Helen C. Gunsaulus: Collector and Curator

Frank and Helen Gunsaulus, 1915

Frank W. Gunsaulus is a recurring character in the story of the Alice T. Miner Museum, appearing most recently in our last post as a mutual friend and fellow collector of Alice and Emma B. Hodge. The close relationship between the Miners and Frank Gunsaulus extended to the rest of the Gunsaulus family and particularly his youngest daughter, Helen. As a young woman, she worked closely with her father to curate and research his collections, and eventually came to occupy an important position in the Chicago museum world in her own right. A recognized expert in Japanese art, she cataloged Alice Miner’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints in 1927.

Helen C. Gunsaulus was born in 1886 in Baltimore, Maryland, where her father was the pastor of Brown Memorial Church. The following year, Rev. Gunsaulus was called to the Plymouth Congregational Church and the family settled in Chicago. Helen attended Ferry Hall School, a girls’ preparatory academy in Lake Forest, Illinois, and then went to the University of Chicago, graduating in 1908. Like many young women of her class and background, she spent a year traveling in Europe after completing her formal education. 

Helen’s work in museums began through her own collecting (a selection of surimono from her collection was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1912) and her work with her father. In 1916, Frank Gunsaulus donated his collection of Japanese sword mounts to the Field Museum of Natural History, and Helen took on the task of preparing a catalog. Three years later, she was formally hired as assistant curator of Japanese ethnology, which (as the museum’s annual report stated) would permit “the systematic and intelligent study and disposition of considerable material in this division...Miss Gunsaulus brings to the work she has undertaken, studious habit and special training, with enthusiasm and aptness for museum practice, as the work thus far done upon the collections in this division gives evidence.” 

Helen Gunsaulus in her office
at the Art Institute, 1920s

In the early 20th century, as more white, middle- and upper-class women were joining the workforce, they found the museum field one of the most friendly and open to them. Unlike professions like law and medicine, which had educational and licensing requirements that were difficult for women to meet, museum work had no universal qualifications. The world of art could also be seen as an extension of the domestic sphere. Women like Helen Gunsaulus, who came from well-to-do families and had been raised to appreciate art and had the means to travel, in addition to being college-educated, were in many ways ideal museum workers.

In 1926, Helen became assistant curator of Oriental Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Although the Department of Oriental Art was only established in 1921, the museum had been collecting Japanese prints and other artworks since the early 1900s and had presented a groundbreaking exhibits of prints (organized by Frank Lloyd Wright) in 1908. Clarence Buckingham’s extensive Japanese print collection was first shown in 1915 and was formally accessioned in 1925. After the death of long-time curator Frederick Gookin in 1936, Helen Gunsaulus took over as Curator of the Clarence Buckingham Print Collection. Though Japanese prints were her specialty, she also wrote on a variety of other subjects, including Japanese textiles, clothing, and masks, Near Eastern embroidery, and Persian pottery.

Helen Gunsaulus (far right) at Heart’s Delight Farm, 1917

It was shortly after her appointment as curator of Oriental art that Helen came to Chazy to catalog Alice Miner’s collection of Japanese prints. The print collection had been assembled by Emma Hodge, perhaps with Helen’s advice. After her visit, Helen wrote to William Miner, saying, “Do not ever mention being indebted to me and mine after all of the generous and beautiful evidences of your friendship. I can never ever repay either if you for your kindness. Anything I can do for you is the greatest satisfaction to me. It was a pleasure to work on the prints and I learned a great deal in studying them and working out their meanings and the names of their makers.” 

Helen lived in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood with her partner, Helen Mackenzie, who also worked at the Art Institute of Chicago (first as curator of the Children’s Museum, and later as the curator of the Gallery of Art Interpretation). They both retired in 1943 and moved to their summer home on Cape Cod, where they were active members of the community, organizing exhibits and other programs at the South Yarmouth public library. When Helen Gunsaulus died in 1954, her extensive collection of Japanese prints went to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sources:

Information about Helen Gunsaulus’s life was drawn from census and other records available through Ancestry.com, articles in the Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, Field Museum publications, and the Chicago Tribune.


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A Partner in Collecting: Emma B. Hodge

Publicity photo of Emma B. Hodge

After Alice T. Miner herself, the individual who probably did the most to shape the way the museum looks today is Emma B. Hodge. Her influence is most evident in the ceramic collection, which Alice acquired under her mentorship, but she also donated books, textiles, Japanese prints, and ephemera such as Valentines. An early collector of American folk art, Hodge also played an important role in the Art Institute of Chicago as a patron and a donor.

