New Contemporary Arts Programme at the Brontë Parsonage Museum

Apart from today's meagre newsround we have this hot-from-the-oven press release from the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

BRONTË PARSONAGE MUSEUM ANNOUNCES NEW CONTEMPORARY ARTS PROGRAMME

The Brontë Parsonage Museum has announced a new contemporary arts programme to run from April to September 2009. The new season will include Ghosts, an exhibition of landscape photographs of the moors around Haworth by major British artist Sam Taylor-Wood. A series of photographs of Writers’ rooms, serialised in The Guardian each Saturday by photographer Eamonn McCabe, will also be exhibited at the Parsonage.

The museum will also be developing its programme of literary readings and events, following recent funding from Arts Council England to develop literary events that showcase and celebrate women’s writing. Bestselling author Kate Atkinson will begin the new programme on Thursday 23 April, reading from her latest novel When Will There Be Good News? Writers Justine Picardie, Joanne Harris, Amanda Craig and Jude Morgan, along with Mills & Boon author Kate Walker will be taking part in literary events in June. Playwright and critic Bonnie Greer will be reading from her new novel at the Parsonage in September.

“The contemporary arts programme is going from strength to strength and continues to inspire artists and writers of the highest calibre to work with us. What is more, the Arts Council funding marks an exciting new stage for the arts programme. The Brontë sisters were pioneering women writers and this project will enable the museum to celebrate their legacy by working with both established and emerging women writers and supporting a new Writer in Residence scheme at the museum”.
Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer

As part of the literature project, the museum will also be launching a new monthly book group on Wednesday afternoons to discuss contemporary fiction and the work of visiting authors.

Brontë Parsonage Museum’s Contemporary Arts Programme April – September 2009, full programme details:

Kate Atkinson
Thursday 23 April, 7.30pm
The Old Schoolroom, Church St, Haworth
Kate Atkinson’s first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World (2002), and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet (1997), Emotionally Weird (2000), Case Histories (2004) and One Good Turn (2006). Case Histories introduced her readers to Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, and won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster. Her latest novel, When Will There Be Good News, also features Jackson Brodie.

Tickets are £5 and should be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640188/ jenna.holmes@bronte.org.uk

Writers’ Rooms
Friday 1 May until Monday 6 July
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Renowned photographer Eamonn McCabe publishes the series Writers’ Rooms, documenting the writing spaces of novelists, biographers and poets, in The Guardian each Saturday. This exhibition of prints from the series offers a fascinating glimpse into the desk spaces of some of the most important writers working today.

Eamonn McCabe made his name as a sports photographer for The Observer in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1988 he became Picture Editor of The Guardian and has been awarded Picture Editor of the Year six times. In 2001 he returned to full-time photography, specialising in portraiture. A selection of photographs from his series Artists and their Studios was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2008.

Free on admission to the museum

The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë
Friday 5 June, 3.30pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
To coincide with the museum’s new special exhibition focusing on Branwell Brontë, Juliet Barker and Justine Picardie discuss the life and creative legacy of the reprobate Brontë brother.

Juliet Barker was educated at Bradford Girls' Grammar School and St Anne's College, Oxford, where she obtained a doctorate in medieval history. From 1983 to 1989 she was the curator and librarian of the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Her books include The Brontës, which won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award and was short-listed for both the AT&T Non-Fiction Prize and the Marsh Biography Award, The Brontës: A Life in Letters, Wordsworth: A Life and, most recently, Agincourt: The King, The Campaign, The Battle and The Tournament in England 1100 – 1400. In 2001 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Justine Picardie is the author of Daphne (2007) which tells the story of Daphne du Maurier’s obsession with Branwell Brontë; If the Spirit Moves You (2001); Wish I May (2004) and My Mother’s Wedding Dress (2005). She has also written introductions to the Virago Modern Classics editions of Daphne du Maurier’s The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (2004) and The King’s General (2004). Formerly the features editor of British Vogue, she is a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine and writes for Harpers Bazaar.

