Recently in Exhibit Category

The Center for Book Arts is Pleased to Present Its Winter 2012 Featured Artist Project
Patricia S. Ward: Re/Vision
January 18th to March 31st 2012
Patricia S. Ward: Re/Vision
When: January 18th to March 31st 2012 Where: 28 W. 27th St., 3rd Floor, New York, NY
Subway: N/R to 28th St, or F to 23rd St Admission: free
Organized by Alexander Campos, Executive Director

In a site-specific installation titled Ward presents a replica of her workspace, along with a number of miniature books and book-objects created from shredded pieces of an unpublished novel on loss, nostalgia, and war. The installation reflects her journey of moving beyond the experience of rejection to delving into the themes that permeate her writing, returning at last to her wartime childhood and incorporating the memorabilia she has carried with her since leaving Lebanon. All objects in the exhibition are meant to be touched and explored, so that viewers can experience more intimately the artist's journey.

Visit our website for up-to-date details: www.centerforbookarts.org

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS
The Center for Book Arts is committed to exploring and cultivating contemporary aesthetic interpretations of the book as an art object, while invigorating traditional artistic practices of the art of the book. The Center seeks to facilitate communication between the book arts community and the larger spheres of contemporary art and literature through exhibitions, classes, public programming, literary presentations, opportunities for artists and writers, publications, and collecting. Founded in 1974, the Center for Book Arts was the first organization of its kind in the nation.
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The Center for Book Arts is Pleased to Present Its Winter 2012 Featured Artist Project
Ethan Shoshan: Strange Birds
January 18th to March 31st 2012
Ethan Shosan: Strange Birds
When: January 18th to March 31st 2012 Where: 28 W. 27th St., 3rd Floor, New York, NY
Subway: N/R to 28th St, or F to 23rd St Admission: free
Organized by Alexander Campos, Executive Director

Social ecologist Ethan Shoshan presents an archive of 31 treasured objects and their accompanying conversations. This project encompasses vignettes of people’s lives through objects that hold significant personal meaning to them. Through each object on display, a conversation with its caretaker begins; visitors have the freedom to peruse the objects and listen to an accompanying audio guide conversation. It is through these stories that we engage with the person and create an intimate connection to something deeper within ourselves. Shoshan’s Strange Birds weaves together forgotten histories, memories, and embodied experiences in an affirmation of life and its lessons. Collaborators include: Arthur Aviles, Jill L. Conner, Barry Frier, Bibbe Hansen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Jim Hubbard, Stephen Kent Jusick, Stephen Lack, Agosto Machado, Stefani Mar, Liz McGarrity, Lucia Maria Minervini, Angelo Monaco, Augustmoon Ochiishi, Uzi Parnes, Dennis Redmond, Hunter Reynolds, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Rob Roth, Edward Rubin, Rafael Sanchez, Arleen Schloss, Gervaise Soeurouge, Sur Rodney Sur, Chris Tanner, Brad Taylor, Gail Thacker, Jack Waters, Kathleen White, Brian "Soigne" Wilson, and Stephen Winter.

Visit our website for up-to-date details: www.centerforbookarts.org

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS
The Center for Book Arts is committed to exploring and cultivating contemporary aesthetic interpretations of the book as an art object, while invigorating traditional artistic practices of the art of the book. The Center seeks to facilitate communication between the book arts community and the larger spheres of contemporary art and literature through exhibitions, classes, public programming, literary presentations, opportunities for artists and writers, publications, and collecting. Founded in 1974, the Center for Book Arts was the first organization of its kind in the nation.
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NEW YORK, February 3, 2012—Print/Out at The Museum of Modern Art examines the many roles that prints play in artistic practices today, embracing the versatile and global nature of contemporary art in the last two decades. On view from February 19 to May 14, 2012, in The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, Print/Out brings together approximately 70 series or projects drawn from MoMA’s extensive collection of more than 50,000 prints and illustrated books, while also including several important loans from private and public collections. Print/Out is part of a series of large-scale print surveys periodically organized by the Museum’s Department of Prints and Illustrated Books in order to assess the current state of the medium. The last two exhibitions were Printed Art: A View of Two Decades, organized by Riva Castleman in 1980, and Thinking Print: Books to Billboards: 1980-1995, organized by Deborah Wye in 1996. Part of Print/Out takes place on the Museum’s second floor with the exhibition Printin’, co-organized by the artist Ellen Gallagher and Associate Curator Sarah Suzuki, and centered around Gallagher’s major portfolio DeLuxe (2004-05). The Museum is also hosting Print Studio, an interactive space that explores the evolution of artistic practices relating to the medium of print, from January 23 to March 9, 2012, in the Mezzanine Level of The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building. Print/Out is organized by Christophe Cherix, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, with Kim Conaty, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art.

Focusing on the medium’s defining characteristics—its reproducibility, collaborative nature, and ability to circulate widely—Print/Out explores how artists have integrated these ideas in some of the most innovative art practices of our time. The exhibition features some 40 artists and artist groups, including Ai Weiwei, Trisha Donnelly, General Idea, Martin Kippenberger, Lucy McKenzie, Aleksandra Mir, Robert Rauschenberg, Rirkrit Tiravanija, SUPERFLEX, and Kelley Walker, along with publishers and publishing projects such as Edition Jacob Samuel, museum in progress, and Permanent Food. Among the notable installations is Thomas Schϋtte’s Low Tide Wandering (2001), an ambitious series of 139 prints that will be hung on site by the artist, criss-crossing the gallery space to create a maze-like, immersive environment.

The earliest works in the exhibition coincide with the geopolitical transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s, an emblematic point of departure for examining a medium, which, because of its capacity to disseminate information, has often been linked to social change. For Vienna-based association museum in progress (founded 1990), newspapers, magazines, and other media spaces offered effective sites for artist interventions, which founders Kathrin Messner and the late artist Josef Ortner commissioned from an impressive range of international artists. While recognized as an artist and political activist, Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957) is often overlooked in his role as a pioneering publisher, yet the three volumes he produced in the 1990s—known as The Black Cover Book (1994), The White Cover Book (1995), and The Grey Cover Book (1997)—could well be among his most impactful and enduring legacies. These paperbacks, comprised of artists’ submissions, essays, and translations of existing art-historical and critical texts, offered a new vehicle for circulating and disseminating information among China’s contemporary artists during a moment marked by a near total lack of access to foreign monographs, exhibition catalogues, and art magazines.

Another notable artist’s project that demonstrates the potential of the print medium for spreading ideas across vast geographies is Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (1991). Based on a black-and-white photograph of an unmade bed, this site-specific project is to be presented on public billboard spaces. As part of Print/Out, the work will be on view on billboards in the following six locations throughout New York City from February 20 to March 18, 2012: 11th Avenue and 38th Street in Manhattan; Neptune Avenue and Guider in Brooklyn; Pennsylvania Avenue near Fulton Street in Brooklyn; Van Dam Street near Queens Boulevard in Queens; 31st Street near Ditmars Boulevard in Queens. One additional billboard will be on view at the entrance to the exhibition.

Print/Out opens with a work by Martin Kippenberger (German, 1953-97), who realized an impressive body of multiples in collaboration with various publishers and galleries throughout his career. On view is a set of screenprints from 1992, Inhalt auf Reisen (Content on Tour), which Kippenberger produced with Austrian publisher Edition Artelier. This series is the result of a multi-stage process that began in 1989 when the artist asked his assistant to make a group of paintings after his own. Deeming the copies “too good,” Kippenberger decided to destroy them, but this apparent end was just the beginning. Several works grew out of these paintings, among them sculptures of industrial containers made to house the smashed-up, discarded paintings, and Content on Tour, whose imagery is based on a photograph of the destroyed paintings in one of the containers. The screenprint exists in four variants: one of the full image and three smaller, cut-down versions, each of which has been mounted on plywood. The artist then used a circular saw to make random linear marks on the surfaces, partially destroying the images and also distinguishing each print as a unique object. The works became the material result of the artist’s previous endeavors in painting, photography, and sculpture, ultimately producing a work that transcends its origin through a long sequence of reproduction and alteration.

Robert Rauschenberg’s (American, 1925-2008) The Lotus Series forms the other bookend to the exhibition. The last printed project completed by the artist before his death, The Lotus Series (2008) exemplifies the experimentation with process and transfer techniques that Rauschenberg engaged in throughout his career. Based on the artist’s small, faded photographs from his trips to China between 1982 and 1985, these 12 large-scale prints were made using high-resolution scans and digital printing processes as well as the photogravure technique. With this series, Rauschenberg blends tradition with innovation, prompting the viewer to look at the receding past with the hyperclarity that recent technology has made possible.

Other featured artists, like Rirkrit Tiravanija (Thai, b. Argentina, 1961) and Philippe Parreno (French, b. 1964), have used prints to recount, share, or reactivate earlier events and ephemeral works. Tiravanija has been challenging traditional models of art-making since the early 1990s, developing a practice based in participation, interaction, and collaboration. Around 1992, the same year as his paradigmatic work Untitled (Free) (which was recently on view in MoMA’s Contemporary Galleries), Tiravanija began to produce editions, publishing the first of many multiples in relation to his ephemeral or experience-based work. These editions included tins of curry paste or a backpack equipped for an expedition, both of which are on view in Print/Out. In 2011 Tiravanija completed what he considers to be his first traditional print project, Untitled 2008-2011 (the map of the land of feeling), comprising three scrolls stretching more than 80 feet altogether. The relentlessly peripatetic artist’s expansive passport—reproduced page by page, end to end—provides both a central organizing structure and an autobiographical narrative, the story of the artist’s life through the places he has visited. For Tiravanija, the laborious production process required for prints of this scale and complexity, involving the collaboration of 40 assistants over a span of four years, was an integral part of the final work.

In Parreno’s Fade to Black (2003)—a set of posters printed in phosphorescent ink—the artist recounts a series of past events organized in collaboration with some of his contemporaries, including Tiravanija as well as Liam Gillick and Pierre Huyghe. Each poster depicts an image or text related to one of these earlier events, with Parreno‘s Argentina vs. Netherlands 1978, Medina 2003 (2003) consisting of a photograph of a workshop that he gave in Medina, Argentina, in 2002. At that workshop Parreno screened the 1978 World Cup soccer final and then asked students “to replay the game in the schoolyard like they would have with a classical theatrical play.” In Print/Out this poster, along with the other posters in the series, is presented in a space in which the lights are programmed to go on and off at regular intervals, producing the strange effect of seemingly blank, white sheets, whose imagery suddenly emerges, glowing vibrantly when the room plunges into darkness. The images repeatedly fade in and out of sight, creating, as the artist describes, “a flickering memory” of his artistic practice.

Another special project presented in Print/Out is by SUPERFLEX, the Copenhagen-based artists’ group (Bjørnstjerne Christiansen [Danish, b. 1969], Jakob Fenger [Danish, b. 1968], and Rasmus Nielsen [Danish, b. 1969]) that has been organizing projects questioning social and economic structures since 1993. The group describes its practice in terms of tools (rather than artworks), utilized in the service of concrete cultural interventions; these tools are not finished products but rather instructions for doing and calls for participation. Copy Light/Factory (2008) addresses the larger implications of copyright through a workshop in which a series of lamp designs are “refabricated” by affixing photocopies of the designs to a basic cubic lighting structure. The resultant lamps reveal how copies of copies can become originals again. At certain times over the course of the exhibition, visitors to the Museum can participate in this project by making these lanterns at work stations, with the results going on view within the gallery space.

Investigating the nature of networks and circulation, Aleksandra Mir (American/Swedish, b. Poland, 1967) has developed a practice that merges cultural anthropology and fine art, investigating social structures, globalization, and the contemporary urban experience. Mir’s elaborate mapping project Naming Tokyo (2003-present) is organized around her solicitation from friends and colleagues of names for Tokyo’s otherwise undesignated streets. Print/Out presents one of the incarnations of this project: blank maps of the city, with legends on the reverse offering proposed organizations for Tokyo’s neighborhoods and streets, according to her research and her friends’ suggestions. Another project, Venezia (all places contain all others) (2009), organized for the 2009 Venice Biennale, consisted of one million fake postcards—ten thousand each of one hundred designs—combining stock images of generic or well-known scenery (such as a picturesque harbor or the New York City skyline) with the Italian city’s name. Just as the colorful maps and playful descriptions of Naming Tokyo mask its underlying critique of colonialism, the Venezia postcards—free souvenirs within the Biennale grounds—explored ideas of tourism, cultural geography, and displacement. In all of her projects, the artist’s light-handed and witty approach to her material often belies the heavier cultural and political content that it invokes.

Print/Out also includes a presentation of the work of California-based printer and publisher, Jacob Samuel (Edition Jacob Samuel, founded 1988). Samuel is best known for his unconventional approach to the print medium, adapting his expertise in the traditional technique of etching to the diverse practices of contemporary artists. This exhibition focuses on Samuel’s “portable printing studio,” a specially made, travel-ready aquatint box that he first used in 1996 with the performance artist Marina Abramović (Yugoslav, b. 1946), traveling to the artist’s Amsterdam studio to work with the artist in her own environment. The result, Spirit Cooking (1996), a portfolio that functions as a cookbook of “essential aphrodisiac recipes,” is on view in the exhibition, along with Samuel’s project with Chris Burden, Coyote Stories (2005), which recounts through handwritten texts and allusive imagery the artist’s personal encounters with coyotes near his Topanga Canyon, California, home. As part of Print/Out, Samuel has worked on a new portfolio with the artists and twin brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias (German, b. Romania, 1973), whose colorful, graphic compositions draw on a range of motifs, from popular culture, Eastern European folk art, and Russian Constructivism. Over the course of three days, Samuel worked with the artists in their Cologne studio, teaching them the basics of etching and helping them translate and adapt motifs from their visual lexicon into a set of plates. Print/Out follows this project through the printing, proofing, and publishing process, presenting a range of working materials and documentation in the galleries, and taking the opportunity to study one of Samuel’s collaborations from start to finish.

Within the exhibition these and other focused presentations are featured alongside areas physically demarcated with dotted wallpaper, in which print series by various artists—including Trisha Donnelly, Damien Hirst, Guillermo Kuitca, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Julie Mehretu, Jorge Pardo, Slavs and Tatars, Kara Walker, Franz West, Pae White, and Xu Bing—are broken apart and interspersed throughout the galleries. The layouts of these sections were designed by Armand Mevis and Linda Van Deursen (Mevis and Van Deursen, Amsterdam), who also served as the designers of the exhibition’s publication. The resulting view within the galleries captures both the familiarity and the ubiquity of prints in today’s landscape, and attests to the extraordinary vitality of a medium central to contemporary artistic practice.

Printin’
February 15-May 14, 2012
The Paul J. Sachs Prints and Illustrated Books Galleries, second floor
As part of Print/Out, the related exhibition Printin’, co-organized by artist Ellen Gallagher (American, b. 1965) and Sarah Suzuki, Associate Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at MoMA, is also on view. Printin’ takes as its starting point DeLuxe (2004-05), a tour de force portfolio of 60 works by Gallagher that challenged traditional ideas of what a print could be. This technically complex work employs a range of mediums, unorthodox tools, and elements, from slicks of greasy pomade to plastic ice cubes. DeLuxe also offers a constellation of ideas, touching on such issues as portraiture, identity, history, advertising, commodity, and the disruption, translation, and recasting of space. Proposing a kind of technical dissection and conceptual unpacking of this portfolio, Printin’ brings together work by more than 50 artists from multiple disciplines in a sweeping chronology that extends from the 17th century to the present day, to propose a free-flowing yet incisive web of associations that are reflected in DeLuxe. Encompassing prints, drawings, films, books, photographs, sculptures, videos, and comic strips, the exhibition features such artists as Vija Celmins, David Hammons, George Herriman, Rammellzee, Robert Rauschenberg, Martha Rosler, Experiens Sillemans, and many others, forming a dense network of formal, technical, and conceptual connections and intersections.

SPONSORSHIP: Major support for Print/Out is provided by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.

The Museum acknowledges generous funding from Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Orentreich Family Foundation, Mary M. Spencer, Philip Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons, and Sally and Wynn Kramarsky.

Additional support is provided by The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.

RELATED INSTALLATION:
Millennium Magazines
February 20-May 14, 2012
Mezzanine Level, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
This survey of experimental art and design magazines published since 2000 explores the various ways in which contemporary artists and designers utilize the magazine format as an experimental space for the presentation of artworks and text. Throughout the 20th century, international avant-garde activities in the visual arts and design were often codified first in the informal context of a magazine or journal. This exhibition, drawn from the holdings of the MoMA Library, follows the practice into the 21st century. The works on view represent a broad array of international titles within this genre, from community-building newspapers to image-only photography magazines to conceptual design projects. The contents illustrate a diverse range of image-making, editing, design, printing, and distribution practices. There are obvious connections to the past lineage of artists’ magazines and small press architecture and design magazines of the 20th century, as well as a clear sense of the application of new techniques of image-editing and printing methods. Assembled together, these contemporary magazines provide a first-hand view into these practices and represent the MoMA Library’s sustained effort to document and collect this medium. Millennium Magazine is organized by Rachael Morrison and David Senior, MoMA Library.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS:
Artist and Publisher: Printmaking and the Collaborative Process
MoMA hosts two conversations between publishers and artists featured in the exhibition Print/Out and Printin’ as they discuss their creative practice and the process of collaboration. Christophe Cherix, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books and organizer of Print/Out, moderates.
Thursday, February 16, 6:00 p.m., The Celeste Bartos Theater
Artist Ellen Gallagher in conversation with publishers and printers at Two Palms Press.
Tuesday, February 28, 6:00 p.m., The Celeste Bartos Theater
Artist Marina Abramović in conversation with Los Angeles publisher/printer Edition Jacob Samuel.
Tickets ($10, $8 members and corporate members, $5 students, seniors and staff of other museums) are available online, at the information desk in the main lobby, and at the film desk after 4:00 p.m. Any remaining tickets may be picked up one hour before the start of the program at the Education and Research Building ticketing desk.

Print Studio
January 23 to March 9, 2012
Open daily, Wednesday to Monday, 12:00-4:00 p.m.
Mezzanine Level, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
Print Studio is an interactive space that explores the evolution of artistic practices relating to the medium of print. The Studio offers a series of free drop-in workshops, lectures, and events that emphasize accessible and sustainable models for the production and dissemination of ideas.
See separate press release for complete details and schedule or visit MoMA.org/PrintStudio.
Print Studio is made possible by a partnership with Volkswagen of America.

AUDIO GUIDES:
The audio guide accompanying Print/Out features exhibition organizer Christophe Cherix joined
by artists Rirkrit Tiravanija, Alexandra Mir, and Lucy McKenzie, among other artists, publishers, and printers, along with a new, specially-produced soundscape by participating artist Trisha Donnelly. The audio guide accompanying Printin’ is led by artist Ellen Gallagher and Associate Curator Sarah Suzuki. Artists David Shrigley, Simon Fujiwara, and Martha Rosler also discuss the exhibition, while poet Terence Hayes and artist-performer Theaster Gates read the poetry of Aimé Césaire and Bob Kaufman. MoMA Audio is also available for download at MoMA.org, at MoMA.org/audio, and as a podcast on iTunes. MoMA Audio is available free of charge courtesy of Bloomberg.

PUBLICATION:
A fully illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition and includes essays and interviews by Mr. Cherix, Ms. Suzuki, and Ms. Conaty. Print/Out: 20 Years in Print features focused sections on 10 artists and publishers—Ai Weiwei, Ellen Gallagher, Martin Kippenberger, Lucy McKenzie, Aleksandra Mir, museum in progress, Edition Jacob Samuel, SUPERFLEX, Robert Rauschenberg, and Rirkrit Tiravanija—as well as rich illustrations of printed projects from the last two decades by major artists such as Trisha Donnelly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Schütte, and Kelley Walker. 236 pages, 585 illustrations. Paperback, $50. Available at the MoMA Stores and online at MoMAStore.org. Distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK | D.A.P. in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson outside North America.

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Public Information:
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 708-9400, MoMA.org
Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday, 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Closed
Tuesday
Museum Admission: $25 adults; $18 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $14 full-time students with current I.D. Free, members and children 16 and under. (Includes admittance to Museum galleries and film programs). MoMA.org: $22.50 adults; $16 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $12 full-time students with current I.D. No service charge for tickets ordered on MoMA.org. Tickets purchased online may be printed out and presented at the Museum without waiting in line. (Includes admittance to Museum galleries and film programs).
Film Admission: $12 adults; $10 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $8 full-time students with current I.D. (for admittance to film programs only)
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The Center For Book Arts is Pleased to Present Its Winter 2012 Exhibition

Fine & Dirty
Contemporary Letterpress Art
January 18th to March 31st 2012
Fine & Dirty
When: January 18th to March 31st 2012 Where: 28 W. 27th St., 3rd Floor, New York, NY
Subway: N/R to 28th St, or F to 23rd St Admission: free

Organized by Betty Bright and Jeff Rathermel, Minnesota Center for Book Arts

The practice of letterpress printing incorporates craft standards and the book’s haptic character, along with art world strategies, materials and content. With Fine & Dirty, the Center for Book Arts’ Winter 2012 Exhibition, the curators assemble work that represents the best in letterpress books today, created by established and emerging artists. The exhibit explores the forces that are reshaping the meanings of craft in letterpress printing in the twenty-first century, and that may shed light on the larger craft-world’s relationship to art and to life. The exhibition also investigates other influences on current letterpress work. These include DIY (Do It Yourself) and its playful organizational spin-off for letterpress, ILLSA (Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts); Asian influences such as wabi sabi; international influences such as the UK’s Ken Campbell’s improvisatory approach and Ron King’s theatrical presentations, and a heightened focus on design and on a wide use of papers seen in work by Germany’s Viktoria Schäpers and Barbara Tetenbaum.

Visit our website for up-to-date details: www.centerforbookarts.org

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS

The Center for Book Arts is committed to exploring and cultivating contemporary aesthetic interpretations of the book as an art object, while invigorating traditional artistic practices of the art of the book. The Center seeks to facilitate communication between the book arts community and the larger spheres of contemporary art and literature through exhibitions, classes, public programming, literary presentations, opportunities for artists and writers, publications, and collecting. Founded in 1974, the Center for Book Arts was the first organization of its kind in the nation.
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Oxford, 24 January 2012 - The Bodleian main exhibition opens to the public this Saturday, 28 January. It celebrates the stories of medieval romance and how they have influenced our culture, literature and art over the last thousand years.  It includes the dramatic love stories about King Arthur and Tristan and Isolde as they are illustrated in sumptuous medieval manuscripts, alongside works of art and draft papers by J.R.R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman and Monty Python, the last on public display for first time.

The Romance of the Middle Ages exhibition at the Bodleian Library draws on the Bodleian’s outstanding collection of manuscripts and early printed books containing medieval romances. These range from lavishly-illustrated volumes to personal notebooks and fragments only saved by chance. Alongside these will be works of art from across Europe that illustrate romance legends; these include ivory carvings, jewellery and caskets, on loan from national museums and collections.

Romance writing developed in Britain after the Norman Conquest and flourished as a form of storytelling right through to the Middle Ages, forming the basis for many kinds of later drama, poetry and prose fiction. This colourful exhibition tells how these compelling medieval stories have inspired writers and artists across the centuries; from the early modern period (including Shakespeare, Ariosto and Cervantes) through to medievalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (including Walter Scott, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris) and, finally, to contemporary versions and adaptations (including manuscripts and drafts by J.R.R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman and the Monty Python team). From the Knights of the Round Table to the Knights that say ‘Ni!’, The Romance of the Middle Ages exhibition tells the fascinating story of medieval romance across the ages.

Highlights of the exhibition include:
    •    The Song of Roland - the earliest copy of France’s national epic (mid-12th century)
    •    Exquisite ivory carvings from France (14th century)
    •    Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - One of the most precious manuscripts of Middle English poetry. On loan from the British Library (c.1400)
    •    The Red Book of Hergest - amongst the most important books written in Welsh, containing The Mabinogion and many other texts, on loan from Jesus College, Oxford (c.1400)
    •    William Caxton’s The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye - a copy of the first book ever printed in the English language (1473/4)
    •    A draft illustrated page from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1946)
    •    Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Terry Jones’s own working copy of the screenplay for the film, never shown to the public before (1973)

Dr Nicholas Perkins, exhibition curator said: ‘It’s a great pleasure to open up the Bodleian’s wonderful collections for this exhibition. They are of huge importance in telling the story of romance, and include some of the most spectacular books from medieval Europe. They have also offered inspiration to those captivated by the Middle Ages as a time of romance and wonder. From the young William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones beguiled by the Arthurian legends as Oxford students, to providing a working base for J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the Library has nourished both scholarly and imaginative engagement with the medieval for centuries.’

An online exhibition (http://medievalromance.bodleian.ox.ac.uk) with the same title will be launched on 29 January.  It will feature nearly all the items on display in the exhibition room, along with many additional items. A 12-min video with the curator of the exhibition and scholars from the University of Oxford introducing the exhibition and the ideas behind it is also available. Twitter hashtag is #BODromance

Events accompanying the exhibition include lunchtime talks, special school activities and a show A Love Like Salt inspired by the exhibition to be held in the Divinity School, Bodleian Library on 20 April.

THE ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
28 January - 13 May 2012
Exhibition Room, Bodleian Library, Old Schools Quad, Catte Street, Oxford
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm; Saturday 9am - 4.30pm; Sunday 11am - 5pm CLOSED EASTER SUNDAY
ADMISSION FREE

The Grolier Club is pleased to present a unique exhibition that explores and illuminates the causes, conduct, and historical record of the Civil War through maps and other historic items. Torn in Two: the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, organized by The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center of the Boston Public Library, will open to the public on February 22, 2012.

This unique presentation - which will run through April 28 before continuing on its national tour - will showcase 50 historical objects including maps, photographs, prints, diaries, political cartoons, music, and press of the period. The overarching theme of the exhibition is the central role geography has played in the causes, conduct, consequences, and commemorations of the American Civil War.

The exhibit is divided into three major sections: Rising Tensions, which will examine the economic, social, and political differences between the North and the South that led to war; Nation in Conflict, which will focus on the war itself; and Remembering Battles and Heroes, which will document the nation’s attempts to commemorate the battles and honor the lives that were lost during the war.

Included in this remarkable selection are rare examples of photographic images depicting 19th-century slave life, the first American demographic map which was one of Abraham Lincoln’s key resources during the war, and Ensign, Bridgman and Fanning’s United States railroad map which revealed the contrast between the newly industrialized, increasingly urban North and the agrarian, rural culture of the South. Throughout the exhibition, the history of the national conflict is examined through the eyes of everyday citizens, helping to portray this most complex national schism in personal terms.

Torn in Two will feature a special emphasis on New York City that will challenge and engage visitors of all ages.  Of particular interest to New York audiences will be Civil War battle maps and diagrams published in rare, original newspapers such as The New York Times, The New York Herald and New York Tribune.  Also included will be a spectacular 1865 “bird’s eye view” map of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn published by Charles Parsons, so detailed that street patterns, church steeples and even chimney smoke are clearly visible, along with harbored ships in the distance.  

A virtual exhibition of Torn in Two with digital images of all objects, as well as K-12 curriculum materials and educational resources based on the exhibition’s themes, are offered on the Leventhal Map Center’s website, maps.bpl.org and at tornintwo.org.

About the Leventhal Map Center - The Map Center was established in 2004 as a public-private partnership between the Boston Public library and map collector-philanthropist, Norman Leventhal. The Map Center’s mission is to make the Library’s extensive collection of more than 200,000 historic maps and 5,000 atlases dating from the 15th century to the present accessible to the general public and to promote their creative use in research and scholarship, education, and civic engagement. In October 2011, the Map Center opened a permanent, state-of-the-art Map and Study Center on the first floor of the library’s historic McKim Building in Copley Square, Boston.

Torn in Two is sponsored by the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.

LOCATION AND TIME: Torn in Two will be on view at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, from Feb. 22 - April 28, 2012. The exhibit will be open to the public free of charge, Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Additional information and directions are available at www.grolierclub.org.  

CATALOGUE: A fully-illustrated 170-page catalog of Torn in Two, published by the Boston Public Library, will be available at the Grolier Club.

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS AT THE GROLIER CLUB
May 15 - July 28, 2012. Aaron Burr Returns to New York: An Exhibition on Burr and His Contemporaries.

Visit the Grolier Club website: www.grolierclub.org

New York, NY, January 2012—Best known for his groundbreaking fluorescent light installations, Dan Flavin (1933-1996) was also an avid draftsman and collector of drawings. Throughout his career, the self-taught artist turned to drawing to plan his constructions and installations, as well as to sketch from nature in the most traditional fashion. He also enthusiastically acquired drawings by artists of diverse styles and backgrounds with whom he felt affinities.
 

Now, for the first time, the central role that drawing played in Flavin’s art will be explored in a major exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum, opening on February 17, 2012. The show includes more than one hundred drawings by the artist—from early abstract expressionist watercolors of the 1950s and portraits and landscape sketches, to studies for his seminal light installations and late pastels of sailboats. In addition, the exhibition will feature nearly fifty works from Flavin’s personal collection of drawings, including nineteenth-century American landscapes by Hudson River School artists, Japanese drawings, and twentieth-century works by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Donald Judd, and Sol LeWitt. The exhibition will be on view through July 1, 2012.



"The world knows Dan Flavin through the iconic fluorescent light installations on which his reputation rests," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "But few people are aware that these magnificent pieces often began as sketches, schematic drawings, and diagrams on graph paper. Throughout his career, Flavin turned to drawing to explore new ideas and new themes, and collected drawings by old and modern masters to serve as sources of inspiration. The Morgan is delighted to present this first-ever retrospective look at the key role that drawing played in the creative process of one of the twentieth-century’s most innovative artists."



Early works
Dan Flavin: Drawing begins with the artist’s early drawings and watercolors. Landscapes are often the subjects of these works, and they reveal his interest in atmospheric and meteorological conditions, stemming from his training as a meteorological technician while in the Air Force. His admiration for Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline led him to adopt a broad, gestural style. Particularly important among his works of the late 1950s is a group of watercolors with handwritten texts copied from the Bible, as well as from Irish and Chinese poetry and from James Joyce—a figure with whom the young Flavin identified, owing partly to their shared Irish heritage. 



Early on Flavin began the practice, which he would continue throughout his career, of dedicating his works not only to friends and relatives, but also to historical figures and people whom he admired, such as Picasso and Cézanne. Some of these lengthy dedications express Flavin’s political and social engagement, as in the 1961 watercolor to those who suffer in the Congo, a reference to the crisis that ensued after the Congo achieved independence in 1960.



Drawings for icons and related constructions

Flavin’s first sustained series of constructions with light are the icons, created between 1961 and 1963. Each consists of a painted wooden square to which one or more lamps have been attached. Although only eight were fabricated, drawings document ideas for many more. Their collective title was inspired by the artist’s interest in Russian art of the early twentieth century, notably that of Kasimir Malevich, who referred to his abstract art as "the icon of my time." Likewise, Flavin compared his use of electric light to a modern type of icon. With characteristic irony, however, he noted that his icons "differ from a Byzantine Christ held in majesty; they are dumb—anonymous and inglorious . . . They are constructed concentrations celebrating barren rooms. They bring a limited light."


The drawings for Flavin’s icons range from small sketches on 3 x 5 inch notebook pages—a favorite support for his working drawings—to large, finished studies in colored pencil or pastel. icon V (Coran Broadway Flesh) is the subject of several detailed drawings, probably because, with the number of lamps it includes, it is one of the most complex in the series, but also no doubt because Flavin considered it to be his best work at the time. It is "a perfectly resolved piece—symmetrical square of one color which is totally lighted," he wrote in his journal. Obsessed with keeping records of his work, Flavin drew several "inventories" of his icons, taking stock of those already made and planning future ones. Many drawings document various possible arrangements of several icons together, attesting that, although they were eventually sold individually, these works were first conceived as a group. 



Drawings for fluorescent light installations

From 1963 until the end of his life, the fluorescent light installations for which he is celebrated constituted Flavin’s main artistic production. These were first worked out in rapid sketches on the pages of the 3 x 5 inch notebooks he carried with him at all times. Using a fine ballpoint pen, Flavin combined visual and verbal notations, including such inscriptions as the color and dimensions of the lamps. Sometimes writing and drawing became one as Flavin literally "drew" the fluorescent tubes with the words designating their color. Some studies were on larger sheets, usually of 8 1/2 x 11 inch typing paper, a support that, like the notebook pages, demonstrated a preference for nonartistic paper. Indeed, Flavin did not treat his working sketches as master drawings. "For me, drawing and diagramming are mainly what little it takes to keep a record of thought...," he wrote. But his drawings were essential to his working process, and he carefully kept them. All were precisely dated and sometimes numbered to record the sequence in which they were made. 



In the 1960s, Flavin also created finished drawings in preparation for his installations, using colored pencil and sometimes colored paper to suggest the interaction of the lights in the space. A few of these exist for the Green Gallery installation of 1964, Flavin’s first exhibition of fluorescent lights. As he became more familiar with the effects of lights, he no longer felt the need for such drawings. The later ones were made primarily for the market.
 

Beginning in 1971, Flavin kept visual records of his installations through what he called "final finished diagrams," carefully drawn in colored pencil on graph paper. These were not drawn by him but by others following his instructions—first his wife Sonja, and later his son, Stephen, and other assistants. The draftsperson’s initials appear on the sheet, next to Flavin’s signature. Delegating the actual making of a work is unusual with drawings, which are traditionally associated with the artist’s hand. But Flavin’s approach was in keeping with developments in Minimal and Conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s, which stressed the role of the artist as the person who conceives the work, though he may not be the one who actually executes it. This was notably the case with Flavin’s light installations. He planned them and closely supervised their placement, but the pieces, commercially available, were installed by electricians. 



Landscapes, sails, and portrait drawings

Perhaps the most unexpected aspect of Flavin’s drawing production is the numerous landscape sketches he made outdoors from observation. Particularly drawn to riverbanks and ocean shores, he often sketched views of the Hudson River and Long Island beaches. In these quick drawings, he would capture the mood of a scene in a few strokes. Working in series, he made many sketches from the same point of view in rapid succession. Unlike his studies for light installations, these drawings were made in traditional artists’ sketchbooks and in graphite pencil. Exercising the same care he took with his working studies, Flavin dutifully recorded the date, subject, and location of each sketch, sometimes even the weather conditions of the day on which it was made. For the purpose of exhibitions, he would frame many of them together, in sequences reflecting the order in which they were created.
 

During the 1980s, Flavin focused on the subject of sails in charcoal and pastel drawings whose spare composition and calligraphic qualities reflected his interest in Asian art. First drawn from observation, these were eventually made from imagination, allowing Flavin to draw them in any season. In addition to the landscapes, Flavin frequently drew portraits of his friends or of people he encountered by chance, for instance at restaurants or cafes. Often in ballpoint pen, these drawings can be found interspersed with sketches for light installations in Flavin’s notebooks. Rendered with quick, short marks, these likenesses often border on caricatures as the artist sought to catch his subjects’ salient features. 



Flavin’s collection

Highlights from Flavin’s collection include sheets by early-twentieth-century abstract painters such as Arp and Mondrian, both of whom he mentioned several times in his journal during the 1960s. Rather than finished drawings, Flavin sought sketches and studies, in which he found the most direct expression of the artist’s thoughts. Because of his own habit of working out his installations from quick notations on small pieces of paper, he felt a connection with artists like Mondrian, who could plan a painting by jotting down a few lines on the wrapper of a pack of cigarettes. Drawings by Hans Richter and George Grosz from the late 1910s and early 1920s are evidence of Flavin’s interest in the constructivist phase of Dada. 



Flavin’s collection also includes many drawings—probably acquired through exchange—by his friends and contemporaries. A large sheet by the Chinese-American artist Wallace Ting is a reminder that it was he who introduced Flavin to sumi ink—a medium the latter used extensively in the late 1950s. Drawings by Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Sol LeWitt evoke Flavin’s friendship with other artists associated with the Minimalist movement. He was particularly close to LeWitt, who has acknowledged the influence of Flavin’s concept of series on his own development, and to Judd. Earning his living as an art critic in the early sixties, Judd wrote several pieces on Flavin, praising "the power and complexity" of his work. Judd’s drawings in Flavin’s collection are related to his early Minimalist sculpture. Two elegant designs in gouache and pastel show that the two men shared the same interest in the use of color to create objects that combined aspects of sculpture and painting while being neither. 



Flavin developed an interest in nineteenth-century American landscape drawings during the 1960s, especially after he moved to Cold Spring, in the Hudson River Valley, in 1965. His most intense period of acquisition of works by Hudson River School artists was 1979-81, when he bought a large number of them on behalf of Dia Art Foundation for the purpose of displaying them at a planned Dan Flavin Art Institute in Garrison, New York, a project that was never completed.


Flavin had a lifelong interest in Asian art as well, the influence of which is visible in his work from his early ink and charcoal drawings to his late pastels of sails. In the mid-1980s Flavin purchased over thirty Japanese drawings from Galerie Janette Ostier in Paris. Most of them date to the first half of the nineteenth century and are by artists associated with ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world), such as Hiroshige, Hokusai, and Kuniyoshi. Japanese drawing epitomizes the combination of expressivity and economy that Flavin aimed to achieve in his own art.
 

Light installations at the Morgan

Two major fluorescent light installations by Flavin will also be on view. At the entrance of the exhibition, visitors will encounter Flavin's untitled (to the real Dan Hill) 1a, 1978, a work composed of pink, yellow, green and blue light cast in two directions: out towards the viewer and back into the corner of the gallery. A spectacular corner installation, untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3, 1977, an eight foot square grid, will suffuse the Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery on the ground floor with pink, yellow, green and blue light. Several studies related to this work are on view in the exhibition. 




Public Programs

Family Program

Glow Play: Sculpting with Light

Saturday, February 25, 2-4 p.m.

Artist and educator Nicole Haroutunian will invite children and their families to discover the drawings of Minimalist artist Dan Flavin. After visiting the exhibition and experiencing two of the artist's light installations first hand, they will then create color sketches inspired by Flavin's works on paper and shape glowing sculptures of their own.

Adults: $6; Members: $4; Children: $2



Gallery Talk 

Dan Flavin: Drawing 
Friday, March 2, 7 p.m.

With Isabelle Dervaux, Acquavella Curator, Modern and Contemporary Drawings

Free


Symposium 
Minimalist Drawing: The 1960s and 1970s

Friday, April 27, 10:30 am-5 p.m.

This symposium will explore the changing form, function, and status of drawing in the era of Minimalism and Conceptual art. Speakers to be announced. 
$15; $10 for Members; free to students with valid ID.


Additional programs to be announced



Organization and Sponsorship
This exhibition is supported in part by the Dedalus Foundation, Inc. and Nancy Schwartz, with additional assistance from The Aaron I. Fleischman Foundation. 


Major funding for the catalogue is provided by Lannan Foundation. 

Dan Flavin: Drawing is organized by Isabelle Dervaux, Acquavella Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum.


The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan’s private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets.



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours

Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PASADENA, Calif. (January 2012) - Exploring the avid pursuits of collectors past and present, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair will feature a special exhibit entitled “A Love Affair with Books: Personal Stories of Noted Collectors.” This colorful, wide-ranging exhibit spotlights legendary library builders as well as the contemporary Southern California book lovers including:

Railroad magnate Henry Huntington amassed a spectacular collection of rare books and manuscripts in the fields of British and American history and literature which make up the core of one of the finest research libraries in the world; selected materials from the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

Philanthropist William Andrews Clark, Jr. formed a collection that make up one of the nation’s most comprehensive rare books and manuscripts libraries with particular strengths in 17th and 18th century English literature and history, Oscar Wilde and fine printing; selected materials from UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

The Ward Ritchie Collection from Occidental College presents the work of the world-renowned, Southern California-based fine book printer

The Lawrence Clark Powell Collection from Occidental College honors the legendary librarian and literary bibliographer who founded the UCLA School of Library Service

Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar collects children’s books with an emphasis on the works of Victorian illustrator Arthur Rackham

Academy Award-winning producer and director Tony Bill’s collection documents the history of early aviation; now part of the San Francisco International Airport Aviation Museum & Library

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has assembled an encyclopedic cinema collection

Monsignor Francis J. Weber has published and built a big collection of small books all measuring less than 4 inches; selected materials from Azusa Pacific University

Librarian and gemologist Mary Murphy began her collection dedicated to precious stones and jewelry to advance her professional knowledge and 30 years later has a private library of over 600 items

A past president of the Zamorano Club, California’s oldest book club, Gordon J. Van De Water has long collected books dealing with California and the West

Now in its 45th edition, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair will take place at the Pasadena Convention Center on February 10 - 12, 2012. Recognized as one of the world’s largest and most prestigious exhibitions of antiquarian books, the Book Fair gives visitors the opportunity to see, learn about and purchase the finest in rare and valuable books, manuscripts, autographs, graphics, prints, maps, photographs and more.

With the collections and rare treasures of more than 200 booksellers from the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), the Book Fair will feature volumes from five centuries of printing, as well as original manuscripts that predate Gutenberg. Books will cover every imaginable area of interest -- from the history of travel and exploration, early science and medicine to classic literature, modern first editions, children’s and illustrated books, and the arts. Items range in price from a few dollars to more than six figures.

The Book Fair also includes seminars on the basics of collecting as well as various themed topics. A panel discussion in conjunction with the special exhibit will feature collectors Kenneth Turan, Tony Bill, and Mary Murphy and will be moderated by journalist, author and TV/radio personality Patt Morrison. Sunday, February 12 is Discovery Day, which gives attendees the opportunity to present up to three items to experts for free examination.

Book Fair hours are Friday, February 10 from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, February 11 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, February 12 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Pasadena Convention Center, located at 300 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA. Tickets on Friday, February 10 are $25 and provide three-day admission. Proceeds from Friday tickets will benefit the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Tickets purchased on Saturday or Sunday are $15 and include return entry throughout the remainder of the Book Fair.

For more information, visit www.labookfair.com or call 800-454-6401.

Connect with the Book Fair at http://twitter.com/labookfair or http://www.facebook.com/LABookFair.
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(Washington, DC)  Shakespeare’s heroine Rosalind criticizes the verses penned by her lover Orlando: “some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear.”  No doubt she would write better ones, but Shakespeare doesn’t give her a chance.  Did he know any women writers?  Had he read any women’s verses circulating in collections among his acquaintance?  We may never know, but we do know that many women of the time, from aristocrats to courtesans, wrote on a range of topics from the spiritual to the sensual.  

Shakespeare’s Sisters: Voices of English and European Women Writers, 1500-1700 showcases the emerging diversity of early women authors and suggests how this rich legacy has shaped subsequent writing and scholarship.

“For generations, the emphasis was on the canon of male writers’ works, which was of course established by men. Many works by early female authors have only been uncovered in the last 50 years by scholars interested in women’s writing. The first wave of feminist scholarship rooted in the archives to search for works by women writers. Now there is biographical and critical research on specific women writers and  an ongoing attempt to include them in the canon,” says exhibition curator Georgianna Ziegler.

The exhibition title, Shakespeare’s Sisters, is inspired in part by an influential essay by Virginia Woolf. In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Woolf imagined a sister for Shakespeare called Judith, who wanted to be a playwright like her brother, but was unable to pursue a career as a professional writer because of her gender.

In the near century since A Room of One’s Own was published, scholarship has uncovered previously unknown works by women—female authors who were “Shakespeare’s sisters” in literary enterprise.

“Women writers Shakespeare might have known is one of those questions, like many questions, we wish we could ask Shakespeare if he were around,” says Ziegler. “There is some thinking that Shakespeare might have known The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary. It has an Othello-like plot, but it was not written to be performed on a stage, so it is hard to say whether he might have been familiar with it.”

Many works were not published during the authors’ lifetimes, or survive in only a few copies. To rediscover these works, researchers delved into libraries, archives, or other repositories and simply “dug around,” as Ziegler describes it.  

Knowledge of these women and their works is now more readily available than ever before, and the exhibition showcases the works of over fifty women writers and literary patrons from England, France, and Italy.

