Resorts at Sea is officially Murals on the High Seas

So the person who knows the least about building a website is building a website. I've said from time to time, whenever tackling a challenging project, that "I don't know enough not to try." Uh ... Yeah, if that doesn't fit now ...

The home page. The use of circular images gives the impression of portholes.
The tag line: It is art. It is history. Is it art history? (Ay, there's the rub.) 
A little cheesy, but there's no need to get too serious.

It all began with Resorts at Sea and a general interest in artworks created for American passenger ships. (You can read earlier entries by typing in "resorts at sea" in the search area at the upper right corner.) It was fun to see who did what and where it was installed. As I continued to dig, roadblocks kept cropping up with this national mural competition in 1940 to decorate American President Lines' President Jackson-class, seven ships designed for round-the-world passenger/cargo service. It was the second largest competition sponsored by the Section of Fine Arts, and it's become a veritable footnote. I aim to change that.

The New Deal portion has been the most intriguing chapter. 

Originally, the website was to focus on the Jackson-class, but many of the winners received commissions for other liners, so the scope expanded. Focusing on newly-built ships, the story starts with Matson Line's Malolo in 1927 and ending with the nuclear ship Savannah in 1962; covering about 50 ships total. The Malolo utilized art depicting scenes of Hawaii and California, as that was her route, while the Savannah is unique for artworks loaned by the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The story ends with the nuclear ship Savannah, which is still afloat in Baltimore.

Organized by decade (1920s, 1930s, etc.), these American ships will be placed in an even broader context, as you'll be able to look at artworks on foreign liners, like Empress of Britain, Bremen, Normandie, Queen Mary, Andrea Doria, and Rotterdam, to name a few. The fun part has been locating images with identifiable artworks in clear focus; not always an easy task. As a result, not all artworks can be shown.

It's been amazing the amount of resources consulted and/or gathered in this project; 
book covers are shown in the "portholes." Many will be shown in the Odds & Ends tab.

Phase One will take care of the basics: a little history, minor observations, and the obligatory Facebook page to drive traffic and conversation. (And acceptance that the site will continue to evolve, and not be 100% perfect right out of the gate.) Phase Two will include more observations, comparisons, exploration of themes, and the possible addition of more ships. Phase Three will include a book deal, traveling exhibit, perhaps a lecture tour, because why not? If we're going to do this, let's do it up right.

The Peabody Essex Museum, in cooperation with the Victoria and Albert Museum, just wrapped up Ocean Liners: Speed and Style, dedicated to all aspects of the ocean liner culture. Alas, I wasn't able to make the trip to see it, but I do have the book, and it's very well done, but with little emphasis on our side of "the pond." *grumble grumble* It does make for a nice benchmark, though.

Anyway, I think things are on track to launch sometime in March 2018. See you on the "maiden voyage!"

Resorts at Sea: Delta Line

I thought I had every significant piece of Delta Line ephemera. Folded sheet of deck plans? Check. Profusely illustrated color brochure? Check. Profusely illustrated black and white brochure? Check. But there’s another! A random search online turned up one I had completely forgotten about. Images from it were used in the 2010 book Ship Style, which, by the way, is well worth one’s time.

The Del Norte, Del Sud, and Del Mar were the first American passenger liners built after World War II, sailing from New Orleans to South America, and they’re often overlooked. (To some, if it doesn’t happen on the North Atlantic, it doesn’t exist. You know who you are.) These sleek passenger-cargo liners were designed by the firm George G. Sharp. In a call to them a few months ago, I learned they had tossed all records pertaining to their passenger ship design division. News like that makes me even more determined to see this project through. But with twists like Sharp’s, it’s just going to take a bit longer.

These ships, just under 500 feet long, registered at 10,000 gross tons, carried 120 passengers, and, as a unique departure from the norm, had twin uptakes, which predated Holland-America’s iconic Rotterdam by a decade. The rooms were spacious, light, and airy; belying the smallness of the vessels. In the mid-1950’s, Delta Line’s advertising began calling the experience of taking the trip to South America a “resort at sea.”

Though the illustrations in this case are renderings, they are faithful to the interiors, as they’ve been described. Sculptor Raoul Josset created coats of arms representing the four nations that had control over New Orleans to go in the dining room. You can see a couple of them here on the left.

Artist Pierre Bourdelle did the spandrels for the hall (main lounge). For Del Norte, scenes of New Orleans history were depicted. The medium was carved linoleum, following his use of it for America in 1940. He also used it in President Cleveland and President Wilson in 1947 and 1948. I’m not sure if he repeated this motif for Del Sud and Del Mar. The finding aid for his papers is vague, with no mention of these ships, or the two Presidents, so only a visit to those materials will clear things up. But I like to think he would do something different for each ship in this trio.

I’ve just begun a conversation with JoAnne Heaney. She started working for George G. Sharp in 1943, under the supervision of future husband, Jack. She had a hand in these Delta liners, President Cleveland and President Wilson, and nuclear ship Savannah.

Resorts at Sea: December: n/s Savannah

Part of President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program, the Savannah was the first commercial ship powered by a nuclear reactor. Militarily, we had the Nautilus (a sub) and the Enterprise (an aircraft carrier). Just as the Savannah in 1819 was the first steam powered vessel across the Atlantic, the Savannah of 1962 promised a new age in merchant ship propulsion. French Line’s France was said to have the capacity to be converted to atomic power, as was the Italian Line’s Leonardo da Vinci and the proposed, but never built, sister to the United States.

Several pieces of art were commissioned for the Savannah, and though passenger ships are sometimes described as “floating galleries” because of this commissioned art, the Savannah actually had an honest-to-God art exhibit on board as stated in the August 1962 Marine Engineering/Log article introducing her. However, details were sparse. Sculptor Jean Woodham created Progression, a six-foot tall work in welded nickel silver, and a chronology in the back of her 50 year retrospective catalogue referenced a selection of works from the Whitney Museum.

 

Savannah's Main Lounge, shown in a brochure dated May 1964.

 

A search turned up a newspaper article from May 1964 listing 14 works in this exhibit. One artist – Louis Bunce – did work for the late 1950’s Mariposa and Monterey; all others are new to this study. These paintings were created between 1925 and 1962 and were chosen by John Gordon, curator at the Whitney.

 

Now the Marine Engineering/Log article says this exhibit was to be rotating. The Savannah’s service record was erratic and short-lived, and I don’t know yet whether this was the first exhibit, or one of the rotations. If it was one of the rotations, then the photo above was dropped in just before the brochure went to press, or is one of the earlier exhibits. 

Fun fact: the table in the foreground is a 30-inch slab of petrified wood from the Petrified National Monument in Arizona.