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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy B. Wilson

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Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Frye. We talked about Mickelina Watier or

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Speaker 1: Mikaelino Watier. Hopefully I didn't make anyone really furious about

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Speaker 1: which pronunciation we went with. If I did, I'm sorry

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Speaker 1: that birth year. Okay, these episodes did not come out

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Speaker 1: in this order because we had the whole series of

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Speaker 1: other episodes in between them. But I recorded this episode,

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Speaker 1: or I researched this episode and the Merry Dire episode

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Speaker 1: back to back, So if you've heard the Merry Dire

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Speaker 1: episode in the behind the scenes, you know I went

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Speaker 1: down a whole, huge rabbit hole about where the place

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Speaker 1: of execution was in Boston at that time. Right in

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Speaker 1: this episode, I went down a giant rabbit hole about

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Speaker 1: what her birth year was supposed to be. And I

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Speaker 1: spent so much time searching various permutations trying to figure out, like,

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Speaker 1: did someone discover a new like a new document, was

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Speaker 1: there something that clarified her birth year to sixteen fourteen

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Speaker 1: instead of sixteen oh four And I did not find

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Speaker 1: a good answer, and I was like, if I had

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Speaker 1: made that discovery, I'd be telling everybody, and so like

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Speaker 1: then I was like, I'm going to have to for

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Speaker 1: the second episode in a row, contact a random person

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Speaker 1: and ask them for help. And in this case it

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Speaker 1: was like the contact address for the center for a

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Speaker 1: netherlandish art. I wish I knew the details of like

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Speaker 1: what new documentation suggest that in sixteen fourteen is the

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Speaker 1: right year rather than sixteen oh four. But if you

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Speaker 1: go looking for any information about about her, of which

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Speaker 1: there's just not a ton, you will see a lot

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Speaker 1: of places have one year, and a lot of places

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Speaker 1: have the other, and some places have both years in

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Speaker 1: different places. It was a lot. I'm very curious about,

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Speaker 1: uh about where that correction came from. One thing I

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Speaker 1: found a brief mention of that I did not put

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Speaker 1: in the episode just because it didn't seem totally Jermaine

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Speaker 1: and also seemed like something that could strike people oddly,

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Speaker 1: is that Mickelina and her brother Charles lived together for

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Speaker 1: their whole their whole adult life's lives or both artists.

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Speaker 1: It seems like they probably shared a home for their

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Speaker 1: whole adult lives. They did own their property. There's there's

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Speaker 1: a little fuzziness there. There are a couple of places

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Speaker 1: that are like formal official documents about like property they

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Speaker 1: bought or whatever that like mistakenly identifies them as husband

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Speaker 1: and wife, and then like somebody crosses that out and

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Speaker 1: is like brother, which like makes sense that that like

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Speaker 1: two adult people living together forever, that people would just

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Speaker 1: assume that they were a married people, but really they

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Speaker 1: were siblings. And you know, those were among the very

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Speaker 1: few currently known documents about their whole lives. Man, I

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Speaker 1: wish we knew so much more about her. I wish

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Speaker 1: we knew a lot more about her personality than what

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Speaker 1: we can imagine based on her placing herself as a

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Speaker 1: self portrait right in the black and hole. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's interesting, right because we can guess and

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Speaker 1: it seems like that must mean she was kind of

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Speaker 1: a firecracker. M But we could be wrong, you know

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Speaker 1: what I mean, Like we could be We don't know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe one day we will discover something else hers, perhaps

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Speaker 1: a little diary. Yeah, that would be cool there. I've

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Speaker 1: also in various lectures that I watched people give about her.

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Speaker 1: People also seem pretty confident that there are other, as

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Speaker 1: yet undiscovered paintings because like, because she was so not

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Speaker 1: well known at all. Apparently the twenty eighteen exhibition LAS

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Speaker 1: is often the case when there's a big art exhibition somewhere,

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Speaker 1: you know, there are posters of it all over town,

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Speaker 1: and the bus shelters are decorated, like suddenly, this person's

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Speaker 1: name is everywhere, and that really seems to have prompted

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Speaker 1: a lot of the people realizing that they had a

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Speaker 1: work in their own collections or private collectors realizing whose

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Speaker 1: work they had. I read an article that was about

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Speaker 1: this exhibition at the MFA that was about Rosemrie and

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Speaker 1: ivon Auto Load getting this call or email or something

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Speaker 1: like that from an art dealer who was like, Hey,

