Gender and art

"Virginia Woolf was one of the most important and celebrated writers of the twentieth century. This extensive exhibition of portraits and rare archival material will explore her life and achievements as a novelist, intellectual, campaigner and public figure.

Curated by biographer and art historian Frances Spalding, the exhibition includes distinctive portraits of Woolf by her Bloomsbury Group contemporaries Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry and photographs by Beresford and Man Ray, as well as intimate images recording her time spent with friends and family."

Virginia Woolf. Art, Life and Vision

National Portrait Gallery, London

10 July - 26 October 2014

The Royal Exchange stages an adaptation of Orlando, Virginia Woolf's novel of love, history and gender swapping.

"Orlando, directed by Max Webster, is the adaptation of the semi-autobiographical novel written by Virginia Woolf, thought to be an ode to her lover, Vita Sackville West. It tells the tale of a young, irrepressible nobleman, who lives implausibly through four centuries, in many different disguises. Orlando is page to Queen Elizabeth, beau at the Court of James and Ambassador to the pompous palaces of Constantinople. It is at this point in the story that Orlando undergoes an unexpected transformation.

“Orlando has become a woman”, Woolf writes. “There is no denying it”. No indeed, for whilst revolution explodes around him, Orlando sleeps, awakening as a beautiful, sensuous woman, whilst maintaining his previous masculine charms and persona. Forever youthful, the ‘wits’ of the eighteenth century bore the female Orlando to tears before the crinolines of the nineteenth threaten to engulf her."

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

20 February - 22 March 2014

http://www.royalexchange.co.uk/page.aspx

Michèle Gazier et Bernard Ciccolini imaginent une BD qui met en scène la grande romancière britannique Virginia Woolf.