Anne Morgan and Anne Murray Dike, founders of the American Committee for Devastated France Blérancourt, ca. 1919–1921, sulfur-toned silver print (courtesy Franco-American Museum, Château de Blérancourt)
Morgan Library
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 21
Admission: $8-$12 (free Friday nights from 7:00 to 9:00
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
War can bring out the worst in people, but it can also bring out their best. Deeply affected by the devastation suffered by France during World War I, Anne Tracy Morgan, daughter of the late financier J. Pierpont Morgan, led the American Committee for Devastated France from 1917 to 1924, as some 350 women, living in barracks in Blérancourt not far from the front, raised funds and provided food, clothing, medical care, and education to the French people, particularly children. The civilian wing of the American Fund for French Wounded, which was founded by Morgan and Isabel Lathrop in 1915, the organization also published weekly bulletins and commissioned photographs and film, much of which is on view at the Morgan Library through Sunday in the exhibition “Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France 1917-1924,” which tells a remarkable story of French-American cooperation that continues today at the Franco-American Museum of the Château of Blérancourt.
One of seven photographic portraits of Mark Twain, each inscribed by Twain, gelatin silver prints on card, 1906
It’s a terrific time to visit the Morgan, which has several other excellent shows up through the new year. “Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress” includes more than 120 of Samuel Clemens’s original manuscripts, photographs, diaries, rare books and letters, and other fascinating paraphernalia, held in honor of the 175th anniversary of his birth. As part of the Morgan’s free Friday night programming, Declan Kiely will lead a tour of the exhibit at 7:00. In addition, December 5’s Winter Family Day Celebration will feature live performances by characters from Twain’s work as well as Charles Dickens’s, whose A CHRISTMAS CAROL will also be on view. And on December 7, Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin will deliver the lecture “Originally of Missouri, Now of the Universe: Mark Twain and the World.” The wonderful “Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968” comprises fifty-five large-scale drawings that reveal Lichtenstein beginning to incorporate pop-culture imagery into his work, which would explode into bright, bold comic-book colors in the 1970s. On Saturday afternoon, the symposium “Lichtenstein in Context: Drawing in the 1960s” will examine the techniques used by Lichtenstein and his contemporaries. And the excellent but small “Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks” includes twenty of the French artist’s beautiful drawings along with two sketchbooks.
Director Tamra Davis (GUNCRAZY) transports viewers back to the 1980s New York art scene in the intimate documentary JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD. In 1986, just as the career of street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was exploding, Davis filmed him being interviewed by designer Becky Johnson, a revealing portrait that she put away in a drawer for more than twenty years. Davis finally brings out that footage, making it the centerpiece of this new examination of the ambitious, influential artist and musician who experienced massive success before falling hard and fast and dying of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-seven in 1988. Davis, a friend of Basquiat’s, conducts new interviews with many of the people from his inner circle, including art dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, Annina Nosei, Tony Shafrazi, and Bruno Bischofberger; Basquiat’s girlfriends Suzanne Mallouk and Kelle Inman; close Basquiat friends Diego Cortez and Fab 5 Freddy; NEW YORK BEAT cable TV host Glenn O’Brien; and fellow artist Julian Schnabel, who directed Basquiat in DOWNTOWN 81. Davis has also dug up amazing footage from the 1980s of Basquiat that shows him to be a unique, driven figure who used whatever he could — from broken windowframes and doors he’d find on the street to immense canvases — to spread his art and world view, which began with drawings in which he identified himself as Samo, criticizing contemporary art as “the same old shit.” Ultimately, though, it was his relationship with Andy Warhol that was the beginning of the end. JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD is a dazzling document of a fascinating time and a cautionary tale of success that comes too fast, too soon. The film is screening November 11-14 as part of the Maysles Institute’s Doc Watchers Presents series.
