The Moveable Feast: Experience the Modernist Salon

Date: December 1, 2008 Toronto By: Dr. Irene Gammel

Last night we opened the exhibition The Moveable Feast: Experience the Modernist Salon. Over 120 visitors from Ryerson and York University crowded into the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, which had been transformed into a salon with portraits of modernist salonières Lou Arensberg and Florine Stettheimer and their interior spaces and décor. Visitors enjoyed jazz improvisations, live dance and Dada sound poetry, along with a culinary installation with recipes from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (rice pudding and fudge being especially popular). Letters and poetry by Ezra Pound and the Baroness Elsa were displayed in an epistolary installation. Visitors embraced their androgynous personae by dressing up and having their photographs taken with a slide show making them instantaneous participants in the salon. The exhibit was organized by twelve graduate students in the joint Ryerson-York Communication and Culture graduate program as their final project in my CC8829 Modernist Literary Circles course. The exhibit runs until January 30, 2009.

Click here for photos taken by Jean-Paul Boudreau
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