Special Exhibits
Edward Gorey & Cats and Dogs
Houghton Library at Harvard
Friday, December 5 at 11 am
Houghton Library at Harvard
Friday, December 5 at 11 am
And now for something completely different! We have arranged a private tour of two special exhibits at Harvard's Houghton Library in Harvard Square. The Gloomy Gallery features a variety of Edward Gorey’s macabre and oddly amusing written work, illustrations, cut-outs and more. Gorey attended Harvard asan undergraduate.
The other exhibit Creature Comforts: 175 Years of Dogs and Cats at Home, showcases original children’s books of people, pets, and home from the 19th and 20 century, including authors Beatrix Potter and Margaret Wise Brown.
Scroll down to read more about these exhibits.
To register, contact Lois Gerson at loiswrites@gmail.com. There is no cost for this tour but space is limited. We will have lunch together in the Square following our tour. Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, Lamont Library, and Loeb House, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts.
Edward Gorey: The Gloomy Gallery
Over the course of his eccentric and productive career, book designer and illustrator Edward Gorey (1925–2000, AB ’50) became renowned for offbeat and often macabre subject matter in a “sinister-slash-cosy” style that was both humorous and unnerving. The items in this exhibition immerse viewers in Gorey’s inventive and comically dark creative universe, which delights in revealing the “little bit of uneasiness in everything.” Several drawings are on display for the first time, including some early works from his Harvard student years.
“There’s no place like home” – and for many people home is incomplete without a pet dog or cat. Spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, the items in this display delve into the powerful relationship between pets and the idea of home, and its associations of belonging and security, safety and acceptance, and obedience and propriety. They also explore the fine line between tameness and wildness, and the limits of the human social order.