Organized around topics including Paderewski’s life in music, political career, links to California, and private life, the exhibit also features a short display on Poland’s history and Paderewski’s impact on popular culture. Many extraordinarily rare and never-before seen items—including personal possessions, correspondence, photographs, and Paderewski’s concert programs that are on exhibit—have been culled from the Paso Robles Collection held by the Polish Music Center at USC.
Read the latest review of the exhibit, written by public diplomacy scholar Paul Rockower, atlevantine18.blogspot.com.
Violinist Jerzy Milewski and his wife, Aleida Schweitzer, were the most recent visitors to the Paderewski exhibit at USC. This Rio de Janeiro-based duet came to perform in several different venues in California during the second half of April. Like many others who saw the exhibit, the Milewski Duo were impressed by the sheer range of documents and the scope of artistic, political, and business enterprises that Paderewski handled so adroitly throughout his life. The musicians also visited the Paderewski monument that, since 2007, has graced the grounds of USC’s Thornton School of Music.
USC’s “Paderewski – The Modern Immortal” exhibit is scheduled to travel next to Paso Robles, where it will be on display at the Pioneer Museum during the 2011 Paderewski Festival in Paso Robles. This year’s Festival will be held November 10-13 in various venues around this charming Central Coast town that served as Paderewski’s American pied-à-terre for twenty-five years. Further plans for the exhibit, including showing it in Poland, are currently being considered.
“Paderewski – The Modern Immortal” is free and open to the public during library hours through May 2011 (for summer library hours, see www.usc.edu/libraries).
[MZ]
Polish Music Newsletter
May 2011, Vol. 17, No. 5. ISSN 1098-9188. Published monthly.
Los Angeles: Polish Music Center, University of Southern California