FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:  David Mayhew for Cohn Dutcher Associates
(203) 533-5621     david@davidmayhew.net

FANCIFUL ART FOR THE FAMILY NOW ON DISPLAY IN CARAMOOR'S SPANISH COURTYARD

Kathy Ruttenberg's AGAIN - large-scale ceramic sculptures of animals and
woodland scenes - offers a fairy tale wonderland for families

Katonah, New York - Two dynamic exhibitions of ceramics are now on display at Caramoor's historic Rosen House (formerly the House Museum) as part of All Fired Up!  - A Celebration of Clay in Westchester, an all-county effort organized by the Westchester Arts Council and the Clay Art Center to explore the versatility of ceramics.  Caramoor's 2008 special exhibition in the Rosen House, A Journey in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance to American Contemporary, which opened in May, has been joined by Kathy Ruttenberg's AGAIN, a family-friendly exhibition of large-scale animals and woodland scenes outdoors in the Spanish Courtyard.

AGAIN
AGAIN is an extraordinary installation of large scale ceramics and mixed media by Kathy Ruttenberg, a Bearsville, NY-based sculptor and watercolorist best known for her work in ceramics.  The display, a fairy-tale wonderland of flora and fauna, woodland creatures, and other exotic outdoor subjects is on the stage of the Spanish Courtyard through November 16th.  Audiences young and old are invited to use their own imaginations to interpret the exhibition. Depending upon age and experience the narrative may be a love story, a tragedy, a mystery, or a fairy tale.  Perhaps it is all of those interpretations rolled into one.

Kathy Ruttenberg trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York, the School of Visual Arts at Tangier, Morocco, and the New York University Graduate Program in Venice, Italy.  Her work has been shown at the American Museum of Ceramic Arts, New York City's Gallery Henoch, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Macy's Herald Square, Habatat Galleries in Chicago, and many galleries throughout the country.  Ruttenberg's work is represented in many private collections.

AGAIN continues through November 16th, Wednesday through Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm in October and Tuesday through Friday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm by appointment only in November.
 
A Journey in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance to American Contemporary
The Rosen House's 2008 special exhibition, A Journey in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance to American Contemporary, continues during regular museum hours through December 19th.  The guest curator is Liz Quakenbush, Associate Professor of Art at Penn State.  The exhibition of maiolica, an Italian tin-glazed earthenware brilliantly colored in vivid yellow, blue, green, and beautiful ochre hues, features an array of fanciful scenes. The objects on view, drug jars or "Albarelli," flasks, large plates and vases are all fancifully decorated with crowned goddesses flanked by winged cherubs and serpents swarming in a turbulent sea, horned satyrs dancing in the forest, and Adam and Eve tempted in the garden.  These biblical, historical, and mythological images, selected from the Museum's outstanding permanent collection, are all the more remarkable because they exist on the face of 16th-century Italian maiolica pottery.  The exhibition also includes a set of twelve Catalan tiles from the 18th to early 19th-centuries, designed by Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) and depicting whimsical musicians. 

Twenty magnificent rooms of the Rosen House, built by Caramoor's founders, Walter and Lucie Rosen, and recently named in their honor, are open to the public.  They are filled with the extraordinary collection the Rosens amassed through the years: Renaissance, 18th-century, and Eastern art objects and furnishings, tapestries, sculptures, paintings, textiles, furniture, exquisite wall coverings, stained glass, Urbino maiolica, and a major jade collection.  This remarkable museum is one of only five famous mansions in the United States that incorporate entire rooms from European palaces and country manors.

The Rosen House, including the special exhibition A Journey in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance to American Contemporary will be open for Guided Tours through December 19th.  Hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 1:00pm to 4:00pm (last tour begins at 3:00pm). 

Tickets for tours of the House Museum, including the special exhibition, are $10, children under 16 are admitted free.

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About Caramoor
Caramoor is the legacy of Walter and Lucie Rosen, who built the great house and filled it with their treasures.  Walter Rosen was the master planner for the Caramoor estate, bringing to reality his dream of creating a place to entertain friends from around the world.  Their musical evenings were the seeds of today's summertime Caramoor International Music Festival as well as the Fall and Spring musical program held in their former home, now known as the historic Rosen House.  Realizing the pleasure their friends took in the beauty of Caramoor - the house with its art collection, the gardens, and the musical programs - the Rosens established a public charity to open Caramoor to the community.

Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.

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