Copyright © 2021 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett
We all experience those unique moments in life that fuel our artistic passions. We may be 18 or 80, but that moment is unforgettable and guides our path. At the University of Minnesota, I went from performance to painting in the blink of an eye. Historic scenery brought focus to my chaotic aspirations.
I first attended USITT as an undergraduate in 1989. That year the conference was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The USITT Expo floor contained a potpourri of historic scenery and models that had been recently acquired by the School of Theatre and Dance at Northern Illinois University. This was during the same time that Lance Brockman was acquiring several historic design collections for the University of Minnesota, including the Twin City Scenic Co. collection, the Great Western Stage Equipment Co. Collection and Holak Collection.
The scenery on display at USITT was a very small sample of a much larger collection that was documented by Alexander F. Adducci in the 1980s. He painstakingly photographed each artifact with a crew of students and produced an exceptional slide collection. The slides were initially used as a teaching resource. Adducci was listed as the curator for “A Collection of Late 19th and Early 20th Century Scenic Art, Containing 3100 Color Images, Documenting a Rich Period of American and European Scene Painting and Opera Design.” The slide collections sold by the University of Northern Illinois were purchased by a variety of academic institutions and archives throughout the country in the late twentieth-century. Many of the slides now sit in their archival sleeves, carefully protected and often inaccessible. They remain untouched. Here is the link to the slide collection at the University of Minnesota: https://archives.lib.umn.edu/repositories/9/resources/1907
This collection ignited my own spark, a spark that continued to be kindled by dry pigment and barrels of size water. At the time, I did not truly understand the historical or cultural significance of the collection, only seeing the beauty of the brushwork. It is only now that I recognize the international significance of this collection. As the slide inventory states,”Housed in the Arts Annex of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Northern Illinois University, the Scenic Collection includes elements from the settings of 90 operas, with approximately 900 backdrops and borders and more than 2200 framed scenic units. These sets illustrate an exceptional range of production styles between 1889 and 1932, reflecting the influence of Realism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Modernism and Art Nouveau in scene painting. In addition to the scenery there are 3 dimensional units including furniture and properties. Furthermore, the collection is supported by an extraordinary archive of production notebooks, property lists, inventories, expense records, performance time sheets, correspondence, original photographs of the sets, selected costumes, and opera stars of the period, ground plans and blue prints, painters elevations and renderings, original costume and set design drawings, and 120 exquisitely painted and detailed ¼” scale maquettes of the settings.”
In an odd twist of fate, the Scenery Collection popped back onto my radar a few years ago while attending another USITT conference in Fort Lauderdale. I have since reacquainted myself with the collection as its future is in peril.I am going to start sharing images of these extraordinary artifacts, now housed in a leaking warehouse with an uncertain future. Although these precious pieces have been quarantined for quite some time, they deserve another moment under the spotlights. I will be working with Dave Doherty, and we will bring every nook and cranny of this collection to you online. Here are a few photos from when the scenery was featured at USITT in 1989.
To be continued…
