Visitors Will Find "Virtue and Vice" in New Reynolda House Exhibition Opening Sept. 18

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Contact: Sharyn Turner
336.758.5580
sturner@reynoldahouse.org
or Sarah R. Smith
336.758.5524
smithsr@reynoldahouse.org

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.  (July 29, 2010) A new exhibition opening this fall at Reynolda House Museum of American Art will depict scenes of everyday 19th-century life as portrayed in some of the museum's most notable works of art and paintings on loan from museums across the southeast. Reynolda House is the exclusive venue for "Virtue, Vice, Wisdom & Folly: The Moralizing Tradition in American Art," which opens with a party for the general public on Friday, September 17 at 7 p.m. Festivities will feature 19th-century music, hors d'oeuvres and beverages in keeping with the time period of the exhibition, a cash bar, and admission to the main floor of the historic house.

Admission to the opening party is free to members and students, $5 for non-members. The exhibition will be on view in the main gallery of the Babcock Wing through December 31, 2010.

"Virtue, Vice, Wisdom & Folly" will explore how Americans more than a century ago defined themselves and their nation in moralizing terms through genre art, a realistic style of painting that depicts scenes from everyday life. In the 19th century, as Americans grappled with what it meant to be citizens of the young country, artists turned to canvas and paper to work out ideas about materialism, family, race, gender, politics, and the natural world.

"The paintings and prints in the exhibition provide fascinating insights into American values and traditions," says Reynolda House Managing Curator Allison Slaby, who organized the exhibition. "As the country made the difficult transition from a largely rural and agrarian society to a more urban and industrial one, artists responded in large part by idealizing life in the rural countryside and creating cautionary tales about life in the city."

"Virtue, Vice, Wisdom & Folly" will be divided into five sections:  Life in the Country, Men and Women, Family Life, Politics and Patriotism, Black and White, and Life in the City. The exhibition will explore such questions as: What can we learn from these works about American views on propriety, responsibility, and morality?  How have these views shaped contemporary society?  And, how are the lives of the people depicted in these works of art relevant to us today?

Adjacent to the exhibition of American paintings, Reynolda House will present "Moralizing in the Age of Rembrandt," a small, complementary exhibition of 17th-century Dutch genre prints. This exhibition examines the history of the moralizing tradition in genre art and considers the connections between morality and emerging market economies in 17th-century Holland and 19th-century America.

Reynolda House received support for the exhibition from major sponsor the Charles H. Babcock, Jr. Arts and Community Initiative Endowment and from contributing sponsors Anne and Bruce Babcock.

Exhibition Events

Chief Curator of the Hunter Museum of American Art Ellen Simak will be the first participant in the Distinguished Speaker Series on Tuesday, September 28 at 5:30 p.m. In a lecture titled "Lilly Martin Spencer: Women's Work," Simak will discuss the work of this 19th-century artist, one of the few women of her time to earn a living as an artist painting scenes of family life.

University of Pennsylvania Professor of Art Michael Leja will speak on "Winslow Homer and the Composite Image" on Tuesday, October 12 at 5:30 p.m. Leja will discuss Homer's works produced for  "Harper's Weekly" and other publications in the context of industrialized picture production and the mass marketing of images in the mid-19th century.

On Wednesday, November 17 at 5:30 p.m. Brian Allen, the Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, will discuss "Eastman Johnson: Abolition and Patriotism." Many of the works by Eastman Johnson, including Reynolda House's own "The Storyteller of the Camp (Maple Sugar Camp)," circa 1861-66, use the "sugaring off" season in New England as the basis for the artist's exploration of traditional New England values and the ideals of freedom during the tumult of the Civil War.

Admission to each lecture is free for members and students, $5 for non-members.

Exhibition Gallery Experiences will have two distinct formats. "Looking Aloud" Gallery Discoveries at noon on Thursdays, October 7, October 21 and December 2 will allow visitors to join small staff-led groups to study a single painting before joining the other groups to share their reflections and tour the entire exhibition. Free with museum admission.

Gallery Talks will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 2 with Managing Curator Allison Slaby and on Tuesday, November 9 with art scholar Charles Peterson. Slaby will guide a walk-through of the exhibition, while Peterson will focus on the 17th-century Dutch prints that complement the American collection. Admission is free to members and students, $5 for non-members. 

"Storytelling at the Museum: Of Newsboys, Rat Catchers, and Shepherdesses" is just the ticket for children. Expert storytellers will enthrall elementary school-aged children with tales inspired by scenes of everyday life as portrayed in the exhibition on Tuesday, November 16 and Saturday, November 20 from 10 a.m. to noon.
Free with museum admission.

For young professionals, Reynolda After Hours will host Dance Dance Evolution on Friday, November 12 from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fiddle and Bow Country Dancers of Winston-Salem will teach folk-style contra dancing, transitioning to popular dance music  later in the evening. Those who prefer not to dance can indulge in a special moonshine cocktail and explore the exhibition. Admission is $5 for members, $8 for non-members.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation's premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its permanent collection.  Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features traveling and original exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events.  The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.

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