AUT: fw: flowers for homestead

["Neil Gordon" <practicalhistory@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: joehill23@xxxxxxxxxxx

As a small gesture in the field of historical memory and forgetting, flowers
and a poster with the following text were placed today (21 July 2000) at the
entrance to Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London, where a talk on the art
collection of Henry Clay Frick has been scheduled. Our aim is not simply to
correct the historical record about Frick, but to pose some broader
questions about who gets remembered with monuments and who gets erased from
history. We expect our flowers to be removed quickly; if you would like to
add your own flowers in the next week, you can place them at Dulwich Picture
Gallery, Gallery Road, London SE21 7AD. Alternatively you might wish to send
an e-mail to the Frick Collection (rosenau@xxxxxxxxx) or Dulwich Picture
Gallery (info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) stating that you are remembering
those killed by Frick?s Pinkerton men during the Homestead strike of 1892.
Let us know if you do anything. We would also be interested in hearing about
anything you may have done in relation to monuments, statues etc.

Flowers for Homestead

Henry Clay Frick (1849 -1919) is best known now for the art collection he
founded, the subject of a talk at Dulwich Picture Gallery by his great great
grand-daughter on July 27th 2000. The Frick Collection was established in
his New York mansion with a bequest on his death in 1919.

How easy it is to buy a place in posterity, so long as you can pay the
asking price. The stories of the great cultural benefactors ? the Fricks,
Carnegies and Tates - rarely ask about the origins of their wealth. A
history of the Frick collection refers to him only as 'the Pittsburgh coke
and steel industrialist'; a tribute to Andrew Carnegie talks glowingly of
'the Captain of Industry', 'the world's richest man' who gave it all away.
No mention here of Homestead, Pennsylvania.

But our memories are not for sale. For us Frick will always be remembered
for his role in the Homestead strike in 1892 when he employed armed company
goons to shoot workers at the Carnegie Steel Company (Andrew Carnegie was
conveniently out of the country to avoid getting blood on his own hands).

Was it guilt that made Frick and Carnegie philanthropists? Maybe, but it is
their names that are immortalised in galleries and libraries, not the
anonymous steel workers who created their wealth and were shot down at
Homestead.

It?s a similar story with Dulwich Picture Gallery with its origins in
Alleyn?s College of God?s Gift (now Dulwich college). The good burghers of
Dulwich may raise a glass to Edward Alleyn (1566-1626), but who drinks to
the prostitutes who worked in his brothels on the South Bank? Close to the
site of the Bankside stews the latest art gallery, the Tate Modern, bears
the name of a sugar magnate not those who worked on his plantations. Across
the road at the old Tate Britain there is no trace of the prisoners who
suffered in the Millbank penitentiary on the same site.

Step inside Tate Modern and see some of the work of the 1990s ?Young British
Artists? cultivated and commissioned by that modern day Frick, Charles
Saatchi. Nothing illustrates better how little this wave of artists have to
say than their dependence on a man who made his money from, among other
things, helping Thatcher stay in power with his advertising.

It?s not just in art that the wealthy patron and philanthropist is making a
comeback. Cash starved facilities like Lambeth?s Carnegie Library in Herne
Hill Road are facing closure at the same time as New Labour is making
?public services? like schools and hospitals increasingly dependent on
private sector finance.

There are too many monuments to Frick, Tate, Carnegie, Saatchi, Alleyn and
all the other assassins and pimps. Since Frick?s memory is going to be
invoked on this site next week, we have placed this small memorial to some
of those erased from such stories.

These flowers have been placed here in memory of those killed by Frick?s
gunmen and in memory too of Alexander ?Sasha? Berkman (1870-1936), an
anarchist who on 23 July 1892 shot and wounded Frick in response to the
Homestead massacre. Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison for wounding
one man and died in poverty. Frick was never prosecuted for causing the
deaths of many and died rich enough to found an art collection.



Notes:

1. For the history of the Homestead strike, see:
www.geocities.com/pract_history/homestead.html

2. Charles Saatchi has recently bought ?My Bed? by Tracey Emin for a
reported £150,000.  ?She had protested against the idea of her art being
owned by the man whose advertising expertise had kept Mrs Thatcher in power.
But, at 37, she appears to be mellowing? Emin says she knew she had matured
when ?I was at Vivienne?s [Westwood] party, Mrs Thatcher was there and I
didn?t spit at her?. Emin and Saatchi are believed to have made up at
another party.? (?Saatchi and Emin make up as he buys her unmade bed for
£150k?, Independent on Sunday, 16 July 2000).

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