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Speaker 1: this is this is going to be coming up for sale,

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Speaker 1: and how delighted and astonished they were that like number

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Speaker 1: one it was it was mckleeena Walt Watti's worked, and

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Speaker 1: then number two that it was specifically the Five Senses

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Speaker 1: because that was, you know, work that people had been

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Speaker 1: trying to find, and that was just at this point

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Speaker 1: three years ago, so I know every time it came

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Speaker 1: up in the telling of this like, oh, that was

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Speaker 1: not figured out until nineteen sixty five, eighty seven. This

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Speaker 1: is like history unfolding before our eyes. Yeah, yeah, which

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Speaker 1: is cool. I don't really know what the story is

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Speaker 1: behind when Garland with Butterfly was rediscovered. All I know

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Speaker 1: is that I was trying to find more information about it,

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Speaker 1: and then I was like, this museum says have it

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Speaker 1: on loan right now, so it's been found. Great. There

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Speaker 1: was as as folks may know, I'm continually looking at

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Speaker 1: in bookmarking links to talk about on Unearthed, and there

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Speaker 1: was one that just within the last few days was

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Speaker 1: like three previously unknown paintings by seventeenth century masters, and

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Speaker 1: I was like, are any of them Mclanawati? None of

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Speaker 1: them were, But like my very first thought was is

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Speaker 1: it a new Mcleanawatier painting? I really just I was

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Speaker 1: not even there to look at that at the MFA

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Speaker 1: when I stumbled onto these. Not only was I not there,

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Speaker 1: I was not there to look at European art at all.

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Speaker 1: The MFA is having another Hokusai exhibition, which is we

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Speaker 1: have done a Hokusai episode before after previously the MFA

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Speaker 1: had done a different Hokasi exhibition, and so uh Patrick

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Speaker 1: and I had gone to see that and then he

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Speaker 1: had other plans for the day he left, and I

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Speaker 1: was like, I'm staying at the Art Museum, and then

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Speaker 1: I'm going to walk all the way from the MFA

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Speaker 1: to North Station, which I did. And my plan had

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Speaker 1: been to go into the like the Japanese h and

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Speaker 1: other Asian art area. All of that is currently being redone,

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Speaker 1: I think, so a lot of the things that I

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Speaker 1: was gonna go look at were not like that whole

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Speaker 1: area was closed off, and so I was just kind

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Speaker 1: of wandering around the museum and then I was like,

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Speaker 1: what is who is this beautiful self portrait? What is

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Speaker 1: this five? What is who? I've never heard? What's the

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Speaker 1: Center for Netherlandish Art? Like? It was a a whole

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Speaker 1: discovery process that day at the MFA and then a

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Speaker 1: very long walk on a very windy day. This is

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a jump. But I keep meaning

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Speaker 1: to mention it to you in forgetting. But you mentioned Hokusi.

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Speaker 1: Did you see the Doc Martins that they were doing

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Speaker 1: with Hokusi Art, No bought a pair of those boots

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Speaker 1: so fast. That sounds you. Doctor Martins does a lot

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Speaker 1: of collaborations with big museums and they pick out kind

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Speaker 1: of iconic pieces of art, and they put them on

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Speaker 1: shoes and I have a few of them. Those those

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Speaker 1: great wave boots are real good. Yeah, they still have

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Speaker 1: them in quite a few sizes, So you might get

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Speaker 1: lucky if you go to Nice. Nice. This particular hocus

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Speaker 1: I exhibition is about like hokus I, Hokusi's students, the

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Speaker 1: continuing influence of hokus I's work, and so there's a

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Speaker 1: lot more uh like modern work as part of the exhibition.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot of stuff in it that I

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Speaker 1: thought was really cool. We really enjoyed it. And so

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Speaker 1: if you are into Hoasai or other Japanese art or

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Speaker 1: other art influenced by Japanese art, well that's the thing

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Speaker 1: happening right now. I don't I'm not clear on whether

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Speaker 1: this Miquelina Woitier exhibition how long it's going on, or

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Speaker 1: if it is just a permanent part of collection now,

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Speaker 1: but I was very glad that I stumbled over it

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Speaker 1: while not even there to be looking at European art.

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Speaker 1: Magical accidents. Yeah, we talked about Louis Sullivan this week.

