Screening and director talk for ‘A Woman on the Outside’
Norfolk, Conn. — Director Lisa Riordan Seville will introduce her new film “A Woman on the Outside” on Thursday, February 9 at 7 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Part observational documentary, part family album, “A Woman on the Outside” is a tender portrait of one family striving to love in the face of a system built to break them. More than a quarter of women in this country have had a loved one incarcerated. For Black women, the odds are even higher. To love someone who’s locked up isn’t a marginal experience – it’s an American one. Growing up, Kristal watched nearly every man in her life disappear to prison. She channeled that struggle into keeping families connected, both as a social worker and with her van service that drives families to visit loved ones in far-off prisons. But when Kristal’s dad and brother return to Philly, her happiness meets the realization that release doesn’t always mean freedom. Passionate, funny and resilient, Kristal remains determined to carve out a different future — for herself and for her young nephew, Nyvae.
Director Lisa Riordan Seville is an award-winning reporter and independent filmmaker whose stories explore how money, power and policy shapes the lives of everyday people. Visit here to register and to find out more.
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Salisbury School explores local history
Salisbury, Conn. — Salisbury School’s “Coloring Our Past” history class will share their research and explore the mystery of Edwin White’s portrait, “Maria Birch Coffing with Jane W. Winslow,” on Thursday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. via Zoom.
Maria Birch Coffing with Jane W. Winslow is currently on exhibit in the Academy Building of the Salisbury Association. The name “Jane W. Winslow” was added to the the title of this portrait retroactively when a restoration more prominently revealed Winslow’s figure standing behind the woman in whose house she lived and worked for decades. Join the Salisbury School’s students and teacher Rhonan Mokriski in a conversation exploring local history, the intriguing artist, Edwin White, and the roles that race, society and economics played in 19th century Berkshires.
To join Salisbury School’s Zoom Conversation visit HERE
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See Chinese artist Tongji Philip Qian’s ‘Duration of Status’ art exhibit at Simon’s Rock
Great Barrington— Bard College at Simon’s Rock presents Tongji Philip Qian’s “Duration of Status: Recent works on paper among other things” in the Hillman-Jackson Gallery at the Daniel Arts Center now until March 31.
Tongji Philip Qian’s “Duration of Status: Recent works on paper among other things,” showcases primarily works on paper from the past two years such as graphite and pigment marker drawings, etchings, and woodblock prints. Other mediums in the presentation vary, but include leather structures and painted wooden panels.
As a Chinese artist living and working in the United States, Tongji Philip Qian is intrigued by the juxtaposition between “America” and “elsewhere.” His works attempt to earn his membership in this country following movements commonly associated with Conceptualism and Post-Minimalism while anchoring a distance that recalls his identity as a foreign-born artist.
He borrows the title of this exhibition, Duration of Status, from entry stamps issued by the United States Customs and Border Protection Officials. “Duration of status” is an immigration vocabulary, indicating that the person is legal as long as their paperwork remain accurate and unexpired. To Tongji Philip Qian, “duration of status” is a parameter he must follow to maintain lawful presence in the United States, but it also informs a useful framework to delimit his projects. These parameters provided the artist with moments of confluence, paradox, and perhaps renewed relations with himself and the world at large.
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Author Maggie Anton to discuss ‘The Choice: A Novel of Love, Faith, and the Talmud’
Pittsfield— On Thursday, February 9 at 6:45 p.m., join novelist Maggie Anton as she talks and answers questions about her work and latest book, “The Choice: A Novel of Love, Faith, and the Talmud.” This program is a part of “Jewish Literary Voices: A Federation Series in collaboration with The Jewish Book Council.”
Award-winning author Maggie Anton has written a wholly transformative novel that takes characters inspired by Chaim Potok and ages them into young adults in Brooklyn in the 1950s. When Hannah Eisen, a successful journalist, interviews Rabbi Nathan Mandel, a controversial Talmud professor, she persuades him to teach her the mysteries of the text forbidden to women—even though it might cost him his job if discovered.
This free program will be presented via Zoom.
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Attend a lecture on Joseph Luzzi’s ‘Botticelli’s Secret’
Pittsfield— Author Joseph Luzzi presents a lecture on his book “Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and Rediscovery of the Renaissance” on Thursday, February 9 at 7 p.m. online and for free via Zoom.
Some five hundred years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created works of unearthly beauty. A star of Florence’s art world, he was commissioned by a member of the city’s powerful Medici family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all one hundred cantos of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the ultimate visual homage to that “divine” poet.
This sparked a gripping encounter between poet and artist, between the religious and the secular, between the earthly and the evanescent, recorded in exquisite drawings by Botticelli that now enchant audiences worldwide. Yet after a lifetime of creating masterpieces including Primavera and The Birth of Venus, Botticelli declined into poverty and obscurity. His Dante project remained unfinished. Then the drawings vanished for over four hundred years. The once famous Botticelli himself was forgotten.
The nineteenth-century rediscovery of Botticelli’s Dante drawings brought scholars and art lovers to their knees: this work embodied everything the Renaissance had come to mean. From Botticelli’s metaphorical rise from the dead in Victorian England to the emergence of eagle-eyed connoisseurs like Bernard Berenson and Herbert Horne in the early twentieth century, and even the rescue of precious art during World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the posthumous story of Botticelli’s Dante drawings is, if anything, even more dramatic than their creation.
A combination of artistic detective story and rich intellectual history, Botticelli’s Secret shows not only how the Renaissance came to life, but also how Botticelli’s art helped bring it about—and, most important, why we need the Renaissance and all that it stands for today.
