South Pacific

History [edit]Partridge and his academy The university was founded in 1819 at Norwich by military educator and former superintendent of West Point, Captain Alden B. Partridge. Captain Partridge believed in the "American System of Education," a traditional liberal arts curriculum with instruction in civil engineering and military science. After leaving West Point because of congressional disapproval of his system, he returned to his native state of Vermont to create the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy. Captain Partridge, in founding his academy, rebelled against the reforms of Sylvanus Thayer to prevent the rise of what he saw as the greatest threat to the security of the young republic: a professional officer class. He believed that a well-trained militia was an urgent necessity and developed the American system around that idea. His academy became the inspiration for a number of military colleges throughout the nation, including both the Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel, and later the land grant colleges created through the Morrill Act of 1862.[4] Partridge's educational beliefs were considered radical at the time, and this led to his conflicting views with the federal government while he was the superintendent of West Point. Upon creation of his own school, he immediately incorporated classes of agriculture and modern languages in addition to the sciences, liberal arts, and various military subjects. Field exercises, for which Partridge borrowed cannon and muskets from the federal and state governments, supplemented classroom instruction and added an element of realism to the college’s program of well-rounded military education. Partridge founded six other military institutions during his quest to reform the fledgling United States military. They were the Virginia Literary, Scientific and Military Academy at Portsmouth, Virginia (1839–1846), Pennsylvania Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Bristol, Pennsylvania (1842–1845), Pennsylvania Military Institute at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1845–1848), Wilmington Literary, Scientific and Military Academy at Wilmington, Delaware (1846–1848), the Scientific and Military Collegiate Institute at Reading, Pennsylvania (1850–1854), Gymnasium and Military Institute at Pembroke, New Hampshire (1850–1853) and the National Scientific and Military Academy at Brandywine Springs, Delaware (1853).[5] [edit]Fire and hardship: Norwich in the 19th century In 1825 the academy moved to Middletown, Connecticut, to provide better naval training to the school's growing corps of cadets. In 1829, the state of Connecticut declined to grant Captain Partridge a charter and he moved the school back to Norwich (the Middletown campus became Wesleyan University in 1831). Beginning in 1826, the college offered the first program of courses in civil engineering in the US. In 1834 Vermont granted a charter and recognized the institution as Norwich University. During the 1856 academic year, the first chapter of the Theta Chi Fraternity was founded by cadets Frederick Norton Freeman and Arthur Chase. With the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Norwich cadets served as instructors of the state militias throughout the Northeast and the entire class of 1862 enlisted upon its graduation. Norwich turned out hundreds of officers and soldiers who served with the federal armies in the American Civil War, including four recipients of the Medal of Honor. One graduate led a corps, seven more headed divisions, 21 commanded brigades, 38 led regiments, and various alumni served in 131 different regimental organizations. In addition, these men were eyewitnesses to some of the war's most dramatic events, including the bloodiest day of the conflict at Antietam, the attack up Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg, and the repulse of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. Seven hundred and fifty Norwich men served in the Civil War, of whom sixty fought for the Confederacy.[6] Because of the university's participation in the struggle, the number of students dwindled to seven in the class of 1864 alone. The Confederate raid on St. Albans, Vermont precipitated fear that Newport, Vermont was an imminent target. The corps quickly boarded an express train for Newport, the same day, October 19, 1864, to the great relief of the inhabitants. After a catastrophic fire in 1866 which devastated the entire campus, the town of Northfield welcomed the struggling school. The Civil War, the fire, and the uncertainty regarding the continuation of the University seriously lowered the attendance, and the school opened in the fall of 1866 with only 19 students. The 1870s and 1880s saw many financially turbulent times for the institution and the renaming of the school to Lewis College in 1880. In 1881 the student body was reduced to only a dozen men. Later, by 1884, the Vermont Legislature had the name of the school changed back to Norwich. In 1898 the university was designated as the Military

