City's Ken Benn has character, will travel

By MERVYN DYKES - Manawatu Standard | Friday, 9 November 2007

Palmerston North author and storyteller Ken Benn, who acted the part of Leonardo during guided tours of the da Vinci Machines exhibition at Te Manawa, has become one of the exhibits - in a manner of speaking.

His way with words was so successful that he has been engaged to perform at the exhibition's next stop in Nelson and is hoping to be part of the Christchurch showing as well. Every Saturday and Sunday during the exhibition's Palmerston North season, which ended on October 28, he adopted the persona of Leonardo and led patrons around the gallery on a tour of "his" works. Te Manawa marketing manager Paula Allen said yesterday the response to the guided tours was so strong they were quickly booked out. The tours lasted for about 70 minutes and after the second month a second tour had to be introduced each day to meet the demand. Mr Benn said he was initially given a folder of information about the machines to help him prepare. "I high-tailed it to the library where I took out about two-thirds of the books for research," he said yesterday. "Actually, I had a bit of a head start. As a long-time mathematician, he is one of my heroes." Mr Benn said that in spite of the wealth of material Leonardo da Vinci left behind about his work, there were few clues to his personal life. Most of this information came in snippets gathered after the event from students and others who had known him. "It was a wonderful experience to enable people to get to grips with the personality of Leonardo."

 

Alan Clarke, THE NELSON MAIL: 4 December 2007

I was one of the 540 people who took a tour in time through the world of Leonardo da Vinci with Palmerston North author and storyteller Ken Benn at our provincial museum at the weekend. Bringing the talented Benn south was a terrific initiative by the museum, which must be hoping that the "Machines" exhibition will do for it what the Len Lye show did for the Suter last Year.

Catching "Machines" - for the same price as a movie ticket - is a terrific way to do just that. You'll also gain an insight into the creativity and breadth of one of history's most remarkable minds. As Leonardo, Benn took us on a fascinating trip through the life, times, politics, genius and frustrations of the ultimate Renaissance man. Mixing humour, fact, innuendo art and guesswork (and even a weapons of mass destruction/George Bush joke) he brought context and meaning to the, array of sketches and models based on da Vinci's plans and drawings. Hopefully there'll be an opportunity to bring him back for an encore before the exhibition ends next February.