Rokeby MuseumRokeby Museum Distance Drawing Course — Week 6: Illustration
WEEK 1 | WEEK 2 | WEEK 3 | WEEK 4 | WEEK 5 | WEEK 6
Inspired by Rachael Robinson Elmer (1878–1919) and taught by Courtney Clinton, Rokeby Artist in Residence
Dear Student,
Courtney Clinton here, Artist in Residence at Rokeby Museum.
After four great months, my residency is coming to an end this week. Yup, that’s right. This is our last letter! I’m so grateful to Catherine Brooks and the museum for giving me this opportunity. Allison Gregory, Education and Interpretation Fellow, has been an incredible collaborator. She has made sure, despite the border closure, I always have digital access to the museum’s archive!
Together, we have explored not only the lessons of a 19th century drawing course, but also the artistic journey of one of its students, Rachael Robinson Elmer (1878–1919).
Hopefully what has come through with this course is the relationship between engaged observation and the art of drawing. This conception of drawing as a kind of visual research is very different to our modern understanding of art as an expression of self.
With our final lesson, I would like to bridge these two understandings of art and show how we can use the tools that we have developed throughout the course to unlock our creative voice. In this week’s letter, we will explore the production of Rachael’s chef d’oeuvre, her fine art postcard series, Art Lover’s of New York, part of the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC. And as an homage we will design our own fine art postcard.
Read MoreBook Review: Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent”
by Richard Bernstein, M.D., Rokeby Museum Trustee
“…Wilkerson pries open the lid on this country’s racism and exposes the underlying truth—that from the beginning, America has created a caste society, Whites on the top, those of African descent on the bottom.”
Isabel Wilkerson’s 2010 work, The Warmth of Other Suns, was an extensively researched and beautifully narrated account of the Great Migration of 1915–1970, which saw nearly 6 million people of color escape the poverty and racial injustice of the South for the promise of better lives in the North only to encounter the same racism and limited opportunities, and sometimes the same overt brutality, in their new homes. Her book introduced many to the largest migration of modern times and a little remarked phenomenon of the twentieth century.
In her latest book, Caste: The Origin of our Discontents, Wilkerson pries open the lid on this country’s racism and exposes the underlying truth—that from the beginning, America has created a caste society, Whites on the top, those of African descent on the bottom. This rigid structure has endured from seventeenth-century Virginia to the present, and it allows those in the dominant caste to deny racist tendencies while supporting a social structure that benefits them to the detriment of those of the lower caste.
Read MoreRokeby Museum Distance Drawing Course — Week 5: Self-Critique
WEEK 1 | WEEK 2 | WEEK 3 | WEEK 4 | WEEK 5 | WEEK 6
Inspired by Rachael Robinson Elmer (1878–1919) and taught by Courtney Clinton, Rokeby Artist in Residence
Hello Students!
Allison Gregory here, Education and Interpretation Fellow at Rokeby Museum. So far, our distance drawing course has brought you an artist’s perspective on art history and drawing through the writing of Courtney Clinton, Ernest Knaufft, and, of course, Rachael Robinson Elmer. This week I would like to bring in a different perspective.
Read MoreRokeby Museum Welcomes New Director
Deep into the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, Rokeby Museum embarked on a national search for a new director. Over ninety applications later, the search committee identified an exceptionally large pool of highly qualified candidates, eleven of whom we interviewed. Encompassing many Zoom interviews, some distanced presentations, and various quarantines, the process was lengthy but we were undaunted. Now we are thrilled to announce that Lindsay Houpt-Varner, PhD, will lead Rokeby as its first full-time director.
Read MoreTogether We Make a Difference
by Catherine Brooks, Rokeby Museum Director
It was about three years ago to the day when I sat at a picnic table with other Rokeby board members discussing our next move. Museum director Jane Williamson had announced her wish to retire, but our first round of interviews had not produced a candidate able to accept our offer.
Parallel to this, and unrelated, I was alarmed and overwhelmed by what I saw and read of increased division and discourse in the public arena. Differences of opinion in policy and politics is what democracy is all about, but what was becoming clear was that the pitched voices 1. weren’t listening to one another, and 2. represented just the tip of an unstable iceberg. Beneath the waterline, I feared a monolith built on failures in education, opportunity, and engagement.
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