Contemporary artist Elizabeth Berdann, based in New York City, has a solo show entitled “Marvels, Curiosities & Conundrums” at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. It will include a survey of her work from the last 20 years, and also some new work, such as her current installation, “String of Pearls,” which was inspired by the Thomas Seir Cummings necklace of miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The show opened on February 11, 2010, and will run through mid-May. For further information on the artist, please see her website, www.elizabethberdann.com, and for further information on the show, please see the Contemporary Museum’s website: http://www.tcmhi.org/cal.htm .

The collector in the previous post who is a direct descendant of the British artist Thomas Heaphy has shared images of a signed portrait miniature by Heaphy’s wife Mary Stevenson. Mary Stevenson’s work is extremely rare, and a signed miniature by her will help with future attributions. It’s interesting to note how similar Stevenson’s style was to her husband’s.

A fascinating history blog named Georgian London provides an intimate view of daily life 18th century London.

“History News Network” says: “From London’s 18th century rookeries, to being a dwarf in 18th century England, to Jeremy Bentham and the birth of a surveillance society, to what it was like to have gout, to bizarre birth stories from Gentleman’s Magazine, Georgian London informs, instructs, and entertains us on ordinary life in 18th century London, emphasizing especially the artisan and immigrant populations of the city. This is fascinating socal history presented in blog formk and is a terrific younger entrant into the burgeoning history blog scene.”

The blog has been voted “History Website of 2009″ by the online readers of History Today magazine, and contains links to other online history blogs, such as Victorian London.  Georgian London may be found at http://www.georgianlondon.com/ .

Portrait miniature enthusiasts are used to hearing about Charles Willson Peale as one of the early premier miniaturists in the United States, whose miniatures can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.  Another facet of the man is revealed in this children’s book, called The Mystery of The Mammoth Bones, by James Gilbin, based on true-life events in Peale’s life. A review from “Publisher’s Weekly” summarizes the story:

“With the pacing of an ace detective, Giblin unveils the painstaking steps in artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale’s 1801 discovery of mammoth bones. Through a third-person narration of Peale’s experience, Giblin establishes these fossils’ revolutionary importance to science, technology and social history, beginning with Peale’s exploratory digs, his assemblage of the first skeleton and its subsequent exhibition and controversy. Structuring the text in this way allows Giblin to deftly paint a turn-of-the-19th-century world and to demonstrate how this finding shook prevailing scientific and religious beliefs and contributed to current theories of evolution and extinction. Readers will devour the details that contrast Peale’s time to today, such as the harrowing journey from Philadelphia to upstate New York (it took a day and a half just to get from Philadelphia to New York City, before sailing up the Hudson River in the days before steam power), a trip that today takes three hours, and President Thomas Jefferson’s personal interest in and professional support of the excavation. Unfortunately, some details lack context, such as the original $200 pricetag of the bones without mention of what that sum could buy. After wrapping up this gripping mystery and its legacy, profusely illustrated with photographs of the mammoths and Peale’s own sketches, Giblin concludes with a brief biography of the Renaissance man Peale and a summary of theories on mammoths and mastodons. Fans of all things dinosaur will find much to explore here, and readers may well be infected with Peale’s pioneering spirit. Ages 8-12.”

Don Shelton, a miniatures collector who maintains the blog “Artists and Ancestors” (www.portrait-miniature.blogspot.com), is featured in an article in today’s Sunday Observer in London.  The article, entitled “Founders of British Obstetrics Were ‘Callous Murderers,’” recounts some of the subversive information Shelton uncovered when researching the sitter Anthony Carlisle in a miniature he owns, painted by Henry Bone.  The link to the article is below.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/07/british-obstetrics-founders-murders-claim

As an addendum, the article has provoked a flurry of interest:  New Zealand national radio interviewed him this morning, BBC UK and BBC Scotland are interviewing him live tonight, and a UK producer wants to talk to him about a TV documentary.