Call for Papers | Object Fantasies: Forms and Fictions
As posted at H-ArtHist:
Object Fantasies: Forms and Fictions
Munich, 7–9 October 2015
Proposals due by 31 July 2014
Interdisciplinary Conference of the Junior Research Group Premodern Objects: An Archaeology of Experience (Elite Network of Bavaria / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich)
In modern understanding, the word ‘object’ signifies something material, spatially defined and functionally determined. These notions are accentuated by the word objectivity, which defines an ideal, systematic mode of grasping objects as ‘subjects’ that presumably operate neutrally and scientifically. In contrast, the Latin word
‘fantasia’ has, since antiquity, signified an apparition or the ability to imagine something that can equally be an image, a concept or, also, an object.
The conference takes the latter alternative meaning, that is, the non-objective experience of objects as well as recent positions of thing studies as the basis for inquiry into the creative act in the reception and construction of objects. How, for instance, do the object fantasies let the borders between object categories or objects and creatures blur? What role do they—equally nourished by illusion and experience—play in the perception and handling of material objects? To what degree do perceptions of and references to objects have a lasting effect on the conception and creation of other material objects or fictional objects in images and texts? And finally: What correlation exists between the creative handling of the objectual, the self-perception of subjects and the concrete and imaginary conditions of their social lives? The conference will pursue these as well as other lines of questioning of different formal as well as fictional possibilities in the creation of objects. Welcome are papers from all fields of human sciences on individual objects, object categories and systems, objects in images and texts, objects with images and script as well as object theories. The travel and accommodation costs of the speakers will be covered. The conference serves as a preparation for an anthology on the same topic. Working languages are English, German, French and Italian. Please send a one page abstract and a short CV by July 31, 2014 to objektfantasien@kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de.
Exhibition | Satires: Caricatures Genevoises et Anglaises du XVIIIe Siècle
Now on view in Geneva:
Satires: Caricatures Genevoises et Anglaises du XVIIIe Siècle
Musées d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève, 16 May — 31 August 2014
Dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, Genève voit naître plusieurs artistes au talent satirique avéré, tels Jean Huber l’Ancien ou Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer. La France est alors le premier modèle de l’art «sérieux» pour les Genevois, mais ce sont les productions anglaises qui nourrissent leur verve comique et parfois férocement critique à l’égard des mœurs, de la politique ou de la religion de leur temps. Si le lien entre les artistes locaux et leurs illustres contemporains anglais, tel William Hogarth, a souvent été souligné par les historiens de l’art, jamais il n’a été présenté au public sous la forme d’une exposition. Le Cabinet d’arts graphiques se propose de combler cette lacune.
The exhibition flyer is available here»
The press release is available here»
On Site | The International Museum of the Reformation in Geneva
Geneva’s Maison Mallet (to the left), built between 1772 and 1725, houses the International Museum of the Reformation; it stands next to the thirteenth-century St. Pierre Cathedral, the front of which is dominated by a mid-eighteenth-century portico. The photo comes from the museum’s website.
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The Other Side of the Story: The International Museum of the Reformation in Geneva
By Tobias Locker
Art historians are—at least to generalize from my own experience—rarely surprised by museums. And yet, sometimes we visit an institution where subject, setting, and presentation complement each other so favorably that they transform the visit into an inspiring experience. I was recently surprised in such a way at Geneva’s International Museum of the Reformation. The visit expanded and enriched my view of the Reformation, which is sometimes cast as less important than Roman Catholicism for understanding the Baroque, even as it was the trigger for the Counter Reformation. The Museum tells the other side of the story, the one of an influential religious movement inspiring the arts and mentality of the early modern period.
The International Museum of the Reformation was inaugurated in 2005, next to St. Pierre Cathedral in the Maison Mallet, a hôtel particulier, modelled entre court et jardin and built between 1722 and 1725, after plans of the architect Jean-François Blondel (uncle and mentor of Jacques François Blondel, the architectural theorician and author of the famous multivolume works De la distribution des maisons de plaisance… and l’Architecture Française…). At its opening, the museum still had much in common with the original nineteenth-century project of presenting Geneva as the seat of the Calvinist Reformation. But today the focus is—as its name suggests—much wider, extending the narrative of historic Protestantism into the twenty-first century.
