We love Very Special Arts Festival

Last Friday, at least 150 kids and their teachers joined us at the Cameron Center for a Magical Very Special Arts Festival. The students enjoyed art stops, free balloons, a magic show, and lunch in the park on a beautiful fall day. We are, as always, grateful for the assistance provided by volunteers from the Laurel Arts League and Laurel's Junior Auxiliary.

Authors, Books, Pens: Tuesday, November 28

During our Museum Shop Open House, we have four authors coming in to sign books:

John David Williams and Catherine Strange will be signing Fearless Entertaining from 10 AM to 12 PM.

Wyatt Waters will sign his latest, The Year of the Stars, from 12 - 2 PM.

Robert St. John will be signing Deep South Parties from 12 - 2 PM

Holidays are coming up!

We've got a lot going on here in preparation for the holidays.

The museum is closed on Thanksgiving Day but open the rest of the holiday weekend, so if you're in the area or have out-of-town visitors, don't hesitate to stop by.

The Museum Shop is holding its holiday open house on Tuesday, November 28. We've got authors signing books, lots of great deals, and as always, excellent tasty treats. Lots of people (including staff!) do their holiday shopping at the open house. We've got a lot of great gift items, from kids' toys, books, and art kits to Choctaw baskets, Mississippi-made pottery, books, and one-of-a-kind jewelry.

We will be closed Friday December 1 through Sunday December 3, due to our annual Gala fundraiser on December 2nd. We've got some exciting auction items coming in for both the live and silent auctions, and I hope to have some pictures of some of them to post in the next week or so.

As always, details about all of our programs can be found on the main website: Lauren Rogers Museum of Art

Time is running out!

Saved from the Storm is closing this coming Sunday, November 12, so if you haven't had a chance to get here, November 12th is your last chance.

The following week, Miniature Worlds: Art from India will be closing down. November 19th, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, is the last day.

Once these shows come down, there will be no exhibitions in the Stairwell Gallery or the Lower Level Galleries until December, but our permanent collection galleries will still be open to the public.

last collections workshops coming up soon

The final opportunity to attend a Collection Recovery Workshop for institutions led by conservators from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation is scheduled for Thursday, November 16. The subject is "Furniture and Wooden Objects."

There are openings remaining and anyone interested in attending should email
epope@mdah.state.ms.us. The Collection Recovery Workshops for Institutions are held on the campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Gulfport. The workshops, which begin at 9:00 a.m. and end around 4:00 p.m., focus on responding and stabilizing water-damaged objects.



The final Collection Recovery Workshop open to the public is scheduled for Natchez at the Historic Natchez Foundation, (Commerce and Main Streets), Saturday November 18, Furniture and Wooden Objects.

Public Workshops are from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. Registration is not necessary for the public workshops.

Trick-Art-Treat!

Last wednesday a lively group of young artists got ready for Halloween in our Trick-Art-Treat class, taught by Education Curator Mark Brown. The students painted pumpkins, made treat bags, made masks, and, along the way, made a mess! Fun was had by all:

Art Talk follow-up

Rolland Golden and John Kemp spoke to an enthusiastic audience in our Lower Level Galleries on October 19, and followed up with a book-signing in the lobby/gift shop area.

Our next Art Talk is October 19th

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will present painter Rolland Golden as its next Art Talk speaker on Thursday, October 19 from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Lower Level Lecture Hall.

Rolland Golden’s career as a professional artist began in 1957. Known for his portrayals of the rural South including his native New Orleans French Quarter, Golden brings a certain sensitivity to his landscapes that only a Southern artist with long ties to the land can bring. He is a three-time recipient of the National Arts Club First Place Award, a two-time winner of the Thomas Hart Benton Purchase Award, winner of the Winslow Homer Memorial Award, and many others. He has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, including a one-artist show that toured the Soviet Union in 1976 and 1977. His paintings appear in numerous private and public collections, including those of Columbia Pictures, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the National Arts Club, and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

John R. Kemp’s book “The Journeys of a Southern Artist” features Golden’s work and will be available in the Museum Shop for purchase and signing by the artist immediately following Art Talk.

Art Talk, sponsored by West Quality Food Service, Inc., is free and open to the public. Guests are invited to bring a sack lunch. Desserts and beverages will be provided. For more information, call LRMA at 601-649-6374 or visit the website www.LRMA.org.

Heritage Festival 2006

Saturday, October 7th was a lovely fall day for an arts festival with musical performances, art activities, art demonstrations, and free pizza. Several hundred kids & adults enjoyed the day on the LRMA lawn.

The Cowboy Blues Band provided entertainment:














... a mustachioed blues"man" in training took the stage for "Ride, Sally, Ride":



















Artist Charles Crossley helped young artists do their own collages & paintings:



































Local woodcarving artist Ben Morgan demonstrated woodturning on his lathe:





And, apparently, kids and their parents weren't the only ones enjoying the fine weather and entertainment:



Who knew doggies dug the blues?

Art Talk

"Art Talk" is one of our ongoing programs here at LRMA. The third Thursday of most months (excluding December and summertime), we have a brown-bag lecture at noon. We provide drinks & dessert, you can bring your own lunch. Last month, we had Penny Kemp from the Riley Performaing Arts Center speak.





Kemp is Marketing Director of the Mississippi State University Riley Performing Arts Center located in the heart of downtown Meridian. She will discuss the $25 million renovation project that includes a broadcast studio, 30,000 square foot conference facility, and the Grand Opera House of Mississippi, which has been fully restored to its 1890s grandeur. I for one am excited about the ambitious programming at the Riley Center, and am looking forward to visiting it. I may even have to borrow some children so I can go to some of the kids' events.

