Education

Illustrating Childhood: The History of Children’s Book Illustration in the United States
In conjunction with the special exhibition The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats* (July 19-October 20)
Participants will be invited to the special curatorial overview and the opening reception on July 23.

In conjunction with the special exhibition The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats, the Museum is offering a class on the history of children’s book and magazine illustrations. Illustrating Childhood will review the history of illustration from the nineteenth century to the present introduce students to various illustrative styles, and enhance visual analysis skills. The class will survey a broad spectrum of stylistic and socio-cultural developments in children’s illustration. Participants will also have an opportunity to share memories of their favorite childhood book(s) and reflect on the personal and aesthetic reasons for their attachments with insights gained from the class.

For more detailed description click here.

Time: Tuesdays, July 2, 9 and 16. 10:30 am -12:00 pm
Price: $60/45 for members
The registration deadline: June 15
To register call 215 923 3811 x153 or email education@nmajh.org.

Instructor: Mary F. Zawadzki
Mary Zawadzki is currently completing her Ph.D. in nineteenth-century American art history. She worked in the education department of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and currently teaches art and illustration history at Parsons: The New School for Design. Her dissertation focuses on the art and aesthetic education program of the nineteenth century children’s illustrated magazine St. Nicholas. She has presented extensively on illustration in America, and has been published in the Mid-Atlantic Almanac, a scholarly journal about popular American culture.

* The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats is organized by The Jewish Museum, New York, from the collection of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection, The University of Southern Mississippi. The exhibition was funded at The Jewish Museum through a generous grant from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Joseph Alexander Foundation, the Alfred J. Grunebaum Memorial Fund, and the Winnick Family Foundation.


IMAGES
Jessie Willcox Smith, "Beauty and the Beast," from The Now-a-day Fairy Book by Anna Alice Cooper. NY:Dodd, Mead & Co., 1911.
St. Nicholas Magazine, cover. Vol. 11, no. 10. (August 1875).

Conscientious Objectors: Post-War Political Films

At the Museum

4-week class: $125/$100 BMFI & NMAJH Members

Call BMFI at 610-527-4008 ext. 106 or click here to register. 

Racism, anti-Semitism, corruption, and political oppression are not just problems that plagued our nation in the 1950s—they are issues that Hollywood addressed in some of its best work of the era. These political films, coming in the relatively comfortable period following World War II, had the luxury of once again taking on domestic social problems after the industry spent years focusing on the more immediate threats abroad.

But filmmakers with controversial political viewpoints needed to tread lightly in this time of HUAC, Joseph McCarthy, and the emerging Soviet threat. As a result, much of the era's cinematic activism was aimed at slightly off-center—yet clearly analogous—targets.

This course examines Edward Dmytryk’s noirish Crossfire (1947), Richard Brooks’s gritty Blackboard Jungle (1955), as well as Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and A Face in the Crowd (1957), to consider the factors surrounding the translation of individual social consciousness into mainstream entertainment. Gaining a better understanding of these ideas opens up new cultural and historical avenues to the appreciation of cinema from any era.

Instructor: Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., Director of Education, BMFI. 

Photo Credit: On the Waterfront (1954)