“A State of Wondering”
On November 15th, the Brandywine River Museum had the pleasure of having Richard Meryman come to the museum for a lecture.
For those who have not yet seen or read the book, I highly recommend it. The pages are filled with bright, beautiful pictures and the text is primarily Andrew Wyeth’s own words as recorded in over four hundred hours of conversations with Meryman. Other portions of the book are quotes from important people in Wyeth’s life including his wife, Betsy and son, Jamie.
Meryman was an absolute pleasure to listen to as he told his captive audience of around 170 people about Andrew Wyeth. To supplement what he was saying, audio was played of Meryman and Wyeth conversing in interviews. As your ears adjusted to the static and background noise of the tapes, you could hear Meryman and the rather high pitched Andrew talking about different aspects of his art. It was truly fascinating. My favorite part was when Andrew was describing how he would sometimes paint something then “leave it in a state of wondering and dream about it” for a while before coming back to it.
After introducing us to Andrew, Meryman then told us about Christina Olson, the woman from the world-renowned painting of Christina’s World. He showed us some objects from her home such as her makeup powder puff. Most exciting of all though was that we got to hear Christina’s recorded voice as he interviewed her.
After the lecture, Meryman went upstairs to the third floor for the book signing. I joined the back of the line and was so happy to hear everything that people were saying about the talk, Meryman’s book and even about the museum itself.
As people patiently waited in line clutching brand new copies of his latest book from the museum store or dog-eared and well-read copies of his older books, they chatted positively and excitedly about the lecture they just heard.
I left that day at the museum with new found knowledge on Andrew Wyeth and afascinating new book signed by Meryman. It was a great lecture and an absolute privilege to hear Richard Meryman speak and especially to hear Christina Olson and Andrew Wyeth through the crackling audio tell us more about their lives.
