15 minute read
Educational Policies and Employment Opportunities
During the early nineteenth century, the United States experienced a period of reform movements. People reformed prisons, asylums, elder care facilities, and schools as part of the broader American narrative of progressivism. Prisons were touted to be rehabilitative of mind and spirit, encouraging meditation and repentance; asylums were established to care for those with psychiatric disabilities; homes for the aged boasted how Americans cared for the elderly; and schools for blind and deaf children were founded. Cast as exemplars of progress and modernity, educational institutions for deaf and blind children advertised innovative teaching practices and efforts to shape disabled children into productive American citizens. At the beginning, signed language was viewed as innovative, modern, progressive, a means for the deaf child to access spiritual salvation. Agrarian and craft based economies offered plentiful opportunities for employment for deaf people, especially as schools for deaf and blind children offered vocational training. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth century, signed languages were framed as backward and regressive. Inventors invented technologies that were supposed to restore the facility of hearing. The valorization of medical authority superseded the lived experience and advocacy among deaf people to preserve sign language methods in education. Between the valorization of medicine, science, and technological progress, deaf schools stood little chance of missing the onslaught of cure and pathology. By 1920, eighty percent of deaf schools used oral methods. The development of a manufacturing economy, rising immigration, and urbanization also changed the employment landscape for deaf people. Deaf people were called into the factories in full force during wartime, proving their worth as patriotic worker-citizens but this show of loyalty and competency did not last beyond the war, although booming postwar economies provided some lasting benefit. Deaf people continued to grapple with low employment rates and barriers to higher education throughout the 20th century.
Frances Carlberg King (Florida 1913- 1997)
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Kansas Farm, 1965
Acrylic on board
23.5 x 27.5 inches (59.6 x 69.8 cm)
Gift from the artist
1990.02.002
Francis M. Tuttle
(Geneva, New York 1839-1910)
Lodi Point on Seneca Lake, 1885
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 inches (60.9 x 76.2 cm)
On loan courtesy of Historic Geneva
Francis M. Tuttle was a renowned portrait and landscape painter from Geneva, New York in the Finger Lakes region at the end of the 19th century. His family was wealthy and well-established, dating back to the Mayflower. The paintings included here offer a sense of Tuttle’s skills at capturing his local Finger Lakes landscape and his portrait skills. In all of the work, scale is somewhat distorted, as certain elements appear considerably larger than others and suggest the painter’s visual attention to certain elements over others.
(Geneva, New York 1839-1910)
Wooded Lake Scene, 1882
Oil on canvas
17.5 x 24 inches (60.9 x 76.2 cm)
On loan courtesy of Historic Geneva
Francis M. Tuttle
(Geneva, New York 1839-1910)
The Steele Child, n.d.
Oil on canvas
35.5 x 29.5 inches (90.1 x 74.9 cm)
On loan courtesy of Historic Geneva
Francis M. Tuttle
(Geneva, New York 1839-1910)
Grace Walton Wheat, n.d. Oil on canvas
49.5 x 38.5 inches (125.7 x 97.7 cm)
On loan courtesy of Historic Geneva
Like John Brewster Jr., a hundred years before him, Tuttle was a deaf painter who gained fame and income through portrait (and landscape) painting. In this way, his portraits engaged sociality with the larger hearing American community around him. This portrait of Grace Walton Wheat is larger than life and intricately detailed while it also captures Seneca Lake behind her but out of scale with her own physicality.
