(TRENTON, NJ) -- The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie will host the closing reception for its acclaimed exhibition Painting the Moon and Beyond: Lois Dodd and Friends Saturday, April 30 from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. In addition to meeting the show’s artists, attendees will hear a moon- and art-inspired concert of Nocturnes, Arias, and Artistic Memories performed by cellists Eric Schultz and Mira Kang and pianist Sandra Pucciatti. The program will include selections by Chopin, Sondheim, Bach, Puccini.
Eric Schultz is known as a producer and director of arts programming, including public television’s State of the Arts. Mira Kang is an accomplished concert soloist who has appeared on many renowned stages. Sandra Pucciatti is the Managing Director of Boheme Opera NJ.
Following the concert, the museum will formally accept into its collection the painting Woodland Vase, by Mel Leipzig, who painted the artwork on site in the Trenton City Museum in 2019.
Painting the Moon and Beyond showcases paintings by New Jersey native and revered landscape painter Lois Dodd and artists who have long been a part of her life. Dodd is a co-founder of the legendary artist-run Tanager Gallery and has, for more than 70 years, painted her surroundings—New York’s Lower East Side, rural Mid-Coast Maine, and the Delaware Water Gap. Among her favorite subjects—and the central theme of the exhibition—is the night sky. Together with fellow exhibitors Jeff Epstein, Dan Finaldi, and Elizabeth O’Reilly, Lois Dodd has ventured out on summer nights to paint. In addition to the nocturnes, Painting the Moon and Beyond looks through windows and doors and at portraits the artists have made of each other, including one by Mel Leipzig of Trenton.
The Trenton City Museum is open Fridays and Saturdays from 12 noon to 4:00pm and Sundays from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. Ample parking is available adjacent to the museum in Trenton’s Cadwalader Park, entered from Parkside Ave. There is no admission charge, but donations in support of the museum’s mission and programs are appreciated.
The Trenton City Museum is housed in Ellarslie Mansion, an 1848 Italianate Villa in the heart of Trenton’s historic Cadwalader Park, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Current and rotating exhibits reveal and celebrate Trenton’s historic and cultural past, while art exhibitions showcase the finest in contemporary regional painting and sculpture. The Trenton Museum Society, the organization that works with the City of Trenton to support the museum’s operations and programming, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding in 2023.
IMAGES: (LEFT) Eric Schultz by Mel Leipzig (RIGHT) Moon Circles by Elizabeth O'Reilly
