Johns Hopkins OCA

06/06/2019

Thomas A. Corner's portrait of William August Marburg hang on the main level of the Billings Administration Building.

05/21/2019

"My understanding of how intertwined science and art are has been crucial to my time at Hopkins," [Sudler Prize winner Victoria] Yeh wrote in the personal statement that accompanied her application. "'Problem-solving' has always been a major goal in all my classes, whether they be in the sciences or the humanities. Art—painting in particular—is also about problem-solving. The process of simplifying or enhancing certain details or colors to achieve your artistic vision is an essential part of the creative process, and without it you simply have photorealism with no artistic interpretation."

Victoria Yeh wins Louis Sudler Prize, and Julia Zimmerman wins the President's Commendation for Achievement in the Arts

05/20/2019

The funds that made the possible the completion of Hopkins' Christus Consulator statue, a replica of the original by Danish sculptuor Bertel Thorwaldsen, were donated to Johns Hopkins Hospital by William Wallace Spence, whose ca. 1906 portrait by Thomas Connor hangs near the famous statue in the Billings Administration Building.

05/06/2019

Mariana Cook's 1994 photographic portrait of Nina Woo Matheson hangs in the East Reading Room of the Welch Medical Library.

In 1984, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine appointed Matheson associate professor of medical information and director of the William H. Welch Medical Library. She rose to professor of medical information in 1991. During her tenure, she led the Welch Library in the development of integrated advanced information systems.

A major achievement was her work in transforming Victor McKusick’s Mendelian Inheritance in Man, an authoritative compendium of human genes and genetic phenotypes, into an online knowledgebase system with the capacity for updating on a daily basis. In 1987, the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), debuted as the first online, fully searchable genetics knowledgebase.

04/30/2019

Karsh's photographic portrait of Richard Anthony Polacsek hangs in the East Reading Room of the Welch Medical Library.

Born in Vienna, Polacsek came to Johns Hopkins in 1969 as the director of the William H. Welch Medical Library and professor of medical bibliography. As director of the library, he not only updated the facilities, introduced new services, and improved the library’s collections, but also introduced computer management of the collections, started a network of libraries at the medical institutions, and assembled a staff that developed extensive skills in modern information technology.

Yousuf Karsh, an Armenian, was born in Mardin, present day Turkey, and left as a refugee fleeing from the Turkish Ottoman Empire. At the age of sixteen, Karsh’s parents sent him to live with his uncle George Nakash, a photographer, in Quebec, Canada. Years later, Nakash arranged for Karsh to further study with John Garo, in Boston, Massachusetts. Following that apprenticeship, Karsh returned to Canada and started to work with photographer John Powls in Ottawa. It was Karsh’s geographic location that brought him to the attention of Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who arranged for Karsh to meet and photograph Winston Churchill along with other diplomats.

Karsh’s images of historical leaders include Dwight D. Eisenhower, Fidel Castro, Pope Pius XII, John F. Kennedy, and Prince Rainier of Monaco. Other notable sitters include Albert Einstein, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright, Andy Warhol, and Pablo Picasso.

04/10/2019

Bust of William H. Welch at the William H. Welch Medical Library.

Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

04/02/2019

Formerly known as The Great Hall and now as the West Reading Room, the upper level room in the Welch Medical Room was photographed by Barbara Highsmith in 2012. These and other photographs of the Hopkins East Baltimore Campus are in the collection of the Library of Congress.

The ceiling is definitely worth a look up!

"The ceiling is decorated with countersunk molded plaster panels painted by Salvatore Lascari in color and gold leaf. Some of the designs include an Aesculapian serpent, the shields of Johns Hopkins and the city of Baltimore, and the signs of the zodiac, the room originally contained walnut tables, chairs, and divans and was lit with chandeliers and lamps."

-- A Short History of the William H. Welch Medical Library (Koehler, Barbara M. M.L.S.; Roderer, Nancy K. M.L.S.; Ruggere, Christine M.S., Neurosurgery, 2004 Feb;54(2):465-78)

03/29/2019

Erik G. Haupt's 1937 of George Eli Bennett hangs on the Mezzanine level of the Welch Medical Library.

Bennett made significant contributions to the field of orthopaedics, developing important improvements in braces and traction apparatus. He published on shoulder and elbow injuries affecting professional baseball players, and treated many famous athletes. He served as president of both the American Orthopaedic Association and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

03/27/2019

Martin Frobisher's posthumous portrait of William Henry Welch, the "dean of American medicine" hangs on the Mezzanine level of the Welch Medical Library.

In 1884, Welch was appointed the first faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and recruited its founding faculty. In 1887, he launched the pathological laboratory, the first building of The Johns Hopkins Hospital to open. He was named pathologist-in-chief when the hospital officially opened in 1889. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine opened in 1893 with Welch as its first dean. Later in 1916, he helped organize the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and became its first director. Welch also founded and served as the first director of the Institute of the History of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University.

03/26/2019

We continue to survey art on the East Baltimore campus of Johns Hopkins. We're still in Welch Medical Library, looking at the portraits on the Mezzanine level.

Among them is Minnie Lois Fletcher's portrait (1920) of Hopkins embryologist Warren Harmon Lewis.

Lewis was probably best known for his pioneering microscopic cinematography, which began in 1928. He was the first to film the fertilization and development of a mammalian egg, in 1929, a film which was featured in The Century of Progress Exposition in the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Lewis found that the use of time-lapse cinematography allowed him to speed up on the screen phenomena that were too slow to be seen and understood by direct observation.

With Fletcher, we are encountering our first woman artist on our art survey.

03/20/2019

This ca. 1930 portrait of John Woolman Churchman (artist unknown) hangs on the Mezzanine level of the Welch Medical Library.

Churchman served as a resident house officer, clinical assistant in surgery, and genitourinary surgeon at Johns Hopkins from 1902-1905. After a sojourn as a volunteer assistant surgeon at a clinic in Breslau, Germany, Churchman returned to Johns Hopkins in 1906, and served as an assistant resident surgeon until 1909, and as an instructor of surgery from 1909 to 1911.

03/19/2019

03/18/2019

Thomas C. Corner's portrait of Henry M. Thomas, Sr., is among the ten portraits of Hopkins founding figures hanging on the Mezzanine Level of the Welch Medical Library.

Thomas was Johns Hopkins’ first professor of clinical neurology.

03/13/2019

Dewitt Clinton Peters' portrait of Daniel Coit Gilman hangs on the Mezzanine Level of the Welch Medical Library.

Gilman was the first president of The Johns Hopkins University. The original academic building on the Homewood campus of The Johns Hopkins University is named Gilman Hall in his honor.

03/10/2019

Thomas C. Corner's portrait of Franklin Paine Mall hangs on the Mezzanine level of Welch Medical Library.

Mall was the first professor of anatomy at Johns Hopkins University.

The Corner portrait was commissioned after another portrait, by Leopold G. Seyffert, was sent back to the painter for alterations at the urging of Mall's wife.

03/05/2019

Griffith Baily Coale's portrait of Florence Rena Sabin hangs on the Mezzanine level of Welch Medical Library.

In 1917, Sabin became the first woman at The Johns Hopkins University School Medicine to be appointed to a full professorship.