Admission is £5.00 and advance booking is not required.

The Brontës and Romance
Saturday 6 June, 8pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
The Brontës’ novels are often described as being amongst the greatest love stories of English literature. This discussion, chaired by Justine Picardie, examines the influence of the Brontës’ works on the romance genre.

Amanda Craig is the author of six novels, including Love in Idleness (2003), a modern retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and most recently Hearts and Minds (2009). Amanda contributes regularly to The Independent on Sunday and The New Statesman and is a columnist for the Sunday Times. She has written and contributed to several articles on romantic fiction, describing it as one of the oldest and most distinguished genres in literature.

Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley and has published eight novels including Chocolat (1999), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp; Holy Fools (2003), Gentlemen and Players (2005) and The Lollipop Shoes (2007). Her books are published in over 40 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. Her novel Five Quarters of the Orange (2001) was shortlisted for the 2002 Parker Romantic Novel of the Year award.

Jude Morgan studied on the University of East Anglia MA Course in Creative Writing under Malcolm Bradbury and has published five critically acclaimed historical novels, Symphony (2006); Passion (2005) and The King’s Touch (2002). His nineteenth-century romances, An Accomplished Woman (2007) and Indiscretion (2006), have been likened to the works of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. Jude Morgan’s most recent book, The Taste of Sorrow, is published in May 2009 and tells the extraordinary story of the Brontë family.

Kate Walker has written over fifty books for Mills & Boon. A huge admirer of the Brontës, she wrote her MA thesis on the work of Charlotte and Emily Brontë and one of her most recent novels, Bedded by the Greek Billionaire (2008) is loosely inspired by Wuthering Heights. Kate is also the author of The 12 Point Guide To Writing Romance which won a Cata Romance award and she lectures on romance writing.

Tickets are £10 and should be booked in advance.
Bookings: 01535 640195 / peter.morrison@bronte.org.uk

The Brontës in the World of the Arts
Friday 3 July, 7.30pm
West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth
The Brontës were passionate about the visual arts, but little critical attention has been paid to the influence of music, theatre and material culture on their lives and literature. This panel discussion, chaired by Patsy Stoneman, brings together the contributors of a newly published collection of essays The Brontës in the World of the Arts, which presents new research on the Brontës’ relationship to the arts more widely. Christine Alexander, Sandra Hagan, Meg Harris-Williams and Juliette Wells discuss the significance of the creative arts on the Brontës’ writings.

Admission is £5 and should be booked in advance.

Ghosts
Friday 17 July until Monday 2 November
Brontë Parsonage Museum
Sam Taylor-Wood’s landscape series, Ghosts, was shot on the moors around Haworth, where the fictional Wuthering Heights is set, and documents her own emotional response to that landscape and the novel’s brutal take on desire and suffering that she finds expressed within it. Ghosts was originally exhibited as part of Sam Taylor-Wood’s most recent exhibition Yes I No at the White Cube Gallery, London in October 2008 and the museum has worked with the artist to create new prints of the photographs for exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London in 1967 and has had numerous group and solo exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1997) and The Turner Prize (1998). Solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zurich (1997), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2000), Hayward Gallery, London (2002), State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (2004), MCA, Moscow (2004), BALTIC, Gateshead (2006), MCA Sydney (2006) MoCA Cleveland (2007) and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2008).


Bonnie Greer
Wednesday 9 September, 2pm
The Old Schoolroom, Church St, Haworth
Bonnie Greer is a playwright, critic, broadcaster and novelist and she will be reading from and discussing her new novel, Entropy (2009), as well as the influence of the Brontës. Born in America, Bonnie Greer studied theatre in Chicago with David Mamet and in New York with Elia Kazan and wrote a number of plays for American theatres in Chicago and New York. She has won the Verity Bargate Award for best new play and has had numerous plays produced for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. Her previous novel is Hanging by Her Teeth (1994).

Admission is £3 and advance booking is not required.

Quite a remarkable series of events, we think.

Categories: Brontë Parsonage Museum, Brontë Society