February 5, 2012

Worth a Thousand Words: Art, Objects, and the Stories They Tell

Hartford Public Library
500 Main Street
Hartford

Stories of African American history and culture will be told through the objects from the permanent collection of The Amistad Center for Art & Culture. Learn to read stories through art, artifacts, and ephemera of the 19th and 20th century in this talk by Alona Cooper Wilson, Assistant Director & Curator of The Amistad Center for Art & Culture.

 

February 8, 2012

Topsy's Legacy: Imagining Uncle Tom's Cabin After the Civil War

6 pm
Aetna Theater

Wadsworth Atheneum
600 Main Street
Hartford

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Associate Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania

Presented in Collaboration with Wadsworth Atheneneum and the Harriett Beecher Stowe Center

As the popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin grew, so did the number of illustrations that were printed alongside the text, and as the years passed the story and characters became a part of American popular culture.  By the turn-of-the-century, Uncle Tom's Cabin was experienced visually in multiple ways, including stage plays and minstrel performances, the broadside posters that advertised these productions, photographs of actors, and early silent films. This talk explores illustrations of Topsy at the dressing table, a favorite scene from stage adaptations of the book that existed first in the theatre and then later made their way into reprints as erroneous illustrations. Why were apocryphal images such as this one so popular and how did they come to signal both the possibilities and the limits for depicting racial violence in the century that followed America's Civil War?

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is Associate Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania and the Visual Arts Editor for Transition.  She is the author of Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker (Duke UP: 2004) and Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century (Washington: 2006).  Her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Strictly a Negro Art is a bio-contextual study of work by the Harlem Renaissance-era artist Sargent Johnson.


February 27, 2012

A Taste of History

February 27, 2012*
5:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Wadsworth Atheneum
600 Main Street
Hartford

An evening of art, food, music, & more!

Billy Grant, Chef Chair

Participating Restaurants

Bricco Trattoria
Dish
Feng
Grants Restaurant
Healthy Source Caterering
Max Amore
Mozzicato De Pasquale Bakery and Pastry Shop
Restaurant Bricco
The Mill at 2T
Tschudin Chocolates and Confections
AND MORE TO COME!

Beverage Sponsors

Sponsored by

Prices
General admission (no reserved seats/table)
Amistad Center Members $45
Non-members $50

Reserved seats and tables
Individual Premier Reserved Seat
Non-Members $75

Amistad Center members$65

Reserved Table of 8
$600 for Non-members

$520 for Amistad Center members

Event sponsorship $1500
Acknowledgement in the event program and 1 premier reserved table for 8.

To purchase tickets or reserved tables, click here

Parking for a nominal fee is available in the Front Street Garage, directly behind the museum off Prospect Street. Free parking is available on the streets around the museum after 6 pm.  For more information about parking, click here.

*Severe weather date February 28, 2012.