We went to the museum this morning to see the new show of Jacob Lawrence’s illustrations of Aesop’s Fables which opened August 3rd and runs through October 27th.
The drawings were done in the late 1960′s for a book of the fables, the originals now part of the Paul G. Allen Family Collection. They are quite wonderful ink drawings with evidence of Lawrence’s hand and work procedure evident in the pencil lines and erasures still visible. Each drawing is accompanied by a label with the fable and, even better, the MORAL being illustrated (for instance the one above “The Council of Mice” carries this “moral”: “Easier said than done”)
Photographs are strictly forbidden, but I snuck just one to entice you down to take a look at these beauties…
“The Ass and the Grasshoppers”…Moral: “It is impossible to become what one is not.”
Go straight to the print study room and look for my other favorite “The Tortoise and the Hare”…remembering this well known moral: “Slow and steady wins the race”…you won’t be sorry!
The big fall show isn’t up yet…(it opens August 31st and runs until December 22nd)
but work was underway…
BUT…It seemed like a summer festival upstairs for me…there’s a lively Max Ernst painting of 1951 “Dancers Under the Starry Sky” on temporary loan…
Claes Oldenburg’s “Wedding Souvenir” of 1966 gets us in a festive wedding mood…
Oregon’s own Andrew Vincent reminds us of the bounty of where we live with “Bowl of Apples” from 1940…
and the current Hudson River School painting on loan from the Michel and Victoria Hersen Collection, a James Renwick Brevoort painting of 1868 called “Sunset”…looks familiar…better go take a look this week…it’s cool and “cool” in there…
