Winter approximately 1936: The exhibitions of RAYON AND SYNTHETIC YARNS IN TEXTILES, Department of Industrial Arts; SPINNING AND WEAVING - A HOME INDUSTRY, Division of American Rooms; PHOTOGRAPHS OF CONTEMPORARY DANCERS BY THOMAS BOUCHARD, Dance Center; A SELECTION OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS BY ANDRE DUNOYER DE SEGONZAC FROM THE COLLECTION OF FRANK CROWNINSHIELD, Print Department; which will open Friday, December 11, will be ready for preview by art critics and representatives of the press On Tuesday, December 8.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 151.
Winter approximately 1936: The Brooklyn Museum will open four exhibitions simultaneously on Saturday, December 12th, and there will be a reception and preview for members and guests of the Museum on the evening of Friday, December 11th. The Department of Industrial Art, Christine Krehbiel, Acting Curator, will occupy the special exhibition galleries on the first floor with a large exhibition of Rayon and Synthetic Yarns in Textiles, showing processes of manufacture as well as finished products. The Division of American Rooms, Elizabeth Haynes, Assistant Curator, will occupy the neighboring sub-balcony gallery with an exhibition of spinning and Weaving as a Home Industry. At the opening, students from Pratt Institute will give practical demonstrations in this gallery. The Dance Center, Grant Code, Acting Director, will present an exhibition of Photographs of Contemporary Dancers by Thomas Bouchard in the Balcony Gallery, Second Floor. In the adjacent Print Gallery, the Department of Prints and Drawings, Carl 0. Schniewind, Curator, will show Drawings and Prints by Andre’ Dunoyer de Segonzac from the collection of Frank Crowninshield. During the reception on Friday the 11th, Mr. Crowninshield will give an informal talk on the collection in the Print Study Room.
Exhibitors in the Rayon Show are American Bemberg Corporation, American Enka Corporation, Delaware Rayon Corporation, Rayon Department of E. I. DuPont de Nemours Company, Inc., Industrial Rayon Corporation, North American Rayon Corporation, Skernandoa Rayon Corporation, Tubise Chatillon Corporation and The Viscose Company.
In connection with this exhibition the Museum is publishing a Handbook of Rayon and Synthetic Yarns to which the following articles have been contributed by experts in the field: Introduction by M. D. C. Crawford, The Scope of Rayon by Stephen S. Marks, Texture of Rayon Fabrics by Alexis Sommaripa, The Fashion Significance of Rayon by Anne Mullany, Rayon Yarns in Knit Fabrics by E. D. Fowle, Decorative Rayon Fabrics by Virginia Pegram, Science Looks at Rayon’s Serviceability, by Charles L. Simon, Spun Rayon by Alexis Sommaripa, Statistics by Stanley B. Hunt, The History of Rayon by S. A. Salvage, and technical explanations of the various processes by which rayon is fabricated, Viscose, Acetate and Cuprammoniun, by H. W. Rose, H. De Witt Smith and Theodore Wood respectively.
The exhibitions will be available for press preview Tuesday December 8th.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 146.
December 15, 1936: The Dance Center of the Brooklyn Museum announces the following program of activities for the season 1936-1937, a program which has been drawn up in consultation with loading dancers and schools of the dance:
(1) Demonstrations of contemporary dance techniques in the Sculpture Court every Saturday morning from 10:30 to 12:30. These demonstrations range from formal recitals to demonstration lessons of the elements of modern dance technique. An organ recital follows each demonstration.
(2) Gallery tours illustrating the relation between the art of the dance and the arts represented in the museum collections, every Saturday at 12:45.
(3) Exhibitions of the dance in art: photographs, painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, etc.
(4) A bulletin of current dance events in New York and vicinity. Professional dancers, managers, producers and booking agencies are urged to send advance notices of recitals and dance productions so that they can be announced by means of this bulletin. Brooklyn, the largest borough of the city of New York, has a large and enthusiastic dance audience. This audience can be reached through announcements at the Brooklyn Museum.
