Raysor Print Collection Acquired by Richmond’s VMFA
This lovely show that just closed at the VMFA provided a tantalizing glimpse of a major new print collection recently donated to the museum. With a $150 million construction project completed last spring (a glowing review from Architectural Record is available here), the VMFA is now in the process of developing a first-rate study room for works on paper. Within the next year or so, the entirety of the Raysor Collection of 10,000 works should be relocated to its new home and the print room finished. Stay tuned. For anyone remotely near the museum, know that there is an outstanding new collection of prints in your area. Incidentally, I feel quite fortunate to have attended the big celebration gala at the beginning of last month(!), and I’m thrilled at the promise of the Raysor Collection. -CH
Art A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 29 January — 22 May 2011
Curated by Mitchell Merling
This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary gift of approximately 10,000 prints from the collection of collector, connoisseur, and scholar Frank Raysor, who grew up in Richmond. Over the past 35 years Raysor has amassed a collection which covers the history of printmaking, as seen in this exhibition, and which also contains special deep holdings in artists such as Charles Meryon, Félix Bracquemond, Seymour Haden and Wenceslaus Hollar. The collection will increase by one third the total number of objects in VMFA’s collection.
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Press release from the museum:
The Virginia Museum of Fine Art’s Collectors’ Circle named Richmond-raised Frank Raysor ‘Collector of the Year’ at a gala on Saturday, 2 April 2011. During the evening’s celebration, VMFA Director Alex Nyerges announced Raysor’s plans to bequeath more than $3 million to the museum. Raysor already has promised VMFA a gift of 10,000 prints that he has amassed throughout the past 35 years. In recognition of this unprecedented gift, the museum’s previous library is being named the “Frank Raysor Center for the Study of Works on Paper.” The center will house more than 15,000 works on paper and will provide the space and resources needed for the study of the history of western print-making, among other subjects. The study center will open after a complete renovation and refurbishment of the existing space. The gifted prints cover the history of print-making, spanning the 15th century to present day, and are by both European and American artists. The works will increase the museum’s total number of objects by one-third.
“The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ relationship with Frank Raysor dates back to his childhood visits,” Nyerges said. “In the past we have benefitted from a number of antiquities, which he donated in the early 1990’s. His rich and fascinating collection of prints is a gift for all Virginians.”
As Collector of the Year, Raysor joins a group of distinguished donors and museum supporters. Past recipients include: Linda H. Kaufman, Jane Joel Knox, Mrs. Nelson L. St. Clair, Jr., Robert and Nancy Nooter, Paul Mellon, Jerome and Rita Gans, Arnold L. Lehman and Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Raysor grew up in Richmond, attending Thomas Jefferson High School, before going on to Duke University and Harvard Business School. He has loaned works from his collection to special exhibitions at the Albuquerque Museum, the Yale Center for British Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 1982, Raysor guest-curated a small exhibition at VMFA of 18th-century prints with classical subjects drawn from his collection in conjunction with the museum’s internationally important exhibition, Vases from Magna Graecia. In addition to his collecting, Raysor has made important contributions to print scholarship, including his collaboration on the catalogue raisonné of the works of Charles Meryon.
Reviewed: New Publications on Meissen
Recently added to caa.reviews:
Ulrich Pietsch and Claudia Banz, eds., Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie, 1710–1815 (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 2010), 400 pages, ISBN: 9783865022486, €49.90.
Ulrich Pietsch and Theresa Witting, eds., Fascination of Fragility: Masterpieces of European Porcelain (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 2010), 368 pages, ISBN: 9783865022479, €49.90.
Reviewed by Donna Corbin, Associate Curator, European Decorative Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art; posted 22 April 2011.
‘Triumph of the Blue Swords, Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie, 1710–1815’ (the English-language version of ‘Triumph der blauen Schwerter. Meissener Porzellan für Adel und Bürgertum 1710–1815‘) and the accompanying exhibition at the Japanese Palace in Dresden (May 8–August 29, 2010) celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Meissen porcelain manufactory. The exhibition was conceived as one of three complementary exhibitions—the other two being ‘The Fascination of Fragility‘ (Ephraim-Palais, Berlin, May 9–August 29, 2010; catalogue reviewed below) and ‘All Nations are Welcome. Three Hundred Years of the Meissen Manufactory’ (Meissen, January 23–December 31, 2010)—organized for the anniversary year. The exhibitions were intended to commemorate the anniversary, to highlight the indisputably influential role Meissen played in the development of porcelain production across Europe in the eighteenth century, and to bring attention to the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen that still exists today. . .
