The winter weather is beginning to break here in Washington, D.C. I already have daffodils in my front yard and green buds are visible on the famous Japanese cherry trees along the tidal basin. The capital is emerging from hibernation, but the Smithsonian National Postal Museum (NPM) has not slept over the winter! It has been a very active time for us, especially online.
Here are a few highlights of recent NPM content available online, in reverse chronological order:
I was recently interviewed for an episode of Our American Stories, a radio program with more than 4 million listeners that is broadcast to more than 230 radio stations. The 17-minute episode, titled “How the USPS Came To Be,” is available here: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/podcast/history/how-the-usps-came-to-be.
Director Elliot Gruber spoke to the Collectors Club of New York on January 4. His presentation, “Director’s Cut – Treasures of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum,” can be viewed at https://www.collectorsclub.org/videos/.
In December, the museum marked the 50th anniversary of baseball star Roberto Clemente’s 1972 death in a plane crash while on a humanitarian mission to Nicaragua with an author’s reading of the children’s book Clemente! by Willie Perdomo. Afterward, Perdomo and Robert Clemente Jr. participated in a Q&A moderated by NPM’s Maureen Leary. See the video here.
The 12th Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposium, co-chaired by my colleague Dr. Susan Smith and Scott Tiffney, librarian and director of information services at the American Philatelic Research Library, was held December 8-9 at the National Postal Museum. The paper presentations were also broadcast online. For a list of the topics discussed and brief biographies of the presenters, visit the Symposium page.
The 19th annual Maynard Sundman Lecture, also organized by Smith, featured Rowan University professor emeritus and well-known polar philatelist Hal Vogel, and was held November 1 via Zoom. The topic was “Polar Philately and the Wilkes Antarctic Expedition.”
To be updated when the videos become available online, please contact Susan directly at [email protected].
Curator Lynn Heidelbaugh’s recent book, Between Home and the Front: Civil War Letters of the Walters Family (Indiana University Press, 2022) was featured in an episode of C-SPAN’s American History TV. The episode was filmed at the NPM and features Lynn and her co-author, Tom Paone, discussing this collection of previously unpublished letters from the museum’s collection. You can watch it online here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?522860-1/letters-home-front.
I was featured in an August 2022 episode of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s podcast, “Portraits,” hosted by director Kim Sajet. We talked about stamp portraits based on originals in the gallery’s collection and depictions of FDR and Benjamin Franklin on stamps. You can hear the episode at https://open.spotify.com/episode/7cVgvuIpHrKAqeWmLZf408.
APS members may not be aware that the USPS produces its own informative podcast, titled “Mailin’ It!” My colleagues, curators Alison Bazylinksi and Lynn Heidelbaugh, were recently featured in episodes 16 and 17, respectively. Alison discussed the history of USPS uniforms and Lynn spoke on military mail. Head here to listen: https://usps-mailin-it.simplecast.com/episodes, and while you are there be sure to check out the two chats on modern U.S. stamps as well (episodes 7 and 32).
Summer Seminar philatelic research course
I am honored to have been invited back to teach the four-day course on philatelic research during this year’s APS Summer Seminar, June 12-15. It is geared toward helping writers, exhibitors, and collectors begin or complete a research project, with morning sessions devoted to sources and techniques followed by free time in the afternoon to take advantage of the APRL’s resources or for one-on-one research consultations with me. To register, visit https://stamps.org/SummerSeminar. Please also feel free to contact me directly with any questions about the course before you register!
Monacophil 2022
The National Postal Museum had a strong presence at the international philatelic event Monacophil 2022 November 23-26 in Monte-Carlo.
Among the items the NPM exhibited at Monacophil 2022, was a folded letter (Figure 1) titled “Au Citoyen” (“To Citizen”), which was directed to James Monroe on October 19, 1794. In 1794, to avoid being drawn into the war between France and Great Britain, President Washington sent John Jay to London and James Monroe to Paris as U.S. ministers. Monroe received this letter two months after he arrived in France. Monroe’s failure to reassure France’s revolutionary government about American neutrality got him recalled from his post in 1796.
Figure 1. The folded letter titled “Au Citoyen” (“To Citizen”), which was sent to James Monroe when he was sent as an emissary to France by President George Washington.
In the “100 Iconic Stamps and Documents” exhibition held at the Musée des Timbres et des Monnaies, the museum showed a recent NPM acquisition: the 12-pence Black Empress of Canada (Figure 2), printed for the colony in 1851 by Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson of New York. Approximately 140 copies are known to exist today.