• published: 06 May 2011
• views: 15186

This film, presented in 7 parts, shows Brazil as seen by the late Brazilian painter Candido Portinari (1903-1962). PORTINARI (by his biographer Antonio Callado) At the end of his life, when he was very ill and full of financial worries, Gauguin wrote from Hiva-Oa, in the Marquesas Islands, to his faithful friend Daniel de Monfreid, to announce he was thinking of going home, going back to France. In words seemingly brutal in their frankness but dictated by a long, lucid friendship, Monfreid told him not to come back: “... you enjoy the immunity of the great Dead... you have become part of the history of Art.” A few days later, in May 1903, Gauguin was dead. Only Tioka, his old Maori friend, was there to close his eyes. However, as Monfreid had anticipated, Gauguin was, from that day on, among the great European dead. He might have ended his days in a remote Pacific Island, but he was born in France, he had made his name in France, he had been the friend of Van Gogh, of Mallarmé, of Strindberg. In that same year 1903, Portinari was born in Brazil and when he died in 1962, his name was well-known in the United States, in France, in Italy. To this day one can see Portinari’s mural paintings in the Library of Congress, in Washington. And, in the great entrance hall of the United Nations, in New York, one can see his two impressive, gigantic oils named respectively Guerra [War] and Paz [Peace], installed there in 1957. At about the same time, Portinari was showing his paintings in Europe and in Israel, and was illustrating, for Gallimard, novels of André Maurois and Graham Greene. But it seems that the passing of time does not help sustain the works of artists born away from the first world of Western Europe and the United States. The great museums, the great galleries, the great art magazines, the stock exchanges of art are located in New York, in Paris, and in very few other cities. Either an artist belongs to that magic circle where “l’histoire de l’Art” is always alive and rich or he has to have his name brought to life again from time to time, recalled, remembered. The intrinsic value of Portinari’s paintings is shining as brightly as ever. But the memory of his name became blurred. Let us have a look, in this book, at the many-sided, majestic world of Portinari. Born into a family of poor Italian immigrants who toiled in the coffee plantations in the State of São Paulo, Candido Portinari in 1928 won a scholarship in painting that took him to Paris. During his stay in Europe, Portinari had his painter’s block, like a writer’s block: he visited studios and exhibitions; he compared techniques of painting; he spent hours and days in churches and museums; but he painted nothing. Literally, as he used to say, he painted “only a few pictures, small ones.” The truth is that in Europe Portinari felt like a sponge, like blotting-paper, like an open camera, just absorbing impressions, sucking, registering. Upon coming back to Brazil, on the other hand, he started painting as if he might die if he stopped. In a few years, he became the most important painter in Brazil. In 1935, his name reached the United States, through his painting Café [Coffee]. In 1940, The University of Chicago Press published a study of his work under the title Portinari, His Life and Art. This book contains many black-and-white and full-color reproductions, including paintings on social and religious themes and some magnificent portraits that show that he reached the height of his powers at an early age. It also reveals that by this time, Portinari was already acclaimed by no less a person than Rockwell Kent, the American painter, illustrator, and writer. Kent (1882-1971) wrote the introduction to the book, and it is still a pleasure to note the enthusiasm with which he welcomed his young colleague from the south. This is how he describes the vision central to Portinari’s art: The world of Portinari: as, compelled by it, in thought, we move about in it, with wonder — fear, perhaps — but with the same acceptance of its elements as our unconscious selves accord the most fantastic dreams that trouble us in sleep, we come gradually to the realization that this is no world of pure imagination but an intensified, fantastic re-creation of the world that Portinari knows, his native land, Brazil. Of this, his other paintings are the evidence. In them, we see the landscape, we tread the soil; we see its workers and their poverty — not agonized about, just recounted. And recounted with love. Not love for poverty and unremitted toil, but love for woman, man, and child — who, rich or poor, to him are lovable. He paints them trustfully. “Blessed are the meek” would seem to be the utterance from his heart. And if the conditions of their life on their Brazilian earth would seem to us to be no great inheritance, they by their goodness make life seem worthwhile. They work; they marry and rear families; their children pl

• published: 28 May 2009
• views: 8850