TONY SARG: GENIUS AT PLAY

Adventures in Illustration, Puppetry, and American Popular Culture

This exhibition is organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum and supported, in part, with generous funding from the

National Endowment for the Arts 

Lead Sponsor:

Media Sponsor:

June 10 through November 5, 2023

Tony Sarg: Genius at Play is the first comprehensive exhibition exploring the life, art, and adventures of Tony Sarg (1880-1942), the charismatic illustrator, animator, puppeteer, designer, entrepreneur, and showman who is celebrated as thefather of modern puppetry in North America. His vast knowledge of puppet technology was instrumental in his design of the inaugural Thanksgiving Day parade balloon for Macy’s Department Store in 1927, as well as subsequent parade balloons and automated displays for the company’s festive holiday windows, which were imitated nationwide. The creator of a host of popular consumer goods, from toys and clothing to home décor, Sarg also envisioned fanciful illustrated maps and created mural designs for the Oasis Cafe in New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

No Swimming

Tony Sarg (1880 – 1942)
Photographer Unknown
Tony Sarg’s Turkey Gobbler Balloon, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1929
Photograph
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association

Slider Image:
Photographer Unknown
Tony Sarg’s Sky Elephant Balloon, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1928
Photograph
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association

Tony Sarg with Sea Monster

Tony Sarg (1880 – 1942)
Photographer Unknown
Tony Sarg with Nantucket Sea-Serpent and Children on Beach, Nantucket Sea-Serpent Hoax, 1937
Photograph
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association

Drawing from public and private collections of art and material culture, the exhibition features original illustrations, marionettes, animations, interactive elements, and ephemera, including stage sets, illustrated books, commercial products, and archival photographs. Exploring themes relating to Sarg’s prolific career and ongoing influence, this theatrical installation serves as a window into the creative process and achievements of an exceptional American artist and showman. Celebrating Sarg’s infamous 1937 Nantucket Sea Monster Hoax, a thirty-foot inflatable balloon will greet visitors upon their arrival, and a richly illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Exhibition Themes Include:

  • London to New York: Sarg as Illustrator
  • Moving Images: Sarg’s Animations
  • Balloons Over Broadway: Macy’s on Parade
  • Puppets on Tour: Sarg’s Marionettes
  • Humor, Fantasy, and the Turning Page
  • The Big Stage: Illustrated Maps, Architectural Projects, and Two World’s Fairs
  • Whimsical Art for Commerce
  • Sarg’s Nantucket Adventures
  • The Artist’s Legacy
Sarg with Macy's Balloon

Tony Sarg (1882-1942)
Photographer Unknown
Tony Sarg with large Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade masks and puppets, c.1929
Photograph
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association

About the Artist

A German-American illustrator, puppeteer, author, designer, entrepreneur, and practical joker, Tony Sarg was born in Guatemala in 1880, the son of German diplomat and coffee entrepreneur, Francis Charles Sarg, and a British mother, Mary Elizabeth Parker. His paternal grandmother, Mary Ellen Best, was a gifted watercolorist. It is believed that the young Sarg, at the age of six, first tinkered with a mechanical invention to remotely feed the family’s chickens for his father. Surrounded by puppets as a child, he was also the inheritor of his grandmother’s beloved toy collection and developed a fascination for creating and performing with marionettes.

When Sarg’s family returned to Germany in 1887, he entered a military academy at age 14 and, three years later, received a commission as lieutenant⸺a post that he resigned in1905 to move to the United Kingdom in pursuit of artistic opportunities. While still in Germany, Sarg met Bertha Eleanor McGowan, an American tourist from Cincinnati, Ohio. Continuing his relationship with her while in the United Kingdom, he married McGowan in 1909, and the couple returned to England where their daughter, Mary, was born in 1914. His German heritage and anti-German sentiment in England leading up to World War I prompted Sarg to move his family to New York City, and in 1920, he became a naturalized United States citizen.

