The Eric Carle Museum Exhibits Winnie-the-Pooh

Amherst, MA—The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts is now showing a small exhibition of Pooh and his friends, featuring the book’s penultimate drawing from Winnie-the-Pooh recently purchased by private collectors.  The iconic piece depicts Pooh and Piglet walking into the sunset just moments before they turn back into ordinary toys, and Christopher Robin drags Pooh “bump, bump, bump” back up the stairs.”  Additional Pooh drawings on long-term loan from the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA), are also on exhibit through September 4th.

“Happily for The Carle, the collectors generously asked if we would like to have this drawing on loan for a period of time.  We are pleased to make this wonderful work the centerpiece of a small exhibition surrounded by a selection of other engaging Pooh drawings from the Penguin archive,” said Carle’s Chief Curator Nick Clark.

Winnie the Pooh is one of the most beloved animals in children’s literature, according to Clarke.  Making his first appearance in 1926 in Winnie-the-Pooh and again in the 1928 sequel, The House at Pooh Corner, this “bear of little brain” has been immortalized by the words of author A. A. Milne and the simple but enduring illustrations of E. H. Shepard. Together with his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger, Pooh’s adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood have enchanted readers young and old for over eight decades, and have been described as one of the greatest celebrations of childhood.  

The timelessness of these stories and drawings is captured in what Milne wrote at the end of Chapter X in The House at Pooh Corner, In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place and We Leave Them There: "Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing."