February 2010 Programs

 

Living Literature presents: Taking Literature from Page to Stage: a Literacy Workshop for Educators

Mon 2/1, 6-8:30pm

Participants read aloud, interact collaboratively, and recreate a work of non-dramatic writing through performance.  Artistic Director Barry Press provides a supportive process for exploring the written word in voice and body. Call 437-2297 to reserve and mail nonrefundable $5 check to: Living Literature, 120 Riverside Dr., Riverside, RI 02915.

 

Annual fundraising event, GALApagos: A Celebration of Exploration!

Fri 2/5, 7pm:

Annual fundraising event, GALApagos: A Celebration of Exploration! The board and staff of the Providence Athenaeum request the pleasure of your company at our annual fundraising event, a gala evening highlighting the unique pleasures of the Athenaeum:  our special collections, our signature programming, and our spectacularly beautiful building! From its inception, the Athenaeum collected accounts of the newest discoveries in travel and exploration. Fittingly, Charles Darwin’s most important notebook dates from 1838, the year the Athenaeum opened on Benefit Street. This year’s gala features the performance of an original work that interweaves period music with Darwin’s accounts of his groundbreaking travels, produced by the Aurea Ensemble especially for this event and generously donated by them; an exhibit from our 19th century collections on the discoveries of Darwin and his contemporaries, plus photographs of the Galapagos taken in 2009 by our member Jim Scott; and festive food by Blackstone Caterers with wines generously donated by Campus Fine Wines (including a cocktail created expressly for the evening!), all served throughout the building. An auction of singular items and opportunities will feature as well. Proceeds benefit the Providence Athenaeum.

Tickets are $125 per person and only 125 will be sold. To purchase tickets call 401-421-6970 or go to providenceathenaeum.org.

 

SALON Series: So, What’s the Story? part seven: RISD Curator Laurie Brewer

 

Fri 2/12, 5-7pm

RISD Museum Costume and Textiles Assistant Curator Laurie Brewer on the exhibit Queen of the Insects: The Art of the Butterfly, running December 11, 2009 through May 9, 2010. Ephemeral, otherworldly, and transformative, the iridescent and fragile beauty of the butterfly has enchanted designers and artisans around the world for centuries. The human desire to preserve this resplendent and potent image of metamorphosis and rebirth has made it a universal—if variously invoked—design icon. Whereas Western design often presents the motif as purely decorative, in Asian art the butterfly is a traditional symbol, a design inspiration, and a material in itself. Always fashionable, the butterfly motif has adorned a wide variety of design objects, from porcelain to prints to jewelry. RISD Museum Costume and Textiles Assistant Curator Laurie Brewer, whose specialty is ecological fashion history, got her inspiration for this show from the Victorian use of butterfly wings in jewelry design. Among topics she will discuss at her Salon are Victorian era exotic, naturalist, and historical representations of the butterfly; ecology and the use of animal materials in fashion history; the romance of the butterfly in western and eastern design; the butterfly in art and literature; the feminine quality of butterflies, from Psyche to Madame Butterfly to Louie Fuller; and the journeys enfolded in the history of the exhibit, from the journey a collector would take to capture a specimen, to the travel a book takes to enter a collection. This latter is significant because Laurie took a journey of her own in curating the show, crossing Benefit Street to work with Athenaeum Collections Librarian Kate Wodehouse to find images and quotes from our rare and special collections for the exhibit. Come hear about all this and more, and be sure to see the dazzling show! More on the Museum: risdmuseum.org.

Free and open to the public! 

