In this issue
-- Winter Program Notes
-- Friends Enjoy Special Benefits
-- Big Read Offers Big Programs
-- February: The Month of Love and Valentines -- Collection Spotlight: Paisley Shawl -- Emily Dickinson in Winter -- About the Museum -- Are you on FacebookŪ? Join us!
Love-is anterior to Life -
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Winter Program Notes 
Listen to a recent broadcast of "The Sunday Edition," a weekly production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, that focused on the rising tide of interest in Emily Dickinson. The hour-long feature on Dickinson's life and poetry concludes with substantial material recorded last September at the Museum's annual poetry marathon.
Visit the Mead Art Museum's newest exhibition, "Orra White Hitchcock (1796-1863): An Amherst Woman of Art and Science." This special exhibition at Amherst College's Mead Art Museum brings to light the little-known art of one of the Connecticut River Valley's earliest female artists. Hitchcock, her husband Edward (influential scientist and president of Amherst College), and their children were well known to the Dickinsons. The exhibition runs through May 29, 2011. Look ahead to "Emily Dickinson: The Virtual Belle of Amherst," a talk by independent scholar Polly Longsworth, on February 27 at 2 p.m. at the White Church Community Center at Historic Deerfield.
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Friends Enjoy Special Benefits 
Being a Member of the Friends of Emily Dickinson Museum will have its advantages in 2011. Aside from being an important part in the preservation of Emily Dickinon's home and poetry, members can look forward to discounts to a Nosegay workshop with Marta McDowell, a Friends of the Emily Dickinson Museum Member's Day and other special member's programs.
These are just a few of the benefits! Membership also includes:
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Big Read Offers Big Programs 
The Big ReadApril 2-May 21, 2011 The Emily Dickinson Museum has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to hold our second "Big Read" of Dickinson's poetry. A host of exciting free programs await you! The program "kicks off" on Saturday, April 2, when the Museum launches "Poems Around Town." Encounter Dickinson poems in unexpected places as fifteen businesses and organizations in downtown Amherst host one of the poet's verses. You'll also be able to dial in for a cell phone poem. Also on April 2, at 2 p.m., Thom Tammaro and Sheila Coghill, editors of Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson, will share poems from the anthology and talk about Dickinson's allure. The Big Read continues in April with "Emily Dickinson's Poetry 101, " a two-hour program that provides an introduction to the poet and a discussion of selected poems. On Tuesday, April 26, visual artist Spencer Finch--recently described by a Washington Post reviewer as "one of the smartest, most original artists working today"-- gives a public talk about his interest in Emily Dickinson; later that week he installs a new work on the Museum property. Details about Big Read programs in May will be featured in upcoming E-Updates. Complete information about all of the Big Read programs is available at www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/thebigread. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest.
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February: The Month of Love and Valentines 
Emily Dickinson's schoolmate started the United States Valentine's Day card craze. Esther Howland, who graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1847, the same year Emily Dickinson entered, started manufacturing Valentine cards in her home and quickly built a highly profitable business. In a letter written from Mount Holyoke a few days after Valentine's Day 1848, Emily Dickinson described Mary Lyon's opposition to sending "those foolish notes called Valentines," and the lengths to which the young students went to circumvent the prohibition. Dickinson's two earliest known poems--"Awake ye muses nine," and "Sic transit Gloria mundi"--were written as Valentine messages. Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections offers a glimpse of the Valentine tradition at Howland and Dickinson's alma mater.
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Collection Spotlight: Paisley Shawl 
Paisley Shawl, Emily's, from Paisley, Scotland, c. 1830-1860 or 1840-1880On the bed in Emily Dickinson's room at the Homestead is a paisley shawl, one of two in the Museum's collection, that belonged to the poet and her mother.
The design and pattern of what are now known as "paisley" fabrics originated in India and became fashionable in Europe in the early nineteenth century when Napoleon's first wife, Empress Josephine, brought many beautiful pieces back from her travels to India and to Egypt. When Queen Victoria developed a taste for these textiles, factories in Scotland began weaving reproductions. The town of Paisley became one of the leading shawl centers throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth-century, embracing a new loom appendage known as the jacquard attachment (named after its French inventor, Jacque Marie Jacquard). The mechanical attachment resulted in a less labor-intensive and more efficient process to make the shawls. With this revolutionary advancement in the industry, the shawls were now reproduced by the thousands, ready for the mass market. Shawls from the factories in the town of Paisley retained much of their Indian flavor, typically featuring the repetition of the comma shape we now recognize as the paisley motif. Dickinson's shawl is a superb example of an 1840-1870 jacquard-weaving with the ornamental motif so common of the period. Imagine it draped over her shoulders, white dress underneath, and her stunning auburn locks. It now lies over her 19th century sleigh bed, as if she had just taken it off from the cold outside. For further reading on the general history of this object, more information can be found within The Art of Paisley by Ed Rosebach; "The Paisley Shawl" in Country Houses, October 1985; as well as "A Passion for Paisley" in Early American Life, February 2006.
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Emily Dickinson in Winter 
Although Emily Dickinson did not live to see the great blizzard of 1888, which left snow drifts of up to 20 feet in areas of Amherst, she did witness plenty of snow. We might assume after reading so many passionately involved poems with spring and summer, that she wrote only a few poems about winter; However, one of her critics, J. Edwin Folsom, cites 30 poems that "directly mention winter, and nearly 60 that mention snow." The Concordance to Dickinson's poems mentions 125 poems that refer to "snow," 60 that mention "winter," 53 that mention "cold," and 15 that mention "ice," "icicles," or "hoar." This image of the Evergreens was taken in 1880.
The Sky is low - the Clouds are mean.
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About the Museum 
The Emily Dickinson Museum: The Homestead and
The Evergreens is dedicated to educating diverse
audiences about the poet's life, family,
creative work,
times, and enduring relevance, and to
preserving and
interpreting the Homestead and The Evergreens as
historical resources for the benefit of
scholars and the
general public. The Emily Dickinson Museum is owned by the Trustees of Amherst College and overseen by a separate Board of Governors. The Museum is responsible for raising its own operating and capital funds. The Emily Dickinson Museum is a member of Museums10, a collaboration of ten museums linked to the Five Colleges in the Pioneer Valley--Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Museum's Tour Center may be reached at 413-542-2947, Wednesday through Sunday, during museum hours.
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Are you on FacebookŪ? Join us! 
The Museum has created a presence on
FacebookŪ
to share information and tools with the FacebookŪ
commmunity.Become a fan today! Just click on the FacebookŪ icon.
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Quick Links . . . |
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More Links . . . |
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Quick Links... |
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For general information, contact the Museum at
Recorded Information:
413-542-8161
Website:
http://www.EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org
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