The full review is available here» (CAA membership required)
Call for Papers: St. Thomas Graduate Symposium
University of St. Thomas Art History Graduate Symposium
St Paul, Minnesota, 17-18 November 2011
Proposals due by 15 June 2011
The University of St. Thomas (MN) Art History Graduate Program invites proposals for its second annual graduate student research symposium. This year’s event will be held November 17-18, 2011, with a keynote talk by Dr. Steven Nelson (Associate Professor of African and African American Art History and chair of the Graduate Council at the University of California, Los Angeles) on Thursday night and student papers on Friday, November 18.
For consideration please submit a 250-word abstract and CV as attachments to artgradstusym@stthomas.edu by June 15, 2011. Selected participants will be notified by June 30 and your full paper will be due by October 1. Paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length, and the Graduate Program will award a prize to the best paper of the symposium. For more information about the event please contact artgradstusym@stthomas.edu. We look forward to your submission!
Call for Papers: The Florida State Graduate Symposium
The Florida State University Art History Graduate Symposium
Tallahassee, 4-5 November 2011
Proposals due by 1 August 2011 [extended to 29 August]
Keynote Speaker: John T. Paoletti, Kenan Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus and Professor of Art History, Wesleyan University
The Art History faculty and graduate students of The Florida State University invite students working toward an MA or a PhD to submit abstracts of papers for presentation at the 29th Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium. Paper sessions will begin on Friday afternoon, November 4, and continue through Saturday, November 5, with each paper followed by critical discussion. Symposium papers may come from any area of the history of art and architecture. Papers will then be considered for inclusion in Athanor, a nationally-distributed journal published by the Department of Art History and the FSU College of Visual Arts, Theatre & Dance.
The deadline for receipt of abstracts (maximum 500 words) is Monday, August 1, 2011. Please indicate the title of the talk, graduate level, and whether the subject originated in thesis or dissertation research. Send the abstract either as a printout or an email attachment to: Dr. Lynn Jones, Symposium Coordinator, lajones@fsu.edu.
Reviewed: Portrait of the County of Dorset
Notice of the exhibition appeared here back in February. Alex Kidson’s recent review is, however, much more illuminating — and laudatory — than the general description.
Alex Kidson, “Review of Georgian Faces: Portrait of a County,” The Burlington Magazine 153 (April 2011): 274-75.
Anyone expecting . . . the kind of celebratory ‘treasures from local houses’ show that was a staple of regional museums until the later part of the last century is in for a surprise. The sixty-seven portraits that make up this exhibition are for the most part not masterpieces; but they have been selected with immense rigour. . . Gwen Yarker, the curator, for whom the show is a triumph, has lived in Dorset for many years, and her understanding of the history of the county is apparent at every turn. She has explicitly based her selection on the structure of the Revd John Hutchin’s ‘History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset’ of 1774, with its emphasis on social hierarchy, and has given full weight to eighteenth-century modes of patronage. She fearlessly prefers, for example, to include replicas over originals to remind us that our present-day obsession with ‘originality’ is not one that was shared in the eighteenth century. . . .
Yet in Yarker’s text [for the catalogue], as well as with her selection, art-historical revisionism is far from suppressed. . . . In fact, the show is full of art-historical trouvailles. . . . It seems almost an understatement to say that the exhibition is at the forefront of the current study of eighteenth-century British portraiture. More than that, in its concern for local detail, its accuracy, but also its willingness to confront problems and to speculate, it points the way forward for future research. In revealing just how powerfully the old county structure acts as a focus of inquiry, it occupies some of the same research terrain as the catalogues of the Public Catalogue Foundation, or some of the initiatives of the National Portrait Gallery’s Subject Specialist Network project Understanding British Portraits (which supported the exhibition’s study day); yet its impact is far more direct and forceful than theirs. . . What takes this exhibition out of the realms of the remarkable and into those of the miraculous is that it was accomplished on a budget of £1000. . . .
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