Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward to Open at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 3/12

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The great Noël Coward is coming back to New York. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and The Noël Coward Foundation will open the multimedia exhibition Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward on March 12. The exhibition is opening in conjunction to a city-wide festival celebrating the life and career of Noël Coward. Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward will be on display from March 12 to August 18, 2012 in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free.

Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward is a major exhibition focusing on Coward as playwright, composer, director, stage, screen, and cabaret performer, and international celebrity. It represents the most comprehensive exhibition on Noël Coward ever assembled, including unique material from the collections of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

This Exhibition offers unparalleled access to the Coward Archives and draws on public and private collections in Europe and the US as well as his homes in Switzerland and Jamaica, Star Quality features photographs, posters, programs, scripts, costumes, personal effects, memorabilia, and other objects, many previously unseen, as well as rare audio and video components. It will cover all aspects of his life and work including his relationship with Hollywood, his work as a spy during the Second World War, his worldwide celebrity status, and an extensive section on his life-long love of New York, which began in 1921. Amongst the items on display will be one of the Oscars awarded in 1933 for CAVALCADE, his 1971 special Tony Award, the gorgeous Irene Sharaff gown worn by Florence Henderson in THE GIRL WHO CAME TO SUPPER, original costume and set design sketches by Gladys Calthrop, Edward Molyneux, and Cecil Beaton, and of course several notable dressing gowns worn by Coward. The Exhibition will also feature original letters, lyrics and manuscripts as well as some of the remarkable first night gifts given by and to Coward during his extraordinary career which reveal much about the man and the era in which he lived.

The exhibition is in conjunction with a city-wide Noël Coward Festival which will take place between March and August 2012. Amongst other organizations taking part are the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Paley Center for Media, The Juilliard School, The Actors Company, TACT, The Mabel Mercer Foundation, The Light Opera of New York, and The Drama Bookshop. Further details on all the festival events can be found on the dedicated website www.noelcowardinnewyork.com.