Eli Whitney Museum

The Landscape
Food & Drink | Art Auction | Live Music
915 Whitney Avenue

Leonardo's Light
Food & Drink | Art Auction | Live Music
915 Whitney Avenue

Leonardo: In Flight
Food and Drink Outside
Art Auction Inside
Thursday, May 18th 2023 | 5:30-9pm | 915 Whitney Avenue

It's About Time.

What Time Is It?

Press two fingers on your heart. Count the pulses. You are a clock ticking at about 60 beats per minute. You are a clock that times everything. You are the clock that matters.

Leonardo At Play

The masque carried Leonardo da Vinci to prominence in the court of Ludovicio Sforza in Milan. Leonardo produced extravagant costumed pageants to celebrate the Duke's weddings, coronations, and whims. Public splendor is a compelling mask for power.

Just Blown Away

Propagation

Molly Gambardella's dandelion captures the spirit of the 23rd Leonardo Challenge completely. It's cluster of delicate seeds wants to be loosed to launch new growth. Yours is the breath that will give them flight.
Thank you.

Not long ago travelers consulted paper maps distributed by service stations gratuitously, but difficult to refold. Today watches, phones and cars themselves provide directions, sometimes with animated updates and commentary voiced in dulcet but skeptical tones. A decade has transformed the ancient arts of cartography radically. Early maps recorded star patterns that marked changing seasons. Now the celestial robots of GPS guide us to lost car keys. Early maps defined the boundaries of unknown territories. Now we wonder if there is any space unmapped. We need a map to track the changing meanings of all these maps.

The Knot

A knot is a simple or elaborate twist and interlacing of fibers. The knot's structure makes the fibers into something new: a tool, a weapon, an ornament, a calculation, a message. Snare a rabbit. Net a fish. Lash a sail. Cinch a saddle. Gird your loins. Plait your hair. These ordinary bindings are nodes of civilization. Or a knot can be personal. Touch your navel. It remembers the knot that first defined you as an individual.

Consider the Lady with an Ermine, Leonardo's stunning portrait of Cecelia, the mistress of Ludovice Sforza, the Duke of Milan and Leonardo's patron. The painting brims with movement, with immediacy, and with bold brushwork. Leonardo paints in the new medium of oils.