Old State House Museum Collections Blog

   This spring, the Old State House Museum opened a new exhibit entitled Arkansas/Arkansaw: A State and Its Reputation. The exhibit sheds new light on the evolution of Arkansas's backwoods, hillbilly image.  Curated by and based on a book by Brooks Blevins of Missouri State University,  Arkansas/Arkansaw will remain open to the public (for FREE!) until March 2012.

As part of the museum's efforts to promote the new exhibit, I interviewed Dr. Blevins over the phone to produce a video podcast. (If you haven't watched the podcast, I highly encourage it!)  We spoke for about an hour, but only 20 minutes of the audio made the cut to the podcast.  As a bonus, below is a 3-minute snippet from the interview in which Dr. Blevins discusses the irony behind the exhibit and some of the more nuanced aspects of Arkansas/Arkansaw.

Arkansas/Arkansaw: Brooks Blevins Interview (Bonus) by Old State House Museum

 
  With the sesquicentennial of the Civil War rapidly approaching, the Old State House Museum is gearing up for an ambitious slate of five exhibits over the next five years.  In preparation, the collections staff has been spending a significant amount of time scouring the collection for items related to Arkansas in the Civil War, researching their provenance, and improving the museum's knowledge of their history and former use.  Among these recently visited objects is a carpet bag from a U.S. Naval Surgeon.

 The carpet bag belonged to Martin L. Gerould of Canaan, New Hampshire.  On September 22, 1863, Gerould was appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon of the ironclad USS Eastport .  The Eastport was originally a Confederate vessel which was captured by Union forces and converted into an ironclad ram. The Eastport and Gerould would serve the next two years along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, patrolling and capturing supplies.

The interior of the flap on the bag contains the information which has enabled the museum to document this provenance.  Pictured below, the bag is stenciled in black ink, "Surg. M.L. Gerould, USN."

    This episode of the Old State House Museum Collections Podcast covers the history of the prison system in Arkansas and the collection of objects acquired in 2008 from the Arkansas Department of Correction.  The collection consists of 236 objects ranging from the only two electric chairs used to carry out executions in the state of Arkansas, to inmate-made prison weapons, to the infamous Tucker Telephone.  As we have done in previous installments, we conducted an interview with an expert in the field, Dina Tyler, Public Relations Director for the Arkansas Department of Correction.   The podcast is embedded below as a YouTube video in two parts.  If you would like to subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, click here. (You must have iTunes installed on your machine.) If you would like to download a slightly smaller version of this episode directly to your hard drive, click here.



Part One

Part Two

    The subject of this post is a mounted poster of Johnny Cash, who is of course an Arkansas native, looking disheveled and wildly brandishing a machine gun.  The image appears to be a promotional photograph for one of Cash’s film roles.  Cash appeared in numerous films and television shows throughout his career, and though it is uncertain which role the image pertains to, it may be from his 1961 gangster film “Five Minutes to Live.”  The museum acquired the poster as part of a collection displayed in our Sweet Sounds exhibit on Arkansas musicians.   The poster is signed, as pictured below, “Sincerely yours Goddard Lieberson!”

     Initially we believed the signature on the poster to be Johnny Cash signing with his character’s name, but upon further inspection, we were able learn more about Goddard Lieberson and the possible meaning of the inscription.  Apparently Lieberson was the president of Columbia Records, Cash’s record label.  Cash often had a strained relationship with Columbia and the inscription may have been a humorous message to Lieberson, given the context, rather than a signature by Lieberson himself.  None-the-less, this is merely speculation.   The true meaning and author of the inscription may never be known for certain.

Below are links regarding Cash’s film career and Lieberson:
Johnny Cash on IMDB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Lieberson
Johnny Cash and Goddard Lieberson (Google Books biography)

  
    Amongst the collections of the Old State House Museum, we have dozens of Civil War era prints and magazines.  Harper’s Weekly was of course one the most popular circulated publications in the United States and the prints and engravings from it’s pages are often fantastic works of art and pieces of historical documentary evidence.  Many talented artists illustrated for the magazine, including Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer.  Homer worked illustrating and engraving for magazines for nearly 20 years, long before he became renowned as one of the great American painters.  The print from the museum’s collections pictured below is from the November 21, 1863 edition of Harper’s Weekly.  It is entitled “The War in the Southwest – Guerillas Hunting Union Men with Blood-hounds.”