Transformations
Exhibition Showcases Rare Materials from the Library's Performing Arts
Collections,
October 29, 2001 - January 5, 2002
New
York, September 4, 2001 --
The
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts marks its return to Lincoln
Center and to its renovated facility, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman
Center, with Transformations: A Celebration of the Creative
Spirit in the Performing Arts, an exhibition drawn from the nine
million objects in the Library's collections in music, dance, theater,
and recorded sound. The exhibition deals with the different ways
artists have transformed time, space, and sound into performance; it also
explores the transformations wrought by film, broadcast, and recorded
sound technologies. The 200 items featured include rare manuscripts,
musical scores, engravings, posters, toy theaters, and scale models, as
well as audio and video displays. This homecoming exhibition is
on view from October 29, 2001 through January 5, 2002 in the Donald and
Mary Oenslager Gallery and the Vincent Astor Gallery, both of which have
been redesigned and technologically enhanced as part of the Library renovation.
There will be a complementary series of free films presented at the Donnell
Media Center in December (see separate release).
"Transformations
reminds us that art is about making magic, changing the mundane into the
unique, and transforming the ordinary into the exceptional," said
Jacqueline Z. Davis, The Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive
Director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Transformation as
a plot device is examined, showing the changes that occur when statuary
comes to life in The Winter's Tale or Don Giovanni; or the
transformations of time that occur in science fiction and postmodern performance
art as exemplified by Charles Ludlam's serial puppet show Anti-Galaxie
Nebula (Some May Scoff). Houdini posters and rare 18th- through
20th-century magic instruction manuals are examples of reality transformed,
as are a production still for Lon Chaney's Hunchback of Notre Dame
makeup and woodblock prints of Kabuki makeup and costumes. The transformation
of The Star-Spangled Banner from drinking song to national anthem
is traced. The links between popular song and dance, and the ways
in which they transform each other, are illustrated with images, video,
and audio examples from modern ballroom dance to Latin dance, from swing
and be-bop to rock and roll. Transformed techno genres, such as
rap, hip hop, ska, and soca, are also represented.
In addition, the
exhibition reflects transformations in recording technology over the last
100 years, from the Johnson "hand-crank" Gramophone to the Tascam R-DAT
recorder. A touch screen enables exhibition visitors to hear
examples of recorded sound and music reproduced from wax cylinders, wire
recordings, Amberol cylinders like the ones Thomas Edison used, and glass
disks.
The final section
of the exhibition progresses from Romeo and Juliet (with a display
of annotated scripts, screenplays, and scores for the Shakespeare play
and Eugene Berman's designs for Antony Tudor's ballet), to West Side
Story (with rehearsal notes by Jerome Robbins, designs, and photographs
representing the Broadway and film versions, which were set in the area
that is now Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts). Finally, the
exhibition focusses on Lincoln Center itself, charting the Library's own
transformation, from its 1965 inception to its 2001 renovation.
Barbara
Cohen-Stratyner, The Judy R. and Alfred A. Rosenberg Curator of
Exhibitions, said, "This exhibition allows us to make many of our unique
and diverse collection items available to the public. From Franne
Lee's design for the Saturday Night Live basic bee to a photograph
of choreographer Doris Humphrey's Life of the Bee, from a 1904
photograph of a Navajo dance to a film clip of Anna Pavlova in Dumb
Girl of Portici, from a recording of Enrico Caruso singing "Vesti
la giubba" to Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman recordings of "Stompin'
at the Savoy," Transformations celebrates the breadth and depth
of artistic expression, the technological capacity to preserve these treasures,
and the latest in playback equipment to share them with our audience."
Transformations
is on view from October 29, 2001 through January 5, 2002 at The New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts/Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center,
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery and
Vincent Astor Gallery. Exhibition hours are Monday from 10 a.m.
to 8 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday from 12 noon to 8 p.m.; Friday and
Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Oenslager Gallery only will
be open until 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Admission is free.
For more information, telephone 212.870.1630.
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Support
for this exhibition has been provided by Elizabeth Rivers Lewine.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts gratefully acknowledges
the leadership support of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman. Additional
support for programs and exhibitions has been provided by Judy R.
and Alfred A. Rosenberg and the Miriam and Harold Steinberg Foundation.
The corresponding
website for this exhibition can be visited starting in October at www.nypl.org/transformations.
All images on this
page are from the collections of The New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
1. Magic is reality
transformed, as seen in the Houdini poster for The Double Fold Death
Defying Water Mystery (Russell-Morgan Lithographers, 1911).
2. Cecil Beaton
illustration for My
Fair Lady,
ca. 1956. This is a triple transformation: the Lerner and Loewe musical
was transformed from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion,
a transformation of the Greek myth about the transformation of a statue
into a woman.
3. Animal transformations
are common in most societies' lore. Here, man becomes insect in Franne
Lee's "bee" design for television's Saturday
Night Live,
1975.
Contact: Rima
Corben and Herb Scher at 212.221.7676
(rcorben@nypl.org, hscher@nypl.org)
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rcorben, hscher:
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