Rollie McKenna - A Village Love Affair

This Fall, The Stonington Historical Society will launch the Rollie McKenna Project — a book and exhibition about the life and work of the late Stonington-based photographer. 

McKenna was known internationally for portraits of the arts and literary elite such as Leonard Bernstein, Alexander Calder, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Elliot, Dylan Thomas and Truman Capote and the architecture of Europe and Latin America. She lived in Stonington where she documented the history and culture of small town life and was part of a once-flourishing arts scene among artists such as the poet James Merrill, gardener and author Eleanor Perenyi and her mother, the novelist Grace Stone. 

The exhibition titled A Village Love Affair, is set to open Friday, November 2, 2018 at the Richard W. Woolworth Library. 

Notable contributors of the project include American graphic designer and novelist Chip Kidd, who will design the book’s cover; Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard who will write the book's introduction; and photographer (and Stonington Borough resident) Francis Hills, who will curate the exhibition.