National Pie Day Drive-Thru
Ellison Community Recreation Center (Bldg. S-499), 5671 McCain, Millington
Friday, January 22, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Public Domain
National Pie Day Drive-Thru Event, Ellison Community Recreation Center — Millington
We all owe a big thanks to Charlie Papazian. Who is this man? He founded National Pie Day in 1975. A school teacher in Boulder, Colorado, he liked pie so much that on January 23, his birthday, he declared that this day would be forever remembered as National Pie Day. Papazian really loved pie. In fact, he loved it so much he would have a birthday pie instead of a birthday cake. Since then, his idea for a National Pie Day has spread all over the United States.
Celebrate any way you’d like. We have some fantastic bakeries in the Mid-South. Go get your pie. To whet your appetite, head out to Millington for a free slice of classic apple or Oreo cream pie on Friday. Then on Saturday, take home a pie of your choice from our local bakers. Makeda’s Cookies has Pie Friday every Friday featuring pies made with a butter cookie crust. Muddy’s just opened a kitchen on Broad. Your pie is waiting for you. Go get some.
A Step Ahead Foundation 10th Anniversary Step Off
Online from A Step Ahead Foundation, astepaheadfoundation.org
Saturday, January 23, 5 p.m.
Facebook/A Step Ahead Foundation
A Step Ahead Foundation 10th Anniversary Step Off
We just finished a week of service during King Day week, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Let’s continue celebrating by honoring A Step Ahead Foundation’s (ASAF) 10 years of service in Shelby County.
The organization was founded by Claudia Haltom in 2011, driven by her 17 years of experience as a Juvenile Court judicial magistrate. From the bench, Haltom saw and ruled on cases in which the parent was a single mother who had become pregnant while she was in school, dropped out, and had one or more babies before she was emotionally, physically, or financially prepared to provide for her children.
Haltom addressed the problem through the program she founded so these young women could plan their futures and achieve their full potential. Join ASAF executive director Nikki Gibbs and other staff members to learn about the Foundation’s programs and services during this virtual presentation while enjoying performances from local dancers, step teams, and supporters.
“Anticipating a Revolution: The Preconditions of American Impressionism”
Online from The Dixon Gallery & Gardens, dixon.org
Sunday, January 24, 2 p.m.
Facebook/Dixon Gallery and Gardens
Virtual opening lecture of “America’s Impressionism: A Social Revolution,” online from Dixon Gallery and Gardens
Amanda C. Burdan of Brandywine River Museum of Art will speak on topic.
This weekend, The Dixon Gallery and Gardens opens a new exhibition, “America’s Impressionism: Echoes of a Revolution.”
Fans of Impressionism art — and art history — will delight in this showing of American art from the late nineteenth century to World War II. American painters adapted the style to their own ends during this period, shaping one of the most enduring, complex, and contradictory styles of art ever produced in the United States.
This exhibition explores the nation’s embrace of Impressionism, the innovations Americans brought to the Impressionist experiment, and its resonance across two generations of American painting. As American artists interpreted Impressionism, they effectively created a new genre and passed it down to subsequent generations of American artists. Through more than 50 paintings, the exhibition presents an original and nuanced history of the American engagement with the French style, one that was both richer and more ambivalent than mere imitation.
Selected works offer a window into the complex act of translation as Impressionism was introduced, imitated, and modified over a period of 50 years. It tells a fascinating story of American artists coming to terms with a new modern style as seen through paintings of the rural and suburban landscape, sentimental scenes of women and children, and architecture of bygone eras.
The opening lecture will be presented online by Amanda C. Burdan, curator of Brandywine River Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. Burdan will explore the perfect storm of circumstances in place that enabled Impressionism to take root and flourish in the United States. These circumstances include the international study of young American artists, the rise in popularity of Tonalism and the work of Claude Monet in America, and the intertwined nature of national identity and American landscape painting. The stage was set, combined with other factors, for the broad spread of American Impressionism over the course of many decades to follow.
The Hunting Heart: Carson McCullers
Online from Tennessee Shakespeare Company, tnshakespeare.org
Sunday, January 24, 3 p.m.
Photo courtesy of Tennessee Shakespeare Company
The Hunting Heart: Carson McCullers, online from Tennessee Shakespeare Company
Sunday’s weather forecast calls for rain. Why go out when you can join the Tennessee Shakespeare Company online to explore the popular Southern gothic/realism writer Carson McCullers (1917-1967)? A rare multi-form fiction writer, she penned characters who were usually in physical, psychological, and spiritual isolation.
Feelings, no doubt, within her own life. Her music studies were abandoned after losing Juilliard tuition money on the subway. Her romantic life was tragic, complicated by physical pain, addiction, and illnesses. Plagued by strokes, she was ultimately confined to a wheelchair due to partial paralysis. She described her writing as “a search for God.”
The performance will be directed by Stephanie Shine who will be joined on stage by fellow TSC actors Cara McHugh Geissler, Jasmine Robertson, John Ross Graham, Michael Khanlarian, and Irene Keeneyand.
Excerpts will be featured from McCullers’ play A Member of the Wedding and major works including The Ballad of the Sad Café and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Excerpts will also be read from her first published work when she was 19 years old — the short story "Wunderkind" — as well as two of her poems.
The Maltese Falcon: 80th Anniversary
Malco Paradiso Cinema, 584 S. Mendenhall and Collierville Grill & MXT, 380 Market, Collierville
Sunday, January 24, 3 p.m. and Wednesday, January 27, 7 p.m.
Photo courtesy of Fathom Events
The Maltese Falcon: 80th Anniversary, Malco Paradiso and Collierville Grill
How excited are you that theaters are open again in Memphis? The excitement continues with the 80th-anniversary screening of The Maltese Falcon on Sunday — plus a bonus screening the following Wednesday. This 1941 American film noir was directed and scripted by John Huston in his directorial debut. Based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade and Mary Astor as his femme fatale client. Gladys George, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet co-star.
The story follows a San Francisco private detective and his dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers, all of whom are competing to obtain a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette.
The film premiered in New York City 80 years ago and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Considered one of the greatest films of all time, it was one of the first 25 films selected by the Library of Congress to be included in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain as the first major film noir. Now that is something to get excited about this weekend.
Just for fun and to put it in context with the times, in 1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, Pearl Harbor was bombed, the United States officially entered World War II, Bob Hope performed his first USO Show, and all German, Italian, and Japanese assets were either frozen or seized by the United States.
There were some fun times too that year. The cartoon Elmer’s Pet Rabbit was released, marking the second appearance of Bugs Bunny. Captain America Comics issued the first Captain America comic and the Wonder Woman comic began publication. Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane premiered in New York City and the New York Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Th-th-th-that’s all folks!
For a full list of what’s happening this weekend in and around Memphis, check out our calendar of events. Also, be sure to tag your favorite Instagram photos of Memphis while you are out and about with the #memphismagazine hashtag. I hope you have a great weekend.
