Flag for potential LCHS donors has been raised

The hoopla surrounding the sale of the Clarence H. White prints by the Licking County Historical Society earned the LCHS considerable publicity and offered an education to the rest of us.

That those in charge of the Society can sell off items assumed to belong to the public is news to me - not that I think it's illegal or under-handed, but only that I never considered such a possibility.

The fact that members of this group sold White's highly significant, once-in-a-lifetime treasures from Newark's past should raise a flag to all potential donors.

A donation is a transfer of ownership, meaning the new owner can do whatever he wants with it, including sell it. Now we know the LCHS might very well do that no matter what the historical significance, especially if there's a handsome profit involved.

Therefore, chances are good that future donations to LCHS will be considered with a great deal of care. Older folks looking for a haven for family relics might as well give them away as gifts or sell them to whomever will pay most. Better such proceeds stay in the family than under the control of quasi-government machinery on the prowl for profit.

If items could be loaned rather than donated, the owner would maintain his right to protect and preserve them. Such an arrangement would be the only way I'd entrust the LCHS with my stuff, if I had any. If this option exists for donors, the Society would do well to make it known.

Why preserve our heritage, when we can profit from it it?

Let the sale in New York City of the White photographs be a wake-up call to local folks who assumed, like I did, that the local historical society is being run by people who always make good decisions. It is not.

But this catastrophe at least opened new vistas for government and quasi-government fund-raisers. Now that the Historical Society has discovered this novel way in which to make money, namely selling valuable items from the community's heritage, one might expect them next to sell the Webb House. This would be really big bucks for historians to use "to collect and preserve, or encourage the preservation of, all that pertains to the social, political, educational, agricultural, industrial, and archaeological history of the ... County," as is their mission.

If that works out for the Historical Society, its deciders might find even more profits by developing condos along the rim of Sixth Street Park.

Maybe the idea will catch on and the city could find paving money by selling off the Courthouse lawn for permanent shanties as rentals to itinerant merchants.

Then the state might awaken to the potential wealth of Newark Earthworks. Sell the buggers. California might buy them and if not, China would. Ship them out of here because, after all, it's only our local heritage - and what's that, compared to money?

134,250 pieces of silver

NOTE: Please refer to the Advocate report from April 9, 2008 because it reports net proceeds ($110,000) and not gross proceeds ($134,250) that I used here, from which one can conclude that about $25,000 went to sale expenses.

Licking County Historical Society is richer by $134,250, sort of, but the long-term cost may be much greater than that.

David Spencer reported as a comment in this journal on the prices paid to Licking County Historical Society for some photos by Clarence H. White. They were sold by Sotheby's Auction House, New York City April 8, 2008.

According to his report, 11 prints were sold and two unsold for a total gross price of $134,250.

"Telegraph poles" described here earlier as "a rare local gemstone" brought $103,000; "The Arbor," $11,250; "The Readers, $10,000; and "Selected Studies" (eight images), $10,000. Two ("Woodland Scene" and "The Puritan") did not sell, apparently because no bidder met the Society's reserve amount.

Of particular interest to collectors was the lot containing eight photos because two of the platinum prints in that group are "quite important," according to one dealer/expert/curator who insists on anonymity. Six of these photos are platinum prints, two are photogravures, and all are very early works by Mr. White.

Among these - the most important one in the dealer's view - was an image entitled "Lounging." It was shown in the "New School of American Photography" exhibition organized by F. Holland Day, presented in London and Paris. It was also exhibited twice in the Newark Camera Club shows (1899 and 1900) and further exhibited in New York (1899), Dresden (1909) and finally in the influential International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo (1910). Another print of this image is in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This image was published twice in 1901, once in The Photogram and again in the Bulletin du Photo-Club de Paris. "Lounging," shows Letitia Felix in the Penney House in Newark. Letitia was, if I remember previous research correctly, Clarence's sister-in-law.

"Someone got a sweet deal," he said, explaining that the LCHS take on these eight images would be $7,500 or less after sale expenses, or not even $1,000 each.

The exact amount of net proceeds and how they are used is a subject for the Advocate to report.

But no matter about that, it will be interesting to observe, as the years roll on, if this relatively piddling amount of "profit" will not have cost the Society irreparable harm to its reputation as trustworthy keeper of the community's historical treasures.

