African-Brazilians still feel the impact of slavery 130 years after its abolition

CGTN America
Published on Oct 1, 2018
In a typical farmhouse from a 19th century Brazilian coffee plantation, the masters lived in the so-called Casa Grande – the Big House – while the slaves were confined to their quarters, called Senzalas.

Purrington and Russell’s “Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World”

 

New Bedford Whaling MuseumPlus

Restoration of the World’s Longest Painting is on Its Way

Through the generosity of the Stockman Family Foundation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities the Museum is moving forward on a long-awaited project, the restoration of the 1848 Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World. One of the Museum’s iconic artifacts, the Purrington-Russell Panorama, is believed to be the longest painting in the world. Although such a claim is difficult to prove, at 1,295 long (and eight and a half feet tall) it is a reasonable belief, particularly given that the few other surviving works of this ilk only hundreds of feet long feet are often touted as among the longest.

Created when giant paintings unrolled in front of a paying audience were a common form of popular entertainment, this Panorama not only documents details about whaling and the maritime world of the mid 19th century, but also survives as a nationally important artifact of American culture. It illustrates like no other document the path of expanding hegemony of the United States through the intersection and injection of American commerce worldwide into remote and exotic ports and landfalls.

Created by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington in 1848, this Panorama has been displayed in a host of venues – from a national tour when it was created to the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was donated to the Museum in 1918 and was displayed for many years. However, one can easily imagine what a century and a half of rolling, unrolling, display, and light can do to deteriorate nearly a quarter-mile of painted cotton sheeting. It has not been exhibited in its entirety for more than 50 years, and the Museum thanks Mystic Seaport for kindly storing this monstrous painting over the past year as we develop plans for its next step.

Several preliminary studies of the panorama were completed over the years, ably led by former Conservator Robert Hauser. With funding now in place the Museum can assemble an advisory team, hire a consulting curator whose specialty aligns with this project, and move forward with development of a formal treatment protocol that will clearly test and define each step of the restoration process. With these pieces in places restoration can begin. The Museum continues to seek funding for restoration of the full panorama, and this grant gets us a huge step in the right direction to again make it accessible to scholars and visitors.

https://vimeo.com/whalingmuseum/panorama

Purrington and Russell’s “Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World” on Vimeo

Restoration of the World’s Longest Painting is on Its Way

Through the generosity of the Stockman Family Foundation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities the Museum is moving forward on a long-awaited project, the restoration of the 1848 Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World. One of the Museum’s iconic artifacts, the Purrington-Russell Panorama, is believed to be the longest painting in the world. Although such a claim is difficult to prove, at 1,295 long (and eight and a half feet tall) it is a reasonable belief, particularly given that the few other surviving works of this ilk only hundreds of feet long feet are often touted as among the longest.

Created when giant paintings unrolled in front of a paying audience were a common form of popular entertainment, this Panorama not only documents details about whaling and the maritime world of the mid 19th century, but also survives as a nationally important artifact of American culture. It illustrates like no other document the path of expanding hegemony of the United States through the intersection and injection of American commerce worldwide into remote and exotic ports and landfalls.

Created by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington in 1848, this Panorama has been displayed in a host of venues – from a national tour when it was created to the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It was donated to the Museum in 1918 and was displayed for many years. However, one can easily imagine what a century and a half of rolling, unrolling, display, and light can do to deteriorate nearly a quarter-mile of painted cotton sheeting. It has not been exhibited in its entirety for more than 50 years, and the Museum thanks Mystic Seaport for kindly storing this monstrous painting over the past year as we develop plans for its next step.

Several preliminary studies of the panorama were completed over the years, ably led by former Conservator Robert Hauser. With funding now in place the Museum can assemble an advisory team, hire a consulting curator whose specialty aligns with this project, and move forward with development of a formal treatment protocol that will clearly test and define each step of the restoration process. With these pieces in places restoration can begin. The Museum continues to seek funding for restoration of the full panorama, and this grant gets us a huge step in the right direction to again make it accessible to scholars and visitors.

See:
https://vimeo.com/36824966

New Bedford Whaling Museum Resurrects America’s Longest Painting

The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s “Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World” is the longest painting in America, as well as a rich tapestry of fascinating narratives that delight, inform and entertain. The Panorama recreates the experience of a whaling voyage, detailing the remarkable sights that only whalemen were privileged to see, and depicts the story of whaling and the cultural ties born of this global industry, now ingrained in the unique multi-cultural landscape of New England.

See:

• New Bedford Whaling Museum Resurrects America’s Longest Painting October 1, 2018

New Bedford Whaling Museum Resurrects America’s Longest Painting

Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage on view in its entirety for the first time in generations

News provided by

New Bedford Whaling Museum

Jul 02, 2018, 08:00 ET

NEW BEDFORD, Mass., July 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — America’s longest painting will be exhibited by the New Bedford Whaling Museum. In 2017, the Museum completed the conservation of the 1,275-foot-long Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World, painted in 1848. This summer, the public will be reintroduced to the newly restored painting through two exhibitions: “A Spectacle in Motion: The Original” and “A Spectacle in Motion: The Experience.” Each exhibition will honor different aspects of the artwork.