Exhibition Highlights

Shakespeare’s Sisters features early printed and manuscript works by Shakespeare’s female contemporaries, as well as portraits and other artwork. The exhibition includes seventy-five items from the Folger collection, as well as materials from the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Beinecke Library at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the Library of Congress, and a private collection.

Highlights include: 

•    First edition. An original printing of Virginia Woolf’s classic text, A Room of One’s Own, first published in 1929.
•    Private musings. Lady Anne Clifford was a voracious reader and diarist.  On display is her own annotated copy of John Selden’s 1631 Titles of Honor and a 1923 printed edition of her diary edited by her descendent, Vita Sackville-West.
•    Mixed metaphors. Marguerite of Navarre, queen consort to the king of France, wrote on widely varying topics, from devout religious poetry to short stories on love and relationships. Her intense—and controversial—allegorical poem Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (Mirror of the Sinful Soul) as well as her story collection The Heptameron are both featured in the exhibition.
•    Love poems. Italian courtesan Veronica Franco, whose life inspired the film Dangerous Beauty, earned acclaim for her passionate poetry.   
•    Royal religion. Queen Catharine Parr, Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, wrote several books, including Prayers Stirring the Mind.
•    Women playwrights.  Plays by Aphra Behn, Susanna Centlivre and others who were the first Englishwomen to follow Shakespeare in writing professionally for the theater.

Shakespeare’s Sisters brings the works of early women writers—often neglected, ignored, or overlooked for centuries—to a wider audience and showcases the rich literary legacy of Shakespeare’s female contemporaries. Through these rediscovered works, the voices of Renaissance women are heard by modern audiences.  

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Georgianna Ziegler is Louis B. Thalheimer Head of Reference.  She has been interested in early modern women for many years, writing a Ph.D. thesis on Queen Guinevere in medieval romance, and designing Davidson College’s first course on women writers when she was a member of the English faculty.  She has published on Elizabeth I, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Esther Inglis, and on female characters from Shakespeare, including Portia, Catharine of Aragon, and Lady Macbeth.  At the Folger she has curated exhibitions on Shakespeare’s Unruly Women and Elizabeth I: Then and Now.

RELATED PROGRAMS
10,000 Years of Women Writers
Join us for a series of readings, concerts, performances, and lectures celebrating the contributions of women to the arts. More information is available at www.folger.edu/womenwriters.

January 24-March 4
FOLGER THEATRE
The Gaming Table
Whimsy, wit, and wordplay sparkle in this effervescent comedy by Susanna Centlivre, one of 18th-century London’s most popular playwrights. An independent-minded widow with a penchant for gambling holds a nightly card game teeming with revelers and rakes.
Hours: Tuesdays-Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm & 8pm, Sundays at 2pm & 7pm
Tickets: $30-$60

February 16
O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES
Readings From Shakespeare’s Sisters
Rita Dove, Linda Gregerson, Elizabeth Nunez, Linda Pastan, and Jane Smiley read their commissioned poems and essays from the Shakespeare’s Sisters chapbook, published in conjunction with the Folger exhibition of the same name.
Hours: Thursday at 7pm
Tickets: TBA

February 25
FAMILY EVENT
Shake Up Your Saturdays
Learn about the women who dared to write poetry during and after Shakespeare's time in this free family workshop filled with history, activity, performance, and fun! A scavenger hunt takes young visitors through the Folger's Shakespeare's Sisters exhibit.
Hours: Saturday, 10-11am
Tickets: Free. Advance registration required. Email educate@folger.edu to register or for additional information.

March 2
PEN/FAULKNER
Tilar Mazzeo & Stacy Schiff
Two female historians talk about grappling with the past and the stories that create it. Tilar Mazzeo is the bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot: The Story of the Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It, and The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World’s Most Famous Perfume. Stacy Schiff is the author of Cleopatra, a #1 bestseller and named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2010.
Hours: Friday at 7:30pm
Tickets: $15

March 5
O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES
Eavan Boland
Eavan Boland’s poems examine womanhood and history with a sheer, lyrical grace and skill. Boland has published ten volumes of poetry, including Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, New Collected Poems, Domestic Violence, and An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-87. She is the recipient of the Lannan Award for Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award.
Hours: Monday at 7:30pm
Tickets: $15

March 16-18
FOLGER CONSORT
The Songbird
Francesca Caccini was one of the guiding spirits behind the revolutionary music of the earliest operas and the brilliant solo songs of the Baroque. Composer of a wide range of solo songs, duets, and stage music, she is perhaps best known for her La Liberazione di Ruggiero, the first opera by a woman, which premiered in 1625.
Hours: Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 5pm and 8pm, Sunday at 2pm
Tickets: $35

April 13-15
FOLGER CONSORT
The City of Ladies
The French and Burgundian courts of the early 15th century fostered a culture that treasured its musicians, artist, and writers and the revelatory idea of beauty for its own sake. Influential writer Christine de Pizan lived at court in France and wrote City of Ladies during this time. One of her ballades, Dueil angoisseus, was set to music. This song and other pieces composed for court and chamber are performed by vocalists, fiddles, harps, lutes, and winds.
Hours: Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 5pm and 8pm, Sunday at 2pm
Tickets: $35

Online Resources
Visit www.folger.edu/shakespearessisters for an online version of Shakespeare’s Sisters, including images, an audio tour, and related information.  

RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Shakespeare’s Sisters: Women Writers Bridge Five Centuries
Edited by Gigi Bradford and Louisa Newlin
Thirteen women poets and authors—among them, former U.S. poets laureate Rita Dove and Maxine Kumin and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jane Smiley—respond to the works of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women writers in this elegantly designed, handbound collection of poetry and essays. 52 pages, softcover.  Available in the Folger Gift Shop for $19.95.

VISITOR SERVICES
Tours
Monday - Friday at 11am & 3pm,Saturday at 11am & 1pm and Sunday at 1pm
Folger Docents offer guided tours of the exhibition, as well as the Folger’s national landmark building, free of charge.  No advance reservations required.

Group Tours
Docent-led tours of the exhibition, as well as the Folger national landmark building, are offered for groups of 10 or more.  To arrange, please call (202) 675-0395.

Guide by Cell Audio Tours
Visitors, using their own cell phones, can call (202) 595-1844 and follow the prompts for 150# through 167# to hear women scholars share personal comments on exhibition items.

UPCOMING FOLGER EXHIBITIONS
Open City: London, 1500-1700
June 8-September 29, 2012
Kathleen Lynch and Betsy Walsh, Curators
Over the course of two centuries, London changed from the capital of England, secure within its medieval walls, to a metropolitan seat of empire. Open City explores activities and pressures that altered Londoners’ sense of community, focusing especially on three types of institutions that touched everyday lives: church, theater, and market. Drawing on materials as disparate as deeds, diaries, engravings, and maps, Open City illustrates the impact of new ideas, new products, and new people in this rapidly growing capital city.


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About Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Shakespeare Library is a world-class center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. It is home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period (1500-1750). Folger Shakespeare Library is an internationally recognized research library offering advanced scholarly programs in the humanities; an innovator in the preservation of rare materials; a national leader in how Shakespeare is taught in grades K-12; and an award-winning producer of cultural and arts programs—theater, music, poetry, exhibitions, lectures, and family programs. By promoting understanding of Shakespeare and his world, Folger Shakespeare Library reminds us of the enduring influence of his works, the formative effects of the Renaissance on our own time, and the power of the written and spoken word. A gift to the American people from industrialist Henry Clay Folger, the Folger Shakespeare Library—located one block east of the U.S. Capitol—opened in 1932. Learn more at www.folger.edu

PARIS-The gallery Les Enluminures in Paris has announced its Spring exhibition:  “Flemish Manuscript Illumination.”

Owner and President of Les Enluminures, Paris and Chicago, Dr. Sandra Hindman says, “This exhibition coincides with the seasonal exhibition on “Miniatures Flamandes 1404-1482” jointly organized by the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.  The Brussels venue took place from September 30 to December 31, 2011. The Paris exhibition opens March 6 and closes on June 10, 2012.”
 
Les Enluminures, located in the Louvre des Antiquaires, opposite the Louvre Museum, will exhibit 30 works of art from the fifteenth century simultaneous with the Paris event (at Tolbiac).

Highlights include works by artists Simon Marmion, called in his day the “prince of illumination,” Willem Vrelant, who worked for the court, the municipality, as well as wealthy Europeans outside Bruges, and the Master of Mary of Burgundy, a lyrical illumination that was last on the market in 1884, among others.

Hindman says, “Featured items testify to the refined and lavish patronage of the Burgundian dukes and duchesses, including Philip the Bold, Philip the Good, and Charles the Bold and Margaret of York. Urban centers of production and monastic patronage are also explored in Les Enluminure’s exhibition."

“This exhibition gives us an opportunity to display some of our Flemish manuscripts and miniatures that are related to the incomparable treasures belonging to libraries in Brussels and Paris. The exhibition has special meaning and importance to me because I studied closely with the great L.M.J. Delaissé, who organized the landmark exhibition of Flemish manuscript illumination in Brussels in 1959, called “Le Siècle d’or.”  I myself have published extensively on the topic. These two exhibitions in Brussels and Paris are designed as a sort of update of what is new in Flemish illumination 52 years later.”

March 6 - June 10 2012
LES ENLUMINURES
Les Louvre des Antiquaires,
2 Place du Palais-Royal,  75001 Paris (France)
Tel: +33 1 42 60 15 58 info@lesenluminures.com   www.lesenluminures.com

NEW YORK, January 10, 2012—The Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition Cindy Sherman, a retrospective tracing the groundbreaking artist’s career from the mid-1970s to the present, from February 26 to June 11, 2012. The exhibition brings together some 180 key photographs from the artist’s significant series—including the complete ―Untitled Film Stills‖ (1977-80), the critically acclaimed centerfolds (1981), and the celebrated history portraits (1989-90)—plus examples from all of her most important bodies of work, ranging from her fashion photography of the early 1980s to the breakthrough sex pictures of 1992 to her 2003 clowns and monumental society portraits from 2008. In addition, the exhibition features the American premiere of her 2010 photographic mural. An exhibition of films drawn from MoMA’s collection selected by Sherman will also be presented in the Museum’s theaters in April. Cindy Sherman is organized by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.

Cindy Sherman is widely considered to be one of the most important and influential artists of our time and her work is the unchallenged cornerstone of post-modern photography. Masquerading as a myriad of characters in front of her own camera, Sherman creates invented personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. Her works speak to an increasingly image-saturated world, drawing on the unlimited supply of visual material provided by movies, television, magazines, the Internet, and art history.
 
Ms. Respini says, ―To create her photographs, Sherman works unassisted in her studio and assumes multiple roles as photographer, model, art director, make-up artist, hairdresser, and stylist. Whether portraying a career girl or a blond bombshell, a fashion victim or a clown, a French aristocrat or a society lady of a certain age, for over 35 years this relentlessly adventurous artist has created an eloquent and provocative body of work that resonates deeply with our visual culture.

The American premiere of Sherman’s recent photographic mural (2010) will be installed outside the galleries on the sixth floor. The mural represents the artist’s first foray into 2 transforming space through site-specific fictive environments. In the mural Sherman transforms her face via digital means, exaggerating her features through Photoshop by elongating her nose, narrowing her eyes, or creating smaller lips. The characters, who sport an odd mix of costumes and are taken from daily life, are elevated to larger-than-life status and tower over the viewer. Set against a decorative toile backdrop, her characters seem like protagonists from their own carnivalesque worlds, where fantasy and reality merge. The emphasis on new work presents an opportunity for reassessment in light of the latest developments in Sherman’s oeuvre.
 
Entering the galleries, the exhibition strays from a chronological narrative typical of retrospectives, and groups photographs thematically to create new and surprising juxtapositions and to suggest common threads across several series. A gallery devoted to her work made for the fashion industry brings together commissions from 1983 to 2011.

Sherman’s interest in the construction of femininity and mass circulation of images informs much of the work that takes fashion as its subject, illustrating not only a fascination with fashion images but also a critical stance against what they represent. A gallery exploring themes of the grotesque focuses on bodies of work from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, including disasters (1986-89), sex pictures (1992), and horror and surrealist pictures (1994-96). Sherman’s investigation of macabre narratives followed a trajectory of the physical disintegration of the body, and features prosthetic parts as a stand-in for the human body. A gallery devoted to Sherman’s exploration of myth, carnival, and fairy tales pairs works from her 2003 clowns with her 1985 fairy tales series. These theatrical pictures revel in their own artificiality, with menacing characters and fantastical narratives.
 
Galleries devoted to single bodies of work are interspersed among the thematic rooms. Sherman’s seminal series the ―Untitled Film Stills,‖ comprising 70 black-and-white photographs made between 1977 and 1980, are presented in their entirety (the complete series is in MoMA’s collection). Made to look like publicity pictures taken on movie sets, the ―Untitled Film Stills‖ read like an encyclopedic roster of female roles inspired by 1950s and 1960s Hollywood, film noir, B movies, and European art-house films. While the characters and scenarios may seem familiar, Sherman’s ―Stills‖ are entirely fictitious. Her characters represent deeply embedded clichés (career girl, bombshell, girl on the run, housewife, and so on) and rely on the persistence of recognizable manufactured stereotypes that loom large in the cultural imagination.
 
Other series presented in depth include Sherman’s 1981 series of 12-color photographs known as the centerfolds. Originally commissioned by Artforum magazine, these send-ups of men’s erotic magazine centerfolds depict characters in a variety of emotional states, ranging from terrified to heartbroken to melancholic. With this series, Sherman plays into the male conditioning of looking at photographs of exposed women, but she turns this on its head by taking on the roles of both (assumed) male photographer and female pinup. The history portraits investigate the relationships between painter and model, and are featured in depth in the exhibition. These theatrical portraits borrow from a number of art historical periods, from Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical. This free-association sampling creates an illusion of familiarity, but not with any one specific era or style (just as the ―Untitled Film Stills‖ evoke generic types, not particular films). The subjects (for the first time, many are men), include aristocrats, Madonna and child, clergymen, women of leisure, and milkmaids, who pose with props, elaborate costumes, and obvious prostheses.
 
Sherman has explored the experience of aging in a youth- and status-obsessed society with several bodies of work made since 2000. For her headshots from 2000-2002 (sometimes called Hollywood/Hamptons), the artist conceived a cast of characters of would-be or has-been actors (in reality secretaries, housewives, or gardeners) posing for headshots to get an acting job. With this series, Sherman underscores the transformative qualities of makeup, hair, expression, and pose, and the recognition of certain stereotypes as powerful transmitters of cultural clichés. Her monumental 2008 society portraits feature women ―of a certain age‖ from the top echelons of society who struggle with today’s impossible standards of beauty. The psychological weight of these pictures comes through in the unrelenting honesty of the description of aging and the small details that belie the attempt to project a certain appearance. In the infinite possibilities of the mutability of identity, these pictures stand out for their ability to be at once provocative, disparaging, empathetic, and mysterious.
 
SPONSORSHIP:
Major support for the exhibition is provided by Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, The Modern Women’s Fund, and The William Randolph Hearst Endowment Fund.
 
Additional funding is provided by The Broad Art Foundation, David Dechman and Michel Mercure, Robert B. Menschel, Allison and Neil Rubler, Richard and Laura Salomon, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Glenstone, Michèle Gerber Klein, Richard and Heidi Rieger, Ann and Mel Schaffer, and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.
 
EXHIBITION TOUR:
Cindy Sherman will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 14-October 7, 2012); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (November 10, 2012-February 17, 2013); and Dallas Museum of Art (March 17-June 9, 2013).

PUBLICATION:
Cindy Sherman is accompanied by a publication that presents the stunning range of work produced by the artist during her 35-year career. Lavishly illustrated with more than 180 works (some never before published), the book highlights all of Sherman’s major series. Printed in Italy by Trifolio SRL using its new AREAW4 printing process—which yields especially vibrant blues, purples, yellows, and oranges, not possible in conventional offset printing—the book reproduces the artist’s work with astonishing color fidelity. In the plate section, Sherman’s photographs are grouped thematically to suggest the common threads that run through multiple series. An introductory essay by the exhibition’s curator, Eva Respini, presents an overview of Sherman’s career and investigates some of the dominant themes in her work, while also exploring the theoretical discourse that has surrounded it from the very beginning. A contribution by art historian Johanna Burton offers a critical reexamination of Sherman’s work in light of her recent series, and a conversation between Sherman and filmmaker John Waters provides an enlightening view into the artist’s process. 9 ••• x 12, 264 pages, 255 illustrations. Price: $40.00 (paperback); $60.00 (hardcover). Available at the MoMA Stores and online at MoMAStore.org. Available to the trade through ARTBOOK | D.A.P in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson outside North America. The publication will also be available in French (available from Éditions Hazan), German (available from Schirmer/Mosel), and Spanish (available from La Fábrica Editorial).

RELATED EXHIBITION:
Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman
April 2-10, 2012
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1
Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman is presented in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition Cindy Sherman. Film—the common cultural language of our era—has had a profound influence on Sherman and is an inspiration for much of her work. Belonging to the first generation of Americans raised on television, Sherman was fully steeped in mass-media culture, and she recalls watching films such as Rear Window and La Jetée. In college in the mid-1970s, she immersed herself in film, studying under the avant-garde filmmaker Paul Sharits and experimenting with the medium of film alongside making photographs.
 
For Carte Blanche, Sherman has selected films from MoMA’s collection, including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974), La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962), Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959), The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski, 1964), and Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943). Ranging from camp to horror to classic art films, Sherman’s choices reflect the artist’s diverse interests and influences. Carte Blanche includes additional films on loan to MoMA, and has provided the opportunity for the Museum to acquire films for the collection. As the ―Curator’s Choice,‖ one screening features Sherman’s 1976 short film Doll Clothes, followed by her feature film Office Killer (1997), which draws on the horror genre well represented in Sherman’s choices for Carte Blanche. The exhibition is organized by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, in collaboration with the Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.

PUBLIC PROGRAM:
Cindy Sherman: Circle of Influence March 26, 2012, 6:00 p.m. Theater 3 (The Celeste Bartos Theater), mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building

This panel discussion features artists working in a variety of mediums as they explore Cindy Sherman's influence on contemporary art practice, including issues such as feminism and identity. Participants include painters George Condo and Elizabeth Peyton, and video and performance artist Kalup Linzy. Moderated by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, and organizer of the retrospective exhibition Cindy Sherman.
Tickets ($10; members and Corporate Members $8; students, seniors, and staff of other museums $5) can be purchased at the lobby information desk, at the film desk, or in the Education and Research Building, and are available on MoMA.org.

Support for this program is provided by Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro. 

WEBSITE:
Accompanying Cindy Sherman is a comprehensive website featuring the complete selection of images that appear in the exhibition. MoMA also commissioned exclusive video content for the site—short clips of artists, film makers, art historians, and cultural critics speaking about their favorite work by Sherman. Confirmed participants include artists Marilyn Minter, Marina Abramović, and Robert Longo; Vanity Fair editor Ingrid Sischy; gallerist Helene Wiener; art historian and critic Douglas Crimp; curator Eva Respini; and Director of The Museum of Modern Art, Glenn Lowry. The diversity of participants will underscore the many facets of Sherman's work. The site, www.MoMA.org/cindysherman, launches on February 26, 2012.

AUDIO GUIDE:
An audio program accompanying the exhibition features commentary by curator Eva Respini and curatorial assistant Lucy Gallun, as well as audio clips of Cindy Sherman discussing her work. It is available at the Museum free of charge, courtesy of Bloomberg; on MoMA.org/wifi; and as a podcast on MoMA.org/audio or on iTunes. MoMA Audio is a collaboration between The Museum of Modern Art and Acoustiguide, Inc. Available in English only.

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Public Information:
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 708-9400, MoMA.org
Hours: Wednesday through Monday, 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday, 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday.
Museum Admission: $25 adults; $18 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $14 full-time students with
current I.D. Free, members and children 16 and under. (Includes admittance to Museum galleries and film
programs). Tickets can be purchase online at a reduced rate of: $22.50 adults; $16 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $12 full-time students with current I.D. Target Free Friday Nights 4:00-8:00 p.m.
Film Admission: $12 adults; $10 seniors, 65 

New York, NY, January 2012— Bolstered by its recent political independence, economic prosperity, and maritime supremacy, the Dutch Republic witnessed an artistic flourishing during the seventeenth century, known as the Dutch Golden Age. The Morgan Library & Museum presents over ninety drawings by some of the preeminent artists of the period—among them Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn and his followers Ferdinand Bol and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout; Abraham Bloemaert; Aelbert Cuyp; and Jan van Goyen—in an exhibition titled Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection, on view from January 20 through April 29, 2012.

The Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century was a federation of seven states—Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Friesland, Overijssel, and Groningen. The exhibition focuses on artists who worked primarily in their native lands, rather than those whose careers took them to France, Italy, or elsewhere abroad, and highlights the broad spectrum of subjects—portraiture, marine views, landscapes, biblical and mythological narratives, genre scenes, and the natural world—that fueled their creative imaginations. 



"The collection of Clement C. Moore, known as Chips, is a testament to the concentration of talent in the Dutch Republic during its Golden Age" said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "The period is, of course, associated with Rembrandt, but there were many other extraordinary artists working at this time as well. Their exceptional creativity and skill is on display in this exhibition, and we are delighted Chips has chosen the Morgan, not only as the venue for this exhibition, but as the eventual permanent repository of these works, as well."



"I am honored and thrilled that the Morgan has chosen to exhibit and catalogue my collection of Dutch drawings," said Mr. Moore. "These works have been a source of great pleasure for my family and me over many years, and it is my hope others will find them as appealing. They provide us with an image of the legendary Golden Age—a period that notably included the founding of New York by Dutch traders—so an opening here is especially appropriate."




PORTRAITS AND FIGURE STUDIES
Among the finest drawings in the exhibition are portraits and figure studies, including two by Rembrandt. A Beggar, Facing Left, Leaning on a Stick is Moore's most recently acquired Rembrandt, and is also the earliest chronologically, dating to 1628-29. Rembrandt executed the sheet during his Leiden period (1625-31), when he was preoccupied with the theme of beggars. This figure, with his tall hat, ample cloak, and walking stick, was deftly sketched with an economical use of pen and ink. Adjusting the pressure on his pen and with it the width of each stroke—thin for the shading of the figure's face, thick for the darkest side of his hat—Rembrandt worked quickly and confidently to capture the essence of the man, and masterfully suggested the fall of light through a combination of areas of blank paper, such as the hat, and rapid parallel hatching in his face, left leg, and the ground at the left to suggest volume and shadow.
 
Two Men in Polish Dress Conversing demonstrates Rembrandt's powers of observation. An endless variety of people lived in and traveled through the Dutch Republic during this period, and the artist diligently recorded the bustling activity of the world around him. The men represented here are identifiable as Ashkenazi or Eastern European Jews by their long beards and costumes. Their garments, źupans, were typically worn by Polish Jews in the seventeenth century. The man on the left dons a rabbi's hat; the figure on the right, a kolpak, the soft-peaked cap of Polish origin worn by unmarried Ashkenazi men. By the 1640s when Rembrandt created this drawing, he had come to favor black chalk; this work belongs to a group of some sixty-five chalk studies representing single or small clusters of figures shown in everyday pursuits.
 
Hendrick Goltzius was one of the most important Dutch artists of the transitional period between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His rapidly drawn Portrait of a Smiling Young Boy reflects a departure from the artist's early Mannerist style in favor of greater naturalism following a trip to Italy in 1590-91. His bold, animated pen work masterfully captures the sitter's lively, smiling eyes. The awkwardly drawn hands may constitute an autobiographical allusion: Goltzius's own fingers were badly burned and his hand permanently crippled during childhood.
 

David Bailly is represented by three accomplished works, including his 1624 The Lute Player. This drawing is one of at least three copies that Bailly made after a celebrated painting by Frans Hals (now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris). Minor differences, such as the straggly strands of hair on the lute player's forehead and the position of his little finger on the neck of his instrument, suggest that Bailly used as his model an early copy of the original, perhaps by Frans's brother, Dirck Hals, or his pupil, Judith Leyster. The table, which puts the viewer at a low vantage point, was entirely Bailly's invention.




SEASCAPES

In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic dominated the seas and much of the world's trade. The invention of sawmills enabled the construction of an enormous fleet of ships and by 1630 Amsterdam had succeeded Antwerp as the world's most important port. The centrality of water to the Dutch way of life is repeatedly attested to in drawings in the Moore collection, and indeed in countless other images produced during this period.
 

Scenes like Herman Saftleven's View of a Harbor with a Careened Ship embody the bustling energy of seaports where ships were repaired, and fish and wares were sold. At the center of this view is a careened ship, beached at high tide to expose its hull for repair with hot tar, which is seen generating smoke. During the seventeenth century oceangoing vessels would last approximately two years on the open sea before succumbing to worm damage or dry rot.



Willem van de Velde the Elder spent his entire career drawing boats and seascapes, and his accurate recordings of naval scenes remind one of the constant military vigilance necessary to maintain Dutch command of the seas. We know that van de Velde was present as an informal observer at a turning point in the Thirty Years' War in 1639, immortalized in his striking drawing A View of Dunkirk Harbor, Probably During the Blockade by the Dutch. Some thirteen years later when the first Anglo-Dutch War broke out in 1652, van de Velde was hired by the Dutch States-General to officially record the various battles and maneuvers of the Dutch fleet. The Ship Oosterwijk with the Assembled Dutch Fleet of 1664 is one such sweeping firsthand sketch, which he would make from the deck of the vessel before working them up into pen paintings or turning them over to his son to replicate in oil on canvas.
 



LANDSCAPES
We have a better idea of what the Dutch countryside looked like in the early seventeenth century than we do of anywhere else in Europe at the time. River with a Bridge and Fishermen Hauling in a Net, a masterful drawing by Jacob de Gheyn II, is one of the artist's few surviving landscapes. In this sheet, the viewer's eye is drawn into the distance by the simple yet ambitious one-point perspective. The two trees on the right bank, one dead and the other in full leaf, symbolize the contrast between spiritual purgatory and salvation. However, positive motifs, such as the sea's abundance and the fertility of the fields dominate, creating an image of optimism that reflects the spirit of the Golden Age.


Allart van Everdingen's Winter Landscape with Skaters, Three Windmills, and Ship Under Repair epitomizes a quintessential Dutch Golden Age landscape with its depiction of figures engaged in such daily activities as going to market, skating, or hauling in the day's catch; ships sailing in the distance or under repair; and, of course, the ubiquitous windmill.
 

Aelbert Cuyp, best known for his idyllic views of the Dutch countryside, is represented by his luminous Windmill by a River, with a Jetty in the Foreground. The jetty was likely a construct of Cuyp's imagination, added to give depth to the composition. 





GENRE SCENES
Perhaps the most entertaining drawings of the Dutch Golden Age are those that depict scenes from everyday life—eating, drinking, skating, music-making, game-playing, and carousing. Willem Pietersz. Buytewech's exquisitely detailed Fish Market draws us into a bustling scene where the day's catch arrives amid fish sellers' offerings—slithering eels, pike, dried herring, and plaice. The work belongs to a series of four compositions representing the elements, this drawing symbolizing Water.
 

Isaac van Ostade's genre drawings masterfully capture private moments and reveal the artist's empathy for the human condition. In his A Peasant Pouring a Glass of Beer for His Companion, a standing man bends over to refill his partner's glass. In return, she reaches up and tenderly touches his arm, perhaps to thank him or to signal that she has had enough. Ostade's energetic The Artist in his Studio invites us to peer over a painter's shoulder as a potential client watches him work. The play of light at first suggests a nocturnal scene, but the two artificial sources of illumination—either candles or lanterns, one at the painter's feet and the other on the assistants' table—would have augmented the natural daylight in the shadowy interior. 



Among the most amusing scenes is Cornelis Dusart's Shrovetide Revelers Entering a Courtyard. Shrovetide festivities offered an unapologetic excuse for indulgence and foolish behavior before the penitence demanded by the Lenten season. In Dusart's drawing, the entertainment that unfolds before us is so captivating,it is easy to overlook the appalling state of the house, its broken windows, and a spilled basket of coal—not to mention the figures shamelessly urinating, defecating, or drunkenly enjoying their beer.



Gerbrand van den Eeckhout's Young Man Seated on a Barrel, with His Hand Raised to His Head offers an allegory of human frailty or the foible of overindulgence celebrated in Dusart's drawing. Van den Eeckhout's black and white chalk drawings on blue paper have been highly prized since the seventeenth century. A seemingly genteel young man or soldier holds his hand up to shield his eyes from the unrelenting sun, his sensitivity to light perhaps explainable by the contents of the barrel upon which he sits.




ANIMALS AND NATURALIA
Dutch artists had myriad points of access to exotic animals, whether from ships returning from the far corners of the known world, traveling circuses, menageries, street fairs, or markets. Johannes Bronckhorst, who resided in Hoorn, the port of entry for the ships of the Dutch East India Company, had ample opportunity to study the exotic taxidermied birds imported into the country. Bronckhorst accurately rendered the body of his King Bird of Paradise, though he could not have known that it had blue feet or that its two elongated tail wires were decorated with emerald green disk feathers on its tip (the bird's feet and tail feathers were routinely removed by Asian traders, leading to the myth that it had no feet and thus spent its life in perpetual flight).



Cornelis Saftleven's Two Cows by a River with a Church Steeple in the Distance is one of several representations of domestic animals in the exhibition. Before 1600, it was unusual to find cows as the subject of a composition; Saftleven's drawing points to the increasingly important role dairy farming began to play in the Dutch economy over the course of the seventeenth century.

Cow pictures emerged as a genre, and scenes such as this one, which includes two docile animals in an idealized rural landscape, provoked nostalgia for a simple way of life among wealthy Amsterdam collectors.



The Red and White Tulip drawings by Pieter Holsteyn II provide evidence of the enormous popularity and influence of tulips at this time. Coveted collector's items, tulips were status symbols worth literally millions of dollars in today's currency. The surge in tulip prices led to futures markets and speculation, a phenomenon later called tulipmania. So valuable were these bulbs that specialist botanical artists like Holsteyn created elaborate, hand-painted manuscript catalogues in order to market the bulbs to potential clients, and to record each variety's colors. The two sheets on view come from such a disbound album. 




BIBLICAL AND MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS
Of the final two Rembrandt drawings in the exhibition, one is clearly connected with a biblical scene; the other presents challenges for scholars, and its subject remains a matter of debate. Study of a Sick Woman for the 'Hundred Guilder Print' and an Alternative Sketch of Her Head, ca. 1647-49, is likely the first of five or six probable studies for Rembrandt's most celebrated etching, Christ Healing the Sick ('Hundred Guilder Print'), and the last held in a private collection. Rembrandt achieved an extremely expressive drawing despite his sparse use of pen and ink, creating this preliminary sketch of the seated woman who appears at the center of the finished etching. Rarely is there such a clear connection between Rembrandt's drawings and prints.



More elusive is the subject of Rembrandt's St. Peter Preaching (?), a group figure study whose tentative subject has not been identified with absolute certainty. If this is indeed a biblical scene, it is the only one for which Rembrandt used black chalk, a medium he normally reserved for landscapes and group studies. An alternative explanation is that this may, in fact, be an elaborate study of figures in exotic costumes, a theme to which Rembrandt turned frequently. 



Abraham Bloemaert's Two Half-Length Studies of a Young Shepherd and a Study of the Upper Body of a Shepherd was the first major figure study to enter the Moore collection. A devout Catholic, Bloemaert received several important commissions from the church, including his first documented altarpiece, Adoration of the Shepherds, with which these studies are connected.

Another important work by Bloemaert, Danaë Receiving the Golden Rain, represents the type of mythological scene that afforded sixteenth- and seventeenth-century artists an acceptable rationale for depicting the female nude. Dating to 1610, the drawing's subject is the Greek myth in which Jupiter, disguised as a shower of golden coins, gains entry to the bedchamber of Danaë, whose father, King Acrisius, has locked her away to prevent her from conceiving the male child prophesied to kill him. Danaë is impregnated by the coins and bears Perseus, who later fulfills the prophecy by accidentally striking Acrusius with his javelin. 




CATALOGUE

An accompanying, fully illustrated catalogue by Jane Shoaf Turner, head of the Rijksprentenkabinet of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and editor of Master Drawing, includes new research and comprehensive entries on the drawings presented in the exhibition. ($40; available at the Morgan Shop, or online at www.themorgan.org/shop).




PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Rembrandt and the Crying Boy: A Question of Method 
Wednesday, January 25, 6:30 p.m.

Martin Royalton-Kisch, eminent scholar and former curator of Dutch and Flemish drawings and prints at the British Museum, will discuss the attribution of a newly discovered Rembrandt drawing and explore how decisions on authenticity are currently reached in the fraught field of Rembrandt scholarship.

Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection will be open at 5:30 pm especially for program attendees. 

Tickets: $15; $10 for Members 



Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection 
Gallery Talk
Friday, February 10, 7 p.m.

With Esther Bell, Moore Curatorial Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints

Free



Rembrandt

Friday, March 23, 7 p.m.
(1936, 85 minutes)

Director: Alexander Korda
Charles Laughton stars in this moving, elegant biopic about the Dutch painter. Shot in black and white but with close Rembrandtesque attention to light, this film begins when Rembrandt's reputation was at its height, and tracks his quiet descent into loneliness and isolated self-expression. 

Free



The Lure of the Local in the Dutch Golden Age

with Christopher D.M. Atkins
Tuesday, April 3, 6:30 p.m.
In this lecture, Christopher D.M. Atkins of Queens College and The Graduate Center/The City University of New York will explore why Dutch artists increasingly decided not to travel internationally during a period when their Flemish, French, and Italian counterparts frequently did. Atkins will discuss the depiction of sites and activities culled from Dutch artists' local surroundings, images for which the Dutch Golden Age is so well known.

Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection will be open at 5:30 pm especially for program attendees.

Tickets: $15; $10 for Members




ORGANIZATION AND SPONSORSHIP
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Rita Markus Fund for Exhibitions.

The catalogue is underwritten by The Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Research and Publications.

Public programs are generously supported by The Netherland-America Foundation, Inc.



Rembrandt's World is organized by Linda Wolk-Simon, Charles W. Engelhard Curator and Head of the Department of Drawings and Prints, and Esther Bell, Moore Curatorial Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan’s private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets.



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

For Immediate Release-January 4, 2012

Lloyd Library and Museum (LLM) is pleased to announce: "Turning up the Heat this Winter: Peppers in Image and Word." January 14 through April 13, 2012. Opening reception and lecture-Saturday, January 14, 2012, 4-7 p.m.

This exhibit explores the depictions and descriptions of the chili pepper-Capsicum annum [reproduction at left from LLM's copy of A Curious Herbal by Elizabeth Blackwell, volume 1, plate 1, 1739]-a plant that, over recent years, has experienced a growth in popularity both as a food and medicinal ingredient.  Love peppers or hate them, come to see LLM's new exhibit "Turning up the Heat this Winter: Peppers in Image and Word" to learn about them and taste the heat at a lecture and catered reception on Saturday, January 14, 2012, 4-7 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

The exhibit will feature books from LLM's vast collection, such as the 1516 edition of Pliny the Elder's (23-79 CE) Natural History, the earliest mention of it in LLM.  From there, the exhibit follows the economic, medicinal, and botanical history of this popular plant through five centuries.  In addition to Pliny's book, some of the earliest depictions of Capsicum in European literature will be on display-featuring herbals from the 16th and early 17th centuries by such notables as Leonhard Fuchs (1501-1566), Carolus Clusius (1526-1609), Matthias de L'Obel (1538-1616), and Rembert Dodoens (1517-1585).  These are interesting volumes, in part because the information on peppers was so limited, and thus a little confused and confusing.  Now, we know much more about chili peppers.  There are whole volumes devoted to the plant, its fruit, uses, and benefits.  Jean Andrews (1923-2010), of the University of Texas at Austin, wrote two notable works on the pepper and became a world-expert on the subject, which will be on display, along with a host of other fascinating works.

W. Hardy Eshbaugh, a world-renowned expert on peppers will deliver a brief but fascinating lecture, "Some Like it Hot: The Little Known World of Chili Peppers" on January 14 at 4:30.  Eshbaugh, Professor Emeritus of Botany at Miami University, received his Ph.D from Indiana University in 1964 and, since then, established a long and distinguished career in Miami University's Botany Department (1967-1998), serving as Chair from 1983-1988.  During his career and
beyond, Eshbaugh attained his reputation as a Capsicum expert.  With his assistance, the accompanying art exhibit will include a variety of images of peppers, including some by Jean Andrews, David Carangilo, Amal Naj, and Jeff Schickowski.  Eshbaugh's photos feature some of his own finds from the field.  In addition, reproductions of Eduardo Fuss's photo art will be featured with the permission of the Zimmerman Library of the University of New Mexico.

The Lloyd Library and Museum, located at 917 Plum Street, downtown Cincinnati, is a local and regional cultural treasure.  The library was developed in the nineteenth century by the Lloyd brothers-John Uri, Curtis Gates, and Nelson Ashley to provide reference sources for Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, Inc., one of the leading pharmaceutical companies of the period.  Today the library is recognized worldwide by the scientific community as a vital research center. The library holds, acquires, and provides access to both historic and current materials on the subjects of pharmacy, botany, horticulture, herbal and alternative medicine, pharmacognosy, and related topics.  Although our collections have a scientific focus, they also have relevance to humanities topics, such as visual arts and foreign languages through resources that feature botanical and natural history illustrations, original artworks, and travel literature, thereby revealing the convergence of science and art. The Lloyd is open to anyone with an interest in these topics.  Free parking is available for patrons and visitors behind the library building.  For more information, visit the Lloyd website at www.lloydlibrary.org.


Lloyd Library and Museum
917 Plum Street
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
513-721-3707
www.lloydlibrary.org
Open Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Open the third Saturday of the month, September through May, 9:00 a.m.
to 4:00 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas — “The King James Bible: Its History and Influence,” an exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, demonstrates that four centuries after its first printing, the King James Bible (1611) remains one of the most influential books in the English language.

Running from Feb. 28 to July 29, the exhibition includes other notable Bibles and examples of modern book design featuring biblical texts, resulting in the most comprehensive display of Bibles and related materials in the Ransom Center’s history.

Featuring more than 220 items from the Ransom Center’s collections, the exhibition also includes materials from the Folger Shakespeare Library of Washington, D.C., and Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford that help reveal how the King James Bible translation came into being.

The language and imagery of the King James translation has had an extensive influence on English-speaking cultures and literature, from John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” to the poetry of Phillis Wheatley to Norman Mailer’s novel “The Gospel According to the Son.”

The language of the King James Bible permeated the Civil War-era writings of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and both pro- and anti-slavery advocates.

It also provided the title for Walker Evans and James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” a landmark work on sharecroppers hit hard by the Depression, and even inspired the tattoos for Robert De Niro’s character, convict Max Cady, in the film “Cape Fear” (1991).

This wide-ranging influence can be seen throughout the Ransom Center’s film, photography, art and literary holdings.

“The language of the King James Bible has become an integral part of our daily speech — so much so that we rarely know we’re using it,” said Danielle Sigler, the Ransom Center’s assistant director and curator for academic programs and one of the exhibition co-curators. “Whether encouraging someone to ‘eat, drink and be merry’ or getting through something by ‘the skin of one’s teeth,’ we are echoing the translators of the King James Bible.”

Since the origin of printing, the Bible has been regarded as the ultimate challenge for artists, designers and printers. Perhaps no single object embodies this better than Johannes Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible, which is on permanent display at the Ransom Center.

Many other monuments of classic fine printing, ranging from an early Nicolas Jenson illuminated Bible to the Christopher Plantin Polyglot Bible to an 18th-century folio Bible printed by John Baskerville, will be featured in the exhibition.

The Ransom Center’s modern printing collections provide colorful and original treatments of biblical passages by well-known book designers and artists, including a suite of prints from Marc Chagall’s “Exodus,” the massive Oxford Lectern Bible designed by Bruce Rogers, plates from art deco books by François-Louis Schmied and the entire set of Jacob Lawrence’s large silkscreen prints for “Eight Passages” from the book of Genesis.
 
This exhibition and related materials were developed by the Harry Ransom Center, Folger Shakespeare Library and Bodleian Library. This exhibition has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the support of Margaret Hight.

“The King James Bible: Its History and Influence” can be seen in the Ransom Center Galleries on Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours until 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays.

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In Illuminations: The Private Lives of the Medieval Kings BBC Four will tell the story of the Medieval monarchy as preserved through stunning illuminated manuscripts from the British Library’s Royal Manuscripts collection which contains some of the most priceless documents in our national history. Some of these manuscripts were commissioned by the Medieval Kings to burnish their legacies. Others were captured as war booty, and handed down from one dynasty to the next. Together they make up a fascinating record of the role of the king and the role of the country as it became a major power at the heart of Europe. This new 3x60 series presented by renowned art historian Dr Janina Ramirez, and produced by Oxford Film & Television will explore the extraordinary art and culture of the period. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019h3g2
 
Many important illuminated Royal manuscripts will be captured on film for the first time as part of the BBC's ongoing collaboration with the British Library and in conjunction with the Library’s latest exhibition, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (www.bl.uk/royal). Dr Ramirez will decode and contextualise the manuscripts and in doing so will bring the monarchy of the Middle Ages back to life with the help of Library experts and series consultant Dr Scot McKendrick, Head of History and Classics at the British Library and lead curator of the exhibition. Many of these treasures have not been seen for hundreds of years so their secrets are fresh to the modern eye.

For Dr Scot McKendrick: "There is no doubt that this collection held by the British Library provides us all with unique opportunities to explore in-depth the lives of our Kings from the medieval period. The beauty and ingenuity of these manuscripts, that have stood the test of time, also tells us a great deal about a relatively forgotten period of our history. We are delighted to be telling this fascinating story through the British Library’s exhibition and through this mesmerising series with BBC Four."

The series runs chronologically beginning with the unification of England under King Athelstan in the 10th Century, covering the 100 Years War with France, and ending with the brutal magnificence of Henry VIII. Spanning 800 years, the British Library’s Royal Manuscripts collection holds a clear message: a medieval king had to project a powerful identity to keep his place at home and to win abroad, and these amazing documents capture the dynastic struggles each ruler faced. From the rueful footnote detailing Edward II’s demise ‘I am called the tumbledown king and all the world mocks me’, to Henry VIII’s scribbled love notes to Anne Boleyn in the margins of his Book of Hours, we see a succession of kings battling to shape an unruly nation and battling sometimes for their lives.

Across the series Dr Ramirez will discover some of the most remarkable art works in our history. These were the elite artefacts of their day made by the premier artists. Embellished with gold, painted in jewel-like colours, they took months, even years to produce, and were priceless beyond compare. One of the books she encounters, the Liber Regalis has powerful contemporary relevance because it has been used in every Coronation service since 1380, including that of our present Queen. Dr Ramirez will argue that some of these pieces deserve to be ranked with the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey as treasures of our cultural heritage and Royal legacy - they are as stunning and as important.

Richard Klein, Controller of BBC Four, commented: "The story of the Medieval Kings was captured through beautiful manuscripts that remain as vibrant today as when they were first penned. BBC Four will recreate that world, drawing on Dr Janina Ramirez' in-depth expert knowledge, to decode the manuscripts. It is a privilege to be able to offer viewers the first chance to see these manuscripts in all their glory on television through our collaboration with The British Library. "

"The story of the Medieval Kings was captured through beautiful manuscripts that remain as vibrant today as when they were first penned. BBC Four will recreate that world, drawing on Dr Janina Ramirez' in-depth expert knowledge, to decode the manuscripts. It is a privilege to be able to offer viewers the first chance to see these manuscripts in all their glory on television through our collaboration with The British Library. "

The BBC creates partnerships with the arts sector that go beyond broadcast, from sharing expertise to widening public engagement in UK arts. BBC Four’s relationship with the British Library is part of an on-going programme of collaborative work agreed in 2009 by Mark Thompson and Dame Lynne Brindley. The relationship’s aims include developing new ways of integrating access to nearly a million hours of BBC TV and radio content and more than 150 million British Library items - which will significantly increase access to research material for the benefit of researchers and the wider public.

Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings is a BBC arts programme commissioned on behalf of BBC Four Controller Richard Klein by Commissioning Editor for Arts, Mark Bell. The series is produced by Oxford Film and Television, Executive Producer is Nick Kent.

The three-part series will be shown weekly from Monday 9 January 2012, 9.00pm.
 

DENVER (January 3, 2012) - The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver) today announces the exhibition, More American Photographs, opening March 1, 2012 with more than 100 works presenting some of the best-known examples from the Farm Security Administration (FSA) alongside recently commissioned work from 12 contemporary artists.

Inspired by the FSA’s 1930’s and 1940’s program to document the Great Depression’s effects on America’s landscape and people, More American Photographs offers a portrait of America today in the wake of the Great Recession.

Incorporating FSA works owned by the Library of Congress, this exhibition vividly and poignantly discloses the diverse effects of the recent economic calamity: environmental disasters, factory-ghost towns, the collapse of the housing boom and a lack of economic mobility.

The exhibition’s 12 contemporary artists include Walead Beshty, Larry Clark, Roe Ethridge, Katy Grannan, William E. Jones, Sharon Lockhart, Catherine Opie, Martha Rosler, Collier Schorr, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth and Hank Willis Thomas. Many of these artists, some of whom do not typically work in a documentary style, have emulated the same straightforward and unglamorous style of photorealism the FSA photographers pioneered in the 1930s. Such historical examples from Esther Bubley, Sheldon Dick, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Marion Post Wolcott, Louise Rosskam and Ben Shahn will also be on view.

The exhibition’s title refers to Walker Evans’ American Photographs, one of the most powerful photography books ever produced, originally conceived as a catalogue to accompany Evans’ solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1938.

The exhibition is curated by Jens Hoffmann, director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco (CCA Wattis).  It was first exhibited at CCA Wattis from October 2—December 17, 2011, and following its presentation in Denver, will be traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, from January 26—April 7, 2013.  Subsequent tour venues to be announced.

The presentation of the exhibition at MCA Denver is sponsored in part by MCA Denver’s Director’s Vision Society members and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  We would like to further thank the citizens of the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.

Currently on View

West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977, on view through February 19, 2012.

Thinking About Flying, on view through April 30, 2012.


About MCA Denver

MCA Denver is a non-collecting institution acting as an incubator for art and ideas, artistic exchange, and dialog. As Denver’s first institution devoted entirely to contemporary art, MCA Denver inaugurated its new environmentally sustainable facility, designed by David Adjaye, on October 28, 2007. The 27,000 square foot space, located in the Lower Downtown area, received the distinction of Gold level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). MCA Denver marks David Adjaye’s first public building in the U.S. as well as his first contemporary art museum worldwide. In 2009, MCA Denver merged with The Lab at Belmar.

MCA Denver presents exhibitions of artworks by regional, national, and international artists.

Museum Location, Hours and Ticket Prices

MCA Denver is located at 1485 Delgany on the corner of 15th Street and Delgany, Denver, CO.  The telephone number is 303 298 7554.  Museum hours are Tuesday through Thursday 10AM to 6PM, Friday 10AM to 10PM and Saturday and Sunday 10AM to 6PM. The Museum is closed on Monday.  General admission to the Museum is $10, senior and student tickets are $5. MCA Denver offers $1 off admission to visitors who come to the Museum via public transportation. Children under the age of 6 are admitted free.

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Philadelphia, PA December 28, 2011--Drawing on books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, prints, photographs, and ephemera in the Library Company's collection, guest curator Wendy Woloson explores underground urban commerce in early America in our upcoming exhibition "Capitalism by Gaslight: The Shadow Economies of 19th-Century America." The exhibition focuses on the ways many Americans earned their livings outside the spheres of wholesale and retail commerce, conducting economic transactions in illicit and semi-legal ways.

Crime was certainly nothing new to Americans, and reports of highway robberies and stolen goods appeared in newspapers from their first issues on colonial soil. Yet the profound and relatively rapid shifts in the country's economic structure and demographic patterns after the Revolution contributed to the flourishing of both legal and illegal commerce. Woloson explores these changes using the Library Company's rich collections of Americana.

An interactive portion of the exhibition features electronically displayed pamphlets that visitors can page through, as well as a recipe book containing instructions for making one's own whiskey at home,. Visitors will leave the Library Company with a small reminder of the show, a trade card with a biography of someone who operated in the commercial underworld.

From pick-pocketing to gambling, counterfeiting to prostitution, "Capitalism by Gaslight" describes the myriad ways people participated in an earlier, shadowy realm of commerce that required a surprising degree of creativity, cunning, and financial acumen. This exhibition will be on display from Monday, January 17, through Friday, August 24, 2012.

About the Library Company of Philadelphia
The Library Company of Philadelphia is an independent research library concentrating on American history and culture from the 17th through 19th centuries. Free and open to the public, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera and works of art. The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials within our care. We serve a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and the nation, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, an online public access catalog, and regular exhibitions and public programs. Located at 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, it is open to the public free of charge from 9:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Library Company can be found online at www.librarycompany.org.

The Library Company of Philadelphia
Lauren Propst
Publicity, Events, and Program Coordinator
email: lpropst@librarycompany.org
phone: 215-546-3181

New York, NY, December 21, 2011—This winter The Morgan Library & Museum will present a wide-ranging group of exhibitions, including sketches, studies, and pastels by Dan Flavin in the first-ever retrospective of his works on paper; drawings by Rembrandt and artists of the Dutch Golden Age; and an innovative look at the ways artists, writers, and composers have used animal imagery in their work. For further information or images, please contact Patrick Milliman or Alanna Schindewolf. 



Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection

January 20-April 29, 2012


Bolstered by its recent political independence, economic prosperity, and maritime supremacy, the Dutch Republic witnessed an artistic flourishing during the seventeenth century. Popularly known as the Golden Age of Dutch art, the period produced some of the world's greatest artists—among them Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn and his followers Ferdinand Bol and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout; Abraham Bloemaert; Aelbert Cuyp; and Jan van Goyen. Beginning on January 20, The Morgan Library & Museum presents over ninety drawings by these artists and others from this celebrated time in an exhibition titled Rembrandt's World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection. On view through April 29, 2012, works in the exhibition will be shown as a group publicly for the first time.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Rita Markus Fund for Exhibitions.

The catalogue is underwritten by The Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Research and Publications.

Public programs are generously supported by The Netherland-America Foundation, Inc.


Dan Flavin: Drawing 

February 17-July 1, 2012


Best known for his fluorescent light installations, Dan Flavin was also an avid draftsman. This first retrospective of his drawings will include over one hundred sheets representing every phase of his career: early abstract expressionist watercolors of the 1950s, studies for light installations, portraits and landscape sketches, and pastels of sailboats from the 1980s. In addition, the exhibition will feature nearly fifty works from Flavin's personal collection of drawings, including nineteenth-century American landscapes by Hudson River School artists, Japanese drawings, and twentieth-century works by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Donald Judd, and Sol LeWitt.

This exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the Dedalus Foundation, Inc.


Major support for the catalogue is provided by Lannan Foundation.


In the Company of Animals: Art, Literature, and Music at the Morgan

March 2-May 20, 2012


Drawing from the breadth of the Morgan's collection, this exhibition will explore the ways in which animals have served as inspiration for artists, writers, and composers throughout history.



Ancient seals, drawings, prints, books, and medieval, music, and literary manuscripts will illustrate the use of animals as symbols, teachers of moral lessons, talking characters, and subjects of scientific study and artistic inspiration. 

Included in the exhibition are works by John James Audubon, William Blake, Albrecht Dürer, T. S. Eliot, David Hockney, Ted Hughes, George Orwell, Sergei Prokofiev, Peter Paul Rubens, E. B. White, and Virginia Woolf, among many others.





Ongoing

Robert Burns and "Auld Lang Syne"

Through February 5, 2012



Every December 31, tens of millions of people raise their voices with friends and family in a chorus of "Auld Lang Syne," bidding farewell to the past year and looking forward to a promising new one. But how did a traditional Scots folk song—with lyrics that many people scarcely understand—emerge as one of the world's most enduring popular songs? With manuscripts, rare printed editions, and audio selections, this focused exhibition explores the origins of a song that began as an old Scots poem and air and evolved into a globally shared expression of friendship and longing.

This exhibition is made possible by a generous gift in honor of Mr. Thomas Burns Reid and Mrs. Mary Theresa Reid.


The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org

Alanna Schindewolf
212.590.0311
aschindewolf@themorgan.org

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present an unprecedented exhibition of original artworks by poet Elizabeth Bishop and works from her personal collection. This marks the gallery’s second exhibition of the poet’s work; the first was presented in 1996. The show will also include Bishop’s desk from Brazil, where one imagines she wrote some of her important late poems, along with vitrines containing books, photographs, and smaller objects that she collected over the years on her travels.

One hundred years since her birth, and just over thirty years since her death, Bishop is now considered among the most important American poets of the Twentieth Century. Until now, the one facet of her life that has not been explored fully is the transformative role that the visual arts played in her creative output over her lifetime. Bishop made her own art, mostly in the form of intimate watercolors, gouaches, and drawings. She collected art during her years in Brazil, and was also given (and acquired) pieces by her family and closest artist friends. Like her poems, her own artworks possess an unpretentious earthiness combined with an acute eye for detail of everyday life. She made her art quietly, privately, and gave many of them away to friends over the years. The works in this exhibition were all in her collection at the time of her death.

The exhibition will evoke the poet’s private, domestic world. It will comprise rarely exhibited original works by the artist, including enchanting watercolors and gouaches, as well as two enigmatic box assemblages that are indebted to Joseph Cornell. In addition, the exhibition will include a selection of works by other artists: two paintings by the primitive painter Gregorio Valdes, an early Calder print, a relief painting by John Ferren, among others. There will also be two family portraits and a landscape that she inherited, which she writes about in her poems and prose pieces.

The gallery is publishing a 48 page hardbound book with texts by noted writers Dan Chiasson, Joelle Biele and the Pulitzer prize winning writer Lloyd Schwartz.

The exhibition is presented in association with James S. Jaffe Rare Books, LLC.

For further information and visuals please contact the gallery at 212.262.5050 or info@tibordenagy.com.

WELLESLEY, Mass. - The Davis Museum at Wellesley College will open an exhibition that explores the French roots of American Lithography on Wednesday, March 14, 2012.  With a French Accent: French and American Lithography Before 1860 will include about fifty French and American prints from the collection of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.  On view through June 3, 2012 in the Morelle Lasky Levine '56 Works on Paper Gallery, the exhibition is free and open to the public. 



The exhibition With a French Accent and an accompanying publication uncover several themes: the important of French technology, the circulation and reproduction of French imagery, stylistic contributions of French lithographic artists, and the reproduction of American genre paintings by French publishers for distribution in Europe and the United States.
 

Among the prints on display will be John Rubens Smith’s portrait of his wife printed by Barnet & Doolittle about 1821.  The two partners studied lithography in Paris before trying to establish a firm in New York.  A lithograph, Piercing the Ears, published in New York in 1825 by Anthony Imbert, reproduced a lithograph by Léopold Boilly from his series, Les Grimaces, published in Paris from 1823-1828.  The Philadelphia firm Cephas G. Childs and Henry Inman also reproduced French prints.



Several French print publishers, Bailly and Ward, Turgis, and Goupil distributed prints in the United States through their shops in New York.  A dozen of their prints will be on display.  Several French lithographic artists settled in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston bringing new styles of drawing on stone to the American public.  For example, Francis D’Avignon was particularly adept at drawing portraits after photographs and Charles Crehan’s portrait of Jenny Lind is freely drawn with carefully delineated facial features.  William Schaus, Goupil and Company, and Michael Knoedler all published prints lithographed in Paris after American genre and history paintings by artists such as William Sidney Mount, Lily Martin Spencer, Junius Brutus Stearns, F. O. C. Darley, George Caleb Bingham, and Richard Caton Woodville.

The exhibition was curated by Georgia Brady Barnhill, Director of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture, and Lauren B. Hewes, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts, both of the American Antiquarian Society, based on research supported by funds from The Florence Gould Foundation of New York.



The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is an independent research library founded in 1812 in Worcester, Massachusetts. The library’s collections document the life of America’s people from the colonial era through the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Collections include books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, broadsides, manuscripts, music, graphic arts, and local histories.



EXHIBITION EVENTS


Opening Celebration

Wednesday, March 14 | 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The Davis Lobby and Galleries

Free


Join us in celebrating this groundbreaking collaboration between the Davis and the American Antiquarian Society, as With A French Accent opens to the public.



Symposium: French and American Lithography: History and Practice

March 31, 2012

Collins Cinema

Free


Co-hosted by the Davis and the American Antiquarian Society, this symposium explores transnational interconnection, particularly the impact on American lithography of artistic exchange between France and the United States through the 19th and 20th centuries and into contemporary practice. This daylong event at Wellesley College features a range of talks by exhibition curators Georgia Brady Barnhill and Lauren B. Hewes, and visiting scholars Marie-Stephanie Delmaire and Catherine Wilcox-Titus, and lithography demonstrations by a visiting artist and a master printer. This event as been generously supported by Jay and Deborah Last, by Wellesley College Friends of Art, by Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art.  Registration information may be found on the Davis Museum’s website: web.wellesley.edu/web/Events or by calling 781.283-2373.



DAVIS MUSEUM GENERAL INFORMATION


Location: Wellesley College, 106 Central St., in Wellesley, Mass. 

Museum Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11 am-5 pm, Wednesday until 8 pm, and Sunday, noon-4 pm.  Closed Mondays, holidays, and Wellesley College recesses.

Admission is free and open to the public.
Telephone: 781-283-2051

Website: www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu

Parking: Free and available in the lot behind the museum. Additional parking is available in the Davis Parking Facility. 
Tours: Led by student tour guides and curators. Free. Call 781-283-3382

Accessible: The Davis, Collins Café and Collins Cinema are wheelchair accessible and wheelchairs are available for use in the Museum without charge. Special needs may be accommodated by contacting Director of Disability Services Jim Wice at 781-283-2434 or jwice@wellesley.edu.



ABOUT THE DAVIS MUSEUM


One of the oldest and most acclaimed academic fine arts museums in the United States, the Davis Museum is a vital force in the intellectual, pedagogical and social life of Wellesley College.  It seeks to create an environment that encourages visual literacy, inspires new ideas, and fosters involvement with the arts both within the College and the larger community.



ABOUT WELLESLEY COLLEGE & THE ARTS


The Wellesley College arts curriculum and the highly acclaimed Davis Museum and Cultural Center are integral components of the College’s liberal arts education.  Departments and programs from across the campus enliven the community with world-class programming - classical and popular music, visual arts, theatre, dance, author readings, symposia and lectures by some of today’s leading artists and creative thinkers - most of which are free and open to the public. 



Located just 12 miles from Boston and accessible by public transit, Wellesley College’s idyllic surroundings provide a nearby retreat for the senses and inspiration that lasts well after a visit.



Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world.  Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,400 undergraduate students from all 50 states and 75 countries.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  
Media Contacts: Nina J. Berger
781-283-2034, nberger@wellesley.edu
Sofiya Cabalquinto
781-283-3321, scabalqu@wellesley.edu



New York, NY, November 22, 2011—Each New Year's Eve, millions raise their voices in a chorus of "Auld Lang Syne," standing with friends and looking back with nostalgia on days past. But how did a traditional Scots folk song—with lyrics that many people scarcely understand—emerge as one of the world's most enduring popular songs? It was Robert Burns (1759-1796), the great eighteenth-century Scottish poet, who transformed the old verses into the version we know today. Robert Burns and "Auld Lang Syne" at The Morgan Library & Museum untangles the complex origins of the song that has become, over time, a globally shared expression of friendship and longing. On view from December 14, 2011 through February 5, 2012, the exhibition features rare printed editions, a manuscript of the song in the poet's own hand, and selections from the Morgan's important collection of Burns letters—the largest in the world.



The Scots words for "old," "long," and "since" combine to form a phrase that translates loosely as "time gone by," "old time's sake," or, in some contexts, "once upon a time." But the old Scots phrase so gracefully evokes a sense of nostalgia that it has been embraced throughout the English-speaking world. Burns, who reworked the song for publication, declared that "a sprinkling of the old Scotish has an inimitable effect." While the song has become indelibly associated with New Year's Eve, it remains an anthem of friendship and remembrance. 



"There are some works of art that have become so much a part of our collective consciousness that we forget that they did not emerge fully formed," said Christine Nelson, the Morgan's Drue Heinz Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts and Head of Interpretive Strategy. "'Auld Lang Syne' is just such a work. We are pleased to be able to look back at the early history of this familiar song by presenting selections from two of the Morgan's great collections: the Robert Burns letters and manuscripts purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1906, and the recently acquired James Fuld Collection of printed music."



Exhibition highlights

Like many traditional songs, "Auld Lang Syne" has a tangled history. The words and melody we sing today have roots in an old Scottish ballad and dance tune, but went through various incarnations before finally coming together in 1799 in A Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs for the Voice. This important edition, published by George Thomson with major contributions by Robert Burns, is on view along with earlier volumes that trace the evolution of what has become one of the world's most popular songs.



The centerpiece of the exhibition is a celebrated letter that Burns wrote to Thomson in 1793, filling page after page with comments on some seventy-four traditional songs. "One song more," Burns told Thomson, "& I have done. Auld lang syne—the air is but mediocre; but the following song, the old song of the olden times, & which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, untill I took it down from an old man's singing; is enough to recommend any air." Burns then wrote the now-famous words in his own hand.



In another important letter on view, written in 1788 to his friend Frances Dunlop, Burns made his first documented reference to the song. Mrs. Dunlop had recently seen a dear friend after a long separation. "We met as we parted after an interval of forty-five years," she told Burns. He replied with these lines: "Apropos, is not the Scots phrase, 'Auld lang syne,' exceedingly expressive. There is an old song & tune which has often thrilled thro' my soul." Over two hundred years later, we still associate the song with old friends and bittersweet nostalgia.


Though Burns preferred to minimize his contribution and claim that he did nothing more than copy a traditional song, even George Thomson, who was the first to publish "Auld Lang Syne" as we know it, felt that "the Song affords evidence of our Bard himself being the author." Indeed, Burns devoted the last ten years of his short life to collecting old verses for publication in two major compilations of Scottish song, and he freely revised and "mended" as he saw fit, even composing new poetry to accompany traditional tunes.



The exhibition presents versions of "Auld Lang Syne" that predate the Burns version. On view, for example, is what is believed to be the earliest surviving manuscript rendering of a ballad beginning Should old acquaintance be forgot, written in a nobleman's commonplace book from the 1660s. The "old acquaintance" of this ballad is a faithless lover ("the most disloyall maid that ever my eye hath seen") rather than a beloved old friend. Though the first line is familiar, the rest of the text bears little resemblance to the enduring version that Burns gave us over a century later.


The tune we now call "Auld Lang Syne," too, has a complex history. On view is a mid-eighteenth-century compilation that includes "The Miller's Wedding," a strathspey (a type of Scottish dance) that includes a hint of the tune we now call "Auld Lang Syne." In 1792, James Johnson published the now-familiar tune in his collection The Scots Musical Museum—but it accompanied the words of a song called "O Can Ye Labor Lea, Young Man," not "Auld Lang Syne." In fact, when the Burns version of "Auld Lang Syne" was published for the first time in 1796, in a later volume of the Museum, the words were paired with an altogether different tune.


It was George Thomson who first brought the words and music together in his Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs in 1799, after Burns's death. It was not unusual to pair verses with whatever popular tune provided a good metrical fit, so it was simple for Thomson to make the switch. Burns was not Thomson's only prominent collaborator; Thomson also engaged such prominent composers as Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven to compose new musical settings of Scottish songs for voice, piano, violin, and cello. The exhibition features an important manuscript, in Beethoven's own hand, of three of the settings that Thomson commissioned from the great German composer over the course of about a decade. Beethoven would later supply Thomson with a new setting for "Auld Lang Syne."
 

Since his death in 1796, Burns has remained wildly popular, and countless literary pilgrims have made their way to southwestern Scotland to pay him tribute. The exhibition includes, for example, a handful of pressed wildflowers gathered by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne during an 1857 visit, as well as a charming letter that John Keats wrote to his teenage sister during the 1818 trip that inspired his sonnet "On Visiting the Tomb of Burns." The original handwritten journal of the great Scottish poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott is shown open to this heartfelt tribute: "Long life to thy fame and peace to thy soul, Rob Burns. When I want to express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in Shakespeare or thee." And a copy of the 1787 edition of Burns's poems, lavishly rebound during the twentieth century and incorporating a bejeweled portrait of the author, is shown as a more recent example of "bardolotry." 



Multimedia

The exhibition includes an audio guide (accessible on complimentary listening devices available at the Morgan's information desk) that allows visitors to listen along as they look at rare printed musical scores that trace the evolution of the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." An online multimedia exhibition features a dozen printed editions and manuscripts, allowing web visitors to follow the early history of both the words and music of the song.



"Auld Lang Syne" in popular culture

During the 1920s and 1930s, the great bandleader Guy Lombardo adopted "Auld Lang Syne" as his signature song. Since then, many popular films that have featured the song at key moments in the action. In Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), George Bailey's brother memorably leads friends, family, and neighbors in the song to mark the moment when George (Jimmy Stewart) reclaims his appreciation for life. In Waterloo Bridge (1940), the glamorous Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor dance by candlelight to a wordless version of the song. In Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally (1989), two good friends admit their love for each other as strains of the song play at the culmination of a New Year's Eve party. When Harry (Billy Crystal) wonders what the song means, Sally (Meg Ryan) declares, simply, "It's about old friends," echoing Robert Burns's famous letter to Frances Dunlop, which is on view in the exhibition. And in the 2008 film Sex and the City, Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis of The Cast perform the song as it was first published in 1796—with Burns's words set to a now unfamiliar tune.



The Morgan's Scottish holdings

The Morgan Library & Museum is the most important repository of Scottish literary manuscripts and letters outside of Scotland. Holdings include a manuscript of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the hand of Robert Louis Stevenson; half the surviving manuscripts of the novels of Sir Walter Scott (including Ivanhoe and Guy Mannering) as well as the whole of his personal journal; and over 120 letters of Robert Burns which incorporate manuscripts of at least one hundred poems. The Morgan's Burns collection includes the two principle series of his surviving letters: those to the music seller and editor George Thomson, and those to Frances Anna Dunlop, a widow with whom Burns enjoyed a long correspondence.



The James Fuld Music Collection

In 2008 the Morgan purchased the James Fuld Collection, considered to be the finest private collection of printed music in the world. It includes thousands of first editions of classical and popular music from the eighteenth century to the present by American and European composers, in addition to legendary rarities such as the first issue of "The Star Spangled Banner." Mr. Fuld had a particular fondness for "Auld Lang Syne" and collected important early editions of the work as well as precursors to the song as we know it today.



Organization and Sponsorship

This exhibition was made possible by a generous gift in honor of Mr. Thomas Burns Reid and Mrs. Mary Theresa Reid. 

Robert Burns and "Auld Lang Syne" is organized by Christine Nelson, the Morgan's Drue Heinz Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts and Head of Interpretive Strategy.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.


"Auld Lang Syne"

The Burns version,
from the Morgan manuscript

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my Dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu't the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot,
Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidlet i' the burn,
Frae mornin' sun till dine:
But seas between us braid hae roar'd,
Sin auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty feire,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine;
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
The Burns version,
with Scots words translated

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o' lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my Dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We two have run about the hills,
And pulled the daisies fine;
But we've wander'd many a weary foot,
Since auld lang syne.

We two have paddled in the brook,
From mornin' sun till dinnertime:
But seas between us broad have roar'd,
Since auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty friend,
And give us a hand o' thine;
And we'll take a right goodwill draft,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll buy your pint-cup,
And surely I'll buy mine;
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.


Public Programs


Gallery Talk

Friday, December 16, 7 p.m.

Robert Burns and "Auld Lang Syne"

With Christine Nelson, Drue Heinz Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts

Free 



Concert

Tuesday, January 24, 7:30 p.m.
*
Days of Auld Lang Syne: Euan Morton Sings Songs of Scotland
On the eve of Burns Day (the poet's birthday), noted singer and actor Euan Morton (Taboo, Measure for Pleasure, Sondheim on Sondheim) presents a wide-ranging program of classical and contemporary songs in celebration of Scotland, including works by the beloved songwriter and poet Robert Burns. Pianist and composer Bryan Reeder accompanies Morton in a performance not to be missed.

Tickets: $25 for Non-Members; $20 for Members; (Tickets go on sale December 1, www.themorgan.org/public)


*The exhibition Robert Burns and "Auld Lang Syne" will be open at 6:30 pm especially for concert attendees. 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org
Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

Amherst, MA - (November 7, 2011) The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is pleased to announce “Phantom Tollbooth Day,” in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of the classic children’s book, and the recent release of Carle trustee Leonard S. Marcus’ The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, an insightful addition to the uproarious classic.  Both Norton Juster and Leonard Marcus will be here to discuss and sign their books The Carle will also have related activities in the art studio and a special storytime in the reading library featuring picture books by Juster, including The Odious Ogre (2010), his most recent collaboration Jules Feiffer, the illustrator of The Phantom Tollbooth.  All are welcome and encouraged to attend this all-day event on November 20th, 2011.
 
This pun-filled day coincides with Growing Every Which Way But Up: The Children’s Book Art of Jules Feiffer, The Carle’s newest exhibition featuring the artwork of The Phantom Tollbooth’s multi-talented illustrator.  Leonard S. Marcus, the guest curator for the exhibition, said in an article he wrote for the fall edition of Fine Books and Collections Magazine, “Tracing the arc of Feiffer’s latest creative adventure has for me, as the Carle exhibition’s curator, been an exciting chance not only to share with museum-goers some of contemporary children’s literature’s most keenly irreverent graphics, but also to show that ‘kids’ book illustration can be just as poignant--and pert--as the many and varied other forms of narrative art that Feiffer has practiced so brilliantly over the years.”  The exhibition features artwork from Feiffer’s collaborations with Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (1961), and the more recent picture book, The Odious Ogre (2010),  along with Feiffer’s own picture books, including Bark, George (1999), among many others.
 
Program Schedule

12:00 - 5:00 pm Playing with Words and Pictures in the Art Studio

12:15 Film

1:00 - 2:00 pm Conversation with Norton Juster and Leonard S. Marcus including a screening of the trailer for the upcoming Phantom Tollbooth documentary. Book signing to follow

2:00 pm Storytime in the Reading Library featuring books written by Norton Juster

3:00 pm Film

About the Museum:
Together with his wife Barbara, Eric Carle, the renowned author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art as the first full-scale museum in this country devoted to national and international picture book art, conceived and built with the aim of celebrating the art that we are first exposed to as children. Through the exploration of images that are familiar and beloved, it is The Museum’s goal to provide an enriching, dynamic, and supportive context for the development of literacy and to foster in visitors of all ages and backgrounds the confidence to appreciate and enjoy art of every kind.


The Museum—which houses three galleries dedicated to rotating exhibitions of picture book art, a hands-on Art Studio, a Reading Library, an Auditorium, a Café, and a Museum Shop—is located at 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, MA. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm. Admission is $9 for adults, $6 for children under 18, and $22.50 for a family of four. For further information and directions, call 413-658-1100 or visit The Museum’s website at www.carlemuseum.org.

New York, NY, November 10, 2011—The Morgan Library & Museum has announced the launch of an extensive online exhibition in conjunction with its exhibition, Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan, on view through January 29, 2011.


More than 120 religious and secular works from the Morgan's outstanding collection of Islamic manuscripts are presented, including thirty not in the museum exhibition. Magnifying capabilities bring rich details—often nearly hidden even from a short distance—into view, while accompanying commentary from exhibition curator William Voelkle provides context and insights.



The online presentation is divided into five sections: 



Dating from the tenth through the nineteenth centuries, eighteen Qur'ans and Qur'an leaves reveal a wide range of decorative motifs and calligraphic styles. 



Five illustrations from a thirteenth-century treatise on the benefits of animals—ranked among the ten most important Persian manuscripts in existence—mark the beginning of the Natural History and Astrology section. Also included are several works based on astronomy, cosmology, demonology, poetry, and mysticism.



Over thirty illustrated manuscript pages depict a variety of scenes from the life of Persian mystic and poet Rumi, including a water monster begging Rumi's wife to intercede on his behalf, Rumi restoring his favorite flute player back to life, and the Prophet Muhammad reading Rumi's poetry. 



The Read Persian Album, one of two disassembled albums that once belonged to Sir Hercules Read, a curator at the British Museum in the early twentieth century, contains exceptional depictions of secular subjects. Of special note are images of an Uzbek prisoner, a young lady reclining after her bath, and a fern whose surrounding ink drawings of plants and animals is visible only upon closer viewing.



The second album, known as the Read Mughal Album, is particularly notable for its life-like portraits of Mughal rulers, and several composite drawings, such as an elephant, horse, and lion made of entwined animal and human figures.



The importance of Persian poetry and poets is evident in their rich representation in the online exhibition. Thirty-six manuscripts illustrate some of the most beloved Persian poems, like Nizami's Khamsa, which includes the story of Laila and Majnun, the Persian Romeo and Juliet.



Organization and Sponsorship

The online exhibition was organized by William Voelkle, curator and head of the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, and Dan Friedman, Web site Manager and Designer. It will remain a permanent resource on the Morgan's Web site at http://www.themorgan.org/islamic.



The exhibition is supported in part by a generous grant from the Hagop Kevorkian Fund and by the Janine Luke and Melvin R. Seiden Fund for Exhibitions and Publications.



Related exhibition


The online exhibition is presented in conjunction with Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan, an exhibition at the Morgan of more than ninety manuscripts, single illuminated pages, and Qur'ans. It marks the first time the Morgan has gathered its collection of Islamic manuscripts together in a single exhibition. On view through January 29, 2012.



Related programs


Reading the Qur'an: The Contemporary Relevance of the Sacred Text of Islam 
With Ziauddin Sardar

Thursday, November 17, 6:30 p.m.* 

In his new book Reading the Qur'an, Ziauddin Sardar, one of Britain's leading cultural critics, provides an illuminating and highly personal look at the Qur'an and its role in Islam today. Sardar speaks out for a more open, less doctrinaire approach to reading the Qur'an, arguing that it is not fixed in stone for all time, but rather a dynamic text which every generation must encounter anew. Presented in cooperation with Asia Society & Museum.

Tickets: $15 for Non-Members, $10 for Morgan and Asia Society Members


*The exhibition Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan will be open at 5:30 p.m. especially for program attendees.



Gallery Talk: Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan

Friday, November 18, 7 p.m.

William M. Voelkle, Curator and Department Head, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, with Zahra Partovi, Rumi translator.

Free with museum admission



Adult Art Workshop: An Art of Measure and Harmony: The Arabic Letterform

Friday, December 9, 6:30-8:30 p.m.

After a brief tour of the exhibition Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan, calligrapher Elinor Aishah Holland will demonstrate the method of preparing paper, cutting a qalam (pen), and writing Arabic letters. Participants will then be invited to carefully observe the twenty-eight independent Arabic letter forms in the style called Thuluth. Using traditional tools and materials, they will experiment with and draw the letters themselves. In keeping with tradition, they will learn the ancient system of proportional measurement governing Arabic letterform to create harmonious and meaningful lines.

Tickets: $20 for Non-Members; $15 for Members



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street

New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.



Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

CODEX Mexico is a pioneering initiative aimed at promoting the arts of the book in Mexico and Latin America and to foster the development of international collaborations and cross-border outreach and exchange of skills and ideas.

The first initiative is a collaboration with the Centro Cultural Estacion Indianilla and Tonaltepec Global S.C. in response to an invitation from The CODEX Foundation to co-ordinate CODEX MEXICO events at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) in late November 2011 and an Exhibition / with events (to be announced) at Centro Cultural Estacion Indianilla in February 2012. These two events will establish the CODEX Mexico Chapter as part of The CODEX International Network.

The CODEX Mexico inaugural events will include the opening of the exhibition Libros de Artista at 1:00 p.m. on November 25th, 2011 at the Centro Cultural Mundo Cuervo, in Tequila, Jalisco. CODEX Mexico will offer an inaugural presentation and event at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) during a conference to be held at 8:00 p.m. on November 27, 2011, at the Agustin Yañez Hall (upper level). On this occasion, the CODEX Mexico Manifesto (en español) will be issued as a starting point for the promotion and establishment of a Center for the Study of the Book, a library, and a regional center for the safeguarding and preservation of significant books on the art and history of printing and a laboratory preserving and teaching the multiple skilled crafts of handmade book production aimed at national, regional and global markets.

On February 16, 2012, this same exhibit will move to the Centro Cultural Estacion Indianilla in Mexico City. The exhibition is comprised of a collection of original hand-made volumes printed in California and drawn from the collections of Stanford University Library and an equal number of artist's books made by Mexican artists and printers will be included to make this a ground-breaking cross-border collaboration.

A catalogue will be issued in conjunction with the joint Stanford University Library / CODEX Mexico Exhibition titled Libros de Artista, with texts by Peter Rutlredge Koch, printer and president of The CODEX Foundation; Robert Bringhurst, poet and erudite historian of printing, and the renowned Mexican writer Pedro Angel Palou. Copies may be obtained from the CODEX Foundation.

CODEX Mexico opening events are generously supported by the Mexican National Council for Culture and the Arts, the Guadalajara International Book Fair, the Centro Cultural Mundo Cuervo, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Government of Mexico City, the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco, California, the Embassy of the United States of America in Mexico, Stanford University Libraries, and The CODEX Foundation.

ITHACA, N.Y. (Oct. 26, 2011) - Photography changed the course of history, offering Americans an entirely new view of themselves and their own country. Now, through an exhibition at Cornell University Library, some of the country's rarest, earliest and most important photographs will be on display for the world to see.

"Dawn's Early Light: The First 50 Years of American Photography features photographs and related artifacts about the technological development of photography - from daguerreotypes to gelatin prints - in the 19th century, while also illuminating the turbulent historic currents that shaped the nation.

The exhibition opened Oct. 20 in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collection's Hirshland Exhibition Gallery in Cornell's Carl A. Kroch Library. The exhibited materials are highlights from a magnificent set of more than 16,000 19th-century American photographs from the Beth and Stephan Loewentheil Family Photographic Collection.

Highlights of the exhibition include:
*       Multiple photographs by preeminent Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, including a large 1861 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, warmly inscribed to the wife of Lincoln's oldest and closest friend;
*       Images documenting the Civil War, including a photograph of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton sitting with soldiers;
*       A personal photograph album compiled by Mark Twain; and
*       Photographs documenting African-American life, westward expansion and the rise of celebrity culture.

"Super-collectors like Stephan Loewentheil have enriched our Library in extraordinary ways," said Anne R. Kenney, Carl A. Kroch University Librarian. "Without people who are dedicated to collecting and preserving historic artifacts, we would never be able to tell such a rich and complete story about our own history and the milieu from which Cornell was established."

Its opening celebration is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 4:30 p.m. in Olin Library's Amit Bhatia Libe Café. Deborah Willis, Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, will deliver a lecture entitled "Framing the 19th Century Photograph: Then and Now," followed by a reception in the Carl A. Kroch Library. The opening events are funded through the generosity of Gail '56 and Stephen Rudin.

"This collection from the Loewentheil family stands as one of Cornell Library's most significant acquisitions," said Katherine Reagan, curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. "It provides rich visual documentation that will complement and extend the Library's major textual collections on 19th-century America. Moving forward, the images in this collection will vastly increase our ability to understand our history."

The exhibition will run through May 4, and it has been funded by generous support from the Loewentheil Family and the Stephen '58, MBA '59 and Evalyn Edwards '60 Milman Exhibition Fund.

The extensive online exhibition is available on the Library's website<http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/DawnsEarlyLight/>.

To learn more:
Explore Cornell University Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections<http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/>.

WOOJUNG CHUN: LIBRARY,
 28 October-23 November 2011. This installation by the Korean artist Woojung Chun presents an imagined library furnished with bookcases, cabinets and globes, all recognizable as symbols of a place where knowledge resides. Chun reveals her library as ‘a place of persistent search for elusive questions: unsolved theories, unexplained narratives and unresolved philosophical debates’. She has been inspired in part by Borges’ text, ‘The Library of Babel’, which compares the library to the universe as a repository for all knowledge and every individual truth.

Library is an on-going, evolving project: this new installation at England & Co includes three recent works shown at the Cairo Biennale earlier this year, together with new works incorporating video projection exhibited for the first time. James Putnam, who curated an installation of Chun’s Library at the Venice Biennale in 2009, describes how the objects displayed on the bookcases ‘are both meaningful and meaningless’,  representing ‘a distillation of memories, accumulated information, ideas and interests - an ambiguous ever-growing and unbounded entity. Her library takes the form of enigmatic artefacts that… seem to possess a persistent force of memory that refuses to be forgotten, carrying histories, fictions, emotions and knowledge suspended in time.’

Displayed in a darkened space, the installation seems at first to be a library from a palatial house of a past era: although apparently furnished conventionally, further inspection reveals that there are no books in the bookcases and that the globes are not covered with maps of the world.

The dark wooden bookcases are meticulously crafted cabinets containing arcane and intriguing objects and tableaux, often surrealist in spirit. One cabinet contains repeated photographs of faces with mouths swallowing an endless string of letters and numbers; another has a chest of drawers with roots growing from its base. Others contains a puzzling, complex construction of boxes, strings and pulleys, or are inscribed with diagrammatic, alchemical drawings. A naked figure, curled up seemingly asleep, inhabits one cabinet; while brass implements of quasi-scientific origin are displayed in another case. The two globes stand among the bookcases, one representing the life of nature with beings moving and floating across the earth’s surface, while the other represents a kind of labyrinth of life with raised markings suggesting routes across a dark universe.

Woojung Chun was born in Seoul in 1976, and currently lives and works in the UK. Library was first shown as a solo installation as part of The 53rd International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia in 2009; and she also took part in The 12th International Cairo Biennale in early 2011. Previous exhibitions include Good Morning Mr. Nam June Paik at the Korean Cultural Centre UK (2008); Lessons of Embodiment (part of Escrita na Paisagem) at the Biblioteca Municipal de Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal (2009); and Biblioteket at Luftskipet, Fjell Gard, Norway (2010).

Washington, DC—Following a two-year renovation, the galleries devoted to impressionism and post-impressionism in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art will reopen to the public on January 29, 2012. Among the greatest collections in the world of paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, the Gallery's later 19th-century French paintings will return to public view in a freshly conceived installation design.

"The Gallery's French impressionist and post-impressionist holdings, comprising nearly 400 paintings, are among the most prized in the Gallery, and rightly so," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "A world-class collection of this caliber results from the generosity of many donors, from the 1942 Widener bequest that brought the Gallery its first impressionist paintings to other treasured works of art, received primarily through gifts large and small."

The installation is organized into thematic, monographic, and art historical themes, including the "new" Paris of the Second Empire and the Third Republic; "high impressionism" of the 1870s marked by sun-dappled landscapes and scenes of suburban leisure; the fantastic, sophisticated color experiments of late Monet; Cézanne's genius in landscape, still-life, and figure painting; the bold innovations of Van Gogh and Gauguin; and the Parisian avant-garde circa 1900: Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Modigliani, and Rousseau. Text panels in many of the galleries will suggest the ideas behind these groupings, and new audio-tour stops will further help orient the visitor.

Opened in 1941, the National Gallery of Art is significantly younger than its competitors in this collecting area (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The Gallery boasts major masterpieces from the Chester Dale Collection, which in accordance with the deed of gift in 1962 may never be loaned. These include Manet's Old Musician, Cézanne's The Peppermint Bottle, Gauguin's Self-Portrait, Van Gogh's La Mousmé, Degas's Four Dancers, two of Monet's celebrated views of Rouen Cathedral, and Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques. They join other great works of French art, given to the Gallery by the Mellon family and other donors, including Manet's The Railway and Plum Brandy, Renoir's Dancer, Cézanne's Boy in a Red Waistcoat and Harlequin, and Van Gogh's Self-Portrait and Roses.

Thirteen works have been newly restored, including Renoir's sparkling Parisian view of the Pont Neuf, his ever-popular Girl with a Watering Can, Monet's classic Bridge at Argenteuil, and a portrait of Monet's newborn son Jean in his cradle.
 
During the two-year period of repair, restoration, and renovation, works normally on view in these galleries were either in storage, on loan, or featured in a special installation—From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection—in the West Building Ground Floor galleries. Some fifty of the greatest works from this collection were included in major exhibitions shown in Houston, Tokyo, and Kyoto.

General Information
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov. Follow the Gallery on Facebook at www.facebook.com/NationalGalleryofArt and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ngadc.

New York, NY, October 17, 2011—Beginning tomorrow, The Morgan Library & Museum will exhibit over thirty extraordinary works from its extensive collections of printed books, illuminated manuscripts, Americana, music, and literary and historical manuscripts. The items will be shown in the recently-restored McKim building and will remain on view through February 12, 2012.



A ROYAL COPY OF THE KING JAMES BIBLE
Of particular note is a first edition of the King James Bible—now in its 400th anniversary year. From the time of its publication in 1611 until the nineteenth century, the King James Bible was the dominant translation of scripture for the English-speaking world. Along with the works of Shakespeare, it remains one of the few seventeenth-century texts in wide circulation today. This copy (one of two first editions of the King James Bible owned by the Morgan) displays the royal arms on its bindings and has manuscript notes by Laurence Chaderton (1536?-1640), one of the forty-seven Anglican and Puritan divines entrusted by King James to produce the revised translation. At one point it belonged to Jane Fisher (c. 1626-1689), whose legendary role in Charles II's escape from England during the Civil War turned her into a cultural hero for the royalists. The Bible's ornate title page was engraved by Antwerp artist Cornelius Boel. It depicts symbols of the Trinity, images of the apostles, the four evangelists, Moses and Aaron, and—in reference to Christ's self-sacrifice—a pelican piercing its breast to feed its young.



THE ONLY COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT OF AN AUSTEN NOVEL

The exhibition features a number of literary treasures, including Jane Austen's Lady Susan, the only surviving complete manuscript of an Austen novel. Written when the author was just nineteen, the manuscript remained untitled at her death and was not published until more than fifty years later in 1871. Austen also appears in Virginia Woolf's notebook from 1931 that includes a heavily revised draft of "A Letter to a Young Poet," first published in the Yale Review in 1932. Among the unpublished passages is Woolf's assertion that the two most perfect novels in the English language are Austen's Emma and Anthony Trollope's The Small House at Allington. 

Also on view will be the manuscripts of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's beloved Le Petit Prince, John Steinbeck's final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent (donated to the Morgan by Steinbeck after he studied original medieval manuscripts at the Library in 1957 for his translation of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur), and J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country.

"JINGLE BELLS" AND OTHER MUSICAL ITEMS

Two classic American melodies, "New Yankee Doodle" (1798) and "The One Horse Open Sleigh" (1857)—later, "Jingle Bells"—will be on view. "Jingle Bells" was written by Pierpont Morgan's uncle, James Pierpont, and is his only song to have achieved lasting fame. 

Some of the greatest composers of the nineteenth century are also represented in this exhibition. Franz Liszt, whose bicentennial is celebrated this year, intended for more than a decade to compose music inspired by Hans Holbein's Todtentanz woodcut series and Andrea Orcagna's fresco Trionfo della Morte—both reflections on death. He eventually composed Totentanz in 1849, the manuscript of which will be displayed, bearing the hand of his copyist August Conradi with later revisions by Liszt. Other music manuscripts include Strauss's popular "Morgen" (1897), Mendelssohn's Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (1833/1834), and Henri Duparc's L'Invitation au voyage (1870).



THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS 

Among the Morgan's more sobering pieces of Americana is Rebecka Eames's petition from Salem prison to the governer of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips. Written on December 5, 1692 after four months of imprisonment for witchcraft, Eames repudiates her previous confession, claiming she had been "hurried out of my senses by ye afflicted person Abigall Hobs and Mary Lacye who both of them cryed out against me. . .spitting in my face saying they knew me to be an old witch." Eames was subsequently pardoned.


