#whitman200

This year marks Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, so this month we’ll be featuring works from the collection along with commentary from Whitman’s writings.

In the 1850s, Walt Whitman frequented an exhibition of Egyptian artifacts now part of the Brooklyn Museum’s collection. He befriended the original collector, Dr. Henry Abbott, and even read through a two-volume history of ancient Egypt (a rare feat for the poet, who notoriously left books unfinished). The royal effect and calm expression of statues like this one resonated with Whitman, who called the Egyptian collection “a place to go when one would ponder and evolve great thoughts.”

Continue the Whitman celebrations on October 25, when we unveil a new artwork inspired by the famous Brooklynite in One: Xu Bing and use the #ASKBKM app to tour the Museum in the author’s footsteps.

We here at Brooklyn Public Library are excited for the opportunity to celebrate Walt Whitman on the occasion of his 200th birthday! Whitman lived and worked for part of his life in Brooklyn and penned “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” so, as you can imagine, Brooklynites are eager to claim him as OUR poet (although, Camden, NJ, you can have some too--there’s enough to go around).

This year marks Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, so this month we’ll be featuring works from the collection along with commentary from Whitman’s writings.

Walt Whitman and his friend William Sidney Mount both grew up in rural Long Island. Whitman’s poem “A Song of Joys” revels in a childhood full of companionship and adventure on the Island’s shores and farms. As he wrote, “O to go back to the place where I was born, / To hear the birds sing once more, / To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more, / And through the orchards and along the old lanes once more…” The poem has a pastoral appeal similar to Mount’s art, like this painting, which depicts a group of young men escaping their duties with a noonday nap.

Continue the Whitman celebrations on October 25, when we unveil a new artwork inspired by the famous Brooklynite in One: Xu Bing and use the ASK Brooklyn Museum app to tour the Museum in the author’s footsteps.

“Among the few relics left to remind the present inhabitants of Brooklyn of the days and scenes of their grandfathers, few are more valuable than the large, somewhat time-stained picture known as ‘Guy's Brooklyn.’” This is how Walt Whitman wrote of Francis Guy’s 1820 painting, Winter Scene in Brooklyn. Whitman, a librarian for the founding institution that became the Brooklyn Museum, wrote about works in our collection from Ancient Egyptian sculpture to paintings by his American contemporaries like Francis Guy. 

This year marks Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, so this month we’ll be featuring works from the collection along with commentary from Whitman’s writings. Continue the Whitman celebrations on October 25, when we unveil a new artwork inspired by the famous Brooklynite in One: Xu Bing and use the ASK Brooklyn Museum app to tour the Museum in the author’s footsteps.

This year marks Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, so this month we’ll be featuring works from the collection along with commentary from Whitman’s writings.

After an 1857 visit to porcelain manufacturers in Greenpoint, Walt Whitman observed that “great things would yet be accomplished with the mixtures of clay, bone and feldspar, now so extensively used in so many different shapes, under the name of Porcelain.” Produced by Brooklyn-based Union Porcelain Works for the United States’ Centennial in 1876, this “Century Vase” shows that Whitman’s assessment was correct. Designer Karl L. H. Mueller helped put a distinctively American spin on porcelain—first used in Asia and then Europe—by including bison heads as handles and vignettes depicting events like the Boston Tea Party and the installation of telegraph poles.

Continue the Whitman celebrations on October 25, when we unveil a new artwork inspired by the famous Brooklynite in One: Xu Bing and use the #ASKBKM app to tour the Museum in the author’s footsteps.

Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman! 

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the American literary icon who influenced Brooklyn’s artistic and intellectual life in the mid-1800s. Did you know that Whitman was an acting Librarian at the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library? The predecessor institutions of the Brooklyn Museum, the Apprentices’ Library and the Brooklyn Institute, engendered cultural legitimacy in the rapidly expanding village of Brooklyn, and fostered a creative atmosphere that bolstered Whitman’s talents. These institutions played a role in Whitman’s writings throughout his adult life—from Brooklyn Standard, a poem recounting Revolutionary War hero General Lafayette laying the cornerstone of the Apprentice’s Library building, to the multiple Brooklyn Daily Eagle art reviews praising the Institute’s representation of Brooklyn artists. An art aficionado himself, Whitman inspired many young artists, including painter Walter Libbey whose portraits are currently on view in our fifth floor Luce Visible Storage and Study Center. His deep-rooted connection to Brooklyn as a whole is pervasive in his literature: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry describes the common commute of a Brooklynite traversing the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan, and Leaves of Grass was published here. Even after moving away, Whitman’s lasting love for the borough caused him to return multiple times over the following decades, and his legacy remains alive in Brooklyn today. Come visit the Brooklyn Museum and help us celebrate two centuries of Walt Whitman!