 Welcome to Barnes Takeout, your daily serving of art. My name is Kaylyn Jewel. I am a senior instructor in adult education at Barnes Foundation. And today I wanted to talk about a room that I miss very much these days. Every day that I work at the Barnes, I spend time in the galleries looking for inspiration, taking in the paintings, looking at all the stuff. And this room that we see here, gallery 23 up on the second floor, is one of my favorite spots in the whole gallery, partly because there's so much weird stuff in there. I think when a lot of us go to the Barnes, we go there to see the fabulous Renoirs like Martha has been talking about or the Van Gogh paintings or Matisse or Picasso. But what we might not expect are some of the little hidden treasures that are in the collection. And so when we look at this room here in room 23, and I think this is a wonderful photograph of the gallery, we can see the trees outside. It makes me really excited that this spring is happening and we're getting ready to see those trees again when we get back to the galleries. But if we zoom into the central part of what Dr. Barnes referred to as his ensembles, what we've got here is a really interesting display of objects. The most prominent in this display is the painting. It was painted by Henri Matisse in 1916. It's called Still Life with Gord's. It's a fabulous painting. And what most people do when we come into this gallery is to look at that painting because it's so wonderful. But what I wanna do is look at something else that's in here and two of these little things. So on the left and right side of what is a coffee pot in the middle that was made in roughly 19th century American coffee pot in the middle, we can see these two little objects. The one on the left is a pelican. The one on the right is just called a bird. So let's look at the one on the right first. So here he is. He is a bird. We'll look at the pelican too. And we can go back here. These two little objects were made by an artist named Thomas Meiling. And they were made sometime in the early 1940s. They were created by Thomas Meiling as a hobby. He referred to them as his creations and they were sent to Dr. Barnes in 1942. These are just two of a collection of other little figures or creations that Tom Meiling sent to Dr. Barnes. And whenever Tom Meiling would send these objects to Dr. Barnes, he would include a note with them. And we have these notes that survive in our archives at the Barnes and our wonderful librarian and archivists have been extraordinarily helpful and digging up all of this stuff. And so I was able to see this correspondence between Tom Meiling and Dr. Barnes. And there's some really wonderful things that both of them have to say about these little objects. So let's look at the lobster claw bird, again made in 1942 or roughly 1942. You can see that we zoom in a little bit more. You can see that it is a lobster claw that has been taken apart and put back together to form the shape of a bird. And if we zoom in on the beak, you can see that Tom Meiling has painted onto the beak a little mouth. Which is adorable. And then if we go down, you can see that the bird is standing on two of these little spindly wire legs. And his feet are made out of what to me look like beans, like lima beans or something that have been dried and then used in this way. So when Tom Meiling sent these to Dr. Barnes, as I said, he included a note with them. And in this note, he says all kinds of things. And I wanted to read to you a couple of quotes from it because I think it's just really wonderful to get a sense of what Tom Meiling was thinking of when he was making these objects. So he says one day when he was younger, he saw a lobster claw hanging in a window and he looked at it and realized that it had a face in it. And he only needed to add a little paint to this lobster claw to create this face. So this is kind of how this started. He was an artist that was from Maine and he met Dr. Barnes when Dr. Barnes and his wife, Laura, were on vacation up in Maine in the summertime. And so when Tom sent these to Dr. Barnes, he said he refers to Dr. Barnes's collection, which we are so familiar with today. He refers to it as Dr. Barnes's little hobby. Literally uses the word hobby to refer to Dr. Barnes's collection, which I think is pretty great. He says that in this note, I am sending you by parcel post six different articles, which I wish to donate to your museum. And someday about 50 years from now, someone will enjoy them. So this is what Tom Meiling said of these objects. So that was in 1942, April of 1942. Later on, we have Dr. Barnes responding in a whole series of letters with respect to these objects. And he says, in the first of these letters, your package, so this is Dr. Barnes speaking, your package of artistic creations made out of lobster claws was a real delight and they leave no doubt that you are a genuine artist. It will be a pleasure for me to show your works of art to our students, not only for their intrinsic artistic value. So here we can see the pelican and let's go back to this view. And not only for their intrinsic artistic value, but because they are concrete proof of our teaching that art may arise in the most commonplace events of life. And when one's expression is genuinely realized, that work of art takes its place with even the great paintings. And so I think these words of Dr. Barnes are pretty amazing when we think about these really humble little objects made out of common materials, like a clamshell and a lobster claw and some beans, are reconfigured to create these little sculptures. And when Dr. Barnes writes back to him, again, he sends several letters back to Tom Mayling. He says in August of 1942, I shall have photographs taken which show how well the objects which you sent me look among some choice masterpieces of the days of long ago. It should be a great pleasure to know that your artistic expressions have found a setting in such good company. And so Dr. Barnes is really thinking of these little creations that Tom Mayling was creating because he was a retiree, he was 78 years old when he sent these objects to Dr. Barnes and he refers to them in other letters that these are objects that kept him busy and that it was, we can think of them like a craft project. I imagine a lot of us are doing craft projects these days to keep ourselves busy. And so these are little objects that kept Tom Mayling busy. And they were so enjoyable to him that he wanted to share them with other people and wanted specifically to share them with Dr. Barnes as students. And so in the last of these letters that Dr. Barnes writes back to Tom Mayling, he says our teacher, so this is September 17th of 1942, our teachers make use of all of these objects, including yours in their instructions to students. And so as somebody who teaches in the galleries and talks with the public and talks with our students and talks with all of you, I think that we are keeping Tom Mayling's spirit alive when we look at these little creations. So you never know, maybe some of those objects you guys are, might be making and the craft projects that you and maybe your kids are working on right now. Maybe they'll end up in some kind of a collection, like the Barnes someday. All right, well, thank you so much for joining. This was really fun talking about some of my favorite objects at the Barnes. And I hope you guys have a great day. Thank you.