David Mudgett
(Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
Seaside in Maine, 1955
Ink & Pencil
19 x 27 inches (48.2 x 68.5 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
Frances Carlberg King (Florida 1913- 1997)
Stilt Houses on Canandaigua Lake, c.1960
Watercolor on paper
10.5 x 13 inches (26.6 x 33 cm)
Gift from the artist
1996.02.012
David Mudgett
(Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
The Fisherman, 1957
Watercolor on paper
19 x 19 inches (48.2 x 48.2 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
David Mudgett
(Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
Boats in Maine, 1955
Watercolor on paper
27 x 22 inches (68.5 x 55.8 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
2006.08.001
22.25
1981.01.001
Igor Kolombatovic (Greece 1919 - California 2014)
Coastal Landscape (Mendocino, CA), 1974
Oil on canvas
37 x 41.5 inches (93.9 x 105.4 cm)
Gift from the artist 1990.04.001
David Mudgett
(Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
Horse Barn in Winter, c.1965
Watercolor on paper
23 x 29 inches (58.4 x 73.6 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
David Mudgett
(Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
The Illinois River, c.1965
Watercolor on paper
22 x 29 inches (55.8 x 73.6 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
Kelly H. Stevens
(Texas 1896 - 1991)
River & Mountain in Texas, c.1930
Oil on canvas
21 x 27 inches (53.3 x 68.5 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
Kelly H. Stevens
(Texas 1896 - 1991)
Texas Bluebonnets, c.1930
Oil on canvas
22 x 28 inches (55.8 x 71.1 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
Untitled, c.1970
Watercolor on paper
19 x 23.5 inches (48.2 x 59.6 cm)
Gift of Jeanette Daviton
2015.02.001
David Mudgett (Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
Marshland, c.1965
Watercolor on paper
22 x 29 inches (55.8 x 73.6 cm)
Gift of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and James DeCaro Family
Jean Hanau
(France 1899 - New York City 1966)
Transportation, c.1930
Watercolor and graphite
20.5 x 18 inches (52 x 45.7 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.024
Harry Williams
(Washington DC 1959California 1991)
Untitled [Sinking Titantic], 1970
Oil on canvas
9.5 x 15.5 inches (24.1 x 39.3 cm)
Gift of Malinda Mangrum
2021.09.001
Deaf people have always been a part of history, but their stories are underdocumented, especially the stories of deaf people who were not straight white men. In Belfast, Northern Ireland in the 1900s, deaf shipyard workers gained access to employment at Harland and Wolff, a major shipbuilding company, through deaf activism. Deaf people were among the builders of the Titanic, which sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912. This, coincidentally, is also the date of Williams’ death from AIDS, almost 80 years later to the day, on April 15, 1991. Williams painted Titanic in 1970.
Jean Hanau
(France 1899 - New York City 1966)
Manhattan, 1930
Mixed media
14.5 x 18 inches (36.8 x 45.7 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.016
David Mudgett
(Wisconsin 1909 - Illinois 1991)
Cityscape, c.1965
Watercolor on paper
21 x 23 inches (53.3 x 58.4 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
Jean Hanau (France 1899 - New York City 1966)
Male and Female Circus Performers, 1934
Oil on canvas
52.5 x 39.5 inches (133.3 x 100.3 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.003
Circus Performer Seated at a Table Approached by a Young Woman Carrying an Empty Bowl, 1954
Oil on canvas
52 x 38.5 inches (132 x 97.7 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.002
Igor Kolombatovic (Greece 1919 - California 2014)
Study of Nudes, 1978
Oil on canvas
30 x 36 inches (76.2 x 91.4 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.021
Jean Hanau
(France 1899 - New York City 1966)
At the Vanity, 1930
Watercolor and graphite on paper
17 x 15 inches (43.1 x 38.1 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.005
Fashion Illustration
Watercolor and graphite on paper
18 x 14 inches (45.7 x 35.5 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.010
Florence Ohringer
(Massachusetts 1914 - Florida 1981)
Woman’s Head, 1940
Oil on canvas
19 x 16 inches (48.2 x 40.6 cm)
Gift of Milton Ohringer
1979.03.002
Bubba, 1940
Oil on canvas
37 x 25 inches (93.9 x 63.5 cm)
Gift of Milton Ohringer
1979.03.001
Mary Thornley (Indiana 1950 - )
Self-Portrait, 1989
Charcoal on paper
24 x 19 inches (60.9 x 48.26 cm)
Gift of Tom Willard
2018.02.003
Igor Kolombatovic (Greece 1919 - California 2014)
Elizabeth, n.d.
Oil on canvas
42 x 30 inches (106.6 x 76.2 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.003
Jean Hanau
(France 1899 - New York City 1966)
Fantasy II, c.1931
Watercolor on paper
18 x 21.5 inches (45.7 x 54.6 cm)
Gift of Renate Alpert
2009.03.009
Robert “Ned” Edward Behnke (Washington 1949 - 1989)
Philodendron Lady, c.1975
Acrylic on canvas
55 x 52 inches (139.7 x 132 cm)
Gift from the artist
1976.02.001
Igor Kolombatovic (Greece 1919 - California 2014)
Foreplay of the Lovers, 1970
Oil on canvas
41 x 35 inches (104.1 x 88.9 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.002
Igor Kolombatovic (Greece 1919 - California 2014)
Mother and Her Baby, n.d.
