Enfilade

From The Morgan:

Thomas Gainsborough: Experiments in Drawing
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 11 May — 19 August 2018

Curated by Marco Simone Bolzoni

The eighteenth-century British master Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) is celebrated for his portraiture and for his depictions of rural landscapes. Although he was best known as a painter, he was also a draftsman of rare ability. Gainsborough experimented with various media to sketch preparatory studies, finished works, and in some cases exercises for his own enjoyment. Thomas Gainsborough: Experiments in Drawing brings together more than twenty works primarily from the Morgan’s collection that reveal the artist’s technical innovations, his mastery of materials, and his development of a new and original mode of drawing.

The exhibition is sponsored by Lowell Libson and Jonny Yarker Ltd. and generously supported by Mr. and Mrs. Clement C. Moore II and the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust.

Marco Simone Bolzoni, Thomas Gainsborough: Experiments in Drawing (London: Holberton, 2018), 84 pages, ISBN: 9781911300458, $25.

Press release (1 December 2017) from the Rijksmuseum:

High Society: Four Centuries of Glamour
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 8 March — 3 June 2018

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Jane Fleming, later Countess of Harrington, ca. 1778–79 (San Marino, The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens).

The Dutch national museum, the Rijksmuseum, is presenting High Society with over thirty-five life-size portraits of powerful princes, eccentric aristocrats, and fabulously wealthy citizens by the great masters of art history, including Cranach, Veronese, Velázquez, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Sargent, Munch, and Manet. The centrepiece are Rembrandt’s spectacular wedding portraits, Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, which will be shown for the first time following their restoration.

Never before has there been an exhibition dedicated to this most glamorous type of portrait: life-size, standing, and full length. Loans have come from museums and private collections from all over the world including Paris, London, Florence, Vienna, and Los Angeles. High Society also gives a glimpse into the informal life of the well-to-do. More than eighty prints and drawings from the Rijksmuseum’s own collection show what went on behind closed doors: parties, drinks, gambling, and amorous encounters.

International Masterpieces
The works vary from the early sixteenth to the start of the twentieth century. Masterpieces include the impressive portraits of Henry the Pious, Duke of Saxony and Catharina, Countess of Mecklenburg by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1514), the married couple Iseppo da Porto and Livia da Porto Thiene with Their Children by Veronese (1555), Don Pedro de Barberana y Aparregui by Velázquez (ca. 1631–33), Portrait Jane Fleming by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1778/79), The Artist by Edouard Manet (1875), and of course Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit by Rembrandt (1634).

Four Centuries of Fashion
Most of the people portrayed are very lavishly dressed, giving the exhibition an overview of four centuries of fashion: from the tightly cut trousers and doublet from 1514 to the haute couture of the late nineteenth century. Some of the subjects portrayed, however, are wearing fancy garments in an antique style. Another is wearing a kilt, yet another is not wearing trousers and one is almost completely naked. Remarkably, those portrayed often have dogs with them. One man is accompanied by a lion. One couple have their children with them. The backgrounds can be richly decorated interiors, often with columns and/or curtains, or a summer or winter landscape. One man is standing in front of an imaginary landscape with palm trees, while another is adopting a flamboyant pose in front of the Colosseum in Rome.

Vices
Whereas the life-size portraits show the well-to-do in their Sunday best, three rooms in the exhibition are devoted to activities that take place for the most part behind closed doors: parties, drinks, gambling, amorous encounters, and brothel visits. Based on the vices of Gluttony, Greed, and Lust, more than eighty prints and drawings from the collection of the Rijksmuseum have been assembled, many showing humorous and satirical scenes, often with a strong moralizing message in the inscriptions.

Photo: Rijksmuseum/David van Dam.

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The catalogue by Jonathan Bikker (Curator of Research at the Rijksmuseum) will be available at the Rijksmuseum Shop from March 2018. An edition of the journal Kunstschrift entitled Ten Voeten Uit (Full Length) will also be published to accompany the exhibition.

Jonathan Bikker, High Society (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2018), 136 pages, ISBN: 978-9462084261, 25€.

Josef Salazar y Mendoza, Portrait of Don Antonio Mendez (1750–1829) and His Family, 1795, oil on canvas, 36 × 49 inches (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Patrick).

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Now on view at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art:

Salazar: Portraits of Influence in Spanish New Orleans, 1785–1802
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, 8 March — 2 September 2018

Curated by Cybele Gontar

In conjunction with the tricentennial celebration of New Orleans, Salazar: Portraits of Influence in Spanish New Orleans tells the story of Yucatán-born Josef Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza (ca. 1750–1802), whose career spanned most of the Spanish administration of New Orleans. The exhibition offers a view of Spanish colonial New Orleans through a re-examination of about 30 of Salazar’s portraits. His oeuvre is contextualized in relation to works and other historical artifacts reflective of the city as a site of mobility and transatlantic artistic exchange.

