The Wisconsin Idea and the Visual Arts
Maryo Gard Ewell
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters/Wisconsin Regional Art Program
September 24, 2015
I’m so happy to be talking with you today, and in advance I thank my colleagues Bob Gurda,
Rebecca Herb, Anne Katz, Helen Klebesadel, Gerry McKenna, George Sibley and George
Tzougros, for assisting me.
The Wisconsin Regional Art Project, and the Wisconsin Regional Artists Association, have an
amazing history. What does a visitor from Colorado know about this? Well, a bit. My father,
Robert E. Gard, in 1948 founded a sister organization, the Wisconsin Regional Writers
Association – and as I’ve looked through his papers, talked with his colleagues in the University
of Wisconsin system about the role that the arts have played in building the State of Wisconsin
… well, let me start at the beginning.
It was about the turn of the last century. Robert LaFollette – Fighting Bob – was governor, and
his college friend from the University of Wisconsin, Charles Van Hise, was the president of the
University (and by the way, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was then the University of
Wisconsin, so that’s how I’ll be using the name).
LaFollette was a populist. He believed deeply that the people, the ordinary folks of Wisconsin,
should participate in, and shape, the democracy that was and would be, Wisconsin. And he
believed that, in exchange for their participation, the State should serve their communities.
LaFollette and Van Hise hatched a grand vision called the Wisconsin Idea. It had two key parts:
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First, that the newest ideas in agriculture, or engineering, or economics, or science, or
the arts should directly serve Wisconsin communities
And second, that the University of Wisconsin would serve all of the State’s individuals.
Governor LaFollette said in 1901, “The State will not have fulfilled its duty to the
University nor the University fulfilled its mission to the people until adequate means have
been furnished to every young man and woman to acquire an education at home in
every department of learning.”1
Van Hise stated it even more strongly: “The greatest waste in our nation is not economic
but rather the waste of human talent.”2
Van Hise was a geologist, not especially known as an arts supporter, but still he said, “I
would have no mute, inglorious Milton in this state…I would have everybody who has a
talent have an opportunity to find his way so far as his talent will carry him, and that is
only possible through university extension supplementing the schools and colleges.”3
So you see WHA radio flourishing – designed to help deliver an education, the awareness of
new ideas – useful ideas - to people in the state in places large and small.
1
Quoted on UW-Madison webpage www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu/timeline.html; downloaded 11/7/07
2
Quoted by Gard in his 6-year plan to study the arts in community life, unpublished, 1952
Howe, Frederick, Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912, p. 142
3
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You see University Extension working in parallel with Cooperative Extension in delivering
classes in person, or by correspondence on just about every imaginable topic to rural places.
In the arts, it was no different. You see the Wisconsin Dramatic Society founded in 1910 by
Professor Thomas Dickinson of the English Department, who encouraged plays written by
Wisconsin people – Pulitzer prize winning Portage playwright Zona Gale emerged from this
movement. Production of locally-written plays was aided by the University’s Lyceum Bureau;
the Bureau of Dramatic Activities loaned scripts and offered help in playwriting, acting, and
producing plays. The Speech Department worked with the Extension Service to provide judges
for the rural plays.
You see the formation of the Bureau of Community Music, later the Bureau of Community Music
& Drama, in 1913. Its director, Professor Edgar “Pop” Gordon, crisscrossed Wisconsin by train
in the 19-teens and 20’s to help form singing societies. The purpose was good music, yes, but
“I see in community music and drama a means of combating juvenile delinquency and family
degeneration”4 (how contemporary is this!). In communities where there was religious conflict,
such as DePere at the time, he thought music could be useful; he helped form an ecumenical
choral group that sang in a Presbyterian church under the direction of a Catholic priest.
And remember, this was all tied to LaFollette’s idea of a democracy; in 1912, playwright Percy
MacKaye had written, “The Wisconsin Idea involves the full scope of popular self-government;
and popular self-government without indigenous art forms is incapable of civilized expression.”5
The College of Agriculture was in a particularly fine position to serve rural Wisconsin. Chris
Christensen had become Dean of the College, and he believed that the Danish folk school
movement – blending cultural learning for farmers with agricultural learning – dovetailed nicely
with the Wisconsin Idea. In a history of the Folk School, Irish poet-economist George Russell is
quoted as saying:
“A nation is cultivated only so far as the average man…is cultivated and has knowledge of the
thought, imagination, and intellectual history of his nation…. Governments do not build up
civilizations. That is done by the citizens using the creative imagination about life, trying to
make the external correspond to something in the spirit.6
Dean Chris explicitly felt that education in our agricultural colleges must be broad and must
include good literature, art, music, history – the cultural side of life – as well as the practical
training for better farming. He said:
“In emphasizing the social or cultural values arising out of the improved economic conditions, it
is well to keep clearly in mind that this will come about only if the economic process operates in
some kind of cultural framework. The achievement of wealth itself contains no guarantee that it
will become the means to more significant living…. As a matter of fact, wealth in careless hands
may be a two edged sword wielding destruction to its owner and to society.”7
4
Gard, Robert E., Grassroots Theater: A Search for Regional Arts in America, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1955, p. 91
Patten, Marjorie, The Arts Workshop of Rural America: A Study of the Rural Arts Program of the Agricultural Extension Service,
New York, Columbia University Press, 1937, p. 25
5
6
Campbell, Olive D., The Danish Folk School, New York, MacMillan, 1928, p. 5-6.
