National Museum of American Illustration - Vernon Court - Newport R.I.

A Great Summer Season Opening!

On Thursday, May 22 the NMAI opened for Summer Season 2014 with the debut of a new exhibition, Norman Rockwell and his Contemporaries!  This exhibition has already been widely popular with both critics and museum visitors, it features artists such as: John Falter, John Clymer, Mead Shaeffer, Stevan Dohanos, Frank Schoonover, JC Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, and of course, Norman Rockwell. For more information on this new exhibition.

Our Summer hours are now in full swing, adding three extra days a week for you, your family, and friends to see this new exciting record-breaking exhibtion; as well as a chance to visit The American Muse exhibition continued from last May due to public demand, original illustrations from My Little Pony: Under the Sparkling Sea by Mary Jane Begin, and selections from our American Imagist Collection. Come visit the NMAI during our extended Summer hours, Thursdays - Sundays 11am - 5pm, no need for reservations. The exhibition is also available for viewing on Wednesdays by advance reservation for groups of 6 visitors or more.


The NMAI recently added a new statue to our NMAI Sculpture Collection! The Vigil of Rizpah by Joseph Mozier is now available for viewing in our Tiffany Loggia. Another Mozier sculpture, the noted  work entitled Jeptha's Daughter is on exhibit in The Marble Hall.

Installing a statue is much more complicated and involved than one may think. When Rizpah was delivered we were shocked to discover that she weighed 1860 lbs, just short of 2,000lb, a literal ton! Her weight ruled out manually carrying nearly a ton of marble  into Vernon Court and onto her pedestal. Other avenues had to be considered.

The solution? A huge forklift was carefully guided down the pathway leading to the entrance of the Tiffany Loggia, with only inches of clearance on either side. Rizpah's crate was slid onto the forklift attachment and slowly lifted up and over the marble steps and gently placed inside the building.
From the machine's extended reach over the steps, to the clearance of the crate in the doorway, to the width of the forklift to fit down the pathway, everything was thoughtfully planned. As anticipated, every measurement miraculously just barely fit to the great credit of the sculpture erection  team.

However it appeared, surprisingly that was the easist part. She was too heavy to be manually lifted onto her pedestal. Instead, a scaffolding was assembled inside the Loggia (very skillfully, to avoid the track lighting as well as the restored murals). A pulley system was installed and stratigically placed around the statue, supporting her delicatly so that pieces would not be snapped off by her own weight when lifted. Instead of being placed onto the pedestal,  it was actually slid beneath her, and then she was lowered down onto it.

A big thank you to the team assembled who volunteered their helping hands, advice, and experience in installing our new statue!


The NMAI is pleased to announce our recent participation in the Brandywine River Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, A Date with Art: the Buiness of Illustrated Calendars. Works from the NMAI's permanent American Imagist Collection were featured, including Maxfield Parrish's Venetian Lamplighters (1922), Reveries (1926), and Sunup, Little Brook Farm (1942).

"To a 1920s audience, Parrish's calendar scenes were magical windows to a world that glowed with fairies, exotic lights, and lush scenes rendered with almost three-dimensional realism. The glowing blue-sky in "The Venetian Lamplighter" (1922) is equally striking in the original painting and its calendar counterpart. Even Parrish's more pedestrian views of New England landscapes and ordinary homes - seen in 1929 and 1945 calendars - still have that unearthy depth and lights." - John Chambless, Chester County Press


A Date with Art: The Business of Illustrated Calendars - some text below from the Brandywine Museum press release: www.brandywinemuseum.org:

"Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rowckwell and N.C. Wyeth - foremost illustrators in the first half of the 20th century - created some of their best-known images for advertising calendars. Calendars hung in millions of homes, shops, and offices, providing artists with an opportunity to disseminate their work to a much broader audience than that for books or magazines. A Date with Art: The Business of Illustrated Calendars introduces visitors to the once-thriving, lucrative business of illustrated calendars. From Parrish's haunting work for General Electric's Edison Mazda Brand to Norman Rockwell's iconic images for the Boy Scouts of America, calendar images contributed greatly to an artist's popular repuation. Yet just as these for artists reaped financial benefit and fame by creating art for calendars, the connection to cocmmercial venures at times undermined their critical repuations as artists. This exhibition will reveal the various ways in which Pyle, Parrish, Rockwell, and Wyeth integrated calendar works into their calendar work into their careers, adapting to shifting views of contemporary art, illustration, and business."

