Isaac Witkin’s sculpture Everglades has graced Pynchon Park since 1977—at least until recently. The sculpture is in storage while the pocket park is renovated so that it can once again provide easy access from downtown to Chestnut Street and the Springfield Museums. Back when longtime Springfield resident and arts philanthropist Dr. Irving Meyer helped bring this abstract sculpture to the city through a National Endowment for the Arts—Art in Public Places grant, he probably did not realize the impact it would have on his family, setting Meyer’s son on the path to his vocation. James Meyer is now Curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He is also the author of a new book called The Art of Return: The Sixties and Contemporary Culture (UChicago, 2019). Springfield-born Meyer will present an introduction to his book on September 19 at 12:15 pm at the popular Museums a la Carte lecture series.
Art was part of the family story for all of James Meyer’s life. “My father’s involvement with the MFA and the public sculpture program in Springfield (now represented only by the Isaac Witkin sculpture below the steps heading down from Chestnut Street), triggered my interest in the abstract art of the 1960s, Minimalism, and modernist sculpture like Witkin’s,” said Meyer. “My new book The Art of Return goes back to that time.”
The Art of Return: The Sixties and Contemporary Culture is an innovative work in which James Meyer engages art criticism, theory, memoir, and fiction to examine the fascination with the long Sixties and contemporary expressions of these cultural memories across the globe. Meyer draws on a diverse range of cultural objects that reimagine this revolutionary era stretching from the 1950s to the 1970s, including reenactments of civil rights, antiwar, and feminist marches, paintings, sculptures, photographs, novels, and films. Many of these works were created by artists and writers born during the long Sixties who were driven to understand a monumental era that they missed. These cases show us that the past becomes significant only in relation to our present, and our remembered history never perfectly replicates time past. This, Meyer argues, is precisely what makes our contemporary attachment to the past so important: it provides us a critical opportunity to examine our own relationship to history, memory, and nostalgia.
In his Museums à la Carte lecture, The Art of Return: An Introduction, Meyer will offer an overview of his newest book’s themes and how his work intertwines with his childhood in Springfield and Longmeadow. “Two stories I relate happened in Longmeadow, in our kitchen,” Meyer said. “The massacre at Kent State and the war in Vietnam: I saw them on our television, but I didn’t understand them.” Meyer, who was born in 1962, added, “We are all historical; we are marked by the periods in which we grow up.”
Meyer’s book focuses on art practitioners, like him, who were born during the long Sixties and harbor first and second-hand memories of that time. Growing up in the U.S., Western and Eastern Europe, China, and Africa, “Sixties children” recall the same period from dramatically different points of view—a revolutionary era that witnessed the end of colonialism, the Cultural Revolution, and the emergence of the Civil Rights, feminist, LGBTQ, and environmentalist movements whose reverberations are still felt today.
Meyer will also talk about the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, which was so much a part of his life through this father. “My dad went to the opening of the MFA in 1932 with my grandmother,” he said. Meyer remembers the projects his dad undertook, especially the public sculpture program that introduced him to the art form he would continue to study throughout his career. “You can’t help but absorb information and interest.”
About Irving Meyer
Dr. Irving Meyer was an enthusiastic supporter of the Springfield Museums, serving both on the Board of Trustees in the 1980s (including chairman) and the Art Advisory and Collections Committees until his death in 1993, said Heather Haskell, Director of the Art Museums and Vice President of the Springfield Museums. “He was passionate about American art and collected paintings, prints and watercolors.”
In 1995, with assistance from members of the community, the Museums purchased William Bradford’s painting Icebound Sealer under Winter Sun (1877) in tribute to Dr. Meyer. The painting is on display in the American 19th Century Art Gallery on the first floor of the D’Amour Museum.
UPCOMING MUSEUMS À LA CARTE LECTURE:
September 26: The Face of Abraham Lincoln: A Life in Photographs: Barry Deitz, Lecturer & storyteller
We will look at the life of Abraham Lincoln through the photographs taken of him during his life. He was the most photographed president of the era and the powerful images of his changing face, are themselves, a chronicle of the age. The program will look at his life, the art of photography during the Civil War years, and how those portraits formed so many of our ideas about Lincoln and his life. This talk is followed by a docent-led gallery tour for members only.
About the Museums à la Carte Lecture Series
The Springfield Museums’ hold a popular lunchtime lecture series called Museums á la Carte. Guests are welcome to bring a lunch to enjoy during the program. Cookies and coffee are provided through the generosity of Big Y. The cost for admission to the lecture is $2 for Springfield Museums members and $4 for nonmembers.
Free onsite parking is available. For more information about Museums à la Carte, call 413.263.6800, ext. 488.