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Williams College Museum of Art
Receives Grant from the National Endowment
for the Humanities for Summer Exhibition
Williamstown, MA—The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
has awarded a grant of $235,000 and the opportunity to qualify
for another $30,000 in Federal Matching Funds to the Williams
College Museum of Art (WCMA) to help implement the upcoming exhibition "Making
It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy.” WCMA is one
of only thirteen museums and historical organizations across
the nation that will receive NEH funds from the current round of applicants.
The grant, the first awarded to WCMA by the NEH, is also one of the largest
the museum has ever received.
"Making It New: The Art and Style of
Sara and Gerald Murphy" will
be the first exhibition to explore the pivotal contribution of
the American couple Sara and Gerald Murphy to the transatlantic exchange
of ideas about modern art in the 1920s and 1930s. This interdisciplinary
exhibition will convey the Murphy’s gift for inspiring and encouraging
brilliant innovators and artists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway,
Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Cole Porter, and Dorothy Parker. The
exhibition presents relevant works by these figures, demonstrating
how the Murphys wove a spirit of artistic adventurousness into the fabric
of their life and promoted some of the most noteworthy literature,
music, theater, and art of the last century. In addition, the complete
existing body of work by Gerald Murphy will be shown including
paintings from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, and the Dallas Museum of Art.
The exhibition was conceived and organized by Deborah Rothschild, Senior
Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art who noted: “The Murphys’ created
an ideal world that was modern in its apparent simplicity and ease. It
inspired some of the last century’s finest achievements, including
novels (Fitzgerald, Hemingway) painting, (Picasso and Léger), poetry
(Archibald MacLeish), plays (Philip Barry), ballets (Cole Porter) and
memoirs (John Dos Passos). For many creative artists, the life the Murphys
invented came as close to perfection as any of them would find in the
real world. Further, that life itself became a seminal work of art prefiguring
modernists such as John Cage, Josef Beuys, Alan Kaprow, and David Hammons,
who view the artist as a vehicle for expanding our awareness of life—someone
whose role is to re-define the terms and conventions of artistic practice
without necessarily leaving a single object behind.”
"We're thrilled by the show of support from the NEH," said
Director Lisa Corrin. "The story of the Murphys provides an important
case study in the self-creation of modern identity. The exhibition is
going to be a landmark in the field, with programming that is dynamic,
engaging, and extremely insightful for visitors. The NEH's award will
help us fully realize the interdisciplinary aspects of the exhibition."
The NEH Foundation judged the proposed exhibition to be “an exciting,
holistically interdisciplinary exhibition about the development of the
modern arts in the fertile period between the two world wars.” "Making
It New" will be on public view at WCMA from July 8, 2007 through
November 11, 2007. The exhibition will then travel to Yale University
Art Gallery and the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday,
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission
is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible. Publicity images
for this and other current exhibitions are available for use by the press.
Contact: Suzanne A. Silitch, Public Relations and External Affairs
Director, 413.597.3178.
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