"Telegraph Poles," a rare LOCAL photographic gemstone, goes to auction

Among world-renowned photos by Newark's Clarence H. White being sold by Licking County Historical Society April 8 is one entitled "Telegraph Poles."

Here's how the auction house catalogue describes the famous photograph, in part:
Clarence H. White's 'Telegraph Poles' offers a spare and modern view of Newark, Ohio, where the photographer lived from 1887 to 1906. It was in Newark that White began to photograph, while working as a clerk at Fleek and Neal, the grocery wholesaler where his father was employed. White's distance from the artistic epicenter of New York City makes his development as a photographer of real talent and sensitivity all the more remarkable. In many respects, 'Telegraph Poles' shows that White, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, was further advanced on the path to modernism than many of his contemporaries.
...
'Telegraph Poles' shows a small section of what had once been an extensive series of canals built throughout Ohio and extending to the Great Lakes. The canals facilitated trade and the transfer of freight throughout the state and, via the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal, to the east coast... In White's day, remnants of the canal were still present in Newark...

Here's what William B. Becker, director of the photographymuseum.com, wrote to me about that photograph:

"Having acquired a previously unrecorded, signed platinum print of this image in January, I can assure you that it is not some interchangeable work that would not be missed from a collection rich with other CHWs. This is not only a masterpiece, it was recognized as such from the time it was made. (Please see the attached quotation, which hit me like a lightning bolt when I discovered it.) And only four platinum prints of 'Telegraph Poles' are known."

Here is that quotation:

The most notable instance of Mr. White's ability to extract beauty from the homeliest material is the print entitled Telegraph Poles. The scene appears to be a canal, on the banks of which are poles and irregular buildings, separated by vacant spaces, like teeth and stumps and gaps in an old crone's jaw—an unsightly, even squalid, spot, at least to the stranger; but to the man who has seen it under all sorts of aspects of light and weather, moreover, with an artist's eye, alive to the abstract fascination of mere lines and masses, of mingled variety of tone, this most unsuggestive subject has revealed possibilities which have yielded an original and strikingly beautiful picture.

If I am addressing any one who has hitherto regarded art as the mere imitating of objects, this picture should open up a new idea. It would seem that it is not so much the objects as the use which the artist makes of them that constitutes art, the little something of himself mixed in with the ingredients, the personal alchemy that transmutes the commonplace into the beautiful. So, if you want your portrait taken, it may be less important what clothes you wear than whom you select to photograph them.

--Charles H. Caffin, Photography as a Fine Art: The Achievements and Possibilities of Photographic Art in America (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1901) pp. 121-122 [reprinted from Everybody's Magazine]

For more information on White, visit the Newark Tea Party Clarence H. White Gallery at this link. For more information on the sale of White's prints by the Licking County Historical Society, go to the box at the top of this page and type in "photography."

Historical Society: Here's what a museum expert thinks

I recently received a letter from a person who has far more experience in historical museums than any other person I know. She grew up here but moved away 26 years ago. Since then she has worked with Faberge (jewelled) eggs from the Hermitage (in Russia), DaVinci sketches, Michelangelo’s slippers & drawing tools. She does conservation and restoration work on textiles for collectors; she is helping update museum exhibits in Memphis and has "dressed" Elvis a few times - to mention a few examples from her vast experience.

This lady knows about the local Clarence White connection and about the Licking County Historical Society's upcoming yard sale for some of his prints. Here's her comment:

As someone who has been involved for years in museum collection departments, I don’t understand the logic behind the (Licking County Historical Society) selling the Clarence White photos. What treasures for the citizens of Licking County! I have two early photos of Newark ... that I had seriously considered donating to the LCHS. ... No reason to “entrust” the LCHS with these now, if they’re so casually disposing of the fabulous White collection!

If you can't trust the historical society, what can you trust?

Gary Smith served many years as a photographer at the Advocate. After he read my entries here about the sale of Clarence White's photographs by the Licking County Historical Society, his comment nailed the significance of the problem:

"The Clarence White photo sale is sad. If his photo originals get sold off, we might as well leave ours to Hall & Son or Duff’s Smorgasbord."

Exactly, because leaving anything of lasting local value (though my photos wouldn't be likely contenders) in the care of local Historical Society curators would be no more secure than leaving them to a business that could cease to exist at any time, as have Hall & Son and Duff's.

