On the Edge of Your Seat

Lights, Camera, Action, and Art!

Exploring Early 20th-Century Popular Entertainment through programs and lectures.

Dust off your high hat and get ready for a lineup of programs guaranteed to knock your socks off. Experience the lively and quirky spirit of vaudeville through lectures, programs and performances. This series of programs is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, "On the Edge of Your Seat."

"Iridescence of the Moment": Visual Artists and the Modernity of Vaudeville
and Early Film Patricia McDonnell
Sunday, April 21, 2:00 p.m.
In this program, On the Edge of Your Seat curator Patricia McDonnell discusses early 20th century artists who responded to the visual attractions in their modern environment. As American cities modernized, a "concept of show" permeated the scene as show rooms, showgirls, and even commercial display as we know it today created a new and strongly visual aesthetic. Nowhere was this impact felt more strongly than in show business, especially in the most popular theaters of vaudeville and film. McDonnell examines how early 20th-century artists reacted to and interpreted the heightened spectacle of American popular amusements. Artists she assesses include Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn, Everett Shinn, and others.

Tough on Black Actors: Black Vaudeville in America Nadine George-Graves
Thursday, June 20, 7:00 p.m.
In this slide and video-illustrated lecture, Nadine George-Graves examines the triumphs and trials of black vaudevillians at the turn of the 20th century. At this time, African-American vaudevillians pioneered new modes of performance in song, dance, comedy, and theater. These performers, who helped set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance, struggled for better conditions and developed aesthetic styles that are still with us. The Theater Owners' Booking Association, also known as "Tough on Black Actors," served as the premiere vaudeville touring circuit for black performers. Playing "TOBy-time" meant playing the big-time, but it was not all fun and games. Hear about this little-known yet vital aspect of American theater history. George-Graves is assistant professor of theater studies at Yale University, and is a theater director, actor, and dancer. She is the author of the groundbreaking study, The Royalty of Negro Vaudeville: The Whitman Sisters and the Negotiation of Race, Gender, and Class in African American Theatre, 1900-1940.

Contemporary Spectacle: A Neovaudeville Variety Show
Thursday-Saturday, July 11-13, at 7:00 p.m.
$10/$5 WAM members, students, and seniors
For tickets, call the Weisman Museum Store at 612-625-9495
The eclectic entertainment of early 1900's vaudeville reigned nationwide and produced some of our most beloved entertainers. The spirit of vaudeville is alive and well-practiced by Twin Cities performers in this neovaudeville production. Acts will include performance artist and puppeteer Michael Sommers, fiddler and rope trick artist Pop Wagner, magicians Nick and Jenna Sharpe, and an array of escape artists, hoofers, and animal and novelty acts. Come to be wowed by the breathtaking feats of wonder assembled by curator, choreographer and performance artist, Laurie Van Wieren.

A Cinema of Attractions and a Culture of Sensations: Early Film and Popular Entertainment Tom Gunning Thursday, July 18, 7:00 p.m.
Film emerged in the 1890s as a new improved version of popular visual entertainments for American audiences. As a new mass audience appeared with a bit of money and a little more leisure time, film cannibalized the forms of amusement already drawing crowds: vaudeville, burlesque, amusement parks, dance crazes, and the sensation drama. At the turn of the century, new forms of popular entertainments attracted audiences by powerfully addressing their senses, creating a new culture of color, movement, speed, absurdity, magic, and thrills. With century old films and visual images, Tom Gunning describes this new culture.

Gunning is professor of cinema and media studies, and of art history at the University of Chicago. He is the author of D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years and some 100 articles on problems of film style and interpretation, film history, and the culture of modernity from which cinema arose.

Historic Film, Contemporary Video, and Live Performance at Franklin Art Works
Franklin Art Works, 1021 Franklin Ave E. For directions, call 612-872-7494.
$6/$3 WAM members, students, seniors, Franklin Art Works Members
For advance tickets, call the Weisman Museum Store at 612-625-9495.
Saturday, July 20, 7:30 p.m.
Join us for an eclectic assortment of historical and contemporary art forms! In conjunction with the Weisman exhibition, On the Edge of Your Seat, this evening of entertainment includes a series of short silent films projected with live musical accompaniment and neovaudeville short acts, presented at the historic Franklin Art Works. This former silent movie house dates back to 1916, and contains the Twin Cities' only surviving original silver screen. Franklin director Tim Peterson describes the building's dramatic transformations, from its theater history to its current process of renovation and use as an art exhibition space. The current exhibition on view features contemporary video art by sss.

