The event is free and open to the public. This program is made possible by the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Emmeline Elliott

That old photograph of Great-Grandpa Olson might hold more family history than you know.

Robert Kolbe can help unravel that information during his presentation on the history of photography in the state from 1840 to 1930.

Kolbe will speak at 7 p.m. Sept. 8 at the Madison Public Library as part of the Madison Area Arts Council Chautauqua Series. The event is free and open to the public. This program is made possible by the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Kolbe, an independent scholar from Sioux Falls, will talk about a number of issues in photography, such as when the occupation started and the types of photography used since the beginning of Dakota Territory.

Several kinds of photographs were done in South Dakota, Kolbe said, including Ambro type, tin type, stereographs, cabinet cards and Daguerreo type.

He’ll speak about the timeframes when certain forms of photography were used. For example, Daguerreo types were made from 1840 to around 1860 and tin types were produced from the mid-1850s through the 1870s.

Kolbe will use a slide show during his presentation and bring examples of different forms of photography.

Early photography still has an impact on people locally, Kolbe said, by what one can learn from a picture as it relates to genealogy. By knowing the differences in the varying types of photography, people can distinguish what kind of photograph they have, he said.

“If you can tell the difference, it helps you date the timeframe when the photograph was done,” Kolbe said.

Other pieces of information can be picked up as well, like where the picture was taken, who the photographer was and what kind of paper was used for the photograph.

Kolbe said audience members can bring along their own old photographs to the presentation and see if he can give them any information about it.

Kolbe has spent more than two decades studying early photography. In 1985, he started working with Brian Bade, who was a colonel in the South Dakota Air National Guard, on a book that documented Dakota photographers from 1853 to 1920. During research for the book, titled “They Captured the Moment,” they found 1,760 early photographers who worked in the Dakotas.

“Since the book came out in 2006, I have added another 50 photographers,” Kolbe said.

Kolbe will mention some specific photographers, mostly those who worked in eastern Dakota, including John M. Munson. Munson had a photography studio in Madison for about 40 years until 1918, Kolbe said. There are 15 early photographers listed in Kolbe’s book who spent time in Madison and one photographer who was in Ramona.

Kolbe said he hopes the audience comes away from the presentation with the tools to learn more information from their old photographs.

“I would hope they have a better appreciation of old photographers and the images they did,” Kolbe said.

MAAC meetings are held the first Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. at The BrickHouse Community Arts Center at 106 S.E. 2nd St. in Madison.

Image: ‘Grand View Hotel on Lake Madison Grounds’ From the Digital Library of South Dakota.

That’s my best pitch for this month, and just a reminder, all of forthcoming agendas and past minutes can be found on our website.

Madison Area Arts Council monthly meeting, 7pm, The BrickHouse, 106 SE 2nd St. We’ll see you there!

If you’re looking for more about South Dakota’s glass history, be sure to catch both of Emmeline’s articles, the Chautauqua Series Summary and her Chautauqua Column as well.

Mundt Foundation debuts cartoon collection 

No Laughing Matter: The editorial cartoons of Karl E. Mundt, an exhibit of cartoons chronicling the life and times of Karl E. Mundt, is on display in the Mundt Foundation at Dakota State University from Sept. 1 through the month of December. 

The collected cartoons, 40 of which are original drawings, span Mundt’s 34-year congressional career. He served South Dakota in the House of Representatives from 1938 to 1948 and as a senator from 1948 to 1973. During that time he participated in major events in American history like the investigation of communist activity in the motion picture industry that created the Hollywood black list. He served on the committee that investigated racketeering and chaired the special Senate subcommittee conducting the Army-McCarthy hearings. 

“It’s a walk back through history — 34 years of history and they’re very entertaining,” said Bonnie Olson, the archivist for the Foundation and Dakota State University’s archives. “It’s just a fun way to reminisce about our history.” 

Throughout his congressional career Mundt amassed a comprehensive collection of documents, photographs, more than 100 scrapbooks, gifts from foreign dignitaries and memorabilia from his travels. His archives present a fairly complete record of his time in Washington. 

“He was in office so many years – a person starts to collect things,” Olson said. 

Olson said his well-developed sense of humor might be what led Mundt to include the cartoons in his collection, particularly those that didn’t portray Mundt in a favorable light. 

“He was a very personable person,” she said. “He had a good memory. He liked to come back to South Dakota to visit with his South Dakota constituents.” 

The exhibit is made up of 60-plus cartoons — 40 originals, and 20 that were pulled from newspaper clippings. Many of the drawings are signed and contain personal messages to the congressman. Exhibit designer Lisa Bretsch organized the work by cartoonist and included biographies of the men who created the art. 

“It’s cool,” she said. “One of the reasons that we’re putting these cartoons up for exhibit is because they’ve never been exhibited.” 

The earliest dated original cartoon on exhibit, a black and white drawing from 1943 by Will B. Johnstone, addresses an acronym Mundt created called GWIBIT, which stands for Guild of Washington Incompetent Bureaucratic Idea Throatcutters. The cartoon is one of many done by Johnstone who was a political cartoonist for the New York World-Telegram. To get to the paper each day, Johnstone walked past the Woolworth Building in New York City. After the stock market crashed in 1929, he said that he should be getting combat pay because of the dangerous walk past the building where many market losers were leaping out of windows committing suicide. Johnstone died in 1944. 

Mundt has work by well-known cartoonists like Herb Block, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist who won Pulitzer prizes in 1942, 1954, 1979 and shared a Pulitzer in 1973 for his coverage of the Watergate scandal. 

