Image of "In Suspension" in the Homestead Conservatory

In Suspension: A site-specific art installation, June 21 – September 9, 2019

Wonder – is not

precisely knowing
And not precisely
knowing not –
A beautiful but

bleak condition
He has not lived
who has not felt –

Suspense – is his
maturer Sister –
Whether Adult Delight is Pain
Or of itself a
new misgiving –
This is the
Gnat that
mangles men –

-F1347

In Suspension

A site-specific art installation at the Emily Dickinson Museum featuring work by Tereza Swanda, Ingrid Pichler, and Fletcher Boote

The Emily Dickinson Museum is pleased to present this first site-specific art installation in the restored Homestead conservatory. In this small greenhouse Dickinson tended flowers “near and foreign,” forging a deep connection that permeated her poetry and daily life. Imagine dirt under the poet’s fingernails as she wrote the poems that immortalized flowers blooming in her garden, home, and Amherst’s fields and woodlands.

This mixed-media installation aims to forge the colors Dickinson saw from the conservatory out into her landscape. In this meditation on suspension, colors change based on the atmosphere, and the space between subjects. Light from color gels is cast throughout the room by projection and refraction. Sound is a complimentary element to color.

The installation is best viewed from inside the conservatory, which is open from 11AM-4:30PM each day the Museum is open (Wednesday through Monday). All are welcome inside to view the installation, but the space is restricted to four people at a time. Photography inside the installation is most welcome.

About the artists:

Tereza Swanda teaches at Dean College and has 20 years of color theory through painting. She graduated from Mass Art in Boston with a degree in Sculpture and Painting and holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has exhibited her own work extensively both locally, nationally and internationally over the last ten years. Learn more: https://www.mamatereza.net/

Ingrid Pichler specializes in site-specific glass installation for the private and public sector and is a visiting lecturer at Salem State University. Pichler has been working in architectural glass for almost thirty years. Throughout her career, her hands-on approach has enabled her to develop a keen understanding of the transformative potential of light in the context of architectural glass. Most of her works have been commissioned, location-specific installations, utilizing a wide range of techniques from traditional painting and staining, to new innovation for fusing and casting in contemporary glass technology. Learn more: http://www.pichlerart.com/

Fletcher Boote is a composer and performer investigating nuances of human relationships as they are expressed in arrangements of sounds. She has recently taught sound healing and vocal workshops at Princeton University and lead courses at Johnson State College. Boote has been working in sound for over a decade and has worked with students of Meredith Monk. Learn more: http://fletcherboote.com/

“Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life”, with Marta McDowell, December 15, 2019

4:30-6PM at the Amherst Woman’s Club at 35 Triangle Street, Amherst, MA

The cultivated world of plants, wildflowers, trees, and shrubs provided Emily Dickinson with a constant source of inspiration and companionship. On December 15, take a seated “tour” of Dickinson’s gardens with the author of Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places that Inspired the Poet. Led by celebrated garden historian and 2018 Gardener-in-Residence Marta McDowell, this talk will treat visitors to a seasonal exploration of the poet’s passion for the natural world.

A book signing follows the talk. Books will be available for purchase at the program. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public. Parking for this program is available at the Amherst Woman’s Club.

About Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life (Timber Press, 2019):

Emily Dickinson was a gardener as well as a poet. She tended flowers in her Amherst, Massachusetts garden and in the small conservatory that her father added on to their brick house on Main Street. Flowers have their own poetry. As she said, “flowers…, without lips, have language.” Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life explores the plants and places of Dickinson’s life alongside her poetry.

Richly illustrated with selections from Dickinson’s herbarium, period botanical art by three of Dickinson’s contemporaries, historical images, and new photographs, Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life traces this little-know part of Dickinson’s life. It beautifully reveals the many ways her passion for plants sparked her creativity and inspired much of her beloved poetry.

About Marta McDowell:

Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. Her latest book is Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life, 2019. Timber Press also published The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents’ Gardens, and Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, now in its seventh printing. Marta is working on a new book about The Secret Garden and its author, Frances Hodgson Burnett, due out from Timber Press in 2022. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America’s Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement.

