The Howard County
I N
F O C U S
VOL.8, NO.3
F O R
P E O P L E
O V E R
More than 30,000 readers throughout Howard County
Premiere brings Matisse to life
5 0 MARCH 2018
I N S I D E …
PHOTO BY KATIE SIMMONS-BARTH
By Robert Friedman After more than 100 years, the art collecting Cone sisters of Baltimore, the great French artist Henri Matisse, and the modernist literary icon Gertrude Stein are together again — on stage, at least, at the Howard County Community College in Columbia. They are the leading characters in All She Must Possess, a world premiere play by Baltimorean Susan McCully, being presented at the Rep Stage on the community college campus. Valerie Leonard and Nigel Reed, actors who are married to each other and live in Columbia, are bringing their prize-winning acting talents to the production, which is Rep Stage’s contribution to the 2018 D.C. Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The play centers on the collecting efforts of the sisters, Etta (1870-1949) and Claribel (1864-1929) Cone, daughters of GermanJewish immigrants who settled in Baltimore in the 1870s, and whose family’s textile business made them part of a thriving Jewish community in the city at the time. The two spinster sisters lived most of their wealthy lives in Baltimore, while going on many trips to Europe (Paris in particular), in their extensive efforts to collect modern art. They were able to afford the trips thanks to their annual inherited income of $2,400 each — considerable spending money back then. The experts of the time considered the “degenerate” works of art purchased by the sisters to be worthless. But they now make up the world-renowned modern French collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The museum’s Cone Wing houses more than 3,000 works by Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and others, whose total value today has been estimat-
FREE
L E I S U R E & T R AV E L
Exploring Virginia’s African American heritage sites; plus, two bargain vacation spots, farther from the madding crowds page 22
ARTS & STYLE Valerie Leonard (right) portrays Gertrude Stein and Grace Bauer plays Etta Cone in a world premiere play about the Cone sisters, whose vast collection of modern art now fills a wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Leonard also plays the role of Etta’s sister Claribel in the play, All She Must Possess, which is onstage at Howard Community College through late February.
ed at $1 billion. There are 500 works by Matisse alone — the largest museum collection of the Post-Impressionist master’s artistic output anywhere.
Area playwright Playwright McCully, 54, is a performer, an assistant professor at the University of
Maryland at Baltimore (UMBC), and a feminist theater scholar. She said she spent a year researching the sisters’ lives, and a year and a half writing the one-act play in which Etta and Claribel Cone are back in Stein’s Paris salon, meeting such starving See MATISSE page 29
Young Frankenstein is brought to life at Toby’s Dinner Theatre; plus, a world premiere play focuses on the art-collecting Cone sisters page 26 TECHNOLOGY 4 k Online shopping pros and cons FITNESS & HEALTH k How to break a fall k Breast cancer blood test
7
THE 50+ CONNECTION 15 k Newsletter from Howard County Office on Aging and Independence LAW & MONEY 19 k How to simplify your finances k Beware certain credit card offers ADVERTISER DIRECTORY
31
PLUS CROSSWORD, BEACON BITS, CLASSIFIEDS & MORE