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| Exhibition poster © Amber Claus 2015 |
Above
Poster by graphic designer Amber Claus for an exhibition of student posters about
historic pencil sharpeners from the P.D. Whitson Collection. Department
of Art, University of Northern Iowa.
•••
J.J. Oppenheimer, quoted in
Robert Bruce Williams, ed., John Dewey, Recollections (Washington DC:
University Press of America, 1970), pp. 123-124—
At the dinner table one evening
[in the 1920s at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, at the college
president’s home], our famous guest [Count Hermann Keyserling] suddenly asked
all of us who in the American scene would make a distinct contribution to culture
in the next fifty to one hundred years. A number of nominations were made. When
it came my turn, I said “John Dewey.” At that, the huge (rather tall than huge)
Count said: “I met John Dewey last week at my lecture at Columbia University.
Surely that ‘little shrimp’ couldn’t add anything to human knowledge.”…Later by
several weeks, Time magazine had a short article on the Count’s departure in
which a reporter asked him what three things had the United States
[contributed] to civilization. The Count replied: “Jazz, skyscrapers and John
Dewey.”
