October 20, 1936
Continuing at the Brooklyn Museum are several recently installed exhibitions of unusual interest. That of six American Artists - Alexander Brook, Guy Pene du Bois, Leon Kroll, Charles Sheeler and John Sloan (painters) and John Flanagan (sculptor) - occupies the larger portion of the Special Exhibition Galleries on the First Floor, while in an additional gallery held in reserve preparatory work is being pushed for the coming exhibition of the Rayon and Synthetic Yarn Industries scheduled for December 12. In the New Accessions Room, which forms the entrance to these galleries, recently purchased Egyptian antiquities include several very rare and beautiful pieces of sculpture. In the Print Galleries a large and carefully selected exhibition of Four Centuries of Portraiture in Prints offers both the amateur and the connoisseur an unusual opportunity to survey this subject and make comparisons. Adjoining the Main Entrance Hall is the American Federation of Arts travelling exhibition of the Art of the Dance in Photograph, assembled and sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum and shown there for the first time. The eighty six photographs represent dancers in action of all styles and are the work of twenty five photographers. Among the celebrated dancers depicted are Pavlowa, Mordkin, Nijinsky, Duncan, St. Denis, Wigman, Helm, Graham, Kreutzberg, Weidman, La Argentina, Escudoro, Haakon, Georgi, Shawn, Schoop, The Ballet Russo de Monte Carlo, The American Ballet of the Metropolitan Opera House and The Joos Ballet.
The silver of the Cruiser Brooklyn will be taken off exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum the end of this week.
The exhibitions mentioned above will close on the following dates: Six American Artists, November 29; Rayon and Synthetic Yarn Industries, January 25; recently purchased Egyptian antiquities, November 22; Four Centuries of Portraiture in Prints, December 6; The Art of the Dance in Photograph, November 29.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 138. View Original
November 13, 1936
At three o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday, November 14th, the Dance Center of the Brooklyn Museum will present In the Sculpture Court the English Folk Dance Society of America In a program of country dances, Morris dances and sword dances. The program will include Helston Fury, Gathering Peascods, Rodney, William and Nancy, Haste to the Wedding, Oranges and Lemons, The Old Mole, Shepherd’s Hey, Winlaton, Bacon Pipes, The Running Set, The Morpeth Rant, Nonesuch, St. Martins, Lads a Bunchun, and Brighton Camp.
This is the first of the series of dance recital programs to be presented at the Brooklyn Museum this year. Other programs will be announced later. Last season Hanya Holm, Esther Junger, Sara Mildred Straus, Tamiris, Anita Zahn, Maria Theresa and The American Ballet presented group and solo programs at the Museum in connection with the exhibition of the Dance in Art.
The Brooklyn Museum is continuing the policy of exhibiting works of art which have the dance as a subject, and is showing this month an exhibition of the Art of the Dance in Photograph. These photographs show the Ballet Russe, American Ballet, Joos Ballet, Trudi Schoop, Martha Graham, Esther Junger, Hanya Holm, Pavlowa, Nijinski, Mordkin and many other dancers of the present day and immediate past.
Enthusiastic response of thousands of museum visitors to the dance exhibition and programs last year convinced the museum authorities that the dance deserved a permanent place in the museum as one of the most vital and popular of contemporary arts, having in its substance and composition, obvious relations with painting, sculpture and other museum collections, supplementing the music programs which are regular features of the museum calendar. Plans for the work of the dance center have been formulated in consultation with leading dancers and dance schools and the center will be run in cooperation with them. The museum’s weekly bulletin of dance events will keep the museum public informed of current recitals outside the museum. The directory of dance schools will inform Interested museum visitors of teachers who can offer them the type of instruction they desire.
It is the intention of the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center to serve the dancers by providing a free dance laboratory where young dancers and choreographers can test their work before a large and interested public and where dancers and dance groups of established reputation can educate their public by demonstrations of technique and other analytical programs and can appeal to the large public in Brooklyn interested in tho dance but directly served by comparatively few dance events and dance centers. It is anticipated that some of the Brooklyn Museum programs will be planned as preliminary studios intended to increase the appreciation of subsequent dance recitals outside the Museum.
To avoid overcrowding of the Sculpture Court, admission to Museum programs will be by a limited number of free tickets distributed at the Museum.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 141-2. View Original
December 15, 1936
The Dance Center of the Brooklyn Museum announces the following program of activities for the season 1936-1937, a program which has been drawn up in consultation with loading dancers and schools of the dance:
(1) Demonstrations of contemporary dance techniques in the Sculpture Court every Saturday morning from 10:30 to 12:30. These demonstrations range from formal recitals to demonstration lessons of the elements of modern dance technique. An organ recital follows each demonstration.
(2) Gallery tours illustrating the relation between the art of the dance and the arts represented in the museum collections, every Saturday at 12:45.
(3) Exhibitions of the dance in art: photographs, painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, etc.
(4) A bulletin of current dance events in New York and vicinity. Professional dancers, managers, producers and booking agencies are urged to send advance notices of recitals and dance productions so that they can be announced by means of this bulletin. Brooklyn, the largest borough of the city of New York, has a large and enthusiastic dance audience. This audience can be reached through announcements at the Brooklyn Museum.
(5) A directory of dance schools. Many members of the Brooklyn Museum audience are interested in dancing themselves. The Museum receives many inquiries about courses of instruction in the dance. Dance teachers and schools of the dance are urged to send complete information about courses of instruction, hours, rates, teachers available for direction of groups formed outside the dance studios, etc. This information will be available to the Brooklyn public in the Museum directory of dance schools.
