Previous Exhibits

Thomas Nast Supports Public Schools

Macculloch Hall has unveiled the newest exhibit from the Thomas Nast Collection. Thomas Nast and the Public School System will be on display in the Nast Gallery through September 2007. This exhibit is made possible with grants from the F.M. Kirby Foundation and the W. Parsons Todd Foundation.

Thomas Nast was very interested in public education and drew many cartoons about the issues surrounding schooling. Many of these cartoons appeared in Harper’s Weekly, while others were drawn for books and other publications. Nast often expressed more than one of his ideals, whether it be political, religious, or his many other views, in a single cartoon. Nast’s drawings for the most part were politically motivated. Many of the public school cartoons were drawn during President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration. Nast was a great supporter and friend of Grant, these cartoons sided with the president.

In 1868, public funds were first set aside to be used by Catholic schools in New York. The Democrats had control of the New York legislature at this time. Nast, being a staunch Republican, saw this funding as an attack on the Republic. He created many of his pro-public school cartoons to try to save the Republican ideals of the country and to repress the Democratic ideas. Nast drew some of his most popular characters in these types of cartoons to convey his points. Both Uncle Sam and Columbia are represented in various cartoons to promote the public school system. Nast firmly believed the public school system was an important foundation of the United States and tried to preserve it through his cartoons.

Going Places

It’s the time of year to make summer vacation plans, and Macculloch Hall is displaying Going Places, an exhibit on eighteenth-and nineteenth-century travel. On view through August 19, the show examines the reasons people traveled, the difficulties they faced, and how the evolution of transportation expanded travel opportunities. One section features the history of the Jersey Shore as a vacation spot over three centuries.

With every advance in technology, the world is growing smaller and moving faster. The Internet grants instant access to information from all around the globe, twenty-four hours a day. In the twenty-first century we can jump on a plane and reach virtually anywhere, for business or pleasure. But for most of history, travel was a long, arduous process undertaken only when necessary. The arrival of the railroad in the mid-1800s launched a transportation revolution that changed the face of travel with each step.

In addition to expanding the social scene and visiting loved ones, travel was universally undertaken to improve health. On May 30, 1824, Louisa Macculloch wrote to her son from Morristown: “The fact is we have had a whole tribe from the South (Camden)—never did I see such an emaciated sickly set. I hope the air from our mountains will clear their complexions and make them look less like walking ghosts.” The salt air of the Jersey Shore also held tremendous appeal for weary city-dwellers looking for invigorating breezes and a cooler climate.

In the years following the Civil War, travel became as accessible for the growing middle class as it had been for the wealthy. As industrialization produced a surging economy and more leisure time, the tourist clientele created a need for more hotels, cottages, resorts, entertainment, and transportation. A tourism economy thrived, and with it came real estate and transportation development that expanded the American culture and changed its landscape.

Dolley Madison, Style and Substance

When most people think of Dolley Madison, what comes to mind is her reputation as a fashionable hostess, or her namesake brand of desserts. Macculloch Hall Historical Museum’s new exhibit, Dolley Madison, Style and Substance, aims to broaden the visitor’s understanding of one of the country’s most beloved First Ladies. On view from February 20 through August 14, 2005, the show will examine her progression from a Quaker schoolgirl to a politically influential partner of President James Madison.

The true test of Dolley Madison’s strength came during the War of 1812, when the White House was attacked by enemy troops. While the President observed the battlefield action in Maryland in August of 1814, Dolley remained in the mansion to try to maintain a sense of normalcy in the midst of chaos. As the British marched towards Washington, the city was so panicked that the troops assigned to protect the President’s residence fled their post. The First Lady steadfastly remained in the White House until the last possible moment, ignoring her own safety to protect the nation’s treasures.

Dolley’s warmth and vivacious personality lit up the newly established capital of Washington, D.C. from the two terms of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency through her husband’s own presidency. During Dolley’s eight years as First Lady the nation was bitterly divided politically between favoring the French and the British. Dolley created a neutral social atmosphere that fostered healing of the fractured capital.

The exhibit will showcase Macculloch Hall’s collection of Dolley Madison’s personal belongings, including her confirmation certificate, a miniature portrait and silhouettes, silver, letters, and an 1886 book of her memoirs.

