March 4, 2009
In conjunction with The Big Read of To Kill a Mockingbird, the Stark Museum of Art will host a program "Spotlight on the Mockingbird in Art," Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at noon. The program will feature a reading from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by a local celebrity reader. Also, Sarah Boehme, Director of the Stark Museum of Art will give a gallery talk on "The First Pictures of the Mockingbird." The program is free to the public and participants may bring brown bag lunches.
The Stark Museum of Art will have on display the first published description of a mockingbird, Mark Catesby's hand-colored engraving of the bird in his book The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1731. Also on view will be engravings of the mockingbird by Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon.
The Stark Museum of Art's program is part of a community-wide emphasis on reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, initiated by the Lutcher Theater for the Performing Arts and done in cooperation with the Houston Public Library, The Big Read. http://lutcher.org/bigreadtexas.html Sarah Boehme invites the local public to bring their lunches to the Stark Museum of Art to enjoy one of the readings from the novel and additional background, "The mockingbird was a favorite subject of early natural history artists in America. Their illustrations and texts demonstrate the fondness for the bird that is echoed in a theme of the novel."
Mark Catesby (c. 1682-1749)
The Mock-bird
1731, engraving on paper, hand-colored
In The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and teh Bahama Islands, Volume 1
Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas, 11.18.2.A
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