Abstract
Albert Albano, Executive Director of the Intermuseum Conservation Association (ICA), describes the mission and operations of the ICA and its involvement in the preservation of WPA art. Albano goes into detail about regional styles of art and specific pieces of important WPA art in Cleveland.
Loading...
Interviewee
Albano, Albert (interviewee)
Interviewer
Mitchell, Tim (interviewer); Hons, Justin (participant)
Project
Cleveland Artist Foundation: WPA Art in Cleveland
Date
8-1-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
76 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Albert Albano interview, 01 August 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 900012_901012.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/857
Transcript
Albert Albano [00:00:01] Okay, good. Carry on. Is that other stuff. Okay. That I already blabbed about? Oh, okay.
Tim Mitchell [00:00:11] Just so you know, I am going to ask you some.
Albert Albano [00:00:14] Ask me, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, why don't. Okay, maybe. Do you want to start then? Why don't you start? All right, then I'll just kind of do my thing. I'm a difficult client, man.
Tim Mitchell [00:00:27] Start with a really easy softball thing. We're here. I guess we need to get the stamp on you.
Albert Albano [00:00:33] Right.
Tim Mitchell [00:00:33] It's August 1, 2006. We're talking with Albert Albano, director of the ICA in Cleveland. Al, I'd like, if you would, to start us today with telling a little bit just about your background educationally and professionally and sort of how you got to this position.
Albert Albano [00:00:51] Today I'm the Executive Director of the Intermuseum Conservation Association, now located in Ohio City in Cleveland. The Inner Museum Conservation Association, ICA was the first not for profit art conservation preservation regional organization established in the United States in 1952 by the director of six major regional museums, which included Cleveland Museum of Art, Allen Art Museum, the Akron Art Museum, for example, with the idea that that association would provide the remedial conservation collections, maintenance, preservation planning for all of those member institutions. We now have approximately 43 members as a part of our association. The ICA provides essentially all of those services as just described, as well as does a great deal of conservation preservation work and planning and strategizing for a number of organizations which have no direct membership affiliation with the ICA, but in fact are significant stewards of art in the region. My own background, I'm a graduate of the Cooperstown Graduate Conservation Training Program, one of the three art conservation preservation training programs in the United States. I have a Master in History and Conservation and a Certificate of Postgraduate Studies in Art Conservation. I'm here at the approximately 30 years within my career I've been briefly assistant Conservator at the Guggenheim Museum, Associate Conservator of Paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Senior Conserver at the Museum of Modern Art, Director of Conservation at the Winterthur Museum and Garden in Delaware, and just prior to coming to the ICA. So now, rather than working as an employee of one major museum, I'm actually directing a staff of approximately 20 providing all of those conservation preservation services to, as I mentioned earlier, over 40 museums in the entire region, as far east as eastern New York and as far west as Indiana, Iowa, north Michigan, and as far south as West Virginia. But we also execute projects to do with organizations such as the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Kansas City, Nelson Atkins Art Museum. Depending on our in house specialization talents which each of the staff and I are recognized in the field and are called upon to provide that expertise outside of the immediate region.
Tim Mitchell [00:03:47] Can I ask you what drew you to art and art restoration in the first place?
Albert Albano [00:03:51] My family background actually is in the building industry. So I think I was always very interested in the fabrication of things and the materials and techniques used to fabricate things, although my own sensibilities did not lie in the direction of what I would call coarse, gross, larger fabrication, namely buildings and high rises, which is the things that my family did. And I was more interested in the cultural arena of the more directly man made or woman made, what have you, artisan made objects which had a greater intimacy, a greater directness in communication, linkage to the individual, and a certain level of kind of delicacy and sensitivity which I felt that the larger projects that I was exposed to through my family's business had less of a magnetism for me to connect to. So art and design have always been a great sort of focus of my life.
Tim Mitchell [00:05:00] Where did you first learn about WPA Federal Art?
Albert Albano [00:05:04] As I became involved in a specialty in 20th century art and design and architecture, sort of ancillary to art and design, it was essentially intuitive that artwork that was designed in context with architecture became kind of an obvious familiarity for me. And I became more and more exposed to that in New York, where I grew up as New York holds a very vast store of public art, much of it, of course, in public buildings, but a great deal of it associated with the fap, the Federal Arts Project and under the auspices of the Works Project Administration during the 1930s. So I think I connected to it through my exposure with my family's building business because I would encounter certain projects that would be tangential to some of the building projects that they were doing. And I was always very engaged and quite frankly inspired by the fact that somewhere in the past people felt that not only were they going to build this edifice for people to work at or live in, but that they felt that they had to embellish it in some way because the idea of being exposed to art and culture, of that type of. Would somehow enrich their either work or living experience in that building. So I think probably my earliest relationship to it came through that source. And then of course, professionally I became connected with WPA art projects, both as I've already mentioned in New York, but actually in my actual working professional life in Philadelphia, when I worked there and was called upon Based on my expertise in 20th century painting, to provide consultation, critical judgment, technical assessment of a number of public art projects related to WPA fabrication.
Tim Mitchell [00:07:08] Can I interrupt for just a second?
Albert Albano [00:07:10] All right. Anyway, I told you, it's a busy place. Got lots of stuff going on, so.
Tim Mitchell [00:07:15] Examples in Philadelphia, New York.
Albert Albano [00:07:18] Yeah, right.