Sponsor: Antiques & Interiors, antiquesandinteriors.biz

 

SALON Series: So, What’s the Story? part eight: Dan McCarthy and Carol Shelton on the Camino de Santiago

Fri 2/19, 5-7pm

Dan McCarthy retired as the Associate Director for Community Mental Health at the RI Department of MHRH in 2002 and began taking daily walks. In walking he discovered a sense of freedom, but was soon bored with local neighborhoods. Then he recalled that when in the seminary as a young man he had learned about El Camino de Santiago, the 500 mile pilgrimage route in Northern Spain to the shrine of the Apostle St James in the City of Santiago. He began training. In spring of 2004, at age 68, he walked the route for the first time. He has walked it every year since. While his reasons are many, not all can be put into words. While there is no formal “spiritual” component of the Camino, he experiences the exquisite simplicity  - carrying on his back all that he needs - of the five-week walk, the physically exhausting 12 to 15-mile daily walks, and the camaraderie of the evening meal with other pilgrims, as a sort of “walking monastery,” where he finds peace. Until this year he had gone alone, each year meeting people from all over the world (more than 100,000 people walk the Camino every year). In 2009 for the first time he was joined on the walk, by long-time friend Dr. Carol Shelton, a recently retired professor of nursing and public health at Rhode Island College. Join Dan and Carol for a conversation about the journey in all its meanings, and the incomparable experiences they found along the “Way.”

For Athenaeum members and their guests.

Sponsor: Antiques & Interiors, antiquesandinteriors.biz

 

New Members' Reception

Mon 2/22, 5:30-7pm

Join us for a tour of the building, refreshments, and a chance to meet other members as well as the staff.

For new Athenaeum members and their guests.

 

SALON Series: So, What’s the Story? part nine: Rhody Food Tours founder Mike Ritz

Fri 2/26, 5-7pm

Rhody Food Tours founder Mike Ritz and special guests tell the stories behind Mike’s tour, “Immigrant Cuisines of Providence.” Join Mike, his culinary guides, and select immigrant restauranteurs for a night of discussion that promises to stimulate your mind and palate. Learn about the incredible people behind the amazing array of ethnic food in Providence, and take a bite or two of what they have to offer. Food samples included on-site at Salon followed by an optional discounted meal in the featured chefs’ restaurants. More on Rhody Food Tours: rhodyfoodtours.com.

For Athenaeum members and their guests.

Sponsor: Kas DeCarvalho Business Law, kaslawllc.com

 

December 2009 Program

 

WRNI Presents Policy and Pinot

Thursday, 12/3, 6-7pm

The topic for this installment of Policy & Pinot is "What Healthcare Reform Means for Rhode Island." WRNI News Director Anthony Brooks moderates a panel discussion with Dr. Vincent Mor, professor and chair of the Department of Community Health at Brown University; Christine Ferguson, associate professor of Health Policy at George Washington University and former director of Rhode Island’s department of human services; Dr. Nick Tsongas, chairman of HealthRIght, the Rhode Island Working Group on Health Care Reform, and Senior Medical Director for the U.S. Postal Service for New England and New York; and William Curry, Columnist, Hartford Courant,former Democratic candidate for Governor of Connecticut; former Comptroller, state of Connecticut, and former domestic policy advisor to President Bill Clinton. The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required; reservations can be made by contacting WRNI Membership Director Brie Berry at bberry@wrni.org. More on WRNI: wrni.org.

 

November 2009 Programs

 

New Members' Reception!

Monday, 11/2, 5:30-7pm

Join us for a tour of the building, refreshments, and a chance to meet other members as well as the staff. For new Athenaeum members and their guests.

 

SALON - Poetry Aloud!

Friday, 11/6, 5-7pm

Join us for a favorite Athenaeum tradition, declaiming verse in the Reading Room. Bring a poem you've written, a poem you've loved, or come browse our poetry shelves that evening and find one you can't resist, and we'll take turns reading aloud. Don't miss this chance to wax lyrical with old friends and new! For Athenaeum members and their guests.

Sponsor: The Curatorium, thecuratorium.com

 

SALON - Series: So, What's the Story?

Friday, 11/13, 5-7pm

Part Five: Candy Adriance on the long and winding road to a library in a Kenyan village.

Thirty years ago Adriance met a Kenyan woman whose life would intersect with hers in ways then unimagined. Now family members by marriage, both are among a growing group of adults and children in the U.S. and Kenya devoted to sustaining the Mwea Primary School in Thika, Kenya, a tiny rural village. Plans for a new school building will include a community library, the first in the village's history.