Besides offering a fine impression of a prestigious home of a wealthy eighteenth-century Genevan citizen, the museum’s presentation succeeds on multiple fronts. While relatively small, it gives a good idea of the different currents of the Reformation. On its ground floor figures like Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Huguenots, and John Knox are explained while the lower level addresses the development of reformed religions from the nineteenth century to the present in a global context.
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I was particularly impressed by installations allowing visitors to experience the rooms of the Maison Mallet while also employing a varied array of media to make the visit fresh and exciting. The Grand Salon, for example, presents chairs grouped around tables with imbedded screens. A film explaining the essential ideas of the Reformation alternates between these screens and two pier-glasses, which themselves turn into screens during parts of the presentation. I found the multimedia display entertaining and clever; the process of watching the film was made more active as the eye was forced to also experience the room, and, for me, the installation provides a rare case in which Philippe Starck’s translucent ‘Louis Ghost’ chairs serve as an appropriate solution, lightening the density of the room while still acknowledging the eighteenth-century setting.
I was also intrigued by the way the exhibition works well for very different intellectual levels. From a scholarly point of view, the information is satisfying, even as the presentations (in both French and English) are easy to understand. The film in the Grand Salon, for instance, is narrated from the point of view of a child, a ‘customer group’ that in my eyes often is not considered sufficiently. Likewise, some dioramas with cutout copies of engravings animated by the turn of a crank handle are positioned at the height of small children.
The efforts of the museum were rewarded in 2007 with the prestigious Museum Prize of the Council of Europe. The International Museum of the Reformation is well worth a visit, and the quick 45-minute walk-through you originally had in mind might extend into a longer visit. If you have energy and time left afterward, you could visit the adjoining St. Pierre Cathedral and the archaeological site under the present thirteenth-century structure, with ruins of earlier churches dating back to the fourth century (the site’s importance was recognized with a Europa Nostra Award in 2008).
Tobias Locker is an art historian and lecturer based in Barcelona/Spain. His research focuses on furniture and decorative arts of the eighteenth century in Europe.
Call for Papers | Sewell C. Biggs Winterthur Furniture Forum, 2015
From Winterthur:
Sewell C. Biggs Winterthur Furniture Forum
New York Furniture: From New Netherlands to Empire State
Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware, 4–7 March 2015
Proposals due by 1 September 2014
Chest, 1700–35. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont 1958.1144. Photo by Gavin Ashworth
Winterthur solicits paper proposals for the 2015 Sewell C. Biggs Winterthur Furniture Forum From New Netherlands to Empire State: New York Furniture, to be held March 4–7, 2015, at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, Winterthur, Delaware.
This forum will focus on the multifaceted furniture of New York and adjacent communities in New Jersey and Connecticut with talks that explore Dutch origins, English styling, and the ascendancy of designs marketed by nationally known manufacturers. Especially welcome are topics with an end date before 1870 that examine: expressions of ethnic and cultural identity in the production and consumption of furniture; links between the cabinetmaking and building trades and the architectural settings of furniture; labor and shop practices; mass production, the introduction of new designs and international marketing strategies. Other topics are also encouraged.
Proposals for presentations 30 minutes in length should include a brief letter of interest, one-page abstract, and short cv and may be e-mailed to: jlane@winterthur.org or mailed to: Furniture Forum 2015, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, 5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur, DE 19735.
Exhibition | The Fortunes of the Italian Primitives, ca. 1800
From the exhibition website:
La Fortuna dei Primitivi: Tesori d’Arte dalle Collezioni Italiane fra Sette e Ottocento
The Fortunes of the Primitives: Art Treasures from Italian Collections
between the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, 24 June — 8 December 2014
Libro d’Ore di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Annunciazione (Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Ashb. 1874, c. 13v)
This exhibition is the first ever dedicated to the topic as a whole. It proposes to offer a critical-bibliographic picture of this very important cultural phenomenon concerning the history of taste and collecting in Italy between the late XVIII century and early XIX century. Among other things, this phenomenon exerted a considerable and direct influence on the formation of the major public art collections in the most important European countries.
