Looking into the Wishing Well. By Matthew Gengler, Access Services and… | by Cleveland Museum of Art | CMA Thinker | Oct, 2022

By Matthew Gengler, Obtain Solutions and Reference Librarian

In a pivotal scene from The Child from Cleveland, actors George Brent and a youthful Russ Tamblyn stand above the Cleveland Museum of Art’s wishing nicely. Tamblyn, actively playing the child, is invited to make a wish Johnny. The film, set in 1949, is a loved ones melodrama that follows a younger boy with a hard property everyday living who is assisted by his most loved baseball group. When the movie could not be worth looking at for the plot, the mid-century footage of the museum’s unique galleries is a handle. The scene with the wishing properly is even highlighted on the poster for the film. Then museum director William Milliken, a devoted baseball enthusiast, would have enthusiastically accredited filming in the galleries.

The serious star of the scene, the museum’s beloved pink limestone wishing effectively — presently installed in the Susan M. Kaesgen Education and learning Gallery and Foyer — has a fairly intriguing history. Officially identified as a Properly Head, the wishing nicely very first arrived at the museum in 1929, acquiring been despatched by the seller on instruction (and assure of payment) of the museum’s European representative, Harold Woodbury Parsons. At the time, Parsons relished independence in collecting for the museum, and with enough explanation. Above his occupation doing work as agent of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as very well as the then Nelson Museum in Kansas Town, Parsons designed crucial acquisitions that fashioned the CMA’s selection of European artwork. Among the the treasures he acquired for the museum is The Holy Family members with the Infant Saint John and Saint Margaret by Filippino Lippi, a masterpiece of Italian painting.

Sadly, this time Parsons had overstepped his authority, a actuality produced community by Milliken in his autobiography, Born Less than the Indicator of Libra, in which he criticizes Parsons for staying “more rash than vigilant.” Probably Parsons could be forgiven for his oversight, taking into consideration the leeway provided him by the museum. Somewhere else in the very same volume, Milliken refers to him as “an indefatigable intermediary” and praises how substantially money he will save the museum via his deft acquisitions. Nevertheless, in this second, he misjudged his client’s passions and the wishing perfectly arrived, albeit unwelcome.

This did not avert its exhibition, nonetheless. The earliest images of the wishing properly from 1931 present it put in in the inside garden court of the museum. With its caged songbirds and unique vegetation, the setting supplied a space of quiet repose for the fatigued museum customer to pause and replicate. The wishing effectively helped to entire the illusion until the museum approached an crucial milestone.

In anticipation of the museum’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration in 1941, the director made the decision that the nicely should really be employed for a silver coin selection to advantage museum acquisitions, calling it the Silver Jubilee Treasure Pool. The wishing nicely was set up in the rotunda, exactly where the marble statue of Terpsichore Lyran (the muse of lyric poetry) by Antonio Canova now stands (at the time, the Canova experienced not entered the collection, and resided at Exbury Residence in Hampshire, United kingdom, in the assortment of Lionel de Rothschild).

In his unpublished history of the selection, Milliken describes museum benefactor Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, a statuesque muse in her possess suitable, at the celebration as a “grand dame, with her elegance, heightened by her superb evening robe and her dazzling jewels, tossing silver dollars from across the Rotunda.” The treasure pool was a great accomplishment with donations topping $4,000 in the jubilee year.

The to start with operates procured for the selection with donations from the perfectly were May Display entries such as Harvest by Katherine Greuner Lange and Backward Glance, a uncommon watercolor operate by John Paul Miller. This began a extended custom of making use of the Silver Jubilee Treasure Fund, renamed the Wishing Effectively Fund in 1961, to acquire objects by regional artists. From 1944 to 1993, the museum obtained virtually 200 objects with the fund, mainly from the once-a-year May possibly Display. In several strategies, donations to the Wishing Very well ended up donations to the artistic legacy of Cleveland.

Following almost 14 many years of assistance to the establishment, the well head that Mr. Parsons shipped with no acceptance entered the selection, in 1943. This item continues to keep the fascination of website visitors who peer down into the depths, toss a coin, and make a wish. Museum guests who have contributed their coins to the wishing properly can justifiably position to the artwork in the galleries bearing the Silver Jubilee or Wishing Nicely fund attribution and say that they had a aspect in earning the acquisition probable.