Tim Mitchell [00:07:20] Let me ask you. I know as I've read more about the Federal Art Program and, you know, today I was looking at print collections at Case and things like that, you get a sense of many varieties of federal art. How would you describe- So I know there are a lot of programs. I know there are a lot of different elements. But are there sort of identifiable characteristics of the Federal Art Program that you could-
Albert Albano [00:07:45] Well, there were a number of different branches. And each is my recollection. Although this, of course, is well documented. And obviously you can corroborate all these details. But fundamentally, there were regions associated with the Federal Art Project. And within those regions, frequently there were key cities which had their own divisions. And those divisions were related to different specializations of art. For instance, there was a graphic division. Frequently there was a mural division. There was—there might have been a ceramic and sculptural division. And individuals were selected to be heads of those divisions. Frequently those selected were people who had already established some level of visibility and reputation and were chosen as a result of that visibility and reputation to direct and guide those individual urban programs. I believe that ultimately the regional program was all hierarchically answerable to the government, the main Washington branch. I think different programs had different degrees of accountability and responsibility. But I believe that there was enough of a linkage that there was some approval. There were some approval layers that had to occur depending on the scope of the project and whether the project was specifically for an individual city or whether it was designated as a regional project. And so those are some of the ideas that I can throw to that in terms of how that operation worked. But fundamentally, for obviously a more detailed description of that, we could see— I actually even have in my own collection a number of objects which, you know, I use and we have used through various components of our program. The WPA, as an example, produced booklets on how to actually do certain things to do with— The one I'm looking at right now is Technical Problems of the Artist: Technique of the Silkscreen Process by Anthony Velonis, Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration. Technical Problems of the Artist: Canvas Adhesives by Raphael Doktor. These are all small individual booklets that were published by the WPA, basically, that were provided for individuals discussing how these things could be generated. And, you know, I’ve been collecting these things for years. They're obviously very hard to find at this point, but they’re extremely useful in terms of having to deal with the preservation issues which are presented when one encounters some of these projects.
Tim Mitchell [00:10:50] Because it gives you some idea of what some of the criteria would have been made available to some of the artists working within the program criteria in terms of how they apply, how they get involved, what kinds of-
Albert Albano [00:10:54] Also how murals were- Really some very basic technical issues. For instance, some of the adhesives that might have been selected to actually attach murals to walls. Some of the specific techniques that would have been used to, in fact, install some of these murals. And these are all the kinds of technical details that can be invaluable when an organization like the ICA is called upon to engage in a conservation preservation project to do with perhaps a WPA mural. And there are any number of different types of challenges which we have been presented with the goal, ultimately, of preserving those objects in perpetuity.
Tim Mitchell [00:11:43] When we think about the murals, for example, they seem to have sort of common characteristics of style as well. Were those prescribed, do you know, in Washington, or was it sort of a regional-
Albert Albano [00:11:55] No. The style prescription is, as far as I've certainly perceived and understand, was more of a really kind of a local, regional prerequisite. And I’m not even comfortable in saying prerequisite, and I don’t believe that’s the correct word. Because, as an example, one of the most exciting WPA art projects, I believe, of the whole period — and there were many failures as well as successes — were, as an example, the Williamsburg Housing Project. And specifically, a very important abstractionist, Burgoyne Diller, who was head of the Mural Division for the WPA Federal Art Project in New York, essentially led the selection of, I believe, eight artists to produce murals for the Williamsburg Housing Project. And, in fact, those murals were either completely abstract or Precisionist, bordering on abstraction to some degree. And, as a good example, that certainly would have been perceived as rather progressive. And yet it was certainly an approved project. In fact, the proposals for those murals for the Williamsburg Housing Project were actually exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. One of the most fabulous murals produced under the auspices of the WPA was Swing Landscape by Stuart Davis, which is at Indiana University in Bloomington. Because the mural, so-called, painted by Stuart Davis, was ultimately not installed at the Williamsburg Housing Project, it still remains somewhat unclear why the mural was not installed. For a long time, the presumption was that it was rejected. But in looking at the extant documentation, which admittedly is not complete, it suggests that that may, in fact, not have been exactly correct. It might have been that the site had altered to the degree where the mural was no longer compatible with the space, or that perhaps the number of murals ultimately able to be used had altered. But regardless, the mural was not installed, and it remained under the auspices of the WPA. It was exhibited in Cincinnati in the early '40s and then ultimately lent for a 99-year lease to Indiana University in Bloomington, where it still resides today and is considered arguably one of the greatest modern American paintings by William Agee, who is a preeminent art historian to do with early American modernism. So I think that's quite a significant endorsement of how important a painting, mural, Swing Landscape, is. And yet it was never ultimately installed as part of a WPA project. On the other hand, regionally, where what is now, of course, collectively called Regionalism as a painting — I don’t know if it would be proper to call it a style, but to some degree it is caveated under that heading — people like Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, Grant Wood, these were all people who were presumably trying to incorporate their, you know, the indigenous world that they experienced in and around their own lives, which often dealt with rural subject matter. So that also had a very powerful influence. And therefore, from a regional point of view, where tastes might have been less sophisticated and less current in terms of the main urban art centers like New York or Chicago, where the European avant-garde influence would have been a bit more profound, one can say that, as you asked, were these prerequisite styles, or as much as they were the acceptable styles to the constituency who were going to be engaging with this artwork and ultimately encountering it as part of their world. And so, therefore, subject matter, namely the history of a particular area or the history of America on a broader scope, would have been subject matter that would have been more accommodating to those local sensibilities or regional sensibilities. So I would describe it more in that capacity than I would to say that it was actually a definitively rigid prerequisite.
Tim Mitchell [00:16:47] I haven't seen Swing Landscape, and I'm familiar with Stuart Davis's work.
Albert Albano [00:16:51] It was here for, oh, gosh, about eight or 10 months. We did a very large conservation campaign on Swing Landscape, partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and it was actually great fun to engage. And we made some very interesting discoveries of some alterations that had occurred as a result of some rather insensitive early restoration campaigns, which had covered some of the design elements which we happily were Able to safely reveal again. And so it being here for those months was great fun to have Bill Agee come to visit it and to talk about it. He's actually working on a catalog resume for Stuart Davis. And it was a very exciting process to discuss some of the origins of the mural and its relationship to the Williamsburg housing project and to kind of deconstruct the issues about why or why not it being installed. And so, in any event, those.