The exhibition begins with the fundamental contribution of Giovanni Previtali (La fortuna dei primitivi. Dal Vasari ai Neoclassici, Turin, 1964), published exactly fifty years ago. With a scientific committee made up of art historians, historians of collecting and art critics, the exhibition intends to delve into this theme that to date has been relatively neglected. Significant progress has been made since the pioneering studies of Venturi, Previtali, Haskell and Pomian. The time is therefore ripe to reflect on this phenomenon and, especially, on the people who collected works by the primitives, to some extent systematically (and therefore not occasionally), and on those who strove to lay hands on these panel paintings with precious gold grounds (merchants, agents, procurers and restorers). Singling out Florence as the privileged site for an exhibition like this one is practically a foregone conclusion, given the wealth the Tuscan-Florentine area has had historically in the production of artworks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Almost all the collections of primitives indeed boasted works from this geographic area.
The exhibition will review the principal personalities who were in the forefront of this recovery, exponents of the church (from simple abbots to powerful cardinals), as well as noblemen and scholars who could not resist the attraction of these fragile and precious artistic representations. The rooms will therefore exhibit works of art (paintings, sculptures, objects of sumptuary art and illuminated codices) that were once in the collections of Francesco Raimondo Adami, Stefano Borgia, Angelo Maria Bandini, Alexis-François Artaud de Montor, Joseph Fesch, Teodoro Correr, Girolamo Ascanio Molin, Alfonso Tacoli Canacci, Sebastiano Zucchetti, Anton Francesco Gori, Agostino Mariotti, Matteo Luigi Canonici, Giuseppe Ciaccheri, Tommaso degli Obizzi, Gabriello Riccardi, Giovan Francesco De Rossi and Guglielmo Libri, to cite only the best-known names.
An animated dialogue will accompany visitors along a sort of ideal stroll through the Italy of collectors from the late XVIII century to the early XIX century. Visitors will be encouraged to make quick visual comparisons aimed at grasping the taste, the eye and the aesthetic sensitivity of the various collectors whose collections will be compared for the first time. Alongside paintings that at that time constituted the principal interest of collectors, there are other, equally important sections tied to illuminations and sculpture. The intention is to show the circularity of interests of collectors who with a pioneering approach sought to preserve these historical-scholarly representations, every day threatened by the risk of destruction or abandon.
The very numerous visitors of the Galleria dell’Accademia will thus be able to appreciate a selection of works of art of high and, in many cases, of the highest level, based on a serious scientific project, which will offer yet another confirmation of the heights of quality Italian art attained from the XIII to the XV century. The artists whose work will be on display in this exhibition include, among others, the Master of Magdalene, Arnolfo di Cambio, Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi, Nardo di Cione, Lippo Memmi, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Pietro da Rimini, Beato Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Andrea Mantegna, Cosmè Tura, Piermatteo d’Amelia and Giovanni Bellini. The exhibition catalogue is expected to constitute the till-now inexistent text of reference dedicated to this specific theme taken as a whole.
The catalogue will be available from ArtBooks.com:
Angelo Tartuferi and Gianluca Tormen, eds., La Fortuna dei Primitivi: Tesori d’Arte dalle Collezioni Italiane fra Sette e Ottocento (Firenze: Giunti, 2014), $78.
Exhibition | Art and Politics: The Electress Palatine
From the Museo delle Cappelle Medicee:
Art and Politics: The Electress Palatine and the Final Season of Medici Patronage in San Lorenzo
Museum of the Medici Chapels (Cappelle Medicee) Florence, 8 April — 2 November 2014
Curated by Monica Bietti
There are many reasons for paying due tribute to the Electress Palatine, Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici (1667–1743), the last descendent of the Grand-ducal branch of the Medici dynasty. Indeed the last years of her life—following the death of her brother the last Medici Grand Duke Gian Gastone—were intimately bound up with the present and future life of her State, for the safeguarding of which she drafted the “Family Pact,” the fundamental document that guaranteed the protection and conservation of the heritage of the Medici within their city and their State.