Figure 2. National Postal Museum conservator Scott Devine installs the Black Empress in the rarities hall at Monacophil, November 23, 2022.
The museum also showed “Napoleon and America,” a single frame exhibit chronicling the effects of Napoleon’s wars on trade and diplomacy in the new American republic. This material was drawn from the museum’s 14-volume Henry A. Meyer collection of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic postal history.
Curators from five international philatelic collections were on hand for the event, and we took the occasion to have lunch together in the Port of Fontvieille (Figure 3). We discussed ways to cooperate in the future and build an international network of philatelic curators for mutual advice, support, and inspiration.
Figure 3. Philatelic curators visiting at Monacophil 2022 are (from left) Pascal Rabier, curator emeritus, Musée de La Poste (Paris); Perrine Bisson, conservator, Musée de La Poste (Paris); Stuart Aitken, curator of philately, The Postal Museum (London); Nicola Davies, head of collections, the Spear Museum of Philatelic History at the Royal Philatelic Society London; Dan Piazza, of the NPM; Andreas Hahn, head of the Archive for Philately (Bonn); and Monika Nowacka, head of philatelic collections at Musée de La Poste (Paris). (Photo courtesy of Pascal Rabier)
A visitor from Mongolia
Figure 4. Myagmarjav Selenge, of Mongolia, points to Mongolia’s entry in the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery’s “One Stamp of Every Country” exhibit, the $1 high value from the 1924 Sceptre of Indra set.
On November 17, the National Postal Museum was visited by Myagmarjav Selenge (Figure 4), stamp expert of the Postal Stamp Museum at the Central Post Office in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I gave her a tour of the museum, and she presented the NPM Library with a copy of Chinggis Khaan: Man of the Millennium, published in 2002 by Mongol Post.
First day ceremony
The James Webb Space Telescope Forever Stamp was launched in a first day ceremony September 8 at the National Postal Musem (Figure 5). Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science and Research Ellen Stofan and NPM Deputy Director Toby Mensforth were featured speakers.
Figure 5. Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science and Research Ellen Stofan speaks during the James Webb Space Telescope first day ceremony.
Baseball: America’s Home Run
By the time you read this column, the 2023 Major League Baseball season will be underway and the second rotation of NPM’s three-year baseball exhibition will have opened to the public in our Washington, D.C. galleries! This fresh iteration of the exhibit features some amazing New York Yankees-themed stamps and memorabilia. The Yankees finished first in the American League East Division last year, but lost the league championship to the Houston Astros, who went on to defeat the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series.
The Celebrate the Century stamp series is represented this time around by the 33-cent Roger Maris 61 in ’61 stamp from the 1999 Celebrate the Century stamp series (Figure 6). Maris and Mickey Mantle quested to break Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a single season for much of 1961.
Figure 6. The original artwork for the Roger Maris stamp.
Then, Mantle developed season-ending hip problems in September. Maris continued alone, finally achieving his record in the last game of the regular season.
Only four players have since broken Maris’ record, and three of them were implicated in the 1990s steroid scandal. Original artwork and proof material for the stamp will be shown alongside Maris’ and Mantle’s game-used jerseys and bats.
Joseph Paul “Joe” DiMaggio (1914-1999) was born in California to Italian immigrant parents. He played 13 seasons – from 1936 to 1951 – in center field for the New York Yankees, earning an All-Star berth every year and helping the team win 10 American League pennants and nine World Series championships. His most famous accomplishment, however, was his 56-game hitting streak in 1941, a record that still stands.
Figure 7. The original artwork for the Joe DiMaggio stamp created by Kadir Nelson, along with his home uniform from his rookie season in 1936. DiMaggio had a spectacular rookie year in which he hit 29 home runs and was a key player on the World Series championship team. (Uniform on loan from the Stephen Wong Collection.)
DiMaggio’s fame, however, did not stop the federal government from targeting his parents as enemy aliens during World War II, depriving them of their livelihood and imposing a curfew. Artist Kadir Nelson’s portrait of DiMaggio on the 2012 commemorative stamp shows him in a home uniform (like the one displayed in the exhibit), following through on a right-hand swing.
When the stamp was issued, baseball fans complained that right-handed hitter DiMaggio appears poised to bat as a lefty, but the artwork is based on a photograph of Joltin’ Joe’s backswing.