GALILEO'S BIAS REVEALED 

When the Catholic Church granted Galileo permission to publish his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, it did so with the proviso that he draw no conclusions in favor of one system or the other. Galileo's obvious endorsement of Copernicus's sun-centered cosmology did not go unnoticed by the Church, however, and the aged astronomer was pressured to recant his beliefs and remain under house arrest for the remainder of his life. It took more than 350 years before the Vatican officially acknowledged its wrongful condemnation. On display will be Stefano della Bella's engraved frontispiece, which depicts Copernicus conversing with Aristotle and Ptolemy.



A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY WEDDING PRESENT

The Morgan's rich holdings of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts will be represented in this display by several important Italian, French, and Austrian works. Among them is a thirteenth-century wedding gift: a richly illustrated Psalter and Book of Hours made for Ghuiluys de Boisleux on the occasion of her marriage to Jean de Neuville-Vitasse.

The book eventually descended to Catherine de Courtenay, Empress of Constantinople. On view will also be the Farnese Hours (1546), considered one of the most important Italian Renaissance manuscripts. The pages on view depict the Office of the Dead, with the Great Equalizer presiding over an array of clothes while his feet rest on a papal tiara and a crown, reminding us that social rank dies when we do. The following page depicts the raising of Lazarus by Christ, an image frequently used to illustrate the Office and one that offers hope that Christ will grant rest and pardon to the deceased.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours

Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Alanna Schindewolf
212.590.0311
aschindewolf@themorgan.org

Oxford, 27 September 2011. The Bodleian Libraries’ autumn exhibition Treasures of the Bodleian opens to the public this Friday, 30 September. It will feature a selection of the Bodleian’s rarest, most important and most evocative items, from ancient papyri through medieval oriental manuscripts to twentieth-century printed books and ephemera.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

    •             Jane Austen, The Watsons. This is part of Austen’s first draft, and is one of the earliest examples of an English novel to survive in its formative state. Acquired at auction earlier this year, it was the last major Jane Austen manuscript in private hands, and the most significant Austen item to come on the market in over twenty years.
    •             The Laxton Map, 1635, depicting England’s sole surviving open-field system.
    •             The Elements of Euclid, AD 888, the oldest surviving manuscript of what would become the standard version of Euclid’s Elements, as re-edited in the 4th century AD by Theon of Alexandria.
    •             Marco Polo’s Travels, manuscript, 14th century, ‘one of the great picture books of the Middle Ages’.
    •             Telegrams from the Titanic, 1912. The distress message from the Titanic to the Celtic. From the recently acquired the vast archive of Marconi  plc.
    •             Codex Mendoza, 16th century, an account of Aztec life with pictographs by an Aztec artist and annotated in Spanish.
    •             Wilfred Owen, ‘Anthem for Dead Youth’, 1917, handwritten draft.
    •             The Kennicott Bible, illuminated Hebrew Bible, 1476. Made at Corunna in north-west Spain, it is bound in a contemporary goatskin box-binding, of which only five other examples are extant. Its fine parchment pages contain exceptionally beautiful combinations of calligraphy by the scribe Moses Ibn Zabara, and illuminations and decorative penmanship by the artist Joseph Ibn Hayyim.
    •             Magna Carta, 1217. The Bodleian has four of the seventeen surviving pre-1300 ‘engrossments’ of Magna Carta, three of which date from 1217 and one from 1225.
    •             The Ashmole Bestiary, 13th century. Produced in England, this superbly illustrated manuscript is one of the finest of the early Gothic illuminated Bestiaries (Christianized versions of ancient animal lore) which were especially popular in this country in the first half of the thirteenth century.
    •             Letter from an Egyptian boy to his father, 2nd or 3rd century AD. Many of the 500,000 or so papyrus fragments discovered at the end of the nineteenth century contain passages of literary or philosophical works, but most are the stuff of everyday life: shopping lists, tax returns, legal documents, private letters and memoranda. Tattered and fragile, they are clearly of great age, but the concerns they express are immediately recognisable. Occasionally, amongst the mass of business papers, they reveal personal emotions: here, a petulant schoolboy called Theon complains to his father for leaving him behind.
    •             William Shakespeare, First Folio, 1623. This is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published seven years after his death by two of his fellow actors. The first collected edition of any English playwright, it prints a total of thirty-six plays, many of which would otherwise have been lost to future generations.
    •             Bakhshali manuscript - first evidence of the concept of zero, represented by a round dot. A leaf from a remarkable birch bark manuscript, that provides unique evidence for how the earliest Indian  mathematics was written. The text is a collection of algorithms and sample problems in verse, with a commentary explaining them in a combination of prose and numerical notation.

The exhibits are arranged into broad themes: the classical heritage; mapping the world; the sacred word; the animal and plant kingdoms; works of the imagination; the sciences of observation and calculation; historical moments in time.

The Treasures of the Bodleian exhibition looks towards the new permanent exhibitions gallery in the Weston Library which will open in 2015. Members of the public can give their thoughts on which of the library’s treasures should be put on permanent display in the new building. Visitors to the exhibitions are also invited to take part in the debate on what makes a particular book, manuscript or relic - out of a collection of nine million - a treasure? They can offer their own views when visiting the exhibition, or via our website: http://treasures.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Sarah Thomas, Bodley’s Librarian, said, ‘We are delighted to be able to put on public display a selection of the Bodleian’s greatest treasures. This is just a preview of what the Weston Library will offer the public when it opens in 2015. We want our collections to be accessible to the public, for people to come and see them, admire, inspect and get close to them. We want our treasures to become part of the public vocabulary.’

A website (http://treasures.bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and a free mobile app (to be launched in the second half of October) will accompany the exhibition. They will feature all the items on display in the physical exhibition, some of them presented in digital format for the first time. Extra objects featured on the website include:

    •             John James Audubon’s Birds of America.
    •             John Donne’s only surviving poem in his handwriting.
    •             Handel’s conducting copy of Messiah.

Several items are accompanied by video presentations made by experts from University of Oxford. Podcasts of music and readings from a number of manuscripts in both the original language and English will bring the ancient items to life.

Twitter hashtag is #BODtreasures

TREASURES OF THE BODLEIAN
30 September - 23 December 2011
Exhibition Room, Bodleian Library, Old Schools Quad, Catte Street, Oxford
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 4.30pm
Sunday 11am - 5pm
Admission free

For further information on The Bodleian Libraries contact:  Oana Romocea, Communications Officer, Tel: +44 (0) 1865 277627, Email: oana.romocea@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Washington, DC - Through materials from the year 1000 to 2011, Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible offers a "biography" of one of the world's most famous books, the King James Bible of 1611, which marks its 400th anniversary this year. 

Given the interest in the King James Bible this anniversary year, the Folger is adding Sunday viewing hours from noon to 5pm. Manifold Greatness can also be seen Monday-Saturday, 10am to 5pm and one hour before performances and readings.
 
A blockbuster, NEH-funded exhibition, Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible tells the story of this landmark book through a remarkable assemblage of rare books, manuscripts, and works of art, including the Folger's own first edition of the 1611 King James Bible. Through these materials, curators Hannibal Hamlin of The Ohio State University and Folger curator of rare books Steven Galbraith trace the centuries-long narrative of the King James Bible and the English Bibles that came before it. The exhibition also shows how its words have played out over the centuries since 1611, from Handel's Messiah and countless works of literature to the Apollo 8 astronauts' reading of Genesis as they orbited the Moon.
 

“The legacy of the King James Bible is actually too huge to articulate in a brief sentence or two, because its influence is sort of astronomical," notes exhibition curator Steven Galbraith. Fellow curator Hannibal Hamlin adds, "It influenced English-speaking writers, not just in Britain and America, but all over the world, everybody from John Milton in Paradise Lost to Charles Schultz in A Charlie Brown Christmas."
 
First printed in 1611, the King James Bible remains a towering landmark—a shared point of reference across the cultural landscape, from The Simpsons to William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell to the most traditional Anglican hymn.
 
Its familiar words and cadences have influenced writers from Milton to Melville, T.S. Eliot to Toni Morrison. The words of the King James Bible ring out in Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and, every holiday season, in performances of Handel’s Messiah.
 
The story behind this influential book, however, is less well known. It includes earlier Bible translators who worked at the risk of their lives; meticulous seventeenth-century scholars; and generations of King James Bible owners—among them, families who recorded births, marriages, and deaths in treasured copies.
 
The Folger’s Manifold Greatness exhibition is part of a major collaboration between the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, which recently produced a related exhibition, Manifold Greatness: Oxford and the Making of the King James Bible. The project also includes a website and blog, a Bodleian Library publication, Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible, and a traveling panel exhibition, inspired by the Folger exhibition and produced by the Folger in partnership with the American Library Association (ALA), which will tour to 40 libraries around the country over the next two years. After the Folger exhibition closes in January 2012, a version of it will be on exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
 

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
 
Beginning with tenth-century Anglo-Saxon biblical poems, the exhibition moves swiftly to the dramatic story of the early English Bibles, for which translators sometimes risked and even lost their lives. Rare books, manuscripts, and portraits then tell the stories of the tense conference at which James I agreed to a new Bible, and the four dozen or more top English scholars who created it over several years. A look at the centuries-long "afterlife" of their famous text in public life, literature, entertainment, and the arts takes up the second half of the display. 

Some of the not-to-be-missed items on exhibition include:
 
    •    The ‘Caedmon manuscript,’ an Anglo-Saxon manuscript (c. 1000 CE), that retells biblical stories in epic verse; the manuscript's drawing of Noah's Ark looks like a Viking ship
    •    A rare Wycliffite Bible from the 1380s; such manuscripts, linked to the reformer John Wyclif, were the first full English Bible
    •    Two leaves from William Tyndale's contraband translation, 1520s to early 1530s: Tyndale was executed in 1536 for his attempts at translating the Bible into English
    •    Queen Elizabeth's copy of the Bishops' Bible, 1568
    •    The Bodleian copy of the Bishops' Bible annotated by translators at Oxford with their changes
    •    The Folger’s copy of the first edition of the King James Bible
    •    Prince Henry Bible, an elaborately-bound copy of the King James Bible owned by James I's son
    •    A copy of the "Wicked" Bible (1631) in which the printer omits a key word from the Seventh Commandment on adultery
    •    The John Alden Bible, a copy of the King James Bible which came to America on the Mayflower
    •    Copies of the King James Bible owned by Frederick Douglass and Elvis Presley

 
ABOUT THE CURATORS
 
Steve Galbraith, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Rare Books (2007-2011) and now Curator of the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology, is an expert on the history of the book. Before coming to the Folger, he was Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts as well as a Visiting Professor of English at The Ohio State University. His publications include The Undergraduate's Companion to English Renaissance Writers and Their Web Sites (Libraries Unlimited, 2004) and articles in Reformation and Spenser Studies. He is currently working on a critical edition of Thomas Drue’s Duchess of Suffolk, a book on Edmund Spenser’s printing history, and a textbook on rare book librarianship. He earned his MLS from the University of Buffalo and his PhD in English Renaissance Literature from the Ohio State University.

Hannibal Hamlin, Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University, studied English at the University of Toronto and completed his doctorate in Renaissance Studies at Yale University. Renaissance literature and culture, especially Shakespeare, Donne, the Sidneys, and Milton, the Bible as/and/in literature, metrical psalms, and lyric poetry are among his scholarly interests. His publications include Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge, 2004), The Sidney Psalter: Psalms of Philip and Mary Sidney, co-editor (Oxford World Classics, 2009), The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic and Cultural Influences, co-editor (Cambridge, 2011), along with numerous journal articles, book chapters, and reviews. A book on the Bible in Shakespeare is Hamlin’s major current project, in support of which he has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies (a Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship), and the National Humanities Center, among other grants. He is editor of the journal Reformation and guest editor of a forthcoming forum on Poetry and Devotion for Religion and Literature.
 
 
VISITOR SERVICES
 
Hours
Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm; Sundays, Noon-5pm
Closed all Federal Holidays

Admission
Free

Tours
Monday-Friday at 11am & 3pm and Saturday at 11am & 1pm
Folger Docents offer guided tours of the exhibition, as well as the Folger’s national landmark building, free of charge. No advance reservations required.
 
Group Tours
Docent-led tours of the exhibition, as well as the Folger national landmark building, are offered for groups of 10 or more. To arrange, please call (202) 675-0395.
 
Audio Tours
Visitors, using their own cell phones, can call (202) 595-1844 and follow the prompts for 200# through 213# to hear the exhibition staff share personal comments on exhibition items.
 
 
RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible
Edited by Helen Moore and Julian Reid. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Paperback, 2011.  ISBN: 978-1-8512-4349-5.  224 pages, 65 color plates.
 
Manifold Greatness: The Making of the King James Bible is a richly illustrated, accessible, and meticulous account of the creation and afterlife of the 1611 King James Bible. Through chapters written by leading scholars, including the curators of the Bodleian and Folger Manifold Greatness exhibitions, the narrative explores the cultural, religious, and material contexts for the translation, its impact in England, and the reception and cultural influence of the King James Bible in America, from the 1600s to the present day. The book also features a chapter on the King James Bible and related rare materials at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Scores of colorful images closely integrated with the text include rare printed books, manuscripts, and artifacts, from the notes of the translating committees and pages from the Wycliffite and Tyndale translations of the Bible to the Bishops’ Bible owned by Elizabeth I, the Algonquin Bible of 1663, and Harper’s Illuminated Bible of 1846.
 
Available in the Folger Gift Shop and online at www.folger.edu/shop, $35.
 
 
ONLINE RESOURCES
 
Website
: www.manifoldgreatness.org
A comprehensive companion to the exhibitions as well as a stand-alone resource, the website includes photo galleries, eleven original videos, timelines, audio, and activities and educational resources for children. 

Blog
www.manifoldgreatness.org/blog
Curators and project staff share their discoveries, highlight areas of particular interest, update on programs and activities around the exhibitions, and share the ongoing influence of the King James Bible today.

Social Media
Connect with Manifold Greatness on Twitter (@manifoldgr8tness), Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.

 
RELATED PROGRAMS

FAMILY PROGRAMS

Shake Up Your Saturdays!

Saturday, September 24, 10-11am

Through crafts and a scavenger hunt learn about the translation of the most famous book in the world, and how it still influences us today! Age 6-12.


FOLGER LECTURES
Jill Lepore
KJV in the USA: The King’s Bible in a Country without a King
Thursday, September 29, 6pm; $15
Noted scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore discusses the influence of the King James Bible in the United States.
 
FOLGER INSTITUTE

An Anglo-American History of the KJV
Thursday, September 29-Saturday, October 1
This scholarly conference, chaired by Lori Anne Ferrell (Claremont Graduate University) and Kathleen Lynch (Folger Institute), with plenary lectures, panels, and round tables, explores the Bible’s role in provoking, defining, and then, in a sense, outlasting the English Reformation as an essential template for life, letters, art, politics, and culture.
 
FOLGER CONSORT
A NEW SONG

Friday, September 30-October 2
Musical settings of biblical verse and other sacred works from the reigns of James I and II are complemented by instrumental fantasies and lively dances by Coperario, Locke, and Purcell. With period strings, organ, and Washington National Cathedral's chamber vocal ensemble Cathedra, under the direction of Michael McCarthy.
 
O.B. HARDISON POETRY SERIES

Robert Pinsky
Tuesday, October 4, 7:30pm, $15
Pinsky, who served an unprecedented three terms as U.S. Poet Laureate, reads from his collections of poems and from his non-fiction prose book, The Life of David, a biographical account of the biblical warrior, poet, and king.


FOLGER THEATRE
Othello
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Robert Richmond
Featuring Owiso Odera & Ian Merrill Peakes
October 18-Novement 27
This gripping tale of jealousy and betrayal, in which Iago turns Othello against Desdemona, stands apart among Shakespeare’s tragedies. Othello was first performed as King James I came to the throne.
 
FOLGER LECTURES

Poetics and the Bible
Friday, December 16, 7pm, Free
Poet and professor Jacqueline Osherow discusses what makes the King James Bible “one of the best poetic translations.” Her sister, Folger dramaturg Michele Osherow, moderates the conversation.


UPCOMING FOLGER EXHIBITIONS
 
Shakespeare’s Sisters
February 3-May 19
Georgianna Ziegler, Curator
 
* * * * *
 
About Folger Shakespeare Library
 
Folger Shakespeare Library is a world-class center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. It is home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period (1500-1750). The Folger is an internationally recognized research library offering advanced scholarly programs in the humanities; an innovator in the preservation of rare materials; a national leader in how Shakespeare is taught in grades K-12; and an award-winning producer of cultural and arts programs—theater, music, poetry, exhibits, lectures, and family programs. By promoting understanding of Shakespeare and his world, the Folger reminds us of the enduring influence of his works, the formative effects of the Renaissance on our own time, and the power of the written and spoken word. A gift to the American people from industrialist Henry Clay Folger, the Folger—located one block east of the U.S. Capitol—opened in 1932. Learn more at www.folger.edu
 
Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street, SE, one block from the U.S. Capitol
Washington, DC  20003        
 
METRO:  Union Station (red line) or Capitol South (orange / blue line)
 
Open Monday through Saturday, 10am - 5pm. Closed Sundays and federal holidays.  Admission is free.
Daily Free Guided Tours of the exhibition and building by Folger Docents:
11am and 3pm, Monday - Friday; 11am and 1pm Saturdays.
 
Public Contact:  Folger Box Office at (202) 544-7077 or www.folger.edu
 
Press Contact:  Garland Scott at gscott@folger.edu, (202) 675-0342 or Tim Swoape at tswoape@folger.edu, (202) 675-0342 or Caryn Lazzuri at clazzuri@folger.edu, (202) 675-3709.
# # #

In December 2011 the Grolier Club of New York will host an exhibition on the history of the French national printing establishment, the Imprimerie Nationale, arguably the most important printing house in Europe.  Drawn from the vast and comprehensive archives of the Imprimerie Nationale, Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic will document the significant influence of the press, not only on printing and the book arts, but on French — and therefore European — literary culture from the mid-sixteenth century to the present day.  The exhibition is being organized by the Grolier Club and the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC), which recently added the historical collections of the Imprimerie Nationale to France’s largest archive of authorial and publishing materials, in cooperation with the Groupe Imprimerie Nationale, S.A.

Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic, curated by H. George Fletcher (the retired Brooke Russell Astor Director at The New York Public Library, and the organizer in New York of IMEC’s 2009 exhibition “Between Collaboration and Resistance: French Literary Life under Nazi Occupation”), will tell the story of the Imprimerie Nationale, from a group of royal printers established by François I in 1538, to the Imprimerie Royale created by Cardinal Richelieu in 1640, through many generations of development, marked often by artistic innovation and wide cultural influence, but sometimes by distress and neglect, to triumphant survival in the present day. Over 200 objects will be on view at the Grolier Club from early December 2011 through early February of 2012, encompassing artifacts of various printing processes, such as punches, matrices, and typefonts from the days of François I to the present, as well as engraved plates and lithographic stones used to produce illustrations (including at least one plate from the famous Description de l’Egypt commissioned by Napoleon, with its proofs and published state).  It will also show archival copies of the books produced at the Imprimerie Nationale, from the scholarly products of the Renaissance in France through the royal folios of the Sun King to the culture-changing works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and thus to the work of postwar and present-day generations of French book artists.  In many cases, original manuscripts, documents, and artwork will allow the visitor to follow the art, craft, and business of book-making from conception to realization. Video installations are planned to provide visitors with an overview of the history of the Imprimerie Nationale, as well as demonstrations of all aspects of book production.

LOCATION AND TIME: Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic will be on view in both the ground floor and 2nd floor galleries of the Grolier Club, 47 East 60 Street, New York, from Dec. 7, 2011-Feb. 4, 2012, with the exception of Dec. 24, Dec. 31, and Jan. 16, when the Club is closed. The exhibit will be open to the public free of charge, Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Additional information and directions are available at www.grolierclub.org.  

CATALOGUE: A fully-illustrated publication featuring scholarly essays on the Imprimerie Nationale and a complete checklist of the exhibition will be created and produced by the Imprimerie Nationale’s Atelier du Livre d’Art et l’Estampe (ALAE). It will be available at the Club, and through Oak Knoll Press.  

RELATED EVENTS: Tuesday, January 24, 2012—A day-long colloquium on “The French Imprimerie Nationale and Printing History” will be held at the French Institute/Alliance Francaise (22 East 60th Street, across the street from the Grolier Club). A reception will follow at the Grolier Club. Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 2-3 pm—Lecture by H. George Fletcher in connection with the exhibition.  

The Exhibition

Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic: 
Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale
 has been made possible by a generous grant from
The Florence Gould Foundation



FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS AT THE GROLIER CLUB

September 14-November 4, 2011: Silver Screen / Silver Prints: Hollywood Glamour Portraits from the Robert Dance Collection.

December 7, 2011-February 4, 2012: Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale.   

February 22-April 28, 2012: Torn in Two, the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.
May 16-July 28, 2012: Aaron Burr Returns to New York: an Exhibit of Burr and His Contemporaries.


Visit the Grolier Club website: www.grolierclub.org

The Book as Memorial: Book Artists Respond to and Remember 9/11
September 6 - December 16, 2011

Ten years have passed since the tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, in several locations on the East Coast of the United States. People in all parts of the country were affected and many of them looked for ways to respond. This exhibition shows art work created by book artists in response to the events of that fateful day. Specifically, this exhibition focuses on works that memorialize the people lost and the indescribable sense that we, as a people, also lost something more intangible. Some might call it a sense of innocence, others might call it a sense of safety, but few Americans would deny that the world felt changed after that day. Using the book format, these artists have given form to these difficult thoughts and emotions to share with a wider audience and to help us remember.

The exhibition includes work by: Art of the Book program (Art School, Pratt Institute), Maureen Cummins, Mimi Gross & Charles Bernstein (Granary Books), Kate Ferrucci (People to People Press), Emily Martin (Naughty Dog Press), Mac McGill (Booklyn Artists Alliance), Sara Parkel (Filter Press), Werner Pfeiffer (Pear Whistle Press), Maria G. Pisano (Memory Press), Otis Rubottom, Sibyl Rubottom & Jim Machacek (Bay Park Press), Rocco Scary, Gaylord Schanilec & Richard Goodman (Midnight Paper Sales), Robbin Ami Silverberg (Dobbin Books), Patricia M. Smith (P.S. Press), Gail Watson (Zuni Press), Marshall Weber (Booklyn Artists Alliance), Pamela S. Wood (Rarehare Creations), J. Meejin Yoon (Printed Matter & Whitney Museum of American Art).

This exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5pm. Non-Yale community members must check in with the security guard in the lobby of the Loria Center, 190 York Street, to gain access to the Haas Family Arts Library. Photo ID required to enter library.

Artists panel discussion
In conjunction with the Yale University Art Gallery's installation "Remembering 9/11", there will be a panel discussion "Ten Years Later: Artists Remember 9/11" at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 22, at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street (at York Street), New Haven, Connecticut. Artists Nathan Lyons, Leo Rubinfien, Judith Shea, and Robbin Ami Silverberg will join Josh Chuang of the Yale Art Gallery and Jae Rossman of the Haas Family Arts Library for a conversation on the impact of Sept. 11 on their lives and work. The event is free and open to the public.

Jae Jennifer Rossman
Assistant Director for Special Collections
Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library
Yale University
180 York Street
New Haven, CT 06520
203.432.4439
203.432.0549 (fax)

From September 14  through November 12, 2011, The Grolier Club presents an exhibition of vintage Hollywood photography tracing the careers of the leading photographers and many of the great stars of the “Golden Age” of motion pictures. Silver Screen/Silver Prints is drawn from the collection of Grolier Club member Robert Dance and curated by Anne H. Hoy. The works on display are shown together for the first time.

Silver Screen/Silver Prints presents Hollywood’s invention of the glamour portrait. The photographs in the exhibit demonstrate the centrality of studio portraits to the film industry’s star-making apparatus, especially in the two decades before the Second World War and, most notably at MGM—which boasted “more stars than there are in the heavens.” The exhibition is divided into ten parts, each dedicated to a single photographer, star, or theme.  

Cases devoted to studio photographers George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, and Ruth Harriet Louise demonstrate their distinctive styles and chart the evolution from soft-focus Pictorialism to sculptured modernist glamour.  Luminous portrayals of Garbo, Crawford, and Ramon Novarro give audiences the chance to see how the portrait camera lens shaped their most enduring images.  Thematic displays focus on Hollywood fashion as promoted by photography and on the development of the discernible Paramount Studios house style.  The final section is devoted to Elizabeth Taylor, the last great star of the Hollywood studio system, who used photography strategically to guide an upward trajectory from her early days as a child actress to her long reign as an international superstar.

The photographs exhibited are all original silver prints, mostly 11 x 14 inches, and printed by or under the supervision of the photographer.  Examining these first-generation photographs reveals at times subtle, and sometimes quite dramatic, uses of sepia and black and white contrasts.  These beautiful rich tonalities are unfamiliar to most viewers, since they are lost in later printings in which many generations separate mass-marketed images from the originals.  To further illuminate the creative process, the exhibition includes a selection of original 8 x 10-inch camera negatives and master prints made from these negatives.

The studio portrait was the first step in the evolution of the star.  Long before a hopeful actor was given a screen test, portraits were taken to determine the camera appeal of new faces.  Once a player had appeared successfully on screen, the portrait photographer set about developing and refining an image that could be translated to the screen for public consumption.   In her American screen debut, Garbo triumphed with audiences as no other new actress has done before or since.  But it was Ruth Harriet Louise, behind the scenes in the MGM portrait studio, who molded Garbo’s persona.  The movies may have made the stars, but still photographs made them icons.

Leveraging the skillfully developed images, the studios distributed portraits widely to keep fans enthralled by their screen favorites.  Fan magazines, the most widely disseminated periodicals of the Roaring Twenties and the Depression Thirties, competed for the best new pictures of top-grossing stars.  Behind full-color covers painted from glamour photographs, these magazines delivered the stars’ images to an eager public and, indeed, into popular culture.  Many of the photographs displayed in Silver Screen/Silver Prints were used for reproduction in fan magazines—as evident in selected magazines on view.

Early stars range from Albert Witzel’s Theda Bara for Cleopatra, 1917, and Alfred Cheney Johnston’s ex-Ziegfield Girl Flapper-era Mae Murray, to James Abbe’s “candid” of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as Hollywood royalty on vacation in Paris, c. 1925.  Joan Crawford appears with Robert Montgomery by Ruth Harriet Louise, 1929, and with the Barrymore brothers by Hurrell in Grand Hotel, 1935. In two photographs by Clarence S. Bull, Clark Gable embraces Jean Harlow in Saratoga, 1936, and succumbs to Lana Turner in Honky Tonk, 1940. Portraits of Elizabeth Taylor by Milton Greene and Cecil Beaton climax the survey. As vamp yields to flapper and blonde bombshell and then to the last Cleopatra, Silver Screen/Silver Prints sketches evolving ideas of glamour—revealing that these stars and their gifted photographers were always ready for their close-up.

LOCATION AND TIME: Silver Screen/Silver Prints will be on view at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, New York, from Sept. 14 -Nov. 12, 2011, with the exception of October 10, when the Club is closed. The exhibit will be open to the public free of charge, Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Additional information and directions are available at www.grolierclub.org.  

CATALOGUE: A fully-illustrated catalog of Silver Screen/Silver Prints, with contributions by Robert Dance and Anne H. Hoy, will be available at the Grolier Club.

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS AT THE GROLIER CLUB
Dec. 7, 2011 - Feb. 4, 2012. Printing for Kingdom, Empire, and Republic: Treasures from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale

Visit the Grolier Club website: www.grolierclub.org

Contact: Megan Smith
msmith@grolierclub.org

MIDDLEBURG, Virginia - Three prints depicting blacksmiths at work from the 18th and 19th centuries are the inspiration for In the Blacksmith Shop at the National Sporting Library and Museum’s Forrest E. Mars, Sr. Exhibit Hall. Rare books, horse shoes of different equine occupations, and blacksmith tools show the history of the farrier at work. Of special interest are shoes from Animal Kingdom, Man O' War, Gallahadion, and Hirapour. The exhibit runs from August 16 - December 30, 2011. The NSLM is free and open to the public. Hours are 11 - 4, Tuesday through Friday and 1 - 4 Saturday. www.nsl.org

The three historic prints are on loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. They are by English artists Joseph Wright (1734-1797) and George Garrard (1760-1826) and French artist Theodore Gericault (1791-1824). The works illustrate continuity in the world of the farrier by portraying the tools and the methods of horseshoeing during the 18th and 19th centuries. Gericault’s image of a Flemish farrier is plate four from “Various Subjects Drawn from Life on Stone,” in 1821. Garrard’s picture of a farrier within the center of a village shows the importance of the craft to everyday life. Joseph Wright, a master of chiaroscuro (an interplay of light and dark), gives the scene a romantic, noble cast.

Rare books from the Library’s collection tell the story of the role horseshoes play in the animal’s health. The Charles Clark Case Book, a nineteenth- century manuscript of a veterinary surgeon’s observations and treatments of hoof diseases, was purchased by the Library in the Duke of Gloucester, 2006, London sale. Charles Clark was the nephew of the famous veterinarian Bracy Clark, early advocate of bare-foot hoof care. Other books from the same era show an interest in developing new systems of shoeing to counter hoof disease and injury. Small books such as The Gentleman’s Pocket Farrier (1732) describe hoof diseases and practical observations for the horseman-traveler. In other books, English, French, and Italian methods of shoeing are compared and analyzed.

Of special interest in the exhibit are shoes worn by famous horses. The 2011 winner of the Kentucky Derby, Animal Kingdom, trained by H. Graham Motion, whose family owns a tack store in Middleburg, is represented by two shoes encrusted with Churchill Downs dirt. Other families in the region contributed plate (shoe) mementos of great Thoroughbred racers - Gallahadion, winner of the 1940 Kentucky Derby, and Hirapour, champion steeplechase horse, 2004. A plate worn by Man O’War, one of the most famous horses of all time, was given to the late Paul R. Fout by a childhood friend who was Man O War's blacksmith during the champion’s racing days.

As Librarian Lisa Cambell began organizing In the Blacksmith Shop, she found the topic generated a lot of interest. Paintings by members of families involved in the equestrian world were offered to the Library for use in the exhibit. One painting portrays a well-known Washington, D.C., blacksmith, Joseph "Smitty" Vanzego, who spent 60 years shoeing horses at race tracks and stables in the region. A story about his career in the Washingon Post (December 16, 2007) tells of Vanzego learning the trade in the army and passing on his skills to two of his sons. In addition to paintings, equine enthusiasts loaned tools, shoes, and other materials. An anatomical example of a horse’s leg, loaned by the Middleburg Agricultural Research and Extension (MARE) Center, is on display. Lindsay Berreth, Library Assistant and eventer, created a guide to the bone structure for visitors. Blacksmith tools have been loaned by Mike May, Mid Atlantic Farrier Supply, Aldie, Virginia. The exhibit, installed by Mickey Gustafson, introduces the story of the centrality of the farrier to the equestrian community over many centuries.

In the Blacksmith Shop is suitable for children. Special tours are available for small groups, especially Pony Clubs. They will be led by Lisa Campbell, librarian and equestrian. For more information or to arrange a tour, please contact 540-687-6542 or jsheehan@nsl.org.

The National Sporting Library and Museum, located in beautiful, historic Middleburg, Virginia, celebrates the opening of its Sporting Art Museum in October, 2011. The Library, founded in 1954, is dedicated to preserving, promoting, and sharing the literature, art, and culture of equestrian and field sports and we are pleased to announce the addition of our Museum. The institution has expanded to become an important research facility and art museum with over 17,000 books and works of art in the collections. The John H. Daniels Fellowship program supports scholarship. Information is shared through exhibits, lectures, seminars, publications, and special events. The NSLM is open to the public. www.nsl.org.

CONTACT: Mickey Gustafson
540-687-6542, ext. 23 mgustafson@nsl.org 

(Katonah, NY) Empire City, Gotham, The Big Apple — whatever you call it, there’s no doubt that New York City has impacted millions of hearts, minds, and imaginations throughout history. This fall, the Katonah Museum of Art shows works of art inspired by New York City in New York, New York! The 20th Century. Organized by the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL, the exhibition features over 50 works from the Norton collection, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, and works on paper, which capture the essence of New York throughout the 20th century. New York, New York! is on view from October 2 through December 31, 2011. The Katonah Museum of Art is located at 134 Jay Street (Route 22) in Katonah, NY. For more information, please visit www.katonahmuseum.org or call (914) 232-9555.
    Including works by Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Stuart Davis, Andreas Feininger, William Gropper, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Reginald Marsh, and Edward Steichen, among others, New York, New York! The 20th Century celebrates the city as muse to photographers, painters, and sculptors, encompassing the varied cultures and lifestyles of its inhabitants. Looking back on a century of tumultuous change, this exhibition is divided into five themes:

    •    On the Waterfront: The docks of the Hudson and East Rivers have seen the arrival of industry and immigrants, marking the beginning of a new life for millions of people. The bridges that connect Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens are emblematic of the five boroughs’ consolidation in 1898 into what we know now as New York City.
    •    Avenues and Streets: Fifth Avenue evokes style and society, while power and money are the hallmarks of Wall Street. Sidewalks, storefronts, and public spaces reflect the vibrant character of the city’s hundreds of distinct neighborhoods.
    •    In the Park: Artists have long found inspiration in the abundance of life found within the city’s parks. Whether picnicking in the grass or people-watching on a bench, the modern day flâneur can enjoy nature’s wonders away from the hustle and bustle of crowded urban streets.
    •    On the Town: Teeming with culture and entertainment, New York is a place where there’s always something happening no matter what the hour. The kinetic energy of gallery openings, concerts, and restaurants are the pulse of the “city that never sleeps.”
    •    Tall Buildings: A view of the top of the Empire State Building above a sea of clouds is the unofficial “welcome” to the city for air travelers. New York’s inimitable skyline, which was considered daring in the early twentieth century, made way for today’s aesthetic and environmental progress in architecture.
 
“This is such a rich exhibition on so many levels,” says Nancy Wallach, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Museum.  “Spanning 100 years of art and history, it captures the vibrancy, power, and beauty of one of the greatest cities of the world through the eyes of some of the most iconic American artists of the 20th century.”
 
In the Project Gallery and the Learning Center
 
Storied City: New York in Picture Book Art, October 2 - December 31
Curated by historian/critic Leonard S. Marcus
 
New York has long held special appeal for the illustrators and writers of children’s books—both as a place to live and as a setting for their stories and art.  Storied City, showcasing original art from more than thirty-five picture books, examines the city’s iconic landmarks, neighborhoods, parks, and modes of transportation.  The featured illustrators include seven Caldecott Medal winners (Richard Egielski, Mordicai Gerstein, Jerry Pinkney, Brian O. Selznick, Marc Simont, David Small, and David Wiesner); several artists long associated with The New Yorker magazine (Maira Kalman, James McMullan, Roxie Munro, Edward Sorel), and many other leading illustrators from the children’s book world.

In The Sculpture Garden and South Lawn
 
Joseph Wheelwright: Tree Figures, June 5, 2011 - May 2012
New England artist Joseph Wheelwright’s haunting tree figures invite a dialogue between the natural and the manmade.  Ranging up to 27 feet tall, these fantastic, anthropomorphic sculptures were created from trees on Wheelwright’s land in Vermont.  Turned upside down, bifurcated trunks become legs, and roots are transformed into heads and arms.
 
General Information
The Katonah Museum of Art is located at 134 Jay Street (Route 22) in Katonah, NY.  For information call 914-232-9555 or visit www.katonahmuseum.org

Museum Hours
Tuesday through Saturday, 10am-5pm, Sunday 12-5pm, Closed Monday.
Admission: $5 general, $3 for seniors and students; members and children under 12 free. Tuesday through Friday, 10am-noon, free.
Free Docent-Led Guided Tours
Tuesday through Saturday, 2:30 pm. Tours are free with admission to the Museum


Contact: Marcia Clark
(845) 528-6647 - marcia@shamelesspromotions.com

(Amherst, MA) August 11, 2011-  The Carle is pleased to announce a forthcoming exhibition featuring cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and children’s book author and illustrator Jules Feiffer. Growing Every Which Way But Up: The Children’s Book Art of Jules Feiffer will open in Amherst, Massachusetts on October 25, 2011 and remain on view until January 22, 2012.
 
As an artist and writer of probing wit and uncommon humanity, Jules Feiffer has made a breathtakingly varied contribution to America’s cultural life for over 50 years. From his Village Voice editorial cartoons to his plays and screenplays including Little Murders and Carnal Knowledge, Feiffer’s satirical outlook has helped define us politically, sexually, and socially. He has excelled in journalism, film, and off Broadway. This exhibition will focus on his equally prodigious talents as an author and illustrator of children’s books.
 
From illustrations that he did to complement Norton Juster’s 1961 uproarious classic, The Phantom Tollbooth, to his current picture-book collaborations with his daughter Kate, Feiffer’s artwork for children is all the more expressive for the years of fatherhood, cartoon-drawing, teaching, and storytelling that informs it. Leonard S. Marcus, the children’s book historian and critic and author of the upcoming The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth, is guest curator for the show. “Feiffer finds that picture-book artists and cartoonists live by many of the same imperatives: the need to instantly grab the reader’s attention, the need to simplify without oversimplifying, and the need to keep the action moving,” Marcus said. Marcus, who wrote  an article about the exhibition for the fall edition of Fine Books & Collections Magazine, says  “Tracing the arc of Feiffer’s latest creative adventure has for me, as the Carle exhibition’s curator, been an exciting chance not only to share with museum-goers some of contemporary children’s literature’s most keenly irreverent graphics, but also to show that ‘kids’ book illustration’ can be just as poignant--and pert--as the many and varied other forms of narrative art that Feiffer has practiced so brilliantly over the years.”
 
Feiffer’s far-ranging credits include a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and an Obie for his plays. The animated version of Munro, which he scripted, won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
 
Related programming and events:
 
Public Art Program
Dots that Walk, Lines that Talk
October 27 - November 6
Drawing inspiration from Paul Klee’s quote, “A line is a dot that went for a walk” and Jules Feiffer’s lines that twist, tumble and turn, have fun creating your own visual journey with marking tools and water color wash.
Free with Museum admission
 
Members’ Opening Reception
Growing Every Which Way But Up:  The Children’s Book Art of Jules Feiffer
A Conversation with Jules Feiffer and Guest Curator Leonard S. Marcus
Saturday, November 5, 2011
5:00 - 7:00 pm
Presentation at 6:15
 
Feiffer Gallery Tour with Jules Feiffer
(1 PDPs)
Sunday, November 6, 2011
1:00  pm
Book signing to follow
Free with Museum Admission
 
Phantom Tollbooth Day with Norton Juster
Sunday, November 20, 2011
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Presentation at 1:00 pm
Book signing to follow
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of this perennial favorite of children and adults with a conversation with Norton Juster and activities throughout the Museum.
Free with Museum Admission
 
Meet Jules Feiffer and Kate Feiffer
(1 PDP)
Thursday, December 8, 2011
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Presentation at 7:00 pm
Book signing to follow
Free
 
About The Eric Carle Museum
 
Together with his wife Barbara, Eric Carle, the renowned author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art as the first full-scale museum in this country devoted to national and international picture book art, conceived and built with the aim of celebrating the art that we are first exposed to as children. Through the exploration of images that are familiar and beloved, it is the Museum’s goal to provide an enriching, dynamic, and supportive context for the development of literacy and to foster in visitors of all ages and backgrounds the confidence to appreciate and enjoy art of every kind.
The Museum-which houses three galleries dedicated to rotating exhibitions of picture book art, a hands-on Art Studio, a Reading Library, an Auditorium, a Café, and a Museum Shop-is located at 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, MA. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm. The Museum is open Mondays in July and August. Admission is $9 for adults, $6 for children under 18, and $22.50 for a family of four. For further information and directions, call 413-658-1100 or visit the Museum’s website at www.carlemuseum.org.
 
Images are available for reproduction. For additional press information and /or images, please contact Sandy Soderberg, Marketing Manager (413) 658-1105 or sandys@carlemuseum.org
 
###

New York, New York, August 9, 2011—Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was Britain's first true literary superstar. In his time, he attracted international adulation on an unprecedented scale, and many of his books became instant classics. Today, his popularity continues unabated, and his work remains not only widely read but widely adapted to stage and screen.

The Morgan Library & Museum's Dickens collection is the largest in the United States and is one of the two greatest in the world, along with the holdings of Britain's Victoria and Albert Museum. Charles Dickens at 200 celebrates the bicentennial of the great writer's birth in 1812 with manuscripts of his novels and stories, letters, books, photographs, original illustrations, and caricatures. Sweeping in scope, the exhibition captures the art and life of a man whose literary and cultural legacy ranks among the giants of literature.



"It is difficult to imagine a novelist of greater importance in the English language than Charles Dickens," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "His books are touchstones of literary history and his characters—from Tiny Tim and Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge and Uriah Heep—are some of the most vividly drawn in all of fiction. The Morgan is delighted to mark this important Dickens anniversary year with an exhibition that celebrates his extraordinary creativity and fascinating life."



Charles Dickens at 200 will focus primarily on Dickens's novels and their relation to his various activities and collaborations—literary, artistic, theatrical, and philanthropic—from The Pickwick Papers (1836), his first book, to Our Mutual Friend (1865), the last he completed. (The Mystery of Edwin Drood remained incomplete at the time of Dickens's death in 1870).

The Morgan's collection of Dickens material notably includes the complete manuscript of Our Mutual Friend, the only manuscript of a Dickens novel in the United States, as well as the manuscripts of three of Dickens's Christmas stories, including the iconic A Christmas Carol (1843). The Morgan has the largest collection of the author's letters (over 1500) in the U.S. as well as more than fifty original illustrations of Dickens's work, complete runs of Dickens's novels published in monthly installments, first editions of his books, portrait photographs, caricatures, playbills, and ephemera.



One section of the exhibition explores the plot outlines and manuscript pages of Our Mutual Friend, a selection of which will be on view to allow visitors to follow Dickens's creative process. In 1865, Dickens dramatically crawled back into the wreckage of a train crash to retrieve the manuscript of an installment of this novel, which is preserved today in the Morgan's collection.



Also on view will be examples of the first appearance of Dickens's novels in monthly published parts, as well as original illustrations (by such artists as Hablot K. Browne, John Leech, George Cruikshank, and Samuel Palmer). These illustrations, alongside Dickens's letters, shed light on his working relationships with the illustrators of his novels and stories.

Another section of the show will feature letters and other documents that reveal the social context and the personal and economic circumstances in which Dickens wrote, including his family life; his travels (to the United States and Europe); and his activity as a social reformer. Dickens was particularly concerned about poverty and prostitution, and collaborated with the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts to address the plight of "fallen women."



Dickens's fascination with dramatic performance, which manifested itself in his participation in amateur theatricals and public readings, and the impact of this interest on his literary technique, will be examined in the exhibition. A selection of original playbills illustrate this aspect of Dickens's work, which encompasses his collaboration with fellow novelist Wilkie Collins. 



The exhibition will also include Dickens's Christmas books. Visitors will be able to see the manuscripts of three of his five Christmas books, including A Christmas Carol (1843), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), and The Battle of Life (1846). The Morgan owns the manuscript of A Christmas Carol, and this installation will allow visitors to see it in the context of Dickens's other Christmas tales which have been credited by historians with significantly "redefining" the spirit and meaning of the holiday.



According to Professor John O. Jordan, the Director of the international Dickens Project marking the 200th birthday celebration, Dickens is "unusual if not unique among canonical English-language authors in remaining at once a vital focus of academic research and a major figure in popular culture. Only Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and perhaps Jane Austen can compare with him in terms of their ability to hold the attention of both a scholarly and a general audience.... He is widely recognized as the preeminent novelist of the Victorian age and a major figure in world literature."



Organization and Sponsorship

This exhibition is generously underwritten by Fay and Geoffrey Elliott.



Charles Dickens at 200 is organized by Declan Kiely, the Robert H. Taylor Curator and Department Head of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at The Morgan Library & Museum.



To coincide with the exhibition, a new facsimile edition of A Christmas Carol is being published with an introductory essay by Declan Kiely.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.