Employed in London as an illustrator and caricaturist, Sarg became an active part of the city’s advertising community. From 1912 to 1914, he designed posters for the Electric Underground Railway Company and became a member of the London Sketch Club, meeting other prominent poster designers of the time. Arriving in New York, Sarg continued his career, easily fitting in with fellow illustrators, writers, and performers who formed the Dutch Treat Club, which boasted among its membership such notable figures of the time as Robert Benchley, Ogden Nash, Jerome Kern, and Norman Rockwell. Elected to membership in the Salmagundi Club, he joined the entertainment committee and performed puppet plays at the venerable arts institution.

Besides producing illustrations for leading publications such as The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Vanity Fair, and others, Sarg’s Up & Down New York, first published in 1926, offered readers an overview of New York City of the 1920s, featuring dynamic and vibrant illustrations of the city’s landmarks and subway system. He also created engaging, illustrated maps, notably for Nantucket and the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, and he designed extensively for the New York World’s Fair in 1939, creating the fair’s official pictorial map.

As if Sarg’s success as an illustrator was not enough to secure his place in history, he also distinguished himself by staging such acclaimed marionette performances as The Three Wishes and The Rose and the Ring in New York City’s Flatiron Building as early as 1917. In the 1920s and 1930s, in the height of his popularity, Sarg’s emphasis on movement in art and his puppetry skills were instrumental in many of his ventures, including the creation of animated cartoons, mechanical figures for window displays, and the inaugural Thanksgiving Day parade balloon for Macy’s Department store (1927), among others. During this time, Sarg wrote and/or illustrated almost thirty picture books, some created with moveable parts, often featuring animal characters to entertain and educate his young readers.

Surrounded by puppets in his youth and the inheritor of his grandmother’s toy collection, Sarg began experimenting with creating, and performing with marionettes. In the early twentieth century, little information existed on puppetry or its artistry and technicality, as makers carefully guarded their craft and proprietary methods. While living in Great Britain,Sarg’s fascination with marionettes was further piqued after seeing the famous performances of Thomas Holden and hisImperial Marionettes, which he attended frequently and closely observed, carefully documenting Holden’s methods. Sarg would later go on to share his knowledge of the mechanics of puppetry in his 1921 publication, The Tony Sarg Marionette Book, which remains an important reference.

From his first professional performance of The Three Wishes in 1917 to his last production of Robin Hood in 1939, Sarg delighted audiences of all ages with his marionette stage shows, which he produced and meticulously oversaw. His traveling company, “Tony Sarg’s Marionettes,” presented such colorful classic tales as Rip Van Winkle, Don Quixote, Alice in Wonderland, Robinson Crusoe, The Mikado, and Sinbad the Sailor, and beginning in 1922, he also taught summer puppetry courses. Inspired by Sarg’s work, Tony Sarg Company members Bil Baird, Rufus Rose, Margo Skewis Rose, and Sue Hastings went on to establish their own puppet troupes. Alma Thomas, the African American painter and educator, studied with Sarg at his studio and visited Columbia University’s historic puppet collection with the artist. Thomas went on to make puppetry a part of her teaching methodology. Jim Henson was inspired by Sarg collaborators Margo and Rufus Rose and took puppetry to new dimensions with his malleable Muppets, which were perfect for television close-ups. In 1934, Sarg began a fruitful collaboration with the Madame Alexander Doll Company, which made toy marionettes and stages widely available to children and families.

Sarg’s connection to Nantucket began in 1920 when he first summered there with his family, and he would return to the island often over his lifetime. He purchased a home there and opened the “Tony Sarg Shop,” later moving it to a different Nantucket location and renaming it “Tony Sarg’s Curiosity Shop.” As he did in London and New York, Sarg became an active member of the Nantucket art community. He and his daughter Mary, an accomplished artist, painted and sold many island scenes. He was also responsible for formulating and delighting islanders with his infamous Nantucket Sea Monster Hoax in 1937 to bring more tourists to the island. Besides his retail shop in Nantucket, Sarg opened store locations in New York and New Hope, Pennsylvania. These shops also became outlets for the sale of the many commercial products he designed, including illustrated puzzles, puppet theaters for children, textiles, wallpapers, furniture, clothing, and more.