Emily Dickinson Birthday Open House, December 14, 2019

1-4PM at the Emily Dickinson Museum

You are cordially invited to celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 189th birthday at her home, the Emily Dickinson Museum! On December 14 join us for a festive open house. Tour the houses for free, enjoy the Holiday decorations and live music, create an artistic postcard to add to our “The World Writes Back: Postcards to Emily Dickinson” project, and, of course, enjoy coconut cake made from the poet’s own recipe. All are welcome and no fee or reservations are required.

About Dickinson’s birthday: Emily Dickinson, the middle child of Edward and Emily Norcross Dickinson, was born on December 10, 1830, in the family Homestead on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. She celebrated 55 birthdays before her death in 1886. As an adult she wrote, “We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” (Johnson L379)

Birthday Celebration Schedule:

1PM Open House begins:

Walk through the Homestead and The Evergreens at your leisure and talk with our knowledgeable guides.
Don’t forget to check out the exhibition of postcards to Emily in the Homestead!
Crafts: At the Homestead create your own artistic postcard to hang in our exhibition. At the Evergreens create a traditional ornament to hang on the Dickinson family Christmas tree.

1PM-1:20PM Yosen Wang String Quartet at the Homestead

1:20-2PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Alex Santos

2-3PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Sebastian Son

Sebastian Son is a junior at Amherst College. He majors in English, and in his free time loves to play music and perform on stage. Around campus, he sings in an a capella group (DQ) and performs with the Theater and Dance Department. He is slated to sing and act in Anna Plummer’s senior project, the Puddle Jumping Society, which opens on March 26th at Amherst College.

2:30PM Coconut Cake is served! Learn more about Dickinson’s recipe for this tasty treat here.

3-3:30PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Yee-Lynn Lee

3:30-4PM Festive piano music at The Evergreens by Anna Buswell

4PM Open House concludes.

Emily Dickinson daguerreotype, showing the poet seated and facing the viewer, resting one arm on a desk

Folger Shakespeare Library’s Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute, December 9, 2019

Join us in Washington D.C. at the Folger Shakespeare Library on December 9 to celebrate the birthday of Emily Dickinson!

Each year, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute brings speakers, scholars, and fans of Emily Dickinson’s work together to celebrate the illustrious poet and her writing. This year, the event will feature Tom Sleigh, reading from his favorite Dickinson poems and sharing his own work, and Lesley Dill, the winner of this year’s Tell It Slant Award.

To purchase tickets to the Birthday Tribute, please visit the Folger’s website.

More about the artists:

Artist Lesley Dill works with paper, wire, horsehair, photography, foil, bronze, and music. Her artworks are in the collections of over 50 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her opera based on Dickinson’s poems, Divide Light, was performed by New York’s New Camerata Opera Company in 2018.

Tom Sleigh’s ten books of poetry include Army Cats (John Updike Award) and Space Walk (Kingsley Tufts Award). His book of essays, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees, is being published as a companion piece to his latest book of poems, House of Fact, House of Ruin.

Amherst Arts Night Plus Open Mic and Featured Artists, December 5, 2019

Join us at the Emily Dickinson Museum during Amherst Arts Night Plus on December 5, 2019 for our monthly Open Mic. Poets, writers, and performers of any kind are welcome! Come early to view the pop-up, contemporary art exhibition in the Homestead by our featured artist. The open mic begins at 6:00 p.m. and will be followed by this month’s featured readers. Those who would like to share their work should arrive between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. to sign up.

Featured Readers: Readings follow the open mic

The Literacy Project presents ‘Our Mirror: Reflections of The Valley’. These original poems, essays, and stories are written and read by students of The Literacy Project. The Literacy Project provides adult basic education programs and opportunities that support participants to engage meaningfully and equitably in the economic, social, cultural and civic life of their communities. With a staff of 20 and 75 volunteers, the Project now offers classes in basic literacy, high school equivalency and college and career readiness at 5 locations in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts: Greenfield, Orange, Northampton, Amherst and Ware.

