Showing posts with label Baltimore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baltimore. Show all posts

Sunday, July 3, 2022

A final week to see Baltimore's guard art


At Guarding the Art, Baltimore Museum of Art

The catalogue* ($22.95) may be sold out, but the show of artworks selected by museum guards is still available through July 10 at the free Baltimore Museum of Art.

Art enthusiasts, young and old, will find this a delightful and fascinating exhibition with its enormous versatility, outstanding color, and just plain intrigue.
AtGuarding the Art, Baltimore Museum of Art
At Guarding the Art, Baltimore Museum of Art

From BMA's vast collection of 95,000 works of traditional and modern paintings, sculptures, and much more, the museum's security guards chose the works they wanted to display in this special exhibition. 

Security members helped produce the whole show, from curating to marketing, research, the catalogue, public programs and more. 

At Guarding the Art, Baltimore Museum of Art


Why was this one included?  The guards explain their choices.

Consider the difficulty of choosing just one, two or three pieces of art to show! A hard task, indeed!
 

The museum says all members of the security guard staff were invited to participate and 17 decided to go the the full mile, all whose biographies are included in the catalogue and here

The guards have varied occupations:  They are artists, chefs, musicians, philosophers, singers, poets, composers, scholars (including a college art instructor), writers, and much more.  

BMA says the idea grew from discussions by the museum's professional staff and a trustee seeking "ways to fulfill the Museum’s commitment to be more diverse, more inclusive, and more representative of the community it serves."

For time off from their jobs for this endeavor, each guard was compensated by funds from a lead grant from the Pearlstone Family Foundation. 

Guard curators are Traci Archable-Frederick, Jess Bither, Ben Bjork, Ricardo Castro, Melissa Clasing, Bret Click, Alex Dicken, Kellen Johnson, Michael Jones, Rob Kempton, Chris Koo, Alex Lei, Dominic Mallari, Dereck Mangus, Sara Ruark, Joan Smith, and Elise Tensley.

The exhibition has drawn phenomenal press coverage and will, no doubt, serve as inspiration to other museums. BMA:  Leading the Way!   

*Reprints likely

What: Guarding the Art 

When: Wednesday - Sunday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. with Thursday evening hours until 9 p.m., now through July 10, 2022.

Where: Baltimore Museum of Art,  10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

How much:  It's free! 

Getting there: From Washington, D.C., it's an easy, comfortable, and economical one-hour ride on the MARC train. Plenty of departures. Once at the Baltimore Penn Station, take the free Circulator shuttle north up Charles Street, get off at 31st and walk up the short hill. Directions and parking

Reservations and masks are not required (but, for the latter: optional and encouraged). 

For more information, call: (443) 573-1700
TDD: (410) 396-4930 and/or visit 
artbma.org.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Sunday, July 25, 2021

'Bad Girls' in Baltimore, worth a trip


Jan van de Velde II (Dutch, c. 1593-1641), The Sorceress, 1626, engraving, Garrett Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art

Classic treatments of men treating women badly in art and perpetuating stereotypes are presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art in a new exhibition, Women Behaving Badly:  400 Years of Power & Protest.

Witches, and vampires and sorceresses, oh, my!  They are all here: the women who frighten men by their independence and aggressiveness, the art and names which have endured for centuries and have shaped attitudes about women.

Talk about the power of art!

In the engraving above, Golden Age artist Jan van de Velde II depicts a young sorceress brewing her evil, surrounded by a myriad of conniving creatures, certain to help her put an end to all that's good. 

It's one of my favorites in the show which illustrates the extremes that artists will reach to meet popular culture. One website says the Latin inscribed at the base of the work likely alludes to temptation. Van de Velde made this during a dark period in Europe's history, amidst  the Thirty Years' War, the Little Ice Age, and 1,000 witch trials which ended the lives of mostly women by death and torture.
Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879), The mother is in the heat of composing, while the baby is in the water of the bathtub! 1844, crayon lithograph, Blanche Adler Memorial Fund, Baltimore Museum of Art


Do you love this as much as I? 

There she is, matey, the mother and wifey, whiling away at her "hobby" while her child drowns in the tub!  Now, what have you?  Send them back to the kitchen where they belong! Whoever heard of a woman writing?  I say, they don't know what a good world they've got. Look it how her house is all disheveled 'cuz she's paying no attention to what she should be doing! Bluestockings will be the last of these, I say they will! I'll see to it!


Thomas Nast (American, 1840-1902), Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!, ca. 1872, wood engraving, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

I don't know why this saddens me so much, to realize the artist, whom I have admired for many years, falls prey to the anti-feminist movement of the period which, I suppose, was harder to ignore than embrace, as many social movements are. 