Public Programs 

Lectures

"Endless fertility": The Comic Art of Charles Dickens

Michael Slater

Michael Slater, Emeritus Professor, Birkbeck College, University of London, will discuss Dickens's wide range of comic writing from broad farce to biting satire, and will illustrate his discussion with readings from Dickens's novels, stories, journalism and other writings.

Wednesday, November 2, 6:30 p.m.
*
Tickets: $15 for Non-Members; $10 for Members

*

The exhibition Charles Dickens at 200 will be open at 5:30 p.m. especially for program attendees.



Charles Dickens: A Life

Claire Tomalin

Join acclaimed literary biographer Claire Tomalin (Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self) as she explores the tumultuous life of the great English novelist in her new book Charles Dickens: A Life. 

Friday, November 18, 6:30 p.m.
*
Tickets: $15 for Non-Members; $10 for Members

*
The exhibition Charles Dickens at 200 will be open until 9 p.m.



Films

Great Expectations

(1946, 118 minutes)

Director: David Lean

David Lean's remarkable adaptation captures the warm humor and richness of character that is quintessential in Charles Dickens's writing. Anthony Wager and John Mills star, respectively, as the young and adult Pip in this classic story of a young man's journey from orphan to gentleman. Winner of two Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, the film also features Valerie Hobson and Alec Guinness.

Friday, October 14, 7 p.m.



The Signalman

(1976, 39 minutes)

Director: Lawrence Gordon Clark

In Dickens's chilling, supernatural tale, an unnamed traveler (Bernard Lloyd) encounters a signalman (Denholm Elliot) on a lonely stretch of railway. The screening will be held on Dickens's 200th birthday anniversary, with an introduction by Morgan curator Declan Kiely.

Tuesday, February 7, 7 p.m.
*The exhibition Charles Dickens at 200 will be open at 6 p.m. especially for program attendees.



Exhibition-related films are free with museum admission. Tickets are available at the Admission Desk on the day of the screening. Advance reservations for Morgan Members only: 212.685.0008, ext. 560, or tickets@themorgan.org.



Family Programs

When Ghosts Pop Up the Pages: A 3D Christmas Carol 

Celebrate Charles Dickens and the holiday season with pop-up book creator Chuck Fischer (Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book). After a brief tour of the exhibition Charles Dickens at 200, children will make their favorite characters from Dickens's classic ghost story come to life as they create pop-up cards to share with family and friends. All supplies included. Appropriate for ages 6-12. This workshop is limited to families with children. There is a limit of two adult tickets per family.
Saturday, November 19, 2-4 p.m. 
Tickets: Adults: $6 for Non-Members; $4 for Members; children $2



Winter Family Day Celebration

Join us for our annual family day celebrating the exhibitions David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre and Charles Dickens at 200. Travel back to the days of Dickens and Revolutionary France with art workshops, strolling characters, a costume photo shoot, festive dancing, and more. For a complete schedule, visit www.themorgan.org. All events are included with admission to the Morgan. Appropriate for ages 6-12.
 Sunday, December 4, 2-5 p.m.



Gallery Talk

Charles Dickens at 200

Declan Kiely, Robert H. Taylor Curator and Department Head, Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts

Friday, October 21, 7 p.m. 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours

Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Alanna Schindewolf
212.590.0311
aschindewolf@themorgan.org

(Amherst, MA)  The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts is now showing a small exhibition of Pooh and his friends, featuring the book’s penultimate drawing from Winnie-the-Pooh recently purchased by private collectors.  The iconic piece depicts Pooh and Piglet walking into the sunset just moments before they turn back into ordinary toys, and Christopher Robin drags Pooh “bump, bump, bump” back up the stairs.”  Additional Pooh drawings on long-term loan from the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA), are also on exhibit through September 4th.

“Happily for The Carle, the collectors generously asked if we would like to have this drawing on loan for a period of time.  We are pleased to make this wonderful work the centerpiece of a small exhibition surrounded by a selection of other engaging Pooh drawings from the Penguin archive,” said Carle’s Chief Curator Nick Clark.

Winnie the Pooh is one of the most beloved animals in children’s literature, according to Clarke.  Making his first appearance in 1926 in Winnie-the-Pooh and again in the 1928 sequel, The House at Pooh Corner, this “bear of little brain” has been immortalized by the words of author A. A. Milne and the simple but enduring illustrations of E. H. Shepard. Together with his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger, Pooh’s adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood have enchanted readers young and old for over eight decades, and have been described as one of the greatest celebrations of childhood. 

The timelessness of these stories and drawings is captured in what Milne wrote at the end of Chapter X in The House at Pooh Corner, In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place and We Leave Them There: "Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing."
 
About the Museum:
Together with his wife Barbara, Eric Carle, the renowned author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art as the first full-scale museum in this country devoted to national and international picture book art, conceived and built with the aim of celebrating the art that we are first exposed to as children. Through the exploration of images that are familiar and beloved, it is The Museum’s goal to provide an enriching, dynamic, and supportive context for the development of literacy and to foster in visitors of all ages and backgrounds the confidence to appreciate and enjoy art of every kind.
 
The Museum—which houses three galleries dedicated to rotating exhibitions of picture book art, a hands-on Art Studio, a Reading Library, an Auditorium, a Café, and a Museum Shop—is located at 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, MA. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm. Admission is $9 for adults, $6 for children under 18, and $22.50 for a family of four. For further information and directions, call 413-658-1100 or visit The Museum’s website at www.carlemuseum.org.
 
IMAGES ARE AVAILABLE FOR REPRODUCTION For additional press information and/or images, please contact Sandy Soderberg, Marketing Manager (413) 658-1105 / sandys@carlemuseum.org
 
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New York, NY, August 4, 2011—This fall The Morgan Library & Museum will host an exhibition of eighty of the Musée du Louvre's finest drawings by artists working in France from the onset of the Revolution in 1789 through the establishment of the Second Empire in 1852. David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre,which opens Friday, September 23, and runs through December 31, 2011, offers an unprecedented opportunity to experience the mastery of Corot, David, Delacroix, Géricault, Ingres, Prud'hon, and other celebrated artists of the era. The Louvre rarely allows so many major drawings from its famed collection to travel. The Morgan is the sole venue for this exhibition.



Throughout the late eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries, France was beset with seismic political, social, and cultural upheaval. The established royal order was overthrown and the country staggered through successive decades of radical regime changes, from republic to empire to constitutional monarchy and back again. These societal upheavals brought about dramatic changes in artistic style, subject matter, and patronage. A new vitality swept through Paris's artistic community, and practitioners who are today considered among the most outstanding artists of their time—Corot, David, Delacroix, Géricault, Ingres, and Prud'hon—moved in important new directions. David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre chronicles this turbulent period, which yielded works that are considered among the most distinguished in the long history of French drawing.



"France's revolutionary era witnessed the emergence of some of the greatest draftsman of all time, as two generations of artists invoked their skill to depict the people, events, and themes that shaped not only French history, but the future of Western civilization," says William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "The names Corot, David, Delacroix, and Ingres are synonymous with artistic brilliance, and we are delighted the Louvre has partnered with us to make these superb works available for all to see. The Morgan is internationally recognized for its drawings collection, and in the 1990s we lent more than one hundred masterworks to the Louvre for an exhibition. We are pleased now to be able to show some of the Louvre's outstanding drawings."

Jacques-Louis David's stunning The Sabine Women Intervening to Stop the Fight between the Romans and Sabines attests to the artist's reliance upon elaborate compositional studies in preparation for his large-scale paintings. David pasted patches of paper on this sheet to rework key passages, and the end result is very close in composition to the final painting, now in the Louvre. David's attention to every detail of his vast, complex paintings is expressed in a study of Napoleon, which records one of the artist's early ideas for the figure of the emperor in a depiction of his coronation. Napoleon clutches his sword to his heart as he crowns himself while the Pope looks on. Ultimately this depiction of the emperor's brazen act was rejected, and the subject of David's painting became the crowning of Empress Josephine.

A favorite of the Empress Josephine, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon is well represented with a ravishing study in his signature black and white chalks on blue paper depicting the luscious form of Psyche borne aloft. The sheet is a study for his painting The Rape of Psyche. Prud'hon's renowned Portrait of Constance Mayer depicts his lover and artistic collaborator during their happy years, before their relationship turned tragic and she committed suicide. Also on view is one of the artist's acclaimed academic nudes, beautifully worked and revealing a new naturalism.



The inventive genius of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson is exemplified by several remarkable sheets, including the large Injured Turk, Falling Backward—a study for a single figure in his chaotic painting the Battle at Cairo—notable for the figure's dramatic pose and colorful costume, and worked in pastels. Girodet's compelling portrait of the printer Firmin Didot captures his friend in the guise of a Romantic genius, heralding a new era. The work of another pupil of David, Francois-Marius Granet, reveals the importance of Rome for French artists, with his atmospheric, heavily washed panorama of the view from Piazza Trinità dei Monti; his expert handling of watercolor is represented in two examples executed after his return to Paris. 



Strikingly original is Théodore Géricault's richly worked drawing of his own left hand. The artist executed the sheet while on his deathbed, and it epitomizes the Romantic movement's increasing interest in the close study of the human body. His Scene of Combat: The Battle of Prince Eugène testifies to the exploration of subjects from recent French history, here in a manner deeply informed by the artist's time in Italy. He depicts, with classical grandeur and in dramatic chiaroscuro, two figures on horseback in direct conflict, silhouetted and frozen in action. He used a similar technique for his lush meditation on an erotic mythological subject, Leda and the Swan. The artist's masterful watercolor Five Horses at the Stake reveals Gericault's love of that quintessential Romantic subject, the horse. Another artist active in Italy, Camille Corot, is famed for his views of the Roman Campagna and Fontainebleau. Here he also displays his talent for depicting the human figure in Nude Girl Crouching in a Landscape, in which a vulnerable girl self-consciously draws her knees to her chest as she shyly averts her gaze. Her body, with its contours defined by an assertive, dark line, rests in a loosely and abstractly rendered landscape.

The greatest master of portraiture, Ingres, is featured with a substantial group of works, including a famous, meticulously detailed drawing of Louis-François Bertin, founder of one of the most influential French newspapers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Both the drawing and the related painting are regarded as exceptional portraits of the triumphant bourgeoisie during the reign of Louis-Phillippe I (r. 1830-48) and represent the height of Ingres's talent in the genre. In addition to an excellent selection of portraits, including a self-portrait, there are two studies for the artist's major late canvas, The Turkish Bath. Each reveals a different aspect of Ingres's draftsmanship, from a confident pen sketch for the composition to a large sheet of black chalk studies exploring the poses of the nude bathers clustered in an interior. Following in Ingres's wake, the brothers Hippolyte and Paul Flandrin portrayed themselves on the same sheet in a masterpiece of double self-portraiture that emphasizes the older master's legacy.
 
One of the most important paintings by Eugène Delacroix is The Death of Sardanapalus, also at the Louvre. A sheet of preparatory studies related to the canvas captures the energetic development of key figures in the scene. The artist's vigor and the striking fluency with which his hand moved across the page distinctively evoke a work in the making. Delacroix's Study for Liberty Leading the People depicts an early idea for the iconic painting's central figure. In this rough sketch, she is represented as a bare-breasted woman, lunging forward, arm raised as she leads the charge across the barricades. Animated by a sinuous movement and the exaggerated torsion of her hips, Liberty seems to leap off the page. A poignant watercolor of Christ in the Garden of Olives serves as a testimony to the skeptic Delacroix's capacity for emotional intensity and human drama. 



Honoré Daumier's aptitude for naturalism is expressed in a rare early drawing, Head of a Young Woman, Turned Three-Quarters to the Right. The sitter's dress and features suggest that she belongs neither to the realm of the studio nor to the world of bourgeois portraiture, but rather to the prosaic sphere of the working and middle class. A ribald Centaur Abducting a Woman reveals a more robust side of Daumier's oeuvre and displays the full force of his agitated, energetic draughtsmanship. Exceptional works by artists active at mid-century include a vivid and dramatic watercolor of the ancient poet Sappho about to hurl herself off a precipice in despair executed by Théodore Chassériau, who inherited the Romantic fascination with tragic heroines from the past. 



ORGANIZATION AND SPONSORSHIP

David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre is organized by Louis-Antoine Prat, curator in the Department of Graphic Arts at the Musée du Louvre and Jennifer Tonkovich, curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum, with the assistance of Esther Bell, Moore Curatorial Fellow, The Morgan Library & Museum.
 

This exhibition is made possible by a major gift from Karen H. Bechtel. Generous support is provided by the Alex Gordon Fund for Exhibitions, the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc., Karen B. Cohen, Wildenstein & Co., Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Grand Marnier Foundation, with additional assistance from Patrick and Elizabeth Gerschel.


The Morgan acknowledges the exceptional collaboration of the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the support of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The exhibition catalogue is generously underwritten by the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation.



PUBLICATION

The accompanying 200-page hardcover catalogue, like the exhibition itself, is a collaborative project involving the curatorial departments of both the Morgan and the Louvre. A foreword by William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan, is followed by an introductory essay "Great Drawings from a Troubled Period" by Louis-Antoine Prat, curator in the Department of Graphic Arts, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Each work in the exhibition is illustrated in color and accompanied by entries written by Prat and Jennifer Tonkovich, the Morgan's organizing curator, along with Esther Bell, Moore Curatorial Fellow at the Morgan, and Alison Hokanson. The catalogue presents for the first time the Louvre's drawings from this critical period, taking into account new scholarship on individual artists and on the history, literature, and philosophy of the Romantic era. The volume also renders the material accessible to English-speaking audiences, in many cases for the first time. 



PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Symposium

Drawing in the Age of Revolutions: New Perspectives 
This symposium coincides with the exhibition David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre. Leading scholars will explore the diversity of draftsmanship during the period and present new research in the field. The program will conclude with a gallery conversation with curators and speakers.

Saturday, September 24, 2-6 pm*



The Art Market, Drawings Galleries, and Collectors

Louis-Antoine Prat, Musée du Louvre and École du Louvre



Between Language and Painting: The Function of Drawing in the Later Work of Jacques-Louis David

Thomas Crow, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University



The Louvre Drawings: A Cultural Historian's Perspective

Stéphane Gerson, New York University



Drawing's Stepchild: The Printed Image from David to Delacroix

Patricia Mainardi, City University of New York



In-Gallery Talks:

"Petits Souvenirs de Bonne Amitié": Drawings and Friendship in Nineteenth-Century France

Esther Bell, The Morgan Library & Museum


Place and Memory in Nineteenth-Century French Drawings

Alison Hokanson, Metropolitan Museum of Art


Tickets: $25 for Non-Members; $20 for Members; free to students with valid ID
*
Galleries open 10 am to 6 pm. 



Concert

"Réalités Invisibles": Music from the Life of Marcel Proust

The Helicon Ensemble

James Roe, Artistic Director

Marcel Proust was a famous lover of music, the invisible art that only exists in the passage of time. The Helicon Ensemble performs French music important in Proust's life and work, with readings from his masterpiece In Search of Lost Time by noted poet and translator Richard Howard.



Nicholas Phan, tenor; Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Mark Steinberg, violin; Hsin-Yun Huang, viola; Edward Arron, cello; Pedja Muzijevic, piano; Richard Howard, reader and Proust translator



Reynaldo Hahn, Songs and Waltzes 

Camille Saint-Saëns, Violin Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 75 

César Franck, Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 7

Tuesday, October 4, 7:30 pm*

Tickets: $35 for Non-Members; $25 for Members

*

The exhibitions David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre and Ingres at the Morgan, will be open at 6:30 pm for concert attendees.



Family Programs

Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day

As part of Smithsonian Magazine's Annual Museum Day, visit the Morgan for free on September 24 by printing out a ticket here: http://microsite.smithsonianmag.com/ museumday/. Don't miss our family programs, where artist and Art Student League instructor Naomi Campbell will lead a drop-in live model sketching workshop designed to introduce children and their parents to the fundamentals of figure drawing. Families will also be invited to visit the exhibition David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre, where educator Lisa Libicki will engage children in the discovery of drawing as a powerful outlet for artists to express their personal visions. Appropriate for ages 6 and up. Program is free with museum admission or Smithsonian Museum Day Ticket.

Saturday, September 24, 2-5 pm



Winter Family Day Celebration

Join us for our annual family day celebrating the exhibitions David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre and Charles Dickens at 200. Travel back to the days of Dickens and Revolutionary France with art workshops, strolling characters, a costume photo shoot, festive dancing, and more. For a complete schedule, visit www.themorgan.org. All events are included with admission to the Morgan. Appropriate for ages 6-12.

Sunday, December 4, 2-5 pm



Gallery Talks

David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre
Esther Bell, Moore Curatorial Fellow, Department of Drawings and Prints

Friday, October 28, 7 pm


David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre 
Alison Hokanson, research assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Friday, December 2, 7 pm



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY -- A major exhibit and symposium organized by the Vassar College Libraries will mark the centenary of the acclaimed poet Elizabeth Bishop, a 1934 Vassar graduate who earned the Pulitzer Prize and many other major U.S. literary honors before her death in 1979. Central to these upcoming events are the unmatched Elizabeth Bishop Papers housed at the college’s Archives and Special Collections Library, which play a vital research role for scholars, writers, and editors from around the world.Notably, these programs dedicated to Elizabeth Bishop are part of Vassar’s special year-long celebration of the sesquicentennial of its founding.

About the exhibit/“From the Archive: Discovering Elizabeth Bishop”
August 30-December 15
Thompson Memorial Library

Curator Ronald Patkus, the Head of Special Collections at the Vassar College Libraries, asked ten Elizabeth Bishop scholars and editors (Joelle Biele, Lorrie Goldensohn, Saskia Hamilton, Bethany Hicok, Brett Millier, Barbara Page, Alice Quinn, Camille Roman, Lloyd Schwartz, and Thomas Travisano) to
select items from Vassar’s Bishop collection that were important to their writing about the poet. For example, Brett Millier (Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It, University of California Press, 1995) selected a composition book that Bishop used in 1934 right after graduating from college; in the book Millier found four pages of writing about the nuances of island life that suggest the origin of several later Bishop poems. Camille Roman (Elizabeth Bishop’s World War II-Cold War View, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) chose for the exhibit an early draft of the poem “12 O’Clock News,” because discovering it at Vassar led Roman to re-read Bishop’s poetry through the frame of war. Alice Quinn picked two drafts of the unfinished story “Homesickness”; earlier, on the invitation of Bishop’s longtime editor Robert Giroux, Quinn edited a volume of Bishop writings that only reside in the Vassar collection (Edgar Allan Poe & The Jukebox: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments By Elizabeth Bishop, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006).

About the symposium
September 24
Taylor Hall

Hartwick College professor Thomas Travisano will moderate a morning discussion “On Editing Bishop,” with panelists Alice Quinn, Lloyd Schwartz, Saskia Hamilton, and Joelle Biele. Barbara Page, Professor Emeritus at Vassar College, will moderate an afternoon discussion “On Teaching Bishop” with panelists Beth Spires, Lorrie Goldensohn, and Jane Shore. The symposium culminates with a keynote address by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, who will also read his new poem dedicated to Vassar’s sesquicentennial and commissioned by the college for the occasion.

About Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911- 6 October 1979) stands as a major mid-twentieth century American poet, whose influence has been felt among several subsequent generations of poets. Her many prizes included the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, two Guggenheims, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and Brazil's Order of Rio Branco. Bishop's first book of poems, North & South, appeared in 1946; the second, Poems (including North & South and A Cold Spring), in 1955; the third, Questions of Travel, in 1965, and the last, Geography III, in 1976. A one-time Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, Bishop also published several poems in The New Yorker, wrote a number of distinctive short stories, and translated poems and prose in three languages, She wrote a volume in the Life World Library on Brazil, and co-edited An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry.

About the Elizabeth Bishop Papers at the Vassar College Libraries

Originally acquired by Vassar College in 1981 from the poet’s estate, the premiere Elizabeth Bishop repository consists of correspondence, personal papers, working papers, notebooks, diaries, and memorabilia, as well as a substantial amount of material by and about the poet’s friends and colleagues. Among the collection are over 3,500 pages of drafts of poems and prose; over 200 letters from poet Marianne Moore discussing their work and mutual friends; and over 200 letters from poet Robert Lowell discussing their work, Bishop’s influence on his work, as well as such prominent writers as Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O'Connor, and Mary McCarthy.

Vassar has steadily expanded its Bishop collection through donations, bequests, and purchases. “These additions have been both significant and sizeable,” writes curator Ronald Patkus for the publication accompanying the Elizabeth Bishop papers exhibit. “As in the original acquisition, they include a variety of materials, but especially correspondence with friends and fellow poets, such as James Merrill, Emmanuel Brasil, and Lloyd Frankenberg. One of the most important additions came in 2002, when the college acquired a collection from the Portinari family in Brazil, which contained among other things Bishop’s baby book; letters to friends from around the time of her partner Lota’s death; two watercolors; and an annotated copy of the book Brazil, edited by Bishop and first published in 1962.”

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861.

PUBLIC CONTACT: Vassar College Libraries, (845) 437-5760, Office of Campus Activities, (845) 437-5370

PRESS CONTACT: Jeff Kosmacher, Director of Media Relations & Public Affairs, (845) 437-7404, jekosmacher@vassar.edu

New York, NY, July 28, 2011—Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) is among an elite group of nineteenth-century French masters whose style is almost instantly recognizable. Arguably the greatest portraitist of his time, Ingres was a brilliant draftsman, and his drawings have long been prized along with his paintings. Beginning on September 9, The Morgan Library & Museum will present seventeen superb drawings and three letters by Ingres from its collection, together with one exceptional loan, in a focused exhibition in the Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery. Running through November 27, the show spans Ingres's career and provides visitors with an intimate look at a draftsman who is indisputably one of the greatest in French history. 



Ingres's Neoclassicism has often been framed in opposition to the Romanticism of Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault, as well as other artists associated with France's Revolutionary Era. This view tends to obscure a freshness and originality that Ingres shared with his contemporaries. Happily for visitors to the Morgan, the Ingres exhibition will run concurrently with David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre, which will feature a further ten sheets by the artist among the more than seventy drawings from the Louvre chronicling the period book-ended by the Revolution of 1789 and the establishment of the Second Empire in 1852—largely encompassing the years of Ingres's career.

"The Morgan is delighted to present this exceptional group of drawings by an artist whose influence was widespread in his day and continued into the twentieth century," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "Ingres was famous for his devotion to a classical style, yet a number of modern artists, such as Matisse and Picasso, were profoundly indebted to him. We are especially pleased to present this exhibition in the context of the larger show of drawings from the Louvre, allowing visitors to see Ingres in the broad sweep of his time." 



The show will chronicle the major phases of the artist's career, beginning with Portrait of a Boy of ca. 1793-4, which he executed when he was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old student at the Académie Royale in Toulouse. When Ingres entered the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David in 1797, he abandoned the fine modeling of graphite and sensitivity to minute detail that characterize this early drawing. Also on view is a preparatory drawing for Oedipus and the Sphinx of 1808, which dates from the period when the artist was a pensionnaire at the Villa Medici in Rome. Like many of his fellow foreign artists in Rome, Ingres explored and sketched local monuments such as St. Peter's, the Palazzo Barberini, and Santa Maria Maggiore. An extraordinary cityscape, View of Santa Maria Maggiore of ca. 1813-14, was likely executed in a sketchbook that Ingres carried with him to a preferred vantage point on the Esquiline Hill. He precisely rendered the church facade, but merely outlined the baroque sculptures and the procession leading away from the entrance.



In the years following his studies, Ingres established an important studio on Rome's Via Gregoriana where he worked on imperial commissions and painted and drew portraits of French occupation officials and their families. Portrait of Hippolyte Devillers of 1812 features the Director of Probate and Estates who moved to Rome the previous year and sat for Ingres on at least three occasions. Pictured as a bachelor at the age of forty-seven, Devillers appears somewhat nervous and delicate, as if he has not quite gained confidence in his new office. One of the most iconic drawings to be included in the exhibition is Ingres's Portrait of Monsieur Guillaume Guillon Lethière of 1815, which depicts the new Director of the French Academy in Rome in all his convivial pomposity. The delicate and naturalistic shading of Lethière's round face juxtaposed to the rapid and jagged lines of his collar clearly demonstrate why Ingres is considered an unparalleled master of portraiture. 



The Morgan Library & Museum is internationally renowned for its extensive collection of literary and historical manuscripts, and the Ingres exhibition will include not only drawings but also three revelatory letters by the artist. In one poignant example, written to Marie-Anne-Julie Forestier, Ingres's fiancée, the artist laments his intense homesickness during his first days in Rome. He writes, "I lie down from nine at night until six in the morning, I do not sleep, I roll around in my bed, I cry, I think continuously of you . . ." Nine months later, Ingres would break his engagement, blaming his unwillingness to return to Paris after the negative reviews his paintings had received at the Salon. 



Ingres once told a pupil that if he placed a sign above his studio door, it would read Ecole de Dessin (School of Drawing). The centerpiece of the exhibition is the large-scale graphite and black chalk Odalisque and Slave of 1839, which likely served as the model for the engraved version of the subject. The epitome of exoticism and orientalism, this exquisite drawing is emblematic of the erotic tales of Arabia that had captured the imagination of nineteenth-century Paris. 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.



Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org

New York, NY, July 19, 2011—Chinese artist Xu Bing's spectacular work, The Living Word 3, was unveiled to the public at The Morgan Library & Museum on Tuesday, July 19, culminating a week-long installation directed by the artist of more than four hundred calligraphic characters. The Living Word 3 soars from the floor of the Morgan's glass-enclosed Gilbert Court towards a position near its third floor balcony—as the characters rise in the air they gradually change from contemporary Chinese letters to ancient pictographic expressions of birds. It is the artist's third and largest version of "The Living Word" series and the first to be displayed in a New York City museum. The work will remain on view through October 2. 



Xu Bing has described The Living Word as a "floating, iridescent cloud of calligraphy" that traces the Chinese character niao, meaning "bird," through time. The characters are painted in rainbow-like colors to create a magical, fairy-tale quality as they rise and escape from the confines of literal definition. The installation at the Morgan also includes a selection of the artist's original sketches for the project.



"Xu Bing has long been attracted to the intersection of word and image," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum, "and The Living Word 3 is an extraordinary example of this. Moreover, it is particularly appropriate for the Morgan as it speaks to the focus of our collections on both text and fine art. We are delighted that Xu Bing has specifically designed this work to take full advantage of the beauty of Renzo Piano's architecture."


Though the Morgan is noted for its holdings of American and European art and literature, its founder, Pierpont Morgan, was also interested in Chinese art. He collected art and artifacts from the Middle East as well as Asia, and the Morgan will hold an exhibition this fall of some of its greatest Islamic manuscripts.



Most of the four hundred acrylic characters that make up The Living Word 3 are carefully tied to a specially-made wire grid attached to the Gilbert Court ceiling. The characters are suspended with monofilament, also known as fishing line. The court is the central public crossroads of the museum and includes the popular Morgan Café.
 

Xu Bing received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999. In 2002 he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize and in 2004 received the first Wales International Visual Art Prize, Artes Mundi. Columbia University presented him with a Doctor of Humane Letters in 2010. In 2008, he was appointed vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and he now divides his time between that city and New York.



The artist grew up in Beijing but during the final years of the Cultural Revolution was sent to the countryside to perform farm labor. He entered China's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1977 to study printmaking, receiving both his bachelor's and master's degrees there.



Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at numerous museums, including the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, and the National Gallery of Prague. His work has also been featured in the 45th and 51st Venice Biennales as well as in the Sydney and Johannesburg biennales.



Since reopening in 2006, The Morgan Library & Museum has mounted a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions devoted to modern and contemporary art, including solo shows of work by Philip Guston, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine. In the summer of 2010 it held its first exhibition in Gilbert Court with three sculptures by Mark di Suvero.



The installation of The Living Word 3 is made possible by a donation from Susanna and Livio Borghese and further underwritten by Clement and Elizabeth Moore, Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky, and The Ricciardi Family Exhibition Fund, in honor of Parker Gilbert and in appreciation of his many contributions to The Morgan Library & Museum.



Generous support is also provided by the American Friends of the Shanghai Museum, with additional assistance from the DeBevoise Calello Family, Helen Little, and Xiling Group.



Public Program

A Conversation with Xu Bing

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 6:30 pm


In conjunction with the installation Xu Bing: The Living Word (July 19 through October 2, 2011), Xu Bing will discuss the genesis of his celebrated work with Isabelle Dervaux, curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan. This program coincides with the publication of Xu Bing, a monograph published by Albion Editions which includes a full chronological account of the artist's life and work, featuring essays by David Elliott, Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Reiko Tomii, and an interview conducted by Andrew Solomon. 

This program is free. Advanced reservations are recommended as seating is limited. Please email: public_programs@themorgan.org 



Xu Bing Publication


This beautifully illustrated monograph on Xu Bing is published by Albion Editions and is the first major publication on one of the most prominent and influential Chinese artists working in the world today. Independent Japanese critic and scholar Reiko Tomii provides a full chronological account of the artist's life and work, from his student experiences in rural China and his involvement with the 1985 New Wave movement, which jump-started the rapid ascent of Chinese contemporary artists, to his move to the United States in the 1990s and subsequent success on the global stage. British curator and critic David Elliott and Robert E. Harrist Jr., Jane and Leopold Swergold Professor of Chinese Art History at Columbia University, explore key aspects of his practice and place it within the context of both recent Chinese history and international contemporary art, and an interview between Xu Bing and acclaimed author Andrew Solomon sheds light on recent events in the artist's life. 


The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-34
05
212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org

David Zwirner is pleased to announce the gallery’s second annual summer pop-up bookstore.

July 25 - August 5, 2011
Hours: Monday - Friday, 10am - 6pm

Open late on Thursday, July 28 until 8pm for the second annual Chelsea Art Walk, an evening of extended hours and special events taking place at over 125 galleries and art institutions around Chelsea. Visit artwalkchelsea.com for details.

For two weeks only—Monday, July 25 through Friday, August 5—there will be special offers on a selection of rare and out-of-print books, signed artist catalogues and monographs, DVDs, posters, collectible show cards, and more. Highlights from this year’s pop-up include ceramic plates by Marcel Dzama, signed copies of the newly-released artist’s book Perlstein by Michael Riedel (limited edition), films by Raymond Pettibon, posters by Christopher Williams, and documentary films about Alice Neel and Robert Crumb.

The pop-up bookstore coincides with the gallery’s summer exhibition, The House Without the Door, on view until August 5.

For more information:
Pop-Up Bookstore contact:
Jessica Manchester
212-727-2070 or jmanchester@davidzwirner.com
Media contact:
Ben Thornborough, Press Officer
212-727-2070 x 141 or bthornborough@davidzwirner.com
twitter: @davidzwirner.com

Summer hours:
Monday - Friday, 10am - 6pm
In July and August, David Zwirner is closed on Saturdays. The gallery re-opens on Tuesday, September 6 with the Artists for Haiti exhibition. Visit artistsforhaiti.com for information. 

AUSTIN, Texas—"Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored," an exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, reveals the rarely seen "machinery" of censorship in the United States between the two world wars.

The exhibition runs from Sept. 6 to Jan. 22, 2012, at the Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin.

Featuring more than 200 items drawn primarily from the Ransom Center's collections, the exhibition explores the question: How did hundreds of thousands of books, pictures, plays and magazines come to be banned, burned, seized and censored in less than 30 years?

"Traditionally, censorship exhibitions start with John Milton's 'Areopagitica' and then provide a list of banned books," said Ransom Center Assistant Director and Curator for Academic Programs Danielle Sigler. "This approach gives you perspective on which books have been banned over time, but it doesn't explain why or how censorship took place. This exhibition focuses on how censorship happens in one country, during a particular era. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice had a leader who stormed into bookshops, pulled things off the shelves and hauled people to court. The New England Watch and Ward Society in Boston created an informal network of booksellers who quietly removed books from the shelves when they were deemed obscene. At the same time individuals operating as postmasters and customs agents decided for themselves what was obscene."

The exhibition draws heavily from the Ransom Center's collection of Morris Ernst, the leading civil liberties attorney who successfully defended James Joyce's "Ulysses" when it was put on trial for obscenity in 1933. In 2009, the Ransom Center received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to catalog the Morris Ernst papers. The Ernst papers will be open for research in late 2011. The exhibition features correspondence revealing the mechanics behind censorship, manuscripts edited for obscenity and pirated editions of James Joyce's "Ulysses" and D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover."

"Because the Center houses collections from writers, agents, publishers and attorneys, we can tell all aspects of this story," said Sigler.

The exhibition is organized by censoring institution, including sections on the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the New England Watch and Ward Society, the Book-of-the Month Club, the Post Office Department and the Treasury Department, as well as sections on the 1933 "Ulysses" trial and writers' responses to censorship.

Between the two world wars, censors waged war on "objectionable" literature using tactics from extra-legal intimidation to federal prosecution. Larger-than-life personalities battled publicly over obscenity, "clean books" and freedom of expression while writers, agents and publishers attempted to navigate the increasingly complex world of American censorship.
"The exhibition is limited to a particular time period, so the visitor can begin to get a sense of the materials that reformers deemed objectionable at that specific moment in American history," said Sigler. "During the interwar years, more often than not, the objection boiled down to sex.

"One of the goals of the exhibition is to show that censorship is far more complicated than one might think. In the United States in this particular period, it was not a matter of a monolithic body censoring books. The process is more nuanced. As you look at these materials, you begin to understand why reformers argued for censorship, why authors battled against it and even why some publishers found censorship a boon for sales."

High-resolution press images from the exhibition are available.

"Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored" can be seen in the Ransom Center Galleries on Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours to 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays.

AUSTIN, Texas—The Harry Ransom Center's exhibition "The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925" showcases how one artifact, in this case a door from a Greenwich Village bookshop in the 1920s, can serve as a starting point to reconstruct the history of a time and place.

The door, which is covered in signatures of visitors to the bookshop, serves as an entryway into the lives, careers and relationships of New York City bohemians of that era. Drawn entirely from the Ransom Center's collections, the exhibition highlights items related to the bookshop, the era and the signers themselves.

The exhibition runs from Sept. 6, 2011, through Jan. 22, 2012, at the Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin. The gallery exhibition is a physical complement to a web exhibition of the same name, which launches Sept. 1 at www.hrc.utexas.edu/bookshopdoor.

As early as 1921, noteworthy visitors to Frank Shay's bookshop, located at 4 Christopher Street in the heart of the Village, began signing the narrow door that opened into the store's back room. When the shop closed in 1925, manager Juliette Koenig preserved the door. The Ransom Center purchased the door in 1960 and added it to the collection of Christopher Morley, who was a patron of the shop and a friend of many of the door's signers. The Center published a brief article about the door in 1972 in "The Library Chronicle," but the door has never been investigated thoroughly.

Many of the signatures on the door represent significant figures in the literary Modernism canon: Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis and Vachel Lindsay. Many more are remembered for their roles in the Greenwich Village and wider New York intellectual scenes. Other signers include founders of the Provincetown players, the theater troupe that launched Eugene O'Neill's career, as well as Hollywood screenwriters, "bohemian" characters, book designers, cartoonists and pilgrims to the Village.

The door is signed on both sides by more than 240 artists, writers, publishers and other notable habitués of the bohemian scene in New York at the time, and the exhibition uses the signatures to reconstruct the intersecting communities that made Greenwich Village famous as an epicenter of Modernism.

Like many Village businesses, the shop was as much an intellectual and social enterprise as a commercial one. Founder Frank Shay not only ran the shop, he also published a newspaper, books and a poetry magazine from the same address. The shop stocked publications that mirrored its range of customers: socialist magazines, commercial weeklies, avant-garde poetry, best-selling novels, children’s picture books and the latest censored shocker.

The exhibition is divided into four sections: "Reconstructing the Bookshop," which uses shop stationery, publications, maps, reconstructions of shop window displays and more to immerse visitors in New York bohemia from the era; "Deciphering the Door," which includes the door itself; "Christopher Morley," which looks at the man who was at the center of the community; and "Autograph Communities," which highlights some of the most interesting names and communities represented on the door.

The exhibition also includes a touch screen where visitors can delve more deeply into the connections between the door signers through the web exhibition.

"A Portal to Bohemia" introduces visitors to the relationship between artistic and commercial production during the modernist period and offers a window to a world in which the two were very much combined. A haven of experiment and unconventional living, the Village was also a place where the modern book and magazine businesses and professional modern theater flourished, laying the foundation for the creative culture of New York as we know it today.
"As we all know, bookselling and buying have changed dramatically in recent years," said Ransom Center Cline Curator of Literature Molly Schwartzburg. "Not long ago, bookshops were important to the social and intellectual community of any given city or town, and as that changes it is important to understand the history of bookshops, both as businesses and as gathering places."

High-resolution press images from the exhibition are available.

"A Portal to Bohemia" can be seen in the Ransom Center Galleries on Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours to 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays.

New York, NY— The more than 400 calligraphic characters that will comprise Chinese artist Xu Bing’s The Living Word 3 at The Morgan Library & Museum will begin being put in place Monday, July 12. The work will be completed on Tuesday, July 19, in the Morgan’s glass-enclosed Gilbert Court and will soar from the floor to a position just below the ceiling, some fifty feet above ground. It is the third in the artist’s “The Living Word” series and is the first ever to be displayed in a New York City museum. It will remain on view through October 2.
 

Xu Bing has described The Living Word as a “floating, iridescent cloud of calligraphy” that traces the Chinese character niao, meaning “bird,” from its present-day usage in simplified Chinese to its ancient pictographic expression. The artist will be at the Morgan during installation and a selection of his original sketches for the project will also be on view.



“Xu Bing has long been attracted to the intersection of word and image,” said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum, “and The Living Word 3 is an extraordinary example of this. Moreover, it is particularly appropriate for the Morgan as it speaks to the focus of our collections on both text and fine art. We are delighted that Xu Bing has specifically designed this work to take full advantage of the beauty of Renzo Piano’s architecture.”



Though the Morgan is noted for its holdings of American and European art and literature, its founder, Pierpont Morgan, was also interested in Chinese art. He collected art and artifacts from the Middle East as well as Asia, and the Morgan will hold an exhibition this fall of some its greatest Islamic manuscripts.

Most of the 400 painted, acrylic characters that will make up The Living Word 3 will be tied to a specially made wire grid with monofilament, also known as fishing line. The grid, in turn, will be fastened to the Gilbert Court ceiling. The space is the central public crossroads of the museum and includes the popular Morgan café. 


Xu Bing received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999. In 2002 he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize and in 2004 received the first Wales International Visual Art Prize, Artes Mundi. Columbia University presented him with a Doctor of Humane Letters in 2010.



The artist grew up in Beijing but during the final years of the Cultural Revolution he was sent to the countryside to perform farm labor. He entered China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1977 to study printmaking, receiving both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees there.



Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at numerous museums, including the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, and the National Gallery of Prague. His work has also been featured in the 45th and 51st Venice Biennales as well as in the Sydney and Johannesburg biennales.



Since reopening in 2006, The Morgan Library & Museum has mounted a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions devoted to modern and contemporary art, including solo shows of work by Philip Guston, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine. In the summer of 2010 it held its first exhibition in Gilbert Court with three sculptures by Mark di Suvero.



The installation of The Living Word is supported by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Livio Borghese in honor of S. Parker Gilbert, with additional assistance from the American Friends of the Shanghai Museum. 



Public Program

A Conversation with Xu Bing

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 6:30 pm


In conjunction with the installation Xu Bing: The Living Word (July 19 through October 2, 2011), Xu Bing will discuss the genesis of his celebrated work with Isabelle Dervaux, curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan. This program coincides with the publication of Xu Bing, a monograph published by Albion Editions which includes a full chronological account of the artist's life and work, featuring essays by David Elliott, Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Reiko Tomii, and an interview conducted by Andrew Solomon. 
This program is free. Advanced reservations are recommended as seating is limited. Please email: public_programs@themorgan.org. 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org



Hours

Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.



Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.
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The National Sporting Library and Museum, Middleburg, Virginia, celebrates the opening of its Sporting Art Museum in October 2011.

The inaugural exhibition for the new Museum is Afield in America: 400 Years of Animal & Sporting Art 1585-1985, curated by F. Turner Reuter, Jr., and based on his book Animal and Sporting Artists in America which was published by the National Sporting Library in 2008. Mr. Reuter’s book is being reprinted this year. The inaugural exhibition in the new Museum is intended to raise awareness of the importance of animal and sporting art as a reflection of American history and cultural life.

Designed to attract the widest possible audience, Afield in America presents works by iconic American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Frederic Remington, as well as those by recognized masters of the animal and sporting art genre, including John James Audubon, Edward Troye, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, and William Tylee Ranney.

“The works of other fine American sporting artists, which have long been esteemed by enthusiasts of the genre but, until recently, were often overlooked by art historians, are an important focus of the exhibition,” says Mr. Reuter. This group includes: William Herbert Dunton, Herbert Haseltine, Thomas Hewes Hinckley, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Alexander Pope, Ogden Pleissner, Percival Rosseau, and John Martin Tracy.

The exhibition will also have an illustrated, color catalogue. In the catalogue, critical essays explore larger interpretations of the works with the objective of defining the remarkable role animal and sporting artists have played in the history of American art. Essayists include William H. Gerdts, Ph.D., art historian and author of Art Across America; Adam D. Harris, Ph.D., Curator of the National Museum of Wildlife Art and author of Wildlife in American Art; Daniel J. Herman, Ph.D., historian and author of Hunting and the American Imagination; and Robin R. Salmon, author and Vice President for Collections and Curator of Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens; and F. Turner Reuter, Jr.
 
Afield in America: 400 Years of Animal & Sporting Art 1585-1985, will run from October 11, 2011 through January 14, 2012.

About the National Sporting Library and Museum
The National Sporting Library and Museum, Middleburg, Virginia, is dedicated to preserving, sharing and promoting the literature, art, and culture of horse and field sports. Founded as the National Sporting Library in 1954, by George L. Ohrstrom, Sr. and Alexander Mackay-Smith, the institution has expanded to become a library, research facility, and art museum with over 17,000 books and works of art in the collections. The John H. Daniels Fellowship program supports research and includes scholars from around the world. Information is shared through exhibits, lectures, seminars, publications, and special events. Many of the programs are free and open to the public.

The Library and Museum are located in the beautiful historic village of Middleburg, Virginia. The NSLM consists of two buildings on the same campus. The Library, built in 1999, was designed to provide facilities for book stewardship and research. It has the Forrest E. Mars, Sr., Exhibit Center and the Founders’ Room for public events. While primarily a research center, the Library is open to the public. The historic building, Vine Hill, also located on the campus, was once occupied by the Library. Vine Hill has been renovated and expanded to house the new art Museum.

About the Celebration Weekend October 7 - 9, 2011
To commemorate the opening of the Museum, the NSLM will host a historic Coaching Drive in the countryside and a Gala on the Museum grounds during a weekend celebration October 7 - 9, 2011. There will be over 25 historic coaches participating in a pageant on Saturday, October 8, 10:00 a.m., at the Upperville Colt & Horse Show grounds, site of the oldest horse show in the country. The presentation will be open to the public.

Visitor Information
The National Sporting Library and Museum
102 The Plains Road
P.O. Box 1335
Middleburg, Virginia 20118-1335
Tel. (540) 687-6542
Fax (540) 687-8540
www.nsl.org 

Baltimore—In 1999, the Walters Art Museum and a team of researchers began a project to read the erased texts of The Archimedes Palimpsest—the oldest surviving copy of works by the greatest mathematical genius of antiquity. Over 12 years, many techniques were employed by over 80 scientists and scholars in the fields of conservation, imaging and classical studies. The exhibition Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes will tell the story of The Archimedes Palimpsest's journey and the discovery of new scientific, philosophical and political texts from the ancient world. This medieval manuscript demonstrates that Archimedes discovered the mathematics of infinity, mathematical physics and combinatorics—a branch of mathematics used in modern computing. This exhibition will be on view at the Walters from Oct. 16, 2011-Jan. 1, 2012.