Tim Mitchell [00:17:53] Well, I guess what I was trying to get to was that is it. I mean, I get this sense there is sort of this tension between the Regionalists and Abstractionists around, you know, who will control the hearts and minds of the Federal Arts Program. It seemed like, you know, Regionalist control. I wonder, is there is one of the theories that because this had sort of abstract tendencies?
Albert Albano [00:18:19] It has been proposed that Swing Landscape had too much abstraction, which made it not suitable for incorporation in the group that was ultimately installed at the Williamsburg. However, in fact, murals that were installed by Paul Kelpie and Albert Swindon are actually far more abstract and have no even semblance of representational imagery in them, as does Swing Landscape. So clearly, Swing Landscape could have not been denied installation because of it being too abstract when other murals that were installed were far more abstract than Swing Landscape. In fact, Stuart Davis rejected the term that was used to categorize his work as abstract, and he felt that it was very specifically based on representational imagery observed in the real world, in nature, and that he tried to reference all of that material. And in fact, if you look at the. At Swing Landscape and know Gloucester, where he was actually working, as you can read about his time in Gloucester, you can actually locate some of the very components that he incorporated into that painting and identify them on site. Still to this day, as Bill Agee pointed out in a few specific, specific instances in the painting. So I think that is a myth that has been proven to be false in terms of, at least given the logic of what ultimately was installed and comparing that to his specific painting.
Tim Mitchell [00:20:19] This story sort of raises the question, though, about, you know, centers of power in Washington, regional directors of the Federal Art Program, and then sort of local consumers of the art in CMHA and places like that. Do you know how that relationship played out?
Albert Albano [00:20:37] I think, for instance, I recollect that William Milliken, who was, of course, a notable director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, was involved in some of the selection processes. And, in fact, I believe I'm remembering correctly that he made some specific choices about the muralists who were going to do some modest work at the Lakeview Terrace Housing Project. So, arguably, it appears clear that subjective choices based on whatever criteria would have been available to the individuals who were involved in the program, either directly or indirectly, and their own particular aesthetics and tastes would have obviously influenced choices. I think it's kind of interesting that, as far as I know, under the auspices, at least, of the WPA, I cannot think of any purely abstract WPA art that was fabricated for Cleveland or any that I have seen actually in Ohio. Now, there are projects that I would say are described as stylized Modernism. And you could certainly comfortably talk about people like Clarence Carter and William Sommer within that category. You might even include people like Edris Eckhardt to some degree in the enamels that she contributed some design work to, apparently for Valleyview. Or, I think, Leroy Flint, who did some interesting — I'm trying to think of some of the artists — but, again, these are stylized representational imagery, which sort of pay some homage to notions of Modernism, but for the most part are largely conventional in their representation. And I think the idea was that there was only going to be a level of acceptance that would allow the artist to push the envelope only so far in reference to the idea of abstraction. Although, again, William Sommer, particularly in the Cleveland in 1833, which he painted for Brett Hall of the Old Main Library, arguably, again, has some very, I think, quite exciting, in some cases inspired, expressionistic tendencies in the mural, which certainly are direct homages to his interest in certain aspects of Modernism, particularly with modernist color theories, if not so much with form. And he was able to get away with a fair amount of that, although he— I don’t think he ever resolved in his own mind a unified style. He was always searching, it seems to me, and many people would argue that a lot of his work is unsuccessful because it's not definitively representational of an individual style, but rather incorporations of different influences in sometimes not the most harmonious fashion.
Tim Mitchell [00:24:30] You may not know this, and I wouldn't expect it necessarily, but it's interesting that you suggest that people sort of maybe understood what there were parameters here with how far they could go. But who- Was William Milliken setting the parameters for this region so that we didn't really see sort of more abstract murals in Ohio?
Albert Albano [00:24:54] You know, actually, I'm going to— That’s a really, really good question, and I don't usually like to do this, but I've got to turn a question back on the question because it's very interesting to try to diagnose style and regional style, why it is in terms of how it becomes established and becomes a little bit of the norm. Surely there are more pronounced issues that affect that, and sometimes subtle issues that affect that. And sometimes it’s just intangibles related to the environment. Clearly, if one is in an area where issues that are more progressive in reference to art and culture are not commonly being discussed, and there’s not a significant enough critical mass that might be discussing those issues of art and culture, then, in fact, if you have more progressive ideas about those topics, you might feel more isolated. And, as a result, that isolation could very, very much make you more conservative in what you’re willing to explore, because you’re seeing that fundamentally there hasn't been much groundwork which suggests that more progressive thinking is going to be supported. So this becomes a little bit of a chicken-and-an-egg kind of formula. I mean, were there clearly defined prerequisites which sort of directed how people were to express themselves in the creative process? Or was it merely a matter of the atmosphere and the circumstances that surrounded that creative process that suggested or influenced either a timidity or a more progressive direction that artists took? I'm not so sure. I must confess that I would suspect that there may have been bits and pieces of both. Clearly, Modernism on a number of levels never really took off in Cleveland. Obviously, we know that there were people who were very powerful representatives of American modernist tendencies. People like Charles Burchfield, William Zorach, and we’ve already mentioned William Sommer to some degree, but fundamentally Hart Crane in poetry. But you can also say that people like Charles Burchfield didn't stay in Cleveland. Marguerite and William Zorach didn't stay in Cleveland. Hart Crane didn’t stay in Cleveland. And, I mean, those are just a few examples. I could go on about the condition in Cleveland artistically in the 1920s and talk about others in that arena. But the fact is that for an artist to feel comfortable in his milieu, for the most part— There are, of course, exceptions to this, people working in isolation, but for the most part, people need the camaraderie, support, support, encouragement of a small or even a group of other individuals who are like-minded and who inspire and give encouragement and support to each other. And I don't believe that that kind of environment really took root here in any significant way. I mean, there were obviously activities associated with the Kokoon Club and some activities surrounding that, but that had a very — a relatively brief — it seemed like it was a fairly parametered group of people who participated. And, for the most part, it really, compared to some of the other modernist tendencies elsewhere in the United States, even at the time, was rather restrained. I think the bigger question is about Modernism in America