The Dancer, the Dreamers, and the Queen of Romania: How an Unlikely Quartet Created America's Most Improbable Art Museum

by Steve Wiegand (Composer)

Overview

The Maryhill Museum of Art is located on 5,300 acres in the Columbia River Gorge. Miles from any sizeable town and surrounded by the gorge's spectacular scenery, Maryhill is an internationally recognized -- and undeniably eclectic -- repository of art that ranges from one of the nation's best Rodin collections to one of the world's largest assemblage of chess sets. It is, as The New York Times once described it, "oddly fitting -- it brought the better works of man near one of the better works of nature."

Dancer, Dreamers, and the Queen of Romania is the story of the four widely disparate people whose lives intertwined in such a way as to lay the foundation for the museum. Loie Fuller was once the world's most famous dancer, who dreamed of becoming beautiful by creating beauty. Alma Spreckels was one of America's wealthiest women, who dreamed of being accepted for who she wanted to be rather than who she was. Sam Hill was a rich man who dreamed of becoming a great man. And Marie of Romania was a real-life queen who dreamed of being a fairy-tale queen.

And it is the story of those who followed them. These people nurtured and grew Maryhill from a fascinating oddity that Time magazine once called "a top hat in the jungle" to one of the relatively few U.S. museums accredited in every category by the American Alliance of Museums.

This is a book that will appeal to readers who like both biography and history, and will have particular appeal, but by no means be limited to, Western U.S. and Pacific Northwest audiences. It is "side-street" history in the tradition of Boys in the Boat, Unbroken, or Dead Wake. It will appeal to art lovers. It will also appeal to everyone who has visited or just passed by an inviting-but-oddly-located museum and wondered how it got there and who keeps it going.

This heretofore untold and remarkable story is narrated by a master wordsmith and historian. Steve Wiegand is the author or co-author of numerous books, including U.S. History for Dummies (Wiley), the 4th edition of which will be out in March 2019; Lessons from the Great Depression for Dummies (Wiley, 2009); The Mental Floss History of the World (Collins, 2008) and Papers of Permanence: The First 150 Years of the McClatchy Company (McClatchy, 2007).

Wiegand spent 35 years as a newspaper reporter and columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Sacramento Bee, and has published in numerous magazines and periodicals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610884969
Publisher:	Bancroft Press
Publication date:	03/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	305
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Steve Wiegand is an award-winning journalist and history writer. His 35-year journalism career was spent at the San Diego Evening Tribune, where he was chief political writer; San Francisco Chronicle, where he was state capitol bureau chief; and Sacramento Bee, where he was a special projects writer and politics columnist.

Wiegand is the author, co-author, or contributing author of eight books, including U.S. History for Dummies, which is currently in its fourth edition and has been published in both Chinese and German; the Mental Floss History of the World; Papers of Permanence; Lessons from the Great Depression for Dummies; and The American Revolution for Dummies.

He is a graduate of Santa Clara University, with a bachelor’s degree in American history and literature, and has a master’s degree in mass communications from San Jose State University.

He lives in Arizona.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 "This curious and interesting building" 3

Chapter 2 "A dancer of pictures:" Loie's story 24

Chapter 3 "This estimable lady:" Alma's story 43

Chapter 4 "We have found the Garden of Eden" 59

Chapter 5 "Young, handsome, talented and rich:" Sam's story 71

Chapter 6 "Very naughty, but a very clever woman:" Marie's story 91

Chapter 7 The best laid plans 113

Chapter 8 Of queens and applesauce 131

Chapter 9 "A wanton dissipation of the assets" 151

Chapter 10 "A top hat in the jungle" 169

Chapter 11 Castle Cliff 187

Chapter 12 "Cultural abuse" 207

Chapter 13 "Resurrection of the Phoenix" 227

Chapter 14 "There is a dream built into this place" 245

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

2020-01-27
Pleasantly spun tale of a museum with an unlikely history—and collection.

Located some 100 miles east of Portland, Oregon, the Maryhill Museum (dedicated in 1926) contains an offbeat assemblage of artifacts, ranging from Native American crafts to a lock of Queen Victoria’s hair, a huge collection of chess sets, and 87 pieces by Auguste Rodin. That all these things, plus a full-size concrete replica of Stonehenge, should be in the same remote place speaks to the strange genius of Sam Hill, who, retired journalist Wiegand writes, “depending on whom you asked…was either a visionary or crazier than an outhouse rat.” A world traveler and railroad executive, Hill built a 5,300-acre Shangri-La, with a palatial home intended for a mentally ill daughter, along the banks of the Columbia River while planning “quixotic” projects such as a peace arch spanning the border of the U.S. and Canada. Into his orbit had fallen Queen Marie of Romania, who boasted, “I am said to be the most beautiful woman in Europe,” and whose friend Loie Fuller, an actress and dancer whose “life overflowed with exclamation points,” convinced Hill to turn that home into a museum. Fuller used her connections with French artists such as Rodin to fill the place with art, using funds contributed by another partner. Fuller herself had been hospitalized for mental troubles, and everyone involved had colorful histories, but somehow everything came together. Beyond the founders, the Maryhill Museum survived but never exactly thrived: Its “nearly nonexistent acquisitions budget” required it to be innovative without becoming, Wiegand writes, “the kind of roadside tourist trap that parked a covered wagon on the lawn and sold grape Slushies at the ticket booth.” As the author observes, the museum endures, though it derives more of its revenue from the sale of alfalfa and wind power than from ticket sales.

A treat for fans of off-the-beaten-track places as well as odd corners of art history.

Kirkus Reviews