What:
Media preview of First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare
Who:
Dr. Krista Sue-Lo Twu
First Folio organizer and associate professor of Medieval & Renaissance Literature
Matt Rosendahl
First Folio organizer and director of the Kathryn A. Martin Library
Ken Bloom
First Folio organizer and director of the Tweed Museum of Art
When:
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 9:30 a.m.
Where:
Tweed Museum of Art, 1201 Ordean Court
The media is invited to be the first to experience First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, a national traveling exhibition of the Shakespeare First Folio, on Tuesday, October 4 at 9:30 a.m. at the Tweed Museum of Art, 1201 Ordean Court.
Exhibit organizers will serve as docents to this rare cultural artifact and explain how UMD became the sole site in Minnesota to host the exhibit.
Grand Opening
A community-wide First Folio celebration gets underway at the First Folio grand opening on Thursday, October 6. The program starts at 5:30 p.m. in UMD's Bohannon Hall 90, 1207 Ordean Court, followed by a reception and the exhibit in the Tweed Museum of Art.
At the program, Dr. Paul Cannan, associate professor of English, will present “A Tale of Two First Folios: The Works of Benjamin Jonson (1616)" and "Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (1623).”
The College of St. Scholastica’s Center for Early Music, The Twin Ports Choral Project, and The UMD Fine Arts Academy will serenade the event with Shakespeare era music.
Calendar Runneth Over
Community partners are planning corresponding programs to bolster the Duluth exhibition of one of the world's most treasured books. The calendar runs the gamut from an intimate, theatre-in-the-round performance at the Kathryn A. Martin Library to a remix of Shakespeare with original music by the indie rock group Low at the Karpeles Manuscript Library.
"The convergence of so many creative and educational communities demonstrates how Duluth places a very high value on literature, history, and arts," says Krista Sue-Lo Twu, the head of the English department and organizer of the exhibition.
Twu adds that community support is a large part of what made UMD's application to host the exhibit stand out. "It was the breadth and depth of community engagement, brought together with the vibrant academic programs in the Humanities and Arts at UMD."
About the First Folio
When the First Folio arrives in a few weeks, its pages will be opened to the most quoted line from Shakespeare and one of the most quoted lines in the world, “to be or not to be” from Hamlet. Accompanying the rare book will be a multi-panel exhibition exploring the significance of Shakespeare, then and now, with additional digital content and interactive activities. UMD is planning numerous programs for the public and families around the First Folio exhibition.
The First Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death.
The Folger Shakespeare Library, in partnership with Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, is touring a First Folio of Shakespeare in 2016 to all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. UMD was selected as a host site for Minnesota in February, 2015.
The Folger Shakespeare Library holds 82 copies of the First Folio, by far the largest collection in the world and more than a third of the 233 known copies in the world today. It is believed that 750 copies were originally printed.