{"id":2809,"date":"2011-05-22T12:52:47","date_gmt":"2011-05-22T19:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/?p=2809"},"modified":"2011-11-16T09:51:20","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T17:51:20","slug":"gertrudeandaliceandleoandmichaelandsarahandjuliananddennyand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/22\/gertrudeandaliceandleoandmichaelandsarahandjuliananddennyand\/","title":{"rendered":"GertrudeandAliceandLeoandMichaelandSarahandJulianandDennyand…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my children’s book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom<\/strong>,\u00a0which I hope will soon reach the bookstores of the various museums where the Stein exhibitions are being held, the two young boys who visit rue de Fleurus encounter the atelier’s floor-to-ceiling paintings for the first time:<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at this really rambling room!\u201d whispered Tom.\u00a0 \u201cThere are masterful modern paintings floor to ceiling!\u00a0 It looks like a museum!\u00a0 I hate museums, everything in a museum is musty and moldy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Fritz pressed his nose against one of the paintings.\u00a0 \u201cThis person has four flaming eyes and three thick ears and is not musty and moldy!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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Tom Hachtman's Fritz and Tom<\/p><\/div>\n

I can assure you that there is also nothing musty or moldy at \u00a0The Steins Collect <\/strong>exhibition which opened last week at SFMOMA !<\/p>\n

In the 25+ years that I\u2019ve been obsessed with GertrudeandAlice I have had moments more extraordinary than the proverbial \u201caha!” \u00a0moments. I \u00a0would have to say that they are \u00a0more like \u00a0“ah Stein!” moments!<\/p>\n

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I experienced several of those moments walking through this exhibition with Julian Stein.\u00a0 Following the introductory lecture by curator Janet Bishop, Julian and I scurried through the museum\u2019s atrium past the waiters and hors d’oeuvres into the elevator for the 4th<\/sup> floor galleries.\u00a0 There we found room after room filled with works that had once hung on the walls of \u00a0the homes GertrudeandLeoandMichaelandSarah.<\/p>\n

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"Woman with the Hat," Matisse 1904\/05<\/p><\/div>\n

Julian had been a guest at their homes as a boy and had seen some of these paintings in Paris or at the home of the Cone sisters in Baltimore, his hometown. We\u2019d pause in awe in front of some of the more familiar ones like Picasso\u2019s 1906 portrait of Gertrude, and marvel at some of the less known ones.\u00a0 It was also a surprise to see from where some of the paintings had come \u2013 Melbourne, Copenhagen, and Stuttgart.<\/p>\n

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"Boy Leading a Horse," Picasso 1905\/06<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to the paintings, the exhibition also features family photo albums and some of the Stein\u2019s massive Neo-Renaissance furniture now owned by a lucky family in Pittsburgh. \u00a0 At one point Julian rested his hand one of the sideboards.<\/p>\n

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"Hands off, please!"<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cYou better be careful that one of the security guards doesn\u2019t see that,\u201d I warned. But then added, \u201cIf he does, you can just say \u2018You know, I used to do this all the time when I visited in Paris and it was no problem!\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

One gallery is devoted to the house built for Michael Stein by Le Corbusier, the Villa Stein-de Monzie.\u00a0 It was in this gallery that I had the \u201c\u00fcber-ah Stein\u201d moment !<\/p>\n

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Villa Stein-de Monzie, 1927<\/p><\/div>\n

As part of the installation there is a video copy of a 1929 home movie shot by Julian\u2019s father, Julian Sr. In it, a 10 year-old Julian is hamming it up for the camera, as cousin Gertrude and others walk around the grounds of the house.\u00a0 So, there I stood next to Julian Stein, eighty-two years later in a SFMOMA gallery watching a young Julian cavorting around cousin Gertrude Stein \u2013 \u201cAH STEIN!\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the opening, a dinner was hosted by the museum up the street in the Palm Court of the Palace Hotel. \u00a0Opening remarks were made by Charles “Chuck” Schwab, chairman of the SFMOMA Board.<\/p>\n

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the Palm Court circa 1900<\/p><\/div>\n

Julian and his daughter Ellen Dennis Stein (with their respective partners) represented the Stein clan; members of the Matisse and de Monzie family \u00a0reunited this famous group. Another guest was one of Sarah Stein’s doctors who attested to the Stein’s California tenure.<\/p>\n

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Julian Stein and Elizabeth Sheehan at the dinner (photo courtesy of Ellen Dennis Stein)<\/p><\/div>\n

The menu for the evening was taken from Alice’s cookbook…and no, that<\/strong> was not served!<\/p>\n

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the ABT cookbook menu (photo courtesy of Ellen Dennis Stein)<\/p><\/div>\n

Lastly, \u00a0SFMOMA security, we really did not press our noses against any of the paintings. \u00a0And that’s the truth!<\/p>\n

I do hereby declare that the SUMMER of STEINS has officially begun!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my children’s book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom,\u00a0which I hope will soon reach the bookstores of the various museums where the Stein exhibitions are being held, the two young boys who visit rue de Fleurus encounter the atelier’s floor-to-ceiling paintings for the first time: \u201cLook at this really rambling room!\u201d whispered Tom.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[66,67,86,89,111,120,131,149,158,173,193,215,224,233],"class_list":["post-2809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-historic-facts","tag-elizabeth-sheehan","tag-ellen-dennis-stein","tag-gertrude-and-alice-and-fritz-and-tom","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-janet-bishop","tag-julian-stein","tag-le-corbusier","tag-matisse","tag-michael-stein","tag-picasso","tag-sfmoma","tag-the-steins-collect","tag-tom-hachtman","tag-villa-stein-de-monzie"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2809"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3496,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions\/3496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}