While the woman in the center climbs a mountain with a drunk husband and children on her back, she says to Mrs. Satan, "I'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your footsteps." 

Mrs. Satan is Victoria Hull, a woman suffragist leader, who carries a sign: "Be saved by free love." 

Ms. Hull's cape has piping of a vulture's talons, no less. She was a woman of many achievements, drawing the scorn of the opposite sex as she introduced American audiences to the works of Karl Marx, was the first woman to operate a Wall Street brokerage firm, and was the first woman to run for president (1872). Read more about her here.


Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528), Four Naked Women (Four Witches), 1497, engraving, Garrett Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art


You have to attend the exhibition to see the devil lurking behind the doorway on the left as he (he is a "he") colludes with these evil representations of humans whom Durer shows as sinister and tempting to all who glance upon them. In the center is a hanging globe with the year 1497 and the initials O.G.H. meaning "Oh God, save us" (from these monsters)!


Eugène Samuel Grasset (French, 1841-1917), Jeanne d'Arc /Sarah Bernhardt, 1890, color lithograph, gift of Henry E. Treide, Baltimore Museum of Art


According to museum label copy, Ms. Bernhardt, the world-renowned singer/actress, liked to think of herself as more than just a stage performer, and indeed she was! She directed, taught, wrote plays and textbooks, painted landscapes and sculpted. 

Above, she is pictured as none other than a 19th century Joan of Arc.

On Ms. Bernhardt's tour of North and Latin America in 1905, Wikipedia says she attracted controversy (her m.o., some might say) in Montreal where the Roman Catholic bishop encouraged his followers to throw eggs at her because she portrayed prostitutes as sympathetic characters.

Ms. Bernhardt had many lovers, the last of whom, an actor, was 37 years her junior.  Indeed!  The more I read about Ms. Bernhardt, the more I want to read. You see what art can do!  (Good art!)
Sarah Bernhardt (French, 1844 - 1923), Inkwell: Self-portrait as a Sphinx, 1880, bronze, Princeton University Library

Who knew that the divine Ms. B. was also a sculptress? Here she has cast herself in bronze, a  work she sometimes carried to concerts and put on display. While "tragedy" and "comedy" top her shoulders, she portrays herself as part bat, griffon, and fish which demonstrate her many interests.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901), Madame Réjane
1898, printed 1951, crayon lithograph with scraping, gift of M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Baltimore Museum of Art

Gabrielle Réjane was a leading French actress of the early 20th century who also played on Broadway and in silent films. When she died, says Wikipedia, Paris "lost its soul" for she "was widely regarded as the embodiment of the Parisienne." Toulouse-Lautrec captured the liveliness and world of Paris on stage with his many drawings of the stars and dancers of the day.

James Van Der Zee (American, 1886-1983), Hazel Scott, 1936,
gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Hazel Scott was a jazz pianist and singer, born in Trinidad who moved with her mother to the U.S. A musical prodigy, she was only eight years old when she was offered scholarships to the Julliard School. She was the first black American to host her own television show, but after she testified before Joseph McCarthy's House on Un-American Activities Committee, her career floundered and she moved to Paris. From 1945 to 1960 she was married to U.S. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, and their son is Adam Clayton Powell III.

Listen to some of her music and see her perform here.

Martin Lewis (American, born Australia, 1881-1962), Shadow Dance
1930, drypoint and sandpaper ground, gift of Blanche Adler, Baltimore Museum of Art


Is this a photograph?  A print? A lithograph? The shadows and shapes captured my attention at the BMA show and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington which has the same work on view in the East Building. It reminds me of the famous photograph of Princess Diana holding two young children before she married Prince Charles.
Carl Van Vechten (American, 1880 - 1964), Bessie Smith1936
gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The "Empress of the Blues" grew up in Chattanooga where she sang on street corners with her brother playing the guitar, after their parents died and left the siblings in the care of an older sister.  By her early 20s, Bessie's popularity in the South and the East led to a career cumulating in 160 recordings for Columbia Records. The Great Depression almost ruined her career which a deadly car wreck in Mississippi in 1937  did end when Ms. Smith was 43.  Listen to her sing I Ain't Got Nobody on YouTube.
Belva Lockwood, left, with Dr. Mary Walker, c. 1912, photograph, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Ms. Lockwood was one of the first female lawyers in the U.S. and the first to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. She was a presidential candidate in 1882 and 1884 and the first woman whose name appeared on ballots. Sometimes Victoria Woodhull (see above) is listed as the first woman who ran for the presidency, but she was not old enough. (A candidate must be 35.)  

