Reynolda House Calling All Children to Storytelling at the Museum

Press Room

Thursday, November 4, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Sharyn Turner
336.758.5580
sturner@reynoldahouse.org
or Sarah R. Smith
336.758.5524
smithsr@reynoldahouse.org

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (November 4, 2010) Reynolda House Museum of American Art is hosting Storytelling at the Museum: Of Newsboys, Rat Catchers, and Shepherdesses, on Tuesday, Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. and on Saturday, Nov. 20 at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Each day's storytelling program is unique and inspired by images in the museum's exhibition "Virtue, Vice, Wisdom & Folly: The Moralizing Tradition in American Art." The paintings and prints in the exhibition include family gatherings, parties, political rallies, pictures of life in both the country and the city in the 19th century.

Admission is free for Museum members, students, and children; other visitors are free with admission to Reynolda House ($10, $9 for AAA members, teachers, and seniors). This exhibition features family-friendly activities including a gallery scavenger hunt. Storytelling at the Museum is part of the city-wide festival 6 Days in November, presented by Sun Trust Bank.

Tuesday's program will reflect scenes of country fairs with a performance presented by The Alberti Flea Circus. Alberti, whose family has links to the flea circus dating to the 1880s, acknowledges that children are active participants, as they "...hold the equipment, cheer, encourage the fleas to perform, watch for cheating, and finally applaud their successes." Performances include Paddy O'Reilly Shaughnessy's flag waving, Captain Spaulding shot from a cannon, Darling Dardanelle performing a circus high dive, and Jumping Harry the Hurtler in a demonstration of an authentic contra dance. Children will then visit the exhibition to search for dogs and cats where the "fleas" live when not performing. Circus Master Jim Alberti will play his vintage street organ in an event that is suitable for children of all ages.

On Saturday, storyteller Renee Andrews will perform the tale of Henry "Box" Brown, a Virginia slave who, at the age of 15, was separated from his family and sent to work in a Richmond tobacco factory. Married and the father of at least three children, Henry was once again separated from his young family and became determined to gain his freedom. With the help of a sympathetic white shoemaker, he was literally shipped in a box to Philadelphia, the Underground Railroad community and freedom. Brown eventually wrote his autobiography and toured the free states in America with his own panorama of scenes depicting slave life and his escape. Andrews will tell both his story and that of his wife Nancy after which visitors will be able to view related paintings in the exhibition.
Saturday's session is more suitable for elementary school-aged children and older.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation's premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its permanent collection. Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features traveling and original exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events. The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.

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