7
Chris Christensen, Foreword to “An Exhibition of Work by John Steuart Curry,” Seventh Anniversary of the Land Grant Colleges,
November 1937, Washington, DC
2
He hired John Barton into the Department of Rural Sociology and he and Barton conceived the
notion to have a visual artist on the staff of the College of Agriculture. The artist would help
enhance the broad economy of the state of Wisconsin as well as help people understand their
own culture. Barton said:
It was a country tavern in Portage County which first gave public recognition to a young Polish
painter for a series of native landscape murals, and the tavern keeper said it was good
business. If it is good business for the tavern, it could also be good business for the local
library, school, or community house. If the work is competent, it would seem more appropriate
to recognize native talent than to hang a conventional print of three horses' heads, a blind muse
playing a harp, or some other worn-out picture from a bygone age.8
But, consistent with the beginnings of the Wisconsin Idea, the artist-in-residence idea was
interlinked with American democracy:
John Barton again: “The rural art movement cannot properly be understood apart from the
democratic movement…. It was inevitable that the democratic revolution – still in process
through universal education and today, adult education – should call into being, among others, a
rural people's art.”9
This would be a revolutionary idea today – and this was 1936. The country’s first artist-inresidence, and not in an art department? And linked to the idea of democracy, not only to art
history and theory. So where to get this artist?
Christenson knew Grant Wood, and he visited him in Iowa to float the idea. Wood liked it, and
suggested that John Steuart Curry of Kansas, who was at the time working in Connecticut,
would be ideal, given his rural background and own populist ideals. The Dean hopped a train to
Connecticut to broach the idea to Curry. He would have no teaching responsibilities; just as
researchers worked in their labs to advance knowledge, so would Curry work in his studio to
advance creativity.
Curry both assisted the University in new ways (such as sketching the football team!) and
assisted the people of Wisconsin in finding their talents. The University president at the time,
Glenn Frank, explicitly believed that “There is poetry as well as production on the farm. Art can
help us to preserve the poetry of farming while we are battling with the economics of farming.” 10
in announcing Curry’s appointment in1936 Pres. Frank said, “In launching this new educational
venture, we are undertaking to give emphasis to regional art as a force for rural as well as urban
culture in the Middle West.”11
[
Curry started travelling, and everywhere he went, he discovered farmers or wives or children
who wanted to make art. He looked around him and saw art in the hills, the farms, the farmers,
the animals, the earth of Wisconsin, and he believed that everyone has the ability to paint what
was most alive to him – that it was just a matter of enabling people to do so. He emphasized
personal vision over technique. As a result, paintings by farmers who worked with Curry are
8
9
Barton, John Rector, Rural Artists of Wisconsin, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1948, p. 6
Barton, John Rector, Rural Artists of Wisconsin, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1948, p. 7
10
Frank, Glenn, “Toward a People's Theater in Wisconsin,” preface to the play “Goose Money,” special extension circular,
University of Wisconsin Madison, June 1928
11 Gard, Grassroots Theater, p, 99
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dramatic, breathtakingly alive. Curry said, “The feeling inherent in the
cannot be ignored or trifled with for the sake of theory.”12
life of the world
This doesn’t mean that he blew off art theory and the deep learning of technique. But the
purpose of those was to go beyond. It was the means, to achieve the end that was an
understanding of life, to paint the thing most alive to the artist. He said, “I do not despise the
classic and accepted forms of our civilization, but it is time that people realize that they have...a
more magnificent life to use and to view in our creative efforts.... If you feel the significance of
the life, the design builds itself.13
He envisioned a statewide exhibit of art by farmers and their families, and the first exhibit was
held in 1940 at the Memorial Union on the University campus with 30 artists from 17 counties
participating; next, it included a junior show with 28 youth the first year. By 1946 there were 101
artists exhibiting! Curry offered a critique of each of the pieces. Local art clubs began to form
(the Rural Rembrandts of Wautoma was the first), and their local shows led to regional shows
which connected with the state show; the independent Wisconsin Regional Artists Association
was ultimately formed, working closely with, and complementing the University’s Art Project.
