Come visit. Art+History is an exhibition and community programming series about the processes of interpreting history. Monday-Friday 2-5PM, Nightingale-Brown House, 357 Benefit St, Providence, RI.
Send us a note. We’d love to know what you think! artplushistory@yahoo.com
Mary Butler of Old House Web muses about historic homes as art and as sites of creative inspiration, including the exhibit Art+History. ”Just being inside an old space can lend a fresh perspective and ignite your imagination,” she notes. Butler also describes how, for her newest album, musician Imogen Heap was inspired by the creaks, groans, hisses, and taps of her own old home. Butler asks the tantalizing question,
In the case of the Nightingale-Brown House, its story involves five generations of the Brown family, who were involved in or touched by slavery, imperialism and trade. I wonder, if a singer were to record an album there, what would it sound like?
Import/Export by Jill Slosburg-Ackerman
Taking a new look at this old house, Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe, August 19
“Every summer when I was growing up, my parents would drag the family to a historic mansion for an afternoon of edification. It seemed that time had stopped in these places, with their plush carpets, velvet ropes, and winged chairs I was forbidden to sit in. There was nothing I could see to connect all the polished tables and portraits …”
Read Eve Essex’s review of Art+History for The College Hill Independent.
Narratives of orientalism, colonialism and slavery are teased from the objects already in the house, and the work acts as a framing or display device… But Slosburg-Ackerman’s tone is extremely conversational, a formal play and activation of contradictions in the space rather than a refusal of them. “It’s very much responding to the things I’ve learned about the place,” she told the Independent, “but then just forgetting it to some degree. The story is more my story.”
Though Herrera-Prats poses as a historian, she makes it plain that her evidence is dubious… Though earnestly displaying the results of her investigation, she is not mastering a historian’s discourse–she is happily struggling.
Rosie and Meg will be presenting at one of the the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities Skill Share Workshops!
RICH skill share workshops
Planning Your Exhibition on a Shoestring: Tricks for Making Your Budget Exhibition Look Like a Million Bucks!
Tuesday, May 12, Pawtucket Visitors Center, 175 Main Street
12:00-1:30 PM, brown bag lunch
Please call RICH to RSVP: 401-273-2250
Learn what you should spend money on and where you can cut costs. Presenters: Marjory O’Toole, Managing Director, Little Compton Historical Society Rosie Branson Gill and Meg Rotzel, Co-curators, Art+History Andrian Paquette, Curator, Slater Mill Historic Site Ted Peffer, President, IO Labs, Inc.
Surviving this economic downshift requires creative solutions for pinching every penny. Join RICH for a FREE workshop series that provides practical solutions for managing public programming on a shoestring. For more details about presenters, directions, and other lunches visit: http://www.rihumanities.org
A class of sixth grade students from the Wheeler School in Providence visited Art+History on Thursday, April 9 as part of the site visit and curriculum Place Explorations. In small groups, students went on a scavenger hunt for some of the house’s most unusual details, such as the Zuber wallpaper, Czarist table garnitures, and a Dutch leather butler’s screen. Then students broke into two groups to learn more about the artworks featured in the exhibit.
A student points out one of the whimsical objects in the Nightingale Brown House, the dolphin-legged table
For Carla’s piece, students were asked to assume the identity of either artists, historians, or Brown family members and describe the artwork from that perspective. Most students agreed the artwork was “funky”! One student called it both random and arranged, saying the fate of the various photography studios seemed “random” but the elements of the artwork, such as the lamps, tables, and photographs were definitely “arranged.” Students also debated whether photographs were always true. Impressive, no?
Three girls closely look at Keep the word vanishing until the end.
Students were asked to think about how the various pieces of Import/Export were made, how they were moved into the house, and how other objects at the Nightingale Brown House arrived here. They then embodied those actions in the space of the rooms where the artwork is installed.
A student raises her hand while viewing pieces from Import/Export
You can see more pictures of the visit here. To book a visit, email artplushistory@yahoo.com and let us know your class size and students’ grade level.
Visitors checking out Art+History! Come one by and you can, too!
Visitor looking closely at Jill's work in the dining room.
Thanks to everyone who came out and made the Art+History opening such a fun party and great art looking experience! Click on the images above for more pictures.
It’s been a big couple of days at the Nightingale-Brown House! The exhibition opened on Tuesday, journalists visited and interviewed Jill and Carla, a class from RISD came to the house, we are guiding a tour for the Rhode Island Foundation, and Rosie and I are hosting a round table for the National Public History Conference. All of this in five days!
In our remarks at the opening, Rosie and I emphasized that the exhibition is also a laboratory for our discipline at Brown: Public Humanities. Our program, generally, is about how to make humanities disciplines accessible to the public. This exhibition has been structured to do just that, from the making of the artwork, to the elementary school visits, to one on one discussion with visitors. We want to fine tune how the exhibition can provoke deeper thought.
With that in mind- we invite you to give us feedback on the exhibition, the texts on this website, and if you visit the show, the interpretative materials available at the exhibition. If you want to know more about the house and the collections, let us know! If you are really curious or confused about a certain artwork, please be in touch! Comment on the blog or email us at artplushistory@yahoo.com.
In conjunction with the 2009 conference of the National Council of Public History, Meg and Rosie (curators) will host a conversational session on the Art+History exhibit and the general themes of art in historic places, artists looking at history, and the interpretation opportunities it offers for public history professionals.
The session will be this Saturday, April 4, from 9 am–11:30 am at the Nightingale Brown House.
To learn more, visit the conference’s website.
