From Broadway World Connecticut

The widespread news coverage earlier this year of the discovery in Scotland of a previously unknown first edition of the collected works of William Shakespeare is bringing greater interest to the national traveling exhibition “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare” that will be on display at the William Benton Museum of Art at UConn from Sept. 1 to 25. More information on events can be found at www.shakespeare.uconn.edu.

The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays published by two of his fellow actors in 1623, seven years after the Bard’s death on April 23. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors” and “As You Like It.”

The national tour is being hosted by one institution in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing this year. The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association.

“As an institution with a strong history of championing the dramatic classics through our resident theater, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, we are very proud to have the opportunity to host this exhibition for our state,” says Anne D’Alleva, dean of UConn’s School of Fine Arts. “This is an important document in the life of the arts and our students and wider community to experience here on campus.”

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

UConn has been selected as a host site for a national traveling exhibition in 2016 for “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.”

The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623 by two of his fellow actors, seven years after the Bard’s death. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors” and As You Like It.” The exhibition will take place in the Gilman Gallery at the William Benton Museum of Art in Storrs.

The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association and will be hosted by one institution in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing. Specific dates for the tour host sites will be announced in April.

“As an institution with a strong history of championing the dramatic classics through our resident theater, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, we are very proud to have the opportunity to host this exhibition for our state,” says Brid Grant, dean of UConn’s School of Fine Arts. “This is an important document in the life of the arts and our students and wider community to experience here on campus.”

Adds Vincent Cardinal, head of the Department of Dramatic Arts and artistic director of CRT: “Connecting the living and breathing work we do in our studios and on our stages to this first collected publication of Shakespeare’s plays will be an unforgettable opportunity for our students, faculty, staff and audiences.”

Click here to view the full article

By Susan Dunne for the Hartford Courant

Imagine a world without “Macbeth,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night.” Imagine a world without “All the world’s a stage,” “Beware the ides of March,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “Something wicked this way comes” and “If music be the food of love, play on.”

William Shakespeare wrote those plays, and those words. But without the First Folio, they would have been lost to history. The First Folio was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, by two of his friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell. It contained 36 of the Bard’s plays, including 18 that had never been published in book form before. “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “As You Like It,” “Comedy of Errors,” “Coriolanus,” “Cymbeline,” “1 Henry VI,” “Henry VIII,” “Julius Caesar,” “King John,” “Macbeth,” “Measure for Measure,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest,” “Timon of Athens,” “Twelfth Night,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “The Winter’s Tale.”

This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In commemoration, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which owns 82 of the 235 surviving copies of the First Folio, is sending those folios on the road, one location for each of the 50 states. The closely guarded historical artifact will be on view to the public at the William Benton Museum of Art at University of Connecticut in Storrs from Sept. 1 to 25.

Some of those 18 plays had been published previously as quartos, which are little more than pamphlets. “They were like the paperbacks you pick up at the airport bookstore and then throw away when you’re done,” said Lindsay Cummings, an assistant professor of dramatic arts at UConn.

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

Recent news coverage of the discovery in Scotland of a previously unknown first edition of William Shakespeare’s collected works has brought increased interest to the national traveling exhibition “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare.” That exhibition is coming to UConn in the fall, and will be on display at the William Benton Museum of Art from Sept. 2 to 25.

The “First Folio” is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays published by two of his fellow actors in 1623, seven years after the Bard’s death on April 23. The collection includes 18 plays that would otherwise have been lost, including “Macbeth,” Julius Caesar,” “Twelfth Night,” “The Tempest,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Comedy of Errors,” and “As You Like It.”

The national tour is being hosted by one institution in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s passing this year. The tour is a partnership between The Folger Shakespeare Library, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the American Library Association.

“As an institution with a strong history of championing the dramatic classics through our resident theater, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, we are very proud to have the opportunity to host this exhibition for our state,” says Anne D’Alleva, dean of UConn’s School of Fine Arts. “This is an important document in the life of the arts, and for our students and wider community to experience here on campus.”

Click here to view the full article

By Susan Dunne for CTNOW

The Evelyn Simon Gilman Gallery at the William Benton Museum of Art at UConn in Storrs has 43 artworks on exhibit, some of the jewels of UConn’s collection. Of the 39 pieces whose artists are known, 34 were created by men and five by women.

In the adjacent gallery is a show of work by the Guerrilla Girls. The goal of that art-activist group is to challenge the unequal representation of female and nonwhite artists in the art world.

Jean Nihoul, curator of the Guerrilla Girls’ show, is aware of the irony of the two exhibits’ juxtaposition. He isn’t fazed by it.

“Our show here is pointing to that show. This shows that the problem is systemic and widespread and it’s applicable to us, too,” Nihoul said.

The side-by-side exhibits lend even more truth to the Guerrilla Girls’ rallying cry, which they have been calling out since 1985: That museums, galleries and collectors give overwhelmingly preferential treatment to white male artists. Since hype and exposure translate into respect and money, the Guerrilla Girls argue that female and minority nonrepresentation suppresses art, opportunity and artists’ ability to make a living.

So the exhibit at UConn levels the field, at least in that museum for now, giving a huge presence to women artists and their in-your-face message. Whether it gives a presence to nonwhite artists is unknown, because the Guerrilla Girls keep their identities secret. They wear gorilla masks when they speak in public, as they will on April 6 at UConn.

Click here to view the full article

By Kenneth Best for UConn Today

When a group of women artists first put on gorilla masks to protest gender and racial inequalities in the art world, their use of humor on advertising handouts and posters called attention to the paucity of works by female artists in gallery and museum exhibitions. Taking the names of dead women artists in order to be anonymous, and wearing the masks to protect themselves against possible retaliation, they called themselves the Guerrilla Girls. More than three decades later, they say there is still work to be done.

“When we started in 1985, you could hear curators and gallery people saying that women and artists of color were not making art that is part of the contemporary dialogue,” says Frida Kahlo, one of the founders of Guerilla Girls. “No one would say that now.” Kahlo’s namesake is the 20th century surrealist Mexican painter known for her self-portraits and as the subject of the 2002 Salma Hayek film “Frida.”

Thirty-nine off-beat “guerrilla-advertising” posters, advertising, and other works are part of the “Guerrilla Girls: Art, Activism, and the ‘F’ Word” in the center gallery of the William Benton Museum of Art through May 22. The exhibition is drawn from the 89-piece Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat (1985-2012) recently acquired by the museum.

Among the works in the exhibition is a 1989 billboard poster that addressed concerns at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The poster depicts a nude woman wearing a gorilla mask lying on a couch with a headline asking: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5 percent of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85 percent of the nudes are female.”

Click here to view the full article