It’s fitting that Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday should be celebrated with an exhibition featuring a lock of the writer’s hair and a chunk of his coffin.
The exhibit Edgar Allan Poe: More Than A Poet, will open at the Enoch Pratt Central Library on Jan. 20 and will also display some of Poe’s handwritten letters to family and friends. “It’s a great way to get inside Poe’s head during his time, to see more of his human aspect,” said Roswell Encina, director of communications at the Pratt.
» www.nevermore2009.com
The exhibit is part of Nevermore 2009, a yearlong celebration honoring the 200th birthday of Poe, coordinated by the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. The festival officially kicks off this month with a variety of events to celebrate Poe’s birthday on Jan. 19, and will be followed by a year of lectures, wine tastings, art exhibitions, theatrical performances and more.
“Poe obviously has a strong and important connection with Baltimore. The 200th anniversary of his birth is an important milestone in Baltimore history as well as American literary culture,” said Sam Rogers, chief marketing officer at BACVA. “For us, the Poe House and Museum, the work that he did here, selling his first story, and dying and being buried here, is an important part of the fabric that makes up Baltimore’s history.”
Beginning Oct. 4, the Baltimore Museum of Art will display “Art of Darkness,” a dramatic exhibition that showcases works by 19th- and 20th-century artists inspired by Poe’s works. Included in the exhibition are vivid illustrations for “The Raven” by Edouard Manet and a portrait of Poe by Henri Matisse.
The Poe House and Museum will commemorate Poe’s birthday with two weekend celebrations in January and is planning smaller events through the year, including a Cask of Amontillado wine tasting March 17 and a public viewing of Poe’s body and funeral procession on Oct. 9 and 10. A lecture on body-snatching and grave robbery and a mock trial of “The Telltale Heart” are tentatively scheduled. Check back at nevermore2009.com for specific dates.
“My goal is to not only educate people about Poe, but for people to have fun while we’re educating them,” said Jeff Jerome, curator at the Poe House. “There’s a fine line between doing that and just boring people to tears.”