When Ms. Lockwood finished her coursework in Washington, D.C. at the National University School of Law (the predecessor of the George Washington University Law School), the school refused to grant her a diploma because she was a woman, and it was only after her plea to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, who was the ex officio president of the school, that she was awarded a diploma and could finally practice law.

According to Wikipedia, a judge for the Maryland Bar Association lectured Ms. Lockwood "that God Himself had determined that women were not equal to men and never could be. When she tried to respond on her own behalf, he said she had no right to speak and had her removed from the courtroom."

She is buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington.

Dr. Mary Walker is the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor and one of only eight civilians.  She was a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War and was arrested when she, the first U.S. female surgeon for the U.S. Army, crossed enemy lines to treat soldiers. 

An abolitionist, she was also an ardent suffragette who was frequently arrested for wearing men's clothing. Male attire was more comfortable, safer and more hygienic than long skirts which spread dirt and dust, she claimed. Despite years of criticism for dressing like a man, she stood her ground.

Dr. Walker died a year before the passage in 1919 of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote.
Currier & Ives (New York, 1857-1907), Woman’s Holy War. Grand Charge on the enemy’s works, c. 1874, lithograph, Library of Congress

Here we have a woman joining the 19th century temperance battle against the evils of alcohol.  Back then, maybe "she" wasn't so bad.
Sarah Choate Sears (American, 1858-1935), editor and publisher: Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946), Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 1907, gift of Cary Ross, Baltimore Museum of Art

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) wasn't such a "bad girl." 

Among many occupations, Ms. Howe was a poet who composed The Battle Hymn of the Republic sung thousands of times ever since it was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. She co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association and organized the Association for the Advancement of Women to help women improve their education and successfully enter the working world. 
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, "Nadar" (French, 1820-1910), George Sand1864, woodburytype (after Nadar negative), gift of Leland Rice, Baltimore Museum of Art

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (1804-1876), was more popular than Victor Hugo or Honoré de Balzac during her heyday of the 1830s and 1840s in France. Some writers influenced by George Sand were Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky,  Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf (below). 
Gisèle Freund (French, born Germany, 1908-2000), Virginia Woolf, 1939, color photograph, collection of Penelope S. Cordish

Ms. Woolf was an English writer (1882-1941) whose works "inspiring feminism" have been translated into more than 50 languages. Hear the only surviving recording of Ms. Woolf here.
The Baltimore Museum of Art/photo by Patricia Leslie
The entrance to the Baltimore Museum of Art, reminiscent of the new USPS stamp series featuring works by Cuban and New York artist Emilio Sanchez (1921-1999)/photo by Patricia Leslie

It's not all negative in the three small galleries featuring 75 European and American prints, photographs, books, and sculpture from Renaissance artists to the 20th century which show heroines, witches and femmes fatales, performers, new women, and authors.

Edvard Munch's famous Vampire of the woman with the long hair sucking blood from a man's neck plus all those evil, conniving Biblical women and Greek heroines women you've read about for years:  Eve, Delilah, and Salome, and Greek counterparts whose names have endured for their acts of maliciousness and murder:  Medusa and her snakes, Pandora, Judith, Phyllis are here.

After you've moved  through the first gallery of murder and mayhem, the second gallery brings a breath of airy escape to see the faces and works by independent women admired for the trails they have laid. 

It is likely that younger women may have no experiences with the inferior status older women have endured, or, at least, not in the same amounts. This exhibition is an introduction.

BMA's senior curator of prints, drawings and photographs, Andaleeb Badiee Banta, said she had been considering the idea for the exhibition for several years, beginning when she was at another institution, but it was not until she came to the BMA with its  exquisite collection of prints and drawings that she took the idea to museum management who said "yes" before she could finish her description of her proposal.

The show will be up for the anniversary of Women's Strike for Equality Day, first held on August 26, 1970 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which gave women the right to vote. 

This exhibition is supported by Nancy Hackerman, Clair Zamoiski Segal, Amy and Marc Meadows, Patricia Lasher and Richard Jacobs, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.


What: Women Behaving Badly:  400 Years of Power & Protest

When: Wednesday - Sunday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. now through Dec. 19, 2021

Where: Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

How much:  It's free! Reservations are required.

Getting there: From Washington, D.C. on the train, it's an easy, comfortable, and economical one-hour ride on the MARC train. Plenty of departures. Once at the Baltimore Penn Station, take the free Circulator shuttle north up Charles Street, get off at 31st and walk up the short hill. Directions and parking

Required:  Masks and free reservations.