Archimedes lived in the Greek city of Syracuse in the third century B.C. He was a brilliant mathematician, physicist, inventor, engineer and astronomer. In 10th-century Constantinople (present day Istanbul), an anonymous scribe copied the Archimedes treatise in the original Greek onto parchment. In the 13th century, a monk erased the Archimedes text, cut the pages along the center fold, rotated the leaves 90 degrees and folded them in half. The parchment was then recycled, together with the parchment of other books, to create a Greek Orthodox prayer book. This process is called palimpsesting; the result of the process is a palimpsest.

On Oct. 28, 1998, The Archimedes Palimpsest was purchased at Christie's by an anonymous collector for two million dollars. It is considered by many to be the most important scientific manuscript ever sold at auction because it contains Archimedes' erased texts.

"The collector deposited the Palimpsest at the Walters for conservation, imaging, study and exhibition in 1999, but many thought that nothing more could be recovered from this book. It was in horrible condition, having suffered a thousand years of weather, travel and abuse," said Archimedes Project Director and Walters Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books Will Noel. "Detailed detective work and the serendipitous discovery of important documents and photographs allowed us to reconstruct what happened to the Palimpsest in the 20th century, when it was subject to appalling treatment and overpainted with forgeries. A team of devoted scholars using the latest imaging technology was able to reveal and decipher the original text."

Before imaging could begin, the manuscript had to be stabilized. Conserving the manuscript took 12 years, including four years just to take the book apart due to the fragile nature of parchment damaged by mold and a spine covered in modern synthetic glue.

"I documented everything and saved all of the tiny pieces from the book, including paint chips, parchment fragments and thread, and put them into sleeves so we knew what pages they came from," said Abigail Quandt, Walters senior conservator of manuscripts and rare books. "I stabilized the flaking ink on the parchment using a gelatin solution, made innumerable repairs with Japanese paper and reattached separated folios."

In 2000, a team began recovering the erased texts. They used imaging techniques that rely on the processing of different wavelengths of infrared, visible and ultraviolet light in a technique called multispectral imaging. By employing different processing techniques, including Principal Components Analysis, text was exposed that had not been seen in a thousand years.

By 2004, about 80% of the manuscript had been imaged. The most difficult pages left were covered with a layer of grime or 20th-century painted forgeries. These leaves were brought to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), one of the most advanced light laboratories in the world, where a tiny but powerful x-ray beam scanned the leaves. The x-rays detected and recorded where beams bounced off iron atoms, and since the ink of the Palimpsest's under text is written with iron, the writing on the page could be mapped. This enabled scholars to read large sections of previously hidden text.

This exhibition has been generously supported by an anonymous donor and by the Stockman Family Foundation.

Discoveries in The Archimedes Palimpsest
Archimedes, in his treatise The Method of Mechanical Theorems, works with the concept of absolute infinity, and this Palimpsest contains the only surviving copy of this important treatise. He claims that two different sets of lines are equal in multitude, even though it is clearly understood that they are infinite. This approach is remarkably similar to 16th- and 17th-century works leading to the invention of the calculus.

Also found only in the Palimpsest is Archimedes' Stomachion. It is the earliest existing western treatise concerning combinatorics. It is thought that Archimedes was trying to discover how many ways you could recombine 14 fixed pieces and still make a perfect square. The answer is high and counterintuitive at 17,152 combinations. Combinatorics is critical in modern computing.

In addition to Archimedes' works, six other erased books of history and philosophy were discovered. Twenty pages of the Palimpsest were created from the erased texts of ten pages from a manuscript containing speeches by Hyperides, an Athenian orator from the golden age of Greek democracy. Twenty-eight pages were from the erased text of 14 pages containing a Commentary on the Categories of the Athenian philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle's Categories is a fundamental text to western philosophy. This commentary survives nowhere else.

When the Palimpsest was imaged at SSRL, the name of the scribe that erased Archimedes' writings was discovered on the first page of the Palimpsest. His name was Johannes Myronas, and he finished transcribing the prayers on April 14, 1229, in Jerusalem.

Future Conservation Research
The exhibition Lost and Found: The Secret of Archimedes will demonstrate what we have discovered at the Walters. The last two galleries in the exhibition will look at what the museum hopes to discover in the future and how scientific discovery can enhance our understanding and appreciation of artworks. The interactive learning stations in these galleries will include five pieces from the museum's collection and will demonstrate how the staff at the Walters collaborates to learn about art and on how to best maintain and preserve this art for posterity. Conservation, interpretation and authenticity will be explored as well as new scientific techniques being used at the Walters.

Publications
The Archimedes Codex presents the story of the lost manuscript as part archaeological detective story, part science and part history. The 313-page book, specially priced at $13.50, is co-authored by Walters Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books Will Noel and Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Stanford University Reviel Netz.

To coincide with the exhibition's opening, two volumes, each priced at $125, of a projected scholarly five-part series documenting the findings of the Archimedes Palimpsest Project will be published for the Walters by Cambridge University Press. The first volume surveys the Palimpsest's history and the projects' scientific findings. The second volume provides transcriptions of the hitherto unknown texts contained in the Palimpsest, accompanied by facsimiles of the processed images from which these transcriptions were constructed.
 
Hours/Admission
Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes is a special ticketed exhibition. General admission to the permanent collection is free.

Special exhibition admission prices are $10 for adults; $8 for seniors; $6 for students/young adults (18-25); free for 17 and under and members.

For additional information, call 410-547-9000 or go to the website at www.thewalters.org.

The Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum is located in downtown Baltimore's historic Mount Vernon Cultural District at North Charles and Centre streets and is one of only a few museums worldwide to present a comprehensive history of art from the third millennium B.C. to the early 20th century. Collection highlights include Egyptian mummies, Renaissance suits of armor, Fabergé eggs, Art Nouveau jewelry and old master paintings. Among its thousands of treasures, the Walters holds the finest collection of ivories, jewelry, enamels and bronzes in America and a spectacular reserve of illuminated manuscripts and rare books. The Walters' Egyptian, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Ethiopian and western medieval art collections are among the best in the nation, as are the museum's holdings of Renaissance and Asian art. Every major trend in French painting during the 19th century is represented by one or more works in the Walters' collection.

# # #
Media Contact:

Amy Mannarino

410-547-9000, ext. 277

amannarino@thewalters.org

NEW YORK, NY--MULTIPLE, LIMITED, UNIQUE: Since 2008, the Center for Book Arts has been involved in a Collections Initiative, which includes the in-depth cataloguing and preservation of our extensive collection of artist books, prints, catalogues, and ephemera. These works are now available to the public through our free and accessible online collections database (centerforbookarts.dreamhosters.com). Multiple, Limited, Unique, the culmination of the three-year effort of the Collections Initiative, offers an overview of the history and development of book arts in the 20th century, and examines the role of the institution in both nurturing and promoting innovative artists and preserving traditional artistic practices.
 
This exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue with essays by noted curators and collectors, including by Johanna Drucker, author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic; Erin Riley-Lopez, Independent Curator and former Associate Curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts; Nina M. Schneider, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA; Amanda Stevenson, Curator, Museum of Printing History; and Tony White, Director, Fine Arts Library, Indiana University in Bloomington. In addition, the catalogue includes an essay by Executive Director Alexander Campos and an introduction by Jen Larson. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a public discussion with Ms. Larson and selected participating artists on Wednesday, July 20, and will travel to the Savannah College of Arts and Design (Fall 2011), Minnesota Center for Book Arts (Winter 2012), Museum of Printing History (Spring/Summer 2012), Lafayette College (Fall 2012), and the Book Club of California (Winter 2013).
 
Multiple, Limited, Unique is organized by Alexander Campos, Executive Director, with assistance from Jen Larson, Collections Specialist.The artists featured in this exhibition are Shana Agid, Rosaire Appel, Tomie Arai, Eileen Arnow-Levine, Dennis Ashbaugh/ Kevin Begos/ William Gibson/ Karl Foulkes/ Peter Pettingill, Lynne Avadenka, Bryan Baker, Delphi Basilicato, Barton Lidice Benes, Doug Beube, Karl Beveridge, Michael and Winifred Bixler, Helen M. Brunner, Julie Chen and Clifton Meador, Deborah Chodoff, Carole Condé, Ana Cordeiro, Beatrice Coron, Maureen Cummins, Guy Davenport and Barry Magid, Donna Maria de Creeft, Sylvia de Swaan, Sue Donym and Marie Guise, Nicolás Dumit Estévez, Dikko Faust, Ann Fessler, Ellie Ga, Chitra Ganesh, Anne Gilman, Kathe Gregory, Roni Gross, Joshua Harris, Pablo Helguera, Barbara Henry, Candace Hicks, Ellen Hotzblatt, Wennie Huang, Gautam Kansara, Matt Knannlein, Kumi Korf, Carole P. Kunstadt, Hedi Kyle, Suzanne Lacy, Guy Laramée, Edna Lazaron, Warren Lehrer, Catarina Leitão, Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, Nancy Loeber, Hilary Lorenz, Margot Lovejoy, Isabelle Lumpkin, Mikhail Magaril, Russell Maret, Franco Marinai, Barbara Mauriello, Scott McCarney, Jean McGarry, Amber McMillan, Susan Mills, Richard Minsky, Tadashi Mitsui, Roni Mocán, Ivan Monforte, Carlos Motta, Mark Murray/Caliban Press, Rick Myers, Bruce Nauman, Shervone Neckles, Jánis Rudolfs Nedéla, Heidi Neilson and Chris Petrone, Sarah Nicholls, Sarah Paul Ocampo/ Rachel LaRue Kessler/ Sierra Nelson, Alfonso Ossorio, Shani Peters, Michalis Pichler, Catya Plate, Sarah Plimpton, Fa Poonvoralak, Lilliana Porter, James Prez, Robin Price, John Randle, Gary Richman, Benjamin D. Rinehart, John L. Risseeuw, Martha Rosler, John Ross, A.S.C. Rower, Ed Ruscha, Marian St. Laurent, Peter Schell, Norman Shapiro, Zoe Sheehan-Saldaña, Masumi Shibata, George K. Shortess, Robbin Ami Silverberg, SKART, Skutá, Karina Skvirsky, Kiki Smith, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Tattfoo Tan, Barbara Tetenbaum, Danny Tisdale, Juana Valdes, Claire van Vliet, John Frederick Walker, James Walsh, Marshall Weber, Cory Wheelock, Michael Winkler, Sam Winston, Simon Woolham, Paul Woodbine, Shanna Yarbrough, Ewa Monika Zebrowski, Paul Zelevansky, and Marilyn Zornado.

Funding for this exhibition, and for the Collections Initiative as a whole, has been generously provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation. Funding for the Center for Book Arts Exhibition Season is provided by the Delmas Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Where: The Center for Book Arts, 28 W. 27th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY
When: July 6 - September 10, 2011
Opening Reception: Wednesday, July 6, 7 -9 pm
Admission: Free
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June 6--Philadelphia, PA. Here and Now: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs by Ten Philadelphia Artists presents a selection of works on paper by ten Philadelphia artists who reflect the remarkable strength and diversity of talent that exists in this city’s cultural community. The artists represented in the exhibition—Astrid Bowlby, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala (who operate in collaboration), Vincent Feldman, Daniel Heyman, Isaac Tin Wei Lin, Virgil Marti, Joshua Mosley, Serena Perrone, Hannah Price, and Mia Rosenthal—range in age from 25 to 50 and utilize a broad range of pictorial strategies. Several also share an interest in addressing contemporary social and political problems in their work, from the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib to the challenges of everyday life in this city’s neighborhoods. In some cases, such issues are confronted in a direct and unflinching way, while others are addressed with edgy humor or ironically masked by great beauty.

“Philadelphia has a remarkable—and remarkably vibrant—artistic community,” says Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “and this is something that the Museum should not simply acknowledge, but also celebrate. It makes our city a lively and very special place. What I find especially exciting about this exhibition is the exceptional quality and creativity that shines through in the work of each of these artists.”

The work of sculptor, installation artist, draftsman, and printmaker, Astrid Bowlby (born 1961) refers to accumulation: of pieces of paper, of shapes and patterns, of lines with varying densities. Here and Now will include Round Robin (2004), a suite of six etchings, consisting of whimsical gatherings of flowers. Philadelphia native Vincent David Feldman (born 1966) is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Tyler School of Art’s program in Tokyo, Japan, which is the source of the photographs shown in the exhibition, including the gigantic Reiyukai Shakaden Temple (Tokyo, 1975). The painted photographs of Isaac Tin Wei Lin (born 1976) featured in Here and Now are animated by wild accumulations of calligraphic patterns, musical notations, and cartoon-like elements, creating charged areas in otherwise negative spaces. The youngest of the artists in the exhibition, photographer Hannah Price (born 1986) will show a group of inkjet prints from her ongoing series City of Brotherly Love which documents a particular aspect of her life in Philadelphia, the first large city in which she has ever lived.

Innis Shoemaker, the Museums’s Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, notes: “Some of the artists in this exhibition are also known for their work in other media, such as installation, video, sculpture, or painting. It has been a privilege, though sometimes a challenge, to make a relatively small selection from the remarkable variety of work being produced today by so many talented artists in our city and to give some sense of what’s going on right now.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States, showcasing more than 2,000 years of exceptional human creativity in masterpieces of painting, sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts and architectural settings from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. An exciting addition is the newly renovated and expanded Perelman Building, which opened its doors in September 2007 with five new exhibition spaces, a soaring skylit galleria, and a café overlooking a landscaped terrace. The Museum offers a wide variety of enriching activities, including programs for children and families, lectures, concerts and films.

For additional information, contact the Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art at (215) 684-7860. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call (215) 763-8100 or visit the Museum's website at www.philamuseum.org.

New York, NY, May 20, 2011—The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that Chinese artist Xu Bing will create a new, larger version of his celebrated work The Living Word specifically for the Morgan's soaring glass-enclosed Gilbert Court. The Living Word 3 will be on view starting July 15. The project is the second in a series of annual summer installations of works by contemporary artists in the Renzo Piano-designed space. 


Xu Bing has described The Living Word as a "floating, iridescent cloud of calligraphy" that traces the Chinese character niao, meaning "bird," from its present-day usage in simplified Chinese to its ancient pictographic expression. The Morgan installation will comprise approximately 400 carved and painted acrylic characters, rising from the Gilbert Court's floor to its fifty-foot ceiling. It will be the largest of The Living Word series to date. A selection of the artist's original sketches for the project will also be on view.

"

Xu Bing has long been attracted to the intersection of word and image," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum, "and The Living Word is an extraordinary example of this. Moreover, it is particularly appropriate for the Morgan as it speaks to the focus of our collections on both text and fine art. We are delighted that Xu Bing has specifically designed this work to take full advantage of the beauty of Renzo Piano's architecture."



Though the Morgan is noted for its holdings of American and European art and literature, its founder, Pierpont Morgan, was also interested in Chinese art. He collected art and artifacts from the Middle East as well as Asia, and the Morgan will hold an exhibition this fall of some its greatest Islamic manuscripts.



During installation of The Living Word 3, scheduled to begin on July 5, visitors to the Morgan will be able to watch the work take form. Most of the 400 individual characters will be suspended from the Gilbert Court ceiling. This will be the first time a work from The Living Word series has been publicly displayed in a New York City museum.

Xu Bing received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999. In 2002 he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize and in 2004 received the first Wales International Visual Art Prize, Artes Mundi. Columbia University presented him with a Doctor of Humane Letters in 2010.



The artist grew up in Beijing but during the final years of the Cultural Revolution he was sent to the countryside to perform farm labor. He entered China's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1977 to study printmaking, receiving both his bachelor's and master's degrees there.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at numerous museums, including the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, and the National Gallery of Prague. His work has also been featured in the 45th and 51st Venice Biennales as well as in the Sydney and Johannesburg biennales.



Since reopening in 2006, The Morgan Library & Museum has mounted a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions devoted to modern and contemporary art, including solo shows of work by Philip Guston, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine. In the summer of 2010 the Morgan held its first exhibition in Gilbert Court with three sculptures by Mark di Suvero.



This installation of The Living Word 3 is supported by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Livio Borghese in honor of S. Parker Gilbert, with additional assistance from the American Friends of the Shanghai Museum. 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.



Admission

$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org

When Earth is viewed from space, cloud formations, coastlines, mountain ranges, islands, deltas, glaciers and rivers take on patterns resembling abstract art—with striking textures and brilliant colors.

These images can be seen in a new exhibit at the Library of Congress, starting Tuesday, May 31. The U.S. Geological Survey’s "Earth as Art" will be on display in the exhibition hall outside the Geography and Map Reading Room, on the basement level of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

The exhibit, which is free and open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, will remain on display at the Library for one year, until May 31, 2012.

The 40 award-winning Landsat satellite images will become a part of the permanent collection of the Library’s Geography and Map Division. In 2006, the division hosted an earlier "Earth as Art" exhibit and those images also became a part of the Library’s permanent collection.

Division chief John Hébert said "The Geography and Map Division is pleased, once again, to receive the exhibition for its permanent collection and to place it on display for an extended period of time. Our patrons and staff enjoyed previous renderings of "Earth as Art," and in my preliminary review, these new "Earth as Art" images will delight all. It is amazing to see how places on Earth from space do appear as art, and yet, at the same time, reflect the ever-presence of humankind in reshaping Earth’s appearance."

Landsat satellites for nearly 40 years have captured images of the Earth’s surface, providing data for applications in business, science, education, government and national security. The satellites monitor important natural processes and human land use such as vegetation growth, deforestation, agriculture, coastal and river erosion, snow accumulation, fresh-water reservoir replenishment and urbanization.

The U.S. Geological Survey selected images for the exhibit based on their aesthetic appeal rather than their scientific value.

The Library’s Geography and Map Division has the largest and most comprehensive collection of maps and atlases in the world, some 5.2 million cartographic items that date from the 14th century to the present. The Library's map collections contain coverage for every country and subject, and include the works of the most famous mapmakers throughout history—Ptolemy, Waldseemüller, Mercator, Ortelius and Blaeu. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds nearly 147 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

The British Library’s major new exhibition Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it reveals the imaginary worlds of the Brontë children.
 
In their childhood, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne Brontë created imaginary countries collectively called the Glass Town Federation. Branwell and Charlotte invented the kingdom of Angria, while Emily and Anne created the world of Gondal. They became obsessive about their imaginary worlds, drawing maps and creating lives for their characters and featured themselves as the ‘gods’ (‘genii’) of their world. Their stories are in tiny micro-script, as if written by their miniature toy soldiers.

The Brontës wrote about their imaginary countries in the form of long sagas which were ‘published’ as hand-written books and magazines, reminiscent of the early fanzines created by science fiction fans from the 1930s, as well as the imaginary worlds made up by many writers such as JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis in their childhood and adolescence. Just like today’s writers of ‘fan-fiction’ who use characters and settings from their favourite television shows and books (from Star Trek to Harry Potter), the Brontës used both fictional and real-life characters, such as the Duke of Wellington.

The Young Men’s magazine (the history of which is told by Branwell in 'The History Of The Young Men From Their First Settlement To The Present Time'), contains an introduction where Branwell gives an account of the toy soldiers which gave rise to the game that resulted in creating imaginary worlds. Originally a place of fantasy, Glass Town, the capital of the Federation, assumed the characteristics of the 19th century city. The map of Glass Town drawn by Branwell has a prototype - a map of real explorations in northern and central Africa in 1822-1824, while the hero of the saga was the real Duke of Wellington - a foreshadowing of what would later become the established genre of alternative histories.

At some point Emily and Anne stopped contributing to the Glass Town and Angria stories in order to create their own imaginary world of Gondal, probably as a rebellion against their older siblings who usually gave them inferior roles to play in the games. Unfortunately, the chronicles of this imaginary place written in prose were lost and only poems are now known. As with the Glass Town writings, these poems are concerned with love and war and explore various modes of identity. Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems relate to characters in the stories, who came from either side of two warring factions.

Early biographers of Emily assumed that the events described in the poems related to her own life, but instead they were figments of her extremely active imagination, and, like Wuthering Heights, not directly written from personal experience. Charlotte Brontë’s poem ‘The Foundling’ tells the story of a young man who emigrates to Glass Town. There he gets involved in politics, falls in love and discovers that he is of a noble background.

Guest curator Andy Sawyer, Director of Science Fiction Studies MA at the University of Liverpool, said:

“The Brontës are well known authors with no apparent association with science fiction but their tiny manuscript books, held at the British Library, are one of the first examples of fan fiction, using favourite characters and settings in the same way as science fiction and fantasy fans now play in the detailed imaginary ‘universes’ of Star Trek or Harry Potter. While the sense of fantasy is strong, there are teasing examples of what might be called the beginnings of science fiction.

“I hope the exhibition at the British Library will challenge what people think of as science fiction and show that it is not a narrow genre, but something that appears in many times, cultures, and literary forms. It embraces works of utopian and speculative fiction that many people may not consider as 'Science Fiction', such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Orwell’s 1984 and Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time-Traveler’s Wife.”

Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it is open from 20 May 2011 - 25 September 2011 in the PACCAR Gallery at the British Library. Admission to the exhibition is FREE. www.bl.uk/sciencefiction

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation and includes books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Up to 10 million people visit the British Library website - www.bl.uk - every year where they can view up to 4 million digitised collection items and over 40 million pages. 
 

New York, NY, May 5, 2011—The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that more than thirty rare works from its collections will be displayed beginning June 14 in the recently restored McKim building. The selection includes examples of art, literature, music, and American history and ranges from Mozart's earliest compositions at age five to a recently acquired letter from the reclusive author J. D. Salinger sent to the dust jacket designer of his groundbreaking novel The Catcher in the Rye. The works will remain on view through October 2, 2011. 


The Mozart compositions were originally part of a music notebook belonging to his sister, Nannerl. On view are two pages; along a margin, Leopold, their father, teacher, and the transcriber, wrote "compositions by Wolfgangerl in the first 3 months of his 5th year of life." These are the earliest documented works by Mozart anywhere and an indication of the genius that would soon change music history.



The J. D. Salinger letter is dated July 7, 1994 after the author took a three-week vacation in Europe. It was the last letter written to Michael Mitchell, the close friend Salinger commissioned to create the dust jacket for the legendary The Catcher in the Rye (1951). In it Salinger complains about his deteriorating eyesight, reports on his travels and the impossibility of finding "a decent, huge green salad" in any European city, and concludes by telling Mitchell that he maintains his customary writing routine.



The selection of Americana includes the original folio edition of the Stamp Act of 1765, which played an important part in the run-up to the Revolution. Seeking a more efficient and lucrative method of taxation, the British government imposed a series of duties on legal documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets for the American colonies. Lacking representation in Parliament, the colonists rallied around the complaint of "no taxation without representation," and the Stamp Act was repealed the following year.



The landmark thirteenth amendment, dated April 8, 1864, declared that "Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." This was the first change made to the Constitution since 1804, and represents the first substantial expansion of civil liberties since the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. The Morgan's copy is written on vellum and countersigned by Abraham Lincoln.
 

In the spring of 1816, in the midst of intensifying public scandal, Lord Byron left England forever. To dispel the tedium of his life as a promiscuous, dissipated expatriate, he began Don Juan in the summer of 1818. The manuscript on display is part of the first Canto of his mock-epic poem, completed in September 1818. It is written in eight-line stanzas, which Byron found well suited to convey the worldly elegance of his conversational style. 



Also featured will be the original manuscript of Guy de Maupassant's Bel-Ami, a novel primarily concerned with money, sex, power, war, and dueling. Begun in the summer of 1884 and completed in only nine months, Bel-Ami represents Maupassant's greatest achievement as a novelist. 



On view from the Morgan's collection of early rare books will be a copy of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), which established the foundations of classical mechanics when he revealed his laws of motion for the first time in print. Also featured will be one of the most important artist's books of the twentieth century: Oskar Kokoschka's The Dreaming Youth (1908). Originally commissioned as a children's book, this collection of color lithographs and poetic fragments document Kokoschka's spiritual state upon entering adulthood, and proved to be the Viennese artist's first major graphic work.



A rare fifteenth-century experiment with printing in color will also be on view in the Morgan's copy of a 1491 missal for the city of Langres. The elaborate metal engraving used to illustrate the first Sunday of Advent has been credited to the same artist responsible for the famed Unicorn Hunt tapestries. Together the artist and the printer, Jean Du Pré, produced an early liturgical masterpiece that rivals the beauty of illuminated manuscripts.



The museum's rich holdings of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts will be represented in the display, including the most celebrated Italian Renaissance manuscript, the Farnese Hours (1546), illuminated by Giulio Clovio for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Prefacing the Seven Penitential Psalms, the page on view depicts scenes connected with David, who supposedly wrote the psalms as penance for having committed the seven deadly sins. He committed ire when he angrily ordered Uriah to the frontline of battle, ensuring his death. Flanking the battle are two representations of David, one in a cuirass, holding Goliath's head, the other, almost nude, holding his sling. On the right, he does penitence for lust, symbolized by the naked women in the border, probably referring to Bathsheba.



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

NEW CASTLE, Delaware (May 1, 2011) The Kelmscott Bookshop is presenting a month‐long exhibition of original art work by two noted illustrators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Louis Rhead (1857‐1926) was a British‐born American artist. His talent was evident early, and he studied art in Paris before being named at the age of twenty-four as the Art Director for D. Appleton, a U.S. publishing firm. In the early 1890s Rhead became a prominent poster artist. As the interest in posters waned in the late 1890s he turned to book illustration. He illustrated numerous children’s books, including Heidi, Robinson Crusoe, Hans Brinker, and Swiss Family Robinson.

This is a collection of 15 finished drawings and 46 preliminary studies done for several of his books. These accomplished and charming works are done in both pen and ink and pencil. They vary in size and paper used. There are drawings for Hans Brinker, Heidi, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Arabian Nights, as well as many others.

Also on exhibit are the illustrations done by Harry Furniss (1854‐1925). This is a collection of 31 original pen and ink drawings that Furniss did as illustrations for his last book, Paradise in Piccadilly, a History of Albany, and the many celebrities who lived there over time, including Lord Byron, Gladstone, Bulwer‐Lytton, Disraeli, and many other notables. Furniss, who died in 1925, was a noted illustrator and caricaturist. He wrote and illustrated twenty‐nine books of his own, and illustrated over thirty books by other authors. The drawings for this book vary in size and in the type of paper used. Each drawing is signed, and many have the titles of the subject and notes to the printer. This is a delightful trove of original illustrations by a popular artist of his time.

This exhibit will be on display at The Bookshop in Old New Castle from May 1‐31, 2011. The shop is located on the second floor of the historic opera house at 308 Delaware Street in New Castle, Delaware. It is part of a rotating series of monthly exhibits offered by the four booksellers who comprise the bookshop, which opened May 1, 2010. They are Oak Knoll Books, Between the Covers Rare Books, The Kelmscott Bookshop and the Old Bookshop of Bordentown, all members of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America. Each exhibit will highlight fine materials that represent each bookseller’s specialties.

About The Kelmscott Bookshop
The Kelmscott Bookshop was founded in the 1970s. Its current owner acquired the store in 2003. The shop specializes in fine and private press, artists’ books, William Morris and the Pre‐Raphaelites, literature, book arts, and children’s books. Fine books are offered in other subject areas as well.

Contact: Susannah Horrom
info@kelmscottbookshop.com
410‐235‐6810

Portrait photographs of the young men who fought and died in the American Civil War will be on display, starting today, April 12, at the Library of Congress.

Nearly 400 ambrotype and tintype photographs of both Union and Confederate soldiers are featured in the exhibition "The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photos from the Liljenquist Family Collection," which is free and open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, from April 12 to Aug. 13, 2011.

The exhibition, which is made possible through the generous support of HISTORY, the Tom Liljenquist family and Union Pacific Corp., is located in the second-floor South Gallery of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington D.C.

"The Last Full Measure" commemorates the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, which started on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter, S.C., and will serve as a memorial to those who gave their lives during the devastating conflict by displaying the faces of 360 Union soldiers—one for every 1,000 who died—and 52 Confederate soldiers—one for every 5,000. Fewer portraits exist of Confederate soldiers, as fewer such photographs were taken in the South during the war.

The faces in the photographs, poignant and unforgettable, invite quiet contemplation of the human costs of the war and the courage and determination that characterized the people on both sides. The names of many of those pictured have been lost during the passage of time.

The Civil War portraits depict ordinary enlisted men, with some rare images of African American soldiers. A number of portraits include loved ones—wives, sisters and children. Details in the photographs often show firearms, hats, canteens and musical instruments.

"The Last Full Measure" also tells the story of the Liljenquist family of McLean, Va., that built the powerful collection of Civil War portraits, now numbering more than 700 images, from which this exhibition is drawn. In spring 2010, Tom Liljenquist and his sons—Jason, 19; Brandon, 17; and Christian, 13—generously donated the collection to the Library as a gift to the nation, in order to ensure broad public access to the images and their long-term preservation.

The Liljenquists became interested in Civil War history after finding bullets and other signs of an encampment near their home in Virginia. As they began to investigate other artifacts from the war, they were especially attracted to the images captured in the photographic formats called ambrotypes (on glass) and tintypes (on metal). On the Library’s website, Brandon Liljenquist describes further his family’s reasons for collecting the photographs and donating them to the Library. Visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/633_lilj_measure.html.

To view the entire Liljenquist Family Collection, visit the Prints and Photographs Division online at www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/lilj/.

Photographs in the exhibition include a girl in mourning; an African American Union soldier; and a Confederate soldier with canteen and cup.

Images in the collection can be seen through Flickr Commons, where viewers can assist in identifying individuals and photographers based on such clues as painted backdrops and regimental insignia. To view the photos at Flickr Commons, visit www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157625520211184/  .

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. It seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.
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San Francisco, April 2011—The Magna Carta (or Great Charter of English Liberties), one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy, is on display at the Legion of Honor May 7-June 5 as part of BritWeek 2011, an annual celebration of cultural crosscurrents between Great Britain and California. The manuscript is presented with an English translation in Gallery 3 under the Legion’s prized Spanish ceiling dating from approximately 1500. This is an extremely rare public appearance for this particular Magna Carta, one of the earliest surviving manuscripts, in the United States. Its declaration that no free man should be imprisoned without due process underlies the development of common law in England as well as the concepts of individual liberty and constitutional government that created the United States.

The Magna Carta on loan to the Legion of Honor belongs to the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, England, and is one of four surviving manuscripts from the revised 1217 issue. The document displayed here is an original Magna Carta, not a copy. It is an official engrossment, or exemplification, of the Latin text sent out by the royal record office to Gloucestershire in 1217, and most likely housed at St. Peter’s Abbey (now Gloucester Cathedral). Seventeen originals survive from the thirteenth century, including the manuscript that will be shown in San Francisco.

Dr. James Ganz, Curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, is coordinating the installation of the Magna Carta at the Legion of Honor. “This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Ganz said. “This historic document is not normally on view even where it resides at the Bodleian Library. It has traveled to the United States only twice before, both times for private events. This is its first public display on this continent in its nearly 800-year history.”

The Gloucestershire Magna Carta Issue of November 1217

The Great Charter agreed on June 15, 1215, between King John of England and his barons at Runnymede, near Windsor, remains to this day one of the world’s great symbols of freedom and the rule of law.
 
A sheet of parchment roughly twenty-one inches high and seventeen inches wide contains fifty-six lines of hand-inscribed Latin text. While the handwriting is parallel to the more formal Gothic style found in early thirteenth-century books, it is specifically a “chancery script,” written relatively quickly and cursively but with a tendency toward extension and flourish. The ink is dark brown in color, so it is probably an iron-gall pigment rather than the blacker carbon-based variety. The text is written on the flesh side of a single parchment made from sheep or goatskin.

This Bodleian original was sent out by the royal chancery in November 1217 to the county of Gloucestershire in the southwest of England. No master-prototype has survived from King John’s ceremony at Runnymede. But the chancery distributed engrossments to county courts across England in 1215 and another five times before 1300, during the succeeding reigns of John’s son, Henry III, and grandson, Edward I. Seventeen such originals survive from the thirteenth century: four from the first issue of 1215, one from 1216, four from 1217, four from 1225 and four from 1297.

The Gloucestershire Magna Carta is among the best preserved.  It was received in 1755 by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, in the bequest of Richard Furney (1694-1753), archdeacon of Surrey and a native of Gloucester.

The Text of the Magna Carta

The Bodleian charter on view at the Legion of Honor is one of the library’s three originals of the solemn reissue of November 1217. The opening line of the charter names the boy king Henry III, then just ten years old, who had succeeded John in October 1216. Power was held by his guardians, the papal legate Cardinal Guala Bicchieri and the Earl of Pembroke, William Marshal the elder. Although King Henry addresses his subjects at the start, the document carries his guardians’ seals at its foot, (Henry was still too young to have a device of his own). The cardinal's mark survives only as a defaced oval lump of white wax at left, but Marshal's small round seal in green wax, showing the earl on horseback, survives at right to authenticate the document. The decision to issue a new version of the Magna Carta with his guardians’ seals was vital to securing the young king's own position as well as the rights of his subjects.

Many clauses of the Magna Carta pertain to mundane matters specific to their place and time: fishing rights on the rivers Thames and Medway, knights' duties on castle guard and gifts of lands to abbeys. The first clause addresses the rights of the church; subsequent language protects widows, though women are denied the right to accuse murderers except at the deaths of their own husbands. Over nearly eight hundred years, almost all of the Magna Carta’s clauses have been abandoned or superseded, yet it has continued to serve as a model and an inspiration, embodying the highest ideals in the governance of a state: the rule of law is higher than a king; rights and liberties belong to all and forever.

Ticketing

Viewing the Magna Carta is included in the general admission ticket for the Legion of Honor. There is a $5 surcharge for Pulp Fashion: The Art of Isabelle de Borchgrave, on view in the lower level galleries of the Legion of Honor through June 5.     

New York, NY, April 4, 2011—From the weekly shopping list to the Ten Commandments, our lives are full of lists—some dashed off quickly, others beautifully illustrated, all providing insight into the personalities and habits of their makers. Beginning June 3, a new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates this most common form of documentation by presenting an array of lists made by a broad range of artists, from Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder to H. L. Mencken, Eero Saarinen, Elaine de Kooning, and Lee Krasner. Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art is on view through October 2. With examples such as Picasso's picks for the great artists of his age (Gris, Léger, etc.), H. L. Mencken's autobiographical facts ("I never have a head-ache from drink"), and Robert Smithson's collection of quotations about spirals, the items on view are intriguing, revealing, humorous, and poignant.



The exhibition, which is organized by the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, presents some eighty lists, including "to-dos," paintings sold, appointments made and met, supplies to get and places to see, and people who are "in." Some documents are historically important, throwing light on a moment, movement, or event; others are private, providing an intimate view of an artist's personal life. Eero Saarinen, for example, enumerated the good qualities of New York Times art editor and critic Aline Bernstein, his soon-to-be second wife. Oscar Bluemner crafted lists of color combinations for a single painting. Picasso itemized his recommendations for the ground-breaking 1913 Armory show, and Grant Wood listed previous economic depressions, perhaps with the hope that the Great Depression would soon end. 


"This exhibition provides a revealing glimpse into the everyday world of great artists by presenting items of the most common type," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "Lists are both practical and personal. They record momentary working concerns, while also offering insight into an artist's private observations and recollections. They provide biographical context and reveal details about personal taste and opinion."



Sculptor Alexander Calder lived in Paris from 1926 to 1933. He kept an address list of his French connections in his handmade address book. On view in the exhibition are multiple pages, which include contact information for Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, German photographer Ilse Bing, and American composer George Antheil, among others. 



Perhaps the most famous list is Pablo Picasso's recommendations for the 1913 Armory Show, the first international exhibition of Modern art in the United States. He names Marcel Duchamp, whose Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) would cause an uproar in the American press, Fernand Léger, and the Spaniard Juan Gris as candidates to be included in the exhibition. All would later become Modern masters.



On a different level, lists can be task oriented. Jeweler Margaret De Patta kept a list of orders for her Modernist creations—rings, earrings, pins, pendants, bracelets—with the name of the piece and purchaser. She obviously derived great satisfaction from finishing projects: when she completed an order, she crossed off the name of the buyer and the item, transforming her to-do list into a done list. Artist N. C. Wyeth made a list of the titles of the watercolors created by his son, Andrew, for the latter's first one-person gallery show in New York.



Lists also tell us what we have done or what we hope to do. Artist Janice Lowry's elaborate illustrated journals are peppered with to-do lists. The recurrent tasks (pay bills, make doctor's appointment) are interspersed with her dream recollections and random thoughts, each page thick with collaged images, stamps, and stickers—a vivid backdrop for her daily tours.

In some cases, lists are less about itemizing facts and more about identifying emotions. Abstract Expressionist artist Lee Krasner responded to a list of questions from an art student by enumerating her reactions to finishing, selling, and exhibiting her work.



Before the age of computers and easily updated electronic lists, artists like Philip Evergood kept current by manually adding information to their lists. Evergood made a list of photographers and framers by gluing their business cards and other contact information together in one long strip. Each new attachment expanded his network.

Lists can be ordinary but telling, as in Franz Kline's receipt from John Heller's Liquor Store in Greenwich Village, dated December 31, 1960. Presumably purchasing booze for a blowout New Year's Eve Party, Kline spent $274.51—an extravagant sum in 1960. He had the liquor—red wines, Scotch, whisky, cognac, vermouth, and champagne—delivered to his loft at 242 West Fourteenth Street in New York City. 



It comes as no surprise that artists would illustrate their lists. In 1932 painter and color theorist Oscar Bluemner made an illustrated list of his recently completed landscape paintings, including thumbnail sketches with the dimension, date, media, and sometimes the subject of the work. His list was a graphic catalog, a snapshot of his current production. 



It is often the casual record that reveals the rhythms of an age. Lists, whether dashed off as a quick reminder or carefully constructed as a comprehensive inventory, give insight into the list maker's personal habits and enrich the understanding of individual biographies. In the hands of their creators, these artifacts sometimes become works of art in and of themselves.



A companion book to the exhibition, published by Princeton Architectural Press, includes an introduction by John W. Smith, director of the Archives, and an essay by Liza Kirwin, the Archives' curator of manuscripts. 



Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art is organized by Liza Kirwin, the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art's curator of manuscripts. The Archives of American Art is the world's pre-eminent resource dedicated to collecting and preserving the papers and primary records of the visual arts in America.



This exhibition is made possible in part by the Charles E. Pierce, Jr. Fund for Exhibitions.

The programs of The Morgan Library & Museum are made possible in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts.

PUBLIC PROGRAM

Gallery Talk: 
Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art

Liza Kirwin, Curator of Manuscripts, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

June 3, 2011, 7 pm 



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult.

Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

New York, NY, March 28, 2011—The complex and rich history of courtly fashion of the late Middle Ages as seen in the manuscripts and early printed books of the period is the subject of a fascinating new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum entitled Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands. Opening on Friday, May 20, the show includes more than fifty works of Northern European origin from the Morgan's renowned collections, and also features four full-scale replicas of clothing seen in exhibited manuscripts. It will run through September 4.



Covering nearly 200 years prior to the beginning of the full Renaissance in France about 1515, Illuminating Fashion examines a period in which clothing styles changed more rapidly than had previously been the case, often from one decade to the next. Social custom, cultural influences, and politics—such as the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) and the occupation of Paris by the English (in the 1420s)—had a notable impact on fashion, and medieval illuminators deftly recorded these shifts in taste. 



The exhibition also touches upon how artists used clothing (garments actually worn) and costume (fantastic garments not actually worn) to help contemporaneous viewers interpret a work of art. The garments depicted were often encoded clues to the wearer's identity and character.



"The Morgan is delighted to present this captivating exploration of an important aspect of late medieval culture," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "As is the case today, artists of the medieval era understood how people used clothing to communicate their status and role in society. As fashions evolved, illuminators followed suit in manuscripts, providing not only an illustrated record of changes in dress and social customs, but also a symbolic visual commentary on the values and morals of the people they depicted." 



THE EXHIBITION
 

Fashion Revolution, 1330-50

The exhibition is organized in eight sections, the first of which is entitled, "Fashion Revolution, 1330-50." During the second quarter of the fourteenth century, fashion moved in an important new direction as the largely unstructured garments of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries gave way to tighter, more form-fitting clothing for both men and women. This was primarily due to advances in tailoring and in the use of multiple buttons.


A new man's garment—the cote hardy—revealed the shape of the torso and arms while tighter bodices and sleeves for women became popular, as did exposed necks and shoulders. The sides of women's outer garment, the surcot, were given seductively large, peek-a-boo openings. Men as well as some women turned the chaperon (a hood with an attached cape and tail) into a fashion accessory that lasted over one hundred years (it appears in the exhibition repeatedly).



For example, the manuscript of the Vows of the Peacock on view (ca. 1345-49) shows the image of Fesonas and Cassiel the Baudrain Playing Chess. The four young men in the miniature are all dressed at the height of the new fashion. They wear the new short garment, the cote hardy, which is buttoned down the front; it is tight at the skirt, bodice, and sleeves. All sport chaperons, two of which are dagged (cut into decorative strips). Some wear delicate shoes, while the youth in blue wears chaussembles: hose with leather soles. The two women at the left wear the open surcot. The woman in blue wears the closed surcot, furnished with a lined slit for access to the kirtle (the garment worn beneath). She also wears tippets: thin decorative bands of clothing falling from the elbow. 



Wasp Waists and Stuffed Shirts, 1350-90

The next section, "Wasp Waists and Stuffed Shirts, 1350-90," reveals how the catastrophes of the bubonic plague, which first struck in 1348, and the defeats of the Hundred Years' War had a stagnating effect on the development of fashion for much of the second half of the fourteenth century. While the look for women changed little from the previous period, men's fashions did develop under the influence of military dress. With a short flaring skirt and a cinched waist, the pourpoint (snug-fitting buttoned-down jacket also known as doublet) was padded at the chest and shoulders, giving its wearer a distinctive 'hour-glass' silhouette.

Long pointed shoes (pouleines) and belts worn low on the hips complimented the look.



In a German Missal (a liturgical service book used by the priest at Mass) created before 1381, three fashionably dressed young people are hawking at the bottom left. The youth wears a red pourpoint with a dagged hem, a particularly tight chaperon, narrow belt, and open shoes. For medieval audiences of the late fourteenth century, the especially fancy clothing of the hawking trio carries connotations of the vanity of secular pursuits, as fashion in the art of this late medieval period was often a metaphor for the wasting of money and energy on the material world.


Luxury in a Time of Madness, 1390-1420

Luxury in a Time of Madness, 1390-1420 is a dramatic contrast to the previous section. This thirty-year period is one of the most sumptuous, elegant, and luxurious of all the Middle Ages. Fashion flowered, ironically against the continued backdrop of political instability represented by the madness of the French king, Charles VI, and the incessant Hundred Years' War. Men's and women's fashions were dominated by a new garment, the houpeland. Men's houpelands featured enormous sleeves and a skirt ranging from full-length to upper thigh. The pourpoint remained popular, but now often finely embroidered and equipped with large sleeves. Women's houpelands were always full-length, with bombard or straight sleeves. The simpler cote hardy, with its voluminous skirt and tighter upper body, continued to be worn. Women also began to wear their hair in temples, a double-horned coif surmounted by veils or a tubular burlet as seen on Delilah in the French Bible historiale (ca.1415-20). Fitting with the time, Delilah's houpeland is trailing and high-waisted with bulbous sleeves and an open V-shaped collar. Also on view in this section is an important fifteenth-century treatise on hunting by Gaston Phoebus, the Livre de la chasse. The well-dressed trainer of huntsmen wears a luxurious, blue fur-lined houpeland with gold embroidery and dagged bombard sleeves. 



Terrible Twenties, 1420s

Military occupations are seldom kind to fashion. The occupation of Paris by the English had a depressing influence on fashion for the decade that Duke John of Bedford was regent in France. In the "Terrible Twenties, 1420s" French nobles fled the capital and art commissions dried up. Fashion, likewise, declined, as a simpler approach to dress prevailed. In the Hours of William Porter (ca.1420-25), the leaf depicting the Decapitation of St. Winifred shows the tyrant Caradoc wearing a new garment that evolved from the houpeland: a robe (gown). Short, unwaisted, but belted at the hips, the gown presents an unflatteringly bulbous silhouette. In sharp contrast to the huntsman in Gaston's treatise, the garment is unembellished with any gold embroidery. 


