MEDIA CONTACT: Judy Moore at 847-491-4819 or jkm229@northwestern.edu

May 11, 2004

Summer Exhibition Features Early Cinema

EVANSTON, Ill. --- “Persistence of Vision: The Evolution of the Moving Image, 1895-1910,” the summer 2004 exhibition at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston campus, will explore the art and technology of pre-cinema and early cinema.

On view to the public from July 14 through Aug. 22, the exhibition also will examine the large and small ways the moving image has changed art and culture.

Drawn from the private collection of Chicagoan Carey Williams, and organized by the Block Museum of Art, the exhibition will feature more than 25 objects ranging from 19th century optical toys to pioneering cameras, projectors and films.

“The optical toys featured in the exhibition were precursors of the motion picture,” said Will Schmenner, assistant curator of film for the Block Museum and the exhibition curator. “The zoetrope, for example, uses hand-colored lithographs and graphics with a cartoon aesthetic to create short views of acrobats tumbling, birds flying and couples dancing.”

The exhibition will feature rare early film equipment from the young motion picture industry such as the Lumière cinematograph -- the first motion picture camera -- and the 1897 Wrench projector -- the first film projector available for public sale.

According to Schmenner, “such inventions gave the public a new vision of movement and a new understanding of time -- one that was reflected in the faster pace of an increasingly technological culture and society.”

The exhibition also will explore the early motion picture industry, which laid the groundwork for the feature-length movie that became a dominant form of entertainment and representation during the past century.

The summer exhibition will include demonstrations of early film equipment, make and take projects for children and adults, and screenings of early motion pictures. The screenings, which will include a selection of films by Georges Méliès, the famous French magician who made hundreds of short movies, and by the Lumière Brothers, inventors of the first motion picture camera, will be held in the Block Museum’s 150-seat, state-of-the-art James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium.