The Night Watch at the Museum of American Art in Prishtina

Lecture by Gertrude Stein: The Making of Americans

Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina and Museum of American Art in Prishtina are pleased to present the continuation of the serie, The Night Watch at the Museum of American Art in Prishtina, with the lecture by the American avant-garde writer and collector

Gertrude Stein, titled “The Making of Americans”.

Gertrude Stein will give a lecture on “The Making of Americans.” Ms. Stein will tell a story about the collections and exhibitions of European modern art assembled by Americans over the years. It begins with Gertrude and Leo Stein’s collection in Paris of early modern art—the first to exhibit the works of Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso together in one room (1905). In the course of time, the Steins’ collection influenced American “taste” in modern European art throughout the first half of the twentieth century, as seen, for example, in the Arensberg Collection, Société Anonyme, the Barnes Collection, the Cone Sisters Collection, and the Solomon Guggenheim and Gallatin collections. Through these American collections, European modern art was perceived and interpreted in a more avant-garde manner than in Europe itself. When the Museum of Modern Art finally articulated its narrative that was based on avant-garde (European) movements in the mid-1930s, it didn’t look strange to the American public thanks to this phenomenon.

The Making of Americans, completed in 1911 is considered to be one of Stein’s major works. The novel was not published in book form until 1925 because of its lengthiness and experimental style. It traces the genealogy, history, and psychological development of members of the fictional Hersland and Dehning families. Stein also includes frequent metafictional meditations on the process of writing the text that periodically overtake the main narrative. The Making of Americans is not really a novel, as Gertrude Stein's narrator says-"not just an ordinary kind of novel with a plot and conversations to amuse you"-but an attempt at a thorough and exacting distillation of the essential properties of people’s behavior.

Her stated objective was to analyze the “bottom nature,” or essence, of “every kind of men and women, every kind there is of men and women.” Fitting her prose to the sameness or very slight variations she found in human nature, Stein produced what many readers found to be a repetitious, prolix compilation of vignettes.

Lectures by Gertrude Stein and Alfred Barr were recorded in 2015 at the e-flux on the occasion of the exhibition The Un-making of Art which was based on the lecture by Walter Benjamin, and associates of MoAA.

The Night Watch at the Museum of American Art in Prishtina is a series of events designed as part of Rilindja Rilindja Rilindja Program by Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina when the Museum of American Art in Prishtina opens after visiting hours. These events aim for a direct approach and unparalleled access to the works and stories of the permanent exhibition and the collection of the Museum of American Art in Prishtina through discussions, performances, workshops, and readings within the museum space.

The American Museum of Art in Prishtina is an educational institution dedicated to collecting, preserving and exhibiting memories primarily of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the International Circular Exhibitions of American Art program. It is precisely these MoMA exhibitions, some of which were curated by Dorothy Miller, that helped create the first common post-war cultural identity in Western Europe, an identity based on internationalism, modernism and individualism.

Each event in this series is a research and learning exercise on a single work or series of works from the Museum of American Art collection in Prishtina. An essay, documentary or discussion illuminates the subject in detail and places that work within the life and career of the artist or visitors and the broader historical contexts. This series is a valuable guide to exploring and interpreting some of the most beloved works of art in the Museum of American Art collection in Prishtina.

Rilindja Rilindja Rilindja is supported by The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Museum of American Art in Prishtina, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Kosovo Office, Trembelat and DZG.