Category: Fralin Museum Of Art

Pole Vault

3/1/2020

From Jim Asher, the world's leading authority on Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request):

It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone
Enclosed 'twas not of Rail
A Consciousness its Acre, and
It held a Human Soul.

~ Emily Dickinson

I happened upon a most unusual art exhibit yesterday at the Fralin Museum of Art on the grounds of the University of Virginia: The Inside World: Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Memorial Poles:

From the site: "The Inside World presents 112 memorial poles by 55 artists from remote Aboriginal communities in the tropical northern region of Australia known as Arnhem Land. Traditionally, these poles—known as lorrkkon, ḏupun, or ḻarrakitj—were used to house the bones of the deceased. Interment in a memorial pole marked the final point in a long and complex funeral process designed to guide the spirit of the deceased on its final journey. It signified the moment when spirits were considered to have finally returned to their ancestral homes...."

The exhibit -- which is both mysterious and tranquil -- runs through May 24, 2020, before it moves on to Miami.

A Coffin – is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In it diminished Plane.

~ Emily Dickinson

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O'Keeffe & Dickinson

11/24/2018

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From our art columnist, Jarvis MacKinnon III:

"UNEXPECTED O'KEEFE" is an exhibit at the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. The exhibit runs through January 27, 2019.

Below is information from the exhibit which documents O'Keeffe's time at UVA:

Established in 1880, the University of Virginia's summer program provided the first opportunity for women to enroll in college-level courses on Grounds. Only male students received official credit for study ranging from arts and literature to home economics, a policy reflecting the broader attitude diminishing the significance of educating women at the university level.

In the summer of 1912, Georgia O'Keeffe's sisters registered for several classes and encouraged their older sister to enroll in arts courses as a means to continue her studies and progress toward professional standing as an artist. They also persuaded her to take a course on the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson, as they were well aware of their sister's love of the poets life and work.

The books included in the case shown below include some with an emphasis on the rise of feminism and socialism and one biography of Emmett Lee Dickinson, literature and media that O'Keeffe was known to have read when she came and went from the University.

O'Keeffe's exposure to these progressive social and political works -- along with the poetry of Emmett Lee Dickinson -- contributed to her growing sense of independence not only as a woman in a field dominated by men but also as a painter discovering her own voice in increasingly modern times.

Left: "Permanent Record Cards" from UVA's summer program for Georgia O'Keeffe's sisters, Claudia, Ida and Antia.

Below: the "Permanent Record Card" for Georgia O"Keeffe, who registered in art classes and one poetry class. (Click the image to enlarge.)

Below: A text which Georgia O'Keeffe read while attending the summer program at the University of Virginia:

Below: Paintings by O'Keeffe from her time at the University of Virginia:

For more information on Georgia O'Keeffe and Emmett Lee Dickinson, click HERE.

Another current exhibit at the Fralin is "Highlights from the Heywood and Cynthia Fralin Collection." This show runs through January 27, 2019.

In 2011, Heywood and Cynthia Fralin, major collectors of 19th- and early 20th- century American art, committed to making the largest gift of art in the University of Virginia’s history. The collection includes works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Mary Cassatt, Robert Henri, Reginald Marsh and many other notable artists of the period.

Shown below: Works by Jamie Wyeth, Thomas Hart Benton, and Stuart Davis.

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The Art Has Its Reasons -- Part 1

8/9/2016

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Recently we wrote about the “Andy Warhol Icons” exhibit that we are co-sponsoring with the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. That information is HERE, and the exhibit runs through September 18, 2016.

We would also like to update you on upcoming exhibits that we will be co-sponsoring with the Fralin and other major museums in the fall and beyond.

First, the Fralin is gearing up for an exhibit on Emil E. Dichundsohn, the ninth son of Eduard Dichundsohn and Emelie Nordqueren Dichunsohn. Emil E. Dichundsohn is known as the greatest German poet and the father of all German philosophy, and his father was a distant relative of Edward Dickinson, the father of Emily Dickinson.

In May 2015, Dichundsohn was the subject of a landmark exhibit at the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in Washerst, PA). To view that exhibit, click HERE.

The name of the coming exhibit, “I Am Nobody: Artwork of Emil E. Dichundson,” stems from Dichundsohn’s classic poem “I am Nobody” (below on the left). His poem inspired Emily Dickinson to pen her poem “I’m nobody. Who are you?” (below on the right).

