Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) students were pleased to be invited for a special tour of the new exhibit “Torn in Two: 150th anniversary of the Civil War” at the Osher Map Library located on the USM campus. Dr. Ronald E. Grim, curator of the Norman E. Levanthal Map Center at the Boston Public Library, where the exhibit was originally organized, led our tour. He explained why the Civil War, 1861-1865, looms large in our history and collective conscience, not only because of its brutality (700,000 soldiers died) but also because of its geographic scope from the north (merchant ships sunk by Confederate raiders off the Maine coast) to the south (the Battle of New Orleans) to the west (the Red River campaign).
The war, thoroughly documented in all types of ephemera, including maps, prints, photos, cartoons, postcards, diaries and letters, comes to life in this fascinating exhibit. Divided into three sections, “Before the War: Rising Tensions,” “During the War: Nation in Conflict” and “After the War: Remembering Heroes and Battles,” it demonstrates how people felt at the time, such as the concerns of slave holders – who will pick the cotton if slaves were freed? – or the worries of a Maine family – who would work the fields if the young men were all off to join the army? The exhibit also illuminates battles with detailed maps of Gettysburg, Bull Run and Ball’s Bluff, but I was particularly taken with an elaborate map entitled “Panorama of the Seat of War, Bird’s Eye View of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia,” a lithograph published in 1861. The exhibit will be at the Library until Aug. 22 and is well worth a visit.
The sesquicentennial of the Civil War was also celebrated by a symposium sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine Historical Society at USM’s Hannaford Hall on April 27. The audience filled the auditorium and enjoyed the two keynote speakers – Manisha Sinha, professor of Afro-American studies and history at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst with “The Great Event of the Nineteenth Century – Emancipation During the Civil War,” and Patrick Rael, associate professor of history at Bowdoin College with “Maine in the Civil War.”
Four breakout sessions were offered – Civil War photography, medical practices, the theatre, and reconstructing the war through literary imagination. Participants could choose any two and we went first to a most informative program on theatre, presented by Richard Sautter, adjunct instructor of theatre at Gettysburg College. We learned that three cities, Boston, New York and Philadelphia, each had at least three large theatres, seating over 2,000 patrons, and producing plays from September through June. It was the age of melodrama, and, since there were no microphones, actors were forced to speak slowly, loudly and always facing the audience. Libby Bischof, associate professor of history at USM, captivated her audience with enlarged photos of the battlefields, pointing out fine details in each – she suggested that you should look long and hard at each photo, a minimum of two minutes, then make a list of what you see, and only then are you ready to start analyzing the photo.
Lunch was a delicious buffet and six soldiers, in uniform, portraying the 3rd Maine Infantry Fife and Drum Corps – three playing the fife, and three on the drums – provided entertainment. They serenaded us with “Marching Through Georgia,” the “President Lincoln Quick Step” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” At the end of this most rewarding day we were glad to pick up a helpful brochure “Civil War Trail,” published by the state of Maine, that lists many of the events and museums involved in this sesquicentennial celebration of the Civil War.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is one of my favorites and I was delighted when OLLI offered a day trip to Boston – a morning at the Gardner and the afternoon at the neighboring Museum of Fine Arts. The new addition to the Gardner, a wing designed by Renzo Piano, is full of light and transparency, undeniably contemporary, but fits beautifully with the opaque and mysterious original building, constructed in the late 1800s by Isabella herself as her home and as a setting for all the paintings, furniture and objets d’art she collected while in Europe. The much-needed wing offers a space to organize the many eager tourists, and adds a shop, restrooms and cloakrooms. It also houses a spectacular auditorium for the Sunday afternoon concerts so beloved by Boston residents, allowing the fabulous Tapestry Room to be restored to its former glory.
We were thrilled to see the glorious orange nasturtiums cascading from the six third floor balconies, almost down to the center courtyard. They last for only a few weeks and garden enthusiasts come from all over New England to see them in bloom. The courtyard itself is a treasure – a mosaic of a Medusa head decorates the center of a tiled square – 4 ficus trees grow at each corner and a dolphin fountain sits at the foot of a stone staircase leading up to the second story. Blue, yellow and orange flowers are everywhere, completing the picture.
After a five-minute walk to the MFA and a quick, but satisfying lunch at the cafeteria, we set off for the American wing. On the way we stopped to crane our necks and gawk up at the murals painted by John Singer Sargent that adorn the grand staircase ceiling and rotunda at the Huntington Avenue entrance. Classical mythology abounds – depictions of Apollo and the Muses, the Sphinx and the Chimaera, Aphrodite and Eros, Hercules and the Hydra, and Perseus on Pegasus Slaying the Medusa. (Try googling the murals – there is a rewarding website that highlights the figures and you don’t have to endure a pain in your neck to see them!). On to the American wing and its wonders, (including the famous oils by John Singer Sargent), then to the bus, exhausted but satisfied with a wonderful day.
Marta Bent lives in Scarborough.
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