Preface and Acknowledgments

Hoving, Kirsten

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Preface and Acknowledgments

Kirsten Hoving

Joseph Cornell and Astronomy: A Case for the Stars

A VIVID CHILDHOOD MEMORY FROM THE EARLY 1960s: I stand with my father in our front yard on a warm summer night as we watch the communications satellite Echo blink its way across the sky...

Author

Kirsten Hoving

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23755

Preface and Acknowledgments

A vivid childhood memory from the early 1960s: I stand with my father in our front yard on a warm summer night as we watch the communications satellite Echo blink its way across the sky. It is an intimate moment. Neither of us can really comprehend how the satellite got there, why it stays up, how it knows where to go, or what it means for the future. Nor can we do anything but marvel at the infinite universe in which Echo is just a tiny, man-made speck. So we just hold hands and look until our necks get stiff, marveling at our place among the stars, at that moment, in our yard.

My businessman father liked to look at the stars, although the telescope we gave him one Christmas was still in its dusty box when he died. He taught me the few constellations he knew: the Big Dipper with its Pole Star, Orion’s bright belt, and Cassiopeia, whose W-shaped form I could almost always find. On hot nights I would sit up in bed and try to see them from my window, looking between the branches of the trees that blocked my view. There was nothing terribly scientific about it. It was just something I liked to do.

Like many young girls of my era, I firmly resisted math and science, putting my energies instead into drawing and writing. Still, the space age seduced me: in fourth grade I taped pictures of astronaut Alan Shepard on my closet door; in sixth grade I painted copies of the Redstone rockets illustrated in my Golden Book of Space Flight; in junior high I belonged to a girls’ club called “Friendship 7,” named after the space capsule in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. If algebra hadn’t been so hard, I might have dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Instead, in college I majored in art, primarily because it was the only course of study that exempted students from my university’s math and science requirements, which I firmly believed would sink my academic career. In my first art history course—Modern Art—I encountered the work of Joseph Cornell, who had been given a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum four years earlier. As a frustrated ballerina, I identified with his dancing lobsters, and many years of playing with my neighbor’s dollhouse prepared me for a shock of recognition when I encountered his miniature worlds.

Not until much later did I find the link between Cornell’s work and my own fond memories of the stars. By then, as a historian of modern art and photography, I had begun to tiptoe ever-so-gingerly into the field of art and science. I published articles about Man Ray’s surreal photographs of mathematical objects and Jackson Pollock’s paintings of the night sky. I discovered a scholarly group of scientists and humanists who met to present their interdisciplinary research, and I delivered several papers at universities and planetariums. I became increasingly intrigued by the possibilities of examining art in relation to science, and I thought I might write a short article on Cornell and astronomy. The result is this book.

Research on Cornell can be both exciting and daunting. Scholars have access to a prodigious wealth of archival material: letters, diary notes, and source material files in the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art (formerly twenty-four and a half running feet of documents available on over twenty rolls of microfilm, now, thankfully, available in digitized form with a comprehensive finding guide), as well as over two hundred large boxes of notes, additional source materials, clipping files, and books that belonged to the artist, housed in the Joseph Cornell Study Center of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Painstaking study of these materials has enabled me to understand Cornell’s fascination with astronomy, and I have learned what I now know about science by following in his tracks: reading the same books he did, examining the newspapers and magazines of his day, studying the sources from which he clipped materials for his artworks. In the process, Cornell has taken me on marvelous journeys back and forth in time and space, on paths illuminated by his fascination for science, his spiritual convictions, and his creative genius.

Along the way, many individuals have shared their expertise and enthusiasm for Cornell with me. At the Joseph Cornell Study Center, Betsy Anderson spent countless hours overseeing my examination of the Cornell materials in her care. I could not have written this book without her good-humored support, and she has my deepest thanks. The staff of the Archives of American Art supplied me with a long summer’s worth of microfilm, fulfilling my requests with prompt efficiency, and more recently Wendy Hurlock Baker has assisted me with scans for this book. In Washington, DC, collector Robert Lehrman shared his knowledge about Cornell with me, and I am indeed grateful to Aimee and Robert Lehrman for access to their wonderful collection. Many staff members of museums and galleries enabled me to examine Cornell’s works first-hand, and I appreciate their assistance. I also thank the private collectors who permitted me to reproduce works from their collections. Curators at museums and observatories were instrumental in providing information and illustrations, and I am especially grateful to Richard Sorenson, Robin Witmore, John Grula, Lynda Hartigan, and many others for their efforts. Ed Blomquist at the Christian Science Monitor efficiently aided with images and permissions. At Middlebury College, I have been helped by able and enthusiastic research assistants, including Gale Berninghausen, Ljudmila Bilkic, Jessica Brozyna, Susanna Gorski, Elisabeth Emmons Hahn, and Sara Blaise Huddleston.

I am extremely fortunate to have received several grants in support of this project. A fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities helped fund a sabbatical year (any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities). My appointment as a Short-Term Visitor at the Smithsonian American Art Museum enabled me to spend an extended period of time at the Joseph Cornell Study Center. A course-release grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided welcome time to complete the manuscript. In the early stages of this project, research funds attached to my position as Charles A. Dana Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College enabled me to publish an article about Cornell’s 1936 Soap Bubble Set in the journal American Art; an expanded version of that article appears in chapter 2. Support from the Voyager Foundation, courtesy of Aimee and Robert Lehrman, Washington, DC; the Society for the Preservation of American Modernists; the Middlebury College Publication Subvention Fund; and funds related to my Charles A. Dana Professorship also helped underwrite the costs of illustrations and permissions.

I sincerely thank my colleagues in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College for their forbearance as I single-mindedly immersed myself in Cornell and his art. Special thanks go to Dana Barrow for her enviable expertise and attention to detail in scanning illustrations and other digital matters. This book would not have been completed without her hours of skillful help with illustration preparation. My appreciation also goes Mary Lou Splain, Megan Battey, and Monica McCabe for their assistance with administrative matters and image technology, and to the staff of the Middlebury College Library for seeing to my research needs. I am especially indebted to several individuals at the college who deserve thanks for having read and commented on portions of my manuscript as it took shape: Dana Barrow, image technologist; Leger Grindon, film historian; Helen Reiff, editor; George Todd, musician and composer; Andy Wentink, dance historian; and Rich Wolfson, physicist. Their comments enabled me to consider Cornell’s art from a wide variety of perspectives. Conversations with other Cornell scholars, especially Stephanie Taylor, further expanded my view of the artist and his work. At Princeton University Press, Hanne Winarsky believed in this book from the outset. I owe her a deep debt of gratitude for her enthusiastic support and wise guidance. My heartfelt thanks also go to copyeditor Anita O’Brien and the production staff at Princeton University Press, who helped make this book a reality.

My deepest appreciation is reserved for art historian Wendy Grossman and her husband, John Greathouse, who supported this project every step of the way. Their hospitality and friendship made my many trips to Washington especially enjoyable. Wendy’s contagious enthusiasm about art and her careful reading of my manuscript were invaluable, while John’s humor never failed to provide a needed lift at the end of a long day. Finally, I thank my children, Emma and Annie Powell, who almost always remembered to ask “How’s Joseph?” when they called home from college, and, most of all, my husband, Rick Clark, whose steadfast love and quiet companionship sustain me. To Rick, I dedicate this book.

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