For Immediate Release: July 3, 2018
Contact: Susan Strano, Marketing Director
802-447-1571 ext/ 204
sstrano@benningtonmuseum.org
Image:
Edward Koren (b. 1935)
Thinking About Extinction II, 2016
Lithograph, printed in black and pale blue on paper
22 inches x 30 inches
Printed and published by Idem, Paris, Artist’s Proof I/VIII
Courtesy of Edward Koren
Elizabeth Kolbert and Edward Koren Present Thinking About Extinction
On Sunday, July 15, from 2:00 to 3:30 pm join Berkshire County author Elizabeth Kolbert and Vermont artist Edward Koren as they explore her book The Sixth Extinction and its impact on Koren’s work in creating curious skeletal creatures in a landscape of ruined Gothic and Classical architecture. The presentation will take place in the Ada Paresky Education Center of the Bennington Museum. On view in the Works on Paper Gallery is Thinking About Extinction and Other Droll Things: Recent Prints and Drawings by Edward Koren. Exhibition on view to September 9. This presentation is free and includes admission to Works on Paper Gallery, but not admission to the other galleries.
Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, for which she won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions. Scientists around the world who are monitoring the sixth extinction predict it to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human. Kolbert has written for The New Yorker since 1999. Her extensive writing on climate change has included her three-part series on global warming, The Climate of Man. She is the editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009, the author of The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit, and Field Notes from a Catastrophe.
Thinking about Extinction and Other Droll Things: Recent Prints and Drawings by Edward Koren is on view at the Bennington Museum through September 9. Partially inspired by his reading of The Sixth Extinction, a selection in this exhibition is a series of prints of curious skeletal creatures in a landscape of ruined Gothic and Classical architecture. “But these creatures, with their amusing hairdos and quizzical expressions, lay eggs and have children. For Koren there is still hope. Humor is just around the corner from despair.” states Jamie Franklin, Bennington Museum Curator. This summer’s show features a largely unknown body of prints, some fresh off the press and never exhibited before.
Edward Koren has long been associated with The New Yorker, where he has published over 1000 cartoons, as well as numerous covers and illustrations. He has also contributed to other publications, including, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, G.Q., Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, and many more. He has illustrated several books by a variety of authors including, but not limited to, Delia Ephron, Pater Mayle, George Plimpton, and Alan Katz. His cartoons, drawings and prints have been widely shown in exhibitions across the United States as well as in France, England and Czechoslovakia. A major retrospective of his work was shown at Columbia University’s Wallach Gallery in 2010 and at the University of Vermont’s Fleming Museum in 2011.
About the Museum
Bennington Museum is located at 75 Main Street (Route 9), Bennington, in The Shires of Vermont. The museum is open 10 am to 5 pm daily through October. It is wheelchair accessible. Regular admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students over 18. Admission is never charged for younger students, museum members, or to visit the museum shop. Visit the museum’s website www.benningtonmuseum.org or call 802-447-1571 for more information.
Bennington Museum is a member of ArtCountry, a consortium of notable art and performance destinations in the scenic northern Berkshires of Massachusetts and southern Green Mountains of Vermont, including The Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art , Williamstown Theatre Festival (20 minutes away); and MASS MoCA (25minutes away). Visit ArtCountry.