The idea for the exhibition stemmed from a 2012 project organised in collaboration between the REM museums of Mannheim—which wished to honour the memory of the Electress who lived and reigned in Germany following her marriage to the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm von Pfalz Neuburg, from 1691 to 1716—the Museum of the Medici Chapels, the Faculty of Medical Surgery of the University of Florence and the Superintendencies for the Archaeological Heritage of Tuscany, for the Architectural, Landscape, Historic, Artistic and Ethno-Anthropological Heritage of the Province of Florence and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. This project led, between the 8th and 22nd October of 2012, to the control of the state of conservation of the mortal remains of the Electress and the rehabilitation of the tomb as well as the restoration of part of the important collection of grave goods. The Museum of the Medici Chapels decided to illustrate to the public the results of this research and restoration by organising this exhibition, centred in particular on the last years of life of the Electress.
Among the outcomes of the control of the tomb and the remains of the last descendent of the Medici, the show displays to the public for the first time two gold medals, two coins and the dedicatory plaque. In addition, the exhibition is also intended to cast light on what Anna Maria Luisa did for art and politics in Florence from 1737, when her brother Gian Gastone died up to the year of her own death in 1743. It presents novelties and authentic rarities emerging from the new studies and researches that followed in the wake of the monographic show devoted to the Electress in 2006, curated by Stefano Casciu (The Wise Princess: The Legacy of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, Electress Palatine).
Bartolomäus van Douven, Allegoria degli Elettori Palatini come protettori delle Arti, 1722 (Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi)
The show is divided into four sections designed to introduce the heterogeneous public of the Museum of the Medici Chapels to the personality of the Princess. The first, Childhood and the Adolescent Years at Poggio Imperiale, briefly illustrates her education and the years of her early youth that she spent at the Medici Villa of Poggio Imperiale with her brothers Ferdinando and Gian Gastone, her uncle Francesco Maria and her grandmother Vittoria della Rovere.
The second section, Youth and Marriage, opens with the fine portrait of Anna Maria Luisa as Flora by Antonio Franchi and deals with the period of her marriage to the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, Johann Wilhelm, celebrated in 1691, and her long sojourn in Germany where the couple were intensely engaged in artistic patronage, well-represented by the works commissioned from Bartolomeo Van Douven, whose famous Allegory of the Electors Palatine as Patrons of the Arts can be admired at the exhibition.
The third section, The Return to Florence and the Commitment to the Family Church, constitutes the core of the exhibition, illustrating the years immediately following the return to Florence of the Electress after the death of her husband in 1716. The events of these years significantly affected the complex of San Lorenzo, which was enhanced by important commissions made by Anna Maria Luisa, presented here in the light of new “political” documents. Following the “Family Pact” of 1737, the Princess indeed launched the final season of Medici patronage in the great complex of San Lorenzo: “Anna Maria set in motion a wide-ranging series of commission initiatives which were focused on San Lorenzo, comprising the construction of the bell-tower, the painting of the cupola of the basilica, the project for the decoration of the ceiling of the Chapel of the Princes (never carried through): it was clearly an attempt on her part to conclude the extensive cycle of operations begun by her distant ancestor Giovanni di Bicci three centuries earlier, in the service of the famous basilica and the public magnificence of the family” (Cristina Acidini).
The show ends with the fifth section, Death, which took place on 18 February 1743, where period engravings and publications illustrate the ceremonies connected with the event. Also displayed in this section are the three-dimensional cast of the head of the Electress, the medals and the other objects found in her tomb.
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From Sillabe:
Monica Bietti, Arte e Politica: L’Elettrice Palatina e l’ultima stagione della committenza medicea a San Lorenzo (Livorno, Sillabe, 2014), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-8883477324, €30.
La campagna di restauro e indagine che ha avuto per oggetto il monumentale complesso delle Cappelle dei Principi presso la basilica di San Lorenzo a Firenze ha dato esiti a dir poco straordinari, non ultima la riesumazione e la delicatissima ricognizione sulle spoglie mortali della principessa Anna Maria Luisa, evento eccezionale di altissimo profilo scientifico, documentato dal National Geographic, e in questo 2014 il Museo vuole renderne partecipe il pubblico.
