I immediately went out and bought all the bell jars I could find, experimenting with their sounds and shapes, and was thrilled to discover that the curve of the jars also brought to mind the shape of a human torso. And then it suddenly occurred to me that bell jars are made of glass, which provided a further resonance with Plath’s work. I decided I wanted to build a set of glass hearts that, when touched, would sing (a form of crying, perhaps). I was so struck by the images these words provoked for me: hearts made out of glass, fragile enclosures of memories, that could either sing or weep. In describing her reaction to these words, Johnson writes: The title of the artwork comes from Plath’s poem “I Thought I Could Not Be Hurt,” specifically the following lines: From an aesthetic perspective, I view Glass Heart as an important contemporary element of the One Life exhibition in that it serves as a unifying force for the selected objects while creating a contemplative atmosphere in the gallery. As an interactive work, Glass Heart offers an aural, visual, and physical encounter that connects the viewer to Plath’s ongoing legacy in a meaningful way. And, I was intrigued by the installation’s participatory component: the museum’s visitors were invited to activate the piece through tapping on the glass jars. The sound, in combination with the work’s sculptural component-flickering firefly-like blue and red lights inside glass bell jars-was unlike anything I had ever experienced before in a museum. I was struck by what I heard-a slow and expansive sound that filled or, rather, haunted the gallery. I first came across the piece at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in 2013 while I was on a research trip for this exhibition. Jenny Olivia Johnson, a composer and an associate professor of music at Wellesley College, created Glass Heart (Bells for Sylvia Plath) as a tribute to Plath’s life and work, and it is included in One Life as an example of Plath’s ongoing artistic relevance and creative inspiration. This is the first time that a national museum has presented such a body of work, and we hope to shed new light on Plath’s visual imagination, her efforts at self-fashioning, and the ways in which her artistic contributions are continuously reimagined and preserved. Her legacy has not only influenced other poets but has also sparked the imaginations of musicians, dancers, actors, and visual artists.Īs co-curator of the National Portrait Gallery’s One Life: Sylvia Plath exhibition, I worked closely with Karen Kukil, a Plath scholar and Smith College’s Mortimer Rare Book Room associate curator, to bring together a selection of Plath’s artworks, photographs, letters, journals, and manuscripts.
One of the most iconic American writers of the twentieth century, Sylvia Plath (1932–63) continues to inspire people working in creative fields. Dorothy Moss Detail of Glass Heart (Bells for Sylvia Plath) in preparation for installation at the Portrait Gallery / Jenny Olivia Johnson / 2013 /Collection of the artist
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