Homes, Curious George featured in NLR exhibits

8/25/14
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON
Debra Wood, Exhibits and Events Manager, sets up an exhibit Monday at the main branch of the William F. Laman Public Library in North Little Rock. The exhibit, "House and Home", which explores themes of our changing ideals of a home, opens on Sept. 1st.
8/25/14 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STEPHEN B. THORNTON Debra Wood, Exhibits and Events Manager, sets up an exhibit Monday at the main branch of the William F. Laman Public Library in North Little Rock. The exhibit, "House and Home", which explores themes of our changing ideals of a home, opens on Sept. 1st.

Starting Tuesday, a history of American houses and what details make them into homes is the theme of an exhibit at the William F. Laman Library in North Little Rock. Also, a back-story exhibit on the Curious George children's books will go on display at the library's Argenta branch.

"House & Home," an exploration of topics including house architecture, housing inequality and what items make up a home, will continue until Oct. 20 in the Laman Library at 2801 Orange St.

"The Wartime Escape: Margret and H.A. Rey's Journey from France," the story of the Curious George authors fleeing from the Nazi invasion of Paris, will last until Oct. 26 in the Argenta branch at 420 Main St.

Both exhibits are free and open to the public during library hours. Library hours can be found at lamanlibrary.org.

"House & Home deals with the story of the house from Colonial time to current time," said Dan Noble, public relations director for the Laman Library system. "It tells a very complete story of the house. Visitors to it will learn about such things as the economics of housing, the architecture of houses, the subprime mortgage crisis. It even goes into such issues as housing inequality."

But houses themselves, Noble said, "are just effectively a building." Housing includes not only neighborhood houses but also college dorms, military barracks and apartments. It's the people living inside those structures and how those people personalize and furnish them that make them into homes, according to exhibit materials.

The exhibit includes displays on how common household items -- telephones, televisions, kitchen appliances -- have evolved and how their meanings change through generations of families.

"House & Home" is organized by the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and is part of NEH on the Road, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibit is managed by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Exhibit materials took up 20 crates weighing 7,000 pounds, according to library officials. The rental cost to the library is $1,000 for its seven-week run.

"It's one of the largest exhibits we've ever had," Noble said. "It's a massive exhibit."

The exhibit at the Argenta branch will be familiar to many who have children or remember from their own childhoods the adventures of the monkey Curious George. But many may not know how the authors, Margret and H.A. Rey, had to flee Paris in June 1940 to escape the Nazi invasion at the start of World War II. The Jewish couple traveled through Spain, Portugal and Brazil before finally making their way to New York by October 1940.

The monkey was a character in one of the authors' stories published in 1939, when the first manuscript that would become the Curious George tales was already in the works, according to exhibit materials. One month after arriving in the United States, according to exhibit information, the Reys obtained a publishing contract for The Adventures of Fifi, which later was renamed The Adventures of Curious George.

The exhibit is based on The Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey by Louise Borden and illustrated by artist Allan Drummond.

The exhibit features 27 frame prints by Drummond.

The traveling exhibit is part of the ExhibitsUSA, a national program of the Mid-America Arts Alliance. The rental cost of the exhibit is $2,500.

"The exhibit follows their plight," Noble said. "Everybody has probably read Curious George. This is really the story of the authors. And it's perfect for that [Argenta branch] location."

Metro on 09/01/2014

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