Connections/Thank You

My name is Thayer Tolles, I'm a curator in the American Wing and my topic today is thank you.

Ever since I was young, manners have been beaten into me. I listened for years and years to my grandmother asking me

to hold the door open or telling me to hold the door open for her. In having children, I want them to understand that concept as well. When my kids were little I always used to laugh at the thank you notes we'd get from

birthday parties where it was literally fill in the blank like, "Dear fill in the blank. Thank you so much for the fill in the blank. It makes me feel fill in the blank."

I like how gratitude can be just the very simple gesture of saying "thank you" or something much larger.

Sometimes it seems to me that the "thank you" is disproportionate to the actual gift received. Frederick MacMonnies received fifty dollars from Charles McKim when he wanted to go to Paris to study. McKim received as a thank you gift

a life-size bronze sculpture, which to me seems really disproportionate in generosity.

I'm very interested in the stories that are associated with the objects that express gratitude. This piece, it's a little wacky in a sense because the patron had negotiated the engraver's release from prison after a scandal he had been involved in, so, when he got his feet on the ground this is what he did.

I think email thank you notes are now quite acceptable, but I actually really like getting a written thank you note in the mail, I mean who gets real mail anymore.

I really like this sampler done by a young girl, expressing thanks to the benefactress of this school. At this time, it was hard

for poor girls to get an education. I'm a knitter myself so I always joke that I'm knitting love into every stitch and maybe she was stitching gratitude.

There are a lot of presentation objects that are given from groups of people

to a single individual or by the maker to a client.

This tea urn was given to a Philadelphia doctor for helping citizens who were ravaged by yellow fever. I like how such a beautiful object comes out of this really awful event.

There is the issue of spirituality in thanks. There are objects that are really offerings, in hopes that something good will happen.

In the case of this torque or neck ring, it's fun to think of people casting these into the peat bogs where they thought that the gods would find them.

And then there are objects that they think that the gods could use. Here we have a sculpture who's offering objects to the gods, he's holding a dove. It's almost as if you see this whole act of thanks playing out.

A very interesting story is the case of Mary Cassatt's Lady at the Tea Table. She made this portrait because the Riddle family had given the Cassatt family this tea set as a gift, but this was a thank you gift that was rejected. As a matter of fact, the sitter's daughter thought

her mother's nose looked too big and gave the portrait back. I bet she had really good manners though, 'cause she certainly knew how to serve tea properly.

On the simplest level, "thank you" is a universal expression. Everyone at one point or another feels gratitude towards

a god, an individual, some good thing that's happened to them and

I'm just interested in the ways that people express thanks or gratitude.I'm not gonna beat anyone down for failing to thank me, but

I don't forget sometimes.