: There are some images so thoroughly American that it makes you
feel good just to look at them. Such is the comfort level
inspired by Currier & Ives prints. Their romanticized
illustrations of Nineteenth Century life have so well branded
America that they still show up on everything from waiting room
walls to the label of a venerable old whiskey bottle.
Seemingly, that is the way Nathanial Currier - a tall, blue-eyed
man with a tendency toward depression and a gift for lithography
- and James Merritt Ives - a rotund and jovial businessman -
planned it when they set out to become "printers to the people."
Although their business spanned a half century, 1852 to 1904,
during which time the firm produced and sold 7,500 iconic images
in an unknown quantity of editions, there was, until recently, no
museum with a permanent collection of Currier & Ives work.
That slight was made right when the Museum of Fine Arts unveiled
"Currier & Ives: An Americana Panorama." The show, which is
currently on view through June 4, launches a series of rotating
exhibitions designed to display the museum's entire collection of
more than 700 items, a gift of Sidney and Lenore Alpert of Silver
Spring, Md.
Heather Haskell, director of the Springfield Museums, a group of
four small interrelated museums, and Liz Sommer, curator, talked
about the magic that keeps Currier & Ives alive, even in a
world grown sophisticated.
"Their United States is a place where the farmland is bountiful,
where families are happy, where the cities look beautiful, and
where any challenges are faced head-on and are overcome. It's an
America that everyone wants to believe in," Sommer said.
While soft colors imbue the prints with an ethereal quality, they
also help articulate every aspect of life in the Nineteenth
Century.
"Central Park. Winter. The Skating Carnival," undated.
Prosperous and protected by labor laws, the middle class
engages in wintertime fun.
Historically, through their firm's prints, Currier and Ives
recounted the birth of a nation and recorded the events of the
tumultuous decades during which the Civil War raged, the American
West was populated and the industrial revolution flourished. Like
television news anchors today, they fed the news-hungry with images
of disasters, shipwrecks at sea and conflagration in crowded
cities. As volunteer firefighters themselves, they were the first
to elevate the heroics of firefighters.