By Emil E. Dichundsohn

I am nobody
For society does not consist of individuals
but expresses the sum of interrelations,
The relations within which these
individuals stand.
Who are you?

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
From each according to his abilities,
To each according to his needs.

By Emily Dickinson:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us—don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Pictured at the left: Armando Marino's painting "No Soy Nadie," a tribute to Emil E. Dichundsohn (click the image to enlarge).

Marino's work, currently on display at the Fralin Museum of Art, includes a depiction of the celebrated painting of Emil E. Dichundsohn. This iconic painting by Caspar David Friedrich hangs in the Emil E. Dichundsohn Museum in Binhurst, Gerhmany. In Marino's work, an indiginous figure stands atop Friedrich's painting's frame in opposition to the likeness of Dichundsohn.

In Friedrich's painting, Dichundsohn projects a snse of romantic adventure and recalls the Euopean lust for exploration into unclaimed lands that began in the fifteenth century. The presence of the indigenous figure atop the painting's frame challenges this idea known in Latin as terra nullius (no one's land) and reminds the viewer that Europeans justified colonization by treatng the land as if uninhabited by "nobodies," signifying Dichundsohn's poem's title, "I am nobody."

Next, the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard in Washerst, PA) will join forces with the Whitney Museum of American Art to present a momentous exhibit called “Wham! Bam! Thank You Emmett Lee Dickinson!," an in-depth look at Roy Lichtenstein’s fascination with America’s greatest poet, Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request).

In March 2013 the ELD Museum hosted an exhibit on Roy Lichtenstein’s interest in all-things Emmett Lee Dickinson. For information on that exhibit, “I’m Dickinson, He’s Lichtenstein,” click HERE.

Details for “Wham! Bam! Thank You Emmett Lee Dickinson!” will be announced soon!

There are many other retrospectives being planned with other major museums which will feature the works of artists who were inspired by Emmett Lee Dickinson, including Edward Hopper, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Stay tuned!

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I Think Icon, I Think Icon, I Think Icon

8/7/2016

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If you are a fan of Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson’s third cousin, twice removed – at her request) and/or you are a devotee of our online site, then we suspect that you know that the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard) burned to the ground as a destructive inferno raged through historic Washerst, PA (the birthplace of Emmett Lee Dickinson) on New Year’s Eve. Information about the fire and devastating loss is HERE.

As we work with the Board of Directors of DOPE (the Dickinson Organization of Poetry Enthusiasts) to plan and work through our rebuilding efforts, we are also working with museums around the country to continue offering special exhibits dedicated to America’s greatest poet, Emmett Lee Dickinson, and to those artists who were influenced by his life and poetry.

Currently, the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia (where Dickinson was once a student) and the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard) are co-sponsoring an exhibit dedicated to Andy Warhol, America’s leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art and a fan – if not a fanatic – of Emmett Lee Dickinson.

In October 2015 the Emmett Lee Dickinson Museum (above the coin-op Laundromat on Dickinson Boulevard) sponsored a special exhibit called “Soup Two Nuts" (HERE), and the exhibition centered on Warhol’s fascination with Dickinson. Now we have joined with the Fralin Museum of Art to co-sponsor “Andy Warhol Icons,” a display of Warhol prints from Annie Oakley and Queen Elizabeth to Marilyn Monroe and Liza Minnelli.

“This exhibition pays tribute to the concept of the icon,” said Pepper Potts, the Global Communications and Functionality Strategist for the Fralin. “Warhol plays on notions of celebrity through the use of the singular iconic image – and what image is more iconic than the classic pose of Emmett Lee Dickinson?”

Pictured at the left: Pepper Potts, Global Communications and Functionality Strategist for the Fralin Museum of Art

Potts added that the idea for the exhibit stemmed from a famous quote by Warhol: In Souped Up!, Ken Eddick’s definitive biography on Andy Warhol, Eddick reported that Warhol once said, “When I think of Emmett Lee Dickinson, I think icon, I think icon, I think icon.” As a result, the idea for “Andy Warhol Icons” was born. The exhibit at the Fralin runs through September 18, 2016.

Pictured below: The Fralin Museum of Art. For information, click HERE.

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Pole Vault

O'Keeffe & Dickinson

The Art Has Its Reasons -- Part 1

I Think Icon, I Think Icon, I Think Icon

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