New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to Present Noël Coward Exhibit

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and The Noël Coward Foundation have revealed further information about some the artifacts that will be displayed in the exhibition Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward, which will run March 12 to August 18, 2012. Star Quality is a major exhibition focusing on Coward as playwright, composer, director, stage, screen, and cabaret performer, and international celebrity. It represents the most comprehensive exhibition on Noël Coward ever assembled, including unique material from the collections of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

The exhibition is billed as offering unparalleled access to the Coward archives and draws on public and private collections in Europe and the US as well as his homes in Switzerland and Jamaica, It features photographs, posters, programs, scripts, costumes, personal effects, memorabilia, and other objects, many previously unseen, as well as rare audio and video components. It will cover all aspects of his life and work including his relationship with Hollywood, his work as a spy during the Second World War, his worldwide celebrity status, and an extensive section on his life-long love of New York, which began in 1921. Among the items on display will be one of the Oscars awarded in 1933 for Cavalcade, his 1971 special Tony Award, the Irene Sharaff gown worn by Florence Henderson in the musical The Girl Who Came to Supper, original costume and set design sketches by Gladys Calthrop, Edward Molyneux, and Cecil Beaton, and several notable dressing gowns worn by Coward. The exhibition will also feature original letters, lyrics, and manuscripts as well as some of the remarkable first night gifts given by and to Coward during his extraordinary career which reveal much about the man and the era in which he lived.

Brad Rosenstein, curator of the exhibition, notes "It's such a thrill to be bringing this exhibition to the heart of New York, which was an adored second home for Noël and the site of some of his greatest successes. What's particularly exciting is how fresh the show will be. We'll be unveiling a number of items that have only been rediscovered in the past year, and which have never before been publicly displayed. New York will be seeing the best Star Quality imaginable, and in many ways be seeing it first."

Jacqueline Z Davis, Barbara G and Lawrence A Fleishman executive director of NYPL for the Performing Arts, said, "I am getting more and more excited as the opening of this comprehensive and enthralling exhibition draws closer. I truly believe it will be a cultural highlight of 2012."

Also, recently announced in conjunction with the exhibition are a film retrospective at Film Society of Lincon Cetner featuring Coward as producer, writer, director and actor, which will run during the weekend of May 11 -13; a special screening of Cavalcade, hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scienes on March 12; and, running June 2-16, at Feinstein at Loew's Regency, Love, Noël, an entertainment starring Christine Ebersole and Edward Hibbert. These events are part of a city-wide Noël Coward Festival which will take place between March and August 2012. Amongst other organizations taking part are Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Paley Center for Media, The Juilliard School, The Actors Company, TACT, The Mabel Mercer Foundation, The Light Opera of New York, and The Drama Bookshop. Further details on all the festival events can be found on the dedicated website, which is listed below.

Alan Brodie, chair of the Noël Coward Foundation, said, "This has been an exceptional collaboration with the Performing Arts Library and we are looking forward very much to the run of the Exhibition there. We have been overwhelmed by the support we have been receiving from so many organizations all over New York City. Noël Coward loved this city and he would be very proud that 2012 will be truly be a year where his status as an honorary New Yorker will be confirmed."

Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward is presented by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Noël Coward Foundation in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Museum of Performance & Design. It is an expanded version of an exhibition first seen at Ten Chimneys in Wisconsin, and then at London's National Theatre, San Francisco's Museum of Performance & Design, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.