Lee “Woody” Wood wasn’t sure what to make of that message back in November.
A volunteer of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston indicated there was a giant picture of what the staff believed was him and others from the Maurice Board of Aldermen from years ago on display at the museum. The museum asked the volunteer to research the photo.
“At first I thought it was like a scam,” Wood said.
Far from it. Then he remembered his brief tenure as an alderman in Maurice when he served out the remainder of someone else’s term on the three-person board. In fall 2002 when artist/photographer Paul Shambroom traveled the country taking pictures of governments in small towns and villages across the country.
Shambroom attended a board meeting in Maurice and took pictures of the mayor and aldermen using a view camera, which allows for larger photo prints. Shambroom even had a sheet draped over him when he took the photos.
After that, everyone moved on.
Turns out the photo he used, which features alderman Paul Catalon, Wood, Mayor Barbara Picard, clerk Mary Hebert and alderwoman Marlene Theriot seated during a meeting with the village seal, a rendering and an American flag behind them, was published in a book Shambroom published years later.
Yet of all the images Shambroom took of small governments — he also visited the north Louisiana town of Bernice and governments in other states — only the Maurice picture made it to the Boston museum as part of its current exhibit “Power of the People: Art & Democracy.”
Wood arrived in Boston earlier this week to see the framed picture — which is 33 inches long and 66 inches wide — and meet the museum volunteer, Sharon Bazarian, whose sent him that initial message.
“I just think it’s really neat for the town of Maurice to have something like this, to be represented in such a prestigious museum,” Wood said. “It’s an opportunity to tell our story. There are all sorts of other things for the exhibit — protests and other small town things — but this is the only picture of a council in the exhibit.”
The framed photo is one of over 100 items on display at the exhibit, which shows how art has expressed ideas about democracy through history and how artists asked citizens about the promise of democracy, the museum’s site indicates. The museum purchased Shambroom’s photo in 2005.
“It looks like a painting but it’s a photo,” said Bazarian, one of about 200 volunteers at the museum. “His goal was to prove democracy in America. It’s not Washington, D.C. but these small towns with populations less than 2,000. With the quality of his images, he wanted to give it gravitas to show important small-town America was.”
Wood, meanwhile, is basking in the moment. He boasted how the picture is roped off from visitors while other more famous art pieces are not. The museum staff want to ask him questions about it because, well, most people behind the museum’s exhibits have been dead for years.
And a staffer is also trying to pitch the story to the Boston Globe.
“How many times in my life am I going to get to sit there and watch people stare at my picture on the wall?” he said. “It’s just kind of funny to me. A bunch of the staff wants to ask me questions. They’re actually getting a bigger kick out of this than I am. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