Looking for more information about conservation?

One of the best online resources for information on conservation & preservation of all kinds of materials is the National Park Service's Conserve-o-Gram series.

Collections Recovery

This past Saturday, approximately twenty people learned all about collections recovery after a disaster (large or small) from three trained conservators. In the course of an afternoon at the Rogers-Green House, the conservators covered preparation, immediate response, stabilization, and assessment of a variety of paintings & painted surfaces.

They also discussed materials for storage & shipping, care & handling, and gave pointers on how to select a conservator. The guest speakers, Brian Baade, Joanne Barry, and Mary McGinn, also looked at damaged works brought in by workshop attendees and offered their opinions on whether their artworks were repairable.

Here, conservator Mary McGinn shows workshop participants what happens when a painting gets wet and is taken off the stretcher: it curls up. If you leave a wet painting on the stretcher or in the frame, it'll stay flat:



Below, Brian Baade explains that a painting is made up of many layers of canvas, sizing, paint, and varnish, so microscopic examination of paint chips is necessary before treatment can begin. A conservator needs to know what he or she is dealing with before determining how to proceed.



Below, McGinn, Barry, and Baade explain that the painting in question is wrinkling because the frame is a little too tight for the painting.

Wednesday, September 27 gallery closure

On Wednesday the 27th, the lecture hall portion of the Lower Level Galleries will be closed to the public until about 4 pm. This encompasses approximately 1/3 of the Miniature Worlds exhibition. The rest of the galleries will remain open.

Collections Recovery Workshop - update

Following a late-summer break, the next series of Winterthur Workshops begin September 21, with a Collection Recovery Workshops for Institutions scheduled. The topic of the September workshop is Paintings and Painted Surfaces. There are a few openings remaining and anyone interested in attending should email epope@mdah.state.ms.us . The remainder of the schedule is October 12, Objects (Glass, metal, ceramic, leather, archaeological artifacts) and November 16, furniture and wooden objects. The Collection Recovery Workshops for Institutions are held on the campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport. The workshops begin at 9:00 a.m. and end around 4:00 p.m.

Collection Recovery Workshops open to the public are scheduled as follows:

Laurel, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Saturday, September 23, Paintings and Painted Surfaces;

Columbus, Columbus/Lowndes Public Library, Sunday October 15, Objects (Glass, Metal, Ceramic, Leather);

Natchez Historic Natchez Foundation, (Commerce and Main Streets), Saturday November 18, Furniture and Wooden Objects.

Public Workshops are from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. Registration is not necessary for the public workshops.

Art Talk thisThursday...

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art will kick off its 2006-07 Art Talk Series on Thursday, September 21 at noon in the Lower Level Lecture Hall. The speaker will be Penny Kemp, Marketing Director for the Mississippi State University Riley Performing Arts Center in Meridian, Mississippi.

Kemp will discuss the 25 million dollar renovation project that includes a broadcast studio, 30,000 square foot conference facility, and the Grand Opera House of Mississippi, which has been fully restored to its 1890s grandeur.

Kemp is a native of Meridian with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s in business from Mississippi State University. She has worked with nationally-recognized marketing and branding firms throughout the southeast and has a strong interest in community development and downtown revitalization.

Art Talk, sponsored by West Quality Food Services, Inc., is free and open to the public. Guests are invited to bring a sack lunch. Desserts and beverages will be provided. For more information, call LRMA at 601-649-6374 or visit the website www.LRMA.org.

A new grant program for artists...

A new charity, United States Artists, will give $50,000 grants to 50 artists. - New York Times

This is good news! Very few grant programs exist for individual artists, and even fewer provide no-strings-attached money to help them just get on with their artwork.

it's been busy here at LRMA,

Which is why the blog has been quiet for a few weeks. After Blues Bash, we installed "Saved from the Storm: The Sarah Gillespie Collection of William Carey University." This exhibition features works that were on the Gulf Coast campus during the storm last year, many of which needed conservation. It's up in our Stairwell Gallery through November 12.

We are also working on "Miniature Worlds: Art from India," which opens this Friday, September 1. We'll have a lecture & opening on September 7 at 5 pm.

AND, we put together a loan of a small show of World War I and World War II posters for the Saenger Theater in Hattiesburg. It'll be up for another few weeks. Here's a sample:



And, last but certainly not least, we lent an exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints to the Mississippi State University Art Gallery in Starkville. For more info, click here.

too much sweet tea at Walker's...

and a few days of intense painting packing, can sometimes lead to things like this:



and this:



In keeping with the attempt to be educational, those blue gloves are made of nitrile, not latex. You may have seen them at the doctor's office. We use them to handle art because they are not powdered (like latex) and aren't likely to leave fibers or threads (like cotton gloves).

Blues Bash is tonight

I think we still have some tickets left - come on out for beer, barbecue, and the blues, $20/person.

Grandma Moses exhibition....

The Fenimore Art Museum Reconsiders an American Idol Named Grandma Moses - New York Times

Why am I linking to a review of an exhibition in Cooperstown, NY? Because the Lauren Rogers' very own Grandma Moses painting, "The Daughter's Homecoming," is one of the thirty-eight pictures in the show. Alas, we didn't rank a mention in the Times review, but we are happy to be participating in an exhibition that will be seen by thousands (probably tens of thousands) of museum visitors. The show travels from Cooperstown to four other venues over the course of the next few years.

Here's a link to the museum for more info:

Fenimore Art Museum