Nov 1, 2005
OSU EXHIBIT; CURATOR REDISCOVERS ANTARCTIC DRAWINGS TIED TO BYRD
They've been in the deep freeze for a long time, and now they're sitting under hot gallery lights.
But David Abbey Paige's pastel drawings of the Antarctic aren't in danger of melting.
The crown jewels at Ohio State University's Hopkins Hall Gallery in an exhibition focusing on polar exploration, the drawings were recently unearthed from the OSU Archives.
"It wasn't a matter of ignoring their presence," exhibit curator Prudence Gill said. "I had no knowledge of it. I think there are many wonders on this campus that are hidden."
The drawings were produced by Armenian-American artist David Abbey Paige of New York during Adm. Richard E. Byrd's second Antarctic Expedition in the early 1930s.
The 60 works are significant, Gill said, because they are the first color portrayals of remote Antarctic vistas. Other expeditions were documented only through black-and-white photography.
Well before the expedition, Paige had painted a cyclorama of the region for the Coney Island Amusement Park. He had talked to members of Byrd's first expedition for a sense of the colors of the region.
"In the end, expedition members were so impressed that a few petitioned Byrd to have Paige included in the second expedition," Gill said.
Paige, too, lobbied Byrd to be included, but the explorer was reluctant because he thought that every crew member had to perform multiple tasks, said Laura Kissel, polar curator at OSU's Byrd Polar Research Center. Polar expeditions were as expensive, dangerous and difficult as space trips are today.
But David Abbey Paige's pastel drawings of the Antarctic aren't in danger of melting.
The crown jewels at Ohio State University's Hopkins Hall Gallery in an exhibition focusing on polar exploration, the drawings were recently unearthed from the OSU Archives.
"It wasn't a matter of ignoring their presence," exhibit curator Prudence Gill said. "I had no knowledge of it. I think there are many wonders on this campus that are hidden."
The drawings were produced by Armenian-American artist David Abbey Paige of New York during Adm. Richard E. Byrd's second Antarctic Expedition in the early 1930s.
The 60 works are significant, Gill said, because they are the first color portrayals of remote Antarctic vistas. Other expeditions were documented only through black-and-white photography.
Well before the expedition, Paige had painted a cyclorama of the region for the Coney Island Amusement Park. He had talked to members of Byrd's first expedition for a sense of the colors of the region.
"In the end, expedition members were so impressed that a few petitioned Byrd to have Paige included in the second expedition," Gill said.
Paige, too, lobbied Byrd to be included, but the explorer was reluctant because he thought that every crew member had to perform multiple tasks, said Laura Kissel, polar curator at OSU's Byrd Polar Research Center. Polar expeditions were as expensive, dangerous and difficult as space trips are today.