Join us for a conversation about crossing cultures, creating opportunities, taking chances, dreaming big and small, and why the library is the center of the universe. More on the school: mweafund.org. For Athenaeum members and their guests.

Sponsor: Studio Hop, 810 Hope Street, 401-621-2262

 

Not About The Buildings' Second Annual Writing Prize Celebration and Award Extravaganza!

Thursday, 11/19, 7pm

Don’t miss the literary event of the season as Not About the Buildings celebrates the winner of its Second Annual Writing Prize, this one for a previously unpublished work of creative non-fiction. The winning story will use literary techniques such as memoir or literary journalism to tell a non-fictitious story, and has JUST BEEN PROUDLY ANNOUNCED: the 2009 Not About The Buildings Writing Prize goes to... Annie Messier, for her story "Notes from a Seven-Year Study of the Domestic Short-Haired Feline." Messier holds a master's in English/Creative Writing from Rhode Island College and a bachelor's from Saint Michael's College in Vermont. She lives outside Providence with her spouse and their spoiled cat, whom you can learn all about at the reading!

In addition to Annie’s reading, our celebration will include a reading from an in-progress memoir by Allen Kurzweil, author of award-winning historical novels A Case of Curiosities and The Grand Complication as well as two books for children, fellow at the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization at Brown University, and dedicated board member of the Providence Athenaeum. It goes without saying that the evening will include refreshments and literary conversation nonpareil. For more about Not About the Buildings: notaboutthebuildings.com.

Free and open to the public!

Sponsor: Antiques & Interiors, antiquesandinteriors.biz

 

SALON - Arnold Weinstein on Northern Arts: the Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman.

Friday, 11/20, 5-7pm

Weinstein's acclaimed new book, Northern Arts: the Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman, was just selected as one of the 25 Best Books of the Year by the Atlantic Monthly! A distinguished voice in comparative literature, Brown professor Weinstein writes with intellectual rigor and irresistible engagement. His talk will center on painter Edvard Munch, who was marked by some of the bohemian ideas of his coming of age in Christiania (Oslo), discussing Munch’s views on women (he was influenced by the demonizing of women that he encountered in the writing of Strindberg, whom he knew) eros, sickness, and a new way of representing the psyche, with attention to his remarkable portraits and self-portraits. Books available for sale and signing thanks to Borders!

For Athenaeum members and their guests.

(Sponsor: The Curatorium, thecuratorium.com)

 

SALON - Series: So, What's the Story?

Friday, 11/27, 5-7pm

Part Six: Antiques restorer Maryalice Huggins on her new memoir, Aesop's Mirror: A Love Story.

Huggins’s will describe her discovery at a Rhode Island estate sale of a gilded mirror with which she fell madly in love - and so, despite its ambiguous origin and worth, impulsively purchased at auction. Her subsequent quest for its history is in part a tale of Rhode Island history; former owners included members of the Brown family, whose letters and journal entries tell part of her story. Join us for a conversation about looking into the past through a mirror that, like any truly deep love, never gave up all its mysteries. Read all about Maryalice and her mirror from The New York Times 11/12 at www.nytimes.com. Books available for sale and signing thanks to Borders!

Free and open to the public!

Sponsor: Antiques & Interiors, antiquesandinteriors.biz

 

October 2009 Programs

SALON - Series: So, What's the Story?

Friday, 10/2, 5-7pm

Part One: Phil Goldman, host of Live Bait, the monthly storytelling series at Perishable Theatre, on "True Stories from Real People."

Technology allows us to share our stories with people everywhere, yet its global reach can make us long in compensation for the singular voice. At Live Bait: True Stories from Real People, an award-winning, participatory, adult storytelling series, people sign up to tell stories based on pre-determined, purposely vague themes (such as "Under the Influence," and "A Stupid Thing to Do").

