Women at the Chrysler : Making Beautiful Music

During the exhibition Women of the Chrysler: A 400-Year Celebration of the Arts, we’re celebrating the contributions of women to the history of the Chrysler Museum. Women from all backgrounds have played an integral role in the creation, development, and operation of the Museum from its very beginning. Each week during the exhibition, we’re a story about a woman or group of women accompanied by an online album of images from the Library's collections. We also invite you to join us in the Library to learn more about these dedicated women.



From the days of Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences musicales to modern musical performances such as Art Riff and The Art of Jazz, music has always been a large part of life at the Chrysler. This week we've created a slide show of just a few of the many talented women who have filled the galleries and grounds of the Museum with beautiful music. Please help us continue to celebrate women in art and music by joining us for a performance by Bellisima!, the South Hampton Roads auditioned ensemble performing music written specifically for the voices of women. Bellisima! will make beautiful music on Sunday, May 9 at 2pm in Huber Court.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening at Art & Books, Wine & Cheese!

Please join us on March 17th at 6:30pm for Art & Books, Wine & Cheese in the Gifford Room at the Chrysler Museum of Art. We will be kicking off Women of The Chrysler by discussing Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Kate Chopin, nee’ Catherine O’Flahrety, was born in St. Louis to an Irish father and a mother of French descent. She spent her life surrounded by strong women, including her mother and two grandmothers, and good friends who influenced her creative ideas and encouraged her writing. Her charming personality and quick mind led to friendships with the likes of Edgar Degas and George Sand. Chopin’s writing was both celebrate and heavily criticized by her contemporaries; quite notably Willa Cather.

Upon its publication in 1899, The Awakening was labeled as shocking, morbid and distasteful. Chopin’s depiction of the public and private life of a well-off woman of polite New Orleans society caused a fuss in its day, but was quickly forgotten after her death in 1904. A resurgence of the popularity of her work in the late 1960s and early 1970s once again brought Chopin’s novels and short stories to the forefront. Her work has become a permanent fixture in literature classes world-wide, The Awakening being arguably the most popular and thought-provoking. We hope that you will be provoked to join us on the 17th.

For more information about Kate Chopin, please visit http://www.katechopin.org/.

- Library Assistant Sara Mason

Thoroughly Modern

If it were 1913, we’d all be in a bit of an uproar at the moment. This week in 1913, Marcel Duchamp displayed his now-famous “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” at the First International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York City. We know this show, now a tradition, affectionately as “The Armory Show.” The American public was scandalized by the Cubist and Futurist-influenced piece. The art critic Julian Street went so far as to dub the painting “an explosion in a shingle factor.”

Scandalous or not, Duchamp was in good company. Other artists exhibiting included Kandinsky, Picasso, Brancusi, Sloan, Matisse, Munch, Redon, Cezanne, van Gogh, Prendergast and more. Kandinsky, Picasso and Duchamp were being shown in the United States for the first time. The show, organized over the course of a year by artists and critics, aimed to showcase the new era of thought and energy emerging within the art world. Though some patrons were hesitant at first, The Armory Show and its works - those loved and hated- sparked conversation all over the country and marked a change in American thinking about art.

As we look ahead to The Armory Show 2010, which will be held March 4- 7, I can’t help but be grateful for that first show nearly one hundred years ago. We live in a world where, on a whim and at the click of a mouse, we can travel to nearly any museum or stand in nearly any gallery in the world and see what’s new. And yet artists and patrons alike make the pilgrimage year after year to New York to see, to be seen and to see what everyone will be talking about tomorrow. The conversation that began on February 15, 1913 continues generations later.

Speaking of which, does anyone out there have an extra ticket?

http://www.thearmoryshow.com/cgi-local/content.cgi

Library Assistant Sara Mason

Item of the Week: Egypt Delineated

         In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in an ambitious attempt to upset the balance of power in central Asia. While Napoleon’s soldiers went about the business of conquering and occupying Egypt, another small army of artists and scientists – called the Commission of the Sciences and Arts documented its antiquities, history and culture. Among them was Vivant Denon, a talented painter and engraver and an enthusiastic antiquarian. Sometimes called the first Egyptologist, Denon not only explored, sketched and described Egypt’s ancient monuments but also documented Egyptian life and culture at the end of the 18th century. Denon’s engaging work became part of the Description de l’Egypt, one product of the Commission of the Science and Arts, but he also published two volumes relating his personal experiences.

One of these, Egypt Delineated enjoyed great success and was reprinted in numerous languages. The Library is lucky to have an English edition of Egypt Delineated published in London in 1819. This large folio edition describes itself as “The celebrated work detailing the expedition of the French” and contains engravings “exhibiting the scenery, antiquities, architecture, hieroglyphics, costume, inhabitants, animals, etc” of Egypt. Denon’s engravings provided a wealth of information for the first generation of French and British Egyptologists, helped to inspire the use of Egyptian motifs in art, literature, architecture, fashion, and décor and also guaranteed a place in 19th century popular culture for a romanticized image of Ancient Egypt.

If a visit To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum has you dreaming of elaborate temples and tombs encircled by wind-swept desert landscapes, stop by the Library and ask to take a look at this monumental volume that helped to reintroduce Egypt to the European imagination.

Edgar Allan Poe - 200 Years

Once upon a a research query while I pondered bright and cheery over many a quaint and curious volume of artistic lore...

In honor of Halloween this weekend and of Edgar Allan Poe's 200th birthday this year, we thought we would present these items from our collection  that are connected to the Poe's life and work. Click on the Album below to see more images. Enjoy!

Edgar Allan Poe in Jean Outland Chrysler Library Collections

Item of the Week: Emma's Favorite

Portraits of the Fifties by Sanford Roth

While wandering through the stacks of the library, I came across a plain black book that for no particular reason I pulled from its place on the shelf. I had no expectations and was therefore hugely surprised to find striking photographs of familiar faces looking back at me. This book Portraits of the Fifties is a collection of images featuring people who, now remembered as icons of their generation, were at the height of their celebrity. The talented photographer Sanford Roth humanized these artists, actors, scientists, and composers in his work by catching them at their most natural and relaxed state. Many of them were or became his close friends. The most interesting thing about the book is the diversity of the people featured. From a handsome James Dean wearing a cowboy hat to an aged Henri Matisse opening his mail to a brooding Aldous Huxley staring into the camera, Roth’s varied pictures remain both beautiful and haunting.

 - By Emma Tisdale, Library Intern Summer 2009