Già nel 2006 Firenze ha reso omaggio all’ultima dei Medici con un’altra importante mostra La principessa saggia. L’eredità di Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici Elettrice Palatina, edito da Sillabe; in questo nuovo evento saranno affrontati temi che approfondiscono la vita di Anna Maria Luisa, moglie dell’Elettore Palatino Johann Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg, e la sua politica dopo il rientro a Firenze, in seguito della morte del fratello Giangastone.
La mostra delle 77 opere di vario genere, alcune delle quali mai esposte al pubblico, offriranno una panoramica aggiornata e approfondita della vita della principessa, le sue committenze artistiche, le sue scelte politiche e di famiglia.
Yorktown Museum Acquires Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo
Another portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo by William Hoare. . . From the press release (6 June 2014). . .
William Hoare, Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, ca. 1733
(Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation)
The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, a Virginia state agency that operates Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center history museums, has acquired a previously unknown oil portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a freeborn, educated African who was kidnapped in Africa and sold as a slave in Maryland during the colonial era. Before taking its place as a centerpiece of the future American Revolution Museum at Yorktown (opening late 2016), the rare portrait (ca. 1733) goes on view at the Yorktown Victory Center this summer from June 14 through August 3.
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was catapulted into fame in the 1730s when the remarkable story of his enslavement and redemption in the North American British colonies was published. From almost the moment he touched ground in London in April 1733, he won the respect of the leading lights of advanced learning in England and ultimately entered the annals of history as a figure embraced by the global abolitionist movement.
William Hoare, Portrait of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solomon), 1733 (NPG L245, Lent by Qatar Museums Authority/Orientalist Museum, Doha, 2010)
Showing Diallo in a white robe and turban, wearing around his neck a bright red leather pouch probably containing texts from the Qur’an, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation portrait is one of two versions painted by William Hoare of Bath, a leading English portrait painter of the 18th century. They are the earliest known portraits done from life of an African individual who was held as a slave in the 13 British colonies that would become the United States of America. The other is currently on view in the National Portrait Gallery of London, on long-term loan following its purchase by the Qatar Museums Authority in 2009.
In a private collection since the 19th century, the Foundation’s portrait came to light following the publicity surrounding an appeal to the British public to keep the Qatar portrait in England. The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, Inc., purchased the oil-on-canvas painting with funds raised privately, including a lead gift from Foundation trustee Fred D. Thompson, Jr., of Thompson Hospitality, the country’s largest minority-owned food service company. “This portrait is a powerful symbol of the diversity of colonial America’s population, which included people from many different African cultures,” says Thompson. “Diallo—his image and story—is an ideal teaching opportunity for the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown galleries.”
“For approximately three years now, the Foundation has been in confidential negotiations to acquire this important portrait,” says Thomas E. Davidson, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation senior curator. “Diallo’s visage speaks for the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and African Americans who remain largely unknown, yet who constituted a major part of late-colonial America’s population.”
“As we plan for the new museum,” Davidson continued, “we hope to convey the way in which the American Revolution represented the beginning of the end for slavery in the United States. While the Revolution did not end slavery by itself, it created an intellectual, moral and political climate in which the practice could not and did not continue forever.”
While there are similarities, neither Hoare portrait is a copy of the other. The painting of Diallo that will be exhibited at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown is 14 by 12 inches, with the subject’s upper body turned toward his right, against a landscape background, within a painted oval. In the other portrait, Diallo is turned toward his left against a solid background. (more…)
Conference | Bound for Greatness: Books, Libraries, and Book Collecting
The National Trust and Waddesdon Manor (Rothschild Collections) Annual Conference
Bound for Greatness: Books, Libraries, and Book Collecting in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, 1 July 2014
Organised by Mark Purcell, Christopher Rowell, and Pippa Shirley
The Morning Room at Waddesdon Manor, with a view of the collection of illustrated books and bindings and a portrait of the collector Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. Photo: John Bigelow Taylor © The National Trust, Waddesdon Manor
The annual National Trust/Waddesdon Manor Conference this year is on the subject of books, libraries, and book collectors and collecting, prompted by the publication in 2013 of the Waddesdon catalogue of Printed Books and Bookbindings. Our distinguished speakers are drawn from across the book world—from libraries, universities, historic house collections, and the book trade. There will also be an opportunity to view the special exhibitions in the manor, including Royal Spectacle: Ceremonial and Festivities at the French Court. This exhibition features the lavishly illustrated books that document the many extravagant festivities and ceremonies staged for the French court during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The day will begin with coffee at 9:45 and end with a drinks reception finishing around 6:00. The £25 conference fee includes tea and coffee on arrival and a two-course lunch. To book a place, please ring the booking line on 01296 653226, Monday to Friday (except Bank Holidays), 10am–4pm, or email: bookings.waddesdon@nationaltrust.org.uk.
