Hierosgamos: From Requiem to Revival

October 16 – 30, 2023
Main Library, L2
Gallery Hours
Monday – Thursday, 5-9 pm
Saturday, 9-5
Sunday, 1-5

When artist Connie Thibaut’s partner, Bill, died in 2018 after a long illness, she created a series of portraits that represent his struggle with his fatal illness during the last months of his life when he was in hospice.  Thibaut based these portraits on the many hundreds of photographs she took of Bill with her cell phone and digital camera.

“I have been through a profound experience as a witness to my partner Bill’s illness and death, and these artworks are my visual testimony,” writes Thibaut.  “At the hospital, where Bill spent the last months of his life, a great drama unfolded.  I attempted to catch fleeting images of it with my camera.  Bill died with tremendous gravitas, seeming to transcend the condition of a helpless victim of a dread and fatal disease.  It was as if I, in witnessing this event, as a mere conduit, a mere medium, were transported to another and a greater, though mysterious, dimension of existence.  It was a humbling experience.  I wondered at how it could be at once so sorrowful and at the same time so beautiful.”

This exhibit complements Connie’s recent donation of her partner, Bill Noble’s papers.  Noble was a staunch advocate for rent control and worked tirelessly on behalf of Cambridge tenants in the 1970s and 1980s.  He was a founding member of the Cambridge Tenants Union (CTU) and its predecessor, the Cambridge Rent Control Coalition (CRCC) and was an active opponent of the expansion of Harvard, MIT and other large Cambridge institutions into city neighborhoods.  Connie’s tribute to Bill in this exhibition shows the deeply personal side of such a public figure so well known in Cambridge activist circles.  Both Bill Noble’s papers and some of Connie’s photographs for Hierosgamos are now available at the Library’s Archives and Special Collections. 

Join us for an opening reception and gallery talk on Wednesday October 18 at 6:30 pm.

Connie Thibaut is a graphics and mixed-media artist who studied painting for five years at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, where she was exposed to the Surrealist painters whose work became a strong inspiration. Later, at Massachusetts College of Art, where she graduated with a BFA and a MSAE (Master’s of Science in Art Education), she learned about the Surrealist women painters and created a Surrealist reinterpretation of an Old French romance for her thesis show. She has studied with and been influenced by Boston area artists such as the late Conger Metcalf (Neo-Romanticism) and more recently Adria Arch (Abstract Expressionism). Although she has retired from teaching, she continues to create art that is informed by her life experiences and which reinterprets the traditions of the Renaissance, Fantastic Art, and Expressionism.

WPA Muralist Elizabeth Tracy Painting at the CPL

Muralist Elizabeth Tracy painting the “Development of the Printing Press,” courtesy of the Cambridge Historical Commission, Cambridge Photo Morgue Collection.

To follow up on our post about muralist Elizabeth Tracy, our friends at the fantastic Cambridge Historical Commission sent us a photograph of Tracy in action with fellow muralist, Arthur Willis Oakman.  Tracy and Oakman are painting “the Development of the Printing Press,” on the west wall of the Library’s Reading Room.  This mural follows the evolution of the printing press from Guttenberg in 1449 through the invention of the cylindrical press by Hoe and Co. in 1820. At the center is the 1639 Stephen Daye press of Cambridge, the first press in America.

The photograph, along with a large collection of the Cambridge Historical Commission’s photographs, can be found on the Digital Commonwealth website.

 

Exhibition on WPA Muralist Elizabeth Tracy

WPA Muralist and Artist, Elizabeth Tracy

The Harvard Art Museums Archives is featuring an exhibit on WPA muralist and artist Elizabeth Tracy, later known as Tracy Montminy.  Tracy, along with Arthur Willis Oakman, painted the four murals in the Cambridge Public Library’s historic reading room.  The public is free to visit the exhibit this Thursday, October 25th from 12:00pm to 3:00pm, during the museum’s Archives Open Hours. 

The murals, commissioned by the Civil Works Administration in 1934, depict the ten divisions of knowledge that make up the Dewey decimal cataloguing system, and include:

• “Religion,” on the east wall of the Delivery Room, featuring the City Seal of Cambridge, flanked by wreaths labeled General Works, Philosophy, Religion, Sociology and Philology.
• “Fine Arts,” on the west wall of the Delivery Room, with a historic clock at its center, flanked with banners titled Literature, History, Useful Arts, Fine Arts and Pure Science.
• “History of Books and Paper,” a series of three panels on the east end of the Reading Room, depicts the contributions of Babylon, ancient Egypt, China, Greece and Rome and medieval Europe.
• “The Development of the Printing Press,” on the west wall of the Delivery Room, is the largest of the set, and follows the evolution of the printing press from Guttenberg in 1449 through the invention of the cylindrical press by Hoe and Co. in 1820. At the center is the 1639 Stephen Daye press of Cambridge, the first press in America.

The four murals were restored in 2009 when the Library was renovated.

Tracy’s mural, Religion, during the 2009 restoration at the Cambridge Public Library.

Tracy’s mural, The Development of the Printing Press, during the 2009 restoration at the Cambridge Public Library.