As part of the 2022 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Maurice Sendak and the World of Puppetry” with panelists Jonathan Weinberg, Lynn Caponera, Tyler Fallas, and Nick Kraczyna on Thursday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. ET. This forum will take place on Zoom (registration required) and Facebook Live and will be available afterwards on the Ballard Institute’s Facebook page and YouTube Channel.
Although Maurice Sendak was not a puppeteer, he understood the nature of puppetry’s never-ending fascination with objects, images, movement, music, and text, and how the creation of those combinations with a collaborative team of artists can make puppets come alive. This forum, moderated by Ballard Institute Interim Co-Director Matt Sorensen, will feature Jonathan Weinberg, Lynn Caponera, and Tyler Fallas of The Maurice Sendak Foundation, as well as Nick Kraczyna, husband of the exhibition’s prominently featured artist, the late Amy Luckenbach, to look at the various ways Sendak designed, collected, and collaborated with puppets and puppet productions. This forum is co-sponsored by The Maurice Sendak Foundation.
Forum Speakers
Jonathan Weinberg, Ph.D. is a painter, art historian and curator. He is Curator of the Maurice Sendak Foundation. He is the author of several books including Pier Groups: Art and Sex Along the New York Waterfront and Ambition and Love in American Art. He is the recipient of numerous grants, residencies and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was the lead curator for the touring exhibition Art After Stonewall, 1969-89 organized by the Columbus Museum of Art to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 2019. He is the curator of Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak, which opens at The Columbus Museum of Art that runs from October 21, 2022-March 12, 2023. An exhibition of his GENESIS window paintings and prints is on view at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven until January.
Lynn Caponera President of the Board and Executive Director of The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Lynn met Maurice when he and Dr. Eugene Glynn moved to Ridgefield Ct in 1971. Lynn spent her childhood at the Sendak / Glynn household helping in the garden playing with the dogs and modeling for Maurice for numerous books. At 19 she moved in as caretaker and companion. Over the years she took on a more rigorous role in Maurice’s professional and personal life till his death in 2012.
Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna is a painter/printmaker of Russian origin, raised in Poland and Germany, educated in the United States, and resident of Florence, Italy, since 1964. Best known for his multi-plate color etchings, his artwork can be found in private collections and galleries around the world, as well as in the Uffizi Gallery’s Permanent Collection of Prints and Drawings in Florence.Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1962, Kraczyna has held over 158 solo exhibitions across five continents. In 1963 he met and married Amy Luckenbach while studying for his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Southern Illinois. He has been Artist in Residence at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH (1988); Palacky University in Olomouc, CZ (1992); and Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY (2007-2008).