Emma Blanxius was born in 1862 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the daughter of Christian and Amelia Petterson Blanxius. Like Alice, Emma came from a large family and had three older sisters. By 1870, the Blanxius family had moved to Chicago and as a teenager Emma—whose parents were both immigrants from Sweden—joined the Freja Society, a Swedish and Norwegian choral group. Through the Freja Society she met Walter Hodge, an English immigrant working in a dry-goods store. They were married in 1879 and had three children.

Frank Gunsaulus (left), Emma Hodge (second from right),
and other Central Church Choir members at Heart’s Delight

The 1900 census shows that by that time Hodge was a widow living with her children, her mother, and her sister Jene (both also widowed). She supported her family as a professional musician, singing in the choir of the Central Church in Chicago. This nondenominational church had been established in 1875 and was as much a theatrical venue as it was a religious one. Music was a focal point of its services, and in 1879 it had moved into the newly built Central Music Hall, a multi-use building that held shops and offices along with an auditorium. Emma Hodge had previously been a member of the Plymouth Congregational Church choir, but when its pastor, Frank W. Gunsaulus, moved to Central Church in 1899, she came with him. In addition to singing at church services, the Central Church quartet performed widely throughout the United States, often accompanying Gunsaulus in “musical lectures.”

Quilts from Emma Hodge’s collection on display at
the Art Institute of Chicago, 1915

It’s not clear if Alice Miner originally met Emma Hodge through her friendship with Frank Gunsaulus, or the other way around, but the three of them shared interests in collecting books, ceramics, textiles, and other decorative arts, and were early supporters of the Art Institute of Chicago. Between 1912 and 1915, Hodge and her sister, Jene Bell, lent and then donated over one thousand pieces of American and English ceramics to the Art Institute in honor of their mother Amelia. Hodge also became interested in collecting textiles, particularly quilts and samplers. To Hodge, quilts represented “the story of American women from Jamestown and Plymouth down; the story of their thoughts and hopes and dreams, as well as the skill of their fingers.” Though Hodge and her fellow Colonial Revival-influenced collectors tended to romanticize the past, they also were some of the first people to recognize quilts, samplers, and other women’s work as art.

Embroidered Russian towel
Art Institute of Chicago,
gift of Emma Hodge (1919)

Emma Hodge also understood the power of art and museums to shape public opinion. In 1918 she organized an exhibit at the Art Institute of textiles from Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Russia—all areas that experienced profound suffering during World War I. As one newspaper reporter observed, knowledge of what was currently happening in those regions “looms like a ghost at the feast of enjoyment of color and design.” The beauty of the textiles stood in contrast with the suffering of their makers, and helped to humanize people who might otherwise have seemed distant and foreign to Americans. By generating sympathy for those ravaged by the “war machine,” the exhibit also had the potential to encourage support for organizations like the Red Cross.

Hodge’s 1918 textile exhibit was held in Gunsaulus Hall, a recently opened addition to the Art Institute which had been funded by a $50,000 gift from William and Alice Miner. Even as the Miners turned more of their attention to Chazy and Heart’s Delight Farm, they remained connected to Chicago’s art world through friends like Emma Hodge. As for Emma, she became nationally known as an expert in antiques, and was the frequent recipient of queries from people who believed—or hoped—that they were the owners of some rare and valuable piece. As her obituary notice in the Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago stated, “It was often her uncheering task to reply that these cherished possessions were worth little or nothing, a duty she accomplished with rare tact and kindness.” Until the end of her life in 1928, she remained an “enthusiast and delver into the historical past,” and an “unfailing and patient adviser of the new collector.”

Sources:

In 1924, Emma Hodge presented Alice Miner with a massive scrapbook of newspaper clippings, programs, photographs, and other material about herself and their mutual friend Frank Gunsaulus. Much of the information in this post comes from the scrapbook. Information was also drawn from Judith A. Barter and Monica Obniski, For Kith and Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012). 