(5) A directory of dance schools. Many members of the Brooklyn Museum audience are interested in dancing themselves. The Museum receives many inquiries about courses of instruction in the dance. Dance teachers and schools of the dance are urged to send complete information about courses of instruction, hours, rates, teachers available for direction of groups formed outside the dance studios, etc. This information will be available to the Brooklyn public in the Museum directory of dance schools.
(6) Resident demonstration groups under the direction of professional dancers. At present about two hundred persons are enrolled in these groups or on the waiting list. Groups are classified as follows: little children 4-6, children 7-9, girls 10-14, boys 10-14, young men 15-20, young women 15-20, business and professional women including housewives 21 and over, business and professional men 21 and over. Registration is kept open and is unlimited, but the number of groups that can work in the museum at any one time is limited by space available and open hours on the crowded calendar of activities.
At present six groups are working, and the applicants fill every group listed above, some of them many times over. The heaviest registration is in the class of business and professional women including housewives. Each group meets only a few times, in order to give members an opportunity to so whether they have a taste or a talent for modern dancing. After the few demonstrations available to each group, membership in which is free, an effort is made to refer interested group members to schools of the dance outside the museum and to organize affiliated dance classes under the direction of cooperating schools of the dance. Teachers from leading schools of the modern dance in New York are cooperating by contributing their services to direct those free demonstration groups. This gives the cooperating teachers an opportunity to appear before the Brooklyn Museum audience and demonstrate their methods of instruction. It is not the intention of the Brooklyn Museum to set up a school of the dance, but merely to provide space where Museum visitors may participate in the dance and leading teachers of the modern dance may demonstrate their work. The resident dance groups are a free cooperative activity of museum visitors and dance teachers. The Museum has provided facilities for such cooperation in response to the manifest interest of the public and the evident mood for such a free public dance center which would give professional dancers an enlarged field of activities and demonstrate the possibilities of the modern dance as an amateur recreation. It is the belief of the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center and of professional dancers who have been consulted that the modern dance can become a true contemporary folk dance, a lay art, as well as a medium for professional performances.
(7) The Brooklyn Museum Dance Center offers facilities for rehearsals and recitals by professional dancers, especially young dancers and choreographers who desire to make debuts in Brooklyn. Hitherto the facilities for debuts and other productions of young dancers have been limited and expensive. The audience drawn to such recitals has been restricted. The Brooklyn Museum offers to such dancers a place, an audience of several thousand persons, and such publicity as it pleases the press to give to the activities of the Brooklyn Museum. The Museum will make every effort to provide publicity by posters, circular mailings and the release of stories to the press. The Federal Dance Theater has already availed itself of this opportunity by establishing at the Brooklyn Museum a separate unit known as the Young Choregraphers Laboratory. The following dancers have been assigned to this unit and are in daily rehearsal at the Brooklyn Museum, Productions will be announced later. Miss Saida Gerrard, Miss Mattie Haim, Miss Ailes Gilmour, Miss Lillian Mehlmann, Miss Nadia Chilkovsky, Miss Mura Dehn and Mr. William Matons, Mr. Glenn E. Pangborn in charge. Other dancers desiring to stage recitals or productions in the Sculpture Court of the Brooklyn Museum are requested to communicate with Grant Code, Editor, and acting director of the Brooklyn Museum Dance Center.
The Brooklyn Museum Dance Center began last year with an exhibition of the Dance in Art (painting, drawing and sculpture) arranged by Mr. Herbert B. Tschudy, and a. series of dance recitals in which the following dancers and groups participated: Hanya Hoim and Group, Tamiris and Group, Sophla Delza, Esther Junger, Sara Mildred Straus and Group, Anita Zahn and Group, Maria Theresa and Group, Georges Balanchine and members of the American Ballet of the Metropolitan Opera. Activities began this year with an exhibition of the Art of the Dance in Photograph assembled as a travelling exhibition for the American Federation of Arts and sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum, a recital by the English Folk Dance Society of America, New York Branch, under the direction of May Gadd, the organization of resident dance groups, and an exhibition of Photography of Contemporary Dancers by Thomas Bouchard, now current.
A professional dancers discussion forum for consideration of technical dance problems is in process of organization. Mrs. Irma Otto Betz will lecture before this forum on the Rudolph von Laban dance script, and the Young Choreographers Laboratory will lead panel discussions.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1936, 155-57.
