F. S. Lincoln, Page In Noguchi’s Jersey Sack
Ruth Page wearing a blue jersey sack costume designed by Isamu Noguchi, 1932. Photo: F. S. Lincoln. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 01455. ©INFGM/ARS
Online, Talk

Archives Deep Dive: Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Page, and the Universe of Chicago

Thursday, June 3, 2021
1 pm–2 pm
Free

Liesl Olson, Director of Chicago Studies at Newberry Library, will present a talk exploring the mutually inspiring relationship between Isamu Noguchi, dancer and choreographer Ruth Page, and their creative orbits in the city of Chicago in the early 1930s. Olson will build on themes and research presented in her digital feature Flicker of an Eyelid: Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Page, and the Universe of Chicago, now available on noguchi.org. 

The lecture will last approximately 45 minutes, with time afterwards for questions and comments. Live closed captioning is provided. Program times listed are ET (Eastern Time). Please send any questions to events@noguchi.org.

Liesl Olson is Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry Library, an independent research library in Chicago. She is the author of Modernism and the Ordinary (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis (Yale University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation for best book of poetry criticism, and the 2019 MidAmerica Award from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature. With three of her Newberry colleagues, Olson was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Public History Project Award from the National Council on Public History for “Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots.” Olson is curator of an upcoming Newberry exhibition, Chicago Avant-Garde: Five Women Ahead of Their Time (September 10–December 31, 2021), which will illuminate the lives and work of Ruth Page, Katharine Kuh, Gertrude Abercrombie, Katherine Dunham, and Gwendolyn Brooks.

This talk has been made possible through major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.