pre-World War II in general. How successful was Modernism in America in general pre-World War II? And it wasn’t terribly successful. I mean, I can really give a lengthy discussion of this. And obviously where, arguably, it had the strongest foothold was certainly in New York and, to some degree, in Chicago, but I think arguably predominantly in New York. And, again, there’s a critical mass that helped make that happen. In the '30s, of course, the AAA was established, the American Abstract Artists, and obviously like-minded individuals participated. And that was a whole new strain of nonrepresentational abstraction, which was quite different than the more organic abstraction of the late teens and ’20s. That was motivated in large part by the Armory Show, which obviously was exhibited in New York and Chicago. And the whole group surrounding Alfred Stieglitz and the 291 Gallery and those artists that Stieglitz supported in the teens and '20s really felt rather isolated. And there was a great moment of emerging Modernism that was European-influenced. And then the goal was to try to find a Modernism that was indigenously American. And I think there were some really, really early successes of that with people like Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Abraham Walkowitz, you know, just to name a few. I could go on. Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Morgan Russell with Synchromism, Patrick Henry Bruce, A. B. Frost. These were people who were all pushing the limits of Modernism in America. Some of which was very European-influenced, some of it was, again, trying to find some indigenous and American component of it, which is where I think the Arthur Dove and the Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe component plays in. But even they sort of adapted modernist tendencies to some aspect of representational imagery to make it — I don't want to say to make it more palatable — but because they felt that perhaps pure abstraction wasn't necessarily a totally indigenous American idiom. And therefore they tried to somehow come up with something that was genuinely inspired by American form and American history. You know, people like Joseph Stella, who was a, who actually was an immigrant, but he got real close to pure abstraction, did some of that. Even Dove did some very limited pure abstraction, or Hartley did some pure abstraction. O'Keeffe, very, very little, actually. You can count them perhaps on one hand. And it was a very, very hard sell. It was a very, very hard sell. And, you know, there was a limited number of people who were supporting it and were willing to pay for it. So, obviously, the struggle, the big struggle for the emergence of Modernism in America, had a profound influence eventually on art of the — and what became kind of the stylistically representative regional art that became a large component of the Federal Art Project, WPA, and therefore only a relatively small component of WPA art really represented pure abstraction. And, again, there is some— I made some references to it, you know. Ilya Bolotowsky did some. I haven't mentioned his name before, by the way. He did a project for the Williamsburg Housing Project as well. Even Arshile Gorky did a project which was also virtually completely abstract, I believe, for the Newark Airport. So there were examples of that. Louis Lozowick kind of pushed the envelope. Not totally pure abstraction, but I've already mentioned Paul Kelpe, Albert Swinden. So, in any event, it never fully- While it germinated and began to grow, it did not remain the, or did not become, I should say, did not ever really become the dominant style. And even where it had a strong presence, it was always challenged to some degree and was really rather confused and contained. And, as far as I have seen, given my experience, a relatively small percentage, at best, of WPA art really would be legitimately within the realm of pure abstraction.
Tim Mitchell [00:33:25] Would you suggest that New York and Chicago were more imbued with the spirit of abstractionism? Does Cleveland have a regional style that is tied to the 1930s- [inaudible] Albert Albano [00:33:40] You know, I actually think that with all of the faults that art historians might point at in reference to people like William Sommer, I do think he was attempting a style that might arguably be said to have had some sort of indigenous connection to this area. And I think that if you look at some of the work that he was doing and that Marguerite and William Zorach were doing when they were actually painting — because, of course, Zorach is most known as a sculptor — you can say that he was definitely trying to create this kind of Cubo-Futurist, Expressionist style. And I'm not using those words just accidentally, because there are components of all three of them that he actually incorporated or tried to meld together in some very personal vision that actually incorporated color symbolism as well. So he had this, you know, this kind of pantheistic view of Modernism as he perceived it in the teens. And in a way, his kind of idiom was established at that time. And he ultimately kind of played with and worked with that for the rest of his life. And whether he was more conservative in utilization of it or times a bit more liberal with it, fundamentally, it always retains some kind of component of this kind of—this kind of Expressionist, Cubo-Futurist sort of mishmash with color symbolism, which he definitely was very much influenced by. And there are some very successful examples of that. And he also was clearly very imbued with his—with nature. And he tried very much to adapt and incorporate representational aspects of nature into his work. And I think at his best, the work is very successful. But if one were to be ruthlessly critical in terms of comparing what William Sommer was doing in, let’s say, 1920 to 1930, and compare what people like Arthur Dove or Marsden Hartley were doing at that same period, or even take the five-year earlier period from 1915 to 1920, I think one would be pretty hard-pressed to compare, on an art historical stature, people like William Sommer to some of those other people who were working in and around the Stieglitz group. Actually, the interesting thing- We, by the way, have a William Sommer painting here now. Quite a nice one, which I think is extremely successful, which belongs to one of our member institutions. But what I find really fascinating, and perhaps was the problem with William Sommer, is he did share what, by all accounts, was quite a positive and influential friendship with Hart Crane for a period of time. Hart Crane did try to give some exposure to William Sommer in New York when Hart Crane had moved to New York. And he did try to sort of draw William Sommer out. And, you know, it’s one of these, I think, interesting what-ifs. Had Hart Crane been able to persuade William Sommer to allow him to show some of his work in New York and to gain some level of following, had that kind of encouragement and support come about by Hart Crane's efforts, what that might have done for William Sommer’s career, as opposed to him working largely in isolation to some— I mean, I think it's fair to call it largely in isolation and largely without any significant support that really sort of pushed him to perhaps the next level in his work and gave him the kind of encouragement that would have, you know, motivated him to continue to grow and develop. That, sadly, didn’t happen. So, in a way, you can look at William Sommer's work in the '30s and even in the '40s, and he's really not going anywhere. I mean, you could arguably pick out work in the late '10s and the '20s, even though sometimes it's hard to date his work. And you might say that his work never really got any better, which is sort of too bad, because that's always something one uses to evaluate: where does an artist get stuck in time, ultimately, and can't somehow break that barrier? And I think, sadly, one could arguably say that William Sommer never was able to go beyond a certain stylistic barrier that he may have been self-imposed to some degree.