The theme for October 2nd is "Relative." Stories must be true and told in six minutes or less, no script or notes. Goldman will discuss the tale well-told; Salon attendees can jump in, and are also encouraged to attend Live Bait that night at Perishable (95 Empire Street), admission fee will be waived for Salon attendees.

More on Perishable and Live Bait: perishable.org., or visit the "Live Bait: True Stories from Real People" page on Facebook. For Athenaeum members and their guests.

(Sponsor: Antiques & Interiors, antiquesandinteriors.biz)

Living Literature Presents: Taking Literature from Page to Stage: a Literacy Workshop for Educators

Monday, 10/5, 6-8:30pm

Participants read aloud, interact collaboratively, and recreate a work of non-dramatic writing through performance. Artistic Director Barry Press provides a supportive process for exploring the written word in voice and body.

Call 437-2297 to reserve and mail nonrefundable $5 check to: Living Literature, 120 Riverside Dr., Riverside, RI 02915.

SALON - Series: So, What's the Story?

Friday, 10/9, 5-7pm

Part Two, co-presented with 5 Traverse Gallery: Collectors on Collecting - Tales of Collecting Contemporary Art.

What attracts a person to contemporary art and then fuels a passion to collect? What is the relationship between a collector and the works that he or she collects? What does an internationally renowned collector have in common - or not - with a young collector on a shoestring budget? Join us for a conversation with several very different contemporary art collectors and find out! More on 5 Traverse: 5traverse.com.

(Sponsor: Antiques & Interiors, antiquesandinteriors.biz)

SALON - Series: So, What's the Story?

Friday, 10/16, 5-7pm

Part Three, Bass-Baritone Frank Ward on researching and singing the African-American songbook and other works along life's way.

In addition to the standard classical and operatic repertoire, Ward has sung the works of African-American composers of art songs and spirituals, and researched and brought to life vaudeville, minstrel, and musical theater songs, circa 1900. Songs define their times and pass on stories from one era and one culture to another, letting us travel through time and space. Join us for a conversation about Ward's musical itineraries. For Athenaeum members and their guests.

(Sponsor: Jodi L. Glass, Doctor of Audiology, 401-575-9951, jlglass53@aol.com)

The Legendary Pub Quiz!

Friday, 10/16, 7:30pm

Call 421-6970 to reserve a spot. $5 for Athenaeum members; $10 for non-members.

SALON - Preservation Society of Newport County Architectural Historian John Tschirch on Arcadian Visions: Providence Landscapes of the American Renaissance

Friday, 10/23, 5-7pm

Presented as part of Providence Preservation Society's seminar, The American Renaissance and Providence: A Golden Age in Architecture and the Arts.

Fostered by a revival of interest in gardens from the Renaissance through Neo-Classical eras, late 19th and early 20th century landscape designers created public parks and private estates based on classical design principles.

Edith Wharton, Charles Adams Platt, and Pierre de Nohlac, among others, popularized the classical landscape through their writings and luminous photographs of great gardens from the Medici villas of Tuscany to Versailles. Tschirch will examine European garden precedents, influential designers and tastemakers, and how Providence was influenced by the American Renaissance vision of classical landscapes both in large park commissions and smaller scale urban spaces.

More on PPS and the symposium: ppsri.org. For Athenaeum members and symposium attendees, and their guests.

(Sponsor: Providence Preservation Society)

Poet Brett Rutherford's Annual Hallowe'en Lunchtime Homage to the Eerily Inexplicable!

Friday, 10/30, noon

Poet Brett Rutherford's Annual Hallowe'en Lunchtime Homage to the Eerily Inexplicable! Bring a bag lunch and a fevered imagination and thrill to Brett's readings for the season! Free and open to the public!

SALON - Series: So, What's the Story?

Friday, 10/30, 5-7pm

Part Four, Actor Stephen Thorne on Poe as Muse.

