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JTA – When one hears the name Rube Goldberg, one thing comes straight to the mind: the fun cartoon designs. Think a ball rolling down a long ramp that hits a series of dominoes, which hits something else, so on and so on.
Nearly 50 years after his death, Goldberg's name will come back in politics or another field to explain something that's unnecessarily complex. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel "Maus," said that "Rube Goldberg knew how to get from A to B using all the letters in the alphabet."
But as an exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History points out, there was a lot more to Goldberg than wacky machines.
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Goldberg, who was born in 1883 and died in 1970, was also an extremely prolific editorial cartoonist, an inventor, engineer, humorist and author. He has been in the advertising industry for over 70 years. He won a Pulitzer in 1948 for his political cartoons, and is an enduring inspiration in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, where his creations are still used in lessons.
A wall at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia features a typically complex Rube Goldberg machine. (Stephen Silver)
Goldberg's life and work is the subject of "The Art of Rube Goldberg," an exhibition that opened last week and runs through January 21 at the Philadelphia museum. The exhibit, which follows stop at museums in San Francisco and Chicago, is the first major exhibition of Goldberg's work since the Smithsonian presented shortly before his death.
"The Art of Rube Goldberg" consists of machines and cartoons, as well as artifacts from Goldberg's life. There are many editorials and political cartoons – we would like to discuss the issue of austerity measures for the continuing struggle for peace between Jews and Arabs – that would not be out of place today.
Goldberg, in fact, drew an estimated 50,000 cartoons in his career, but only a small fraction of them were related to his eponymous machines, his granddaughter Jennifer George said.
As an editorial cartoonist for papers such as the San Francisco Bulletin and the New York Evening Mail, Goldberg even waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as an example on the National Museum of American Jewish History shows. (Stephen Silver)
He drew for papers such as the San Francisco Bulletin and the New York Evening Mail, where his strips were introduced to the mbades through McClure, the country's first syndicate newspaper. He started the machine drawings in the late 1920s in one of several syndicated series – Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts.
The exhibit, supervised in Philadelphia by chief curator Josh Pearlman, is presented with the cooperation of two of Goldberg's grandchildren – George and her cousin, John George, both children of Goldberg's sounds.
The two sounds, Thomas and George, their surname at the insistence of their father. (Thomas thing his brother George's name, and George followed suit – becoming George George.)
Goldberg asked for their safety because it was sent to them for the sake of their political cartoons, but there is no doubt about it. Goldberg was the son of Jewish parents in San Francisco and lived through a time of anti-Semitism harsh before the world wars.
Rube Goldberg's cartoons were not all of complicated contraptions. Above is a collage he drew on the day of his 1916 wedding for his flange Irma. (Rube Goldberg Inc.)
The exhibition also includes more personal, never-before-seen items, such as a cigar box belonging to Goldberg's father. There's a video installation showing modern-day movies – from Wes Anderson to Wallace and Gromit tales to "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" – that's all used Rube Goldberg-like concepts.
Also new for Forbes magazine cover drawn by Goldberg from 1967 that looked at "the future of home entertainment." It was tracked down by the daughter of a Forbes art director and slow to the exhibit.
Goldberg died when Jennifer George was 11 years old, but she is the primary custodian of Goldberg's intellectual property and legacy.
The exhibit in Philadelphia features Rube Goldberg on the Pathé news agency calling him the 'World's Most Famous Newspaper Cartoonist.' (Stephen Silver)
"I remember him through the lens of a child. But when carrying on the legacy of Rube fell into my lap when my dad died, I had to do some heavy lifting, "she said. "All of the cartoons that had grown up in the past, and in the grandparents' study, which I had never read, suddenly I had to start reading, and I had to start educating myself as to who Rube Goldberg was, through the lens of an adult, at least if I was going to do this correctly. "
Several events related to the exhibit are planned, including a Rube Goldberg Contest Machine for local high school students. Admission to the exhibition will be free on Election Day, November 6.
"Ivy Barsky, the museum 's CEO, said last weekend. "Which we do not get to say at a history museum."
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