Picturing the Banjo

Picturing the Banjo examines the visual representation of the banjo, probing the icon's aesthetic and cultural usage in American paintings, drawings, photographs, and other artifacts, including a few musical instruments. This exhibition features some sixty works of art on loan from thirty-two collections, telling the rich story of the banjo—in American art and cultural history—with works by such canonical artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Mary Cassatt, Charles Demuth, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, William Sidney Mount, and Norman Rockwell. Also on display will be pieces by somewhat lesser-known artists whose contributions are equally important in illuminating the banjo's symbolism; this list includes Miguel Covarrubias, Thomas Hope, Francis Benjamin Johnston, and Albert Alexander Smith.

Picturing the Banjo will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with critical essays by Leo Mazow, curator of American art and curator of the exhibition; Sarah Burns, Ruth N. Halls Professor of Fine Arts, Indiana University–Bloomington; John Davis, Alice Pratt Brown Professor and Chair of the Art Department, Smith College; Joyce Henri Robinson, curator, Palmer Museum of Art; and Cecelia Tichi, William R. Kenan Professor of English, Vanderbilt University. Complementing the exhibition, a scholarly symposium approaching the instrument's symbolism from interdisciplinary perspectives will be held at the Palmer Museum of Art in April 2006.

Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art, Picturing the Banjo will open at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in December 2005.

Pressetext

Picturing the Banjo
Special Exhibitions Gallery II

Werke von Thomas Hart Benton, Mary Cassatt, Charles Demuth, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, William Sidney Mount, Norman Rockwell, Miguel Covarrubias, Thomas Hope, Francis Benjamin Johnston, Albert Alexander Smith, u.a.