Exhibit events include book signing and program by Richard Cote

Thomas Nast & the Animals of Politics

Macculloch Hall Historical Museum will present more than twenty examples of animals as political symbols with the exhibit Thomas Nast & the Animals of Politics opening July 25, 2004.

Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was America’s leading political cartoonist in the nineteenth century. From his studio in his Morristown, NJ home, Nast created the symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties that continue more than a century later. Both flattering and derogatory, Nast used the donkey and elephant and their natural attributes to represent the politics of his day.

The Democratic Donkey was Thomas Nast’s first political party symbol. In 1870 his cartoon "A Live Jack Ass Kicking a Dead Lion" appeared in Harper’s Weekly attacking his political foes for rebuking the legacy of Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Nast, a staunch Republican, developed the Democratic symbol from a pictorial tradition that began with Andrew Jackson. The common man, championed by Jackson, was depicted as riding on a humble donkey. Nast seized on this symbol has both stubborn and unpredictable just as he saw his political opponents. For Nast, the Donkey was always a jackass.

Thomas Nast created the Republican Elephant from his own artistic genius. A staunch supporter of Ulysses S. Grant, Nast seized on rumors that this president was considering an unprecedented third term. A false news report that wild animals had broken free of a New York City zoo was Nast’s inspiration for his cartoon "The Third Term Panic" of 1874. Nast reportedly cautioned his ally President Grant that if he sought a third term his presidency was endanger of becoming "a giant pachyderm." From this point the large, strong, but too-long memoried Republican symbol was born.

Nast had a field day with animals as symbols of other nations. England’s lion was both ferocious and kitten, Germany became a pig devouring Europe, Russia’s bear and colonial Africa as a monkey were also caught in the artist’s political menagerie. Images of these international symbols as drawn by Thomas Nast will be included in this exhibit.

Macculloch Hall Historical Museum holds the nation’s largest collection of artworks by Thomas Nast. Museum founder W. Parsons Todd began the collection with purchases directly from the artist’s family. With recent acquisitions, the Nast collection at Macculloch Hall numbers more than 2,000 images. Ironically, Macculloch Hall must remain apolitical under the charter established by Mayor Todd who himself was an ardent Republican.

Dining Exhibit Served Up a Bountiful Feast

Imagine going to a dinner party where each course, from meats to vegetables and sweets to fruit, boasted over a dozen different dishes laid out on tables decked with the finest china, silver, and crystal. Now imagine the preparation and table settings that went into that level of entertaining. Macculloch Hall's fall exhibit, Dining Through the Decades, on display from September 28, 2003 to February 16, 2004, will reveal the social significance of both elaborate and everyday dining in the almost one hundred years between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

For centuries in Europe and then America, the elegant presentation of a bountiful table was the measure of a man's wealth and his wife's position in society. The Dessert Table alone at a gala event was a major undertaking that demanded the utmost creativity and originality of the hostess, not to mention the hard labor of her kitchen staff, to ensure her guests' amusement. Even those less aristocratic dined on a quantity and variety of foods that seem excessive even in our Super-sized era.

But where did the working class members of the household break bread? And how did they set their table when fine porcelain and crystal were out of their reach? Whether prepared for a gala ball or a farmer's family, food was not only a necessity for survival but a centerpiece of social interaction, and Dining Through the Decades will illuminate the customs behind the universal rituals of eating and entertaining.

A highlight of this display will be Macculloch Hall's extensive collection of furniture, china, glassware, and silver. These fine objects are usually only seen on a rotating basis in the Museum's period rooms, but Dining Through the Decades calls for a grand display of table settings that will showcase an assortment of the decorative arts liberated from the storage rooms.

A special section of the exhibit will be devoted to particularly notable examples from Macculloch Hall's silver collection, such as a Revolutionary War-era toast rack from Morristown silversmith Carey Dunn and a 1790s caster set made by Peter and Anne Bateman.

The Life of a Fireman

A new exhibit at Macculloch Hall Historical Museum will examine the history of firefighting, particularly in Morristown. The Life of a Fireman, on display from October 3, 2004 to January 16, 2005, will detail the development of fire companies and equipment from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. At a time when towns and cities were filled with wooden buildings, devastating blazes were common occurrences. A single fire could spread quickly throughout the neighborhood, and the damage could permanently alter the town’s landscape. In response to these disasters, men from the community would band together to form fire departments, but they often lacked the formal training and functioning equipment necessary to effectively put out the fires. The fire companies also played an important social role in the community, sponsoring parades and banquets that were the highlight of the town. Families will enjoy viewing old equipment, photographs, badges and memorabilia from early fire companies.

