Diamonds Are An Arts Institute’s Best Friend

Posted by Mary Murray on March 28th 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: Institute

75th Anniversary: 1936, part one
Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute celebrates its diamond anniversary this year,
meaning that we opened to the public in 1936.
Which got me wondering, what else was happening that year?

Franco and Hitler

Globally, it was a volatile time. China declared war on Japan. Fascism was on the rise across Europe, with Hitler gaining strength, Italy declaring war on Ethiopia, and Generalissimo Franco’s forces taking up arms against the Spanish Republic, thereby initiating the Spanish Civil War.

Capa, Spanish Republican at the moment of this death, 1936

In the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected for a second term as President in a landslide against Alf Landon.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

A first-class postage stamp cost 3 cents.

The forty-hour work week was approved for the American labor force.

Margaret Michell, Gone with the Wind, published in 1936

Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel, Gone with the Wind, was published. Life Magazine began publication, too. Eugene O’Neill received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Boulder Dam (now called the Hoover Dam) was completed in 1936.

Stay tuned, more 1936 fun facts to know and tell are on their way.

Boulder (now Hoover) Dam completed in 1936