Compleat Scholar courses with Edge:

Edward Hopper: Capturing the Cinematic Moment
Robert Silberman
Tuesdays, May 14 & May 21, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
$60/$54 age 62+ and Weisman members
William G. Shepherd Room
To register, call The Compleat Scholar at 612-625-7777.

Explore the relationship between Edward Hopper, theater, and film in this course offered in conjunction with the exhibition On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theatre and Film in Early 20th Century American Art. Hopper was an avid theatergoer who enjoyed films as well as plays, and his works have often been considered particularly "cinematic" or "theatrical." Theaters are a major motif in Hopper's world; one of his masterpieces is New York Movie. With his strong compositions and his ability to create concentrated dramas out of isolated moments, Hopper is a special favorite of filmmakers. Robert Silberman is associate professor of art history at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches film history, art history, and the history of photography. He wrote the catalogue essay on Edward Hopper for this exhibition.

On the Edge of Your Seat: From Vaudeville to Silent Films to the "Talkies"
Robert Cowgill and Patricia McDonnell
Mondays, June 3-June 24 (4 meetings), 6:30-9:45 p.m.
Each class includes a pre-film lecture, film, and post-film discussion. First session only meets at Weisman Art Museum for exhibition tour and pre-film lecture. Other sessions meet at Oak Street Cinema, 309 S.E. Oak Street, Minneapolis. $128/$115.50 age 62+ and Weisman members, tuition includes film admissions.
To register, call The Compleat Scholar at 612-625-7777.

This course explores the exciting moment when theatrical entertainment, particularly vaudeville, was transformed and absorbed by the growing power of film. Each week, after a pre-film lecture, we will view a silent film accompanied by piano at the Oak Street Cinema, to be followed by a post-film discussion. Films screened include Broken Blossoms by D.W. Griffith; recently discovered shorts featuring Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton; Body and Soul, the earliest feature by an African American director; and rare vaudeville mutascopes. Our goal is to examine ways these silent films intersect with larger cultural representations of gender, class, and ethnicity, and to enhance understanding of what influenced artists as they constructed narrative and visual modes to fit this new medium.

Robert Cowgill is director of Oak Street Cinema, a Twin Cities venue for the promotion of the art of film and its integration into the community. He is also adjunct professor in cinema history at Augsburg College. Patricia McDonnell (guest lecturer, June 3) is curator of the exhibition On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theatre and Film in Early 20th Century American Art. She is curator at the Weisman Art Museum and scholar of modernism in America and Europe.

Early 20th-Century Art and Popular Entertainment

A pronounced new visual culture developed in American cities in the early twentieth century. Across disciplines, key scholars described the new, strongly visual aesthetic within urban centers as ruled by "an unabashed display of visuality" "the rapid crowding of changing images" and "a rigorous competition of diverse stimuli." The rising culture of commercialism hastened this transformation as did the new modes of commuter transport by providing new views on the city and greater access to its attractions. The jarring stimuli of amusement parks, shopping experiences, and popular theater spectacles also heightened this experience. This symposium explores the cultural forces and artistic expressions of this changing milieu in the American metropolis.

The symposium, Metropolitan Culture/Urban Vision is organized in conjunction with the major loan exhibition On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theater and Film in Early 20th-Century American Art on view at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis from April 21 through August 4, 2002.

For registration information about the Metropolitan Culture/Urban Vision Symposium, please call the Weisman Art Museum at 612-624-5647 or email your request to bolde001@umn.edu.

Saturday, April 27
Symposium Presentations

Framing the Question: Artists, Modernism, and Popular Entertainment
Patricia McDonnell, Curator, Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota

Vaudeville and early moving picture theaters developed as concentrated microcosms for the caffeinated experience of urban modernity. An array of visual artists responded to this environment and this paper analyzes its effects on early 20th-century painting.

City, Stage, and Screen: John Sloan's Urban Theater
Rebecca Zurier, professor of art history, University of Michigan

A keen observer of modern life in early twentieth-century New York, John Sloan was a particularly avid moviegoer and attended popular theater. This talk examines the artist's interest in theater and cinema in relation to the everyday acts of performance and spectacle in modern urban life.

