Tag Archives: FDR

Online Exhibition Of 1930s American Art Now Running

Walter Quirt

“This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”           President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, June 27, 1936

A Rendezvous with Destiny: 1930s American Art, the new online exhibition from Helicline Fine Arthas started and runs through November 5, 2023. The exhibition features a variety of artistic styles and subject matters from urban, industrial and rural to abstract, people working and scenes of everyday life. For New York City based artists, the City itself was glorified on canvas, paper and bronze. Several of the artists who thrived during that period are still well known today, but most are obscure.


The exhibition, of predominantly 1930s artworks, features that range. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s” celebrates the American spirit during the depression era and serves as the inspiration for Helicline Fine Art’s new exhibition. 

After the stock market crash of 1929, Americans experienced a time of great transition at every level of society. After a terrible slump, the men and women of the country came together to rebuild the economy, their lives and their spirits. For the first time, our government paid artists to create. To this day, many Federal buildings – post offices, court houses, schools, hospitals, administrative buildings – still have the murals of WPA artists emblazoned on the walls and statues standing in courtyards. The work of these artists reflected that renewal. 

The artists of that generation are being rediscovered in 2023 and for generations into the future, thanks to the Met’s new exhibition, and galleries that keep the modernist art flame burning. Helicline’s proprietors, Keith Sherman and Roy Goldberg, recall discovering the WPA period. “We had just moved into our first apartment, constructed in 1929, on the Upper West Side. In attempting to furnish our home we realized we had no sense of style or taste. We spent time in the Strand Book Store to see what homes looked like in the 20s and 30s,” said Goldberg. “We discovered Art Deco, the Machine Age, the WPA and more.

We spent time in museums, art fairs and something that has disappeared from the cultural landscape, antique shows, where we developed our eye. Today we are collectors turned dealers still collecting. The WPA period is in our hearts,” added Sherman. 

Highlights of A Rendezvous with Destiny: 1930s American Art include a bold Stuart Davis gouache on paper; a “Mercury” bronze by Joseph Freedlander that sat on top of 5th Avenue traffic lights from the 1930s-60s; two works by Daniel Celentano (Thomas Hart Benton’s first and youngest student), many works depicting New York City, including a Cecil Bell of street life under the EL train and a Reginald Marsh depicting the Brooklyn Bridge, mural studies, and a Mervin Jules oil of a tailor with astonishing perspective.
MORE ABOUT HELICLINE FINE ART:MORE ABOUT HELICLINE FINE ART:Helicline Fine Art, founded in 2008 by Roy Goldberg and Keith Sherman, specializes in American and European modernism. The gallery’s core offerings are works from the WPA period. Additionally, Helicline offers American scene, social realism, mural studies, industrial landscapes, regionalism, abstracts, and other artwork. Located in a private space in midtown Manhattan, Helicline is open by appointment. The artworks on the site represent a sampling of available works. Helicline’s offerings are also available on artsy.net and 1stDibs.com.

Featured image- |Reginald Marsh.

Mervin Jules

How To Present New Ideas To Your Intimidating Boss

Not all ideas are 'shot down' by an intimidating boss- Albert Einstein's formal letter paved the way to American atom bomb research.
Not all ideas are ‘shot down’ by an intimidating boss- Albert Einstein’s formal letter paved the way to American atom bomb research.

Everyone says they want innovation in their organization, but when an ambitious employee offers it to a Boss or CEO, for example, the idea is often shot down, says Neal Thornberry, Ph.D., faculty director for innovation initiatives at the Naval Postgraduate School in California.

“Senior leaders often miss the value-creating potential of a new concept because they either don’t take the time to really listen and delve into it, or the innovating employee presents it in the wrong way,” says Thornberry, who recently published “Innovation Judo,” (www.NealThornberry.com), based on his years of experience teaching innovation at Babson College and advising an array of corporate clients, from the Ford Co. and IBM to Cisco Systems. 

Neal Thornberry: " Innovation should be presented as opportunities, not ideas. Opportunities have gravitas while ideas do not!”
Neal Thornberry: ” Innovation should be presented as opportunities, not ideas. Opportunities have gravitas while ideas do not!”

Thornberry outlines a template for innovation that works:

1 Intention: Once the “why” is answered, leaders have the beginnings of a legitimate roadmap to innovation’s fruition. This is no small task and requires some soul searching.

“I once worked with an executive committee, and I got six different ideas for what ‘innovation’ meant,” he says. “One wanted new products, another focused on creative cost-cutting, and the president wanted a more innovative culture. The group needed to agree on their intent before anything else.”

2 Infrastructure: This is where you designate who is responsible for what. It’s tough, because the average employee will not risk new responsibility and potential risk without incentive. Some companies create units specifically focused on innovation, while others try to change the company culture in order to foster innovation throughout.  “Creating a culture takes too long,” Thornberry says. “Don’t wait for that.”

3 Investigation: What do you know about the problem? IDEO may be the world’s premier organization for investigating innovative solutions. Suffice to say that the organization doesn’t skimp on collecting and analyzing data. At this point, data collection is crucial, whereas brainstorming often proves to be a waste of time if the participants come in with the same ideas, knowledge and opinions that they had last week with no new learning in their pockets.

4 Ideation: The fourth step is also the most fun and, unfortunately, is the part many companies leap to. This is dangerous because you may uncover many exciting and good ideas, but if the right context and focus aren’t provided up front, and team members cannot get on the same page, then a company is wasting its time. That is why intent must be the first step for any company seeking to increase innovation. Innovation should be viewed as a set of tools or processes, and not a destination.

If you’re gonna ‘demo’ your idea you better have practiced and perfected your routine before showing your boss-

5 Identification: Here’s where the rubber meets the road on innovation. Whereas the previous step was creative, now logic and subtraction must be applied to focus on a result. Again, ideas are great, but they must be grounded in reality. An entrepreneurial attitude is required here, one that enables the winnowing of ideas, leaving only those with real value-creating potential.

“Innovation without the entrepreneurial mindset is fun but folly,” Thornberry notes.

6 Infection: Does anyone care about what you’ve come up with? Will excitement spread during this infection phase? Now is the time to find out. Pilot testing, experimentation and speaking directly with potential customers begin to give you an idea of how innovative and valuable an idea is. This phase is part selling, part research and part science. If people can’t feel, touch or experience your new idea in part or whole, they probably won’t get it. This is where the innovator has a chance to reshape their idea into an opportunity, mitigate risk, assess resistance and build allies for their endeavor.

7 Implementation/Integration: While many talk about this final phase, they often fail to address the integration part. Implementation refers to tactics that are employed in order to put an idea into practice. This is actually a perilous phase because, in order for implementation to be successful, the idea must first be successfully integrated with other activities in the business and aligned with strategy. An innovation, despite its support from the top, can still fail if a department cannot work with it.

For the Silo, Neil Thornberry.

Working 9 to 5? Think about the best times to approach your boss.
Working 9 to 5? Think about the best times to approach your boss.

Neal Thornberry, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of IMSTRAT, LLC a consulting firm that specializes in helping private and public sector organizations develop innovation strategies. A respected thought leader in innovation, Thornberry is a highly sought-after international speaker and consultant. He  also serves as the faculty director for innovation initiatives at the Center for Executive Education at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Thornberry, author of “InnovationJudo:Disarming Roadblocks & Blockheads on the Path to Creativity, holds a doctorate in organizational psychology and specializes in innovation, corporate entrepreneurship, leadership and organizational transformation.