How to Go:
What: The Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad St., Columbus.
Current exhibitions: "Fabric of Survival: The Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz" (through June 14); "Shine On: Nurses in Art" (through June 21); "Remembering Marvin Hamlisch: The People's Composer, Photographs by Len Prince (through Sept. 6); "Hats on the Silk Road: Selections from the Collection of Russell S. and Dona Fling" (through July 5) "Page Turners: The Art of Award-Winning Picturebooks from the Mazza Museum" (through Sept. 6)
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and until 8:30 p.m. every Thursday. The Palette Express is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Admission: $12 for adults; $8 for seniors and students 6 and older; and free for members, children 5 and younger. Admission is free for all on Sundays. If you are a reciprocal member of another art museum, admission is also free.
Parking: Free and available Monday through Friday in the church lot off East Gayand Ninth streets; Saturday and Sunday, in the State Auto Lot. Parking meters are also available in the area.
For additional information: call (614) 221.4848 or visit www.columbusmuseum.org.
WORTH THE DRIVE
Arts writer Meredith Moss takes you to the art exibits and events in our region that are Worth the Drive. If you have news you’d like to share, contact Meredith: MMoss@coxohio.com
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VIDEO: To hear curator Carole Genshaft talk about “Fabric of Survival” see MyDaytonDailyNews.com
Blockbuster exhibitions are terrific, of course, but we’ve also come to appreciate the smaller gems that are showcased in one or two galleries.
At the moment, we’re thinking of the group of shows on display at the Columbus Museum of Art. The museum staff is gearing up for the grand opening of a new 50,000-square-foot addition, but in the meantime, they’ve come up with a terrific mix of exhibits that would make for a pleasant morning or afternoon outing.
“Instead of one huge exhibit, we’re featuring a potpourri of special exhibits as well as some parts of our permanent collection,” said David Stark, the CMA’s new chief curator.
What you’ll see
Our readers often call or write to share news of an exhibit they've seen and recommend. In this case, the recommendation came from Marjorie Walsh of Eaton who had heard the "Fabric of Survival" exhibit was coming to Columbus.
“My husband and I caught a brief story on PBS about Esther Nisenthal Krinitz about a year ago,” she wrote. “The very moving story got us to drive to Evanston, Indiana, to see her work and we were so moved by this exhibit that we left the museum without viewing a single other exhibit. She found with her needle work a way to surmount sheltered feelings and tell her life story. We also found that the Nazis didn’t break her spirit. Her stories are colorful and filled with flowers.”
Exhibition curator Carole Genshaft said she doesn’t often use the word “unique” when referring to an art exhibit, but said the term is appropriate for “Fabric of Survival.” And she’s right. It’s a collection that will have special appeal to those who appreciate and admire fine needlework. The personal Holocaust story is told by Krinitz through charming — but often upsetting — fabric pictures.
Mrs. Krinitz and her younger sister, Mania, were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. At the age of 15, Esther defied the Nazi order for the town’s Jews to report to a nearby railroad station for relocation. She and her sister separated from the rest of their family. The girls escaped into the countryside pretending to be Catholic farm girls to evade the Gestapo. They never saw their family again.
In 1977, at the age of 50, Esther began creating works of fabric art to depict her stories of survival. “A lot of these are about remembering and honoring and memorializing,” said Genshaft. “She wasn’t one of those survivors who wanted to hide her story, she talked about it all the time. But when she described her family’s idyllic life before the Holocaust, her daughters said they wishes they could see what it looked like. No photographs survived.”
So their mother, who had been apprenticed to a seamstress at age eight and was always good at sewing, began with two pieces of embroidery that depicted the life in her small Polish village before the Nazis. “After the first one, she realized she could tell her story in this way,” said Genshaft. “Esther’s tapestries demonstrate the importance of needlework and fabric art as an important category of artistic expression that historically has been undervalued as women’s work.”
A documentary entitled “Fabric of Survival” is shown continuously in the galleries and well worth viewing. A book entitled “Memories of Survival” is available at the museum gift shop.