Self-Consciousness and Representing the Real in Film and Painting circa 1900
Nancy Mowll Mathews, Eugenie Prendergast Curator, William College Museum of Art

This paper explores the negotiation between the "real" and the representation of the "real" in film and art at the turn of the century. Self-conscious performative acts in these media launched a new negotiation with the "real" and what this paper argues to be a distinctly modern aesthetic.

Early Cinema and Modernity: Whose Modernity? Whose Cinema?
Robert C. Allen, James Logan Godfrey, professor of American studies, history, and communication studies,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Scholars have closely linked the experience of early cinema and the experience of modernity, and film historians often assume cinema and modernity as essential metropolitan experiences. Allen will analyze this set of conflations: city and metropolis; modernity and urban modernity; and the experience of cinema in the metropolis, and the experience of cinema in general.

We Have Pulled Down the Stars: Urban Images and Culture from 1880 to 1930
William Leach, professor of history, Columbia University

Between 1880 and 1930, a new world of pictures helped transform America from a rural to an urban culture. Ubiquitous images helped domesticate Americans to the new artificial city, while downgrading previous nature-connected traditions. This lecture focuses on the shift, its cultural meaning, and consequences.

Response by Lary May, professor of American studies, University of Minnesota

Picture the Songs

Rare Live Presentation of Turn-of-the-Century Magic Lantern Illustrated Song Slides

Picture the Songs
Friday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak Street SE, Minneapolis Phone (612) 331-3134

C. Lance Brockman, professor of theater and dance at the University of Minnesota introduces the event.

Rare live presentation of turn-of-the-century magic lantern illustrated song slides. Oak Street Cinema, a Weisman Art partner, is at the corner of Washington Avenue and Oak Street, 5 blocks east of the Weisman and just 2 blocks east of Radisson Metrodome.

As one act on the bill for vaudeville or early moving picture shows, performers often sang newly minted songs accompanied by projected images that narrated the storyline. These vintage song slides are a pictorial delight, reflecting the era's appetite for visual stimulus and technological innovation and anticipating the artistic montage of later modernists. This fun evening of Tin Pan Alley-era melodies will feature songs that describe or depict the early twentieth-century popular theater experience. The Marnan collection of Minneapolis is arguably the largest archive of magic lantern illustrated song slides. Collectors Nancy and Margaret Bergh will present the evening of song and image accompanied by live music.

Oak St. Movie Series

Silent Legends & Vaudeville on Screen
Oak Street Cinema Film Series-
Mondays & Tuesdays in June
$7/$4.50 WAM members (with card), students, and seniors
Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak Street SE, Minneapolis. Tickets and info: 612-331-3134

Silent Legends--June Mondays
Monday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m.
So's Your Old Man (1926) starring W.C. Fields, dir. Gregory La Cava
Preceded by shorts: Back Stage (1919) starring Fatty Arbuckle (who also directed) and Buster Keaton; and vaudeville mutascopes from the Library of Congress
Accompanist: Rich Dworsky

Monday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Broken Blossoms (1919) starring Lillian Gish, dir. D.W. Griffith
Preceded by shorts: The Playhouse (1921) starring and dir. by Buster Keaton; and vaudeville mutascopes from the Library of Congress
Accompanist: Butch Thompson

Monday, June 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Body and Soul (1925) starring Paul Robeson, dir. Oscar Micheaux
Preceded by vaudeville mutascopes from the Library of Congress
Accompanist: Carei Thomas

Monday, June 24 at 7:30 p.m.
Why Worry (1923) starring Harold Lloyd, dirs. Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor
Preceded by shorts: Never Weaken (1921) starring Harold Lloyd, dir. Fred Newmeyer; and vaudeville mutascopes from the Library of Congress
Accompanist: Rich Dworsky

Vaudeville on Screen--June
Tuesdays Tuesday, June 4 at 7:30 p.m.
The Great Ziegfeld (1936) starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, dir. Robert Leonard

Tuesday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Show Boat (1936 original) starring Irene Dunne, dir. James Whale

Tuesday, June 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Vitaphone Vaudeville Shorts from the UCLA Film & Television Archive, featuring performances from the Foy Family; Georgie Price; Josephine Harmon; Burns and Allen; Al Jolson, and others

Tuesday, June 25 at 7:30 p.m.
42nd Street (1933) dir. Lloyd Bacon