To celebrate Fire Prevention Month in October, Macculloch Hall will present Fire Safety Day on Sunday, October 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. Morristown firefighters will be on hand with a fire truck to give families tips on preventing blazes. This program is included with regular Museum admission.

Rare Miniatures and Silhouettes on Exhibit

Macculloch Hall has opened a new exhibit, Portable Portraits, focusing on miniatures and silhouettes. Miniatures are tiny paintings, often done on ivory, that were worn as jewlry or displayed in small cases. Artists were able to create amazingly lifelike detail for working in such small-scale format. Silhouettes are inexpensive, quick likenesses cut from paper and mounted with a contrasting background. Before the arrival of photography in America in 1839, these methods were popular ways to produce portraits. Examples by such masters as Charles Willson Peale, George Catlin, and Rufus Porter from the Museum's collection as well as other public and private collections will be on display through October 20.

Macculloch Hall has over ninety miniatures and silhouettes in its collection including several treasures representing figures from early United States history. One large locket contains a lifetime silhouette of George Washington cut in Philadelphia and presented to his friend Alice Poultney Todd. This particular locket also displays a braided lock of the first president's hair. Rare miniatures by John Trumbull of Martha and George Washington are each painted on silver coins dated 1795. Dolley Madison is represented in several examples. Her silhouette cut at the Peale Museum in Philadelphia during her first marriage to John Todd accompanies an extremely rare silhouette of American naval hero John Paul Jones in a Todd family album. A recently redicovered treasure is a miniature of Dolley's first husband painted by Charles Willson Peale and worn as jewelry by the future first lady. George Catlin's miniature of Mrs. Madison painted in her later years is another highlight of the exhibit.

Miniatures of Macculloch Hall's first residents, George and Louisa Macculloch, join members of the Murray family for which Manhattan's Murray Hill district is named, and three generations of Newark's Bruen family painted in the mid-1830s among many others. Detailed information regarding each portable portrait, whenever possible, is provided in a complimentary ten-page publication available to exhibit viewers.

MACCULLOCH HALL PRESENTING RETROSPECTIVE OF THOMAS NAST, FATHER OF AMERICAN CARTOONING

This fall, Macculloch Hall Historical Museum in Morristown, New Jersey will commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Thomas Nast's death with an enlightening retrospective of his life and art. Thomas Nast Portrays a Changing America, which opens September 22 and runs through January 12, 2003, will showcase objects from the Museum's vast collection, the largest of Nast's works in the world, documenting the illustrator's personal life and artistic career. A thirty-four page illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibit.

From Nast's youthful watercolors of Shakespeare scenes to sketches done shortly before his death in 1902, this display will trace his development as an artist and the creation of his icons, including Santa Claus, Uncle Sam, the Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant.

Among the original artworks exhibited will be Nast's original artist proofs for his most important political cartoon Tammany Tiger Loose and his personal favorite Merry Old Christmas, depicting Santa Claus with an armful of gifts for soldiers and sailors while bearing a dress sword and knapsack. A large humorous self-portrait painting as a volunteer fireman with the Morristown Independent Hose Company entitled Hurray Boys reflects Nast's involvement with his community. Two nine-by-twelve foot murals, The Last Ditch and The Palace of Tears, caricaturing events in American history will also hang on the gallery walls. The exhibit's themes will include Nast's early years, his Civil War reporting, the anti-Boss Tweed campaign, social commentary, the decline of his career, a focus on his most important symbols, home and community life in Morristown, and his last days as American consul in Ecuador.

The United States experienced tremendous change during the second half of the nineteenth century, and Nast's pen recorded the social, political, and cultural mood of the expanding country. His cartoons reached all levels of American society, from presidents to uneducated immigrants, and his influence ranged from developing the practice of children writing letters to Santa Claus to determining the outcome of elections. Nast's influence lives on as many of his symbols are still widely used today, confirming the artist's status as America's image-maker.

Thomas Nast Portrays a Changing America was made possible by grants from the Morris County Heritage Commission, Board of Chosen Freeholders through a re-grant from the NJ Historical Commission, Department of State and the NJ Council for the Humanities a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.