Oil on canvas
40 x 36 inches (101.6 x 91.4 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.006
Helen Dyer (Florida 1911 - 2001)
Floral Still Life with Vase, 1962
Oil on canvas
20.25 x 16.25 inches (51.4 x 41.2 cm)
Dyer Arts Center Founding Collection
2006.03.001
Yellow Flowers, 1969
Acrylic on canvas
17 x 15 inches (43.1 x 38.1 cm)
Dyer Arts Center Founding Collection
2006.03.010
Helen Dyer (Florida 1911 - 2001)
Zinnias, 1962
Oil on canvas
16.25 x 20 inches (41.2 x 50.8 cm)
Dyer Arts Center Founding Collection
2006.03.11
17
Gift
Morris Gayle Broderson (California 1928 - 2011)
Gifts from the Garden, 1984
Oil on canvas
25.5 x 20 inches (64.7 x 50.8 cm)
Purchased through the Permanent Collection Acquisition Fund
1984.01.002
James Castle (Idaho 1899-1977)
Untitled [Flicker and Flutter], n.d. White commercially printed paper with print on reverse (Saturday Evening Post), small rectangular pieces cut out and re-adhered in place 3 x 3.75 inches (7.6 x 9.5 cm)
On loan courtesy of Rob Roth and John Berg
Castle frequently rescripted pieces of text, although the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind records declared him “ineducable and illiterate.” This piece calls forward the image of the candles that deaf children frequently had to blow out as part of their oral training and the kinds of consonant clusters they would often be drilled to speak in.
Joan Popovich-Kutscher
(California 1951 - )
Hearing Test Different Way, 1985
Watercolor and colored pencil on paper
28.5 x 35.5 inches (72.3 x 90.1 cm)
Purchased through the Permanent Collection Acquisition Fund
2018.09.002
After the first eight years of her life were spent in an institution where she was assumed to be cognitively disabled, Kushner transferred to a deaf school where her symbolic etchings and and printmaking emerged under some guidance from her deaf art teacher, Felix Kowalewski. The symbolism of broken fences and lattices, tracks that don’t go anywhere, ties that barely bind or are disconnected, and broken frames with arrows and symbols on them that don’t quite connect characterize this piece and much of Kushner’s work. As a piece representing those broken connections and identities, Kushner also offers commentary on the overall disjunctive symbolism of hearing tests themselves.
Joan Popovich-Kutscher (California 1951 - )
Mrs. Lux with Me, c.1985
Watercolor and colored pencil on paper
20.5 x 16.5 inches (52 x 41.9 cm)
Purchased through the Permanent Collection Acquisition Fund
2018.09.001
(North Dakota 1906 - Missouri 1988)
The Learners, c.1975
Sculpture
5 x 5 x 5 inches (12.7 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm)
Following on the 1964 Babbidge Report to the U.S. Congress about the status of deaf education in America, oralism is coming under some threats. Here Arnold sculpts the intimate scene and close family circle of a deaf child learning to speak with their mother. The emphasis on her open mouth, their faces closely connected, the circular shapes, and their two hands joined at the child’s throat to feel voice vibrations conveys both the tenderness and vigilant attention needed to learn oral speech.
James Castle (Idaho 1899-1977)
Untitled, n.d.
Found board and wheat paste
3.5 x 6.5 inches (8.8 x 16.5 cm)
Purchased through the Permanent Collection Acquisition Fund
2021.12.001
All of Castle’s work is undated. This piece seems as if it is just a re-pasted cutout from a magazine but Castle often used images from popular culture and product material around his environment to cut and paste, and slightly re-alter the images so that they looked “true” to their sources but also, upon closer examination, revealed his own manipulations. He was adept at not only recycling but also practicing and presaging a later trend of “re-mixing” and “covering” already circulating material.
Untitled, n.d.
Found paper and wheat paste
2.5 x 4 inches (6.3 x 10.1 cm)
Purchased through the Permanent Collection Acquisition Fund
2021.12.002
Castle often played with letters and text in clever and critical ways—even though the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind (Gooding) sent him home at the age of 15, declaring him “ineducable and illiterate.” Here he seems to reference the “lasting qualities” of his own family name. While this drawing looks like type that might have just been cut from a newspaper or magazine, it has actually been re-cut, manipulated, and re-pasted by Castle himself in a kind of recycling of original material. Castle used recycled materials in almost all of his art.
Untitled, n.d.
