At the Yale Art Gallery this week: furniture workshops, British film series

A lecture and workshops on Southern furniture and a film series on the theme of black British identity are among the events being presented during the coming weeks at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St.

Talk, workshop on furniture
"Southern Furniture, 1680-1830: A Regional Survey" will be discussed Saturday, Nov. 7, at 11 a.m. by Ronald L. Hurst, interim chief curator and curator of furniture at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Hurst is coauthor, with Jonathan Prown, of the award-winning book "Southern Furniture, 1680-1830: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection."

Hurst's presentation will be the eighth Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Lecture in American Art, a series established in 1990 by friends and colleagues of the young scholar of American painting and decorative arts for whom the lectureship is named. The talk will be followed by a reception in the sculpture hall. Both events are free and open to the public.

That afternoon, a series of hands-on, concurrent workshops will be offered to members of the Friends of American Arts at Yale. The first workshops will take place at 1:45 p.m. One, led by Hurst, will focus on Southern furniture in the gallery's collection. The other workshop will concentrate on "Ralph Earl and His Contemporaries" and will be led by Elizabeth Kornhauser, chief curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. At 3:30 p.m., Deborah Dependahl Waters, curator of decorative arts and manuscripts at the Museum of the City of New York, will lead a workshop titled "Ernest Hagen, Promoter of the Duncan Phyfe Style." Also at that time, Jonathan Weinberg, associate professor of the history of art, will discuss "Twentieth-Century Photographic Portraiture." The work in the current teaching exhibition was installed for Weinberg's course on the history of photography.

To join the Friends of American Arts at Yale, call 432-0615.

Film series
Also in November, a series of contemporary British films will be screened at the art gallery in conjunction with the exhibit "The Unmapped Body: Three Black British Artists." The films relate to issues of race, nationality and gender raised in the exhibition. All films will be shown Sundays beginning at 3 p.m. Screening dates and film descriptions follow.

"In Between" (1992), directed by Robert Crusz, will be shown Nov. 8. Crusz uses narrative and documentary techniques in his work to explore an identity that is both part of and outside two cultures -- Sri Lankan and British. A second film, Hettie Macdonald's "A Beautiful Thing" (1996), will immediately follow. The urban love story is set in a housing project and depicts young lovers struggling with the realities of their class and sexuality in present-day Britain.

Three films will be shown Nov. 15. In "The Attendant" (1992), directed by Isaac Julien, an older, black art museum attendant sees a 19th-century painting of slaves in chains come to life; a young white gay man is the attendant's erotic memory. "What Do You Call an Indian Woman Who's Funny?" (1994) is a humorous documentary focusing on four Indian cabaret performers and exploring topics such as the definition, cultural depiction, and racial perspective of comedy. The film was directed by Gurinda Chadra. "The Passion of Remembrance" (1986), directed by Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien, examines problems associated with race, sex, family and friends as experienced by a young British-born West Indian woman during the Thatcher era.

On Nov. 22, "Burning an Illusion" (1988) and "Dreaming Rivers" (1981) will be screened. Directed by Martina Attile, "Dreaming Rivers" evokes the colonial experience of Caribbean immigrants in Britain. The film shows a middle-aged woman reflecting on the past, present and future from her deathbed, while three young attendants discuss their loss as a metaphor for their increasingly fragmented Caribbean identity. In "Burning an Illusion" a young black woman, born in Britain, rejects her middle-class aspirations after police falsely arrest and beat her boyfriend. As she reads black history and becomes politically aware, she reclaims her African heritage. The film was directed by Menelik Shabazz.

The cost to view the films is $4 each day, $2 for students and members of the Yale Art Museums.