Roaming the Universe
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2022-03-24T15:29:23+00:00
Human actions are bounded by the turning of the spheres, but we also use our own values and experiences to interpret the cosmos around us. We photograph the path of the moon, and we also write fables about it. We even call people stars, and we bask in the glow of their talent and are drawn by their gravitational pull. The universe dances with motion, and so do the people living in it.
George F. Morgan (American, 1876 – 1942)
Annular Eclipse, 1915
Gelatin silver print
On loan from Haverford College, HC08-0375
This composite image captures multiple stages of a solar eclipse. It documents the path of the sun across the sky and the movement of the moon in front of the sun. Haverford astronomy professor Karen Masters observed that the skyline looks strikingly like Cornell University’s clock tower and Sage Chapel. A Cornell lecturer recently confirmed that the photo shows a 1925 solar eclipse seen from Ithaca, NY. How the photograph moved from Ithaca to Haverford is a mystery. However, its subject and history reflect an effort to situate human experience in relation to the motion of the solar system.
Maurice Seymour (American, 1900 – 1993)
Publicity Portrait of Kathryn Lee for Allegro, 1947 – 1948
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Theresa Helburn (Class of 1908)
2005.15.534
For all its dramatic composure and control, the pose of Broadway actress and dancer Kathryn Lee must have been brief. Balanced on point, arms outswept to mirror the extension of her leg, this photograph holds her in a fleeting moment of grace and balance. The photographer, Maurice Seymour, once wrote that, “When the camera catches the dancer before the movement reaches its climactic pose, the picture is likely to be pointless.” Seymour was not interested in the mechanics of motion, but in capturing finished and expressive bodily lines. He thought these lines, punctuated by the shape of the costume, told the truest story of the dance.
Unknown English maker
Casket with Moresca Dance, 1858, after original of ca. 1435 – 1470
Plaster cast of original ivory carving
Gift of Haverford College
1858.247a
On the top of this “casket,” six figures, rendered in bold, energetic lines, perform a moresca dance, a predecessor of a traditional English folk entertainment called Morris dancing. Although the object looks like a functioning box, it is a fictile ivory, or plaster cast, modeled after a medieval casket in the collection of the Louvre Museum.
In addition to its solid plaster latch and lock, the cast has a hollow bottom. Its model is one of several fifteenth-century ivory and bone boxes decorated with similar images of courtly leisure. Although the parts of this object do not move independently, its form and imagery attest to a long history of visual and material translation.
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Unknown Japanese maker
Ivory Sculpture of Three Rabbits Taking Dumplings to the Rabbit in the Moon, ca. 1950
Ivory and wood
Gift of Elizabeth Gray Vining (Class of 1923)
2005.6.23.a-d
Three delicate, red-eyed rabbits ferry pastries to the mythical rabbit in the moon. In Japanese legend, the man in the moon came to earth disguised as a beggar and asked several animals for food. Sad that he could only offer grass, the rabbit threw himself onto a fire to be cooked. The beggar, awed by this sacrifice, revealed his identity and took the rabbit back to the moon. Legend holds the rabbit still appears there, pounding mochi, or Japanese rice cakes, at each full moon. Versions of the story appear in the art, myth, and ritual of several Asian cultures, framing celestial movements as fables.
