April 29, 1958
An exhibition of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge over the 75 years of its life span will be on view in the Brooklyn Museum’s main lobby from April 28 through July 27. There will also be a preview Ball for 1,000 people at the Museum on Saturday night, April 26, with entertainment, dancing, head-dresses from the 1880s with prizes offered, and other festivities organized as a benefit for the Museum in an attempt to wipe out its deficit.
The dozen paintings of the Bridge borrowed for the show range from an Impressionist Childe Hassam painted in 1904 and belonging to the Telfair Academy in Savannah, to abstractions done in the 1950s by Herbert Katzman and Afro. Three famous oils of the Bridge by Joseph Stella have been borrowed from the Yale University Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum and the Walker Art Center In Minneapolis, the latter rarely seen in the East. Also included are paintings by John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Louis Guglielmi and Albert Gleizes. Drawings include a set of 4 by Lyonel Feininger never before shown, as well as 2 watercolors by this artist. Among prints are depictions of fireworks on the Bridge at the opening and of the panic depicted in Harper’s Weekly when it was thought the Bridge was falling. A number of photographs of the Bridge under construction and original drawings by both John A. Roebling and his son Washington, the famous engineers of the Bridge, come from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute In Troy, from the Museum of the City of New York, and from the Department of Public Works where original working drawings are still used whenever any repairs are required on the Bridge. Photos also include original negatives of the Bridge with sailboats under it found in the State Archives of Madison, Wisconsin, and modern prints by Cartier-Bresson, Todd Webb, Andreas Feininger and Ewing Galloway.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1953 - 1970. 1958, 001. View Original
