Spring Schedule Changes

The Vineyard Haven Public Library will be closed for the day on Monday April 15th for the Patriots Day holiday.

The Library will close early at 6:30pm on Tuesday, April 9th, due to the Tisbury Annual and Special Town Meetings which will take place at the Tisbury School Auditorium beginning at 7pm. Library computers will be shut down at 6:15pm that evening. Due to the early close our evening adult program will start at 4pm, a screening of the film "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

The Library will be closed on Sundays beginning April 21st. Sunday hours will resume after Columbus Day.

Pamela Parmal: Quilts, Coverlets and the American Experience

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harriet Powers (American, 1837-1910)
Pictorial Quilt
American (Athens, Georgia), 1895-1898
Cotton plain weave, pieced, appliqued, and embroidered
Bequest of Maxim Karolik, 64.619

At 7pm on Tuesday, March 19, Vineyard Haven Public Library will present a talk by Pamela A. Parmal, Chair and David and Roberta Logie Curator of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The program is entitled Quilts, Coverlets and the American Experience.

Quilts and bed covers are emblematic of the American experience. Their longevity and ubiquity make quilts and coverlets the ideal “democratic” art form from which to explore the story of America and its people. This talk will introduce an exhibition planned for the fall of 2020 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, that will feature more than 50 iconic examples and examine this complex history by going beyond aesthetics and technique to reveal the lives of diverse Americans whose stories are rarely told. Many of the selected pieces were made by people of European ancestry; however, the inclusion of quilts and other bed coverings created by African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, as well as examples from Britain, France, and India, enables visitors to gain a broader understanding of our diverse society. Stories of the many human lives that contributed to textile production, directly and indirectly through enslaved and immigrant labor, need to be told. Distinct narratives embedded in each of the exhibition’s quilts and coverlets also connect to broader ones, such as the movement of commodities and labor across oceans and continents, the nation’s territorial expansion and its emergence as a world power.

Pamela Parmal began work at the MFA in 1999 as Associate Curator, became Curator and Department head in 2004 and was appointed Chair of the David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts in 2014. She has curated a number of exhibitions including Fashion Show: Paris Collections 2006, November 2006-March 2007; And So To Bed: Indian Bed Curtains from an Stately English Home, November 2008-July 2009; The Embroideries of Colonial Boston in 2012; and #techstyle, March-July 2016. She most recently collaborated on the exhibition Casanova: The Seduction of Europe for which she has written an essay on Casanova and dress.

Parmal received a Masters Degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The University of Wisconsin granted her BAs in Art History and French. Before taking her position at the MFA, she worked as Assistant and then Associate Curator for the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design where she served as co-project director during the planning stages for the NEH funded exhibition and catalogue, From Paris to Providence: The Tirocchi Sisters Dressmaking Shop and curated the exhibition, Geoffrey Beene, for which she also wrote the accompanying catalogue.




Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harriet Powers (American, 1837-1910)
Pictorial Quilt
American (Athens, Georgia), 1895-1898
Cotton plain weave, pieced, appliqued, and embroidered
Bequest of Maxim Karolik, 64.619

Luce Play Readers: Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers

On Wednesday, March 13th at 7pm at the Vineyard Haven Public Library, the Peter H. Luce Play Readers will present a reading of  Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers, produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc. Charlena Seymour will direct a cast that includes Polly Brown, Joe Corbo, Felicity Russell, Cynthia Segal, Jay Sigler, Linda Vadasz and CK Wolfson. This free performance is sponsored by the Friends of the Vineyard Haven Public Library, and refreshments will be served. Doors will open at 6:30pm for the 7pm performance.

By America's great comic playwright, Lost In Yonkers won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize. This memory play is set in Yonkers in 1942. Bella is thirty-five years old, mentally challenged, and living at home with her mother, stern Grandma Kurnitz. As the play opens, ne'er-do-well son Eddie deposits his two young sons on the old lady's doorstep. He is financially strapped and taking to the road as a salesman. The boys are left to contend with Grandma, with Bella and her secret romance, and with Louie, her brother, a small-time hoodlum in a strange new world called Yonkers. Neil Simon is widely regarded as one of the most successful, prolific and performed playwrights in the world.

For more than 15 years, the Peter H Luce Play Readers have met every Wednesday of the year at the Vineyard Haven Senior Center from 9am to Noon to read plays of every era and of every genre, from the Greek and Roman classics to the cutting-edge works of contemporary playwrights... and everything in between: Shakespeare, Shaw, Checkov, Moliere, Miller, Ibsen Albee, O'Neil, Pinter and Neil Simon. The group is named for its founder, Peter Luce, who died in 2007.

The Friends of the Vineyard Haven Public Library encourage public understanding of the Library's vital role in the community, support activities for both adults and children, and provide various other volunteer services. Their mission is to support the Library, to build a partnership between the Library and the community and to advocate for exemplary library service. All volunteers and those who are interested in knowing more about the Friends meet at 10:15am on the second Saturday of every month at the library.