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P R O G R A M M E
9:45 Registration and Coffee in the Manor Restaurant
10:15 Christopher Rowell (Furniture Curator, National Trust) and Pippa Shirley (Head of Collection, National Trust / Waddesdon Manor), Welcome and Introduction
10:15 Paul Quarrie (Maggs and former Senior Director of Sotheby’s Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts), ‘The Changing Fortunes of the “Rare Book” in France around 1800: A Chapter in the History of Taste’
10:45 Raphaële Mouren (Librarian and Deputy Directory, The Warburg Institute), Title TBC
11:15 Robert Betteridge (Rare Books Curator, National Library of Scotland), ‘The Library of the Dalrymples of Newhailes’
11:45 David Adshead (Head Curator, National Trust), Architecture of Libraries
12:15 Questions and Discussion
12:30 Lunch in the Manor Restaurant
1:30 Mirjam Foot (Emeritus Professor of Library & Archive Studies, University College London), ‘Two 19th-Century Collectors: A Shared Love of Bookbindings?’
2:00 John O’Brien (Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University), Anglo-French
2:30 Mark Purcell (Libraries Curator, National Trust), ‘The Lost Library at Clumber Park’
3:00 Rachel Jacobs (Assistant Curator, Waddesdon), ‘The Royal Spectacle at Waddesdon Manor: An Exhibition of 17th- and 18th-Century French Festival Books’
3:20 David Pearson (Director of Culture, Heritage and Libraries, City of London Corporation), ‘Emerging Themes in the Study of the Private Library’
3:45 Tea in the Manor Restaurant with an opportunity to visit the shop (3:45–4:30 only), the Manor, and special exhibitions
5:00 Reception on the Terrace
Robin Nicholson Named Director of The Frick, Pittsburgh
Press release (4 June 2014) from Pittsburgh’s Frick Art & Historical Center:
The Board of Trustees of the Frick Art & Historical Center announces the appointment of Robin Nicholson as the institution’s third director. Currently Deputy Director for Art and Education at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, Virginia, Mr. Nicholson will assume his new post in Pittsburgh on September 2.
Mr. Nicholson’s appointment is the result of an intensive national search, conducted by a Search Committee that was formed immediately following the October 2013 retirement announcement of current Director Bill Bodine, whose 12-year tenure began in 2002. The seven-member Search Committee worked in collaboration with Management Consultants for the Arts, Inc. Search Committee Chair Betsy Watkins comments, “The Search Committee enthusiastically recommended Mr. Nicholson to the Board. We are impressed by his creative energy, his scholarship, his appreciation for our collections, and his ideas about programming at the Frick. We feel fortunate to have attracted someone of his caliber to the Frick and are confident that
he will bring inspired leadership to the institution.”
Carolyn ‘Cary’ Reed, Chair of the Frick’s Board of Trustees, says, “We are excited about welcoming Mr. Nicholson to the Frick in September. He joins us at an important time in the Center’s history, as we open a new Orientation Center and break ground for renovated spaces for our education programs, a new carriage gallery and a community center.”
This summer the Frick will open an Orientation Center, which will serve as a point of entry for visitors. The completion of this new facility marks the culmination of the first phase of a site-wide expansion project that began in 2012. The second phase of the project is planned to begin this summer.