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Speaker 1: We did. And Chicago architecture, yes, yes, which I love

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Speaker 1: that city so much. So it's also a joy to

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Speaker 1: get to talk about it a little bit. Louis Sullivan's

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Speaker 1: autobiography is amazing. Yeah, And it was one of those

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Speaker 1: things where I had it ready. I had purchased a

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Speaker 1: kindle version of modern reprinting, and I had like written

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Speaker 1: out the bones of the episode already, you know, because

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Speaker 1: sometimes that's easier than like pouring through someone's memoir, which

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Speaker 1: is often a little a little yeah, flourishy. It's a

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Speaker 1: little harder to follow the timeline because then usually I'll

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Speaker 1: go back through and then I'll go back to the

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Speaker 1: autobiography and be reading it, and I can be like, oh,

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Speaker 1: there's the touch point of dissce. Yes. It was one

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Speaker 1: of those things where this very rarely happens. But when

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Speaker 1: I then opened his autobiography and started reading, I was like, Brian,

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Speaker 1: this is delightful. It's like his turn of phrase. He

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Speaker 1: was a very good writer. I mean that first thing

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Speaker 1: that you read early in the episode where you were like,

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Speaker 1: that is delightful. The entire book is like that. He

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Speaker 1: I love that is very very good as a writer

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Speaker 1: and conveying things. A lot of it like a full

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Speaker 1: I mean, it felt like a third of it is

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Speaker 1: about his use, even though he is writing this in

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Speaker 1: you know, at the end of his life, when he

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Speaker 1: was in his sixties. What's interesting, though, is that he

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Speaker 1: ends his memoir after the Columbian Exposition, like that's the

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Speaker 1: end of it, okay, him being angry, Like it's literally

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Speaker 1: like the denu mal of that book is they have

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Speaker 1: ruined everything, and it's pages and pages of how angry

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Speaker 1: he is. And then that's the end of the book.

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Speaker 1: And it's like, wait, you were living almost thirty years

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Speaker 1: longer after that, what are you now? So I have

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Speaker 1: not read this book obviously, but I'm like, is that

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Speaker 1: what motivated him to write an autobiography? That it really

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Speaker 1: was going to be a treatise about how the White

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Speaker 1: City ruined architecture? I mean part of it, yes, I

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Speaker 1: mean he was he was commissioned to do it. But

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Speaker 1: I think in terms of his layout of it was like, fine,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you why you're all wrong, why

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Speaker 1: you're bad, and your opinions are bad and you're tasting bad.

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Speaker 1: Everyone was all wrong. I mean, it's really interesting. We

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Speaker 1: only talked briefly about his assistant, Elleslie, who was seems

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Speaker 1: like he must have been very good natured because he

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Speaker 1: didn't he didn't have like a rose colored glasses version

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Speaker 1: of Sullivan. He wrote about him in very honest terms

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Speaker 1: and was like, oh, he's really really arrogant, Like he

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Speaker 1: is exactly the guy I won't I didn't write it down,

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Speaker 1: so this won't be a word for a word. But

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Speaker 1: he literally talks about like he gives everyone advice whether

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Speaker 1: they want it or not, Like he will walk up

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Speaker 1: and tell you everything that's wrong with your design, even

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Speaker 1: if you're not, you know, and he would tell off clients,

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Speaker 1: you know, like he would be like, no, your taste

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Speaker 1: is bad, and I'm you hired me because I know

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Speaker 1: what I'm doing. You don't know what you're doing, which

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Speaker 1: may be true, yeah, but it's not a good way

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Speaker 1: to run a business now. So it's not surprising that

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Speaker 1: he was like, this will be my manifesto, ab how

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Speaker 1: you ruined architecture in the United States. There were two

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Speaker 1: things that are very, very extra interesting in this autobiography

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Speaker 1: to me. One is a little tiny weird note about

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Speaker 1: his dad. His dad, Patrick Sullivan, was as we said,

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Speaker 1: irish and from pretty humble beginnings. Because the story that

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Speaker 1: Louis said he was always told was that his father,

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Speaker 1: when he was still just a kid, was on his

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Speaker 1: own because he had lost his father in a crowd

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Speaker 1: at a county fair and never found him again. And

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Speaker 1: I'm like, did he get dumped off in a fair?

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Speaker 1: And like, because I mean, you would think if a

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Speaker 1: parent wanted to find their kid, they would I don't know.

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Speaker 1: This is a weird little detail that I was like.

