Art of Reading Tours Marry Art and Literature at The Mint Museum

I’m hopeful Mr. Darcy will magically materialize and join our Art of Reading tour at Mint Museum Randolph.

The Art of Reading tour is a free program that draws connections between art and literature, two of my passions. Our guide, docent Debbie Struble, spearheaded development of the tour at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, about two years ago to bring together art lovers and book lovers. Book clubs, especially, are huge fans of this blended format.

In a lively presentation, Debbie is referencing Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice to illustrate themes, historic events, social customs, points of view, artistic movements, and lifestyles regarding select pieces in the museum’s Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675-1825 exhibition. I think how fitting it would be for Mr. Darcy, the novel’s handsome and aloof protagonist, to pop into the gallery and tag team Debbie.

“Art of Reading tours have become a great way to support and publicize the museum,” Debbie explains. “We’ve been absolutely floored by the reception.”

I have a special fondness for The Mint Museum, Charlotte’s international center of art and design. Its architecturally striking uptown facility in the Levine Center for the Arts opened in 2010, the same year I moved to Charlotte from Pittsburgh. It was the first cultural institution I visited in my new hometown. Hosting Art of Reading tours to upend traditional ways to visit museums jibes with the Mint’s own somewhat unconventional beginnings.

During the Great Depression, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted his New Deal creating programs to foster economic relief, Charlotte’s Mary Myers Dwelle launched her own “new deal.”

In a bold act of female leadership for the times, she organized a small band of residents to save from demolition the historic building that originally housed the first branch of the U.S. Mint outside of Philadelphia. They relocated the structure (now called Mint Museum Randolph) to its current location in Charlotte’s Eastover neighborhood, and in 1936 opened The Mint Museum, North Carolina’s first art museum.

Eighty-one years later, a building that once made money – literally – continues to make art come alive. Now, if only it could contrive to bring Mr. Darcy to life.

On the Art of Reading tour

Pride and Prejudice is an inspired choice for the Art of Reading tour to link to Portals to the Past, a collection known for its scope and quality.

Surely Austen’s fictional story of love, manners, and values during the English Regency period is familiar. In a nutshell: Elizabeth Bennet, one of five unmarried daughters of a middle-class family, meets wealthy, eligible bachelor Mr. Darcy. He possesses an unconcealed haughtiness and vanity (pride). Spirited Elizabeth tends to make hasty judgments based on misguided first impressions (prejudice).

They’re clearly made for each other. The plot thickens, true natures and motives are revealed, and love triumphs.

Austen published her beloved romance novel in 1813. Her work is still popular and relevant today. Pride and Prejudice has undergone several film adaptations (even, inexplicably, a zombie version that a fellow tour-goer says is a kick) and inspired an abundance of literary imitators.

My personal choice for Mr. Darcy, should he miraculously become incarnated as a real person, would be as actor Colin Firth in his swoon-inducing role from the 1995 BBC TV series.

Despite this being 2017 and Mint Museum Randolph’s location thousands of miles from the pretend Mr. Darcy’s ancestral estate of Pemberley, I believe he would feel at home among the centuries-old British pottery and porcelain. Portals to the Past is more than an admirable display of historical artifacts. It offers windows for us modern-day viewers and readers to glimpse life in bygone days – both real lives and the imaginary lives in our book.

Alas, Mr. Darcy remains a no-show. Undeterred, we proceed for a faithful look at what was and fanciful musings on what might have been.

Debbie sets the stage for our Art of Reading tour with a look at the volatile time frame of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which was roughly 1810-1814.

“It wasn’t all sweetness and light, beautiful tea parties and balls, and gorgeous homes,” she says. “Serious stuff was going on.”

By that she means England’s King George III (aka Mad King George) dealing with the blow of losing the American colonies, the revolution in neighboring France, the Napoleonic war, the rise of the Industrial Revolution resulting in less farm production, and his eldest son’s appointment as regent. On the other hand, thanks to the enlightenment of King George and Queen Charlotte (namesake of my fair city), reading, writing, the arts, science, and medicine were becoming accessible to more people. It’s appropriate, then, that massive likenesses of King George and Queen Charlotte dominate one of the galleries.

Of special consequence to the Bennet family of five daughters was that inheritances still passed through the male line. Fate put them at the mercy of their cousin, insensible and self-important clergyman Mr. Collins, husband of Elizabeth’s best friend, Charlotte.

“God forbid,” Debbie shudders at that outcome, adding that marrying well was the only means for women to get ahead.

Just as Elizabeth strolled with her aunt and uncle through the vast portrait gallery at Pemberley before unexpectedly encountering Mr. Darcy, we admire several large paintings in elaborate frames.

Portrait of Mr. Nicholas Sprimont and his Family depicts colorful potpourri vases akin to those displayed in an adjoining glass case. Wealthy people, like Mr. Darcy and his friend Mr. Bingley, placed these vases on their mantels to keep the air sweet. This was a necessary defense, given how pungent house interiors became without air conditioning and when closed for the winter. Further, heavy silks and velvets the upper class wore became, shall we say, aromatic thanks to once-a-week bathing and without benefit of dry cleaning.

Mr. Darcy hailed from Derbyshire, land of potters. Debbie points to a fuddling cup, a fun piece of 18th century pottery used in drinking games. She laughingly calls it a breathalyzer. It might have come into play when characters like devious Mr. Wickham frequented posting houses, or inns, or when Mr. Bingley entertained friends at home at Netherfield.

Standing up close, I spot holes in the interior walls of the small, interconnected cups. Participants had to determine the order in which to drink without spilling any contents, most likely beer or cider. Success meant “you weren’t blitzed, so you could stay,” Debbie notes.

Perhaps Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy’s aunt, commissioned multiple sets of fine Wedgewood china and beautiful silver for entertaining. More fitting for the Bennets’ household budget would have been Hester Bateman’s less ostentatious and, therefore, less costly silver pieces. A widow, she inherited her silversmith husband’s tools. Taking up the challenge of this rare 18th century bequest, she produced her own designs, like the elegant silver teapot on a stand. Unfortunately, competitors, i.e. men, put their own silver stamps on her designs, so few of hers are known. Like Hester, Elizabeth was forward thinking, an exception to the rule for women.

Many Pride and Prejudice homes would have had a bust of Czar Alexander like the brightly glazed earthenware version staring a bit creepily at us. A strong ally of Britain, he formed the coalition that helped defeat Emperor Napoleon.

Outdoorsy Elizabeth wouldn’t have worn Wedgewood jewelry or such delicate, fabric shoes during her long, rambling walks in the countryside. Nevertheless, I could easily envision her traipsing across England’s Lake District in an 18th century landscape painting.

I’m enchanted by Debbie’s skill at weaving together facts and histories of the Mint’s British ceramics with her musings about fictional characters, scenes, and happenings from the book. Occasionally, her commentary confuses some Art of Reading tour guests, she admits. They have difficulty reconciling the real with the unreal. “Did Elizabeth share tea at the Collins’ using this exact Wedgewood plate?” they ask. “Did Mr. Darcy actually play cards atop this rosewood table with inlaid ivory?” “Do you have Mr. Darcy’s ruffled shirt?”

She concludes with a final tease. “It could be. Could have happened. Don’t know since they don’t really exist and we don’t really have any documentation. But it’s fun to imagine.”

With that, I head home to brew a cup of English Breakfast tea and daydream about Colin Firth, er, Mr. Darcy.