Poetry Discussion Group, November 8, 2019

The Emily Dickinson Museum’s Poetry Discussion Group meets monthly, September through May, for lively conversation about Emily Dickinson’s poetry and letters. The Poetry Discussion Group meets at the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, on the second floor of Amherst College’s Frost Library. Participants should proceed directly to the Library and do not need to stop at the Museum. While no RSVP is required, participants are invited to email edmprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org to receive a list of poems for discussion. Attendees are welcome to bring a bag lunch. Beverages and a sweet snack are provided.

November Poetry Discussion Group will meet on November 8, 2019 at 12PM.

November’s discussion will consider how the nineteenth century dramatic lyric monologue, developed by Browning and Tennyson, impacted Dickinson’s poetry. In many letters, Dickinson underlined how important these British poets, along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were for her work. In July 1862, Dickinson even echoed Browning’s well-known definition of the dramatic lyric when she told Higginson: “When I state myself, as the Representative of the Verse – it does not mean – me – but a supposed person” (L268). Together, we will consider how Dickinson employs—and complicates—the lyric monologue in her own poetry by focusing on a range of poems from the 1860s.

Facilitator: Páraic Finnerty is Reader in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare and co-author of Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle (2013). He is currently working on a monograph entitled Dickinson and her British Contemporaries, forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Emily Dickinson International Society and serves on the Editorial Board of the Emily Dickinson Journal.

Meeting Notes

Center of Humanistic Inquiry Address: 61 Quadrangle Dr, Amherst. This event will be held in the seminar room, the classroom on the left at the top of the stairs.
Parking – attendees may park in the Amherst College Alumni Lot and walk to the library free of charge. Metered parking is available closer to campus on the Town Common. Some select spots and accessible parking are available on campus, around the quad and behind the Frost Library. Participants with a state-issued handicap placard may park in any accessible spaces on campus. See the Amherst College campus parking map for more information.
Program cost – Drop-in fees are as follows: $12 for EDM Friends (Members); $15 for Non-Members.

Amherst Arts Night Plus Open Mic and Featured Artists, November 7, 2019

Join us at the Emily Dickinson Museum during Amherst Arts Night Plus for our monthly Open Mic. Poets, writers, and performers of any kind are welcome! Come early to view the pop-up, contemporary art exhibition in the Homestead by our featured artist. The open mic begins at 6:00 p.m. and will be followed by this month’s featured readers. Those who would like to share their work should arrive between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. to sign up.

Featured Artist: Paintings and film are on display from 5-8PM

Barbara Zecchi, Professor and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a film scholar, film critic, and video-essayist. Born in London, and raised and educated in Italy, she grew intellectually in Spain and in the United States. She received a PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, and joined the Program of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at UMass after teaching at different universities in Europe and in the U.S. (such as Carlos III University of Madrid, California State University, and the Johns Hopkins). Her research and teaching interests include Spanish, Catalan and Latin American cinemas, feminist film theory, film adaptation theory, gender studies and aging studies, and the use of technology in the humanities. Both in her scholarly publications and in her creative work (video-graphic essays, paintings, collages and photographs) she explores and deconstructs gender-based stereotypes and discrimination. She is the author of the books La pantalla sexuada (“The Gendered Screen,” Cátedra 2015), and Desenfocadas (“Women Out of Focus,” Icaria 2014); and editor or co-editor of volumes such Tras las lentes de Isabel Coixet (2017), Gynocine: Teoría de género, filmología y práxis cinematográfica (2013), Teoría y práctica de la adaptación fílmica (2011), among others. She has lectured and presented her digital work extensively in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. Her fascination with Italian futurist art and Venetian glassblowing (rulli) is evoked and persistent in her creative work. She inherited this fascination from her grandfathers. Antonio specialized in the legendary tradition of Venetian glassblowing. Many of his filigree stained glass windows can be still admired in several villas in Veneto countryside. Umberto was a renowned shoe designer who created futurist shoe models currently shown at the D’Annunzio Museo in Arezzo, The Vittoriale degli italiani of Gardone Riviera, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Barbara Zecchi is the co-founder and vice-president of the international research network CinemAGEnder and the founder and director of the Digital Humanities Project “Gynocine: Feminisms, Genders and Cinemas.” She is the founder and co-curator of the UMass Catalan Film Festival, and collaborates in the organization of the UMass Latin American Film Festival. She is Associate Member of the Film Academy of Spain (Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España).

