, 1844–1916, The Pair-Oared Shell,

1872, oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Thomas Eakins and Miss

Mary Adeline Williams, 1929.

John Sloan, 1871–1951, Roofs, Summer Night, 1906, etching.

© 2013 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society

(ARS), New York.

Sloan to Hopper to Pollock

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Allison Thompson is our Public Programming Fellow at Reynolda House. She is here on a DAMLI Fellowship. DAMLI is an acronym for Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative, a program sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation to “diversify curatorial and management staff at art museums across the United States.” To find out more about the initiative, click here. DAMLI has funded twenty pioneering programs of which Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one! Allison will hold the fellowship for one year.

Allison is a gifted conversationalist. She is a warm, lively, and enthusiastic person. She grew up in Newport, Rhode Island and graduated from Wake Forest University with

a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Allison admitted she knew little about Reynolda House before the fellowship opportunity came along, but upon investigation was amazed at Katharine Smith Reynolds’s accomplishments. She began working in July and has been thrilled by the number of people and departments she has been able to connect with. She recognizes how art is the unifying theme at Reynolda and appreciates how we encourage visitors to develop their own interpretations of what they see. She also notes that the challenge is getting more people, including Wake Forest students, to come to events and exhibition openings to learn about Reynolda House.

Allison loves to travel. She spent a sophomore term in Argentina and Chile. Her last

New Faces:Meet Allison Thompson

semester at Wake Forest was spent interning at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., developing programs that would encourage more people to come to that venue.

Allison loves languages, writes poetry and enjoys reading—mainly non-fiction, particularly stories about identity. (Interesting fact: While at Wake she was a member of a hip-hop dance team that competed around the state.)

Future plans? Perhaps living in another country for a while. She is considering Argentina or Denmark.

Allison also loves meeting people. I hope you will get a chance to stop by and talk to her. She is open to new ideas regarding programming and about how Reynolda House can better interact with the public. Any ideas? Pass them on!

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In interviewing one of Reynolda’s newest staff members Amber Clawson Albert, Manager of Community and Academic Learning, I became aware of a relatively new academic discipline—public history. Public history is defined as an approach that communicates historical research and insights to the public at large in meaningful and inspiring ways. Amber is a public historian and has a Ph.D. to prove it.

Amber grew up in Boone, North Carolina, and attended Appalachian State majoring in Public Relations for Non-Profits. After getting her B.S. in 2015, she attended the College of Charleston in history, and her capstone project was “Early Women in Charlestowne.” With her master’s degree in hand, she took on two part-time jobs at Drayton Hall—the

oldest non-restored plantation house in the South—as a marketing assistant and as an educator/docent. There she fell in love with historic preservation.

This sudden interest led her to pursue her doctorate at Middle Tennessee State University, which has a unique program in public history. Her dissertation dealt with a family of cabinet-makers in East Tennessee that was ultimately published in the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts.

With degree in hand, she became the Director of the Historical Association of Catawba County where she oversaw four historical sites, ranging from 1812 to 1953, and learned how historical preservation and recreation work together.

Amber says she is just finding her way at Reynolda House and is already planning for our upcoming exhibitions the illustration art of J. C. Leyendecker in the fall and the decorative arts of Tiffany in the spring. She will be planning talks and events focusing especially on themes of identity, such as sexuality and gender roles, related to these exhibitions.

Amber is kept even busier with a two-year old son named Tice. She particularly likes to walk and listen to audio books—preferably concurrently.

Amber is open to new ideas from docents and volunteers. So if you think of something that would improve the experience of our visitors she urges us to send them to her (albertac@reynolda.org).

New Faces: Meet Amber Albert

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Special GuestsMarch 14, 1974, was a cool day, temperatures in the 40s, with a blustery wind blowing. However, the inclement weather didn’t stop Robert Gwathmey from visiting Reynolda House Museum of American Art. His name was entered, in fancy calligraphy, into the Special Guests book, a special leather-bound journal started in 1965 and stored in the archives.

Gwathmey was an artist and a Virginia native who lived in Amagansett, New York. Reynolda House did not have any of his work then, but he must have liked what he saw during his visit. His painting Belle, done in 1965, came to the Museum in November 1978: “Museum Purchase with funds provided by Barbara B. Millhouse.”

Other “special guests” visited the house, or were here during a speaking tour or perhaps to eyeball the museum as a possible place for a piece of art they owned. Early notable guests signed in by Museum staff included the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Woburn Abbey, in Bedfordshire, England, October 30, 1970; Clement Greenberg, The New York Times art critic (a fellow very influential in

the art world), January 25, 1973; Mr. and Mrs. Pierre S. Dupont of Wilmington, Del., May 17, 1976; and Katherine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, May 9, 1977.

Starting in 1980, the special guests signed the book themselves. Maya Angelou, still living in Oakland, California at the time, visited on March 24, 1981. She had been to Wake Forest University before for a speaking engagement in 1973. She became the Reynolds Professor of American Studies in 1982.

Other notable visitors included writer Reynolds Price; Brendan Gill; drama critic of artist Romare Bearden; writer John Fowles (coming from Lyme Regis, England); Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (in 1993); and Miss Universe Dayamara Torres (1993).

Former President and Mrs. Gerald R. Ford visited on September 3, 1994, when their son Michael Ford, a Wake Forest alumnus, was the University’s student life administrator. Betty Ford was one of the visitors who made a remark in the book: “Thank you. Very beautiful.”

In 1986, when composer George Crumb visited from Media, Pennsylvania, he commented with some musical notes and “I am impressed” (his underlining). In 1994, jazz pianist Barbara Carroll wrote, “Thank you for inviting me to this enchanting spot!” In September 2005, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pronounced Reynolda House “A gem of a museum,” and Justice John Roberts wrote, “Beautiful home and museum.” They were in town with several of D.C. notables.

In 2007, George Carey wrote, “Thank you! A wonderful historic home and exhibition!” Having recently been the Archbishop of Canterbury, Carey certainly knew historic homes.

And, in April 2008, actor Bill Pullman made perhaps the most enigmatic comment: “Such

a place to look for the quiet.” One can imagine it not being such a quiet place when four children lived there.

The Special Guest book is kept in the Reynolda House Archives. Bari Helms, the Director of Archives & Library, quipped that she likes to have it nearby for whenever Special Guests drop by. (What she actually said was that she likes to have it handy “in case Oprah comes in.”)

E D I T O R ’ S N O T E : the idea for this article came from former protection officer and docent Denis Jackson, who was never short of story ideas for his fellow readers of the Dateline. Denis passed away on Friday, March 22, 2019. We dedicate this article in his memory.

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Betty Ford was one of the visitors who made a remark in the book: “Thank you. Very

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Signature of nationally recognized poet, occasional actress, and

Wake Forest Professor of American Studies, Maya Angelou.

Musical signature of composer George Crumb.