The Brandwine River Museum (1 Hoffman's Mill Rd, Chadds Ford, PA) is open daily from 9:30 am. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, call 610-388-2700 or visit www.brandwinemuseum.org


The exhibition has concluded and all three paintings have since returned to the NMAI. Reveries and Venetian Lamplighters are both currently on display in the Grand Salon.






Reviews:
                                                                                                       
"My boyfriend and I...are so glad we visited! The mansion itself is extremely beautiful and well maintained, as are the beautiful grounds. The actual illustration collection is expansive and beautiful. You could spend a great amount of time in each room enjoying all of the beautiful pieces. In particular, we enjoyed the Norman Rockwell collection. We were in awe of the beauty of the house and all the sculptures and illustrations througout...Absolutely worth a visit when you are in Newport -- we are so glad we went!"                                                                                          
                                                                          - "ResortMeg", tripadvisor.com, March 2014

"My colleagues and I consider the holdings of your museum to include works essential to the very cultural foundation of our contemporary society. More, it is recognized that such works as you protect and display remain part and parcel of the very fiber of our cultural identity as a nation and beyond."

                                  - Spencer Ladd, Associate Professor, Chair, University of Massachusetts: Dartmouth

"This Newport museum is truly one of the best museums I've had the pleasure to visit in my lifetime. Well worth taking the journey just to see a sample of some of the greatest "American" art set in a beautiful mansion."                                                                                          
                                                                     - "Commonman777", tripadvisor.com, March 2014
       





Norman Rockwell and his Contemporaries is a thematic exploration of artworks by Rockwell and his peers: those influenced by Rockwell and those who influenced the Master himself. The most noted artist-illustrators of his time were colleagues, classmates, and friends who lived and worked in nearby artist communites. The illustrators reflected and molded American society by depicting prototypical themes still held dear today. Featured alongside Rockwell are: John Clymer, Stevan Dohanos, John Falter, George Hughes, J.C. Leyendecker, and more.



Mary Jane Begin's new book My Little Pony: Under the Sparkling Sea, as the title suggests, is a My Little Pony story with an aquatic theme. Her bold and intense use of colors in the underwater environment and nuanced depictions of the facial expressions convey the characters' wonderment at the strange and new world they experience. Illustrations from this book are now on display for viewing and for sale in the Lower Level galleries to benefit the NMAI.



Continuing for the 2014 Summer Season, this exhibition features the illustrative works of Charles Dana Gibson, Harrison Fisher, Howard Chandler Christy, Walter Granville Smith, James Montgomery Flagg, Albert Beck Wenzell, and others of their Gilded Age Illustrator colleagues, each demonstrating their own particular notion of the Classic American female Beauties from the Gilded Age.


 Summer Season Hours (thru Labor Day2014):     

  Admission:
                                   
  Adults: $18                                                               Thursdays: 11am - 5pm                       
  Seniors (60+)/Military: $16                                      Fridays: 11am - 5pm
  Groups (6 Visitors or more): $15                              Saturdays: 11am - 5pm
  Students: $12                                                             Sundays: 11am - 5pm     
  Children 5 to 12 yrs: $8                                                
  *Children under 5 not admitted                              

(Guided Tours and additional hours available at other times by appointment for groups of 6 persons or more. Ring: 401.8851.8949 ext. 18 for more information)





The National Museum of American Illustration is a nonprofit, independent, educational and aesthetic organization. It is located in Newport, RI on Bellevue Avenue at Vernon Court (1898), a Carrere and Hastings designed Beaux-Arts adaptation of an 18th century French chateau. It is the first national museum devoted exclusively to American Illustration art. Illustration consists of original artwork created to be reproduced in books, magazines, newspapers, and advertisements. "Golden Age" paintings by such luminaries as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, NC Wyeth, JC Leyendecker, and 150 others are displayed in "Gilded Age" architecture, creating a unique union of architecture and art - a national treasure. The Museum is administered by the American Civilization Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the goal to present the best possible venue for appreciating the greatest collection of illustration art - the most American of American art.


Contact Us:

 National Museum of American Illustration
 492 Bellevue Avenue, Newport RI, 02840
 T: 401-851-8949   F: 401-851-8974
 art@americanillustration.org
 www.americanillustration.org
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