In an era before the age of cinema, the Panorama traveled the country as a “moving” panorama. It was how curious people without the means or inclination to travel were transported to exotic locales in the 1800s. The Panorama was a performance spectacle, scrolling on giant spools with accompanying theatrics and narration. Although the painting will not be shown again as a moving panorama, which would undo the extensive conservation efforts, the Museum will exhibit the painting in its entirety for a fully immersive experience. “The Original” runs July 14 through October 8 and features the enormous painting at the historic Kilburn Mill in New Bedford. This exhibition will be free and open to the public.

The second exhibition, “The Experience,” will feature a digital reproduction of the artwork as a theatrical moving picture show, similar to what audiences would have experienced in the 1850s. This exhibition opens July 29 and will run through 2021 at the Whaling Museum.

“Seeing the Panorama in its entirety as a work of art, as well as experiencing it in motion, will be one of the most singular and spectacular American folk art milestones of this era,” said Dr. Christina Connett, Whaling Museum Chief Curator. “It is an artwork of national historical importance and a keystone that defines our region’s role in maritime heritage.”

Museum experts have also produced a two-volume publication that dives into the detail and narrative of the Panorama and allows people to quite literally hold the entire artwork in the palm of their hands.

About the New Bedford Whaling Museum
The New Bedford Whaling Museum is the world’s most comprehensive museum devoted to the global story of human interaction with whales through time, and the history and culture of the South Coast of Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.whalingmuseum.org.

CONTACT: Tina Malott, (508) 717-6840, tmalott@whalingmuseum.org

SOURCE New Bedford Whaling Museum

Related Links

https://www.whalingmuseum.org

Harvard Puts Its Ties To Slavery On Display | Edify

April 24, 2017 Fred Thys

As American universities grapple with their connections to slavery, Harvard University is putting its ties on display. Last year, a plaque commemorating four enslaved people who lived and worked at the school’s Wadsworth House was hung outside. And an exhibit on display now features some of the few documents discovered so far that offer records of the enslaved people who lived and worked at the school. (Steven Senne/AP)

As American universities grapple with their connections to slavery, Harvard University is putting its ties on display in an exhibit featuring some of the few documents discovered so far that offer records of the enslaved people who lived and worked at the school.

Research by Harvard students indicates that at least three Harvard presidents owned enslaved people. One was Benjamin Wadsworth, who was president from 1725 to 1737. He lived in what is now known as Wadsworth House, a yellow house on Massachusetts Avenue that is the second-oldest building at Harvard. It was built in 1726.

…(read more).

As The Opium Trade Boomed In The 1800s, Boston Doctors Raised Addiction Concerns | CommonHealth

 

August 01, 2017   Martha Bebinger
Part 2 of a two-part story. Here’s Part 1.

In the early 1800s, many Boston merchants became millionaires in part by selling opium illegally in China. The profits funded Boston-area schools, libraries, hospitals and early ventures into the industrial revolution, creating a financial dependence on the opium trade.

The opium trade fueled an epidemic in China — and there are signs the merchants unwittingly fed addiction in Massachusetts.

Take this editorial in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (BMSJ), forerunner of the New England Journal of Medicine. It was published in 1833, during the peak period when Boston merchants were sailing to Turkey to buy opium, stopping in China to sell the drug, then returning home with tea, silk, porcelain and some opium.

The editorial from Sept. 4, 1833, begins with this question:

Is there any sure and safe method of curing a person of the habit of opium [use], when that habit is confirmed by many years’ of use of the article?

The author, a doctor, says he asks the questionon behalf of a young woman who was prescribed opium to treat “a slight nervous irritation.” She’s become “a bound and servile slave” to the drug, and alarmed to realize she must increase her dose to avoid feeling sick. For almost a year, the doctor has tried everything he can think of, including substituting other drugs and attempting to wean the patient off opium. But she, “whilst under a course of gradual reduction or of substitution, convulsed for hour after hour in every muscle, and vomiting almost with intermission.”

…(read more).

See related:

• LETTERS FROM CHINA: Phyllis Forbes Kerr
• Forbes House Museum

How Profits From Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston | CommonHealth

July 31, 2017  Martha Bebinger

Opium profits funded many leading Boston institutions. Thomas Perkins and a brother helped found Massachusetts General Hospital, left, and Perkins donated one of his homes for a new school that would be called Perkins School for the Blind. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR, Hadley Green for WBUR)

Part 1 of a two-part story. Here’s part 2.

On the second day of 1826, an elegant gentleman with a full head of white hair sits down behind a desk — perhaps at his stately Boston townhouse, or maybe at his Brookline estate.