Seville to Chazy in 400 Years

In 1918, before plans for a museum in Chazy had been drawn, Alice T. Miner purchased what would become one of the most extraordinary pieces in her collection. It is double-sided page, or leaf, from a gradual, (a liturgical book containing chants for the Christian Mass), created on vellum, framed with one side showing. This gradual leaf measures approximately 24" x 35". The book within which it was once contained was made large enough for the entire choir to read. The front of the leaf has four lines of text and line staves with musical notations. There is a wide illuminated panel border on all four sides, and the first letter of the first word is an historiated, or enlarged, initial letter "D", with a miniature of Saint Paul seated with pen and scroll. The "D" begins Psalm 69:1, "Deus in adiutorium meum intende" God, come to my aid...

Detail of Saint Paul seated with pen and scroll, The Alice gradual leaf

Alice Miner purchased the gradual leaf through her friend, Frank Gunsaulus, a 20th century collector of rare books, manuscripts, and decorative arts. The manuscript has resided at The Alice since the first years of the museum, and many visitors have marveled at its vibrant colors, showcasing the skill of the illuminator, and how the rich colors have survived all of these years. It was created in Spain between 1430-1490. Alice's gradual leaf was the work of the Master of the Cypresses, so named for the characteristic cypress trees that he created which appear in a series of more than 80 miniatures in twenty-two choir books in the Cathedral of Seville, Spain. Dr. Gunsaulus, a Presbyterian Minister and educator, donated another gradual leaf attributed to the Master of the Cypresses to the Art Institute in Chicago in 1916. Gunsaulus acted as an agent in buying two manuscripts for Alice T. Miner, the gradual leaf and a breviary. You may remember two previous blogs-posts about the breviary in The Alice collection.

http://minermuseum.blogspot.com/2009/03/manuscript-reborn.html & http://minermuseum.blogspot.com/2008/08/le-breviaire-dhenri-de-lorraine.html

Both manuscripts in The Alice collection were created on a type of parchment - actually on the highest quality of all parchment, vellum. Vellum is made from calf, sheep or goatskin that has been laboriously prepared by stretching, scraping and alternately wetting and drying the skin while stretched. A final stage of prepping the vellum with pumice and talc was often employed. This intense preparation was done to bring the vellum to the right thickness for book pages and to prepare the skin to properly receive ink.

Our Spanish gradual leaf is a stunning piece of art. The historiated initial is 6 1/2 inches tall, exhibiting the captivating detail achieved by the illuminator. The wonderful detail of illumination, the colors used, the very precise lines - all catch the eye as soon as one enters the Spiritual Exhibit. One cannot help but be drawn into the sumptuous initial and the soft expression on Saint Paul's face, his gesturing hand, and the lush colors and folds of fabric of his garb. The illuminated border is comprised of numerous swirling and multi-colored leaf forms.

If you visit the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, The Art Institute in Chicago, Princeton University, or even the Eastman School of Music at The University of Rochester you might view manuscripts created by the Master of the Cypresses. Closer yet, visit The Alice right here in Chazy, New York and enjoy the Spiritual Exhibit where you can study our Master of the Cypresses gradual leaf, or our other spectacular 15th century manuscript, Le Breviaire d'Henri de Lorraine.

The gradual leaf in the Spiritual Exhibit at The Alice

Emma and the Wedgwood Collection

In 1917 Alice and William were visited at their Heart's Delight Farm in Chazy by a dear friend from Chicago, Emma Blanxius Hodge. Emma had come that long way not just to relax, visit with her friends, and enjoy the fresh country air. She had also planned to catalog Alice's burgeoning collection of china. It was appropriate that Mrs. Hodge should offer her extensive knowledge of decorative arts to her friend in this way since she was responsible for getting Mrs. Miner started with the collection in the first place.

If one were to mention they collect Wedgwood, their statement might merely conjure some vague notion that they were interested in pottery. What the majority of us likely would not realize is the breadth of pottery designs such a collection might include. This is what I hope to illustrate with the newest exhibit at The Alice. My intent was to display some of the Wedgwood pottery Alice collected in the early 1900s, and in the process found a wide variety of the types of objects Wedgwood Manufactory sold starting in 1758.

Of the thirteen pieces I have chosen for our Wedgwood exhibit, ten are described in the 1917 inventory Hodge penned. Emma wrote descriptions, and labeled and numbered more than 350 objects for Alice that summer. Along the way she included information about each pottery type, and its style and manufacturer. The catalog consists of 116 typewritten pages of very detailed information about a collection now housed in the Ballroom of The Alice T. Miner Museum.