Sale of Clarence White prints: A disservice in more ways than one

Thanks to the Advocate, Licking County recently learned that its historical society is selling 13 photographs created by Clarence White, world-famous photographer whose career started in Newark Ohio. Here's the link to that Advocate report.

Also, I had written about the sale at this link and about the work and reputation and local connection of Clarence White at this Newark Tea Party gallery.

Part of the rationale for that sale, according to the society's curator, Emily Larson, is that few Newark residents are familiar with him. “'I bet if you walked around town and asked people if they had heard of Clarence H. White, they’d say no,' Larson said" in the Advocate report.

Which should have led to the question: "What's the difference?" and "How many historic icons represented in the Society's collections would be so recognized?" and "On what are you basing that statement?"

The other part of the rationale for the sale of these once-in-the-history-of-photography-and-of-Newark photographs was "lack of gallery space and proper equipment ..."

Larson was quoted by the Advocate as saying: "Profits from the sales will go toward a Clarence White Endowment that will aid in the society’s efforts to preserve permanent collections." I think the "s" on the end of the word "collection" is significant. I think it means that instead of devoting all the profits of this sale to the preservation and display of the White collection, it means, instead, that the money is for all the stuff being held by the Society.

If that's what it means, the White photos are merely one grand and very lucrative yard sale for the enrichment of the Society.

Exactly how much is realized from this sale and what it's used for will, in the end, reveal the significance of that little "s." And calling the loot from this sale a "Clarence White Endowment" is in no way going to compensate for Licking County's loss of this irreplaceable, world-class heritage from Clarence White.

Further, this sale will surely have an effect on folks with historical items that might be donated to the Society. For one thing, I hope - and I urge - the holders of the Walter White photographs, another world-class photographer whose Tea Party gallery you can see here, will never entrust them or any part of them to the Licking County Historical Society. The same with any other item that donors might suppose would be permanently kept in Licking County. The Society has done itself a great disservice in more ways than one.

Local historical society sells Clarence White photographs

...but why it is doing so is a question still to be answered

Though I have lived next to and under the professional shadow of Clarence H. White for many years, only about a year ago did it strike me that he was appreciated in far away places more than in Newark. That's when I published at the Newark Tea Party a gallery that briefly summarizes his work and his importance to the history of world photography. Here's the link to that gallery. Folks from throughout the world have visited it.

Collectors and researchers contact me, though I never pretended to be informed about any of this. The realization that White and his family are buried within walking distance of my home was my original wake-up call. From there, my web site information grew only to the point where it eventually got swallowed up by my other projects and interests, so it doesn't run deep by any means.

I am not an authority on Clarence H. White nor the history of photography, but I do know that he and his philosophy have been the subject of many scholarly books and papers. (One of them is Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography)

Nor am I a collector. I have so many of my own photographs to sort through it may never get done, and among those are so many I'd like to hang that I wouldn't take a collection of White prints if they were free, except to aid in their preservation.

Still, since there seems to be so few local folks who recognize the importance of CHW, I've been interested in seeing established locally some permanent display of his work, along with that of Walter White, who is no relation but also holds a worldwide reputation for contributions to the history of photography from the work that came out of his Newark studio. (I also have a Walter White Gallery)

To that end I visited the manager/curator of the Licking County Historical Society a few weeks ago and inquired about the CHW collection. She promised to send me a list of holdings, but failed to do so and I had not yet followed up.

Yesterday I learned that the LCHS has placed some or all of its White photographs up for auction. You can view little reproductions of these photos at the Sotheby's Auction site, if you type in the lot numbers 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, and 164 in the Lots Search box at the top of the page. When the hammer comes down April 8, 2008 Licking County will have been robbed of its (or some of its?) claim to international recognition and these works will have been scattered throughout the world.

A faraway collector of valuable photographs, including those of CHW, who knows the rules of such auctions has told me that once placed with this auction house there is no withdrawal, at least it's not at all common to do so. I think, however, a court order could stop the sale.

This sale of Clarence White's photographs is a monumental event in the cultural history of Newark and Licking County. The story of that sale and how it came about should be of interest to local media - as much or more than it is to me.

Who made that decision and why is a story Licking Countians need to be told. It is, after all, another chapter of an international story.