THE NEW ORLEANS PHARMACY MUSEUM Guest post by Caroline Hatton

The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

My friend and fellow children’s book author Caroline Hatton visited New Orleans, Louisiana, in December 2017. She took all the photos in this post. For more information about her, visit www.carolinehattonauthor.com.

After I was born in 1950s Normandy and before I could walk, I caught my earliest glimpses of the outside world when I crawled to the floor-to-ceiling window of my parents’ countryside village pharmacy. Wicker shopping baskets came and went, heavier on the way back. Muddy rubber boots splashed by on rainy days. Across the Route Nationale and village plaza, the church bell clanged the hours away. I grew up playing and doing homework in the back room at the pharmacy, hearing pharmaceutical tales at the dinner table. Later, as a pharmacy school student, I worked as an intern at my parents’ pharmacy in Paris until I graduated in 1979. No wonder I simply have to see old pharmacies and collect photos of antique potion vials when I travel.

By 1979, such sights had disappeared from pharmacies in France.

The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum was no exception, especially since the pharmacist who first set up shop there in 1823, Louis J. Dufilho, Jr., was born in France—just like me! As a teen, he moved to New Orleans with his family and grew up in the family pharmacy. He went back to France and attended pharmacy school in Paris—just like me! He made history when he became America’s first licensed pharmacist.

There were none of these in 1979 France.

Today, the museum exhibits fill two floors. Guided tours are available. The courtyard can be rented for special events. In the 19^th century, additional buildings housed the family home, slave quarters, stables, and carriage house.

As a pharmacy intern in 1979 Paris, I once carried a doctor’s prescription to a leech shop to bring back “2 medium leeches” for a patient!

I used an identical item to compound prescription pills in 1979 Paris.

Upstairs at the museum.

A vintage poster for Vin Mariani (Mariani Wine), claimed that it fortified body and brain, and restored vitality. That’s not hard to believe, considering that it contained cocaine from brewed coca leaves. 

VIN MARIANI

POPULAR FRENCH TONIC WINE

Fortifies and Refreshes Body & brain

Restores Health and Vitality

What the museum info failed to disclose, though, is that Mariani Wine is the French ancestor of Coca-Cola. The story goes like this: after the French inventor of Mariani Wine (a chemist born to a pharmacist family) started marketing it in 1863 and achieved international success, in 1885, an American pharmacist by the name of J.S. Pemberton concocted a mere imitation, a “French wine of coca, ideal tonic.” Soon, Pemberton altered the formula, replacing the alcohol with cola extract and the plain water with fizzy water. A few years later, another American pharmacist, A.G. Candler, bought the formula and founded the Coca-Cola company. In 1903, cocaine was removed from the ingredients. And today, the French for Diet Coke is “Coca Light.”

ANDY WARHOL: From A to B and Back Again, Exhibit at SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA

Andy Warhol, Self Portrait, at SFMOMA exhibit Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again

At the end of August, when I was in Oakland, I took the BART to San Francisco to see the fabulous Andy Warhol retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. (The title of the exhibit is taken from Andy Warhol's book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 1975.) The show ended September 2nd but is  now at the Art Institute of Chicago where it opened on October 20th. (Previously, the show was at the Whitney Museum in New York.) 

Portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe

The exhibit encompasses Andy Warhol’s career from his growing up years in Pittsburgh and early career in New York in the fashion industry, to his ground breaking conversion of soup cans and Brillo boxes to pop art, to portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and much, much more.

Painting of S and H Green Stamps, created by making a stamp from a rubber eraser.

His painting of S and H green stamps (apparently inspired by helping his mother paste them into books) brought back similar memories of mine, filling books with stamps my family got at grocery stores and gas stations and then turning them in to redeem prizes. In the same room at the museum a pile of Brillo boxes and a diagram of dance steps to do the Lindy were displayed.

A pair of diagrams showing the pattern of foot-steps (one for the man, one for the woman) doing the Lindy, a popular dance originating in the 1920s

The exhibit was so big that at MOMA in San Francisco it took up space on three floors (plus one more if you count the examples of his black and white photographs displayed on the third floor of the museum.)

Mylar silver cloud pillows. Recreation of 1966 exhibit of helium filled Mylar balloons at the Castelli Gallery.

In one room, giant silver balloons formed a popular interactive exhibit. Visitors, especially children, enjoyed batting the cloud-like pillows into the air, creating a constantly changing 3-D art piece.

Flower paintings and cow wallpaper

The variety of Andy Warhol's creativity is astounding, ranging from painting and pop-art, to video, television, interactive and performance pieces, to magazines (Interview) and advertising.

The large Rorschah painting was inspired by the "ink blot test" created by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.  Warhol folded the canvas in half vertically to make a mirror image of the design.

Although I had long been aware of Andy Warhol’s soup cans and extravagant life style during the 1970s in New York, I never appreciated the breadth and brilliance of his creativity until I saw the exhibit of his work at SFMOMA.

A few of Andy Warhol's commissioned portraits.

Among my favorites were his portraits, displaying both his painterly style as well his impeccable sense of design and ability to capture the essence of his subject. From 1967 to 1987, Warhol made hundreds of commissioned portraits, typically using a combination of Polaroid photography, screen prints, and paint. One room at SFMOMA is dedicated to these portraits.

The giant image of Mao was created by Andy Warhol in 1972. (Acrylic paint, silkscreen ink, pencil on linen.)

To appreciate the giant painting of Mao Tse Tung one has to stand on the other side of the room. It is mounted on a recreation of the Mao wallpaper that was on the walls of Andy Warhol's studio.

Wilhelmina Ross

Andy Warhol often painted the same subject over and over, as in the case of Wilhelmina Ross. He painted her 73 times, originally as part of a commission by an Italian art dealer in 1974 for a series of 105 portraits of drag queens.

A matchbook with "Drink Coca-Cola" on its cover, has been blown up to giant size in this painting.

But what most people will remember about Andy Warhol is his elevation of ordinary objects, such as a bottle or glass of Coca-Cola, to the status of art, making us think twice about the role these objects play in our lives and our culture.