Featured Readers: Featured readers follow the open mic

“Emily Dickinson In Translation”: During November’s Arts Night, enjoy a presentation of multi-lingual readings and short discussions on the practice of translating the poet’s words, presented by the Translation Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Center is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. A unique enterprise that combines business services with academics, the Center offers translation, interpreting, workshops, language consulting, and much more to a variety of clients including small businesses, multinational corporations, museums, law firms, hospitals, NGOs, filmmakers, advertising firms, educational institutions, and individuals.

Poetry Discussion Group, October 18, 2019

October’s Poetry Discussion Group will meet on October 18, 2019 at 12PM.

Topic: Who’s Who in the Dickinson Lexicon
What do Queen Elizabeth, Captain Kidd, William Tell, and Sappho have in common? Give up? They are all named in Emily Dickinson poems! We know that Dickinson populated her verse with flora and fauna, but what people did she choose to include – and why? In this session, we will look at the complete list of historical figures mentioned in Dickinson’s poetry (not including biblical or literary characters, family members, and friends) and discuss several poems in which some of them serve as metaphors or analogies.

Facilitator: Bruce M. Penniman taught writing, speech, and literature at Amherst Regional High School from 1971 until 2007. He is the site director of the Western Massachusetts Writing Project and lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1999 he was Massachusetts Teacher of the Year and a finalist for National Teacher of the Year, and he is the author of Building the English Classroom: Foundations, Support, Success (NCTE, 2009). He has served as a teacher curriculum mentor in all three NEH Emily Dickinson: Person, Poetry, and Place workshops and has facilitated discussions in the Poetry Discussion Group on many topics.

Meeting Notes

Center of Humanistic Inquiry Address: 61 Quadrangle Dr, Amherst
Parking – attendees may park in the Amherst College Alumni Lot and walk to the library free of charge. Metered parking is available closer to campus on the Town Common. Some select spots and accessible parking are available on campus, around the quad and behind the Frost Library. Participants with a state-issued handicap placard may park in any accessible spaces on campus. See the Amherst College campus parking map for more information.
Program cost – Drop-in fees are as follows: $12 for EDM Friends (Members); $15 for Non-Members.

Findings from the Archaeology Field School, October 13, 2019

4:30PM-5:45PM at the Emily Dickinson Museum Homestead

On October 13, view Emily Dickinson’s world through the eyes of an archaeologist. Join us for a presentation at the Emily Dickinson Museum by the faculty and students of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Archaeological Field School as they share their findings from their work at the Emily Dickinson Museum. Students will highlight pivotal discoveries that shed new light on the archaeological underpinnings of the Dickinson home. Find out firsthand how archaeology informs the Museum’s preservation and restoration projects!

This program is free and open to the public, and is offered as part of Massachusetts Archaeology Month.

For more information, please email EDMprograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org.

“Some Favored Nook”: A Song Cycle by Eric Nathan, October 6, 2019

4PM-5:30PM at The Amherst Woman’s Club, 35 Triangle Street, Amherst

“moving… momentous… captivatingly rich… breathtaking… stunning…
a work that deserves to be heard again and again.” —TheaterJones

The Emily Dickinson Museum is pleased to present “Some Favored Nook,” a song cycle by Eric Nathan inspired by the significant correspondence between Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Eric Nathan’s original composition places Dickinson and Higginson’s writings at the center of the music, using these pivotal texts as a lens through which to view the social, political, and cultural issues of this chapter in American history. Filled with themes of abolition, civil rights, women’s rights, the effects of war, love, and death, the song cycle will be performed on Sunday, October 6.