After Curry’s death, Barton continued supporting rural artists, and for the Wisconsin Centennial
in 1948, the department of Rural Sociology produce a book, Rural Artists of Wisconsin. Aaron
Bohrod was Curry’s successor as Artist-in-Residence, and by 1963, Wisconsin boasted twelve
regional art shows, and the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association had 1800 members, from
each county in Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, James Schwalbach, whose title was initially Extension Specialist in Rural Art, had
come into the picture. He traveled the state constantly, working closely with the local artists and
their exhibits, and many in this room will remember his voice, broadcasting “Let’s Draw” over the
airwaves of WHA from 1936-1970 into the schools of Wisconsin.
I remember my teachers tuning in “Let’s Draw” in my elementary school, which had no art
teacher. Students would listen to instruction for about seven minutes, and then would begin
painting or drawing, often to music. I remember being told to paint whatever Smetana’s
orchestral “The Moldau” made me feel. We were urged to paint our own ideas, just as Curry
urged his students to do. (Indeed, Schwalbach briefly tried out the new medium of television on
WHA TV, rejecting it after just a few sessions because television squashed personal creativity,
he felt, and he went back to radio). And, like Curry, Schwalbach offered critique as well as
teaching. Students selected five representative examples from their class which were sent to
Mr. Schwalbach, who selected exemplary work that then circulated among schools in Wisconsin
during that school year.
Schwalbach had a sabbatical year and went to Scandinavia to study the Home Crafts
movement there. He returned feeling that the same could be done in Wisconsin. His colleague,
Tom Echtner, recalls the formation of the Wisconsin Association of Crafts. They worked with
County Extension agents on a bold program for improving the economic wellbeing of rural
people as well as the beauty of American homes. They’d ask the agent to identify unemployed
or underemployed people in their county who might be able to design things – from puzzles to
12
Mathiak, Lucy, “Bringing Life to Canvas: John Steuart Curry and the Rural Art Program,” The Art of Rural Wisconsin 1936-60
Exhibit Catalogue, Madison, Department of Agricultural Journalism UW-Madison, 1985, p. 6
13
Mathiak, Lucy, p. 6]
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salt and pepper shakers. Schwalbach was in contact with firms that manufactured these items,
and marketplaces nationwide to sell them – so for a time they were rural craftspeople to make a
living.
Schwalbach became Chair of the UW Center System Art Department, and he was a big thinker,
like those who had gone before him. He believed that it was essential to eliminate the “archaic”
distinction between the so-called fine and amateur arts, to resolve the “unnecessary breach
between the amateur and the professional”, and to recognize multiple standards. This would not
be trifling with standards of excellence, but would be building a new kind of artist with a new role
in society: “The community needs the artist, but an artist who accepts some responsibility
towards the community; an artist who can hold forth a vision of the future that is built on the
past.”14
In 1973, I worked for a year as a secretary in the Extension Arts Department. The number of
artists in all disciplines, on several campuses, in this merged department, had grown to 28 by
then. Helen O’Brien, nearly blind, crisscrossed Wisconsin by Greyhound bus, helping 4-H clubs
expand to include youth drama. Ed Hugdahl created a program to help rural organists improve
their music and performance. Marv Rabin created a program to ensure that Norwegian fiddling
was kept alive and flourishing. Dick Wolf directed the Wisconsin Youth Symphony. Robert
Gard’s Wisconsin Idea Theater helped people statewide create and produce their own drama
and, as I mentioned, he created WRWA which encouraged thousands of writers. Karen Cowan
urged people to dance and create choreography. Harv Thompson helped raise standards in
high school drama, and later ran the School of the Arts at Rhinelander. Dave Peterson directed
touring troupes that brought Wisconsin history to life at county fairs or in state parks with his
original musicals. And in the visual arts were Ken Kummerlein and Joe Bradley in Madison, Jim
Schinneller and Tom Echtner in Milwaukee, and so many more. In 1969 Schwalbach wrote
something that probably all those artists would agree with: that Arts Extension was difficult to
define, but that “we stand somewhere between reality, needs, and the challenging tempo of our
time, and the academic towers of a major university.” 15
And so it has been through the years. You may know Leslee Nelson, and now Helen
Klebesadel. And, has been broadly true at the University of Wisconsin since the days of
Governor LaFollette and President Van Hise, and specifically true through the Wisconsin
Regional Art Program since Curry was hired in 1936, the University was working with the
people, offering instruction, inspiration, opportunity for critique and exhibition, and the
uncovering of a personal talent and vision.
