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On The Table Read, the “Best Entertainment Celebrity Magazine in the UK“, Seton Hall Professor James J. Kimble set the historic record straight, producing publicly for the first time the only known portrait of J. Howard Miller, the artist who created the iconic “Rosie the Riveter” poster.
Seton Hall Professor James J. Kimble has again shed new light on the origins of the “We Can Do It!” poster commonly referred to as “Rosie the Riveter.”
Originally produced in 1943 by J. Howard Miller for the Westinghouse Corporation as part of the factory production effort during World War II, the “We Can Do It!” poster was mass reproduced in the 1980s and came to be a revered representation of female empowerment. Although iconic, the model for the poster as well as its creator were long shrouded in mystery and misinformation.
Over the last decade, Professor Kimble has painstakingly uncovered the truth behind the icon.
In 2018, his research on the identity of Rosie the Riveter went viral, appearing in People magazine, on the front page of the New York Times, on NPR and the television show Mysteries at the Museum as well other assorted media across the globe too numerous to list. The story achieved well over a billion media exposures worldwide.
Debunking the commonly held and much celebrated belief that a Michigan woman, Geraldine Hoff Doyle, was the model for the poster, Kimble unearthed the original photo that is believed to be the basis for the poster and, importantly, was the key to Doyle’s claim as the poster’s model.
The photograph Kimble discovered came complete with the original photographer’s caption tag affixed to the back, which names Naomi Parker (-Fraley) in Alameda, California, as the subject of the photo – not Geraldine Hoff Doyle in Michigan.
Fortunately, Naomi Parker-Fraley lived long enough to see the historic record set straight and her identity as “Rosie the Riveter” celebrated throughout the world.
In his most recent research, Kimble set his sights on setting the record straight on the poster’s creator, J. Howard Miller.
In “Famous but Unknown: An Introduction to J. Howard Miller,” published by the University of Chicago’s Source: Notes in the History of Art, Kimble notes:
The sparse information that has been published about Miller is tenuous at best. Some sources, for example, indicate that he was born in 1918 and died in 2004. Others only speculate, with “ca. 1915–1990” being a common guess. None of these dates are correct. Some sources indicate that he graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1939. He did attend that school, but many years earlier. Elsewhere, aside from reproductions of his most famous work, little but speculation about Miller’s life has appeared in print.
Perhaps the most telling sign of Miller’s enduring mystery is the confusion over his likeness. Although his life span was in living memory, he remains astonishingly faceless. Worse, most of the sources that do attempt to convey his likeness make a critical error. One recent exhibition at a reputable museum, for example, featured a creator’s head shot next to a reproduction of the “We Can Do It!” poster. It was actually an image of a much younger man – who was not even a graphic artist.
In his research on Miller, Professor Kimble draws “on obscure publications, archival sources, and interviews to present a brief introduction to the elusive artist behind the icon” and produces for the public the only known portrait of J. Howard Miller. In this portrait, an undated ad illustration, Miller inserted himself into the image as the self-assured, middle-aged barber in the foreground.
“Unfortunately for J. Howard Miller – and the historical record – there was a photographer with the same name born about 20 years after the graphic artist,” said Kimble. “The photographer’s obituary along with an image is readily available online. Couple that with the fact that the resurgence of the Rosie poster as an iconic figure of women’s empowerment did not occur until after the graphic artist’s death, and we have what could be described as ‘extremely fertile ground’ for google-era misinformation. But hopefully, some old-fashioned research and this newly discovered portrait can set the record straight.”
“It is both unfortunate and extremely ironic that the artist behind one of the most recognized pieces of art in world history has remained a veritable mystery until now,” said Kimble. “Perhaps now this great American graphic artist will begin to receive some of the recognition that he, like his work, deserves.”
“Famous but Unknown: An Introduction to J. Howard Miller,” published by the University of Chicago’s Source: Notes in the History of Art.
One of the country’s leading Catholic universities, Seton Hall has been showing the world what great minds can do since 1856. Home to nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students and offering more than 90 rigorous academic programs, Seton Hall’s academic excellence has been singled out for distinction by The Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek.
Seton Hall embraces students of all religions and prepares them to be exemplary servant leaders and global citizens. In recent years, the University has achieved extraordinary success. Since 2009, it has seen record-breaking undergraduate enrollment growth and an impressive 110-point increase in the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen. In the past decade, Seton Hall students and alumni have received more than 30 Fulbright Scholarships as well as other prestigious academic honors, including Boren Awards, Pickering Fellowships, Udall Scholarships and a Rhodes Scholarship. The University is also proud to be among the most diverse national Catholic universities in the country.
During the past five years, the University has invested more than $165 million in new campus buildings and renovations. And in 2015, Seton Hall launched a School of Medicine as well as a College of Communication and the Arts. The University’s beautiful main campus in suburban South Orange, N.J. is only 14 miles from New York City — offering students a wealth of employment, internship, cultural and entertainment opportunities. Seton Hall’s nationally recognized School of Law is located prominently in downtown Newark. The University’s Interprofessional Health Sciences (IHS) campus in Clifton and Nutley, N.J. opened in the summer of 2018. The IHS campus houses the University’s College of Nursing, School of Health and Medical Sciences and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University.
For more information, visit www.shu.edu.
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