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Speaker 1: Wood Ah. The other thing that is really really interesting

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Speaker 1: to me about his autobiography are the omissions. Okay, because

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Speaker 1: three people do not show up in it at all.

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Speaker 1: Three important people his wife, Okay, Frank Lloyd. Right, I

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Speaker 1: was gonna say, is Frank Lloyd write one of them?

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Speaker 1: Because and his brother Albert never appear in that book

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Speaker 1: at all, even though he was apparently close with all

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Speaker 1: of these people and had falling out fallings out with them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think he was real good at grudges and not

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Speaker 1: real good at like the reflection necessary to be able

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Speaker 1: to talk about those things. Like I have known people,

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Speaker 1: and I've certainly had times in my life where there

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Speaker 1: was like an unpleasant thing and I never wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk about it again. Hmm. But eventually ideally you grow

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Speaker 1: and like talk through it, and that's how you don't

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Speaker 1: get plagued by things like that. This is why therapy

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Speaker 1: is great. Yeah. I don't think he ever got to

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Speaker 1: that point. He just was like, the book is closed.

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Speaker 1: Margaret is dead to me, Albert is dead to me.

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Speaker 1: I am so intrigued by this mystery wife, right. I

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Speaker 1: only I found one article about her, and it really

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Speaker 1: was like, there's we don't have a ton of information,

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Speaker 1: and it does seem like she was not always truthful

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Speaker 1: about her self, Like there are a lot of times,

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Speaker 1: like there's a very good documentary about Louis Sullivan that

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Speaker 1: talks about her, and it, like many other things, tells

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Speaker 1: the stories. Though here's a man of forty four and

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Speaker 1: he married a much younger woman of twenty seven. But

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Speaker 1: then this one article I read was like, we think

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Speaker 1: she was actually in her forties, oh yeah, and that

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Speaker 1: she had just been fibbing the whole time, that she

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Speaker 1: was much younger. So it becomes extra hard to track

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Speaker 1: her down because it's like, well, if you don't have

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Speaker 1: a birth record, like then what, yeah, how do you

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Speaker 1: even know who the parents saw are? Would she know

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Speaker 1: a lot of people in the nineteenth century were you know,

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Speaker 1: fabricating their own backstories for whatever benefit. I'm not gonna

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Speaker 1: judge about him. Makes it really hard to document you

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Speaker 1: for the future. Uh yeah, we don't. She really just

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Speaker 1: pops up out of nowhere. It doesn't. There's no like

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Speaker 1: there was a courtship and they fell in love. We

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Speaker 1: knew he was dating her, and then they got it's

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Speaker 1: like suddenly he had a wife. Oh wait, that didn't

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Speaker 1: work out. Like yeah, mysteries, mysteries. And I will say again,

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Speaker 1: I think based solely on their recognition of his incredible

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Speaker 1: skill and his achievements. His peers, I don't know that

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Speaker 1: they were forgiving of him, but they were very magnanimous

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Speaker 1: with him. Like when he reached those rough times in

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Speaker 1: his later life, people that he had talked a lot

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Speaker 1: of trash about were like, dude, I will help you.

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Speaker 1: What do you need, Like, I will give you money,

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Speaker 1: We will set you up in a room somewhere, which

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Speaker 1: is like, for as crabby as he seemed to be

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Speaker 1: with people, I think that speaks very highly of how

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Speaker 1: he was regarded. But that's when he reconciled with FRANKLYD. Wright.

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Speaker 1: Was when he needed help. Oh, dear and FRANKLYD. Wright

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Speaker 1: was like, all right, I mean, you did teach me

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Speaker 1: a lot. I feel like just the fact that he

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Speaker 1: had to write in his autobiography that he was not

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Speaker 1: an all fault terrible It's like, dude, nobody accused you

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Speaker 1: of that, So this kind of seems like you must

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Speaker 1: have been telling on yourself a little bit here. But

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Speaker 1: I also do like the idea that he was like

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Speaker 1: the kid who wanted to cut class, not to go

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Speaker 1: cut up, but to go watch a blade of grass grow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, as a kid who kept getting in trouble

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Speaker 1: for reading during class but not reading what we were

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Speaker 1: supposed to be reading. I feel a little a little

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Speaker 1: empathy there. Yeah, here's what's really interesting to me about

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Speaker 1: his story because he was I think, smarter than the

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Speaker 1: average bear and was probably thinking circles around a lot

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Speaker 1: of people that he encountered. He dropped out of one

