Harry Smith, ethnomusicologist & Cat's Cradle string game expert, displaying "cat's whiskers" design. He'd been weakening malnourished in Franciscan shelter on N.Y. Bowery, came here to stay weeks in my apartment, we went together by plane to Naropa Institute Boulder Colorado where he was resident alchemist- philosopher at the Kerouac Poetics school for several years till his last trip back to Manhattan to receive Obie award for life - long preservation of American Folk Music, and death soon after in 1991 at the Chelsea Hotel.

Art Historical Context

In this intimate gelatin silver print from 1988 (printed 1995), Generation poet Allen Ginsberg captures his friend Harry Smith, a renowned ethnomusicologist cat's cradle string game virtuoso, demonstrating the "cat whiskers" design. The, now housed in the National Gallery Art, measures 28.58 × 22.23 cm and exemplifies Ginsberg's candid documentary style, often turning his lens on fellow counter icons during personal moments of vulnerability and creativity. Harry Smith, weakened by malnutrition in a New York Bowery shelter, found refuge in Ginsberg's apartment before they traveled together to ...

About the Artist

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), born in Newark, New Jersey, emerged as a multifaceted figure in American culture, best known as a Beat Generation poet but also a prolific visual artist whose photographs, drawings, and prints captured the raw energy of his era. His early life offers little documentation on artistic training, though he attended Columbia University in the 1940s, where he formed connectio...