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<\/a><\/p>\nNow you’re saying “He really has had too much of Alice’s special treat !” But no, really, \u00a0Summer 2011 in San Francisco is <\/strong>the Summer of Steins – I’ll bet my fringed suede vest and bell-bottomed jeans with the floral-fabric inserts at the bottom that it’s a fact!<\/p>\n The exhibition\u00a0Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories <\/em><\/strong>will be at The Contemporary Jewish Museum from \u00a0May 12 – September 6, while\u00a0The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde <\/em><\/strong>will be at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from May 21 – September 6.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First, here is what each of the museums has to say about their exhibitions and then I’ll add my groovy thoughts:<\/p>\n “The Contemporary Jewish Museum debuts the first major museum exhibition to fully investigate this fascinating visual legacy and life of Gertrude Stein.\u00a0Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories<\/em><\/strong> is an art-filled biographical exploration of Stein\u2019s identities as a literary pioneer, transatlantic modernist, Jewish-American expatriate, American celebrity, art collector, and muse to artists of several generations. The exhibition also features Alice B. Toklas, Stein\u2019s life-long partner, and explores the aesthetics of dress, home d\u00e9cor, entertainment, and food that the two women created together.<\/p>\n Horst P. Horst: Self Portrait with Gertrude Stein (Carl Erickson Drawing Gertrude Stein and Horst), Paris, 1946<\/p><\/div>\n Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories<\/em><\/strong> is built upon exciting new scholarship by lead guest curator Professor Wanda M. Corn of Stanford University and associate curator Professor Tirza True Latimer of the California College of Arts and is jointly organized with the Smithsonian\u2019s National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n Stein was a cultural networker, bringing creative people and friends such as Picasso, Matisse and Hemingway, but also key members of a cosmopolitan gay and lesbian elite, together at legendary salons held in her homes. Her originality as a thinker, along with her interdisciplinary approach to projects in dance, music and theater, continue to inspire artists today. As an inventor of modernist literature, she wrote novels, poems, journal essays, literary and art theory, opera libretti, plays, memoirs and word portraits.<\/p>\n Robert Indiana poster for the Stein-Thomson opera The Mother of Us All(1975)<\/p><\/div>\n Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories<\/em><\/strong> features more than 100 artifacts and art works by artists from across Europe and the United States. It includes paintings, sculpture, photography, drawings, and artist\u2019s gifts to Stein as well as items from her custom-designed wardrobe, manuscripts, books, periodicals, letters, journals, and personal belongings.<\/p>\n One of Ms Stein's vests<\/p><\/div>\n The galleries will also include media presentations to render a more complete picture of this complex icon of the twentieth-century. One loop will present a montage of photographs from throughout her life; another shows footage from her operas and ballet; and one examines Stein\u2019s life during the war. An interactive, custom-made iPad app allows visitors the opportunity to explore images, press and other material from Stein\u2019s lecture tour across America in 1934-35. On another iPad app, visitors can listen to Stein reading from her work while following along with the text.<\/p>\n The book accompanying the exhibit<\/p><\/div>\n This wealth of archival and artistic material illuminates Stein through five distinct stories that offer multiple ways of looking at or \u201cseeing\u201d Stein. Notably, these five stories do not repeat what is well known \u2014 Stein\u2019s years as a saloni\u00e8re and collector of Picasso and Matisse in the years before World War I \u2014 but instead focus on Stein from 1915-46 when she became recognized as a major writer, collected the works of the neoromantics, and formed a new international circle of young friends that she called her ‘second family.’<\/p>\n The exhibition will be presented at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. after its premiere at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and will be on view there from October 14, 2011 through January 22, 2012.