Filling in shades of meaning

Anyone who's seen "The Devil Wears Prada" knows there's more to the color blue than meets the eye.

In perhaps the most memorable scene of the film, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) enlightens her assistant, Andy (Anne Hathaway ), about the evolution of her bargain-bin blue sweater.

"I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh, I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean," Miranda says.

She explains that after being used in an Oscar de la Renta collection, the color cerulean trickled down from eight other designers to department stores across the country only to make its way to Andy's unfortunate closet.

Ah, blue.

Another place it is more than a color is the Concord Museum, where it is the focus of the exhibition "A Splash of Blue." Every item, including the scene from " The Devil Wears Prada," was selected on the basis of its hue.

"We wanted to spotlight one thing and build an exhibition around it," said David Wood, the museum's curator. "Blue worked really well because it's both aesthetically and historically interesting."

With approximately 26,000 objects in the Concord Museum's collection, representing every shade of the rainbow, there was no shortage of options.

When it came time to narrow down the selection, it was obvious that fishing for blue objects in the closet or the basement would not yield the best results. Instead the museum entered the word "blue" on its database and everything blue-related popped up.

"We looked at our entire collection of blue objects and it was surprising how many interesting things showed up," Wood said. "When you select pieces using only one criteria, you're bound to come up with some fascinating things."

Among those interesting items are fashion furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, and even an advertisement for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer from the 1960s.

The exhibition tells the story of the color blue and how it was interpreted throughout American history.

"People's notion of blue has changed throughout history. Changes in attitude and opinion affect how we perceive the color blue," Wood said. "It's a cultural construct, not a fact of nature. It is what we make of it."

Blue is not only pretty, it can also be a matter of life or death. Featured in the exhibition is a coat worn by a Union officer in the Civil War. In addition to muskets and cannons, soldiers also depended on the color of their uniforms for protection.

Blue cloth was hard to come by during the war and many companies resorted to wearing gray jackets. There was confusion on the battlefield and by 1862 the Union Army ruled that all uniforms had to be dark blue.

Color can also encapsulate a person's essence and give insight into what kind of person they were, proving there's a lot to say about the color of a person's walls.

"Grandfather Emerson's Bedroom" gives a picture of Ralph Waldo Emerson's bedroom through the eyes of his grandson, Edward Waldo Forbes. This is the first time the painting is on display at the museum. Emerson highlighted the blue walls and carpet by using cobalt and ultramarine pigments.

The exhibition is family-friendly and will provide flip panels and audio guides to explain the historical context of each piece.

There will also be a host of cultural programs in conjunction with the blue theme beginning March 1 with a lecture by John Burrows, "Decorating With Blue From Washington to Whistler."

Burrows, design historian and founder of J.R. Burrows & Co., is no stranger to the color blue, having helped design the White House Blue Room.

Wood described the exhibition as "whimsy" and hopes people will realize that "things like colors aren't fixed. Color is not a matter of consent. We make this stuff up."

Just like Miranda Priestly, the Concord Museum wants people to appreciate the color blue the next time they look at the sky or slip on a pair of jeans.

"The Concord Museum is an exploration of cultural history and the color blue is a cultural phenomenon," Wood said.

"A Splash of Blue"
Concord Museum
200 Lexington Road, Concord
February 2 - April 29, 2007
978-369-9763, concordmuseum.org