My enthusiasm for one of our past projects inspired me to write my first blog post.  The project consisted of a marathon reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which was presented in the context of the exhibition Ideal (Dis-)Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer (October 24, 2008 – October 3, 2009). The idea for the reading, as well as the presentation of paintings by Old Masters, was to bring recognized classics into a contemporary realm and reach as broad and as diverse a public as possible.

Most exhibitions are documented with catalogues, and we did this both on the web and in print for the Old Masters exhibition. But how does one communicate the experience of an ephemeral two day reading in our exhibition space? Laurent Torno, a St. Louis based videographer, filmed each of the 74 readers and we ended up with an enormous amount of footage. The question of how to condense this in a web-relevant form was discussed at length.

I think that Laurent’s solution worked well: each participant is represented while reading a short passage, showing the spectrum of the text, the different reading styles, and the diversity of readers. When I was going through the final result, I was struck by the focus of each of the readers, but also by the different ways each bended over the text  – their methods of intonation, how they dealt with the hair that inevitably gets in the way, etc. Some pronounced the words more to themselves, others were in a theatrical mode, while yet others were treading carefully through the minefield of Greek names. What also comes through is that this ancient text continues to be of relevance to our modern world.

Take a look and, by all means, feel free to share it with your friends if it does something for you.–Matthias Waschek, Director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

Here is the final schedule of Saturday readers for A Marathon Metamorphoses. Be sure to listen to K. Curtis Lyle, Carol North, and Avery Springer read a selection of myths from Ovid’s Metamorphoses by clicking on the video link next to their names. Read the rest of this entry »

The buzz around the Pulitzer yesterday morning was that Saturday marathon reader Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes (one of the most read art blogs in the country) wrote a second post about his trip last week to the Pulitzer. If you haven’t caught all the skinny surrounding last weekend’s marathon, I’ve compiled Green’s notes along with a few other internet sources into a list for you. Read the rest of this entry »

For more photos from the weekend, please visit the Pulitzer’s Flickr page.

Or is it your bookmark?

Well, in any case, since 10am this morning, A Marathon Metamorphoses has been going full-throttle. I would like to tell you more, but I’m in a rush to listen to Stefene Russell, who begins in a few, so here are a couple video tidbits to tide over anyone out there glued to the computer, eagerly awaiting a blog update:

Prominent writer and David May Distinguished Professor of Emeritus William H. Gass kicks-off the marathon with the first 15-minute read at 10am.

2:00pm reader Richard Newman, Editor for River Styx, reflects on his fifteen minutes.

It is interesting to note when a translator comes to his text. For his next book Mandelbaum retreated, back to the Greeks, to Homer, but does not, as most translators do, begin with the Iliad. It appears through dates of publication, for some time at least, that the Odyssey and Ovid were companions, with the fanciful lies of Odyseuss book to book with the stories Ovid tells. After all, Ovid is, above all, a storyteller, as is Odyseuss or Ulysses, as we have him from the Latin poet. (I’m not saying there isn’t a little blood in the Odyssey but the Cyclops produces a few more laughs than Cassandra does.) Read the rest of this entry »

Judy Mann, a curator at Saint Louis Art Museum, describes Joachim Wtewael’s idealized rendition of Ovid’s Cephalus and Procris, a dramatic couple who can be read about in Book 7 of the Metamorphoses. The painting is in the Pulitzer’s Main Gallery for Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer, and is on loan from the St. Louis Art Museum.

This post was written by Lorin Cuoco, a consultant for the St. Louis Poetry Center, who has written and edited six books, including St. Louis: A Literary Guide, which she co-wrote with A Metamorphoses Marathon reader William Gass. She and Gass also founded the International Writers Center at Washington University.

The author of the Arabian Nights, Boccaccio, Dante, Chaucer, Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton—all were students of Ovid, some were thieves. Publius Ovidius Naso was born in Sulmo in 43 B.C. His father took him to Rome at an early age, to study law, the preparation even then for a public career. It was the study of rhetoric, though, that he was drawn to and which would bring him fame and then infamy. In A.D. 8 the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis on the Black Sea. His reason? The immorality of Ovid’s love poems, Ars Amatoria (the Art of Love). Ovid himself makes reference to the offense, saying it was a poem, (and a mistake) in a poem called Tristia, written in exile. Sad, devastated, abandoned to a bad climate and unrefined inhabitants, never to return to his beloved Rome after many appeals to Augustus, and his successor, Tiberius, Ovid died in A.D. 17 or 18. Read the rest of this entry »

To produce projects which require a wide-range of specializations–for example theater for Staging Old Masters or Alzheimer’s Disease for Let’s Look–the Pulitzer regularly partners with expert organizations. For A Marathon Metamorphoses, a public reading of a fifteen-book poem, the Pulitzer has united with the literary organizations River Styx and the St. Louis Poetry Center.

The St. Louis Poetry Center promotes poetry in St. Louis by various means, such as workshops, classes, and readings. A consultant for the Poetry Center, Lorin Cuoco, has orchestrated marathon readings in the past and met with Kress Fellow Hannah Fullgraf, Community Engagement Coordinator Lisa Harper-Chang, and Director Matthias Waschek for the designing of A Marathon Metamorphoses. She will also be a reader during the event.

In the following video, Cuoco gives her thoughts on A Marathon Metamorphoses. She also mentions that copies of the Metamorphoses will be being sold at the event. Those books will be provided by another team player, St. Louis local bookstore Left Bank Books.

For those of you who know 3716 Washington Blvd as simply a place to view visual art, you might be asking yourself, What does reading Ovid have to do with the Pulitzer?

For one thing, the Pulitzer’s current exhibition includes Joachim Wtewael’s painting Cephalus and Procris (The Death of Procris), inspired by Book 7 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s an obvious connection but doesn’t give the bigger picture for why the Pulitzer would devote an entire weekend to the topic.

In the video below, the director of the Pulitzer, Matthias Waschek, explains that the Foundation is indeed the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, exploring art forms beyond those mounted to its gallery walls. Its exhibitions (i.e. Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer) are arranged so that the artwork and architecture engage with each other, its viewers, and other areas of culture, such as Music, Theater, Social Work, and now Literature.

Part of the Pulitzer’s mission is that of a laboratory–to experiment and investigate. By its closing on October 3, Ideal (Dis-) Placements will have been on view in the Pulitzer’s building for nearly a whole year, providing the time to maximize pairing it with other areas of study, discovering new ways in which they can work with one another. A Marathon Metamorphoses, by virtue of the variety people participating, will cause a number of topics to converge, but its initial partnership will be that of Old Master paintings to a Classic in Literature.