Emma wrote, "This compiled catalog is dedicated to my dear friends of Heart's Delight Farm, who, while they were laboring with the knitting needle for our soldiers at the front, permitted me to assemble these facts concerning the collection of pottery and porcelain in the Matilda Trainer collection, and furnished for me a summer of fragrant and unforgettable associations.

Emma B. Hodge.

Heart's Delight Farm,

Chazy, New York.

August, 28, 1917"

Alice Miner named her collection of British and American porcelain and earthenware in memory of her recently departed oldest sister Matilda, who passed away on February 14, 1917 - just weeks before her 65th birthday. Emma's visit probably helped to ease the acute loss Alice must have felt that summer. Twelve years older than Alice, Matilda was much more than a sister - she had stepped in to help raise the younger children after their mother died in 1870, followed too soon by their father in 1876.

The objects currently exhibited in the Dining Room of The Alice range widely in style, glaze and intended use, as well as in taste! Included is a handsome black basalt bust portrait of George Washington, circa 1790. It is the largest and most striking Wedgwood object in the collection. When you come for a tour you will also see an ironstone china teapot made by Wedgwood that once belonged to William Miner's grandmother Lydia that was given to Alice for her collection by his aunt Huldah Miner in 1917. One of the more whimsical objects is a small teapot shaped like a cauliflower, realistic enough that it made a docent who is allergic to cauliflower sneeze while helping to install the exhibit!

Another Chicago collector represented in this Wedgwood exhibit, Frank Wakely Gunsaulus, was a mutual friend of the Miners and Emma B. Hodge. Gunsaulus was a major collector of illuminated manuscripts, ancient texts, decorative arts, as well as Wedgwood, and his influence on Alice's collection can be seen in numerous extraordinary objects in The Alice's collection. Many of the objects he had gathered, including an Old Wedgwood collection, were donated to The Art Institute of Chicago. The Alice and The Art Institute each own one of a pair of matching flower vases once owned by Mr. Gunsaulus. He had originally donated both to The Art Institute, yet then removed one from their collection to give to Alice. They are Wedgwood jasperware vases described by Mrs. Hodge as; "Flower Holder. Light blue jasper with white figures in low relief of children playing blind man's buff. Classic borders and octagonal base with geometric border in white low relief. Circa 1785. From the Frank W. Gunsaulus Collection of 'Old Wedgwood' in The Art Institute of Chicago."

The Wedgwood jasperware flower holder at The Art Institute of Chicago,

photo used with permission.

The jasperware flower vase in The Alice collection.

There is truly something for everyone in this Wedgwood exhibit: from teapots to sculptures, plates to flower vases - with a variety of glazes - from wonderful green glaze, to black basalt, or merely "plain" white glaze. There are Queen's ware, jasperware, Flo Blue, daisies, cucumber leaves, cauliflower and crocus... I can see Emma Hodge, Frank Gunsaulus and Alice Miner gathered around the dining table admiring these beautifully made and lovingly collected objects. Come to The Alice, squint your eyes a bit, and find out if you can see those folks too... Or just come to enjoy the collection!

Alice on Ivory

When you visit our museum website (www.minermuseum.org) the first image you see is a lovely painted portrait of Alice T. Miner welcoming you to the site. The original, on loan from Miner Institute, sits on a table in the Parlor here at the museum, and it is truly a lovely image. The portrait was done on ivory by Mira Edgerly Korzybski, a well-known woman artist in her day. Miniature painted portraiture had fallen off in popularity with the rise of photography, but the genre was making a come-back with artists who appreciated the works they were still seeing in Europe.

Alice T. Miner painted portrait by Mira Edgerly, ca. 1915

A largely self-taught artist, Mira Edgerly was born in Illinois in 1879, but grew up in Michigan where her father was an inventor and the director of the Michigan Central Railroad. Her fascination with drawing started when she was quite young, and as a teen she was sent to Europe to study art in England and Paris. Mira later studied at the Art Institute in San Francisco where she met and posed for her friend, photographer Arnold Genthe. John Singer Sargent urged her to pursue her love of portraiture by painting on ivory.

Mira Edgerly Burt (Mr. Burt was her first husband) portrait by Arnold Genthe

Mira Edgerly eventually took the medium one step further by painting on larger pieces of ivory, such as the 4.5"x 10" portrait of our founder, Alice T. Miner. Mira chose more translucent pieces of ivory to give greater luminescence to her colors, ordering the large pieces from London. Her skills were in demand around the world and she painted portraits of socialites, statesman and the upper echelons of American and European society in New York, London, Paris, San Francisco, Chicago, and Latin America.