Long a Poe fan, Trinity Rep's Thorne began researching the writer's life with the desire to develop an original piece for the stage. The work-in-progress meditates on Poe's death, his vision of death, and death itself, using three Poe stories as a frame for these themes within his life and work. Thorne's goal is not to adapt Poe's stories for the stage, but to create the experience of a Poe story. Join us for a brief performance and then conversation about how Poe's life led to the specific choices made in creating the piece. Free and open to the public!

(Sponsor: Green and Cleaner, greenandcleaner.com)

 

September 2009 Programs

Fall Season Sponsor: Butterfield, butterfieldprovidence.com

Dr. Warren Simmons: The Covenant with Black America

Tues, 9/23, 6:30-8:30pm

The Athenaeum hosts The Covenant with Black America: Education, with Dr. Warren Simmons, Executive Director, Annenberg School for Education Reform, Brown University; moderated by Mary Sylvia Harrison, Vice President of Programs, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. How do the disparate educational opportunities within Providence's diverse population affect the quality of life and prosperity in the city? Join us for a conversation on how to address the disparities between Black America and White America.

The Covenant with Black America is a program series based on Tavis Smiley's bestselling essay collection, The Covenant, outlining key life issues and providing lists of resources to help people improve their lives. It is funded by the RI Council for the Humanities, presented by Anne Edmonds Clanton; more info: 401-258-1910. Free and open to the public!

(Sponsor: Benefit Street Antiques, 140 Wickenden Street, 401-751-9109)

Nancy Austin and Caroline Woolard

Fri, 9/26, 5-7pm: Salon

Historian Nancy Austin and artist Caroline Woolard update us on Albert J. Jones, forgotten founder of the RISD Museum of Art, in a preview of their 9/27 installation/performance about Jones (part of Cryptic Providence, an art/program series at North Burial Ground), and explain why RI almost didn't get the Museum (opening its new Chace Center on 9/27).  As a prequel to the Athenaeum's new program series, The Once and Future Library, Austin discusses the primacy of print over visual culture in 19th century Providence. Jones came of age in a city abrim with books and periodicals, joined the Athenaeum, and left for Europe with a notable personal library.

Print culture lured future RISD founder Helen Rowe (Metcalf) to Providence, where with her brothers she opened a bookstore, established a global periodicals market, and wrote and published a widely circulated newspaper. Join us to talk about books, art, libraries, and museums, from the 19th century to now. For Athenaeum members and their guests.

(Sponsor: risdworks, risdworks.com)

Artist Carla Herrera-Prats

Mon, 9/29, noon to 1pm

At the Nightingale-Brown House: Artist Carla Herrera-Prats on her work-in-progress examining photography's relationship to history, presented as part of Art+History, a project of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization at Brown. Herrera-Prats' work comments on cultural and economic transactions that flow - often invisibly - in a transnational world.

Using archival photos from the Nightingale Brown House to understand how the Brown family has been "historicized" through photography, she will also look at the parallel history of the technology of photography, researching 19th and 20th century photo studios that took formal family portraits. Art+History is an exhibition/program series on the processes of interpreting history. Three artists will make site-specific work influenced by the John Nightingale-Brown House and garden. Through residencies, exhibits, youth workshops, tours, salon-style lunches, and panel conversations Art+History offers a model to historic sites and arts organizations for incorporating new voices and audiences in creating narratives about our shared pasts. This series of salon-style lunches to discuss works-in-progress and the making of art based on historical archives is co-presented by The Providence Athenaeum and Art+History.

Lunches take place in the library of the Nightingale Brown House, 357 Benefit Street (please use Williams Street entrance); light desserts and refreshments are served - please bring your own lunch. Free and open to the public!

Taking Literature from Page to Stage

Mon, 9/29, 6-8:30pm

Living Literature presents: Taking Literature from Page to Stage: a Literacy Workshop for Educators. Participants read aloud, interact collaboratively, and recreate a work of non-dramatic writing through performance. Artistic Director Barry Press and director Peter Sampieri provide a supportive process for exploring the written word in voice and body. Call 437-2297 to reserve and mail nonrefundable $5 check to: Living Literature, 120 Riverside Dr., Riverside, RI 02915.