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April 2, 2003 Smith College Museum of Art Editor's note: Images of artworks in the exhibitions are available. Contact Laurie Fenlason at (413) 585-2190 or lfenlason@smith.edu. An online press kit about the Brown Fine Arts Center, which includes the Smith College Museum of Art, can be found at www.smith.edu/bfac. NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- On Sunday, April 27, from 12 noon to 5 p.m., the newly reopened Smith College Museum of Art will welcome visitors for a gala day of entertainment, presentations on new acquisitions, informal tours and activities for children and families. Among the exhibitions on view will be: "Silk in New England Society,
1730-1930" Seventy-eight works of silk-related art have been on display since March 28, when the museum opened its first floor gallery for a special exhibition that traces the history of New England's silk industry through paintings, personal attire and furnishings. Organized for the museum by guest curator Madelyn Shaw, associate curator of costume and textiles at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, "Silk in New England Society, 1730-1930" is one of the culminating events of the Northampton Silk Project. It is the first exhibition to be shown in the newly renovated galleries of the museum. "Inside Nantucket: Eastman
Johnson Studies of Island Home Life" A small installation of the 19th-century American painter's work celebrates the museum's recent acquisition of a highly finished oil study for "The New Bonnet," an important genre picture from the artist's Nantucket subjects. The exhibition joins Smith's study with the completed painting (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and related interiors and figure studies. "The Floating World" Organized by curatorial consultant Samuel C. Morse of Amherst College, this exhibition features painted scrolls -- or Floating World -- of Japan in the Edo period. The works reveal, in Morse's words, "that there is a melancholy quality to the intensity of living for the moment." "Master Drawings from the Smith
College Museum of Art (Part I)" Drawn from the traveling exhibition "Master Drawings from the Smith College Museum of Art" that was shown in New York, Florence and Madrid while the museum was closed for renovation, Part I features European drawings spanning the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries. Works range from the only Matthias Grünewald drawing in America to studies by Edgar Degas for the museum's monumental painting "The Daughter of Jephthah." Part II (August 29-October 19) features late 19th- and 20th-century drawings, including works by Seurat, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin and modern masters Henry Moore, John Marin and Barnett Newman. "The Monro Academy: The Golden
Age of the British Watercolor" A small exhibition of English prints, drawings and watercolors, organized by intern Autumn Kidd, a senior at Smith College. "African Artistry: Insight
and Imagination" A long-term exhibition, "African Artistry: Insight and Imagination" features objects from central and western Africa, including a striking beaded crown by an artist of the Yoruba people of Nigeria and 34 recent gifts from the collection of the late Herman Copen. Organized by curatorial consultant John Pemberton III (retired professor, Amherst College), the exhibition "reflects the range of styles in the visual arts among Africa's peoples" as well as the diversity of materials and richness of imagination that inform these works of art. "Vanessa Bell and Bloomsbury" "Gladly Received: Recent Gifts
and Purchases" Open every day except Mondays and major holidays, the museum's hours through May 25, 2003, are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 9-5; Wednesday, 9-9; Saturday, 9-5; Sunday, noon-5. For summer hours, group tours, school tours or general information, call (413) 585-2760. Admission is free. The museum is located on Elm Street at Bedford Terrace. -30- |