New York: The Library, the MET, and Long Island National Cemetery
As April turned into May of 2023, Will and I ventured to New York City as part of this Hicks Project, with the added bonus of seeing friends and family, as Will is originally from the area (Brooklyn-born, then raised on Long Island). I had reached out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art about seeing and possibly photographing the Hicks prints in their stores that we did not have documented anywhere else, and that they themselves did not have images for on their website. I was beyond excited when they said ‘yes, of course’ and we scheduled the time for a visit a couple of months in advance. I think that having the main of this web project up helped get my foot in the door, showing that I meant business!
The day after we arrived had us at the MET - a Friday - in the Prints & Drawings office tucked behind a nondescript door in that gallery. As glamorous as the galleries are, it’s oddly charming to find the behind-the-scenes areas to be reminiscent of school libraries, complete with carpeting and mid-century hung ceilings. Unpretentious, in a way. It was exciting to discover and photograph several prints by Bill that we had never known before, helped by the friendly P&D staff. This particular box of his etchings came to the Metropolitan, I believe, with many other WPA artist’s work, in 1943 when the WPA-FAP Graphic Arts Division gave about 1,700 prints to the museum. The “copywork” I did that day are some of the images in the ARTWORK section of this website, permission credited to the museum. The museum has since photographed a handful of these as well for their website, and for the forthcoming book I’m doing on Hicks - that is, we payed for rights usage and photography in the case of the book.
Further amusement was had by me that day at the MET - besides seeing the museum in general and some visiting Burne-Jones and Leighton pieces - when I went to the bathroom and went to wash my hands only to have to wait a moment as the costume curator Andrew Bolton, in his usual Thom Browne uniform, was washing his! I behaved myself and did not fan-boy out, leaving him in peace. He was busy setting up the Lagerfeld exhibition opening the following week, which I was to miss. (Sad-face.)
A couple of days later we made it to the New York City Public Library to get our hands on a book that William Hicks and his fellow WWI ambulance company fellas put out soon after the war. Hicks was the editor. Through a rainy day, we finally made it into the library’s famous Rose Reading Room, hushed but packed with people on their laptops. I felt smug as Will and I were there to actually look at a book, ha ha. After waiting twenty minutes or so for the book to be brought from some basement storage lair, we had the rare thing in our hands to peruse for a bit. “Three-Eleven: Being a Collection of Prose and Verse, Contributed by the Members of the Company With Complete History of the Company by John E. Fillmore” was probably printed about 1920, probably as a run of less than 100 copies. This copy had a penciled check-mark next to Bill’s name in the back, and with an acquisition date of 1956, was probably given to the library by his wife Mabel after he died in 1955! Some prose by Bill and the history section itself I plan to reproduce in my Hicks book.
While at the library we also ventured into another elegant room (Architecture Room, I believe) that was empty to have the librarians there fetch a pamphlet folder with some ephemera pertaining to the AMERICAN VETERANS SOCIETY OF ARTISTS that Bill was involved with. Unfortunately it only had a few items - less than we have in our own family archives - and it all pre-dated Bill’s involvement.
A cousin we stayed with in Brooklyn had a couple of Hicks prints in frames, so I did my clever thing of shooting in his upstairs loft with a skylight for soft all-over light and my black-fabric-with-a-hole-cut-in-it trick to cut down on the reflective glass, thus getting some good imagery without having to tear open the back of the frames.
Later on during this trip, Will took me up to show me where he grew up in Port Washington on Long Island and we visited the cemetery where Bill and Mabel are buried - Long Island National Cemetery. Seeing the repeating gravestones lined up by the thousands is always a moving moment.
I won’t go into all of the non-related Hicks stuff we did on that trip (museums, family, friends, food!), but I’ll just say that it was a heart-warming and memorable trip for many reasons, one of those New York experiences that will have us back in the future, hoping for more of the same magic.
