As part of their bicentennial celebration, the Walt Whitman Birthplace and State Historic Site has teamed up with esteemed Walt Whitman collector, Ed Centeno, to present an exhibition featuring cultural artifacts, commercial products, fine arts, and advertisements that depict segments of Walt Whitman’s prose and poetry.
Walt Whitman’s Prose and Poetry in Products and Advertisements will be on display from Jan. 16 through Apri 7, with a free preview and reception on Sunday, Jan. 13, 2 to 3 p.m. for members and 3 to 5 p.m. for the general pubic.
Centeno’s 33 years of collecting Walt Whitman related items has been “rewarding, challenging, and inspirational,” he says. Centeno never intended to exhibit nor lecture about his collection; nevertheless, he discovered that there is an audience interested in his passion. He says many people are curious to see what he collects, and they are interested in understanding why.
The primary focus of Centeno’s collection is the commercialization of Whitman’s name, image, and words in memorabilia, commercial products, advertisements, fine arts, and digital formats. His purpose in collecting is to enrich the knowledge of the past, to preserve and perpetuate this aspect of collecting to future generations, and to acquaint himself with the phenomenon of Whitman’s popularity.
Surprisingly, this commercialization began as early as the 1880s, and Whitman was not entirely opposed to having his image associated with products and services. Upon seeing the earliest advertisements, Whitman laughed and said, “That is fame, giving the hat a little more height and it would not be such an offense…”
Whitman received no monetary compensation for the usage of his name or image. Since the 1880s, Whitman’s image, poetry and name have been used in advertising food products, beverages, music, movies, social media, art, books, political and social awareness efforts, theater productions, and many more.
Up until the mid-1960s, corporate America invoked Whitman with high reverence due to his iconic literary stature and fame through advertisements and commercial products that had no connection to his persona or body of works. From the 1970s and beyond, Whitman’s persona took an entirely different perspective in mass media (TV, radio, internet, movies). Today’s Whitman is more ambiguous, daring, complex, and playful.
Centeno’s fascination with advertisements, posters, commercial products, and private art commissions depicting fragments of Whitman’s prose and poetry humbly began while researching material for an article about American poets on stamps. To his astonishment, he learned that the Walt Whitman House in Camden, NJ, was only miles from where he lived as a teenager.
While getting reacquainted with Whitman’s poetry and reading several biographies, Centeno discovered that Whitman was depicted on cigar boxes, wine, beer, gift cards, insurance advertisements, postcards, postage stamps and more. There are also places and structures named after him — the Walt Whitman Bridge, high schools, a shopping mall, parks, an apartment building, housing projects, bookstores, and other commercial businesses.
Centeno’s collection clearly demonstrates the significance and resonance of Whitman’s literary contribution in modern society, the importance of his high stature in commercialization, and the impact of his fame among collectors.
To see the exhibit, head to Walt Whitman Birthplace and State Historic Site at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station.
For more information, go to www.waltwhitman.org.