In 1936, Sarg accepted the honor of speaking at the first American puppet festival, held in Detroit, and in 1940 on the occasion of his 60th birthday, puppeteers presented him with a folio of letters of appreciation as commendations for his exceptional influence on the profession. In mid-February, 1942, Sarg had surgery for a ruptured appendix and died on March 7th of complications from the procedure, having established an indelible legacy. He is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.

IMAGES

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Roberts House,  c.1928
India ink and watercolor on paper
Collection of the Society of Illustrators

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Up River, 1914
Calendar illustration for The Humours of London, June 1914
Calendar plate
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association, 1983.0057.053g

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Tony Sarg’s Book of Animals, 1927
Illustrated Book
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Sinbad, c.1932
Marionette for Sinbad the Sailor, Tony Sarg Marionettes
Collection of Huber Marionettes

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Bon-Ton Fish Market, 1927
Oil on canvas
Collection of the Nantucket Historical Association, Bequest of Florence L. Schepp, 1964.357.1

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
A Vocabulary Consists of Music??? 1933
Ink on paper
Collection of George Korn

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Can People Eat Any Other Eggs Besides Chicken Eggs? 1941
Illustration for Parents Magazine, September 1941
Ink on paper
Collection of George Korn

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Spring (Lambs), 1942
Illustration for Parents Magazine
Ink on paper
Collection of George Korn

Boy and Girl Gazing at Moon (Puppy Love)

Tony Sarg (1880-1942)
Reluctant (Man with Pig), 1933
Illustration for Parents Magazine
Ink on paper
Collection of George Korn

MEDIA

EXHIBITION VIDEO

Co-Curators: Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director/Chief Curator, Norman Rockwell Museum & Lenore D. Miller, Curator Emerita, George Washington University Museum

Art Historians: John Bell, Ph.D., Director, Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry; Darin E. Johnson, Founder, CEO, Artistic Director, American Theater for Puppetry Arts; Michael Harrison, Obed Macy Research Chair, Nantucket Historical Association; Niles Parker, Executive Director, Nantucket Historical Association; George Korn, Art Collector/Exhibit Advisor

Tony Sarg – “Noah Put the Cat Out” (1922)

Tony Sarg’s Almanac – The First Circus essential excerpt, 1921

The Gifts of Tony Sarg | American Experience | PBS

Tony Sarg’s Sea Monster on Nantucket, 1937 – NHA Research Library Film Collection

Louis Henry Mitchell – Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

PRESS

TIMES UNION

Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade fame gets due at Rockwell Museum

Don’t be alarmed by the 30-foot sea monster outside of the Norman Rockwell Museum — it’s the new, inflatable staff member greeting visitors coming to explore the museum’s latest exhibit, “Tony Sarg: Genius at Play.” The museum is showcasing the largest exhibition of Tony Sarg, an illustrator, puppet master, pioneer in animated films and the designer of the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, on display through Nov. 5.

PRESS RELEASE

Tony Sarg with Sea Monster

Adventures in Illustration, Puppetry, and American Pop Culture Come to Norman Rockwell Museum with New Exhibition Tony Sarg: Genius at Play

opens June 10, 2023

STOCKBRIDGE, MA– Norman Rockwell Museum presents Tony Sarg: Genius at Play is the first comprehensive exhibition exploring the life, art, and adventures of Tony Sarg (1880-1942), the charismatic illustrator, animator, puppeteer, designer, entrepreneur, and showman who is celebrated as the father of modern puppetry in North America and the originator of the iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, floats, and animated store windows. On view from June 10 through November 5, 2023, this new exhibition will present original illustrations, marionettes, animations, interactive elements, and ephemera, including stage sets, illustrated books, commercial products, and archival photographs.

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VENUE(S)

Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA, June 10 to November 5, 2023

Nantucket Historical Association, Summer 2024, Nantucket, MA