Red, green and blue washes with soot and spit stick-applied lines on blotter paper 4 x 9 inches (10.1 x 22.8 cm)
On loan courtesy of Rob Roth and John Berg
Nationalized Identity
The Civil War was bloody and rended the nation apart. People were wounded by the war of internal division and discord over the right to enslave people. Elsewhere, famine, drought, war, and religious persecution brought waves of immigrants from Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Between increased immigration [which represented competition for perceived limited labor and resources] and wounds of war, pressures amped up for people to assimilatethrough customs, norms, and language. Deaf people’s signed languages, once viewed as innovative, became suspect. Unamerican. Deaf people understood [but did they accept?] that, in order to obtain employment, they had to assimilate as English language users. Performative hearingness became an expectation, literacy in English acquired a new significance, and understanding that one’s categorization as white was what opened many doors to the American Dream, deaf people worked hard to achieve this by emphasizing their abledness of both mind and body, their literacy and intelligence, their conformity to dominant understandings of what it meant to be American. Deaf people were met with those expectations and pressure to embrace a nationalized identity. As the United States entered various military conflicts, from wars on the American frontier to wars across oceans- in Asia and Europe, patriotism often became a significant question and gatekeeping measure for employment opportunities. To preserve work and deaf education and participation in the public sphere, deaf people conformed to those expectations by being hyper patriotic, responding to calls for wartime labor, fundraising for military equipment, and engaging in racist campaigns to reject Others (foreigners, disabled people, and so on).
Igor Kolombatovic
(Greece 1919 - California 2014)
The Eagle Protects the USA FlagPatriotism, 1977
Oil on canvas
29 x 23 inches (73.6 x 58.4 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.037
David Ludwig Bloch (Germany 1910 – New York 2002)
Dachau Concentration Camp, 1977
Inkjet print
18.5 x 34 inches (46.9 x 86.3 cm)
Gift of Jane Bolduc
1995.03.005
The geometrical precision of the triangles in the lights—a Nazi symbol for prisoners of many kinds and identities—shine ominously in circles of light on the uniform lines of figures. While the Nazi triangles to mark “other” bodies always pointed down with the single point at the bottom (and two points at the top), Bloch inverts that triangle here. The play of shadows and light, linearity and uniformity, make the image into “still-life” as Bloch provides commentary on oppression, genocide, violence, difference and othering—all themes familiar in deaf history and community.
Cadwallader Lincoln Washburn (Minnesota 1866 - Maine 1965)
La Vieja, 1925
Etching on paper
15 x 12 inches (38.1 x 30.4 cm)
Dyer Arts Center Founding Collection
Vieja translates as “old woman” in Spanish though this etching seems to have been done from the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia during a 1925 scientific expedition where Washburn was sketching exotic birds. The simple, rough etching enhances the solidity of her figure and her direct, knowing gaze back at the artist who is also gazing at her. The portrait also demonstrates Washburn as a global, traveling, cosmopolitan citizen.
Cadwallader Lincoln Washburn (Minnesota 1866 - Maine 1965)
Bearded Old Man, 1934
Etching on paper
9 x 12 inches (22.8 x 30.4 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
The Shepard, 1965
Etching on paper
15 x 12 inches (38.1 x 30.4 cm)
On loan courtesy of the Patricia Mudgett-DeCaro and and James DeCaro Family
Morris Gayle Broderson (California 1928 - 2011)
Honor of Dead Bull, 1957
Watercolor and charcoal on paper
36.25 x 48 inches (92 x 121.9 cm)
1996.01.001
Morris Gayle Broderson (California 1928 - 2011)
Japanese Man with Melon, 1954
Watercolor and charcoal on paper
48 x 36.5 inches (121.9 x 92.7cm)
1996.01.002
Frances Carlberg King (Florida 1913- 1997)
South Florida Scene 1, 1939
Watercolor on paper
20 x 24.75 inches (50.8 x 62.8 cm)
Gift of Perry O’Connell
1993.01.001
Frances Carlberg King (Florida 1913- 1997)
South Florida Scene 2, 1939
Watercolor on paper
21 x 24.75 inches (50.8 x 62.8 cm)
Gift of Perry O’Connell
1993.01.002
Igor Kolombatovic (Greece 1919 - California 2014)
North Beach Locals, n.d.
