Perhaps Gertrude Stein would not make such disparaging remarks about her native Oakland, Ca., today, after the nineties migration of artists and hipsters priced out by the bulging tech bubble, but at the turn of the century Stein most certainly did not find Oakland to be the cultural Mecca for which she yearned. There was plenty of “there” – and everything besides – to be found in Paris, apparently, and so Gertrude and her brothers, Leo and Michael, the latter with his wife, Sarah, all joined the many American-in-Paris expats in 1903 and 1904. It was in Paris that Stein would meet her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas, write many of her Modernist literary masterpieces and, in collaboration with her brothers, begin building one of the most impressive and influential art collections of the 20th century.
The Steins had a taste for the avant-garde, and collected what would become important works by such now-famous artists as Cézanne, Matisse, Picabia and Picasso, whose famous portrait of Stein hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were not only collectors, but avid promoters and even close friends with some of these artists. Gatherings of artists and writers at Michael and Sarah’s apartment led to their famous Saturday evening salons, and Gertrude and Alice’s apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus eventually became so frequented by admirers of their painting collection that they had to set specific visiting hours for their home-cum-museum so that Gertrude could write without interruption.
The Steins’s collections have been culled for an exhibit that will begin near their childhood home, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in May of 2011. After it finishes its run at SFMoMA from May 21 to September 6, 2011, “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” will move to the Grand Palais, Paris (October 3, 2011, through January 20, 2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (February 21 through June 3, 2012). This exhibition incorporates new scholarship and highlights the various emphases of the three collections, Leo’s, Gertrude and Alice’s, and Michael and Sarah’s, and provides extensive archival materials documenting the historical importance of the family’s collection, including Michael and Sarah’s introduction of Matisse to American viewers on their move back to the Bay Area in 1935, the same year SFMoMA was founded.
Situated on Jackson Square in the French Quarter, the Louisiana State Museum has recently opened an exhibit that documents Louisianans’ survival of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as the science of hurricanes. "Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond,” in the words of museum director Sam Rykels, “documents the human struggle in the face of a natural disaster, incorporating everything from survivors' personal mementos to their thoughts and feelings. It documents how the recovery has brought about innovations — turning the region into a laboratory of new ideas.”
As Art Daily reports, “Galleries and connecting areas move visitors through four major presentations: New Orleans' relationship to storms; firsthand accounts of people and predicaments of survival they found themselves in; a forensics gallery exploring the paths Katrina and Hurricane Rita took that year and the science of how the levees failed; and a final section on recovery and the technologies emerging since to combat the destructive forces of nature.”
One of the biggest draws will undoubtedly be Fats Domino’s damaged baby grand piano, rescued from his 9th ward home. “Living with Hurricanes” includes many other displays as well, ones with less significance for rock ‘n’ roll history, but with more affective force. For instance, the collection includes the journal a man kept while trapped in his house during the storm, which he wrote with a felt marker on his walls, and a pair of jeans another man wore with his and his wife’s names and the name and number of the hotel to which she had evacuated while he stayed behind, so that she could be contacted in the event of his death.
The exhibition opened in October, and includes online galleries of Katrina photos and personal stories.