The correspondence between Dickinson and Higginson spanned twenty-four years and offers an intimate look into Dickinson’s private world as well as Higginson’s involvement in major social and political issues of the day. As the commanding officer of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first black regiment in the Civil War, Higginson was also a noted supporter of women poets and published the first collection of Dickinson’s poetry after her death. Nathan’s work sets excerpts from Dickinson’s letters and poems sent to Higginson to music, along with excerpts from Higginson’s essays and diaries, since many of his letters in reply are lost.

*Parking for this event is available at the Amherst Woman’s Club

Tickets for this event may now be purchased online. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Please email EDMPrograms@emilydickinsonmuseum.org for more information.

About the artists:

Eric Nathan, Composer

Eric Nathan‘s music has been called “as diverse as it is arresting” with a “constant vein of ingenuity and expressive depth” (San Francisco Chronicle), “thoughtful and inventive” (The New Yorker), and “clear, consistently logical no matter how surprising the direction, and emotionally expressive without being simplistic or sentimental” (New York Classical Review). Nathan is a 2013 Rome Prize Fellow and 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and has garnered acclaim internationally through performances by Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, soprano Dawn Upshaw, violinist Jennifer Koh, at the New York Philharmonic’s 2014 and 2016 Biennials, and at the Tanglewood, Aspen, Aldeburgh, Cabrillo, Yellow Barn, and MATA festivals. Nathan currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music in Composition-Theory at Brown University.

Tony Arnold, Soprano

“Soprano Tony Arnold is a luminary in the world of chamber music and art song. Today’s classical composers are inspired by her inherently beautiful voice, consummate musicianship, and embracing spirit” (Huffington Post). Hailed by the New York Times as “a bold, powerful interpreter,” she is internationally acclaimed as a leading proponent of contemporary music in concert and recording, having premiered hundreds of works by established and emerging composers. Since becoming the first-prize laureate of both the 2001 Gaudeamus International Competition (NL) and the 2001 Louise D. McMahon Competition (USA), Tony Arnold has collaborated with the most cutting-edge composers and instrumentalists on the world stage and shares with audiences her “broader gift for conveying the poetry and nuance behind outwardly daunting contemporary scores” (Boston Globe). Her unique blend of vocal virtuosity and communicative warmth, combined with wide-ranging skills in education and leadership were recognized with the 2015 Brandeis Creative Arts Award, given in appreciation of “excellence in the arts and the lives and works of distinguished, active American artists.”

William Sharp, Baritone

Praised by the critic of the New York Times as a “sensitive and subtle singer” who is able to evoke “the special character of every song that he sings,” baritone William Sharp continues to garner critical acclaim for his work in concerts, recitals, operas and recordings. In the summer of 2019, he sang Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with American Bach Soloists, a recital of Schoenberg and Weill at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and a recital of Farwell songs in a return to the Washington National Cathedral. Among Mr. Sharp’s engagements in the 2019-20 season are Bach’s St. John Passion with Tafelmusik.

Molly Morkoski, Pianist

Pianist Molly Morkoski has performed as soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean, and Japan. Her playing has been recognized by the New York Times as “strong, profiled, nuanced… beautifully etched… an energetic and focused player… with flexibility and warmth…,” and the Boston Globe called her “outstanding.” In 2007, she made her solo debut in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage playing Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126. As a soloist, she enjoys championing the classics, such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations and contemporary masterworks such as Ives’ Concord Sonata and Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jésus, as well as premiering new works of current composer colleagues, such as John Harbison, Steven Mackey, and Gabriela Lena Frank. Molly Morkoski has performed in many of the country’s prestigious venues, including Weill and Zankel Halls, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Boston’s Gardner Museum and Jordan Hall, St. Louis’ Powell Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian. Internationally, she has performed at the Teatro Nacional in Santo Domingo, the Strasbourg Conservatoire, the U.S. Embassies in Paris and Nice, and in Japan’s Suntory Hall. She has performed concertos with the Raleigh, Asheville, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Tuscaloosa Symphonies, and with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra.