How does one measure an artist’s work? In the case of Dr. Henri Rathle (1911-2007), a person may glean the impression of a man in the painted collection he left to the world at his death. A native of Egypt, he picked up a brush at age fifteen. Until moving to Paris, Rathle remained self-taught and pursued his craft with natural talent. However, under the guidance of the post-Impressionist master Henri Matisse, Rathle refined a unique style that broke all the rules, even those of his famed mentor.

After his service in the British Army in World War II, Rathle followed siblings to America and became a physician, pioneering the use of acupuncture in the care of allergies. From the northeast to the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, Rathle moved around until meeting the woman who became his wife and together they headed for Mobile where they raised their six children. But Rathle never stopped painting; in fact, he painted everyday after returning from his office.

Recognized for his beautiful floral and Gulf Coast landscapes, Dr. Rathle also produced many interesting portraits. Capturing subjects from the local, national, and international scene, these works offer glimmers into the cultural climate of the decades in which he painted. From world leaders to family members, the paintings honestly reveal the true character and priorities of their creator.

With eighty of the ninety-five years of his life at an easel, the record of life captured in paint is now celebrated in this exhibit. The Museum of Mobile proudly presents the portraits of Dr. Henri Rathle.

In partnership with the Southern Literary Trail and Alabama Humanities Foundation, the Museum of Mobile opens an exciting exhibit of the photographic and literary works of famed Southern writer Eudora Welty. Eudora Welty- Exposures and Reflections will open at the Museum of Mobile September 2, 2010.

During the 1930s, while a junior publicist, Welty worked as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her around her native state of Mississippi. On her own time, she took some memorable photographs during the Great Depression of people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs were published as One Time, One Place (1971) and Photographs (1989). Her photography was the basis for several of her short stories, including "Why I Live at PO", which was inspired by a woman she photographed ironing in the back of a small post office.

As her writing career progressed, many of the people she continued to photograph inspired in some way the characters she developed. While Welty herself saw the two art forms as “parallel activities,” the written works can easily be paired with many of her photographic images.

Forty photographs and excerpts from Welty’s written catalogue will harness the powerful creative spirit of one of the South’s great twentieth century writers and will open up to younger generations an opportunity to see a mere glimpse of Southern life in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

The Museum of Mobile has developed this as a traveling exhibit, which after its first showing here at the Museum will travel to Montgomery’s Rosa Parks Museum and throughout Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

---

An Extraordinary Man with a Mighty Vision March 22 through July 11, 2010 We are the architects of our own fortune and the hewers out of our own destiny. – George Washington Carver Best known for his work with the peanut plant, George Washington Carver became a legend in his own time. Discover the life and work of an extraordinary man, born into slavery, who used his gifts to become a groundbreaking scientist, educator, and humanitarian with a lifelong mission: to bring practical knowledge to those in need.

View highlights from the George Washington Carver Exhibit with this Power Point video presentation.

Addtitional events associated with the Carver Exhibit March Our Own Destiny Garden Project March 5, 9am—noon Explainer Training Program March 15—19 MOM’s Having a Garden Party March 21, 4pm—6:30 pm Chautauqua Performances March 22, 9am and 11am by Paxton Williams March 23, 9am and 11am Teacher Preview Night March 25, 4pm—7pm Explainer Training Program March 29—April 2 April Free Sunday Kids Activity April 11, 1pm—4pm Botanical Drawing Workshop |April 17, 9am—4pm Our Own Destiny Garden Project April 21, 9am—noon Earth Day Celebration April 24, 9am—1pm Our Own Destiny Garden Project April 27, 9am—noon May Free Sunday Kids Activity May 2, 1pm—4pm Seed Card for Mothers Day Our Own Destiny Garden Project May 18, 9am—noon June Free Sunday Kids Activity June 6, 1pm—4pm Carver Day camp June 21—June 25

Many people today know George Washington Carver largely from the myths that have grown around him…none of them true. The fact is, he didn’t invent peanut butter; it had existed in many cultures for centuries. Neither did he create 300 new products from peanuts – though he created some, and collected many others.
The truth about Carver is much more interesting than the myths. He was a man with a fascinating life story and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, who overcame tremendous odds to become one of America’s most versatile scientists. He was a trail-blazing proponent of sustainability, who believed that “nature produces no waste” and neither should man. He was a humanitarian whose primary goal was, as he put it, “to help the farmer and fill the poor man’s empty dinner pail.”

