Many visitors are curious
about the person who started the museum, so . . . .
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At left, Harry Finley, founder and
former director of the physical MUM in his
house, and creator of this Web site.
Many years ago I painted this
self-portrait in my kitchen, in Heidelberg,
Germany, (in oil, looking into a mirror)
before I lost much of my hair, not entirely
due to the effort required to create and
develop this museum.
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During World War II, in 1942, I was born in Long
Branch, New Jersey - Winslow
Homer, maybe America's greatest artist, once
limned the beach, famous in his time - where my mother
was waiting for my father to return from the war in
the South Pacific.
I attended nine schools in the twelve years before
high school graduation, including three high schools,
so peripatetic because of my father's career in the
Army. He was a colonel, an engineer, and a West Point
and Cornell graduate, who oversaw the construction of the largest building
in the world (the VAB), by volume, at Cape
Kennedy, Florida. My older brother and fellow artist,
George, long the leading caricaturist of the Army,
also graduated from West Point. My father's brother,
my namesake, wrote witty newspaper columns in Atlantic
City, New Jersey, and HIS father, Alexander Finley,
president of a five-state newspaper circulation
association, thought up the Miss America contest.
Muscular dystrophy crippled and at 21 killed my little
brother, Jim, who remarkably loved to laugh - but wit
helped him tolerate the intolerable.
And read a bit about my mother ("And a
Letter From Your MUM to You").
Besides having a B.A. in philosophy from Johns
Hopkins - so what else could
I do but start a museum of menstruation?
- I dabbled in masters degrees in German, geology and
philosophy but woke up and fled to Europe before
finishing them to work mostly as an self-taught
artist. By the way, my older brother now earns much of
his living as a watercolorist and oil painter, in
Germany, Scotland and in the U.S.A., besides
voluntarily collecting and driving tons of medical
supplies and toilets to Ukraine in his spare time
(Rotary International gave him an award for that) and
founding the first Ukrainian solar energy
organization; he's illustrating a book about solar
energy for Ukrainian children. Recently he established
the American section of the town museum of Schwäbisch
Hall, Germany, and contributed documentary footage to
a German TV film about the end of World War II. My
brother has inspired me since we were kids.
I clung to Germany 13 years, mostly as a graphic designer, cartoonist,
painter and illustrator, and in the 1980s
returned, with regret - still fresh - to the United
States, where I made graphics for the federal
government in Washington, D.C., until my retirement in
2004. Now I paint portraits, read, and work on MUM,
with the goal of establishing MUM again as a physical
museum. (See much more of my
art here.)
The histories of astronomy (especially spectroscopy
in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and medicine
fascinate me, as do languages (I read a few, speak two
and am teaching myself Japanese), cultural history,
biography, painting (mainly faces), creating
picture-stories, making cartoons for people, The New
York Review of Books, The New Yorker, die Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, and sitting around, dreaming stuff
up. I usually walk miles every day.
Actually, if I had had the chance to pick my genes
and interests, I would now be creating classical
music, which I love, but haven't a tune's worth of
talent for.
Read more in my entry in Who's Who in America
and Who's Who in the World.
How does this qualify you to run a museum of
menstruation?
I had the nerve to create it, buttressed by my
interest in the cultural history of menstruation. And
I researched and constructed exhibits by trade. MUM
was my first Web site.
Before I started MUM, I had to decide if I wanted to
suffer the criticism it would of course bring (and
criticized I have been); the enterprise had to be
worth it. I've had no reason to regret my MUM,
although it's been hard. (Read my plans for the future public museum.)
Man muß sich
für eine gute Sache eben beleidigen lassen. -
Stefan Zweig
"One must be willing to suffer
insults for a good cause." (My
translation.) Stefan Zweig, Austrian Jew, the most
translated writer in the world in the late 1930s,
was a fabulous writer, especially of short
biographies. He killed himself before the war was
over, having fled from country to country to
country. He thought the Nazis would win.
© 1998, 2001, 2006 Harry Finley. It
is illegal to reproduce or distribute any of the work
on this Web site in any manner or medium without
written permission of the author. Please report
suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
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