Peacocks of the Mid-Century, 1430-60

The fifth section of the exhibition, "Peacocks of the Mid-Century, 1430-60," sees the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453. Political stability fostered fashion, and the thirty years of the middle of the fifteenth century were an exuberant period. These decades saw the last of the houpeland. Men more often wore the gown: full- or knee-length, belted at the waist. Women's gowns featured wide V-necks with contrasting collars and parlets (plackards worn at the midriff). Their headgear atop the temples continued to evolve, growing ever more extravagant. In the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (ca. 1440), the duchess of Guelders is depicted as a personification of piety distributing coins to the poor while dressed in a magnificent orange ermine-lined houpeland. Her long, voluminous sleeves are open, revealing the gold of the kirtle worn beneath. She wears her hair encased in horns to which a veil is attached. From her high-waisted (but unseen) belt hangs a slender knife case and a purse from which she selects coins.



Late Gothic Vertigo, 1460s and '70s

Late Gothic Vertigo, 1460s and '70s represents the fashion of the Middle Ages for most people today. This is mainly due to the women's towering conical headgear, the turret, from the top of which flowed long transparent veils. The Romance of Tristan (1468) beautifully illustrates Geneviève wearing a vertiginous cone-shaped turret anchored to her head with a frontlet, a band of black velvet. Her gold gown offers the silhouette characteristic for this period: a voluminous skirt; a high, narrow waist; and a wide flaring collar. 



Twilight of the Middle Ages, 1480-1515

"Twilight of the Middle Ages, 1480-1515" examines the period of transition in Northern Europe—the Middle Ages were not yet over and the Renaissance had not yet begun. Both King Charles VIII (died 1498) and Louis XII (died 1515) invaded Italy, and these military campaigns exposed France to Italian art, culture, and fashion. The look for men changed abruptly. Long loose open gowns came into style, and by the 1490s, these gowns became especially voluminous and bulky as illustrated in the Morgan's copy of the very rare Dance of Death printed in 1486. The knight on the page is wearing an open gown with side lapels. The garment is long and loose and, lacking the pleats of the previous decades, hides rather than highlights the male form. His hat, with its low crown and brim, is also new, as are his shoes. These are the demy pantouffles, rounded-toed slippers with an open back. 


Dawn of the Renaissance, 1515 and Beyond

The exhibition closes with "Dawn of the Renaissance, 1515 and Beyond." King François I was famous for his interest in Italian art and culture; he induced Leonardo da Vinci to join the French court. While Italian fashion had begun to influence northern clothing in the early sixteenth century, by the accession of François to the throne in 1515, the true Renaissance began in France, in art as well as in fashion. This is elegantly illustrated in the frontispiece to the king's own copy of the Romance of the Rose (ca. 1525) in which François, surrounded by courtiers, is depicted accepting the volume from its scribe. He and his court are all dressed in new Italianate style. Doublets, in rich fabrics, are slashed on the chest and arms. The calf-length gowns have wide collars but short puffy sleeves. Shoes are square-toed. Indicative of his lower status, the scribe's gown, with its hanging slit sleeves, is a tad out of date. 



Replicas

To enhance appreciation for the fashions of the era, four full-scale replicas of late medieval ensembles are presented, using period hand-sewing techniques and authentic materials—including silk velvet, gold brocade, linen, straw, and ermine. One is of the youth in the blue cote hardy from the Vows of the Peacock, indicative of the "Fashion Revolution." Another is the luxuriously embroidered houpeland of the aristocratic huntsman from the Livre de la chasse.

The voluminous gown and towering turret worn by Geneviève in the Romance of Tristan is brought to life in three-dimensional reality. Also featured is the houpeland of Catherine of Cleves, a replica on loan from Museum Het Valkhof in the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands; the garment recreates the elaborate ensemble she wears while giving alms. 



PUBLICATION

Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands is accompanied by a publication of the same title. The 464-page volume includes 300 color illustrations and contains in-depth discussion of dress in late medieval art, encompassing examples not only from illuminated manuscripts from collections around the world, but also from panel paintings, woodcuts, sculpture, and tapestries. The book is the culmination of a thirty-year study by Dr. Anne H. van Buren (1927-2008), a specialist of Northern European art of the period, assisted by Roger S. Wieck. 



ORGANIZATION AND SPONSORSHIP

Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands is organized by Roger S. Wieck, curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at The Morgan Library & Museum.



This exhibition is generously underwritten by a gift in memory of Melvin R. Seiden, and by a grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.



Major support is provided by The Coby Foundation, Ltd., with additional assistance from the van Buren family in memory of Dr. Anne H. van Buren, and from the Janine Luke and Melvin R. Seiden Fund for Exhibitions and Publications.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.




PUBLIC PROGRAMS


Family Program

The Morgan's Spring Family Fair

During this spring family fair organized in conjunction the exhibition, Henry Chapin and his early music ensemble will lead families in traditional dances and songs enjoyed in France and England 500 years ago. Children will try on costumes inspired by the books of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in the Morgan collection, make their own wool chaperons and hats, and try their hand at fabric dyeing using centuries-old processes. Come with your own homemade medieval costume. Appropriate for ages 6-12.

Saturday, May 21, 2-5 pm



Discussion

From the Set to the Runway

Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Valerie Steele

What is the difference between costume (for film and theater) and fashion (on runway and street)? Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Academy-Award-nominated costume designer (Coming to America, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and author of Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, will be in conversation with Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology and founder/editor of Fashion Theory, and others to be announced. 

Wednesday, June 15, 6:30 pm
*

*The exhibition will be open at 5:30 pm especially for program attendees.



Gallery Talk

Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands

Roger S. Wieck, Curator, Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum

Friday, June 24, 7 pm



Films

The Art of Costume Dramas

To coincide with the exhibition, the Morgan is screening a series of classic period dramas that sumptuously illustrate the fashion of the eras in which they are set.



Becket

(1964, 184 minutes)
 Director: Peter Glenville 
Set during the late twelfth-century, this drama focuses on the long and often tumultuous friendship between King Henry II of England (Peter O'Toole) and Thomas Becket (Richard Burton), from their days of friendly carousing to Henry's appointment of Becket as archbishop of Canterbury and the ensuing struggle between the Church and crown. Winner of an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the film also stars John Gielgud, Gino Cervi, Paolo Stoppa, and Pamela Brown.

Friday, June 10, 7 pm



Restoration

(1995, 117 minutes)
 Director: Michael Hoffman
 With its lavish sets and stunning period attire, this film recounts the life and adventures of Robert Merivel, (Robert Downey Jr.) from his days as a favored physician in the service of King Charles II, to his trials as a doctor in a sanatorium, and finally attending to the sick during the Great Plague of London. Meg Ryan, Sam Neill, Ian McKellen, and Hugh Grant round out the outstanding cast in this Oscar winner for Best Costume Design.

Friday, July 8, 7 pm



The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)

(1963, 187 minutes)
 Director: Luchino Visconti
 This award-winning "fresco of Sicilan life" follows the Prince of Salina (Burt Lancester) as he tries to preserve his family, integrity, and class during the chaotic Italian unification of the 1860s. Based on the Italian bestseller by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the film also features Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon. In Italian with English subtitles.

Friday, July 22, 7 pm



Films are free. Tickets are available at the Admission Desk on the day of the screening. Advance reservations for Morgan Members only: 212.685.0008, ext. 560, or tickets@themorgan.org.



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

New York, NY, March 23, 2011—Jim Dine's series of extraordinary drawings inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture and sourced primarily at the Glyptothek Museum in Munich, Germany will receive its first New York showing in a new exhibition opening May 20 at The Morgan Library & Museum. The forty works on paper, known as the Glyptotek Drawings (1987-88)*, are crucial to understanding Dine's career, as they were instrumental in launching his ongoing engagement with the art of the ancient world. The drawings—a promised gift to the Morgan from the artist—will be on view through September 4. 



Dine first visited the Glyptothek in 1984 and was motivated by the works he encountered there to create a book of Heliogravure prints to house, in his words, "my Glyptothek." Later, in his studio, he produced drawings from sketches done at the museum and from photographs, postcards, and catalogues, incorporating ancient works from other museum collections as well. The entire suite of forty drawings forms a single work. Dine has said, "I think each individual drawing could stand alone, but as a single work all forty make a narrative about learning from the ancient world." 



"The Glyptotek drawings are superb in their imaginative transformation of classical subjects and exhibit the vitality we have come to associate with the art of Jim Dine," said William M. Griswold, the Morgan's director. "To see all forty together is to experience afresh the appeal to the artist of the ancient world. The Morgan is delighted to show them as a group for the first time in New York, and we are deeply grateful to Mr. Dine for the generous gift of these important works to the Morgan's collection."


The subjects of the Glyptotek series include ancient busts, full-length sculptures, statuettes, fragments, and reliefs. Some, such as the Barberini Faun, the Boy with a Goose, and the Wounded Trojan from the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, are well known. Dine says he was drawn to the imperfections of the sculptures that reveal the passage of time—chipped noses, missing limbs, irregular surfaces. Most of the subjects Dine has chosen are barely contained within the edges of his drawings, a device that both energizes them and adds a sense of monumentality. The artist has said, "I choose things that I think can come alive. I don't want to draw these things as dead objects, as stone. I want to observe them carefully, and then I want to put life into them and make them vigorous and physical."



In keeping with Dine's usual working method, the labor-intensive drawings combine a rich variety of media, including ink, charcoal, crayon, pastel, and marker applied in a broad, gestural style. The drawings evidence the artist's enthusiasm for materials and process. Occasionally he abrades the surface with etching tools or an emery board. He often rubs and spreads the material with an eraser or with his fingers, imbuing his subjects with an animate sense of fluidity. The strong interplay of light and shadow and the sweeping strokes that convey the physical engagement of the artist vests these images with a romantic feeling, making them haunting modern visions of the ancient world.



As Dine had planned to make Heliogravure prints from the drawings, he used translucent paper and plastic sheets as support. This unconventional surface allowed for the images to be transferred to etching plates; the prints were published in a 1988 limited edition entitled Glyptotek, with Dine's translation of a poem by Sappho. The exhibition will feature a copy of the book, also a promised gift of the artist to the Morgan.



A number of other drawings, which Dine produced in response to the Glyptotek Drawings, are also presented. Invited by the museum's director, Dine returned to the Munich Glyptothek in 1989; working alone at night in the galleries, he created a number of large-scale works. A selection from this series will be included in the show. The following year, Dine traveled to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen where over a course of seven days he worked in the galleries to create Seven Views of the Hermaphrodite, which is also presented in the exhibition.



Jim Dine: The Glyptotek Drawings is organized by Elliott Zooey Martin, Curatorial Assistant of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan.



*[The artist prefers this spelling for his work.]



PUBLIC PROGRAMS


Discussion

A Conversation with Jim Dine and Ruth Fine

To coincide with the exhibition Jim Dine: The Glyptotek Drawings, the internationally renowned artist speaks with Ruth Fine, Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., about his work. 
Sunday, May 22, 3 p.m.



Films

Jim Dine on Screen
To coincide with the exhibition Jim Dine: The Glyptotek Drawings, the Morgan is screening the following films that document the artist's life and work.



Jim Dine
(1970, 28 minutes)

Director: Michael Blackwood


A concentrated look at Jim Dine's work, this film was made during what the artist called his four-year "voluntary exile" in London. Actively at work in his studio on several large collages—some of which include written words and real life objects—Dine talks about his connections to literature, his frequent collaboration with poets, and reads some of his own poetry. Courtesy of Michael Blackwood Productions.



Followed by:



Jim Dine: A Self-Portrait on the Walls
(1995, 28 minutes)

Director: Nancy Dine


This remarkable documentary records eight days of intense work and quiet rumination as Dine produces and reflects upon an exhibition of large, transitory, charcoal drawings executed directly on the walls of the Ludwigsburg Kunstverein in Germany. Courtesy of Berkeley Media LLC.

Friday, June 24, 7 p.m.


Films are free.
Tickets are available at the Admission Desk on the day of the screening. Advance reservations for Morgan Members only: 212.685.0008, ext. 560, or tickets@themorgan.org.



Gallery Talk

Jim Dine: The Glyptotek Drawings

Elliott Zooey Martin, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Drawings, The Morgan Library & Museum

Friday, June 10, 7 p.m.



The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.
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The Library of Congress announces the opening of the Swann Gallery and the Herblock Gallery on Friday, March 18, 2011. The galleries are two of three exhibition spaces located within the new Graphic Arts Galleries on the ground level of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

The third exhibition space in the Graphic Arts Galleries will open in September 2011. The galleries will focus on the Library’s cartoon collections and offer visitors a rich sampling of caricatures, comic strips, political drawings, artwork created for magazines and graphic-novel illustrations.

The galleries will be open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and admission is free.

The Herblock Gallery celebrates the work of editorial cartoonist Herbert L. Block—better known as "Herblock"—with an ongoing display of 10 original drawings, to change every six months. A four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, who spent more than 55 years at the Washington Post, Herblock took on political corruption wherever he saw it, and championed the rights of "the little guy." The inaugural exhibition, "Herblock Looks at Communism," presents a selection of his 1951 cartoons about the Korean War. A new display in September will explore the Khrushchev-Kennedy confrontation in 1961. The Herb Block Foundation donated the collection of more than 14,000 original cartoon drawings and 50,000 rough sketches, as well as manuscripts, to the Library of Congress in 2002, and has generously continued to provide funds to support ongoing programming.

The Swann Gallery introduces visitors to the fascinating world of caricatures, political cartoons, comics, animation art, graphic novels and illustrations. A permanent memorial exhibition will feature 15 facsimiles of treasured cartoons from the Swann and other cartoon collections, which represent the broad range of holdings in the Library of Congress. This exhibition is made possible by the Swann Foundation, which was established by Erwin Swann (1906-1973) in 1967 to support ongoing exhibitions, related programming, preservation and development of collections and to encourage appreciation for the dynamic, evolving field of cartoon and illustration arts.

In September 2011, the third gallery will open with a changing-exhibition program that showcases the graphic arts collections in the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress. Its inaugural exhibition will be "Timely and Timeless: New Comic Art Acquisitions," featuring treasures of original cartoon art that were added to the Library’s collections during the past decade. On display will be political commentaries, comic-strip and comic-book drawings, New Yorker magazine illustrations and examples of graphic narratives.

The Library has a long history of exhibiting cartoon and caricature art, with the first Swann Gallery—known as the Oval Gallery—opening in 1982 in the James Madison Building. The Swann Gallery moved to the Thomas Jefferson Building in 1998 and remained open until 2004, when preparations started for construction of the Library’s tunnel to the Capitol Visitors Center. In subsequent years, large-scale cartoon art exhibitions—"Humor's Edge: Cartoons by Ann Telnaes" (2004); "Enduring Outrage: Editorial Cartoons by Herblock" (2006); "Cartoon America" (2006); and "Herblock!" (2009)—were held in various exhibition spaces in the Jefferson Building.

The Library has been collecting original cartoon art for more than 140 years. It is a major center for cartoon research with holdings of more than 100,000 original cartoon drawings and prints. These works, housed in the Prints and Photographs Division, span five centuries and range from 17th-century Dutch political prints to 21st-century contemporary comic strips.

The Prints and Photographs Division holds the largest-known collection of American political prints, the finest assemblage of British satirical prints outside Great Britain and holdings of original drawings by generations of America’s best cartoonists and illustrators that are unequaled in breadth and depth. Extensive runs of rare satirical and comic journals from Europe and the United States represent another distinguishing facet. The Library acquired these materials through a variety of sources including artists’ gifts, donations by private collectors, selective purchases and copyright registration.

Sample images from the Swann Gallery:

www.loc.gov/pictures/item/91705247/

www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008661676/

www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96508418/

Tennessee Williams Centennial Exhibit of Rare Books and Memorabilia

Including original uncensored scripts of two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays

NEW CASTLE, Delaware (February 28, 2011) — Between the Covers Rare Books Inc. is presenting a month-long exhibition of rare Tennessee Williams books, play scripts and assorted memorabilia in honor of the playwright’s one hundredth birthday at The Bookshop in Old New Castle starting March 1. Among the notable and rare items is an original script for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof which was used during the Philadelphia tryout of the play. The copy contains a sexually charged scene between Big Daddy and his daughter-in law that was removed before its run on Broadway. Also on display is one of only a handful of known copies of the original script for A Streetcar Named Desire bearing its original title, The Poker Night. This early version includes scandalous dialogue that was cut before production, implicating Stanley Kowalski’s wife, Stella, in the sexual assault of her sister, Blanche Du Bois.

Tennessee Williams, who would be 100 on March 26, is considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of the most important of the twentieth century, with a body of work that still resonates with American audiences today in revival after revival. His work examined subjects previously taboo to American audiences of the late 1940s and 1950s, such as mental illness, domestic violence, and untamed sexuality. In addition to A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, both Pulitzer Prize winners, he wrote The Glass Menagerie, The Rose Tattoo, Night of the Iguana, and Suddenly Last Summer. Just as familiar to many people are the film versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor and Burl Ives as Big Daddy, and A Streetcar Named Desire, which features the iconic scene of Marlon Brando as Stanley screaming “Stella!” from the street below, and Blanche’s famous final line: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

Most of the exhibit comes from the personal collection of the publicity director for New Directions, which first published many of the Williams plays. This enabled the collector to get books signed by the author, and gave him access to the publisher’s pre-publication galleys and page proofs, both of which will be on display. He also meticulously collected Williams’s magazine appearances, as well as foreign editions, and any and all related ephemera, including playbills, ticket stubs, lobby cards and flyers.

Among the items is a beautiful copy of Weird Tales magazine from 1928, which contains Williams’s first published story, written when he was just 16 using his real name, Thomas Lanier Williams. Also on display is the film treatment for The Gentleman Caller which Williams first offered to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer while briefly employed as a staff writer. The studio passed on the detailed outline, despite the inclusion of several happy endings from which they could choose. The rejection turned out to be a blessing for Williams who opened the play the following year on Broadway with a new title, The Glass Menagerie. It was his first major success on Broadway and is considered an American classic.

The Tennessee Williams exhibit runs from March 1-31 and is free to all visitors to The Bookshop in Old New Castle, located at the site of the historic opera house at 308 Delaware Street in New Castle, Delaware. Images from this exhibition are available upon request: matt@betweenthecovers.com

On April 1, the Bookshop of Bordentown will open the next exhibit in its series; “The National Game — Baseball in Print,” which will showcase baseball-related books and prints.

About Between The Covers Rare Books, Inc.
Between The Covers Rare Books Inc., founded in 1985, is a leading antiquarian bookseller specializing in modern first editions, African-Americana, sports (particularly baseball), mysteries, genre fiction, art, photography, and women’s studies. It is a member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), and the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA). www.betweenthecover.com

About the Bookshop in Old New Castle
Each bookseller in the Bookshop in Old New Castle is a member of the ABAA and offers a unique selection of books characteristic to its specific specialties. The Bookshop in Old New Castle opened May 1, 2010. As The Bookshop in Old New Castle is a combination store between Oak Knoll Books, Between the Covers Rare Books, The Kelmscott Bookshop, and the Old Bookshop of Bordentown, the exhibitions will alternate monthly with each store taking turns showcasing different collections of their finest material. www.booksinnewcastle.com

Contact: Matt Histand
matt@betweenthecovers.com
856-456-8008

January 31, 2011 -- Rare Revolutionary War-Era Map is David Rubenstein Gift to Library of Congress. Abel Buell Map First to Show “Stars and Stripes.”

David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of The Carlyle Group, has given the Library of Congress stewardship of the first map printed in North America, depicting the boundaries of the new American nation and showing the "Stars and Stripes" for the first time. The map, which was printed in early 1784 and is considered the best preserved of those few copies in existence, had been in the custody of the New Jersey Historical Society since 1862 and was sold at Christie’s in Manhattan on Dec. 3, 2010. The map will be displayed at the Library of Congress in the early spring and will be available for public viewing for five years.

Abel Buell’s map "A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America Layd Down from the Latest Observations and Best Authorities Agreeable to the Peace of 1783" is the first to be copyrighted in the United States and was published only six months after the Treaty of Paris signing (Sept. 3, 1783) ended the Revolutionary War. This map is the single most important American cartographic document missing from the collection of the Library of Congress, according to John Hébert, chief of the Library’s Geography and Map Division.

Maps and atlases have been an important part of the collections of the Library of Congress since its beginning in 1800, when a joint congressional committee purchased three maps and an atlas from a London dealer. From this modest beginning the Library’s cartographic holdings have grown during the past two centuries to more than 5.2 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, numerous globes, and a large amount of cartographic materials in other formats, including electronic. Abel Buell’s "A New and Correct Map" will join "America’s birth certificate"—Martin Waldseemüller’s monumental 1507 world map—as a welcomed and complementary addition to the Library’s rich map collection.

A civic-minded Washingtonian, David Rubenstein has long been a supporter of the Library of Congress. He is a member of the Library’s private-sector advisory group, the James Madison Council, and in 2010 he gave the Library $5 million in support of the National Book Festival.

"It is a great privilege for the Library of Congress to display this map, which will be on loan from Mr. Rubenstein for the next five years," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "The cartographic curators have pointed to this map as the most important document not held in the national collections."

"The Library of Congress, under Jim Billington’s leadership, is widely recognized as the finest library in the world, and I am pleased to make the Buell Map available for all to see at the Library’s extraordinary facilities," Rubenstein said.

The Library’s Associate Librarian for Library Services, Deanna Marcum, called the Buell map "a centerpiece in the map history of the New World."

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to advance the knowledge and creativity of the American people through its collections, programs and services. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.
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The Morgan Library & Museum Presents Exhibition Focusing on the Controversial Shakespeare Portrait Question

Includes First U.S. Showing of Two Recently Identified Works: The "Cobbe Portrait" of Shakespeare and a Sixteenth-Century Painting of Shakespeare's Patron, the 3rd Earl of Southampton

Also on View is a Copy of the Morgan's First Folio Edition of Shakespeare Plays and Three Additional Portraits, including One Acquired by Pierpont Morgan 



The Changing Face of William Shakespeare Opens February 4

New York, NY, January 4, 2011—In 2009, when the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon unveiled a previously unidentified portrait with strong claims to be the only surviving contemporary likeness of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), it created an international stir. The Jacobean-era painting had hung unrecognized for centuries in an Irish country house belonging to the Cobbe family, and bore significant resemblance to the famous engraving of Shakespeare in the First Folio of his plays.

In a new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum entitled The Changing Face of William Shakespeare, the Cobbe portrait, together with a recently identified sixteenth-century portrait of Shakespeare's patron Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, is being presented in the U.S. for the first time. Also on view will be three additional portraits of the playwright, including one acquired by Pierpont Morgan in 1910, an original copy of the 1623 First Folio, and a copy of Shakespeare's 1593 poem Venus and Adonis, dedicated to the earl. 



Together, the works offer insight into the questions surrounding authentic images of the great playwright, an issue of significant scholarly interest and debate. Both the quality of the Cobbe portrait, thought to have been painted around 1610, and recent technical analysis suggest it is the first in a series of portraits claimed to depict William Shakespeare. The Cobbe portrait bears a Latin inscription, taken from a poem by Horace, addressed to a playwright. Both the Shakespeare portrait and the painting of the earl were inherited by Archbishop Charles Cobbe (1686-1765). In the eighteenth century the Cobbe family was connected by marriage to Southampton's descendants.

The best known image of Shakespeare is Martin Droeshout's posthumous engraving in the First Folio, and the earlier Cobbe portrait has certain costume and design similarities to it, indicating that it may have served as a source for Droeshout. The portrait acquired by Pierpont Morgan, founder of The Morgan Library & Museum, is almost unknown, usually having hung in private offices inside the institution. Also on view, in addition to the portraits and books, is a 1596 royal gift roll that records Southhampton's New Year's gift to Queen Elizabeth I.



"The issue of determining authentic lifetime portraits of William Shakespeare is a fascinating one and the recent identification of the Cobbe portrait adds to the debate," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "This exhibition provides context for a discussion that is certain to continue among scholars and those interested in the work of history's greatest playwright.

"

The Changing Face of William Shakespeare is on view through May 1. It is organized by Declan Kiely, Robert H. Taylor Curator and Department Head of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at The Morgan Library & Museum.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS


Lectures, Discussions, and Dramatic Readings

Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

Garry Wills

Distinguished scholar Garry Wills (Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer), Professor of History Emeritus, Northwestern University, presents the final lecture in a series about Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. This program is a collaboration with The Anthony Hecht Lectures in the Humanities at Bard College.
Wednesday, March 9, 6:30 p.m.



Shakespeare and Southampton

Stephen Greenblatt

The relationship between Shakespeare and the androgynous 3rd Earl of Southampton has long been a subject of speculation and conjecture. In this illuminating evening of performance and commentary, Harvard University professor and bestselling author of Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt, will examine the connections, real and hypothetical, between the Bard and his young friend, whose astonishing portrait will be on display alongside Shakespeare's at the Morgan. Actors will read selections from the Sonnets and the two poems Shakespeare dedicated to Southampton, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Performers to be announced. Presented in collaboration with The Shakespeare Society.
Wednesday, March 23, 7 p.m.



Shakespeare Works: Much Ado About Nothing 
The Morgan hosts an evening of conversation and readings as part of The Shakespeare Society's popular "Shakespeare Works" series. These week-long residencies are aimed at supporting the performance and production of Shakespeare in New York City and creating connections between the theatrical and academic communities. Featuring Olivier-award winning actress Eve Best (Hedda Gabler) and noted actor Jonathan Cake from Tealight Productions's Much Ado About Nothing. Moderated by Michael Sexton, artistic director, The Shakespeare Society.
Thursday, April 28, 7 p.m.



Family Program

Tonight, Tonight: Romeo and Juliet Meet on the West Side

How do you turn a four-hundred-year old play into a Broadway musical set in 1950s New York City? To coincide with The Changing Face of William Shakespeare, opera singer and educator Jennifer Greene leads an interactive, family-friendly exploration of West Side Story, the modern day adaptation of Shakespeare's timeless classic Romeo and Juliet. Children will compare scenes from Shakespeare's play to the musical's libretto, hear performances by live artists, and have an opportunity to sing along with musical selections. Appropriate for ages 6-14.
Saturday, April 9, 2-3 p.m.



Gallery Talk

The Changing Face of William Shakespeare

Declan Kiely, Robert H. Taylor Curator and Department Head, Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum

Friday, March 18, 7 p.m. 



For ticketing and further information on these and other programs, please visit www.themorgan.org/public or call 212-685-0008, ext. 560.

The Morgan Library & Museum


The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
: Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission: 
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

Image captions: 

Artist Unknown, Seventeenth Century (c.1610), William Shakespeare, oil on panel. 24 1/4 x 14 3/4 inches (53.9 x 37.5 cm). Collection of Archbishop Charles Cobbe (1686-1765), Cobbe Collection 

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616), Mr. William Shakespeares comedies, histories, & tragedies. Published according to the true originall copies. London, printed by Isaac Iaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1896; PML 5122.

New York, NY, December 13, 2010—Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) relied on her diary to escape stifling work as a schoolteacher; Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) confided his loneliness and self-doubt; John Steinbeck (1902-1968) struggled to compose The Grapes of Wrath, and Bob Dylan (b. 1941) sketched his way through a concert tour.



For centuries, people have turned to private journals to document their days, sort out creative problems, help them through crises, comfort them in solitude or pain, or preserve their stories for the future. As more and more diarists turn away from the traditional notebook and seek a broader audience through web journals, blogs, and social media, a new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum explores how and why we document our everyday lives. Drawn from the Morgan's own extraordinary holdings, The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives is on view from January 21 through May 22, 2011.



With over seventy items on view, the exhibition raises questions about this pervasive practice: what is a diary? Must it be a private document? Who is the audience for the unfolding stories of our lives—ourselves alone, our families, or a wider group? The diaries on view allow us to observe, in personal terms, the birth of such great works of art as Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter and Gilbert & Sullivan's opera The Pirates of Penzance. Momentous public events, from the Boston Tea Party to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, are marked by individual witnesses. Many diarists, such as Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) and John Newton (1725-1807), former slave trafficker and author of the hymn "Amazing Grace," look inward, striving to live with integrity. Three great artists in their twenties, all on the brink of fame—Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Charlotte Brontë, and Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)—hone their considerable talents in their private writings. And century after century, many individuals—from the famous diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) to Abstract Impressionist painter Charles Seliger (1926-2009)—capture memory and mark time by keeping a daily record of the substance of everyday life.



"The museum is noted for its holdings of manuscripts, sketches, letters, drawings, and other items that speak to the creative mind at work," said William M. Griswold, director of the Morgan. "Diaries are particularly useful and revealing. They offer a real-time glimpse of the ways individuals of various eras and backgrounds have chosen to document their lives, thoughts, and personal struggles."

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the seminal journal of Henry David Thoreau, whose dozens of marbled-paper-covered notebooks record his well-examined life. Like many diarists writing over many centuries in a variety of forms, Thoreau sought "to meet the facts of life—the vital facts—face to face." Thoreau's monumental journal stands alongside the beautifully printed first editions of the confessions of St. Augustine (354-430) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), both transformative figures in the history of self-examination and self-revelation.



The exhibition illustrates that even before the era of web diaries, many writers envisioned (or invited) an audience. The marriage notebooks of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and his wife, Sophia (1809-1871), for example, were interactive documents. The newlyweds made entries in tandem, reading each other's contributions and building a joint narrative of their daily lives, from Nathaniel's first contribution—"I do verily believe there is no sunshine in this world, except what beams from my wife's eyes"—to Sophia's breathless declaration "I feel new as the earth which is just born again." Later, their young children added naïve drawings to the pages of their parents' notebooks, transforming the marriage diary into a family affair.



Anaïs Nin (1903-1977)—one of the twentieth century's most prolific diarists—made a thick copy of her astonishingly intimate personal account, presenting to a friend "this uncut version of the Diary in memory of our uncut uncensored confidences and faith." Nin is one of several featured examples of diarists who sought a wide audience through traditional publication before the advent of the web. William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), a prolific diarist, published one of his journals during his lifetime—The Retreat Diaries (1976), a dream log he kept during a two-week Buddhist retreat in Vermont. Even Queen Victoria (1819-1901) released a volume of excerpts from her journals; a signed copy of her 1868 bestseller Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands is on view.

Some diarists turn their private writings into shared memoir. Fanny Twemlow (1881-1989), a British woman imprisoned in a civilian internment camp during World War II, recopied the illustrated diary that she kept secretly and transformed it into a cherished family memento. Lieutenant Steven Mona, who led a police rescue and recovery team after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, recast his private diary as a letter in order to share his experience with family and friends. "I don't think I will ever look at anything in life the same way," he wrote. 


The diary has long served individuals as a place of emotional haven. Twenty-year-old Charlotte Brontë, working as a schoolteacher at Roe Head School in 1836, wrote diary entries in a minuscule script on loose sheets of paper, combining autobiographical narrative with flights of fictional fantasy that helped her endure emotional isolation. Some years later, sitting in a classroom in Brussels, she opened a geography textbook and scrawled a diary entry on one of the endpapers, confiding her loneliness and bitterness: "it is a dreary life—especially as there is only one person in this house worthy of being liked—also another who seems a rosy sugarplum but I know her to be coloured chalk.

"

Tennessee Williams, too, relied on his diary in times of loneliness. In February 1955 he made his first entry in a cheap Italian exercise book with a cover featuring white polka dots on a blue background: "A black day to begin a blue journal." With Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in rehearsal and a new production of his acclaimed play A Streetcar Named Desire about to open in New York, Williams was nevertheless full of anxiety and increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol. At the height of his literary success, he carried the journal from New York to Rome, Athens, Istanbul, Barcelona, and Hamburg, recording physical and emotional distress, frequent sexual encounters, and a debilitating creative impasse. "Nothing to say except I'm still hanging on," he wrote.

The great Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) did not begin a diary until late in life, when he was already one of Europe's most famous men, and shortly before a countrywide financial crisis forced him to spend the rest of his life writing himself furiously out of debt. Over a period of six years, the journal became a crucial outlet for the feelings of despair—the "cold sinkings of the heart"—that had agonized him from the time of his youth. Even as he revealed his most intimate feelings, Scott made clear that he had decided to "gurnalize" (as he called it) not only for his own benefit but also for "my family and the public."



One of those who read and benefited from Scott's revealing journal was English art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), who kept a diary in 1878 leading up to a severe mental collapse. After he recovered, he meticulously re-read his diary, marking it up and indexing it in search of warning signs to help him anticipate future breakdowns. He left several pages dramatically blank, heading them with just a few words—"February to April—the Dream"—an allusion to the nightmarish visions he had endured over several months.



The diary as a stimulus to creativity is represented by an extraordinary illustrated journal of American painter Stuart Davis (1894-1964), working journals of novelist John Steinbeck, a journal/sketchbook of English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), and a travel diary of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) that is full of mathematical jottings. A diary of Nathaniel Hawthorne includes this idea for a story subject: "The life of a woman, who, by the old colony law, was condemned always to wear the letter A, sewed on her garment, in token of her having committed adultery." Hawthorne, of course, later developed this germ of a story—first documented in his diary—into one of the most celebrated of American novels.



While today's new media facilitates ever more frequent diary entries—sometimes updated hour by hour—the exhibition features examples of diarists similarly committed to continuous life documentation. In Bob Dylan's verbal and visual diary of his 1974 concert tour with The Band, he sketched a hotel room in Memphis and added a line of poetry: "Exploding galaxies of the red white & blue pulsing in the night of the big eye." Abstract Expressionist painter Charles Seliger (1926-2009) kept over 150 notebooks over many decades, rarely allowing a day to go by without recording activities, thoughts, and opinions, until his death in 2009. Seliger wrote in the tradition of the most famous English diarist—Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) —whose record of daily life in seventeenth-century London became a nineteenth-century bestseller. The Morgan holds the corrected proofs for the first published edition of Pepys's diaries—evidence of the long-standing human impulse to read other people's diaries.

In his working journal for The Grapes of Wrath, on view in the exhibition, John Steinbeck articulated the challenge of presenting an uncensored version of oneself: "I have tried to keep diaries before, but it didn't work out because of the necessity to be honest." While today's online diaries and social media profiles encourage the creation of carefully managed self-portraits, the impulse to deliberately craft one's identity in the diary is nothing new.



The exhibition is accompanied by free weekly podcasts of readings from the diaries and an active blog that explores issues related to diary keeping both past and present.

 


DIARIES AT THE MORGAN
In 1909, at a single stroke, financier and collector Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) became the keeper of the most extraordinary stash of American literary manuscripts ever assembled in this country. For the sum of $165,000, he purchased the collection assembled by Stephen Wakeman, which included dozens of notebooks kept by Henry David Thoreau and eighteen diaries of Nathaniel Hawthorne (two of them kept together with his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne). Since Pierpont Morgan's day, The Morgan Library & Museum has continued to acquire diaries of note, sometimes directly from their authors. Recent acquisitions include diaries of Tennessee Williams, Stuart Davis, and Charles Seliger.


PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Lectures
Living the Wired Life

Gordon Bell

What if a diary could capture and store everything an individual experiences in his or her lifetime? Tech luminary Gordon Bell, principal researcher at Microsoft, has spent over a decade working on the MyLifeBits project, an exploration of various aspects of digitizing life, also known as lifelogging. Co-author of Total Recall (recently republished as Your Life, Uploaded: The Digital Way to Better Memory, Health, and Productivity), Bell will speak about the history of MyLifeBits and the impact technology has had on the enduring drive to document our lives. 

Wednesday, February 2, 6:30 PM*

Tickets: $15 for Non-Members; $10 for Members



Dear Diary: Dramatic Readings from The Diary

Join us for an evening of dramatic readings inspired by the compelling personal stories found in the manuscripts featured in the exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives. Actors Paul Hecht (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, 1776) and Barbara Feldon (Get Smart, Smile), will perform selections from the diaries of Charlotte Bronte?, Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sir Walter Scott, Henry David Thoreau, and Tennessee Williams. Commentary will be provided by Christine Nelson, Drue Heinz Curator, Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum.

Thursday, April 21, 7 PM*



*The exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives will be open at 6 PM especially for program attendees.



Films

The Diary on Screen

To coincide with the exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives, the Morgan is screening two films adapted from the diaries of famous historical figures.



MASTERPIECE Classic's The Diary of Anne Frank

(2010, 100 minutes)

Director: Jon Jones

Join us for a screening of one of the most poignant and well-known diary stories. This recent MASTERPIECE Classic production draws on Anne Frank's own words in the most accurate-ever adaptation of the revered memoir. The film stars newcomer Ellie Kendrick as Anne, with Iain Glen and Tamsin Greig as Anne's father and mother, Otto and Edith Frank. Presented in partnership with MASTERPIECE Classic, WGBH Boston.

Friday, February 11, 7 PM



The Story of Adele H.

(1975, 98 minutes)

Director: François Truffaut

Adapted from the real-life diaries of Victor Hugo's daughter (which are on view in the exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives), this film tells the story of Adele H., whose pursuit of a handsome and womanizing British lieutenant takes her across an ocean and eventually sparks her spiral into madness. Isabelle Adjani received an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of the title character in this haunting portrait of obsession and desire. Bruce Robinson, Sylvia Marriott, and Joseph Blatchley also star. Distributed by MGM Home Entertainment Inc.

Friday, April 15, 7 PM



Family Program

Bound to Write: Build Your Own Journal 

Join book artist and educator Stephanie Krause and learn basic bookbinding techniques to
create, decorate, and begin to fill your own journal. Following a brief tour of the exhibition The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives, families will explore beautiful art materials while binding a double signature pamphlet book with a tied wraparound cover. Appropriate for ages 6-12. This workshop is limited to families with children. There is a limit of two adult tickets per family.

Saturday, February 26, 2-4 PM



Gallery Talk
The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives

Christine Nelson, Drue Heinz Curator, Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum

Friday, February 18, 7 PM


ORGANIZATION AND SPONSORSHIP

The Diary is organized by Christine Nelson, The Drue Heinz Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at The Morgan Library & Museum. 


This exhibition is sponsored by CastleRock Management. 

Generous support is provided by the William C. Bullitt Foundation.

The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.


Admission
$15 for adults; $10 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

The Morgan Library & Museum Presents Month-Long Exhibition of Photographs by Massimo Listri of the Great Libraries of Europe

Show coincides with the reopening of the Morgan's original 1906 library and includes twenty-three large-format photographs of such magnificent rooms as Trinity College Library, Dublin

Great European Libraries: Photographs by Massimo Listri Opens December 10

New York, NY, November 22, 2010—In 1902, when Pierpont Morgan commissioned Charles Follen McKim to design a library to house his growing collection of books and manuscripts, the architect conceived an Italianate marble villa that paid homage to the High Renaissance. On the occasion of the most extensive restoration of the McKim building's sumptuous interiors in over one hundred years, The Morgan Library & Museum presents an exhibition of photographs by Massimo Listri documenting iconic European libraries that similarly use fine wood, marble, and other precious materials to create an opulent setting for books. Great European Libraries: Photographs by Massimo Listri is on view from December 10, 2010 through January 9, 2011. 



The large-format photographs, almost five feet in width and four feet in height, dramatically capture the beauty of the libraries, which were built from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. They represent an array of private, public, ecclesiastical, and academic institutions. Among them are the Malatestiana Library in Cesena, Italy, which was completed in 1454 and survives in its original building with its collection and furnishings intact; the St. Gall Monastery Library in Switzerland, which is a fine example of the Rococo style; the magnificent Long Room of Trinity College Library at the University of Dublin, where the Book of Kells is kept; the Laurentian Library in Florence, which was designed by Michelangelo; and the Vatican Library's sumptuous quarters, which were constructed between 1585 and 1590.
 

Massimo Listri is a Florence-based photographer whose work often presents interiors of great architectural and cultural importance. He has photographed ancient castles, villas and palaces, as well as hidden gardens, libraries, convents, monasteries, and universities. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous public and private institutions, including Palazzo Reale, Milan, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, and Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato. Over his career he has produced fifty-eight books on art and architecture. Among the titles are Il fascino delle biblioteche (in which most of the photographs in this exhibition appear), Il fascino dei musei, Italian Parks and Gardens, Where Muses Dwell: Homes of Great Artists and Writers, and Magnificent Italian Villas and Palaces.

This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of Regione Toscana in collaboration with Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci-Prato. For more information, please visit www.centropecci.it.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding in 1906, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. In October 2010, the Morgan completed the first-ever restoration of its original McKim building, Pierpont Morgan's private library, and the core of the institution. In tandem with the 2006 expansion project by architect Renzo Piano, the Morgan now provides visitors unprecedented access to its world-renowned collections of drawings, literary and historical manuscripts, musical scores, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, printed books, and ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets. 



General Information

The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org
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DALLAS—The George W. Bush Presidential Center and SMU announced a special exhibition that will preview some of the historic holdings eventually to be featured at the museum of the Bush Center. The exhibit, Breaking New Ground: Presenting the George W. Bush Presidential Center, casts the vision for the Center and gives visitors a peek into its current and future activities. The exhibit, which will be held at the Meadows Museum on SMU’s campus, will describe in detail the building project which will break ground in November, and showcase ongoing initiatives at The Bush Institute and key artifacts and papers of the Bush Administration.



“Even before we break ground on the George W. Bush Presidential Center, we want to involve the public in what has already become a dynamic hub of ideas, innovation and action,” said The Honorable Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation. “The exhibit will enable visitors to learn what the Bush Center is offering through action-oriented initiatives at the Institute, as well as gain insight into significant moments of our nation’s past through these historic treasures.”

Visitors will be introduced to the planned features of the Bush Center through renderings, floor plans and an architectural model of the building. The building is designed to achieve LEED platinum certification and includes numerous sustainable design strategies.

Visitors will also learn about key elements of the Presidential Library, including the archives and museum, as well as the work of the Bush Institute. The exhibit will invite visitors to share their questions and comments via text and on the Center’s website.

The exhibit, which opens on Saturday, October 23, 2010, and runs through Sunday, February 6, 2011, will feature a number of prominent artifacts that capture defining moments of the George W. Bush Administration including:
    •    The bullhorn President Bush used when he visited Ground Zero on September 14, 2001
    •    The silk dress and bolero jacket designed by Oscar de la Renta and worn by Mrs. Bush at the White House dinner with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
    •    The pistol retrieved from Saddam Hussein upon his capture in Iraq A letter from Bono to President Bush regarding AIDS relief in Africa
    •    A framed print of a painting by Senator Ted Kennedy given to Mrs. Bush on September 11, 2001
    •    A bronzed football commemorating the University of Texas Longhorns 2005 National Championship win, given as a gift to President Bush
    •    A pair of woven sashes presented to President and Mrs. Bush by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of the Republic of Liberia
    •    An award given to Mrs. Bush by the National Teachers Hall of Fame

“The artifacts chosen for the exhibit portray important moments in our nation’s history and provide a glimpse into life in the White House,” said Alan Lowe, director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. “The National Archives is pleased to provide this unique opportunity to ‘preview’ the museum and archives and engage the public in an early discussion on the development of the Bush Center.”

About the George W. Bush Presidential Center:
The George W. Bush Presidential Center invites visitors to reflect on the lessons of the past, focuses attention on the problems of the present and inspires solutions for a better future. Located in Dallas on the campus of SMU, the Bush Center includes the George W. Bush Presidential Library and the action-oriented George W. Bush Institute. To view a virtual tour of the exhibit, visit www.georgewbushcenter.com. To visit the George W. Bush library online, please visit this link: http://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/

New York, NY, September 29, 2010—On October 30, The Morgan Library & Museum's landmark McKim building will reopen to the public following the completion of the most extensive restoration of its interior spaces since its construction more than one hundred years ago. The building, designed by the firm of McKim, Mead and White, was once the private study and library of financier Pierpont Morgan. The Italianate marble villa, designed in the spirit of the High Renaissance, is considered one of New York's great architectural treasures, and its interiors are regarded as some of the most beautiful in America. The $4.5 million restoration revitalizes the historic center of the Morgan, in many ways completing the institution's dynamic transformation that began in 2006 with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano's successful expansion and renovation of the campus.

