GREAT MAGAZINES THAT NEVER MADE IT. MUSE

MUSE: Exploring the World's Museums 

MUSE is part of my collection of magazines that are long gone and out-of-print. The cover of the Premier Issue of MUSE featured a haunting bronze portrait of Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar. According to the notes about the cover, the portrait composed of metal fragments was acquired in 1902 by Henry Walters, son of the founder of Baltimore's Walters Art Gallery. In 2000, the Walters Art Gallery changed its name to the Walters Art Museum to reflect its image as a large public institution. The following year, the museum reopened its largest building after a dramatic three-year renovation. 

Thirty years after the defunct Museum Magazine was published by McGraw-Hill (1979), I tried unsuccessfully to find the original cover art at the Walters Museum website. There is a similar head composed of fewer pieces but not the subject of the cover photo. The bronze portrait bust like the magazine has disappeared.

THE EDITOR

Otto Fuerbringer was the Editor of this one-and-only issue of MUSE. According to the New York Times obituary (7/30/2008), "He (had been) a hard-driving, conservative-leaning managing editor of Time magazine during the political and social upheavals of the 1960s" and "brought a vibrancy, and a degree of controversy, to what had long been a rather taut, tartly written publication". Fuerbringer was noted for "Time’s lead story on April 8, 1966, (it) had no portrait on the cover, just a bold-red headline on a black background that asked, “Is God Dead?...The article set off a backlash by religious conservatives."

In the Editor's letter for MUSE, Fuerbringer said, " Museums are a part of almost everyone's experience. Museum-going is learning and enjoyment, intellectual refreshment and emotional release. It stirs curiosity and enlarges one's vision."

"By founding Muse magazine we hope to keep enlarging the museum experience. We will convey the excitement of current shows and the richness of permanent treasures. we will describe, judge and (when justified) exclaim! The world's museums are our province, and we will help our readers discover them." 

GREAT MAGAZINES THAT NEVER MADE IT. MUSE (2)

MUSE: Exploring the World's Museums (Part 2)

GREAT DISPLAYS

McGraw-Hill, the publisher of MUSE, the long-gone magazine devoted to museums, thought they had a solid creative idea. The premier issue contained articles about the Getty Museum, the Baseball Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown, the Air and Space Museum in D.C., and (for the time) exciting color spreads of museum exhibits. "For too many centuries, too many museums were scholarly warehouses, gigantic filing cabinets, even, in the telling nickname of the Smithsonian, 'the nation's attic'...display artists (now we would call them "exhibit designers") have become as important to museums as they are to department stores. And for similar reasons: to "sell" the merchandise, to help the customer-visitor grasp the virtues of the materials and their relations to others like them.

THE COST OF CREATING AN EXHIBIT.

In 1978-79, the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., designed by Architect I.M. Pei was new. According to a major article about "Great Displays" and specifically, "From the Pacific", MUSE said that a 17,000-square-foot exhibition space was stripped bare and rebuilt. On display were masks and figures, weapons, musical instruments, delicate utensils and vibrant textiles from Hawaii in the east to New Guinea in the west. The exhibitions total cost, including transportation of the objects, came to to almost $500,000". Wow! What a difference thirty years can make.

FRANK LEGO WRIGHT

This Just In From the L.A.Times

A Lego spokeswoman says this Fallingwater will be available Aug. 1. It will sell for about $100 at Lego stores and at www.brickstructures.com, which also has Lego sets of the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Space Needle in Seattle and Wright's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The museum, by the way, has an exhibition on the architect running through Aug. 23.

GREAT MAGAZINES THAT DISAPPEARED

GREAT MAGAZINES THAT DISAPPEARED OR NEVER SURVIVED.

There was a head-hunter (executive search firm) in Chicago named Jack Baxter. His motto was "Jack Baxter Knows Advertising and Advertising Knows Jack Baxter". His consulting firm is long gone but I will never forget his waiting room.

There was a large table, in front of the comfortable leather chairs, carefully arranged with only magazines that were long gone and out-of-print. Of course you remember the original Colliers and Saturday Evening Post? Do you remember Blue Book, Argosy, Portfolio, Eros, Avant Gard, Moneysworth, Fact,  Show, Muse, Geo, and Flair - to name a few? I do not have a copy of Flair but I remember the cutouts, fold-outs, pop-ups, removable reproductions of artworks and paper stocks of different sizes.

