Enfilade

Eighteenth-century news from an airport press release? A first for everything. This exhibition of sixty microscopes looks like a fine way to pass an hour or two during a layover. From the San Francisco Airport:

A World Examined: Microscopes from the Age of Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century
SFO Museum, San Francisco International Airport, 24 December 2011 —  24 June 2012

Curated by Steven Ruzin

George Adams, detail of New Universal Microscope, ca. 1746
(The Golub Collection, University of California, Berkeley)

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The microscope is a relatively young invention. Although magnifiers and “burning glasses” are referenced in ancient Chinese texts and in the first-century CE writings of Roman philosophers, the use of an optical instrument for observing microscopic specimens dates only to the sixteenth century when European scientists first used lenses to magnify objects. Englishman Robert Hooke, one of the most important scientists of his age, modified the compound microscope in the mid-seventeenth century and documented his observations in vivid descriptions and extraordinary copper-plate illustrations of dozens of minuscule phenomena—animal, vegetable, mineral, even man-made objects such as the point of a needle or a razor’s edge. His work stands as a remarkable testament to the keen and curious minds operating at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment.

John Marshall, Great Double Microscope, London, 1710. Wood, brass, cardboard, leather, and gilt (The Golub Collection, University of California, Berkeley)

From mid-seventeenth-century simple microscopes to the modern compound optical devices by German makers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these are the instruments that revealed the long-held secrets of the natural world—the existence of microorganisms, the structure of biological cells, and the composition and operation of a variety of previously unseen life forms. Nearly 350 years after Robert Hooke introduced a “newly visible world,” we continue to rely on the microscope in our eternal quest to better understand the world we inhabit and the challenges posed by that which remains invisible to the unaided eye.

A World Examined: Microscopes from the Age of Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century is located pre-security in the International Terminal Main Hall Departures Lobby, San Francisco International Airport. The exhibition is on view, free of charge, to all Airport visitors from December 24, 2011 to June 24, 2012.

This exhibition was guest curated by Steven Ruzin, Ph.D., Director of the CNR Biological Imaging Facility and Curator of The Golub Collection at the University of California, Berkeley. A selection of images are available here»

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SFO Museum was established by the Airport Commission in 1980 for the purposes of humanizing the Airport environment, providing visibility for the unique cultural life of San Francisco, and providing educational services for the traveling public. The Museum has been accredited by the American Association of Museums since 1999, and has the distinction of being the only accredited museum in an airport. Today, SFO Museum features approximately twenty galleries throughout the Airport terminals displaying a rotating schedule of art, history, science, and cultural exhibitions, as well as the San Francisco Airport Commission Aviation Library and Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum, a permanent collection dedicated to the history of commercial aviation.

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More information on the exhibition, including a history of the formation of the collection and photographs of the installation at SFO Museum, are available via The Golub Collection website.

Thanks to all of you who have helped make 2011 such a good year for Enfilade. I’m taking a few days off, but postings will resume soon. Happy holidays, and I hope the next few days bring plenty of tasty food, some extra sleep, time with friends and family, and maybe even some games around a table. -CH

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From the World Chess Hall of Fame:

Chess Masterpieces: Highlights from the Dr. George and Vivian Dean Collection
World Chess Hall of Fame, St Louis, 9 September 2011 — 12 February 2012

John Style Chess Set, India
Late 18th century, polychromed ivory

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Chess Masterpieces: Highlights from the Dr. George and Vivian Dean Collection celebrates the Deans’ 50^th year of collecting together and uses outstanding selected works to trace the development of the game of chess and the design of fine chess sets from the tenth to the early twentieth century. Sets come from Austria, Cambodia, China, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Kashmir, Morocco, Persia, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. Among the works on display are ones owned or commissioned by Catherine the Great, Napoleon, Czar Nicolas II, and the British royal family.

Chess has been called ‘The Royal Game’ not only because it originated in such royal courts but also because, across all eras and cultures, chess sets have been created from gold, silver, ivory, gemstones, crystal, and other opulent materials by the world’s finest craftsmen. The world-renowned Fabergé, Meissen, and Wedgewood workshops and many others were eager to join ranks with generations of elite anonymous craftsmen who worked for their ruler, church, or wealthy civil patrons to craft chess sets recognized as consummate works of art.

Just as the world’s finest craftsmen devised ever-more ingenious chess set designs, chess players plotted and planned ever-more innovative and elegant styles of play. Hence, each chess set in this exhibition is shown in a famous middle game or problem position from approximately the same timeframe and locale as the set. This enables one to view the pieces as they were intended to be viewed – in play, with the visual beauties of the designs complimented by the strategic brilliancies of the games. Hopefully, looking at pieces in the middle of a period game will bring one a step closer to the original experience of both the chess set and chess play of the time. These games were researched by curator Larry List with the help of chess scholar Myron Samsin of the Ken Whyld Association and noted chess teacher and author, Fred Wilson.

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Information on the John style set pictured above, from the exhibition checklist:

The theme of this style set is the opposition of native Indian troops to the John Company soldiers (often British mercenaries). These soldiers enforced the English control of Indian provinces and guarded the lucrative trade of the British East India Company. Such highly detailed decorative sets were made for display, not play. They were bought from skilled carvers in Berhampur by the British soldiers and traders as mementoes of their time in India serving the Crown. This prime example of the figurative polychromed designs uses the earliest Indian chess color scheme— red vs. green, with red-suited Brits facing off with green-clothed Indians.

From The Jewish Museum:

The Jewish Museum, New York, 2 December 2011 — 29 January 2012

Hanukkah Lamp, Italy, 18th century (?), copper alloy, wood, and iron (New York: The Jewish Museum)

For this exhibition, the museum invited renowned artist and illustrator Maurice Sendak to choose a group of Hanukkah lamps from the collection. Sendak’s work is characterized by a push and pull between beauty and sorrow, light and darkness. His art is triggered by memories and is also their repository. The world he creates is both dangerous and healing, as he tries to deal with the trauma of the Holocaust, in which many members of his family perished.

When going through the museum’s collection, the sheer number and variety of lamps struck a nerve, underscoring Sendak’s deep, lifelong sense of loss at the destruction of the prewar world of his Eastern European Jewish parents. Having movingly evoked that world in his drawings for Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966) and In Grandpa’s House (1985), he surprised himself by mostly avoiding its rich visual language when choosing lamps for this presentation. “I stayed away from everything elaborate. I kept looking for very plain, square ones, very severe looking,” he explained. “Their very simplicity reminded me of the Holocaust. And I thought it was inappropriate for me to be thinking of elaboration.”

The lamps Sendak finds most compelling and poignant are those that “go right to the heart,” whose “beauty is contained.” Yet his sense of humor is never far from the surface: as he made his choices he often free-associated, whimsically recalling old movies and Catskills family vacations. Above all, he is guided by his sensibility as an artist and author. He is drawn to simplicity of line, to a design “subservient to the basic idea of the piece,” and responds to the depth of emotion that emanates from a work itself or from the stories behind it. Concerned lest the past be forgotten, he hopes that young visitors to this exhibition will keep alive the memory of a vanished world.

Susan L. Braunstein and Claudia J. Nahson