Tim Mitchell [00:38:49] If his work is sort of the definition of a Cleveland style, is the mural in the Cleveland Public Library the best example of that or are there other examples of-
Albert Albano [00:39:04] William Sommer painted - that I believe we know - eleven murals. I’m almost certain that that's the correct number. And I think that’s broadly termed mural in that we — that is, the ICA - actually owns a three-part mural of William Sommer done, we believe, in 1927, which was done for a tavern in the Brandywine Valley in Ohio. And the myth is that it may have been done as a trade for a bar build. And whether that's really true or not, it's sort of both sad and amusing to consider the veracity of it. But that having been said, it was deinstalled from the tavern in three sections because it's painted directly on the drywall, which was nailed directly to the wood studs, which have the clapboard directly nailed to them on the opposite side. So the entire wall was cut into three sections, thrown into a corn crib in a horse barn in Millersburg, Ohio, where I found it through some assistance. People who, a man who - Actually, I should say his name was Joe Erdolak - who was a tremendous enthusiast of William Sommer and who gave me the sort of the heads-up, as it were, on the existence of this mural and a few pieces of data, which then I followed up on and was able to track it down. I actually persuaded the owner to make a donation of this three-part mural to the ICA, and we actually now have it. It needs substantial conservation and actually some reconstruction as well. We hope to install it at our building at some point. But that, even though it's in three pieces, represents, I believe, one of the eleven of his works. I know he did a mural for the Akron City School Board. He did a mural, obviously, for the Cleveland Public Library in Brett Hall. He did a mural for the Geneva-on-the-Lake Post Office in Ohio. He did, I think— I know, I know, but I'm not sure if there are two there or just one. I apologize for not remembering this—a mural which is in a lunette, as are many of the others, for Cleveland City, not City Hall. Excuse me, I think it's the Civic Center. I'm not sure what the name of that building—the old Conference Public Hall. Excuse me. And he did an overmantel mural, which is now at the Akron Art Museum. Well, those are the ones that immediately come to mind. And whether he, as I've already sort of addressed, whether we would call that a style, Cleveland style, that’s an interesting question. I suppose if we look at that whole period of 1910 to 1925, or up to that, prior to the 1930s WPA period, there were some interesting things going on which kind of were Decorative Abstraction. Excuse me, Decorative Impressionism, I would almost call, call some amount of Decorative Impressionism that. But again, is that really a Cleveland style? I'm sort of going to reserve judgment on saying that. My question, really, that I'm asking myself is that, were there ever enough people who consolidated together, either loosely or more so intently, who kind of shared and exchanged ideas and created a kind of a, sort of a self-stimulus, you know, by that interaction with each other and all working in a generic, similar fashion? I don't exactly see it. You know, again, I would arguably say that there was some sort of, you know, proto-Impressionist work, and people like, you know, Henry Keller comes to mind immediately. And I'm sort of thinking of—trying to think of some other people who I happen to think, you know, were sort of interesting Decorative Impressionists. Oh, gosh, the Warshawskys. Certainly they were working in that idiom. There were interesting people. There were quite a lot of interesting people. Paul Travis did some interesting work. But again, you know, whether that was a, whether you could group those people together in any way that would give you some sort of overlays of similarity, I would say that that presents some challenges. Although, you know, if you wanted to talk about regional representational painting, there are some stylistic similarities, but arguably there were lots of people in the United States doing that kind of work. And, you know, a lot of it now kind of colloquially comes under this heading of WPA art. But, you know, if WPA art was about the people, so to speak, you know, about the suffering and travails of the people, and were artists developing a greater social consciousness? Yes, I'd say arguably they were, to some degree. At least some amount of them were. But you could arguably say that, you know, what does that social consciousness and the trials and tribulations of the people suffering associated with the Depression have to do with, you know, an abstract mural painted by Paul Kelpe? I'd be hard-pressed to come up with some linkage.
Tim Mitchell [00:45:06] Anyway, I'm wandering a bit here, but we'll bring it back. I'm just curious about- I mean, you've talked about some of the work done here in the Cleveland area. Are there a couple of particularly important murals that work on this period?
