Earlier this year a group of students at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth and their teacher, Julie Clark, collaborated with the Portland Museum of Art for its retrospective “A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr.” The students, dressed up as various sitters from Brewster’s portraits, sit or stand inside gilded frames and in front of backgrounds they have hand-painted to resemble those in Brewster’s works, and interpret for us the lives and times of the sitters they bring to life.
It’s an incredible collection of performances and, however small and quiet, a powerful component of this extraordinary exhibition. In his interpretation of one of Brewster’s more mysterious later portraits, the 1825 painting “Relative of Dr. Royal Brewster” — it is unclear whether the portrait is a relative of, the son of, or indeed Dr. Royal Brewster, John’s brother, himself — a young Baxter student wears an oversized tuxedo jacket to approximate the sitter’s impeccably fit double-breasted coat. Hair combed in 19th-century fashion, the boy signs these words, given in subtitle: “I think this man has a job. He reads a lot” (the young man in Brewster’s portrait holds a tiny volume between finger and thumb) — sizing up the fellow on the other end of this historical encounter, enacting his link to the history of intellectual and artistic and indeed political achievement that Brewster’s efforts were integral in opening up.
Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr. | at the Portland Museum of Art | through March 25 | Tues-Sun 10 am-5 pm; Fri 10 am-9 pm | 207.775.6148
Related:
Slow + steady, Baxter School tries to ban Phoenix freelancer, Natural selections, More 
- Slow + steady
Before grown-ups start talking to kids about certain things, a parent observes, kids start talking to grown-ups.
- Baxter School tries to ban Phoenix freelancer
In response to our continued efforts to investigate conditions for students at the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf on Mackworth Island, the school has attempted to ban Portland Phoenix freelancer Rick Wormwood from the island, which is state-owned property, and part of which is a state park.
- Natural selections
The gorilla is a black blur, out of nowhere, barreling into the cage door — clang! — and then zooming off through the fake rocks and trees.
- Twelve by 12
It’s before noon on a Saturday and I’m at the Glass Slipper.
- Kingston Station
In many ways, Kingston Station is an inferior version of Gaslight, which I reviewed in this space this past week.
- Letters to the Portland Editor, April 28, 2006
Readers fire back on meteorological misconceptions, our Deaf Film Festival coverage, and As Fast As's whereabouts
- Marital law
Susan’s top bone of marital contention involves “Romance.”
- All Tomorrow’s Parties II
At a festival like All Tomorrow’s Parties — a reminder of why so many of us entered the new millennium with tinnitus — an act like Edan might have seemed way out of place.
- The thinking ass
Before his imagery got captured and turned into poster art backdrops for dorm-room bong-hits, Salvador Dalí imagined it in service of a revolution in consciousness. “Accommodations of Desire: Surrealist Works on Paper Collected by Julien Levy,” at the Portland Museum of Art through this spring, traces the stages and offshoots of this revolution along the axis established by one crucial figure in its history and its dissemination — collector and dealer Julien Levy.
- Changing lives
People who love the arts are fond of saying that art changes our lives. Slideshow: The New England Conservatory’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra visits Venezuela and Brazil
- The Quiet
Deaf and mute since the age of seven, teenage foster kid Dot is more than just the loner/loser of her upscale Connecticut high school; she’s a sounding board for all who imagine that she can’t hear their secrets. Watch the trailer for The Quiet (QuickTime)
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Health and Fitness, Hearing Loss and Deafness, Cultural Institutions and Parks, More
, Health and Fitness, Hearing Loss and Deafness, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Portland Museum of Art, John Brewster, Less
