Currently:

Alfred Bendiner: Prints and Drawings  

James and Candace Van Alen Gallery

Redwood Library and Athenaeum

February 28 through December 31 , 2010

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The Redwood Library is pleased to showcase some of the prints and drawings from its Alfred Bendiner Collection. This collection of 153 works was donated to the Redwood in 1996 by Margaret Yarnall, who was the curator of the Alfred and Elizabeth Bendiner foundation.

Alfred Bendiner, architect, muralist, caricaturist, and world traveler, was born in Pittsburgh in 1899.  He caught the travel bug during his architectural student year in Europe in 1928. After his marriage to Elizabeth Sutro in 1937, the couple spent much of their life together traveling throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Central America.  Bendiner recorded his travel experiences and surroundings in sketches he made while on trips.  He wrote in his autobiography that instead of bringing home the expected architectural studies in 1928, he arrived with a portfolio of caricatures.  In fact, he is better known today as a caricaturist than as an architect.  He first aspired to become a newspaper cartoonist, and he maintained his interest in producing humorous art throughout his life.  From 1917 to 1964, his caricatures appeared in newspapers such as the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and the Washington Times-Herald.

The Redwood is working with guest curator Dr. Laura Napolitano, who received her MA in Art History from Williams College in 2000 and her Ph.D. in Art History from University of Maryland, College Park, in 2008.  She has held fellowships at the Smithsonian Art Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art and has been curator for exhibitions at the American Antiquarian Society, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

For this exhibition, Dr. Napolitano has chosen to focus on Bendiner's humorous street scenes and sporting scenes painted while on his many travels around the world.  The show includes depictions of Newport race week, French horseracing, fishing and beach going on the New Jersey shore, ocean liner travel, and observation of foreigh cultures and the behavior of "ugly Americans."

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In Pursuit of Natural History

An Exhibition of Works on Natural History

from the Redwood Library Collections

Rovensky Room Display Case Exhibition

July 21, 2010 through November 18, 2010

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Many of the founders of the Redwood Library, including Abraham Redwood, were naturalists, so it is not surprising that a number of natural history classics were acquired for the Library early on.  Numerous later gifts built on this foundation, and as a result the Library has an excellent collection of early books on natural history.  Included in the exhibition is Thomas Say's early 19th century book on entomology, the first American book on the subject.  Also showcased is the Redwood's 1631 edition of Pliny the Elder's great work on natural history, which is essentially a one volume encyclopedia of the ancient world.  Newport native Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse is represented with an 1810 pamphlet of his lectures on natural history given at Harvard, as well as an 1811 reprint of a number of articles he wrote about plants and some of the great botanists and botanical gardens of the past and present.  There are many more fascinating treasures to be discovered, and this exhibition includes some of the most beautifully illustrated books in the Library. The image to the left is from Melisselogia (1744) by John Thorley, a first edition of the work on bees.

The exhibition is guest curated by Dr. Philip Weimerskirch.  Dr. Weimerskirch received his D.L.S. from Columbia University.  His early career focused on medical libraries and included positions at Columbia University's Butler Library, the library of the New York Academy of Medicine, librarian of the Bronx State Hospital, and history of medicine librarian at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.  Dr. Weimerskirch spent the last 19 years of his career as the special collections librarian at the Providence Public Library.  Currently, Dr. Weimerskirch continues to conduct research and write on the history of book illustration and printing.

 

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recently ...

 

Newport's Own: Portraits by Jane Stuart

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The Redwood Library takes this opportunity to thank Linda Eppich, curator for the exhibition, which was hugely successful.  The exhibition was on display February - December 2009 in the Redwood's Van Alen Gallery and was produced in collaboration with the Newport Historical Society, the Preservation Society of Newport County, and the Redwood Library. Our thanks and gratitude are also extended to the following institutions who loaned Jane Stuart portraits from their collections for the exhibition:  the Boston Athenaeum; Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School

of Design; the Newport Art Museum; the Newport Historical Society; the Peabody Essex Museum; the Preservation Society of Newport County; and the State of Rhode Island, Newport Colony House.