Josephine Baker exhibit shows breadth, versatility, excitement of unique approach to showcasing a legend against backdrop of her times

By Daniel Hines
Publisher
America’s Seniors at www.TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com

If your concept of a visit to a museum is a leisurely stroll through a lot of older items, you need to go to the exhibit honoring the Centennial Birthday Celebration of the  legendary Josephine Baker, now wrapping up its St. Louis showing (August 26) at The Sheldon Art Galleries in St. Louis.

It is fitting that St. Louis should be the launching point for this really outstanding presentation not only of Josephine Baker’s many accomplishments, failures and restoration as a star that transcended her time and era, but also helped shape not just  a nation’s but a world’s consciousness.

That is an amazing feat for a Black woman born June 3, 1906 as Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis.  Her mother, a cleaning woman, hired Josephine out to help her clean houses for the more affluent—and very likely now forgotten—citizens of St. Louis.

But not for long.

Josephine ran away from home at 13 years of age to join a traveling road show.  Because she was so young, and, frankly, a long ways from the beautiful cosmopolitan star she was to become, she relied on getting attention by making sappy faces and gestures in the chorus line.  The antics were successful, and in 1921, she landed a major dancing role in ‘Shuffle Along’. 

But while the show was a success, touring the country, it was Josephine’s decision to accept a role in Paris, France, in a musical review, Le Revue Negre. 

Freed from the racial restrictions of the United States, where the Ku Klux Klan was rising to new political heights and power, Josephine flourished. She was eagerly embraced by the French, became a major celebrity and established a presence as a grand dame of the French entertainment industry.

If that were the end of the story, Josephine Baker would merit a tribute of the sort that has been assembled at the Sheldon.  But, she was to accomplish much, much more.

But, as Mary Strauss, one of the owners of The Fabulous Fox and the one who first dropped the idea of a Centennial Tribute several years ago and has supported it by being its underwriter, noted during our tour of the exhibit, ‘Great People have Great Flaws.’

Money was Josephine Baker’s great failing, and the money she poured into her dream home—a mansion in rural France—eventually led her into financial problems that caused her to be evicted in 1969.

But Princess Grace of Monaco became Josephine’s patron, providing her with a residence and income in Monaco.  In 1973 Baker married an American, Robert Brady, and began her stage comeback. In 1975, Josephine Baker's Carnegie Hall comeback performance was a success, as was her subsequent Paris performance. But two days after her last Paris performance, she died of a stroke. She was accorded a full French Military Burial, a reflection of the deep love and respect her adopted country felt for her.

The exhibit at The Sheldon features more than 100 prints, drawing, photographs, posters, sculpture ands ephemera from important museums.  Olivia Lahs-Gonzales has done an outstanding job of assembling some very rare items that provide insights into the era that shaped Josephine Baker, and, as one walks among the pieces, we gather an insight into a truly unique woman that exemplifies the talent that can spring forth from such an unlikely source as a little girl born into poverty in a mean-spirited era that placed such a foolish importance upon skin color.

Another example of the successful presentation of mood and significance is evidenced by the community outreach in which school children made posters about Josephine Baker.  They are creative and worth seeing in and of themselves, but when presented as a part of the exhibit, they make you believe that Josephine, who loved children, would be thrilled that she can stir such excitement and enthusiasm among the students.

That she can is the thing that is most moving and memorable is the spirit of Josephine Baker.  She had an indomitable spirit, and as one looks at the pictures, it is that spirit that shines forth.  In one, she is in the middle of a club and while her focus is sharp, and she is energetic, the audience around her is only a backdrop.  The effect is that of a star shooting across the night sky, and like a shooting star, this wonderful exhibit will remain in St. Louis for only a short time, before moving on to Washington, DC.