Only in Wisconsin has such a program grown. No other state has had the commitment of state
and University to its artists for the century that Wisconsin has had.
Gard quoted a woman in 1955. She was a writer, but what she has to say applies to visual art,
too, and really embodies the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea and the arts: “If the people of
Wisconsin knew that someone would encourage them to express themselves in any way they
chose…. if they knew that someone would back them and help them when they wanted
help...there would be such a rising of creative expression as is yet unheard of in Wisconsin... for
the whole expression would be of and about ourselves.”16
14
Schwalbach, James, “Personal Involvement in the Arts” in The Arts in the Small Community, supplementary volume 1, Madison,
University of Wisconsin Extension Division, p. 57.
15
Ibid p 58
16
Gard, Grassroots Theater, p. 217
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And as we express ourselves, as we think about what life is all about, as we participate
creatively in Wisconsin’s democracy, Governor LaFollette and President Van Hise will be
cheering.
I’d like to close with the words of my dad’s, Robert E. Gard, who in 1969 said this. I think
Fighting Bob Lafollette, Presidents Van Hise and Frank, John Steuart Curry, Aaron Bohrod, Jim
Schwalbach, and so many, many more through the decades would all approve:
If you try, what may you expect?
First a community
Welded through art to a new consciousness of self:
A new being, perhaps a new appearance –
A people proud
Of achievements which lift them through the creative
Above the ordinary –
A new opportunity for children
To find exciting experiences in art
And to carry this excitement on
Throughout their lives –
A mixing of peoples and backgrounds
Through art; a new view
Of hope for mankind and an elevation
Of man – not degradation.
New values for individual and community
Life, and a sense
That here, in our place
We are contributing to the maturity
Of a great nation.
If you try, you can indeed
Alter the face and the heart
Of America. 17
This was set to music by LaMoine MacLaughlin of Amery, Wisconsin. We’ll show you how it
goes, and then we (and the spirit of Prof. Pop Gordon) will invite you, the people, to sing with
perhaps committing yourselves to altering the face and the heart of America, in your place.
17
Gard, Robert E., Michael Warlum, Ralph Kohlhoff, Ken Friou, Pauline Temkin, The Arts in the Small Community: A National Plan,
Madison, UW Extension Publishing, 1969, p. 98
6
.
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REFERENCES
Barton, John Rector, Rural Artists of Wisconsin, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1948.
Campbell, Olive D., The Danish Folk School, New York, MacMillan, 1928, p. 5-6.
Christensen, Chris L., Introduction to “An Exhibition of Work by John Steuart Curry,” Seventh
Anniversary of the Land Grant Colleges, November 1937, Washington, DC
Frank, Glenn, “Toward a People's Theater in Wisconsin,” preface to the play “Goose Money,”
Special Extension Circular, University of Wisconsin Madison, June 1928
Gard, Robert E., Grassroots Theater: A Search for Regional Arts in America, Madison,
University of Wisconsin Press, 1955.
Gard, Robert E., “A Six-Year Plan to Study the Arts in Community Life, unpublished, 1952.
Gard, Robert E., Michael Warlum, Ralph Kohlhoff, Ken Friou, Pauline Temkin, The Arts in the
Small Community: A National Plan, Madison, UW Extension Publishing, 1969.
Howe, Frederick, Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons,
1912.
Junker, Patricia, Editor, John Steuart Curry: InventingThe Middle West, New York, Hudson Hills
Press, 1998.
Kelly, Mary Frances, “Let’s Draw: James A. Schwalbach, 1936-1970 Broadcasts for Schools,”
PhD Dissertation, UW-Madison, 1990.
Kuemmerlein, Kenneth, Exploring Ideas in Art: A Guide for Adults, Youth and Leaders, Madison,
University of Wisconsin-Extension Arts Development, 1981
Patten, Marjorie,The Arts Workshop of Rural America: A Study of the Rural Arts Program of the
Agricultural Extension Service, New York, Columbia University Press, 1937.
Schwalbach, James, “Personal Involvement in the Arts” in The Arts in the Small Community,
supplementary volume 1, Madison, University of Wisconsin Extension Division, 1969.
The Art of Rural Wisconsin 1936-60 Exhibit Catalogue, curated by Lucy Mathiak and Jan
Marshall Fox, Madison, Department of Agricultural Journalism UW-Madison, 1985
www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu/timeline.html; downloaded 11/7/07
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