Albert Albano [00:45:19] Yeah, there are some very important ones. In fact, I— I think two that we have here as we speak, and that is here being at the ICA, which I think are really worthy of note because they were painted by one of the relatively few African American WPA artists, Elmer Brown. And those were painted for the Valleyview housing project, along with a third mural by Louis Grebenak, which actually is quite accomplished and I think worthy of some note. But I think, from a sociological point of view, the Elmer Brown murals are quite significant, if nothing more. Although they are— They're quite accomplished from a muralist perspective. In terms of subject matter, one has to do with contemporary Cleveland, which actually even shows Elmer Brown with a palette in his hand in the right-hand corner of the mural, and the pendant to the mural, which essentially exhibits kind of this agglomeration of representative images associated with the history of Cleveland, which is kind of interesting in comparison to each other. So those are important because they're quite representative of the current social structure to some degree, as much as one can represent, I suppose, realistically in a mural of 16 feet. But it also suggests, I think, a very interesting perspective because of them having been fabricated by, as I said earlier, one of the few African American WPA muralists. And so those are quite significant, and I think they have more than just a local, that is, city significance, but actually have a regional significance, again because of the status of the artist who painted them. Those, I think — certainly the William Sommer mural, The City in 1833, is not an insignificant — and I think the Public Auditorium murals, because they are essentially a kind of a collection, as it were, of a really interesting — and this is my perhaps somewhat hyperbolic phrase — encyclopedic range of the muralists working in Cleveland under the auspices of the WPA, all of whom had the opportunity, or many of whom had the opportunity, to produce a mural at Public Auditorium. Sadly, those murals are rarely ever seen. They are— Not only are they obscured by the fact that there's virtually no lighting in any significant way that allows you to view them, but Public Auditorium is not readily accessible to view. And, you know, so I lament a little bit, and that's quite typical and, in a way, sort of symbolic to me, sadly, about the status of WPA art in Cleveland in general, that it has been terribly undervalued by its stewards to the extent that, at best, it has been subject to benign neglect. At worst, it has been subject to abuse and damage, if not destruction. And that, of course, is very tragic. And there's nothing more painful in my mind than being labeled a destroyer. And it's very shortsighted not to see the value that this art has for the community currently, as well as the value it certainly had for the community in the 1930s when it was fabricated. Although clearly we are a very different world now than we were 70 or 80 years ago. Nonetheless, I believe the art still has very meaningful significance to the community. And it's all a matter of having it properly respected and incorporated back into a viable lifestyle, albeit different than what its role may have originally had. And I do feel that there are some projects that are, at least, in play in some cases to establish or reestablish the significance of some of that art. And I'm thrilled that I and the staff at ICA are involved in some of those. So that's a good thing. But the job is a long way from being done. And I hope that, you know, we can continue to develop positive public relations on this topic, and that through the kinds of things that you guys are doing right now, by talking to me and others, that there's, again, will help build the critical mass about the awareness of the value of this work, about the sheer quantity of it and its actual aesthetic value, certainly its cultural significance, giving dimension and richness to the lives that we have, I think, today and the way we interact with our community. So, you know, I suppose I have a very strong perspective of this. But given all of the miserable things that go on in the world, to me it seems like preserving culture is a wonderful thing to not only be doing, but to enliven one’s enthusiasm about why we keep going as opposed to giving up. So, in any event, my little speech about that.
Tim Mitchell [00:51:03] That was a good speech. I know that you and Walter Leedy were involved in a sort of a rescue mission of a mural at Shaw High School, I think.
Albert Albano [00:51:16] Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. Walter, who I have the highest regard for — I don't probably need to overly embellish that — but who's been so committed to the community from a cultural perspective. But he lives in East Cleveland, very close to East Cleveland's Shaw High School, and was in the building actually only days before the demolition contractors were actually going to take control of the building. And you might want to know that once a demolition contract begins, in terms of the date, anything in the building or on the site becomes their ownership. They own it because it's scrap. Fortunately, Walter knew — or believed, perhaps, would be more accurate — that there had been a WPA mural created for Shaw High School and did actually do some exploratories and poked around and tried to find it, did come upon a logical location where it might be. And, and, in fact, there was a very large drywall and two-by-four wood soffit that had been built over and out from a very, very large fireplace in what had been the lunchroom eating space in the high school. Bashed a hole through the drywall and with his flashlight actually looked in, and about three feet back from the edge of the soffit he clearly saw a mural. And he called me about that in the morning of a particular day - I don't recall, it may have been a Monday or Tuesday - and told me that in two days the demolition company was going to take possession of the building, and could I come down and look at this, and if there's anything, could we do about it. I went down that very afternoon with one of my staff. We examined the circumstances, did some forensics to try to get some idea of what would be involved in our attempting, at best, to save this mural before it was either destroyed or taken, but more likely destroyed in the demolition of the building. And we came up with a plan that we fabricated more or less on site based on the criteria we could draw, since we couldn't actually crawl in the soffit and do any direct experiments on the mural to determine what particular adhesive had been used to adhere it to the wall. Which is a very critical issue because it meant planning an intervention that would have mandated various types of protection to the surface of the mural so that it would not be damaged in the deinstallation process, if the deinstallation was even possible. Because some adhesives that were used during that period to install murals are very intractable and, in fact, require some very, very complex intervention in terms of protecting the surface of the paint film so that it is not stressed and ultimately damaged by that deinstallation process. And without going into those details, suffice it to say we said we would do something. We wanted to save this mural. We would do as much as we could. We literally mobilized our forces. We have a very good resource team of staff, and we had some dialogues with the stewards that remained in the administrative section of the building, which wasn’t going to be pulled down, to actually convince them of the value of our saving this mural, which did take some effort, believe it or not. But nonetheless, they agreed that we would be allowed to save this mural and that they would remain the owners of it. We're not in the— We were a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit. This was not deinstalling it so we could make it our own, obviously, but there was some kind of confusion on their part about — exactly — even though it was going to be destroyed, letting anybody even take it. Very, very rather odd set of circumstances, but nonetheless we were able to be given permission to do that. The very next day, we set up the site, prepared to actually demolish this soffit, which took— We did that. We had no construction team to do that for us. We had some of our technicians work that. And we were able to get that sorted out. We didn’t have a lot of time, and I believe by the afternoon we had done all the demoing. It was quite a colossal mess, but without any damage to the mural. We then did some surface protection to the mural, which is called facing, a facing system, which sort of obscures the paint surface by adhering various types of tissue or fabric to it with reversible material so that it can be removed, obviously, after, but so that it'll be held in place and to hold all the paint film securely while you actually try to deinstall the mural. We had various scaffolding systems that we set up, and we proceeded to do a deinstallation. It began that afternoon, continued the next day, and actually had it deinstalled by the end of that second day. And it was put on a large-diameter roll. It was brought to the ICA's climate-controlled fine arts storage facility, where it still resides. And my idea — or actually I should really credit Walter with this because we've talked about this — but I believe actually Walter originally suggested, rather casually, that wouldn't it be a very interesting idea, and perhaps to give relevancy, contemporary relevancy, to this 1939 mural, which shows the various activities of the 1939 student body, which, given the phenomenally altered demographics in East Cleveland today, that very factually there are no African American faces in that mural. Which is, I think, a sad reality of the demographics of the 1930s, but it's simply what it was. And our thought was, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if the school could commission contemporary artists — not making it, I don't mean contemporary stylistically necessarily, but contemporary as in alive — to paint a mural, or perhaps even have a student project, or any number of possible angles of this, but a way of painting a pendant to this mural which would represent the activities of the student body today. And lo and behold, it would connect the history of Shaw High School to the present, which is truth and represents the reality of what that truth was in the 1930s and what it is in the 21st century. And I think it would be a very exciting way to develop a little lineage for the new building, which in a way obliterated all of the history that existed in the original Shaw High School, which, of course, was completely demolished. And this is, as far as I know, the only remaining vestige of that original building. So somehow it's a way of looking forward to the future, but nodding to some degree to the past and showing some respect for the history of where we came from. And I think that would be a wonderful way of somehow incorporating that new mural — excuse me, the original WPA mural — into a new project. Anyway, that's kind of the idea.