FLAIR

Fleur Cowles, who created Flair, died at age 101 on June 5, 1909. According to the New York Times, "(she) rose from modest beginnings in New York to become a well-heeled friend of the powerful and famous and the creator of one of the most extravagant and innovative magazines ever published, Although there were just 12 issues of Flair, published from February 1950 to January 1951, the magazine caused a sensation and is still admired for its coverage of fashion, décor, travel, art, literature and other enthusiasms of Ms. Cowles’s. But Flair...was simply too expensive to produce, even though it sold for 50 cents a copy when Time and Life were selling for 20 cents."

GENTRY

Gentry, a fashion magazine for men, was also notable for its ambitious production tricks and inventive covers. Published through 1957, it sold for two dollars a copy. In 1952 the "Board Of Editors" included Alvin Lustig, a dynamic young American graphic designer.  In 1944 he became Director of Visual Research for Look Magazine. He also designed for Fortune, New Directions and the Girl Scouts Of America He went blind from diabetes in 1954 and died in 1955.

My copy contains an article by Albert Camus and a portfolio of fashions with fabric swatches carefully tipped on the page. "Farming For Horse Owners", an article on the advantages of growing one's own feed contains, tipped onto the page, a sample of plump, clean and nutritive oats ready for feeding to your horse.

An H.Freeman & Son (Hickey Freeman) Advertisement features a sports coat with a blend of rabbit's hair, Australian wool and Llama fibre. About $50.

OMAHA BEACH REVISITED

Over ten years ago we drove to Omaha Beach through the small back roads of France. It was a delightful countryside. We were headed for the 1944 D-Day landing beaches of Normandy, France. Along the way we were surprised to see a number of small German, French, English and Australian World War I cemeteries . Each site was meticulously cared for. The larger cemeteries often contained a plain concrete building with dark windows. I  found out later that these were Ossuary building or a "bone repository" for the unclaimed skeletal remains from the Great War's battlefields.

These small roadside cemeteries cast a rather disquieting spell over our touring group. The collection of international roadside grave plots in France were too close in a timeline to Omaha Beach. European history suddenly comes alive and you remember that all of France was a war zone. By comparison, the U.S. seems relatively untouched. There are major battlefield sites, like Gettysburg, or the Little Big Horn, but they are separated by geography and a more distant past. Memorial Day was a big deal when we were young. I remember a silent parade to the local cemetery. We shuffled along to a drum cadence wearing our Scout uniform to plant flags by the veteran's grave sites.

It was dusk when we arrived at Omaha Beach, the tide was out and the only sound was the surf. Hunks of concrete stuck out of the sand. We noticed the beautiful green velvet hills in the distance as we walked on the beach. There was no one else in sight.

LANDING ON OMAHA BEACH

Compare this U.S. Coast Guard photo of soldiers disembarking from a Landing Craft on the morning of June 6, 1944 with the more recent Omaha Beach photo in color. Through the smoke and battle haze you can see hillside as a reference point. There were films of the D-Day landing. One of the most effective depictions of this historic event is the opening sequence of Steven Spielberg's film Saving Private Ryan.

Another very dramatic recreation of the landing can be seen at the Cantigny War Museum in Illinois. You, the viewer, are seated in a landing craft similar to the WWII version. The front of the craft is a rear-projection screen that shows newsreel footage of the landing. When the war footage ends, the front of the landing craft lifts and you walk out onto a life-sized section of Omaha Beach with appropriate battle sounds, smoke, wreckage and bodies. 

EXPLAINING OMAHA BEACH

New museums, monuments, conferences, tours, signage and exhibits about the D-Day landing are added each year. As the number of old soldiers who landed at Omaha Beach declines, the interest in what happened there continues to grow. The metal plaque above the beach shows in simple terms who landed where.

THE AMERICAN CEMETERY AT COLLEVILLE ON OMAHA BEACH.

The 172.5 acres at Colleville contains the graves of 9,387 of our military dead, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. The graves face westward, towards the United States. The linear placement of each Marble Cross or Star of David is precise. As the shadows on the grass lengthen from this vast collection of individual graves, so many markers, so perfectly aligned, it is impossible to remain unmoved. Your eyes fill with tears.