Blast from the past
VIA A MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE PRESS RELEASE, today, with thanks to Bernie Wilson for the link....
"Roy Lichtenstein’s project sketches and small scale models will, for the first time ever, unite with the Young America boat hull he produced for the 1995 America’s Cup in an exhibition at Middlebury College Museum of Art in Vermont. The exhibition is the result of an effort led by the Kevin P. Mahaney Center for the Arts Foundation.
[As many of my sailing friends will know, Mr Lichtenstein designed the distinctive graphics for the hull, not the hull itself. The PACT team was led by our longtime friend and former AC colleague, John K Marshall, who recently married another longtime friend, the esteemed sailing journalist Margherita Marshall (ITA, née Bottini). I am pleased that John will finally be inducted into the AC Hall of Fame later this year; so, too, are his close friends SDYC Staff Commodore Fred Frye and wife Joy, whom I bumped into last weekend in SD. For AC trivia buffs, how was it that the MERMAID did not win the 1995 defense trials, but still raced in the 1995 Cup? --TFE]
"Commissioned in 1994 by PACT 95, a Maine-based sailing syndicate, Mermaid, designed by Lichtenstein, adorned the hull of the boat Young America, which raced in the 1995 America’s Cup under skipper Kevin Mahaney. This exhibition will be the first time that all elements of the original project can be viewed together – including, among other works, four pieces from The Osaka City Museum of Modern Art’s collection, a sketch courtesy of the Kevin P. Mahaney Center for the Arts Foundation and the hull, which is currently in the permanent collection of Storm King Art Center. The exhibition is timed to align with the start of the America’s Cup, which will take place in Bermuda in May and June 2017.
"The premiere of Reflections on a Mermaid, a documentary feature created by prize-winning filmmaker Theodore Bogosian, will become an integral part of the exhibition. It documents the entire America’s Cup project, from the 1994 commissioning to the events that led to the opening of the exhibition, and features rare and exclusive coverage of Roy Lichtenstein in his studio, his gallery and at the christening in San Diego, as well as Kevin Mahaney at the helm of Young America during the 1995 America’s Cup Defender Series."