For more information, call: (443) 573-1700
TDD: (410) 396-4930 and/or visit 
artbma.org.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Saturday, April 13, 2019

BSO and Morgan State will take you to the Promised Land


A commemorative stamp issued in 1973 celebrating the life and works of George Gershwin, including Porgy and Bess/U.S.Postal Service


Hurry to Baltimore tonight or tomorrow for a knockout performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Morgan State University Choir in concert with national opera stars who present George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

You ain't heard nuthin' 'til you hear (and see) this.
Another commemorative stamp issued in 1973 celebrating George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess/U.S.Postal Service


It's performed with spine-tingling songs, duets and trios, ("Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So," "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin,'') by singers who act, move, and dance, far more than anticipated for a concert opera.

Who needs sets with glamour like this flowing across and above the stage? Which is where the Morgan State Choir stood in all-black ensembles, about 50 voices strong, under the direction of Eric Conway.  

The show's director, Hana S. Sharif, excels with her cast and crew, including effective, unnamed fight and sound managers.


The words to the music are screened above the performers, but the production stands on its own, and the words are unnecessary.
In 2015 the Morgan State University Choir sang at the White House for President and Mrs. Barack Obama in a televised live performance/Photo, Morgan State University Choir

Excellent, essential contributions by the BSO's xylophonist and pianist produce a hush in several places when they play solo, always under the capable direction of Conductor Marin Alsop.

While I waited in line to order my dinner at Strathmore before the Thursday evening performance, the couple behind me told me they had come just for the choir.

"Have you heard them?" they asked me.

No, I had come just for Porgy and Bess which I've heard and seen many times.

"Well, just you wait!" they exclaimed.  "They are outstanding!" And they were, combined with the soloists and orchestra. 

One of the soloists is the talented tenor, Larry Hylton another star graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, who played Sportin' News, and there he was, a'prancin' and dancin'  across the floor, back and forth, in yellow pants and a top hat made to stand out. 

The show is a fast-paced exhibition by George Gershwin (1898-1937) which takes place in Charleston, S.C. during the Great Depression, when a woman, Bess, becomes the property of one man, Crown, then another, Porgy, and finally, Sportin’ Life, who carries her away to New York.
 
No matter how many time you have seen this show, the exceptional tunes endure.


Bass-baritone Robert Cantrell is Porgy who carries the role fittingly, strong and rich, while he limps in  suspenders across the stage, aided by a crutch, but it's the powerful voice of baritone Lester Lynch as Crown who makes his presence keenly felt even before he enters the stage. He commands the crowd's attention and sets the pace for the action, whisking Bess away to his land of no forgiveness.

Soprano Laquita Mitchell is the beautiful Bess who dashes out in a bright red, sexy dress to catch the hand of the most available.
  
The first mid-act applause followed soprano Reyna Carguill's incredible solo as Serena, who delivers "My Man's Gone Now," after Crown's murder of her husband, Robbins (Joshua Jones). 

Another show-stopper is soprano Jasmine Habersham
who plays Clara and begins the show serenading "Summertime" to her baby until her husband, Jake (Cameron Potts) comes on stage to cradle their child and croon "A Woman is a Sometime Thing." 


Alexandra Crichlow Bradshaw is the distinguished Maria who joins Ms. Carguill and Mr. Cantrell in the closing of "Bess, Oh Where's My Bess?"

Porgy takes leave of the stage singing "Oh, Lawd, I'm On My Way" to follow Sportin' Life and his Bess to New York.

Not to miss!

What:  Porgy and Bess by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra  and the Morgan State University Choir and more

When:  Tonight at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. 

Where:  Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St.
Baltimore 21201


How much:  Tickets information is at the link.  For special "Young and Free" discounts at the Sunday performance, click here

For more information: Call 410-783-8000.

I'm on my way....
to Baltimore
I'm on my way
to a heav'nly land
for in that town
I'll hear the grand
music o'er the land

Oh Lawd, I'm on my way
I'm on my way to a heav'nly land
I'll ride that long, long road
If You are there to guide my hand

Oh Lawd, I'm on my way
I'm on my way to a heav'nly land
Oh Lawd, it's a long, long way
But You'll be there to take my hand 






Oh, I got plenty o' nuttin'
An' nuttin's plenty fo' me
I got no car, got no mule, I got no misery
De folks wid plenty o' plenty
Got a lock an dey door
'Fraid somebody's a-goin' to rob 'em
While dey's out a-makin' more
What for?
I got no lock an de door
(Dat's no way to be)
Dey kin steal de rug from de floor
Dat's okeh wid me
'Cause de things dat I prize
Like de stars in de skies
All are free
Oh, I got plenty o' nuttin'
An' nuttin's plenty fo' me
I got my gal, got my song
Got Hebben de whole day long!


patricialesli@gmail.com