The music man
Did you know that composer Marvin Hamlisch had Columbus connections? He was married to Terre Blair, Columbus native and former weather and news anchor for WSYX- Channel 6, for more than 20 years and visited the city often.
"Remembering Marvin Hamlisch: The People's Composer," is a photpgraphy exhibit by Len Prince honoring Hamlisch and his musical contributions. The show is part of a Columbus tribute presented in partnership with the New Albany Symphony Orchestra which presented a concert celebrating Hamlisch's work in April.
Hamlisch is one of only 12 people to win all four of America’s top performing awards: the Emmy, Grammy, Tony and the Oscar. He shared the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976 with fellow artists for his musical contribution to the original Broadway production of “A Chorus Line.” He also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for 1972’s “Life Is What You Make It” and both a Golden Globe and an Oscar for 1974’s “The Way We Were.” In 2008, Hamlisch was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame and in 2009, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium.
The photographs in the show were taken by Len Prince, a close friend of the Hamlisches. In addition to pictures taken at a number of memorial concerts dedicated to Hamlisch’s memory, you’ll see some of his sheet music, a baton he used when conducting orchestras, his bow tie, and photos of the family over the years. There’s a video that includes the family’s home movies, and you can use your cell phone to hear tributes to hamlisch by folks like Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand and Marissa McGowan.
A book of photographs by Len Prince, with a foreword by Terre Blair Hamlisch and an introduction by Barbra Streisand, accompanies the exhibition and is available in the Museum Store.
Honoring nurses
In celebration of National Nurses Week, (May 6-12,) Carole Genshaft also gathered an interesting collection of art that honors and features nurses.
“A woman came to us — Judith Kimchi-Woods who is president of the Chamberlain College of Nursing in Columbus — and said she never saw pictures of nurses when she visited art museums,” said Genshaft. “She was so enthusiastic and persistant and she offered to help raise funds to host an exhibit.”
The result is "Shine On: Nurses in Art" which celebrates the invaluable contributions nurses have made to society. You'll see sculpture, paintings, textiles, prints, photographs and posters that span centuries.
The first pieces in the show demonstrate the innate capacity of humans to care for one another through history. Artists featured in the exhibition include Rembrandt van Rijn, Mary Cassatt, George Bellows, Romaine Brooks, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Robert Vickrey.
“A lot of the art is from war periods becase that is when nurses are so needed,” Genshaft explained. There’s a beautiful quilt of Florence Nightengale, a first edition of a book she authored, posters recruiting nurses during World War I and World War II.
A video shows excerpts of nurses from television and film — from “Mash” to “Fairwell to Arms.” At 1- 4 p.m. this afternoon, a program entitled “Almost Human” will feature a demonstration of innovative simulators used in nurses’ training with faculty and students from Chamberlain College of Nursing.
Hats off to hats
A colorful selection of incredible hats is featured in "Hats on the Silk Road: Selections from the Collection of Russell S. and Dona Fling."
The exhibition showcases a selection of headdresses, hats and, skullcaps from around the world and examines the history, provenance and cultural backgrounds they reflect.
A hat, we’re told, can tell us a lot about the wearer’s religion, customs, traditions, livelihoods, social status, time periods and even the climate. The hat may have been made for practical purposes or for special occasions, such as weddings, for recognizing social or political status, and for purposes of religion.
The hats on display represent all levels of society — from rulers to ordinary citizens, rich and poor, male and female, adult and child. Some were worn by kings, queens,and powerful political leaders; others, by brides and grooms.
Picture books
Finally, the exhibit that just opened at the CMA highlights children's book illustrations. "Page Turners: The Art of Award-Winning Picture-books from the Mazza Museum" opened Friday. The Mazza Museum is in Findlay, Ohio.
Each year, a number of prestigious awards including the Caldecott Medal, the Newberry Medal, the Kate Greenaway Medal, and the Mazza Medallion are presented to the very best examples of picture books for children. This exhibit showcases the art from award-winning books from the 1950s to the present.
The art on display illustrates historical events and figures; folktales from India, Japan, Kenya and the United States, and songs, poems and stories. The artists use a variety of media, techniques, and styles to blend with the author’s words.
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