George Washington Carver Educator Guide & Walking Map (pdf format)

This complex and intimate portrait of one of America’s best known names – and least-studied men – emerges from The Field Museum’s traveling exhibition: George Washington Carver. It follows Carver’s entire life and career, revealing both his struggles and his remarkable achievements as scientist, conservationist, educator, and humanitarian. It brings together more than one hundred artifacts from Carver’s personal life and work, along with animated and live videos, interactive displays, a diorama of Carver’s childhood farm, and a re-creation of the Jesup wagon, his mobile classroom.

The exhibition is organized by The Field Museum in collaboration with Tuskegee University and the National Park Service. In Mobile, it is sponsored in part by the Alabama Farmers Federation and Alpha Insurance.

A Thirst for Knowledge
Carver’s childhood was both dramatic and protected. A frail child born into slavery, George and his mother were kidnapped by slave raiders when he was still an infant. George was abandoned by the kidnappers and rescued by his owners, Moses and Susan Carver, who adopted both George and his brother. George’s real mother was never found.

Moses was a farmer in a Missouri frontier town, a frugal man who abhorred waste of any kind. Since George was a sickly child, unable to help much on the farm, Susan taught him handiwork such as embroidery, knitting, and crocheting. George also spent a lot of his time outside, collecting rocks, observing nature, and creating a “secret garden.” His sensitivity and curiosity were apparent, and even as a child he was known throughout the area for his remarkable skill with plants.

“I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me,” Carver later wrote. His foster parents had no formal education, and there were no schools close to their home – only a Blue-back speller in which George found few answers to his endless questions. So at the age of thirteen he left home, with the Carvers’ blessings, to seek an education. With a rich collection of artifacts, the exhibition traces Carver’s path and passions as he worked his way through elementary and high school, through rejection and welcome, to Simpson College in Iowa, then to Iowa State University, and finally to a research and teaching position at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University).

A Driving Vision
Given his drive and education, Carver could have become a theoretical chemist, an academic botanist, or an inventor. But that wasn’t his bent. He had decided early on that his calling was to help “the man farthest down.” On his way to Tuskegee Carver saw fields of scraggly cotton in exhausted soil and poor black farmers struggling to survive. He had what he called a “mighty vision” – of barren fields turning green with crops, whitewashed farmhouses gleaming in the sun, gardens sprouting with vegetables and flowers.

“Carver was driven by the needs he saw around him,” says Michael Dillon, chair of the Botany Department at The Field and one of the curators for the Carver exhibition. “His research was very goal-oriented.”
One of the ideas that Carver seized upon, Dillon says, was crop rotation – a practice long known to other cultures but not used in the South, where cotton truly was king. Carver understood that cotton had depleted the soil of the nitrogen that plants need in order to grow. And he knew that legumes, such as peanuts and peas, had a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that could take inert nitrogen molecules from the atmosphere and convert them into a form plants can use.

It was the desire to make these alternative crops more useful to farmers and others that led to Carver’s famous work with peanuts, cow peas or black-eyed peas, and sweet potatoes (Sweet potatoes, though not a legume, grow easily with little or no fertilizer). He sought many other practical solutions as well, experimenting with seeds, soil enrichment, natural fertilizers, and more.

In every aspect of his research, Carver sought to make his findings accessible to the communities around him. He put plain-language information and instructions into bulletins that were distributed widely. And he took the Jesup wagon to farms and public spaces, demonstrating farming and composting techniques, cooking, canning…even home makeovers with paints, furniture, and decorative items made from plants and minerals.
Sustainable Resources for Food, Fuel, and Much More

Carver’s ideas on conservation were ahead of their time. “I believe the Great Creator has put oil and ores on this earth to give us a breathing spell,” he said. “As we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms…. For we can learn to synthesize materials for every human need from the things that grow.”

Carver blazed a trail for the development of products from plants, a field known as chemurgy. He found hundreds of new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soy beans, including milk and cheese, laundry soap and linoleum, wallboard and rubber, and much, much more. Carver worked on biofuels with Henry Ford, and made a massage oil for polio victims – though it turned out to be the masseur, Carver himself, as much as the oil, that was effective.
After Carver, interest in plant products went out of fashion for decades – only to be rediscovered at the end of the twentieth century. Today’s accelerating research on plant-?based fuels, medicines, and other products is rooted in Carver’s work – though not always with his altruism.

“The most important gift Carver gave to people wasn’t any particular product,” Michael Dillon says. “It was the gift of self-worth.” Carver crossed racial and class boundaries. He gave of himself so that others could become educated, self-sufficient, and proud. He followed his own vision to improve the lives of others.

Admission
Admission to George Washington Carver is free with general admission to The Museum of Mobile ($5 for adults, $4 seniors, $3 for students, and Free for children under 6). Call 251-208-7569 for additional details.