Poe and Twain are seldom mentioned in the same breath, but toward the end of their lives they both lived in what is known today as the Bronx. Samuel Clemons resided in Wave Hill House from 1901 to 1903. Edgar Allan Poe lived in a small farmhouse, from 1846 to 1849, that is now located in Poe Park on East Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. As part of our series to explore 19th-century American writing through the lens of contemporary art, three artists were invited to develop projects based on contemporary readings of these masters’ work. In each writer’s vast oeuvre, the artists have discovered writings that speak to their own concerns as artists. Collectively, these projects play with ideas of site-specificity and expectations about what might be found in this Georgian Revival house.

Amy Yoes explores Poe’s idiosyncratic ideas about interior space as articulated in the essay “The Philosophy of Furniture” and the story “William Wilson.” Her installation speaks to the influence of the environment on the mind through the juxtaposition of the claustrophobic structure and the room’s formal proportions and details. In the middle room, Simon Leung’s video takes Poe’s use of parallels, secrets, doppelgängers and pre-Freudian psychology as a structural and thematic departure to weave interconnected scenes that address Poe's literature, life and legacy. Allison Smith’s interest in Mark Twain’s experience as a confederate soldier, as described in “The Private History of a Campaign that Failed” and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, led her to create provisional furniture and décor that she displays in the parlor of this a historic house.

Public Programs

October 7, 1 & 3pm, Poe and Twain at Wave Hill. Thomas Devaney shares selections from Edgar Allen Poe’s penumbral verse. Carol Muske-Dukes reveals how the linguistic legacy of Samuel Langhorne Clemens inspired her acclaimed new novel, Channeling Mark Twain. Co-sponsored with Poets House.

November 1 and 10, 2pm, Twain’s Trees: It is over a hundred years since Mark Twain lived at Wave Hill and yet there are a number of trees from that time still flourishing here. Walk with Horticultural Interpreter Charles Day to admire the fall foliage and to meet some venerable arboreal survivors.

November 4, 2pm, Poe, Baudelaire and the Gothic in Song. Stephanie Houtzeel, mezzo-soprano and Ken Noda, piano, present a recital of the ghostly and gothic. $15 Member/$24 General/$21 Senior 65+ & Student. For tickets, call 718.549.3200 x385.

November 11, 2pm, Artists' Conversation 

Allison Smith and Amy Yoes orchestrate a conversation between renowned writers and former Bronx residents Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe.

November 18, 3pm, Conversation with Simon Leung who talks about his new video POE.

Support for the Visual Arts Program is provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, Target, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts–a state agency. Sustaining support for Wave Hill is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

The Arts at Wave Hill are sponsored by