Morris Museum Reopens With New Exhibits and the Return of Jazz on the Back Deck and Lots of Strings Festival

The Morris Museum has announced its return to regular opening hours, beginning Wednesday, April 14. Opening hours for the general public will be 11:00AM - 5:00PM, Wednesday through Sunday.

The Morris Museum had moved to a weekend-only opening schedule during the winter months, after having reopened to the public last July. "Now, our weekend attendance has been steadily increasing," says Cleveland Johnson, President/CEO, "as spring weather and vaccines have people venturing back out into public again. Our galleries, full of breath-taking surprises, are looking better than ever!"

Current exhibitions include the indescribable, must-see-in-person Threads of Consciousness: the Tapestries of Jon Eric Riis, opulent, virtuosic artistry in woven silk and metallic thread, often embellished with pearls, gemstone beads, and crystals. Generous support of this exhibition is provided by M&T Bank.

A special exhibit, inspired by the Museum's acclaimed Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata, is Those Beautiful Rags, a look at American Ragtime music, a precursor of Jazz, and the mechanical instruments that brought it alive in bars, restaurants, and parlors.

Newly opened (on Saturday, April 10) in the Museum's 4000-square-foot Main Gallery, Natural Essence-Motion Perceived examines our relationship to the natural world through a captivating collection of kinetic and illusory works. Featured are four artists, Gianluca Bianchino, Alexandra Limpert, Sui Park, and Rein Triefeldt who find beauty in everyday materials, transforming them to reflect natural phenomena, from the subterranean depths below to the cosmos above. Leadership support for this exhibition is provided by Will and Mary Leland.

Two new installations in the Court provide a sneak peek of future exhibitions that demonstrate our commitment to "art, sound. and motion." New Acquisitions: Video-Paintings by the Safarani Sisters features three works by twin Iranian emerging artists Bahareh and Farzaneh Safarani. A delicate veil of video breathes life into their oil paintings with layers of canvas and motion, which will be explored further here this fall in their very first solo museum exhibition. Special Installation Spotlight: Don't Go Quiet by BREAKFAST is an interactive kinetic work by the Brooklyn-based new media art collaborative that explores social causes. This representation of a flag--which responds to the hashtag #blacklivesmatter as well as to your physical movement as you approach the artwork--will be included in their first solo museum exhibition here in spring 2022.

Of course, the Museum's permanent Earth Science and Native American galleries remain open, as well as the Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata, with live demonstrations daily at 2:00PM. For families with children, the "Mega-Model Train" exhibit remains a perennial favorite.

As the Morris Museum's gallery spaces resume full operations, so too does its outdoor performance activity on the "Back Deck." Performances last summer on the Museum's back parking lot were one of the few venues nationwide last summer where audiences could gather, socially distanced in 8-foot blocks, to hear live, in-person performances. Described by The New York Times as a "Live Music Splendor in a Parking Lot", the Morris Museum presented a total of 19 live performances between July and October of last year.

Now "Jazz on the Back Deck" and the classically-programmed "Lot of Strings Music Festival," return with about twenty concerts each during the summer and early-fall months featuring some of the most exciting artists and ensembles performing today.

"We are thrilled to continue both "Jazz on the Back Deck" and "Lot of Strings Music Festival" after the overwhelming success last Summer and Fall" says Curatorial Director of Live Arts, Brett Wellman Messenger, "Connecting great artists with audiences is at the core of what we do here and although it is more challenging now than ever, I am so excited with how we continue to overcome those challenges to create meaningful experiences through live performance."

"Lot of Strings Music Festival" is made possible by a gift by its founding donor, F. Gary Knapp.

View the entire season of outdoor performances online at: https://morrismuseum.org/outdoor-events/

For specific hours, admissions, directions and safety guidelines visit: https://morrismuseum.org/visit/

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