In 1919 Mira Edgerly married her second husband Alfred Korzybski, a Polish-American philosopher and scientist best known for developing the theory of General Semantics. She led an extremely interesting life! She worked to forward the career of Gertrude Stein, and painted a portrait of Princess Patricia, a grand daughter of Queen Victoria, while in Ottawa. Mira Edgerly is mentioned in the autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1933, "Mildred Aldrich once brought a very extraordinary person Myra Edgerly. I remembered very well that when I was quite young and went to a fancy-dress ball, a Mardi Gras ball in San Francisco, I saw a very tall and very beautiful and very brilliant woman there. This was Myra Edgerly young. Genthe, the well known photographer did endless photographs of her, mostly with a cat. She had come to London as a miniaturist and she had one of those phenomenal successes that Americans do have in Europe. She had miniatured everybody, and the royal family, and she had maintained her earnest gay careless outspoken San Francisco way through it all."

An independent and strong character seemed to sustain her and help further her career as well as those of her friends. Today, however, there is not much known about Ms. Korzybski. Her work can be found at The Art Institute in Chicago, and there is a large collection of her personal papers, letters, journals and photographs, along with forty of her ivory portraits at Columbia University in New York City. But if you are in northern New York, you need only travel to The Alice to see an amazing example of her work!

Weaving the Threads of an Eclectic Collection

Visitors often do not know what to expect when they ring the doorbell at The Alice T. Miner Museum. By the time our tours reach the third floor, guests frequently ask how it came to be that Alice built a collection of such variety and depth.

Colonial Revival influenced collectors during Alice’s time were, among other interests, motivated by a wish to preserve the Nation’s early history. They valued quality hand-made objects and tools over machine-made objects, exhibiting a longing to capture the spirit of the past. As these collectors and the Movement itself grew, the ideals embodied in the Colonial Revival Movement became internalized as an emotional, spiritual and intellectual heritage. Collectors no longer limited themselves to decorative arts made in the Colonies, but appreciated quality hand-made decorative and fine art objects from around the world.

While influenced by the Colonial Revival Movement and by other collectors, Alice T. Miner was a sophisticated collector in her own right. She embraced the decorative arts – ceramics, furniture, textiles, and glass. Her collecting did not stop with objects of everyday life, however. The museum also holds smaller collections of beautiful objects and art. Alice acquired her Japanese woodblock prints in the 1920s through her friend Emma B. Hodge. Her friend Frank W. Gunsaulus advised Alice in collecting some wonderful books and manuscripts.

Frank W. Gunsaulus (Left) and Emma B. Hodge (2nd from Right) at Heart's Delight Farm ca. 1917

Over the past few years the connections between Alice and her friends Emma B. Hodge and Frank W. Gunsaulus have become clearer to those of us researching the museum collection. Dr. Gunsaulus, a Presbyterian minister, was a collector of woven coverlets, Japanese prints, rare books and manuscripts. His daughter, Helen C. Gunsaulus, was Curator of the Buckingham collection of Japanese prints at The Art Institute in Chicago. Emma B. Hodge was a collector of pottery, quilts, Valentines, samplers, paintings and Japanese woodblock prints. Their common interests are revealed as we learn more about these Chicago friends. The strongest threads between them lay in their embrace of the Colonial Revival and Arts & Crafts Movements, as well as their many connections to The Chicago Art Institute.

Helen Gunsaulus (Right) and Friends at Heart's Delight Farm, 1917

Here in Chazy, Alice is remembered as she appeared in the 1940s – an elderly woman who stayed close to home. Viewing her entire life and collection from this perspective can limit one’s appreciation of the scope of her experience, however. As evidenced in our archives of travel photos, letters and postcards from around the world, Alice T. Miner traveled far and wide in her lifetime. Yes, she ventured across frozen Lake Champlain on collecting trips with her friends, yet she also journeyed widely across the United States and throughout Europe.

The influence and aesthetic for her collection came primarily from her other home, Chicago, not merely through buying furniture from the neighbor’s old barn. This influence is what you will see when you tour The Alice T. Miner Museum, for within these walls is an eclectic collection of wonderful depth and substance!

Alice T. Miner ca. 1895