Spotlighting St. Louis connections in the collection

This blog post was originally posted in 2014 to honor the 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis. The list, compiled by Ann Burroughs, the Museum’s head of engagement and interpretation, explores a selection of unexpected connections to the city in SLAM’s collection. It is reshared this week in celebration of 314 Day. 

The Saint Louis Art Museum’s close connections to the city of St. Louis are evident before you step inside. The Cass Gilbert-designed Main Building was built for the 1904 World’s Fair, and it stands today as the only surviving building from that moment when the world came to St. Louis. An even earlier scene of city life is captured by one of the Museum’s most beloved works of art–Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham’s painting of jolly flatboatmen dancing and reveling at the city’s wharf. Here are 10 other less familiar connections between St. Louis and the Museum’s collection of art spanning six continents and five millennia.

Joe Jones collection

The Museum is home to several art works by self-taught artist Joe Jones (such as this, this, and this). Born in St. Louis in 1909, Jones painted portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life in an early modernist style that featured recognizable subjects, smooth planes of color, and minimal details. Jones’ work was featured in New York’s Whitney Museum exhibition of contemporary American painting (1934-35) and in the pages of Time magazine.

A majestic feline, made from bronze more than 2,500 years ago, Cat stands watch in the Museum’s Egyptian galleries. Cats may have been revered and prized in ancient Egypt, but this was an unpopular acquisition in the Depression. When the cat joined the Museum’s collection in 1938, a public uproar ensued over the sculpture’s $14,400 price tag. Generations later, Cat has earned the city’s affection and is a favorite for visitors.

SLAM’s African galleries feature two wooden masks whose finely carved features are the work of a 20th-century artist from the Ivory Coast. Once owned by Vladimir Golschmann, the longest serving conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, his widow, Odette, gave the masks to the Museum as a gift in his memory. Golschmann led the symphony from 1931 to 1958—a period during which the stylish French couple took the city’s social scene by storm—and helped develop the orchestra’s reputation as one of the nation’s best.

In the Museum’s decorative arts and design galleries, the graceful curves of a plastic and fiberglass armchair recall the elegant form of the Gateway Arch. These two objects have something in common: their designer, the architect Eero Saarinen. When the Arch was completed in 1965, Saarinen’s armchairs already were popular in homes and offices.

Louis IX of France can be recognized in Vincent Voiture as St. Louis by the crown of thorns he holds in his hand. The 13th-century French king bought the relic from the emperor of Constantinople and later built one of the architectural masterpieces of Paris, la Sainte-Chapelle, to house the crown. Louis was known as a great patron of the arts, so it’s fitting that the French founders of St. Louis named the city in his honor.

In 1846, St. Louis was one of the nation’s busiest river ports, as seen in a landscape painting by Henry Lewis in the American galleries. Steamboats line up along the bustling city’s edge, a scene that contrasts sharply with the painting’s foreground scene of pioneers in covered wagons rest on their journey west.

The Museum devotes an entire gallery to the work of Max Beckmann, a rising star in Germany in the years before World War II. The Nazis labeled his art “degenerate,” state-owned museums took down his paintings, and the artist was forced to resign his teaching position. Beckmann fled to Holland, where he painted works such as the Museum’s Acrobats, and in 1947, he settled in St. Louis, where he taught at Washington University. The Museum now has the world’s largest collection of Max Beckmann paintings and prints.

Several beautiful vases featuring abstract organic forms and a dramatic set of fireplace tiles grace a gallery devoted to early 20th-century ceramics made in University City, Missouri. These works of art are products of one of America’s most distinctive art potteries, which was located just a few miles from the Museum in the St. Louis suburb. Entrepreneur Edward G. Lewis aspired to make University City a center of educational and economic opportunity for women in the early 20th century, and he hired renowned ceramic artists as instructors for aspiring local artists.

This unusual seascape was created by another native St. Louisan, contemporary artist Tom Friedman. The image of wavy water and a horizon line is created entirely by manipulating the paper itself. A close inspection of this art work reveals the intricacy of the folds depicting the water, while a view from a distance offers the balance and harmony of the entire composition.