Arts, Culture, and Entertainment

  • Benton: Mirth, Merriment, Presidential Campaigning

    Museum Exhibitions:
    FIRST FOLIO, The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare
    PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNING OVER THE DECADES: The Mark and Rosalind Shenkman Collection of American Political Flags and Textiles

    Come to the Benton to see two important and exciting ongoing exhibitions.  

    The FIRST FOLIO is on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night. These famous plays and 15 others by Shakespeare would probably have been lost to us without the First Folio. Published in 1623, the First Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays; only 233 copies are known today. This year, to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger Shakespeare Library is sending a First Folio to every state in the United States. The William Benton Museum of Art has been selected to exhibit a First Folio for Connecticut.
    Exhibition closes in five days - September 25.

    PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNING OVER THE DECADES “And I approve this message,” would not be uttered by any of the politicians featured on the 67 carefully preserved block-printed cotton and silk flags on loan from the Mark and Rosalind Shenkman Collection of American Political Flags and Textiles. These convey messages crafted by moneymaking businesses rather than by the presidential candidates themselves. They also feature a variety of stars and stripes, because they date before the country adopted an official flag design. Also on view is an official Massachusetts broadside of the Declaration of Independence printed in Massachusetts on July 20, 1776.
    Exhibition runs until December 18.

    THE WILLIAM BENTON MUSEUM OF ART
    University of Connecticut
    School of Fine Arts

    245 Glenbrook Road
    Storrs, CT
    www.benton.uconn.edu   

    www.facebook.com/benton.museum

    For more information, contact: The Benton at 860-486-4520