Thomas Handasyd Perkins, one of Boston’s leading merchants, has been taking risks with shipments to China for nearly 40 years. But now, he may have gone too far.

Perkins drafts a letter to his nephew and business partner in the Chinese port city of Canton, now known as Guangzhou. The message is an apology and a warning: More than 150,000 pounds of Turkish opium is on its way.

“As respects Opium I must take all the blame in going as far as we have,” writes Perkins, 65, to 39-year-old John Perkins Cushing. “I thought it best to extend ourselves, to prevent intruders; … I am mortified that the quantity that will go out in the spring so far surpasses y’r wishes.”

Thomas Perkins portrait, by Thomas Sully (Courtesy Boston Athenæum)

But the savvy older businessman and the group of relatives who form Perkins and Co. just might be able to handle his overly enthusiastic opium order. The firm has spent more than a decade building an elaborate smuggling operation to protect what’s become its most valuable commodity in China.

Perkins and Co. was among the first — if not the first — American companies to establish a permanent trading office in Canton. With employees on the scene year-round, the firm can optimize profits on the drug — which is still legal in the United States, but illegal in China.

Company agents store chests filled with squash-size balls of opium in ships anchored offshore, to have some control over supply and price. They develop relationships with smugglers and corrupt top government officials. And they use boats manned by dozens of rowers to speed past inspectors, sneak up the coast, and deliver opium beyond the official port.

* * * *

Phyllis Forbes Kerr compiled a book of letters from her great-great-great-grandfather, Robert Bennett Forbes, who was an opium baron. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Among the descendants of Boston’s opium barons, some never discuss the source of family wealth. Others know the history and tease each other about it.

“The boys in my family, my uncles, were quite wicked to my grandmother,” says Phyllis Forbes Kerr, remembering dinners with her grandmother at the Forbes mansion in Milton. It’s now a museum. “We would sit at the table and she would say something about Forbes and they would say, ‘Oh, you mean the drug dealer,’ and she would get really mad.”

Kerr collected correspondence from her great-great-great-grandfather, Robert Bennett Forbes, in a book, “Letters from China.” Sitting in her Cambridge living room, Kerr opens a map of Boston Harbor, at the height of the China trade. The city is ringed by wharves.

“These are all the ports. You just looked out. There were tons of ships there all the time, I mean it’s crazy,” Forbes says.

Museums and libraries mount the occasional exhibit about Boston and the China trade but these shows rarely mention opium.

“We’ve come to a moment where that trade can and should be looked at more closely,” says the PEM’s Finamore.

…(read more).

Here’s part 2

See related:

• LETTERS FROM CHINA: Phyllis Forbes Kerr
• Forbes House Museum

 

“SURVIVING THE CENTURY” – Sir Martin Rees

The Harvard University Center for the Environment and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics present a book signing and lecture:

“SURVIVING THE CENTURY”

MARTIN REES

Former President, The Royal Society; Emeritus Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics, University of Cambridge; Fellow, Trinity College

With discussants:
SHEILA JASANOFF
Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School

DANIEL SCHRAG
Sturgis

Hooper Professor of Geology; Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Director, Harvard University Center for the Environment

TODAY! Monday, October 1 // 4:00p.m.
Science Center Lecture Hall D, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge

Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and cosmologist, and the UK’s Astronomer Royal. His research interests have included galaxy formation, active galactic nuclei, black holes, gamma-ray bursts — as well as more speculative aspects of cosmology such as the multiverse. He is based in Cambridge, UK, where he has been Director of the Institute of Astronomy, a Research Professor, and Master of Trinity College. He was President of the Royal Society during 2005-2010, and in 2006 was nominated to the House of Lords. He has received many international awards for his research, and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy, the Japan Academy and the Pontifical Academy. He has served on many bodies connected with education, space research, arms control and international collaboration in science. He lectures, writes, and broadcasts widely for general audiences. He has long has been concerned with the threats stemming from humanity’s ever-heavier ‘footprint’ on the global environment, and with the runaway consequences of ever more powerful technologies. These concerns feature in his new book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity.

* Free and open to the public. Rees’ latest book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, will be available for purchase and signing after the event.*

Contact:
Laura Hanrahan
Communications Coordinator
Harvard University Center for the Environment
laura_hanrahan
617.495.3039

See:

http://environment.harvard.edu/events/2018-10-01-200000/surviving-century-martin-rees

and

http://environment.harvard.edu/huce-videos

Trump Admin to Weaken Mercury Emissions & Offshore Drilling Regulations

Oct 01, 2018

In environmental news, the Trump administration has taken a number of steps in recent days to roll back environmental regulations and oversight. The New York Times is reporting acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler has completed a proposal to weaken dramatically a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants. Meanwhile, the Interior Department has proposed loosening major offshore drilling regulations that were put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This all comes as the EPA has announced plans to dissolve its Office of the Science Advisor, which was created to give the head of the EPA sound advice about scientific research.