Nancy E. Green, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University
Benjamin Harvey, Mississippi State University
Mark Hussey, Pace University
Christopher Reed, The Pennsylvania State University
Although of another place and time, the Bloomsbury group confronted issues that are remarkably current: international crises, war, the value of craft in an industrialized world, women's rights, environmental protection, and the search for the true, the good, and the beautiful in their art and their lives. A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections, an exhibition catalog produced by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, examines the group's responses to these issues, providing a valuable mirror on how people can address similar concerns today. A hundred years after the Bloomsbury group was established, their story still resonates and brings together a variety of interests across many artistic and intellectual pursuits.
The exhibition will include two hundred watercolors, drawings, books from the Hogarth Press, decorative works from the Omega Workshops, and other works.
The exhibition catalog features essays by several leading Bloomsbury scholars. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of a major 1995 Carrington biography, provides a personal overview of artistic Bloomsbury. Nancy E. Green, the Johnson Museum curator and organizer of the exhibition, explores the Victorian-era influence on sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Mark Hussey's essay discusses the cultural differences behind how British and American audiences experience Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. Benjamin Harvey offers "An Appreciation of Bloomsbury's Books and Blocks." Christopher Reed presents personal stories behind many of the prominent Bloomsbury collectors in North America. The book is illustrated with full-color plates of the two hundred exhibited works, as well as numerous color figures of comparative works and documentary photographs.