Robin Nicholson has served as Deputy Director for Art and Education at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2010. In this post, he has overseen the museum’s curatorial, exhibitions, education, statewide partnerships, publications, and library departments. Mr. Nicholson began his tenure at the VMFA in 2006 as director for exhibitions. Prior to joining the staff of the VMFA, he spent 14 years as director and curator of the corporate art collection of the Drambuie Corporation, headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, and with corporate offices in England and the United States.
A renowned scholar of the art of the eighteenth-century Stuart royal courts in Paris and Rome, Robin Nicholson was educated at Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada, and the University of Cambridge, England, where he earned an MA degree. He has published and lectured extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art. Mr. Nicholson is the author of a book on the portraiture of Prince Charles Edward Stuart that was published by Bucknell University Press in 2002.
At the VMFA, he oversaw a number of major exhibition projects, including Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée Picasso, Paris, the most ambitious exhibition in the VMFA’s history. A 2008 alumni of the Getty Museum Leadership Program and past Chair of the Scottish Society for Art History, Mr. Nicholson served as cultural representative on the Presidential Bilateral Commission on US-Russia Relations.
In discussing his appointment as the Frick’s third director, Mr. Nicholson says, “I am thrilled to take on the leadership of an organization that is poised to take its place as a true icon in the dynamic Pittsburgh cultural landscape. The legacy of two inspirational previous directors has transformed the Frick and placed it in a position of strength where anything is possible—with collections, exhibition, collaborations, interpretation, education, programs, and a great historic green space in the heart of the city. The Frick has many compelling stories to tell, a great staff, and an extraordinarily supportive board leadership; it is a unique institution with unique opportunities at a key moment in its history.”
Frick Board of Trustees Chair Cary Reed remarks, “In its relatively short history, the Frick is fortunate to have had two extraordinary directors—Dick McIntosh and Bill Bodine—each of whom made significant contributions to the institution’s development. We are confident that Robin Nicholson will build on these great legacies as we continue and expand the quality exhibitions and programs which have been the hallmarks of the Frick Art & Historical Center.”
Exhibition | Progress
Left: David Hockney, Bedlam from A Rake’s Progress, 1961–63; Right: William Hogarth, The Madhouse, Plate 8 from A Rake’s Progress, 1735. The images are from the University of Colorado at Boulder, which in 2012 mounted the exhibition Hockney and Hogarth: Selections from the CU Art Museum’s Collection of British Art.
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From The Foundling Museum:
Progress
The Foundling Museum, London, 6 June — 7 September 2014
To mark the 250th anniversary of Hogarth’s death, Progress brings together for the first time three great contemporary responses to his eternally modern moral tale, A Rake’s Progress. David Hockney’s A Rake’s Progress (1961–63), Yinka Shonibare MBE’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy (1998), and Grayson Perry’s The Vanity of Small Differences (2012) are shown alongside Hogarth’s original 1735 prints and joined by a newly commissioned work by Jessie Brennan.
Hogarth’s popularity with both artists and the public has endured for over two hundred years, and his work has provided inspiration to successive generations. Hockney, Shonibare, and Perry not only update Hogarth’s searing social commentary; they also add their own personal concerns to the creative dialogue. Commissioning an emerging female artist to respond to Hogarth’s work, the Foundling Museum further develops the conversation. Exploring issues of sexuality, race, class, vice, temptation, youth, and urban living this exhibition both highlights Hogarth’s continuing relevance and allows us to consider the idea of ‘progress’.
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Rough Music: A Folk at The Foundling Museum
The Foundling Museum, London, 1 July 2014
To accompany the Progress exhibition the Foundling Museum is excited to present a unique event by Dead Rat Orchestra and Jeremy Barlow. Dead Rat Orchestra will perform Rough Music, a new work, incorporating performances on a set of tuned bronze meat cleavers. These specially-commissioned instruments were designed by composer and DRO member Nathaniel Mann as part of his Embedded Residency at The Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford Contemporary Music working with a professional swordsmith using bronze sword casting techniques. The performance will be preceded by a talk by author and early music expert Jeremy Barlow, author of The Enraged Musician. Barlow will consider Hogarth’s prints and explore the artist’s representations of music and sound.
See more at the event website.
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