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

By Matthew Gengler, Entry Products and services and Reference Librarian

In a pivotal scene from The Kid from Cleveland, actors George Brent and a youthful Russ Tamblyn stand around the Cleveland Museum of Art’s wishing nicely. Tamblyn, participating in the child, is invited to make a desire Johnny. The movie, established in 1949, is a family melodrama that follows a younger boy with a challenging house lifetime who is aided by his preferred baseball team. Though the film may not be worthy of viewing for the plot, the mid-century footage of the museum’s authentic galleries is a treat. The scene with the wishing well is even showcased on the poster for the film. Then museum director William Milliken, a devoted baseball admirer, would have enthusiastically permitted filming in the galleries.

The genuine star of the scene, the museum’s beloved pink limestone wishing well — now set up in the Susan M. Kaesgen Education Gallery and Lobby — has a relatively exciting heritage. Officially named a Effectively Head, the wishing perfectly very first arrived at the museum in 1929, possessing been despatched by the supplier on instruction (and assure of payment) of the museum’s European agent, Harold Woodbury Parsons. At the time, Parsons liked independence in amassing for the museum, and with ample cause. Above his vocation operating as consultant of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as effectively as the then Nelson Museum in Kansas City, Parsons created important acquisitions that fashioned the CMA’s selection of European art. Amongst the treasures he acquired for the museum is The Holy Loved ones with the Infant Saint John and Saint Margaret by Filippino Lippi, a masterpiece of Italian portray.

However, this time Parsons had overstepped his authority, a reality created general public by Milliken in his autobiography, Born Beneath the Signal of Libra, in which he criticizes Parsons for currently being “more rash than vigilant.” Most likely Parsons could be forgiven for his blunder, contemplating the leeway delivered him by the museum. In other places in the exact same volume, Milliken refers to him as “an indefatigable intermediary” and praises how considerably revenue he will save the museum by way of his deft acquisitions. Nevertheless, in this instant, he misjudged his client’s passions and the wishing effectively arrived, albeit unwelcome.

This didn’t stop its exhibition, nevertheless. The earliest images of the wishing nicely from 1931 clearly show it set up in the interior yard courtroom of the museum. With its caged songbirds and exotic plants, the placing delivered a house of silent repose for the worn out museum customer to pause and mirror. The wishing nicely aided to finish the illusion until eventually the museum approached an vital milestone.

In anticipation of the museum’s 20-fifth anniversary celebration in 1941, the director made the decision that the very well should really be employed for a silver coin selection to profit museum acquisitions, calling it the Silver Jubilee Treasure Pool. The wishing well was installed in the rotunda, where the marble statue of Terpsichore Lyran (the muse of lyric poetry) by Antonio Canova now stands (at the time, the Canova had not entered the selection, and resided at Exbury Dwelling in Hampshire, United kingdom, in the collection of Lionel de Rothschild).

In his unpublished record of the collection, Milliken describes museum benefactor Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, a statuesque muse in her personal suitable, at the party as a “grand dame, with her elegance, heightened by her wonderful evening robe and her dazzling jewels, tossing silver bucks from across the Rotunda.” The treasure pool was a good achievement with donations topping $4,000 in the jubilee year.

The first operates bought for the selection with donations from the very well have been May well Demonstrate entries which includes Harvest by Katherine Greuner Lange and Backward Glance, a scarce watercolor get the job done by John Paul Miller. This started a very long tradition of utilizing the Silver Jubilee Treasure Fund, renamed the Wishing Nicely Fund in 1961, to receive objects by nearby artists. From 1944 to 1993, the museum acquired almost 200 objects with the fund, primarily from the yearly May possibly Demonstrate. In a lot of strategies, donations to the Wishing Nicely ended up donations to the creative legacy of Cleveland.

Just after virtually 14 many years of provider to the establishment, the perfectly head that Mr. Parsons transported with out approval entered the selection, in 1943. This item continues to hold the fascination of website visitors who peer down into the depths, toss a coin, and make a would like. Museum site visitors who have contributed their cash to the wishing perfectly can justifiably level to the artwork in the galleries bearing the Silver Jubilee or Wishing Properly fund attribution and say that they had a part in producing the acquisition probable.