The project provides enhanced exhibition space for the institution and enables the Morgan to share with the public more treasures from its world-renowned permanent collection. The inaugural installation demonstrates the extraordinary quality and scope of Pierpont Morgan's interests as a collector and cultural steward. Nearly 300 objects dating from 3500 BC to the twentieth century will be displayed throughout the building's majestic rooms in a series of rotating exhibitions. Previously, only about thirty objects were regularly on view in the McKim.

The Morgan will celebrate the restoration project with a series of special activities, culminating with the October 30 public opening. Beginning with a media preview on October 21, the week-long festivities will include a special gala for Morgan patrons and a members' open house. The public opening will include performances by student musicians from the Mannes College The New School of Music, and the New-Trad Octet, as well as a special lecture by Morgan director William M. Griswold and docent-led tours of the McKim building throughout the day. Special screenings of the film, All the Beautiful Things in the World: An Introduction to the Morgan, also will be presented that day.

"The reopening of the McKim building is a special moment in the history of the institution," said Morgan Director William M. Griswold, who is guiding the first major capital project since he assumed his position in 2008. "The building is the heart and soul of The Morgan Library & Museum. Not only does it embody the taste and vision of the museum's founder and patron, Pierpont Morgan, but over the years its beautiful rooms have become synonymous with all that makes the Morgan special. No visit to the museum is complete without a tour of the McKim building, and now, with this ambitious project and the installation of some of the Morgan's outstanding treasures, that experience will be greatly enhanced."

Room-by-Room Summary
 
The restoration project encompasses all of the McKim's rooms and exhibition spaces. Key components include new lighting throughout the building to better illuminate its extraordinary murals and decor, the opening of the North Room to visitors for the first time, installation of new exhibition cases to house rotating displays of masterpieces from the Morgan's collections, restoration of period furniture and fixtures, and cleaning of the walls and applied ornamentation.

Library (East Room)
Pierpont Morgan's stunning library, also known as the East Room, is defined by its majestic thirty-foot walls, lined floor to ceiling with triple tiers of bookcases made of inlaid Circassian walnut and featuring volumes of European literature from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. The library now will be equipped with a new state-of-the-art, yet subtle lighting system; a newly installed late-nineteenth-century Persian rug of the type originally in the room; and newly designed display cases that will be used to exhibit some of the Morgan's most valued objects.

The revamped lighting will allow visitors to fully appreciate the splendor of the lunettes and spandrels of the library's decorative ceiling, the work of noted muralist Henry Siddons Mowbray (1858-1928), which features cultural luminaries of the past such as Socrates, Galileo, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, as well as signs of the zodiac. The improved illumination also will significantly enhance the focal point of the room— the grand fireplace and sixteenth-century tapestry depicting the triumph of Avarice, from a series depicting the Seven Deadly Sins.

The inlaid walnut bookshelves that contain the Morgan's collection of rare books will be enhanced with nonreflective Plexiglas, allowing visitors to identify individual titles and to appreciate the beauty of the exquisite bindings more fully.

An original pendant chandelier, preserved since its removal about seventy years ago and designed by twentieth-century New York designer Edward F. Caldwell, will be restored and rehung at the library's entrance. Seating also will be installed to enable visitors to spend more time contemplating this extraordinary room.

Prior to the restoration, only a handful of objects were regularly on view in the library. Highlights of the approximately one hundred rotating works that will be on display each year in this room include examples of some of the Morgan's finest literary and historical manuscripts, medieval and Renaissance illuminated texts, music manuscripts, and printed books and bindings. Visitors will encounter a letter from fifteen-year-old Queen Elizabeth I purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1900; the manuscript for Balzac's Eugenie Grandet (1833) with a torturous mass of revisions, corrections, and additions demonstrating the writer's complex creative process; illustrated notes by Alexander Calder regarding the installation of his "stabiles" from 1941; the Reims Gospel Book, the Morgan's finest Carolingian manuscript, written in gold at the Abbey of St. Remi (ca. 860); the manuscript of Mozart's famed "Haffner" Symphony No. 35 (1732); a newly discovered manuscript for Robert Schumann's "Des Knaben Berglied" (1849) acquired by the Morgan in 2009 and displayed for the first time; one of the earliest editions of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1483); the first edition of Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking Glass (1872) with proofs of Tenniel's illustrations; Mary Shelley's annotated copy of her masterpiece Frankenstein (1818); and one of the Morgan's three original Gutenberg Bibles (ca. 1455), the first book printed with moveable type.

Study (West Room)
The Renaissance-inspired furnishings of the Study, or West Room, and the paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts displayed, reveal the breadth of Morgan's interests and activity as a collector, and reflect his reputation as a "modern day Medici." The room is defined by its sixteenth-century Florentine coffered wooden ceiling, red silk damask wall coverings patterned after the wall in the Roman palace of famed Renaissance banker Agostino Chigi, and fifteenth- to seventeenth-century stained glass fragments embedded into the windows.

The Study will be enriched by a more substantive display of works from the collection that surrounded Pierpont Morgan in the early 1900s, when he used the room for personal business, as well as with objects that have been acquired since. More than double the number of objects will be on view, including works never shown before, such as the 1530 Verrazano globe, one of the earliest known dated globes, and a bronze St. John the Baptist after Michelozzo. Other works include paintings by Hans Memling, Francesco Francia, Perugino, and Jacopo Tintoretto, among others.

The steel-lined vault in the southeast corner of the room, equipped with a bank vault door and combination lock, is where Pierpont Morgan housed his most valued acquisitions, particularly his collection of more than 600 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The vault remained in use until 2003, housing by then the more than 1,300 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the institution's collection. As part of the McKim restoration project, another modification to the Study makes the vault more accessible to visitors. The curtain currently shrouding the vault's entrance will be removed, new lighting fixtures will be installed, and the vault shelves will be filled with sumptuous leather boxes that housed the Morgan's manuscripts and rare books. Several small bronze objects and tomes in which many of Pierpont Morgan's collections were published also will be on display. The vault's original runner was conserved and will be installed in its original location.

Additional works of sculpture such as such as the Bust of the Christ Child by Antonio Rossellino and Saint John the Baptist by Giovanni Francesco Rustici will be exhibited on the low bookshelves lining the perimeter of the room, and the lush, velvet-covered furnishings will be reupholstered to evoke the atmosphere of the study as it was in Pierpont Morgan's day.

North Room
The North Room, the intimate office of the Morgan's first director, Belle da Costa Greene, will open to the public for the first time, and will be transformed to feature the earliest works in the Morgan's collection, including objects from the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as artifacts from the early medieval period. More than 200 objects will be on permanent view in this new exhibition space. The two-tiered room, lined with walnut bookshelves, features a ceiling of Renaissance-inspired paintings and a bronze bust of Giovanni Boccaccio on the mantle of the fireplace.

Bookshelves along the perimeter of the room will be converted to exquisitely lit cases to display these items, notably a selection of Ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals collected by Pierpont Morgan. Dating from around 3500 BC, these miniature engraved stones were in use for about 3,000 years in the region referred to as Mesopotamia. These seals were the earliest known objects to use pictorial symbols to communicate ideas. Also on view is a selection of clay tablets, including a seventeenth-century BC fragment inscribed with the Babylonian flood epic predating the story of Noah's Ark in the Old Testament.

The room will accommodate freestanding cases for Near Eastern as well as ancient Greek and Roman objects, including a pair of intricately decorated first-century Roman silver cups and a rare thirteenth-century BC stone tablet featuring cuneiform inscriptions.

The installation also will include jeweled and metalwork objects such as buckles, brooches, and other personal ornaments dating from the second to the tenth centuries, from the collection of Morgan trustee Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare, as well as an eleventh-century jeweled book binding. The Migration-era objects from the Thaw collection document the medieval period in Europe.

The original chandeliers, removed two generations ago, will be refinished and reinstalled, allowing for optimal appreciation of the recently cleaned ceiling and upper-tier bookcases. In addition, two Egyptian basalt votive figures will flank the room's fireplace on new pedestals.

Rotunda
The Rotunda, originally entered through the grand doors facing 36th Street, is the dramatic center of the McKim building. Its intricate and elaborately decorated ceiling, also painted by Mowbray, refers thematically to the great treasures contained within this remarkable structure, depicting figures from classical antiquity and the great literary epochs of the past, including Homer, Dante, and Petrarch. The splendor of color and texture is supplied by variegated marble surfaces and columns, mosaic panels and columns of lapis lazuli.

The marble surfaces and mosaic panels that are signature features of the McKim Rotunda have been cleaned and restored to their original grandeur for the first time in a century. New lighting will simulate the natural light that originally came through the oculus and will enhance the richly illustrated apse, ceiling, and lunettes.

Prior to the restoration, the Rotunda was not used as an exhibition space. Now, new display cases will be installed, housing the first substantive display of the Morgan's outstanding collection of Americana, including such great works as autograph letters by Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, the Morgan's life mask of George Washington, copies of the first Bible printed in America, and the Declaration of Independence.

McKim Reopening Public Programs
Saturday, October 30, 2010
All events are included with admission to The Morgan Library & Museum. Tickets to the lecture and concert will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of the program. Advance reservations for Morgan members only: 212.685.0008 x560 or tickets@themorgan.org.


12-3 p.m.    Performance by Mannes College The New School for Music students in the Morgan's Gilbert Court, including repertoire from the Italian baroque to the American Gilded Age.
1-1:45 p.m.    Lecture by William Griswold in Gilder Lehrman Hall, including details of the McKim restoration project and an introduction to the Morgan's history and collections.
4-5:30 p.m.    Concert by New-Trad Octet in Gilder Lehrman Hall
Combining instruments and elements of a traditional New Orleans brass band with those of a modern jazz group, Jeff Newell and the New-Trad Octet explore the early sources of America's musical heritage. To celebrate the period of American history covered in the Morgan's exhibition Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress, the program will feature works by Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, and others.
All Day    Film Screening—All the Beautiful Things in the World: An Introduction to the Morgan. A feature documentary on the history of The Morgan Library & Museum, its collections, and founder Pierpont Morgan.
All Day    Guided Tours of the McKim. Docents will be on hand throughout the day to provide visitors with historical insight into the Morgan's architecture.
About the Project Team
Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum, is coordinating the reinstallation of collection objects in the McKim building.

Exhibition Design: Stephen Saitas, Stephen Saitas Designs
Stephen Saitas Designs, New York has designed more than 175 installations and exhibitions in museums, galleries, historic houses, and libraries since the firm's establishment in 1982. Recent projects include the reinstallations of the European and American collections for The Huntington, San Marino, CA; and the reinstallation of the American Wing period rooms for The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lighting Design: Richard Renfro, Renfro Design Group, Inc.
Renfro Design Group, Inc., established in 1998, is an architectural lighting design firm. Recent projects include the Bloch Building addition to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Craig Thomas Discovery Visitor Center at Grand Teton National Park; and The American Wing Gallery at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Architect of Record: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP
Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, which worked with the Morgan on its 2006 expansion, has been responsible for the restoration and revitalization of many significant buildings and sites, including Grand Central Terminal, Ellis Island Immigration Museum, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse, and the Rubin Museum of Art.

The Morgan Library & Museum
A complex of buildings in the heart of New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. Located at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, with a world-renowned collection that ranges from Rembrandt to Picasso, Mozart to Bob Dylan, Dickens to Hemingway, and Gutenberg Bibles to Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum maintains a unique position among cultural institutions in New York, the nation, and the world.

General Information
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008
www.themorgan.org

Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Admission
$12 for adults; $8 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

Current & Upcoming Exhibitions
Anne Morgan's War: Rebuilding Devastated France, 1917-1924    September 3-November 21, 2010
Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress    September 17, 2010-January 3, 2011
Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968    September 24, 2010-January 2, 2011
Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks    September 24, 2010-January 23, 2011

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Amherst, MA—The first-ever museum consideration of the Jewish picture book, Monsters and Miracles: A Journey through Jewish Picture Books, will travel from Los Angeles to The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and the Yiddish Book Center from October 15th through January 23rd.  This exhibit is co-organized by the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA) and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, featuring more than 100 original works of art, texts, and related objects from time-honored classics and popular favorites.
 
Featured authors and artists include Eric Carle, Daniel Pinkwater, Maurice Sendak, Margot Zemach, Mark Podwal, Francine Prose, Lemony Snicket, Art Spiegelman, and William Steig. With historical examples dating as early as the twelfth century, Monsters and Miracles also encompasses the work of luminaries Isaac Bashevis Singer, Marc Chagall, and El Lissitzky.
 
Monsters and Miracles investigates the significant contributions that Jewish art and storytelling have made to children’s literature, tracing the development of the Jewish picture book from its early cultural roots to its contemporary innovations. The works represent an array of artistic media, including paintings, drawings, computer-generated images, paper cuts, collages, as well as lavishly illustrated Hebrew manuscripts. While texts are mainly in English, there are also works in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Portuguese.
 
Children and adults alike will delight as they revisit their favorite stories and encounter new authors and illustrators. In addition to the artworks on display, the exhibition programming includes a presentation by co-curators Neal Sokol and Ilan Stavans, a presentation by Mark Podwal, and a latke breakfast with Lisa Brown.   See both the Carle website (www.carlemuseum.org) and the Yiddish Book Center website (www.yiddishbookcenter.org) for a complete list of programming.
 
As with all exhibitions, the books featured in the exhibition will be available for families to read and enjoy. Additionally, from December 8 through January 18, The Eric Carle Museum’s Art Studio will offer Monster Mock-Up, where guests can create their own monsters inspired by what they see in the galleries, including William Steig’s Shrek! and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. These complimentary hands-on activities will further expand the visitor experience.
 
“The evolution of the picture book in Jewish history is a fascinating story,” said Carle Museum Executive Director Alexandra Kennedy.  “The art of storytelling is deeply embedded in Jewish tradition and we are pleased to work with the Skirball Cultural Center and Yiddish Book Center to bring this important exhibition to both coasts.”
 
 
Exhibition Overview
 
Organized into six sections, Monsters and Miracles addresses several storytelling motifs.

The exhibition opens with a number of lavishly illuminated Haggadoth dating back to the eighteenth century. Throughout Jewish history, these illustrated liturgical volumes have been used to recount the Exodus story at the Passover Seder, serving as a lively medium of instruction, much like today’s picture books. Also on display is a selection of historical volumes that are set alongside modern versions of the same themes, such as an alphabet primer from medieval Cairo, together with early-twentieth-century and contemporary aleph-bet Hebrew alphabet books.
 
Next, the exhibition presents biblical stories as reconsidered by modern-day authors. Timeless tales provide moral direction to readers and portray ancient heroes in examples such as Why Noah Chose the Dove (1974), written by Isaac Bashevis Singer and illustrated by Eric Carle; Jonah and the Two Great Fish (1997), by Mordicai Gerstein; and King Solomon and His Magic Ring (1999) written by Elie Wiesel and illustrated by Mark Podwal.
 
The third section features illustrations of monsters, giants, goblins, and other mythical beings. Drawing inspiration from biblical angels and demons, the Jewish storybook tradition has created a thriving bestiary of creatures, including golemsand dybbuks, the subjects of tales by David Wisniewski, Mark Podwal, Francine Prose and Barbara Rogasky. In many of these modern tales, imaginary figures take on human traits and frailties, such as: the lovable monsters that populate the realm of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which were modeled after the author/illustrator’s own frightening relatives; a misanthropic ogre becomes the hero in William Steig’sSHREK! (1990), whose name means fear in Yiddish; and an angst-ridden latke looks for signs of Hanukkah in Lemony Snicket’s The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story (2007), illustrated by Lisa Brown.
 
In the fourth section, the exhibition highlights traditional Jewish village life in shtetls (a Yiddish term for rural villages once inhabited by the Jews of Eastern Europe), which remain central to the cultural foundation of Ashkenazi Jewish traditions.Here, stories and illustrations capture the folklore and charm of these communities. Several works represent the early illustration and graphic design efforts by well-known artists Marc Chagall and El Lissitzky, both of whom grew up in a shtetl. Contemporary stories harkening back to shtetltraditions include Art Spiegelman’s “Prince Rooster,” from Little Lit: Folklore and Fairy Tale Funnies (2000) and Kibitzers and Fools: Tales My Zayda Told Me (2005) by Simms Taback, who uses collage and watercolor to portray the colorful residents of shtetls. Here, visitors are also introduced to one of the most popular Arabic folktale characters, Nasreddin Hodja, in Eric A. Kimmel’s forthcoming Joha Makes a Wish: A Middle Eastern Tale (2010), illustrated by Omar Raayan.
 
Next, Monsters and Miracles examines transitions from the Old World to the New. Several tales use migration as their main theme, includingThe Travels of Benjamin Tudela: Through Three Continents in the Twelfth Century (2005) by Uri Shulevitz and The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey (2005) written by Louise Borden and illustrated by Allan Drummond. Other stories use their narrative and illustrations to transporting viewers to different destinations around the world, including Israel, Spain, and frequently the United States. Books such as Haym Salomon: American Patriot (2007), written by Susan Goldman Rubin and illustrated by David Slonim; When Zaydeh Danced on Eldridge Street(1997), written by Elsa Okon Rael and illustrated by Marjorie Priceman; and The Castle on Hester Street (2007), written by Linda Heller and illustrated by Boris Kulikov, demonstrate how Jews embraced the American experience and made it their own.
 
In the final section, the exhibition looks at new trends in Jewish picture books. The influence of the graphic novel is notable in illustrations from The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Wisdom and Wit in the Wild West (2006) by Steve Sheinkin and Houdini: The Handcuff King (2007), written by Jason Lutes and illustrated by Nick Bertozzi. Feature film and television adaptations of some of the most beloved picture books—Curious George (the original manuscript for which was smuggled out of Nazi-dominated Europe along with its creators), and Where the Wild Things Are—are documented by movie stills, video clips, and other memorabilia. Another trend is seen in picture books offering alternative narratives of American Jewish life. Among these are Laurel Snyder’s forthcoming Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher (2010), illustrated by David Goldin; Daniel Pinkwater’s forthcoming story in Yiddish and English, Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken (2010), illustrated by Jill Pinkwater; and Lemony Snicket’s unconventional holiday tale, The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story (2007), illustrated by Lisa Brown.
 
About The Carle:
Together with his wife Barbara, Eric Carle, the renowned author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art as the first full-scale museum in this country devoted to national and international picture book art, conceived and built with the aim of celebrating the art that we are first exposed to as children. Through the exploration of images that are familiar and beloved, it is the Museum’s goal to provide an enriching, dynamic, and supportive context for the development of literacy and to foster in visitors of all ages and backgrounds the confidence to appreciate and enjoy art of every kind.
 
The Museum-which houses three galleries dedicated to rotating exhibitions of picture book art, a hands-on Art Studio, a Reading Library, an Auditorium, a Café, and a Museum Shop-is located at 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, MA. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm. Admission is $9 for adults, $6 for children under 18, and $22.50 for a family of four. For further information and directions, call 413-658-1100 or visit the Museum’s website at www.carlemuseum.org.
 
About the Yiddish Book Center:
The Yiddish Book Center is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing and distributing Yiddish and other Jewish books and opening their contents to the world.  Its beautiful 37,000-square-foot headquarters in Amherst, MA, is a lebedike velt - a lively world featuring an open Yiddish book repository, exhibitions about Jewish literature, art, film, and music and other resources for visitors.  The Yiddish Book Center, located at 1021 West Street, is open Mondays from 10 am to 4 pm and Sundays in the spring to late fall season from 11 am to 4 pm.  Admission is free. For more information about the Yiddish Book Center, call 413-256-4900 or visit www.yiddishbookcenter.org.
 
About the Skirball Cultural Center:
 
The Skirball Cultural Center is dedicated to exploring the connections between 4,000 years of Jewish heritage and the vitality of American democratic ideals. It welcomes and seeks to inspire people of every ethnic and cultural identity.  Guided by our respective memories and experiences, together we aspire to build a society in which all of us can feel at home. The Skirball Cultural Center achieves its mission through educational programs that explore literary, visual, and performing arts from around the world; through the display and interpretation of its permanent collections and changing exhibitions; through an interactive family destination inspired by the Noah’s Ark story; and through outreach to the community.

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New York, NY, September 7, 2010—The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that original manuscript pages from Mark Twain's most important work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), will go on view as part of a major exhibition, Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress, opening on September 17 at the Morgan.



This important, late addition to the show is the first time pages from the first half of Huckleberry Finn have been exhibited in New York City. It is being loaned by the Buffalo and Erie County Library in upstate New York.



In total, four pages of the manuscripts will be on display. They depict episodes involving Huck and Jim on their raft in the Mississippi as well as a ribald song sung by a boatman, and which Twain is believed to have sung at his own wedding. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered by many to be one of the greatest of all American novels. Ernest Hemingway wrote, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn.'"



Coinciding with the 175th anniversary of Twain's birth in 1835, Mark Twain: A Skeptic's Progress includes more than 120 manuscripts, letters, notebooks, journals, rare books, photographs, and drawings from the renowned collections of the Morgan and The New York Public Library. The exhibition features extensive portions of autograph manuscripts of two key nonfiction works, Life on the Mississippi (1883) and Following the Equator (1897), and explores a central, recurring theme throughout the Twain's body of work: his uneasy, often critical, attitude towards a rapidly modernizing America. The exhibition runs through January 2, 2010.



The Morgan Library & Museum
 is a complex of buildings in the heart of New York City. The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. Located at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, with a world-renowned collection that ranges from Rembrandt to Picasso, Mozart to Bob Dylan, Dickens to Hemingway, and Gutenberg Bibles to Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum maintains a unique position among cultural institutions in New York, the nation, and the world.



General Information
:
The Morgan Library & Museum

225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street
New York, NY 10016-3405

212.685.0008

www.themorgan.org


Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

Admission
$12 for adults; $8 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

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The Morgan Library & Museum to Exhibit Superb Selection of Drawings and Sketchbooks by Edgar Degas

Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks Opens September 24, 2010

New York, NY, July 20, 2010—Edgar Degas (1834-1917), founding member of the Impressionist group who was distinguished by his Realist tendencies, is renowned for his vigorous images of dancers, performers, and theater scenes in paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Throughout his career, he used drawing in dynamic and varied ways to explore these recurring subjects.

The exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum opens September 24, 2010, and features some twenty exceptional drawings by Degas, along with two of his sketchbooks, demonstrating the iconic artist's characteristic daring and inventiveness. The show includes works depicting quintessential Degas subjects—from his earliest portraits of himself, family members, and friends to his later intensive studies of dancers and performers. Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks is on view through January 23, 2011, in the Morgan's Clare Eddy Thaw Gallery.

"As a medium, drawing often provides a more personal and intimate glimpse of an artist's creative process than either painting or sculpture, and the works on view in this exhibition are no exception," said William M. Griswold, director of The Morgan Library & Museum. "The artist is known for his bold experimentation with subject matter and artistic technique, and the drawings and sketchbooks in this show underscore Degas' willingness to push himself in new directions."

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
Degas began studying law in Paris in 1853, though he soon turned his attention to copying works in the Louvre. Later, he entered the studio of Louis Lamothe, who was a pupil of Ingres and also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. He left Paris in July 1856 to study independently in Rome, where he filled sketchbooks and sheets with studies of models and copies of old masters. Study of a Male Nude dates from his first year in Rome and reflects the artist's early academic efforts.

Thirty-eight sketchbooks by Degas have survived essentially intact. They cover the period between 1853 and 1886 and constitute the most significant sustained record of any Impressionist artist. The show includes two sketchbooks: one from early in Degas' career, during his first trip to Italy, the other datable to the height of his fame in Paris. The early sketchbook contains diligent student work, such as sketches of antique statuary and copies of Renaissance frescoes and paintings. The subjects range from the whimsical to the thoughtful, with quick portraits of dinner guests, sketches of dancers, and scenes from a Turkish bath in the later notebook.

Also on view from Degas' early years in Italy are Self-Portrait and Details of Hand and Eye(ca. 1856) and Self-Portrait (ca. 1856). These two studies in black chalk were private exercises in proficiency and discipline and remained in portfolios in the artist's studio until after his death. Another work, Self-Portrait in a Brown Vest (1856), a more tentative exploration in oil on paper, reveals Degas' continued use of himself as subject as he came to grasp the rudiments of portraiture.

In addition to self-portraiture, Degas depicted his friends and family throughout his career in works such as Portrait of Paul and Marguerite-Claire Valpinçon (1861) and Rosa Adelaide Aurora Degas, the Duchess Morbilli (ca. 1857). Paul Valpinçon was a friend of Degas from his school days, and Rosa Degas was the eldest sister of the artist's father.

Degas' much-heralded explorations of dancers—in rehearsal, on stage, and at rest—began in the 1870s and intensified during the ensuing decades. This period also marked the beginning of his success as an artist. One of Degas' principal concerns as a draftsman was analyzing the movements and gestures of the female body. On view are several drawings featuring dancers, including Three Studies of a Dancer (ca. 1880), easily recognizable as the study for the celebrated wax sculpture Little Dancer, Fourteen Years Old, depicting the young dancer Marie van Goethem. In this large sheet, the artist studied her from three different angles, attempting to understand the figure in the round in preparation for sculpting it.

Other examples of drawings with dancers include Seated Dancer (ca. 1871), one of the studies for Dance Class at the Opéra on the Rue le Peletier, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, as well as Two Studies of Dancers (ca. 1873), Dancer with Arms Outstretched(ca. 1878), and Two Studies of a Ballet Dancer (ca. 1872).

Though noted for his attention to the female figure, Degas executed many studies of grouped horses and jockeys from which he would use figures in later compositions. Group of Four Jockeys, with its play of intersecting lines of movement, conveys the tension and frequent conflicts in the paddock before a race. The drawing also provides an exceptional example of Degas' remarkable inventiveness as he reworked and revised a particular scene over a significant span of years. He initially executed this compositional study circa 1868 and then returned to it about a decade later to combine the elements in the last stages of preparation for the painting Racecourse Scene.

Later in his career, Degas experimented with mixing drawing media and printmaking techniques as seen in Emélie Bécat at the Café des Ambassadeurs. He began the drawing in 1885 using an impression from his 1877-78 lithograph of a concert at Café des Ambassadeurs, which he extended along the bottom and right edges, and drew over in dense strokes of pastel. Significantly altering the composition of the print, he added the three female spectators in the foreground. The women's dark silhouettes, in shades of blue and ochre, are contrasted against the bright pink dress of Emélie Bécat. Degas used the range of pastels to capture the effects of various light sources in this nocturnal scene and suggests the difference between the mundane and the magical world of the theater.

At the Theater; the Duet (1877-79) is another example of how the artist expertly combined pastel and print. Degas first produced a monotype—a unique print made from drawing in ink on a metal or glass plate—of two singers on stage, seen from behind, with a view to the audience. He then enlivened the print with richly colored pastels. The subject in this work is again Emélie Bécat, who appears with another of Degas' favorite performers, Theresa (Emma Valadon).

Also on view is Landscape with Path Leading to a Copse of Trees (ca. 1890). While Degas is not known as a landscape artist, this work demonstrates how he further explored the medium of monotype. This sheet was made during the artist's visit to the painter and printmaker Georges Jeanniot (1846-1934) in the village of Diénay near Dijon. There Degas recalled scenery from the drive through the Burgundian countryside and produced about fifty monotype landscapes. To create this drawing, he used oil paint (and apparently his fingers) to indicate a few lines of landscape on the plate and printed one or two proofs, hanging them to dry. Later, he completed the composition with a rich layer of pastel.

Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks is organized by Jennifer Tonkovich, Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Morgan Library & Museum.

This exhibition is made possible by the William C. Bullitt Foundation.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Morgan Library & Museum
A complex of buildings in the heart of New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. Located at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, with a world-renowned collection that ranges from Rembrandt to Picasso, Mozart to Bob Dylan, Dickens to Hemingway, and Gutenberg Bibles to Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum maintains a unique position among cultural institutions in New York, the nation, and the world.

General Information
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008
www.themorgan.org

Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

Admission
$12 for adults; $8 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

The Morgan Library & Museum to hold first exhibition devoted exclusively to Roy Lichtenstein's black-and-white drawings

Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968, opens September 24, 2010

New York, NY, July 9, 2010— Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) has long been considered one of the key figures in the development of Pop Art. His signature brightly colored paintings are cornerstones of museum collections the world over. His subject matter drawn from visual fragments of popular culture is emblematic of an entire movement.

An extraordinary new exhibition organized by The Morgan Library & Museum, opening September 24, presents an important series of large-scale, black-and-white works as a group for the first time and examines Lichtenstein's less known exploration of the medium of drawing. Created during the early and mid-1960s, the fifty-five drawings on view offer a revealing window into the development of Lichtenstein's art, as he began for the first time to appropriate commercial illustrations and comic strips as subject matter and experimented stylistically with simulating commercial techniques of reproduction—the famous Benday dots. The work represents an essential and original contribution to Pop Art as well as to the history of drawing. Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968, is on view through January 2, 2011.

"The Morgan is delighted to be the first museum to bring together this important group of drawings by Roy Lichtenstein," said William M. Griswold, director. "The work offers visual evidence of a great artist going in a radical new direction and using the medium of drawing to help him find his way. The Morgan Library & Museum is committed to the study of drawings and their role in the creative process, and Lichtenstein's black-and-white works are superb examples of this."

ROY LICHTENSTEIN IN THE EARLY 1960s
The year 1961 was a momentous period of transformation for Roy Lichtenstein. Thirty-eight years old and regularly exhibiting in New York since 1951, he was by many measures already a midcareer artist, working primarily in painting in Cubist and Abstract Expressionist styles. But in 1961 his art made a radical departure from these precedents. Influenced by the happenings staged by Allan Kaprow, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg, and others, which incorporated everyday objects and popular culture, Lichtenstein turned to an entirely new imagery culled from the contemporary world of advertisements and comic books and adopted the graphic techniques of commercial illustration. The exhibition demonstrates how the act of drawing took on a central role in his practice at this stage, both as a favored medium in its own right, as well as a powerful means of translating and transforming his sources of pop iconography.

THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition provides a rare opportunity to study Lichtenstein's black-and-white drawings as a group, to explore their technique and subject matter, to draw attention to Lichtenstein's revolutionizing contribution to the history of drawing, and to bring to light the critical insights these drawings offer into the artist's larger body of work.

The drawings constitute an original body of work independent from Lichtenstein's paintings. Although he produced many black-and-white paintings during the 1960s, the drawings were in fact conceived independently and cannot be interpreted as studies for the works on canvas. Lichtenstein's motivations in creating these works—which did not have the commercial value of paintings—remain enigmatic, though the exhibition provides some background. Moreover, these drawings differ significantly from Lichtenstein's main body of works on paper. They do not belong to the category of preparatory studies and also stand apart from the drawings of other major pop artists, notably Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jim Dine, whose treatment of pop subjects cultivated an old-master look that is absent from Lichtenstein's black-and-white drawings.

The exhibition traces the development of Lichtenstein's drawing style in the 1960s, notably his technique of simulating the Benday dot printing process—a characteristic feature of his style. The viewer can follow the development of the black-and-white drawings through the rendering of these dot patterns. Lichtenstein never drew them freehand but experimented with a variety of approaches, which he perfected over the years to mimic the effect of mechanical printing.

This technique became inseparable from the meaning of the finished work, producing, in the words of critic Lawrence Alloway, "an original artwork pretending to be a copy." By imitating mechanical modes of reproduction, Lichtenstein presented a critical challenge to prevailing notions of artistic originality and authorship, paradoxically achieving an unmistakable hallmark of style in the process.

The exhibition also explores the sources—comic strips, advertisements, magazines, and mail-order catalogues—of Lichtenstein's subjects. In addition to the drawings themselves, related sketches are on display as well as clippings from newspapers, magazines, telephone books, and other sources from which Lichtenstein drew inspiration for the works in the exhibition. The show underscores the two themes that came to dominate the drawings—household objects and comic-book scenes of war and romance—and illustrates how Lichtenstein endowed them with a heightened psychological resonance and formal intensity, raising them to the level of high art.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
The earliest drawings are also the most basic. A centrally placed, single object often stands against a blank background: an airplane, a couch, a cup of coffee. Others are based on diagrams demonstrating how to use a product by depicting a hand or foot interacting with an object, such as Hand Loading Gun and Foot Medication. When figures are included, as in Man with Coat and Girl with Accordion, they have plain, ordinary features, as opposed to the conventional beauty of male and female figures that would soon appear in his comic-inspired works.

By 1962, the drawings began to incorporate more elaborate source images, which introduced more complex compositions. Keds, for instance, was inspired by an advertisement for Sears, Roebuck & Company. In a sly reference to contemporary abstract art, Lichtenstein significantly reworked the composition to give greater emphasis to the geometric pattern of the sole. Bratatat and Jet Pilot are two drawings inspired by war comics. Both are close-up views of a pilot in his cockpit, with much attention lavished on the details of his accoutrements.

The exhibition also includes a piece from a little-known installation done by Lichtenstein in 1967 that represents an extension into three dimensions of his black-and-white drawings on paper. As part of the Aspen Festival of Contemporary Art, Lichtenstein drew with black tape on the wall of a white room, outlining its architectural elements. The only extant part of this project, a door with the words Nok!! Nok!! is featured, together with unpublished photographs of the whole room.

Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968 introduces an entirely new dimension of the artist's work to audiences more accustomed to seeing his brightly colored paintings. Although Pop art in general has been the subject of a number of shows, they have featured few drawings and rarely addressed the practice of drawing by Pop artists.

The exhibition is organized by Isabelle Dervaux, curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan. After it closes in New York, it will travel to The Albertina in Vienna, Austria (February 4 through May 15, 2011).

Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Dreawings, 1961-1968 is underwritten by the Terra Foundation for American Art .

Major support is provided by an anonymous donor and The Broad Art Foundation, with generous assistance from the Dedalus Foundation, Inc.

The Terra Foundation for American Art is dedicated to fostering exploration, understanding, and enjoyment of the visual arts of the United States for national and international audiences. Recognizing the importance of experiencing original works of art, the foundation provides opportunities for interaction and study, beginning with the presentation and growth of its own art collection in Chicago. To further cross-cultural dialogue on American art, the foundation supports and collaborates on innovative exhibitions, research, and education programs. Implicit in such activities is the belief that art has the potential both to distinguish cultures and to unite them.

The Morgan exhibition program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

PUBLICATION
A 208-page fully illustrated catalogue, compiled by Isabelle Dervaux, is produced in association with this exhibition. It includes essays by Graham Bader, Clare Bell, Thomas Crow, Isabelle Dervaux, and Margaret Holben Ellis and Lindsey Tyne and provides a detailed analysis of the drawings, their subjects, sources, and technique. In addition, it addresses the key exhibition themes: the significance of the drawings within Lichtenstein's oeuvre and their unique place in the art and culture of the 1960s.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Symposium
Lichtenstein in Context: Drawing in the 1960s
This half-day symposium explores the role of drawing in the 1960s in the work of Lichtenstein and his contemporaries. It will address the technique, style, and function of drawing in Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art. Speakers to be announced. This program coincides with the exhibition Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968. Saturday, November 20, 2-5 p.m.

Films
Roy Lichtenstein on Screen
To coincide with the exhibition Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968, the Morgan is screening several films that examine the work of Lichtenstein and his contemporaries.

Roy Lichtenstein
(1976, 53 minutes)
Director: Michael Blackwood
In this film by acclaimed director Michael Blackwood, we travel to Lichtenstein's Long Island studio and observe, from start to finish, the creation of one of his most elaborate compositions, The Artist's Studio. During the process, narrated by Lichtenstein himself, we learn that his parody of works of such artists as Picasso, Matisse, and Leger, serves to portray his ideas about what art —its imagery and stylistic modes—is. Courtesy of Michael Blackwood Productions.

followed by:

The Drawings of Roy Lichtenstein 1961-1986
(1987, 20 minutes)
Directors: Edgar B. Howard and Seth Schneidman
Lichtenstein once said that drawing was "a way of describing my thoughts as quickly as possible." This lively look at Lichtenstein's vision and technique provides a useful overview of his work, showing the genesis of many of his great works as they evolve from drawings into the slick, industrial style surfaces we all know. Produced in association with The Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy of Checkerboard Film Foundation, New York.
Friday, October 1, 7 p.m.

American Art in the 1960s
(1973, 57 minutes)
Director: Michael Blackwood
This film examines the key figures of the 1960s, including Rauschenberg and Johns, two contemporaries of Lichtenstein who were crucial transitional figures between abstract expressionism and the sensibilities of the new decade. American Art in the 1960s explores how the art of that time mirrored the optimism and affluence, as well as the technology and crassness of those boom years. Courtesy of Michael Blackwood Productions.
Friday, November 12, 7 p.m.

Family Program
Dot Dot Dot: Do Pop Art
After a short tour of Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968 with educator and artist Sarah Mostow, children will explore the versatility of the black dot, a trademark of the famed Pop artist. They will take a new look at daily objects, such as a shoe, a watch, a cell phone, or a glass, and, using the stencil technique, they will interpret them in a palette of grays. Appropriate for ages 6-12. This workshop is limited to families with children. There is a limit of two adult tickets per family.
Saturday, October 2, 2-4 p.m.

Gallery Talk
Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968
Isabelle Dervaux, Curator, Modern Drawings, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Margaret Holben Ellis, Director of the Thaw Conservation Center, The Morgan Library & Museum
Friday, October 22, 7 p.m.

The Morgan Library & Museum
A complex of buildings in the heart of New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today, more than a century after its founding, the Morgan serves as a museum, independent research library, musical venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. Located at Madison Avenue and 36th Street, with a world-renowned collection that ranges from Rembrandt to Picasso, Mozart to Bob Dylan, Dickens to Hemingway, and Gutenberg Bibles to Babar the elephant, The Morgan Library & Museum maintains a unique position among cultural institutions in New York, the nation, and the world.

General Information
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405
212.685.0008
www.themorgan.org

Hours
Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; extended Friday hours, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. The Morgan closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

Admission
$12 for adults; $8 for students, seniors (65 and over), and children (under 16); free to Members and children, 12 and under accompanied by an adult. Admission is free on Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is not required to visit the Morgan Shop.

PRESS CONTACTS
The Morgan Library & Museum
Patrick Milliman
212.590.0310
pmilliman@themorgan.org
Sandra Ho
212.590.0311
sho@themorgan.org

Yale University’s Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, 180 York Street, will host the exhibition “Material Meets Metaphor: A Half Century of Book Art by Richard Minsky” from August 2 through November 29.

The exhibition covers 50 years of Minsky’s work — from a 1960 sample book, used when he started his first letterpress printing business at age 13, to “Self-Portrait 2010,” a book that documents the evolution of a canvas, from pencil sketch through many layers of oil paint.

Yale University Library acquired the Richard Minsky Archive in 2004. It includes maquettes, molds for castings, and correspondence, as well as holographic manuscripts and early versions of select works. It documents Minsky's exploration of printing technologies from the mimeograph and spirit duplicator to his early use of inkjet printing on handmade paper.

“Minsky’s work as an artist and as founder of The Center for Book Arts in New York changed the way people see and make books,” said Jae Jennifer Rossman, the Haas Family Arts Library’s Assistant Director for Special Collections.

Many of Minsky's editioned works (non-commissioned work made in multiple copies) will be on view in the exhibition, along with unique works that have become iconic in the field of book art. These include his 1975 binding of “The Birds of North America” and “The Crisis of Democracy,” bound in sheepskin, gold and barbed wire.

More information about Minsky and his work is available online at www.minsky.com. His new book, “The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930,” was published this year by George Braziller, Inc.

The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library opened in August 2008 in the renovated Paul Rudolph Hall and the new Loria Center for the History of Art. The library brings together the collections, staff, and resources from the former Art + Architecture and Drama libraries and the Arts of the Book Collection, as well as staff and services for the Visual Resources Collection. It serves as the library for the Schools of Art, Architecture, and Drama, as well as the Department of the History of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. The library is open to the public Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. during the summer. In September the library will be open Monday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Fridays. For more information, visit http://www.library.yale.edu/arts/.

For information on the exhibition or the Richard Minsky Archive, contact Jae Rossman at (203) 432-4439 or jae.rossman@yale.edu. High quality images of the artist and items in the exhibition are also available.

PRESS CONTACT: Doris Baker, 203-432-1345

June 25, 2010

Eric Carle, internationally known for his beautiful and highly original tissue paper collages, employs bright colors and bold shapes to create images that are appealing and direct. The Carle’s new exhibition in the West Gallery, Eric Carle Prints and Papers, provides a rare opportunity to view some of his lesser known work in printmaking. It is on exhibit through September 5, 2010.

While working as a freelance graphic designer in advertising during the 1950s and 1960s, Carle created artwork in a variety of mediums including watercolor, linocuts, and collage.  His first major publishing project, illustrating Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? with Bill Martin Jr. led to other projects, including a cookbook, which used the linoleum-cut printing technique. This approach enabled Carle to accommodate the extensive text while maintaining a bold graphic presence. Eric Carle: Prints and Papers compares Carle’s early and later works in differing artistic techniques.

Prints and Papers is a complement to the woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi on exhibition in the East Gallery which closes on June 13th. The Art Studio, open every day, also further extends the experience by inviting visitors to create their own stamps.

About The Museum:
Together with his wife Barbara, Eric Carle, the renowned author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar, founded The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art as the first full-scale museum in this country devoted to national and international picture book art, conceived and built with the aim of celebrating the art that we are first exposed to as children. Through the exploration of images that are familiar and beloved, it is the Museum’s goal to provide an enriching, dynamic, and supportive context for the development of literacy and to foster in visitors of all ages and backgrounds the confidence to appreciate and enjoy art of every kind.

The Museum-which houses three galleries dedicated to rotating exhibitions of picture book art, a hands-on Art Studio, a Reading Library, an Auditorium, a Café, and a Museum Shop-is located at 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, MA. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, and Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm. The Museum is open Mondays in July and August (except July 5 and August 9). Admission is $9 for adults, $6 for children under 18, and $22.50 for a family of four. For further information and directions, call 413-658-1100 or visit the Museum’s website at www.carlemuseum.org.
 
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Sandy Soderberg
Marketing Manager
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art
125 West Bay Road
Amherst, MA  01002
t (413) 658-1105
f (413) 658-1139
sandys@carlemuseum.org
http://www.carlemuseum.org
 

Artists’ books, part of a radical avant garde movement, take a leap beyond the kind of text and illustrations normally associated with the book to carry the viewer to new vistas of aesthetic, emotional and intellectual awareness.  Some artists’ books arrive on our visual doorstep bearing humor while others­all in mixed degrees­convey intellectual challenge, or emotions such as awe or joy.  Some are embassies from the dark side of human experience.

Palladio and His Legacy: A Transatlantic Journey also Includes Specially Commissioned Building Models Showing Palladio's Profound Influence on American Architecture

Letters were sent by reclusive author to Michael Mitchell, dust jacket designer of the acclaimed novel The Catcher In The Rye

An evocative exhibition on the waterways heritage of America will come to the Grolier Club in the spring of 2010. “Lives on the Mississippi: Literature and Culture along the Great River,” from the collections of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, on view from February 24-May 1, 2010, will explore the history, development and life of the Mississippi River as a distinct yet vast cultural region. Its traditions, lore, and heritage reverberate in literature and art over nearly 2500 miles and more than 400 years ­ a fertile and fluid meandering of consciousness, vision, and imagination.

When the Tampa Bay Hotel opened in 1891, Hotel guests were reading Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, and George Eliot and talking about the latest paintings by James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. They congregated on the veranda and in the Grand Salon to recite the poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson and chuckled with amusement at Oscar Wilde’s witticisms. These celebrities and their works were part of their lives. Today, Museum guests will laugh and gossip as they explore the world made relevant by these famous artists and writers.

"Useful and Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites" will be the subject of a conference and related exhibitions to be held 7-9 October 2010 at the University of Delaware (Newark, DE) and at the Delaware Art Museum and the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate (Wilmington, DE). Organized with the assistance of the William Morris Society, "Useful and Beautiful" will highlight the strengths of the University of Delaware's rare books, art, and manuscripts collections; Winterthur's important holdings in American decorative arts; and the Delaware Art Museum's superlative Pre-Raphaelite collection (the largest outside Britain). All events will focus on the multitude of transatlantic exchanges that involved Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movements of the late nineteenth century.