Thursday, August 23, 2018

Museum Acquires Moina Michael Portrait

Portrait of Moina Michael

Many a good idea has been scribbled on the back of an envelope. On November 9, 1918, two days before the armistice that officially ended the First World War, education professor and Athens resident Moina Michael used the back of an envelope to respond to Lt. Col. John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Field.” McCrae’s last verse bemoaned veterans and casualties of war when abandoned by those they protected:

To you from failing hands we throw the Torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders Field.”

Michael wrote a poem in response, her phrases full of ardent sympathy. Her own last verse reads:

And now the Torch and Poppy Red we wear in honor of our dead. Fear not that ye have died for naught; we'll teach the lesson that ye wrought in Flanders Fields.”

From this moment grew an industry of charity whose worldwide contributions to veterans of WWI would, after adjusting for inflation, sum over $3 billion. Michael began to wear and champion the wearing of red silk poppies in remembrance of fallen and wounded soldiers. After interest within her community grew, she began selling poppies, with the profits benefiting veterans of the Great War. She undertook national letter-writing campaigns, and by 1920 the poppy was designated the official flower of the American Legion. Not only did the proceeds directly assist veterans, but injured veterans considered unfit for labor could be employed crafting these poppies. Michael continued her active role in Athens by teaching classes of disabled servicemen, attending Disabled American Veterans meetings and planting poppies on the campus of the University of Georgia.

Michael’s legacy as “the Poppy Lady” continues, not only in her tradition of remembrance, but in the fabric of Athens itself. The Georgia Museum of Art recently received a donation of a portrait of Michael, painted by Thomas James Delbridge. The work comes to the museum from Michael’s relative Lucia Howard Sizemore, as part of a larger donation to UGA’s Special Collections Libraries. The portrait depicts Michael clothed in white, bearing a solemn expression and a bouquet of red poppies against an austere dark background. Delbridge was born in Atlanta in 1894 and was active in the South and all around the country before his death in Long Island in 1968. His painting “Lower Manhattan” was included in the 2009-10 Smithsonian exhibition “1934: A New Deal for Artists.” His contemplative portrayal of Michael will soon hang near the museum’s exhibition “For Home and Country: World War I Posters from the Blum Collection.”

Organized by Georgia Museum of Art director William U. Eiland with the assistance of head preparatory Todd Rivers, the exhibition highlights propaganda posters from across the world, including the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany. These posters put a unified image to struggle and created a singular effort behind which all citizens could rally. The exhibition invites viewers to investigate the means by which governments on either side of the conflict gathered and maintained support from their citizens. “For Home and Country” can be found in the Boone and George-Ann Knox Gallery II until November 11, 2018. You can read more about the exhibition here.

--
Penske McCormack
Intern, Department of Communications

No comments: