A Summer of Splendid Exhibitions Now on View at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Kabuki, Ademola Olugebefola, New York City Theaters, the Terry-Craig-Gielgud Legacy

New York, NY, June 30, 2004 -- It’s going to be a colorful summer in the galleries of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, literally and subjectively, as four vibrant and varied exhibitions open to the public in June. Ekanban: Kabuki Billboards Painted by Torii Kiyomitsu will be on display in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery West through August 20. The City and the Theater will inaugurate the Library’s Steinberg Room Gallery and run through October 2. Ademola Olugebefola at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors will festoon the Plaza Corridor Gallery until October 2. And …to illuminate the scene: Ellen Terry, Edith Craig, Edward Gordon Craig and John Gielgud will enthrall visitors to the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery through August 27. All exhibitions are on display at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free.

Billboard by Torii Kiyomitsu for Natsumatsuri Naniwa Kagami.

Ekanban: Kabuki Billboards Painted by Torii Kiyomitsu
June 25 -- August 20, Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery West

Ekanban is the term for the spectacular paint-on-rice-paper billboards that have been displayed outside Kabuki theaters since the 17th century. Just as Kabuki theaters are dynastic, with roles descending for centuries from one generation of family actors to the next, so is the art of ekanban passed along a line of inheritance. Torii Kiyomitsu is the ninth master of the Torii school and the first woman in this long tradition of theatrical painting. Ekanban: Kabuki Billboards Painted by Torii Kiyomitsu presents 30 of the artist’s large, original works, each alive with the intensity of color and high drama of the Kabuki repertoire. Heroes, heroines, geishas, and demons, in exquisitely detailed costumes and vivid scenes of valor, madness and everything in-between, fill these posters with a surprising dynamism peculiar to the pictorially flat ekanban style. The exhibition complements this summer’s Lincoln Center Festival presentation of the 400-year-old, all-male Heisei Nakamura-a Kabuki Theater of Tokyo. Natumatsuri Naniwa Kagami, the piece they will perform several times during July at Japan Society and Damrosch Park, is illustrated in the first two billboards included in the exhibition. Ekanban: Kabuki Billboards Painted by Torii Kiyomitsu offers New York a rare immersion in this exotic and appealing form of public art.


The City and The Theater
June 19 -- October 2, Steinberg Room Gallery

In tribute to Mary Henderson’s recently re-issued definitive history of theater in New York City, The City and the Theatre, this exhibition follows The Great White Way from 41st Street up to 52nd Street in a fascinating look at the evolution of Broadway’s theater buildings from their beginnings to the present day. Among the many legendary buildings highlighted are the old Metropolitan Opera, the Belasco, the Empire, and the Alwin. On display are original architectural drawings by Anthony Dumas (1910s – 1930s) juxtaposed in the cases of surviving theaters with nighttime photographs by Christopher Frith of their current incarnations. Also on view are contemporary drawings by Stanley Stark of old theaters integrated into new buildings, including the Gershwin, the Marquis, and the new Broadway theaters.

Ademola Olugefebola's impressions of the piano improvisations of Ibrahim Abdullah, August 24, 2001.

Ademola Olugebefola at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors
June 25 -- October 2, Plaza Corridor Gallery

New York artist Ademola Olugebefola spends his Augusts at the free performances of the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival. This exhibit presents bold, bright, new mixed-media art based on sketches he did at some of those jazz concerts and modern dance presentations from 1999 to 2002. The sketches are uncanny; a few wild lines snap into focus as the essence of both subject and music. Donald Byrd/The Group, Trisha Brown, Philadanco, Monte/Brown Dance, Abdullah Ibrahim and Mary Stalings, and The Mingus Big Band are captured full-throttle and emblazoned upon circles of brilliant color. Ademola Olugebefola has a distinguished record of important exhibitions in the United States, Africa, Japan, and the Caribbean and is represented in private and public collections throughout the world. He is known equally well for his contributions to the cultural life of the Harlem community. The Ademola Olugebefola Papers are part of The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture collections; his art is in the collection of the Library for the Performing Arts' Jerome Robbins Dance Division.


… To illuminate the scene: Ellen Terry, Edith Craig, Edward Gordon Craig and John Gielgud
June 25 -- August 27, Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery

Four members of a British family epitomized Anglo-American theater for the audience and the profession. Their careers lasted over 150 years; their influence continues to this day. Ellen Terry starred in the plays of Shakespeare, inspired plays of George Bernard Shaw, and secured an everlasting position in the pantheon of legendary stage actresses with her progressive portrayals of intelligent, thoughtful women in a career that lasted for more than fifty years. Her daughter, Edith Craig, linked theater with politics, using her skill in organizing and directing to present more than 150 suffragist and feminist plays. Terry’s son, Edward Gordon Craig, was a revolutionary theorist, designer and director of theater, lithographer, and book artist, and is considered the first to understand and utilize stage lighting as an integral dramatic art. Terry’s great-nephew, Sir John Gielgud, directed and starred in both classics and innovative new plays of the British and American theater, in addition to creating memorable roles in over 50 years on film. This exhibition celebrating Gielgud’s centennial (April 14, 2004) is based on rare artifacts, prompt books, photographs, designs, correspondence, and audio selections from the Library’s four research divisions and its Circulating Collections.


The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts houses the world’s most extensive combination of circulating, reference, and rare archival collections in its field. Its divisions are the Circulating Collections, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, Music Division, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. The materials in its collections are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, and performances. The Library is known particularly for its prodigious collections of non-book materials such as historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters and photographs.

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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York. Exhibition hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 12 noon to 6 p.m.; Thursday from 12 noon to 8 p.m.; closed Sundays, Mondays, and holidays. Admission is free. For exhibition information, telephone 212.870.1630 or visit the Library’s website at www.nypl.org.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts gratefully acknowledges the leadership support of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman. Additional support for exhibitions has been provided by Judy R. and Alfred A. Rosenberg and the Miriam and Harold Steinberg Foundation.


Contacts: Lindy Regan or Herb Scher at 212.704.8600.