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Speaker 1: program after another and yet kept getting snapped up for jobs,

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Speaker 1: So he had to have been really good at it,

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Speaker 1: just naturally, because I can you imagine if you went

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Speaker 1: to a job interview and you're like, uh no, I

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Speaker 1: went to that program, but it was boring. I left

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Speaker 1: after eight months, and then I went to Paris but

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Speaker 1: I kind of messed around in Europe and I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I hung out in Italy, I went to this is

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Speaker 1: teen chapel that was cool, and then I came back

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Speaker 1: here and I don't know. I mean, I want to

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Speaker 1: work in this field, I think, I just it's also boring,

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Speaker 1: Like would you be like, yes, you should absolutely be

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Speaker 1: part of our firm. I know a number of people

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Speaker 1: you uh, have extremely successful careers in a field and

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Speaker 1: also either like dropped out of college or failed out

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Speaker 1: out of college, but they did it one time, right, Yes.

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Speaker 1: The chronic nature of his like abandonment of education is

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Speaker 1: what got me. Yeah, I mean it worked out sort of.

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Speaker 1: M hmm. It does make me sad. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: have to confess because, as you know, like, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I love all of the styles of architecture he got

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Speaker 1: real crabby about. But I also really love change and

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Speaker 1: people experimenting, and so I can see why he would

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Speaker 1: be like, why do you want to build the same

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Speaker 1: stuff with way? Why do we want to have more

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Speaker 1: neoclassical architecture everywhere forever? Wouldn't it be cool to do

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Speaker 1: something new? I'm like, yeah, so I understand that. How

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Speaker 1: fussy that would make a person, especially because people were like, Wow,

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Speaker 1: this is amazing. I mean when the auditorium opened, like

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Speaker 1: the pre hasn't it visited the opening because people were like,

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Speaker 1: what is this amazing building? You know, it was like

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Speaker 1: a big, big deal. And so for a moment he

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Speaker 1: was like the Golden Child. And then suddenly people were like, Eh,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna go back to all of the marble stuff

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Speaker 1: that we used to do. We're gonna do it. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna do it like they did it in Paris in

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Speaker 1: the eight seventeen hundreds. Wait what why? Why? I could

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Speaker 1: see where that would you know, kind of form a

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Speaker 1: kernel of resentment that you then write a manifesto about

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Speaker 1: in your memento, in your memoirs, you have set architecture

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Speaker 1: back fifty years, which I think I mean, in reading

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Speaker 1: a lot and in watching a number of documentaries about him,

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Speaker 1: I think most architectural historians do agree or they're like,

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Speaker 1: yeah it did. Yep, Yeah, we could be in a

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Speaker 1: whole different place style wise in the US in terms

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Speaker 1: of our our buildings and the culture around them if

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Speaker 1: we had not done that one thing at that one expo,

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Speaker 1: which is a fascinating turning point for an entire you know,

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Speaker 1: cultural style to hinge on anyway, Louis Sullivan, I hope,

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Speaker 1: I hope, if there is an afterlife, that it's all

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Speaker 1: beautiful and experimental for you. Yeah, he and GOUDI could

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Speaker 1: have been buddies. I think if you have time off

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Speaker 1: this weekend, maybe maybe go look at some of his stuff.

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Speaker 1: Next time I'm in Chicago, I'm gonna hunt down a

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Speaker 1: couple more of his buildings. I have seen several, but

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Speaker 1: I want to see more. And I have never been

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Speaker 1: inside the auditorium and I want to reel back because

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Speaker 1: it's still open. They still have shows there. It has

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Speaker 1: had a lot of pretty significant work done to restore

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Speaker 1: it to original design spec which is pretty amazing. And

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Speaker 1: every photograph I see Birthdacake, I would almost not as

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Speaker 1: if I were a performer, not want to play there

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Speaker 1: because I think everybody would be gawking at the architecture,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty great. So if you have time off

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Speaker 1: this weekend, we hope you'd look at something beautiful, whether

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Speaker 1: that is a blade of growing grass or a beautiful

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Speaker 1: building or painting or whatever delights you. If you don't

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Speaker 1: have time off, I still hope you get to look

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Speaker 1: at something pretty and at least take some deep breaths

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Speaker 1: and find some relaxation for yourself. We will be right

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Speaker 1: back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on

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Speaker 1: Monday there will be another brand new one to kick

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Speaker 1: off the week. Stuff you Missed in History Class is

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Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

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