Oil on canvas
37 x 36 inches (93.9 x 91.4 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.008
Igor Kolombatovic
(Greece 1919 - California 2014)
Agonies of 1974 [Watergate], c.1974
Oil on canvas
48 x 33 inches (121.9 x 83.8 cm)
Gift of Elizabeth Kolombatovic
2019.01.004
Kolombatovic offers an interpretation of an important national event, the Watergate Trials, in this dramatic, dark painting that brings him into conversation with the national (hearing) identity. The eagle’s symbolic talons resonate with the ghost-white hand embracing the figure’s left shin. A swirl of dark clouds above the figure’s head then transforms into an angry and swooping eagle on the left. While the American flag is crumpled it is still vibrant and commanding in the image. The vibrant foot planted at the center of the work conveys both a sense of solidity and establishment while it is also attached to a leg that is folded in tightly, as if protecting the self. The contradictions of security and anguish in the image place Kolombatovic in conversation with a significant rupture in American culture and collective identity.
Deaf Sociality
Deaf sociality is based on networks, which are complex webs of social, economic and cultural relations that stretch and contract as deaf people move through spaces, physical and virtual. Deaf spaces and networks are diverse in that they can be permanent, temporal, precarious, historical, and contemporary. Deaf networks often involve deep, affective entanglements, which are deep feelings of connections and/or fractures that both drive and emerge from encounters between people, languages, and spaces. These affective entanglements shape the formations of deaf networks, as well as sustain the circulating of ideas, resources, and knowledge among deaf people. At different stages of their lives, deaf people circulate in different networks, encompassing different places and spaces. Dispersed, multiscale, and multiple forms of social spaces are central to the contemporary deaf lived experience; however, in the past, deaf people formed groups and clubs based on shared interests and political activity. Knowledge in the form of deaf histories and stories about specific people and places travel through networks and more recently, material resources in the form of support for local deaf artisans, deaf businesses, or charity, comprising the Deaf Ecosystem.
Guy Wonder
(Washington 1945 – California 2020)
Untitled, c.1969
Mixed media
21 x 17 inches (53.3 x 43.1 cm)
Gift from the artist 2018.13.001
Exotic stamps can be a way of experiencing the world in its expansiveness as a deaf cosmopolitan. Historically, exchanging letters was the foundation of transnational deaf networks. Writing, as with painting and drawing, is another modality in deaf languaging practices; however, it is also fraught because of perceptions that deaf people cannot write well.
Morris Gayle Broderson (California 1928 – 2011)
Homage to Winslow Homer, c. 1968
Watercolor on paper
42 x 28 inches (106.6 x 71.1 cm)
Gift of Robert Baumgarten
1996.01.003
Broderson celebrates fellow watercolor painter Winslow Homer’s popular quote in watercolor washed rainbow hues that spotlight fingerspelling hands. While the long fingerspelled translation is tedious, it is also tender and flowing. The sexuality of both Homer and Broderson have been questioned and considered, but never definitively determined, in art history.
Helen Keller, c. 1973
Mixed Media
40.25 x 28.25 inches (102.2 x 71.7 cm)
Gift of Donna and Robert Davila
2006.12.002
In this portrait of Helen Keller, LaMonto paints Keller’s awakening to language— through sign language converses with the national identity and popular narrative of American culture. Using his technique of sequential figuration and engaging movement, varied direction, colors, contrasts of view, LaMonto paints Keller’s awakening to language. Set upon a grass/natural green background, Keller radiates ecstasy and perhaps a bit of being overwhelmed from the center of the work. Starting at the top of her head the smaller tighter fingerspelling communicates W-A-TE-R. Then emanating out in a fingerspelling circle-swirl that grows larger, more expensive (like the process of learning itself) the fingerspelled words surround her: D-O-G. C-A-T. F-L-O-W-E-R. B-O-O-K. H-E-L-E-N-K-E-L-L-E-R. L-O-V-E.
Henry Newman (Ohio 1929 – 2005)
Panorama, 1987
Acrylic on canvas
36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm)
Gift of Andrew and Teresa Newman
2018.05.001
Elizabeth Williams (Ohio 1929 – 2005)
The Quest for Knowledge, c. 1952
Acrylic on canvas
30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.8 cm)
Dyer Arts Center Founding Collection
2001.05.002
A young student figure with intense, over-large eyes gazing ahead holds pen poised and page open with their left hand thoughtfully holding up their chin–in a classic scene of literacy longing, of beginning to write and express oneself. But there are no words yet on the page and only instead an empty cochlea-shaped shell figure placed near the left margin of the empty journal book before them. The pressure and desire to be a part of the hearing-literate culture, the isolation of education, and the intense but also empty gaze characterize much about the education of deaf children during this period in American history.