Tim Mitchell [00:59:16] What happens if that doesn't happen? I mean, in the meantime, I mean, you're holding, you're holding the mural.
Albert Albano [00:59:22] It has been here under our stewardship. It is being held at again, our climate control fine arts storage, free of charge. And we did all of the work, and I mean the entire project of the deinstallation for no charge. And I'm not trying to blow the ICA's horn as much as I'm simply saying that was contributed as a public service and a very committed public service, and the desire to obviously save this mural from destruction with the hope that someone would show some interest in preserving it. And I must say, given the many, many projects and agendas and directions that we're working on, that is obviously not my main priority. But I, I would love there to be some sort of interested party within East Cleveland or within the, on the school board of East Cleveland, perhaps, who would show some interest in resurrecting this mural. It does need a relatively modest conservation campaign, although it's by no means terribly expensive. And given the vast sums of money, which have of course been expensive in the demolition of the original building and in the new building, arguably spending perhaps $20,000 or roughly speaking, for the conservation of the original mural, does not seem by any means exorbitant. But again, I have no direct involvement in any aspects of the municipality, school system, board of trustees of the school system in East Cleveland. So I just don't, I don't know what's going to come of it, but right now it is here.
Tim Mitchell [01:01:18] Have you been involved in recovering other Federal Arts?
Albert Albano [01:01:21] We have the Valleyview housing project, which was one of the largest public art project in the late 1930s, again under the auspices of WPA. I believe it would have been the Federal- Well, it may have been HUD involvement. I don't know. I don't know. If HUD existed in the 1930s and Federal Housing Authority, perhaps it would have been now, of course, CMHA. In any event the- For the moment we'll refer to it as the Federal Housing Authority, which was involved in developing the Valleyview housing project, which was quite a progressive project for its time. And in a way it incorporated some of the socialist theories of that had affected mass housing projects that were quite prominent in Germany during the 1920s by the Tout brothers, Max and Bruno Tout. And very, very much is an adapted Americanized version of what were quite extensive housing projects that were being developed in Germany in the 1920s. And certainly people in America were aware of those trends. And interestingly, Valleyview really did represent actually an excellent example of some of those quite avant garde concepts in social housing. That having been said, they incorporated quite a range of artwork. Three murals, 24 sgraffito superficially glazed terracotta panels and a approximately 175 piece bas relief superficially glazed lo fi terracotta mural which represented a map of the Valleyview housing project, as well as industrial vignettes which incorporated into the design of that bas relief. And eight glazed bas relief terracottas of children and animals at play for one of the children's rooms in the community center. And a series of playground animals made of monolithic casts of concrete which represented a squirrel, a walrus, a bear, a frog. Well, those four immediately come to mind and they were made in duplicates or triplicates. There are eight, excuse me, nine of which remain in a very sad state of preservation. I'm sorry to report, although largely intact, which were deinstalled prior to the site's demolition, along with all of the different types of terracotta as described a moment ago. And the three large murals that I mentioned earlier, two by Elmer Brown and one by Louis Grebenak. The Elmer Browns are approximately 16 feet long and the Grebenak is approximately 37 feet long. And they're very significant projects, the intent of which is to do conservation campaigns on all of those materials described and have them reincorporated back into the community either on site or at different sites at venues which will allow even greater public access than the new Valleyview housing site would permit.
Tim Mitchell [01:05:52] Walter Leedy had mentioned that it sounded like the murals were going to be reset at CSU in the Student Life Building.
Albert Albano [01:06:00] Right. There has been extensive negotiation between CSU and CMHA for CSU to take on a lend-lease program, as it were. The three murals, which will be put into the new student center building at CSU, that I believe will be designed by Gwathmey and Siegel, which is to be a $40 million project—very, very significant. We're all hoping for the best on that. And, in effect, what I think is a very exciting possibility here is that the murals, which are ultimately the most vulnerable and require the most significant conservation campaigns, will be incorporated, as we are hoping, in a public venue that will even have greater accessibility by the public, as I suggested a moment ago, than they would have if they were at Valleyview. And, in fact, what to me is exciting is—is that one of the murals being about the history of Cleveland by Elmer Brown, the other one being a contemporary perspective of Cleveland in the 1930s. So, in fact, the Elmer Brown murals are not even really about the Valleyview housing project, but actually about Cleveland. So they have a much broader significance to the community and, in a way, deserve a greater visibility than if they were just at a specific site in a housing project for the constituents there. The Grebenak is about building construction, fabrication, has some very, very interesting Renaissance design-influenced foreshortening in the construction — I mean, in the imagery representing the construction — and would be a wonderful mural talking about building and the future and development. So that also has some exciting possibilities. The enamels have a multiple life in the future. We have talked about doing a reconstruction of the enamels, as they are substantially damaged, as I suggested, and doing molds of the results and then being able to make new casts of these animals and not only put some of them back at Valleyview housing, but use them or sets of them elsewhere as public art projects in Cleveland. The bas-relief, the large multi-piece bas-relief, hopes to be incorporated back at the new Valley View, as appropriate, since it is a map of the old Valleyview. And I think, what a wonderful, again, connection to its history, as will these sgraffito tiles, I believe. And there are various very creative ideas that are being put on the table for discussion about that. And all I can do is continue to contribute my ideas and my energy to help bring that to fruition. And we'll hope for the best.
