PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To welcome the American Association of Teachers of French who will be holding their annual conference in Providence this July, a new exhibit, Ecrivez-vous français?, is now on view in the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library lobby featuring selections from the Mel B. Yoken Archive. Highlights include letters from Matisse, Monet, and Marcel Marceau.
Mel B. Yoken MAT ’61 assembled the collection of invaluable letters and photographs over a period of forty years. The materials consist primarily of 20th-century pieces of correspondence by American, British, French and Québécois authors and artists, as well as letters written by significant political and literary figures of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Items featured in the exhibit provide insight into critical literary and artistic aspects of French and Francophone culture, and invite scholarly researchers to pursue a reflection on the significance of the relationship between literature and other art forms. Highlights include a letter from Victor Hugo written in Paris in 1851, a few months before he elected to live in exile in Guernsey, following Napoléon III’s ascent to power. In it Hugo refers to the political involvement of this son, Charles, who was in the Conciergerie prison at the time. And, another letter written by Claude Monet in Argenteuil (where he produced some of his most famous boat and poppy fields scenes), discusses the sale of paintings.
The Brown University Library is home to more than 6.8 million print items, plus a multitude of electronic resources and expanding digital archives serving the teaching, research, and learning needs of Brown students and faculty, as well as scholars from around the country and the world. http://library.brown.edu/
See the following diagram for the location of the exhibit.
Contact: Amy Atticks | Amy_Atticks@brown.edu | (401) 863-6913
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