The Emerson Gallery is hosting "Ernest Hemingway and Walker Evans: Three Weeks in Cuba, 1933" from Thursday, Feb. 15, through Sunday, April 15. The exhibition includes vintage photographic prints by Evans, only recently available for public viewing, along with notes and personal artifacts, left by Hemingway and found among his possessions after his death.
An opening reception will be held in the Emerson Gallery on Thursday Feb. 22, from 4 to 6 p.m. Both the reception and the exhibition are free and open to the public.
A friendship between Walker Evans (1903 - 1975) and Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) began in Havana in May 1933. The three weeks they spent together left a lasting impression on both men. Both the documents and images in this exhibit reveal a friendship between them during a time of growing political instability.
The young American photographer Walker Evans was in Cuba on assignment to take photographs for "The Crime of Cuba," Carlton Beals' severely critical book about the Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado. Hemingway had arrived in Cuba from Key West on a boat, the Anita, chartered from his friend Josie "Sloppy Joe" Russell, to fish and to work on manuscripts. It was during this period that Hemingway wrote two short stories that later developed into "To Have and Have Not," his famous 1937 novel set against the backdrop of roaring Havana and Depression era Key West.
It was suggested that Evans, fearing that he was being watched by the dictator's secret police and that they might confiscate his pictures, gave the prints to Hemingway for safekeeping. Evans would later leave Cuba with 400 negatives but Hemingway would keep the 46 prints that Evans had given him. James R. Mellow confirms this story in his 1999 biography on Walker Evans.
The exhibition is organized by the Key West Museum of Art & History at the Custom House, Florida, and circulated by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE), Los Angeles.
Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. For further information, including information on parking and wheelchair accessibility, please contact the Emerson Gallery at 315-859-4396 or consult the gallery's Web site at http://www.hamilton.edu/gallery.