Tim Mitchell [01:09:13] ICA holds all the pieces. Are we doing okay here for time?
Albert Albano [01:09:16] Yeah, you know what I mean? Let's keep going because we're already, you know, I got, you know, whatever, finish your deal and then, because I do want to check all my stuff before I split for the day, you're probably bored stiff anyway. Probably talked enough.
Tim Mitchell [01:09:28] Well, actually, I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
Albert Albano [01:09:30] Oh, good, good, good, good. Keep talking. I just want to see how many. Go ahead. I'm listening. I'm just checking out these looney because I get all these goofy thing- Believe me, I can multitask. Trust me.
Tim Mitchell [01:09:42] Well, you know, Sharon Dean's doing this exhibit in the fall. I'm just curious. Is there any chance that she could show something like that, that mural from Shaw High School?
Albert Albano [01:09:53] I think that's an excellent idea as a possibility. Sadly, it needs conservation and it has graffiti scribbled on it. There's paint damage. As I mentioned earlier, it is not actually an extensive conservation campaign, but it still requires some amount of resources economically to make that happen. But it would be. Actually. In fact, the good piece of news about it is it's not very big, and therefore it makes it manageable from a point of view of exhibiting. I'd have to refresh my memory on it, but I'm thinking it might be approximately 6ft by 12ft, which is not very large. I mean, it may sound large to you, but given the scope of some of these murals, it's not very large. So that is an interesting idea. And as I sort of suggested earlier, it has not remained at the. At the surface, or should I say at the center of my radar scope. So therefore, it hadn't occurred to me that, gee, this might be a mural that could be exhibited. But the problem, again, is it needs to get the conservation activity directed towards it. And without the resources to do that, there might be. It's not a lot of money. As I said, I'd have to check my paperwork, but I believe it was approximately in the range of about $20,000, which, relatively speaking, is not a lot of money. Not these days. But that having been said, that's what's involved.
Tim Mitchell [01:11:35] Are there digital photographs of [crosstalk] all the-
Albert Albano [01:11:39] Yeah, yeah, we have images of all of the murals that I've discussed and certainly images of all of the other material I've had to send- And in fact, I'll actually read this to you. Well, let me see if it's prudent of me to do that. But it's got to do with the murals from Walter. Can we turn that off for a second? I don't want to say the wrong thing here. Yeah.
Tim Mitchell [01:12:04] Can we go back on?
Albert Albano [01:12:05] Yeah, yeah, we can go back on.
Tim Mitchell [01:12:06] You know, it does seem like there's been a recent resurgence, maybe, in the exhibit that Sharon Dean's claiming this fall as an example, in WPA. Why do you think that's so? I mean, what is-
Albert Albano [01:12:11] Well, that's a good question. I'd like to believe, although I think this is probably delusional, is that somehow there's a, you know, in this current- The currency of life today has become more and more — and I believe this is very, very sad — about disconnecting and about losing an association with others and so much more about the self and more and more about self-satisfaction. You know, people looking and listening, walking down streets with their iPods, and people blabbing on cell phones, and people going to safe, homogeneous, you know, lifestyle centers like Legacy Village so that they don't have to connect and be part of the others or people who are not like me and who don't drive the same car and who are not the same color and who are not the same economic lifestyle. And maybe there is something still that's innate about a lot of us who grew up in neighborhoods, at least certainly generationally, who had some connection to urban centers and the idea of a real neighborhood, and people who have moved to Aurora and Solon who are not in a neighborhood but in these plunked-down-in-cornfield communities. And maybe they're missing something. Maybe people are wanting— There's this void that they're looking to fill. And perhaps that art of the 1930s, even if it's really misunderstood, and we have this kind of nostalgia about a time that never really was the way we envision it, but nonetheless seems to be in our kind of superficial knowledge base, at least that most people hold about the past. It was about people, and it was about people connecting and people helping each other and people being engaged and participating in the same challenges. And maybe — and I did say I think this is delusional — that maybe there's this desire to somehow seek something that was bigger than ourselves and that somehow was yet about ourselves. And there's something very strong that's both latent and, you know, really overt in a lot of WPA art that really does speak to the idea of socialization and the idea of the collective group in a positive way. And many of those images talk about the struggles of our ancestors. And a lot of them are about the history of pioneering and moving from one locale to another and about farming and sort of creating a new environment and about sort of development with airplanes and building bridges. And somehow all of that seems like it was part of a very positive moment in our life, which in many — for many people — maybe is lost. And yet there's this desire to fill that void any way we can. And somehow maybe there's something in that art which is accessible and speaks to that longing soul, you know? I don't know. Hey, man, I don’t know. Whatever.
Tim Mitchell [01:15:34] Anything else you'd like to add?
Albert Albano [01:15:35] Nah, I don't know. I think that's about it. [crosstalk] No, I mean, I'm just really pleased that you guys are doing this. And the more people who become aware of it, I think the greater opportunity for that connectedness, I think in some way. And I think that bodes well for the survival of the art. And I do think it has something to say to us. I really do. I think it has value. And if we lose that art through a loss of our interest in what it had to offer us, man, I think we'll lose something very vital about ourselves. And I hope that doesn't happen because we need all the help we can get.
Tim Mitchell [01:16:18] Anyway, did you have any questions you wanted to add in?
Justin Hons [01:16:23] No, I don't, actually. I mean, I think you covered quite a bit.
Tim Mitchell [01:16:30] Good. Hey, good body dodging and- [inaudible]
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
