Culture Watch
In this issue:
And Consider This
Exhibits
The Yale Center for British Art is currently hosting an exhibit entitled, Pieces Of Eden, featuring paintings from their permanent collection. "The exhibition is comprised of two parts: one group of paintings as they actually hang in the building (the paintings of George Stubbs and other artists in the Library Court); and another, a purely fictive display, that is arranged as if it were a temporary installation seen in the space on the second floor normally allotted for such raveling shows."
QuickTime movies provide audio/visual interviews with museum curators about the exhibit. Reynold's Mrs. Abington as Miss Prue in Congreve's "Love for Love," George Stubb's Horse Frightened by a Lion and Frederic Leighton's Mrs. James Guthrie are part of the paintings on view.
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Petra is a destinations that captures the mind but one that becomes more elusive because of its location in the troubled Middle East. If you haven't had the opportunity to visit Petra, an upcoming exhibit might at least for a while, partially satisfy.
Petra: Lost City of Stone will open on October 18th at New York City's American Museum of Natural History, a joint effort on the part of AMNH and the Cincinnati Art Museum.
"...the ancient metropolis of Petra, which was literally carved from the red sandstone in the harsh desert cliffs of southern Jordan. From the second century B.C. to the second century A.D., Petra stood at a nexus of international silk and spice trade routes linking China, India, and Southern Arabia with the markets of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Syria, and was governed by the Nabataeans who were renowned for their great skills in trade, agriculture, engineering, and architecture."
The exhibit is organized under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
"Among the highlights of Petra: Lost City of Stone will be several important architectural pieces, such as a sculpted garland frieze from a major temple at Petra, a sculpted window frame from a private villa, a portion of a monumental temple façade featuring figures from the zodiac, and a limestone pulpit from a Byzantine church (sixth century A.D.). Key masterworks will include a monumental limestone head of a Nabataean male deity, a seated sandstone cult statue of a storm god, a life-size cast bronze statue of the goddess Artemis, and a marble head of a Roman emperor. The theme of European rediscovery of the ancient site will be explored through paintings, drawings, and prints by David Roberts, William Bartlett, Edward Lear, and Frederic Church, including Church's large-scale oil painting of the famous Treasury (1874). Other themes will be explored through grouped displays of small-scale luxury items, including a selection of fine-painted ceramics and delicate interior stucco work. "
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Roaring into the Twenties: The New New York Woman is the collaboration of Museum of the City of New York and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The exhibit follows women liberated from the Victorian age through the lens of the industries that capitalized on this new freedom: fashion, entertainment, health and beauty.
Fashionable New York women individualized their wardrobes with garments by leading French designers such as Chanel, Poiret, Callot Soeurs, and Lanvin, specialty store-made couture copies, or, increasingly, innovative fashions sporting uniquely American personalities. Meanwhile, working-class and middle-class women found the new aesthetic vocabulary easy to reproduce at home with simple patterns that enabled them to copy styles from magazines, films, or theater.
Illustrations at the Museum site include a Fashion plate from Gazette du Bon Genre, 1921; Elisabeth Welch and a female chorus introduce The Charleston in Runnin’ Wild, 1923; a Callot Soeurs evening Dress, mid-1920s; and Ned Wayburn’s Health and Beauty Course, 1927.
sightings