(6) Resident demonstration groups under the direction of professional dancers. At present about two hundred persons are enrolled in these groups or on the waiting list. Groups are classified as follows: little children 4-6, children 7-9, girls 10-14, boys 10-14, young men 15-20, young women 15-20, business and professional women including housewives 21 and over, business and professional men 21 and over. Registration is kept open and is unlimited, but the number of groups that can work in the museum at any one time is limited by space available and open hours on the crowded calendar of activities.
At present six groups are working, and the applicants fill every group listed above, some of them many times over. The heaviest registration is in the class of business and professional women including housewives. Each group meets only a few times, in order to give members an opportunity to so whether they have a taste or a talent for modern dancing. After the few demonstrations available to each group, membership in which is free, an effort is made to refer interested group members to schools of the dance outside the museum and to organize affiliated dance classes under the direction of cooperating schools of the dance. Teachers from leading schools of the modern dance in New York are cooperating by contributing their services to direct those free demonstration groups. This gives the cooperating teachers an opportunity to appear before the Brooklyn Museum audience and demonstrate their methods of instruction. It is not the intention of the Brooklyn Museum to set up a school of the dance, but merely to provide space where Museum visitors may participate in the dance and leading teachers of the modern dance may demonstrate their work. The resident dance groups are a free cooperative activity of museum visitors and dance teachers. The Museum has provided facilities for such cooperation in response to the manifest interest of the public and the evident mood for such a free public dance center which would give professional dancers an enlarged field of activities and demonstrate the possibilities of the modern dance as an amateur recreation. It is the belief of the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center and of professional dancers who have been consulted that the modern dance can become a true contemporary folk dance, a lay art, as well as a medium for professional performances.
(7) The Brooklyn Museum Dance Center offers facilities for rehearsals and recitals by professional dancers, especially young dancers and choreographers who desire to make debuts in Brooklyn. Hitherto the facilities for debuts and other productions of young dancers have been limited and expensive. The audience drawn to such recitals has been restricted. The Brooklyn Museum offers to such dancers a place, an audience of several thousand persons, and such publicity as it pleases the press to give to the activities of the Brooklyn Museum. The Museum will make every effort to provide publicity by posters, circular mailings and the release of stories to the press. The Federal Dance Theater has already availed itself of this opportunity by establishing at the Brooklyn Museum a separate unit known as the Young Choregraphers Laboratory. The following dancers have been assigned to this unit and are in daily rehearsal at the Brooklyn Museum, Productions will be announced later. Miss Saida Gerrard, Miss Mattie Haim, Miss Ailes Gilmour, Miss Lillian Mehlmann, Miss Nadia Chilkovsky, Miss Mura Dehn and Mr. William Matons, Mr. Glenn E. Pangborn in charge. Other dancers desiring to stage recitals or productions in the Sculpture Court of the Brooklyn Museum are requested to communicate with Grant Code, Editor, and acting director of the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center.
The Brooklyn Museum Dance Center began last year with an exhibition of the Dance in Art (painting, drawing and sculpture) arranged by Mr. Herbert B. Tschudy, and a. series of dance recitals in which the following dancers and groups participated: Hanya Hoim and Group, Tamiris and Group, Sophla Delza, Esther Junger, Sara Mildred Straus and Group, Anita Zahn and Group, Maria Theresa and Group, Georges Balanchine and members of the American Ballet of the Metropolitan Opera. Activities began this year with an exhibition of the Art of the Dance in Photograph assembled as a travelling exhibition for the American Federation of Arts and sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum, a recital by the English Folk Dance Society of America, New York Branch, under the direction of May Gadd, the organization of resident dance groups, and an exhibition of Photography of Contemporary Dancers by Thomas Bouchard, now current.
A professional dancers discussion forum for consideration of technical dance problems is in process of organization. Mrs. Irma Otto Betz will lecture before this forum on the Rudolph von Laban dance script, and the Young Choreographers Laboratory will lead panel discussions.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 155-57. View Original
November 13, 1936
New accessions to the Brooklyn Museum were featured in the report of Mr. Philip N. Youtz, Director, to the Governing Committee at the meeting held yesterday afternoon (November 12) The report covered activities for the month of October.
During the month several fine specimens of Mexican art were secured by purchase including a Toltec mask of green onyx, an engraved slab of jade, and a jade vessel, These are now on exhibition in the Mexican Hall.
Dr. John H. Finney presented the Museum with 112 specimans from Peru. Included in the collection is an outstanding speciman, a robe of Inca period with tapestry figures in bright colors arranged in two bands.
One Chinese and five Tibetan pictures were given to the Oriental Department by Mr. Herbert L. Pratt in memory of his wife.
In connection with the opening of the Library a number of Chinese jades and temple paintings were installed in a small addition to the Chinese gallery.
Tibetan, Indian and Japanese masks, musical instruments and Indian and Siamese sculpture from the collections of the Oriental Department are being shown in the exhibition of the Art of the Dance in photograph which opened October 30th.
A gift of ten fragments in stone and wood has been received from Mr. Louis Herse of Alexandria, Egypt. Several of these pieces are outstanding fragments and will strengthen the Museums collection of the art of Tell-elpAmarna. Among the important purchases of the past month wore a large stone sarcophagus of the XXVI Dynasty, a large bronze statue of the Goddess Sekmet, a Foundation set bearing the cartouche of Amenophis II, a large fragment of a black granite statue of the son of Ramesses II and an exquisite small bronze statue of Imotep.
With the cooperation of the Curator of Prints the Medieval Department obtained five rare and important XVth Century German woodcuts on loan. They were exhibited in the Medieval Hall during the month of October, and will continue to be on view during the next three weeks. They are very handsome examples of early colored woodcuts, almost all unique impressions, and two from the famous Oppenheimer Collection.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 139. View Original