The work of Jim Berryman is also featured. In 1949, he became the chief editorial cartoonist at the Star and in 1950 won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for a cartoon titled, “All Set For A Super-Secret Session In Washington” a drawing of a McCarthy era committee hearing room filled with microphones and cameras. 

The mostly black and white pencil compositions in the exhibit range in size from 21 inches by18 inches to 8.5 by 11-inch drawings. 

“The range of topics covered on these cartoons are anything from the Un-American activities committee to the Councilor Treaty with Russia to the Dixiecrats, which was a group of conservative Democrats that banded together to oppose the re-election campaign of President Harry Truman; to the Army-McCarthy trial,” Bretsch said. 

Benjamin Franklin produced America’s first political cartoon in 1754. His Join or Die slogan advocated an intercolonial association to deal with the Iroquois at the Albany Congress. 

Thomas Nast used his cartoons in Collier’s to expose the corruption of political Boss William “Marcy” Tweed, who used a far-reaching political machine to keep New York City under his thumb. Mundt’s collection deals with a variety of subjects, but offers a glimpse into mid-century American politics. 

The Mundt Archives provides information to researchers, historians, authors, educators and the general public throughout the world with digital and physical records, much of which is available on the Internet or via interlibrary loan. 

For more information contact Lisa Bretsch, 605-256-5211 

This programming event is not sponsored in any part by the Madison Area Arts Council. If you have a programming event you’d like to share with our community, please direct a news release to contact@madisonareaartscouncil.org Thank you. 

Emmeline Elliott

Dr. Barbara Johnson spoke on stained glass windows Sunday during the Madison Area Arts Council Chautauqua Series at Mochavino Coffee and Wine Bar. This program was made possible by the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Most of her presentation focused on windows in South Dakota. She also talked about the process of making stained glass.

Johnson, of Aberdeen, had a slide show with pictures of stained glass from around the state, including windows at the capitol building. She noted the dome as the most prominent stained glass in the building.

It was the “funny looking” windows overlooking the rotunda, however, that were a curiosity to her. The design of these windows had been passed off as curly-Q’s, but Johnson saw more of a bug shape to them.

South Dakota State University entomologist Mike Catungui informed her the pattern looked like a water strider, Johnson said. This insect is also known as a straddlebug.

In his autobiography “A Son of the Middle Border,” Hamlin Garland writes that pioneers of the 1880s used tripod-like boards called straddlebugs to mark their claims of land, Johnson said, who holds a Ph.D. in English.

Those “funny looking” windows turned out to be a tribute to the area’s early settlers, Johnson said.

“Windows tell a story and how they tell it is very interesting,” Johnson said.

She also discussed stained glass windows in area churches, including First Baptist Church, Grace Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, St. Thomas Catholic Church and Trinity Lutheran Church.

Johnson spent considerable time investigating a window at First Baptist Church with a design she’d never seen before. The window has a ribbon with the words “The Light of Wentworth” inscribed on it. “Wentworth” refers to William Wentworth, Johnson said, a colonial minister who said the light of faith is what should be most important to a Christian.

Johnson mentioned symbols and scenes found in the other church windows, such as the legend of the pelican – where the mother pelican plucks at herself for blood to feed her offspring – and its representation of sacrifice.

There are many unexpected places to find stained glass windows in Madison, Johnson said. She suggested looking at houses near Dakota State University and funeral homes.

Sixteen people attended the event. 

(We’re  working on finding a great digital picture of the ‘straddlebug’ window, stay tuned)

The Arts Map, which is essentially a worldwide directory of the arts, is an innovative tool for connecting the arts, artists, and community. It’s easy, it’s quick, and provides for a great way to reach out to the world and say ‘Yes, the arts happen in South Dakota, really!’

Here’s our challenge, we want to make the Madison area the dominant represented community in South Dakota, hands down, and we’re close to that. Artists, musicians, writers, poets, actors, creative-types, and even venues too, this is the tool for you.

To sweeten our challenge, we’ll draw for a few free blizzards in the weeks ahead, for our participating artists and venues, so be quick and get it done!

For those outside of the Madison area, ‘bring it on’, we like a challenge afterall.

So, when the opportunity to have Chautauqua on a Sunday afternoon came to us, we made it happen. When the idea to bring Chautauqua to Madison’s most popular ‘third place’, Mochavino, we jumped on it. Now, we have a great story about stained glass to share with all of you, over latte and wine too.

Join us this Sunday, August 22nd, at 2pm, as we welcome our next Chautauqua Series presenter to Mochavino and Madison, Dr. Barbara Johnson of Aberdeen, and her program, ‘Stained Glass Stories of South Dakota’.

This incredible program is made possible by the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

We’ll see you there! (photo credit: Digital Library of South Dakota, that’s the actual Chautauqua grounds from 1891)

A few of you may have noticed some of our new social web 2.0 tools which have recently been added to our blog. Let’s take a moment to feature these resources, and find out a little more about them too.

We’ve been big fans of twitter, as we love this incredible resource because it’s quick, easy, and fun too. Now, we’ve added a new ‘tweet button’, which can be found at the end of each post. Essentially this allows you to share your favorite posts to your twitter followers. Simply click on this ‘tweet button’, and presto, you’ll help us spread the word to our greater community.

Next up, the new ‘like button’, which allows you to say ‘hey, I like this, it’s cool’ or better yet ‘I clicked this so you can see that I clicked this’. Whatever your thinking, this new feature is a another great way to connect, and speak out in the most modest of means possible. Best part of all, if you have a gravatar image, which is a globally recognized avatar, your unique image will appear alongside others who ‘liked’ a post as well.

Ready, set, go, click those buttons, and let’s connect!

This program is made possible by the South Dakota Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.