Poet Marianne Moore & Lewis Carroll creatively combined in an exhibition by Sue Johnson at Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum & Library

Posted on by James Welsch


The Rosenbach Museum & Library’s Artist-in-Residence Sue Johnson has an original installation called Moore Adventures in Wonderland running from September 23rd, 2009, thru June 6th, 2010. The Rosenbach collection is highlighted with large archives by both Lewis Carroll and Marianne Moore, the witty American modernist poet, so Johnson’s installation sets out to explore the two writers’ connections. In her own words (quoted in last Friday’s Philadelphia Daily News):

Moore almost exclusively uses nature as her platform. She doesn’t people her poetry very often, and I felt a resonant chord with that. With Carroll, of course, it’s Alice’s adventures, but it’s Alice’s adventures with creatures that have been anthropomorphized. So I thought that there was a good conversation that could be had there between two creative people that I felt an affinity with.

Marianne Moore willed to the Rosenbach a room from her Greenwich Village apartment, which was then recreated on site. The exhibition is downstairs from the Moore living room, so Johnson played with the house’s layout and available looking-glasses above fireplace mantles: “I was thinking about going through the looking glass upstairs in the Moore room and landing downstairs in the room that I created. So it’s almost like watching an old filmstrip, where there’s a slippage of the film and you find yourself in another place, down the rabbit hole. I wanted people to be toggling back and forth between those spaces.” (also quoted from the Daily News, where there’s a further detailed description of the installation.)
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is at 2008-2010 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $5 for students and children; closed on Mondays. Too Many Thoughts to Chew: A [Maurice] Sendak Stew is showing simultaneously.
(The Lewis Carroll Society of North America will be meeting at the Rosenbach and viewing Sue Johnson’s installation on April 24, 2010. To learn more about the society, see www.lewiscarroll.org. As the meeting date gets closer, we will be posting additional information about our program that day on the society’s website. – from Clare Imholtz, LCSNA Secretary)
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  1. The Lewis Carroll Society of North America will be meeting at the Rosenbach and viewing Sue Johnson's installation on April 24, 2010. To learn more about the society, see http://www.lewiscarroll.org. As the meeting date gets closer, we will be posting additional information about our program that day on the society's website.
    Clare Imholtz, LCSNA Secretary

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