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde <\/em><\/strong>reunites the unparalleled modern art collections of author Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael Stein, and Michael’s wife, Sarah Stein. Jointly organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the R\u00e9union des Mus\u00e9es Nationaux, Paris, this major touring exhibition gathers approximately 200 iconic paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and illustrated books not only by Matisse and Picasso, who are each represented by dozens of works, but also by Pierre Bonnard, Paul C\u00e9zanne, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Henri Manguin, Francis Picabia, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and F\u00e9lix Vallotton, among others.\u00a0The Steins Collect<\/em> will premiere at SFMOMA, before traveling to Paris and then New York.<\/p>\n The Steins from left Leo, Allan, Gertrude, Theresa Ehrman(Allan's piano teacher),Sarah and Michael (Paris, 1904)<\/p><\/div>\n Supplemented by a rich array of archival materials\u2014including photographs, family albums, film clips, correspondence, and ephemera\u2014the exhibition provides a new perspective on the artistic foresight of this innovative family, tracing their enduring impact on art-making and collecting practices and their inestimable role in creating a new international standard of taste for modern art.<\/p>\n Henri Matisse, The Girl with Green Eyes, 1908<\/p><\/div>\n The exhibition is cocurated by Janet Bishop, curator of painting and sculpture at SFMOMA; C\u00e9cile Debray, curator of historical collections at the Mus\u00e9e national d’Art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Rebecca Rabinow, associate curator and administrator, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A richly illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with new research and original essays from a range of French and American experts in the field.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The exhibition's catalog<\/p><\/div>\n The Steins Collect<\/em> draws from prominent public and private collections worldwide and spans the family’s entire collecting history. Among some 40 works by Picasso and approximately 60 by Matisse are such masterpieces as Matisse’s\u00a0Blue Nude<\/em> (Baltimore Museum of Art),\u00a0Woman with a Hat<\/em> (SFMOMA),\u00a0Self-Portrait <\/em>(Statens Museum, Copenhagen), and\u00a0Tea<\/em> (LACMA); and Picasso’s\u00a0Lady with a Fan<\/em>(National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.),\u00a0Boy Leading a Horse<\/em> (Museum of Modern Art, New York),\u00a0Nude with Joined Hands<\/em> (Museum of Modern Art, New York), and portrait of Gertrude Stein<\/em> (Metropolitan Museum of Art), among many others.<\/p>\n Picasso's portrait of Gertrude, 1906<\/p><\/div>\n Following its SFMOMA debut, The Steins Collect<\/em> will travel to <\/strong>the Grand Palais, Paris (October 3, 2011, through January 16, 2012) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (February 21 through June 3, 2012).”<\/p>\n \u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n I first heard about the possibility of these exhibitions about ten years ago, so it is very exciting to finally see them happen.<\/p>\n What is also exciting is the programming planned in conjunction with them.\u00a0From lectures to films, from an opera production to one-person theatrical performances, from children\u2019s classes to university credit courses there is more there here than GertrudeandAlice could ever have imagined !<\/p>\n To see what is happening in conjunction with Seeing Gertrude Stein<\/strong>, go to:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.thecjm.org\/index.php?option=com_ccevents&scope=exbt&task=detail&oid=9<\/a><\/p>\n And for events relating to The Steins Collect <\/strong>see:<\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/exhibitions\/410<\/a><\/p>\n and<\/p>\n www.sfmoma.org\/pages\/exhibitions\/details\/stein_neighborhood<\/a><\/p>\n Some items from my collection will be included in both exhibitions and in the Fall, in conjunction with the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, I am also co-curating another exhibition with Dyana Curreri-Ermatiger at \u00a0Stanford University’s Bing Stanford Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. \u00a0That exhibition will feature works by artists who have incorporated Stein’s texts into their pieces, as well as highlight the design elements of some of her first editions. The working title for our exhibition is\u00a0I: Influence, Inspiration, Insight, Innovation \u2013<\/strong>Contemporary Artists Look at Gertrude Stein\u2019s Early Published Works. <\/strong>More on this later.<\/p>\n So, as Gertrude Stein may have lamented on that fateful day in 1926 when Alice picked up the shears, what better way to enter the Summer of Steins with peace and love and flowers and<\/p>\n “Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
\nShining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen<\/p>\n