The catalogue is available from ArtBooks.com:

Cybele Gontar, ed., Salazar: Portraits of Influence in Spanish New Orleans, 1785–1802 (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2018), 240 pages, ISBN: 9781608011544, $65.

The catalogue includes a comprehensive collection of Salazar’s portraits and essays that explore the historical and artistic implications of the era. The oeuvre of this Mexican artist is contextualized in relation to works by other early New Orleans portraitists including Antonio Meucci, Francois M. Guyol de Guiran (1775–1849), and Louis Collas (1775–1856).

François Chéreau, Le Missisipi ou la Louisiane dans l’Amérique Septentrionale, ca. 1720, hand-colored engraving (The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1959.210).

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Now on view at THNOC:

New Orleans, the Founding Era
The Historic New Orleans Collection, 27 February — 27 May 2018

Curated by Erin Greenwald

In commemoration of the city’s 300th anniversary in 2018, The Historic New Orleans Collection provides a multifaceted exploration of the city’s first few decades and its earliest inhabitants with New Orleans, the Founding Era, an original exhibition and bilingual companion catalog. The exhibition brings together a vast array of rare artifacts from THNOC’s holdings and from institutions across Europe and North America to tell the stories of the city’s early days, when the city consisted of little more than hastily assembled huts and buildings.

Beginning with the region’s Native American tribes, through the waves of European arrival and the forced migration of enslaved African people, the exhibition reflects on the complicated and often conflicted meanings the settlement’s development held for individuals, empires, and indigenous nations. It features works on paper, ethnographic and archaeological artifacts, scientific and religious instruments, paintings, maps and charts, manuscripts and rare books. These original objects are complemented by large-scale reproductions and interactive items. More than 75 objects are on loan from organizations in Spain, France, Canada, and around the United States. A number of items, like a pair of 18th-century Native American bear-paw moccasins from the Musée du quai Branly in Paris and pieces of 15th-century Mississippian pottery from the University of Mississippi, have rarely traveled beyond their home institutions.

Digital interactives will include a gallery of photographs from archaeological digs at a variety of French Quarter sites, a game quizzing visitors on supplies needed for a new home in the settlement and a 1731 inventory of enslaved Africans and African-descended people living on a West Bank plantation.

Erin Greenwald, ed., New Orleans, the Founding Era / La Nouvelle-Orléans, les années fondatrices, translated by Henry Colomer (New Orleans: The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2018), 176 pages, ISBN 978-0917860744, $50.

The companion catalog—a bilingual edition, in English and French—will feature essays describing the different populations who inhabited precolonial New Orleans and the surrounding areas, as well as the forces driving the settlement’s growth. Essayists include exhibition curator Erin M. Greenwald and historians Emily Clark, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Robbie Ethridge, Gilles-Antoine Langlois, Yevan Terrien, Daniel Usner, and Cécile Vidal. Gérard Araud, ambassador of France to the United States, contributed the book’s foreword.

Erin M. Greenwald is curator of programs at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Formerly, as curator at The Historic New Orleans Collection, she was project director of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded traveling exhibition Purchased Lives: The American Slave Trade from 1808 to 1865. Greenwald holds a PhD in history from the Ohio State University.

Henry Colomer is a French documentary filmmaker and translator. He has directed some thirty films, including various portraits of artists and writers (L’exilé, Iddu, Ricercar, Vies métalliques), as well as a number of documentaries about the upheavals of the twentieth century (Monte Verità, Sous les drapeaux). Colomer has won several awards (Best Historic Documentary, Festival of History Films, Pessac, 1998, 2008; Focal International Award, London, 2010).

Palanquin (Mahadol), Gujarat, ca. 1700–30, gilded wood, glass, copper and ferrous alloy (Mehrangarh Museum Trust; photograph by Neil Greentree).

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Press release (8 January 2018) from the MFAH:

Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 4 March — 19 August 2018
Seattle Art Museum, 18 October 2018 — 21 January 2019
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 9 March — 2 September 2019

Curated by Mahrukh Tarapor, Karni Singh Jasol, Martand Singh, and Angma Dey Jhala

A major collaboration brings a groundbreaking exhibition of royal treasures from India to Houston in March. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in partnership with the Mehrangarh Museum Trust of Jodhpur, Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India showcases nearly four centuries of artistic creation from the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur, one of the largest princely states in India, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan.

Mughal, Huqqa Vase, early 18th century, glass and gold paint (Umaid Bhawan Palace; photograph by Neil Greentree).

Through lavishly made ceremonial objects, finely crafted arms and armor, sumptuous jewels, intricately carved furnishings, and more, the exhibition outlines the dynamic history of the Marwar-Jodhpur region and the Rathore dynasty that ruled it for over seven centuries. Established in the 15th century, the city of Jodhpur was once the powerful capital of Marwar, a vast desert kingdom ruled by the Rathores, who were descendants of a hereditary social caste of Hindu warriors and kings (known as ‘kshatriyas’). Over the course of several centuries, the prosperity of Jodhpur attracted the attention of two successive empires who ruled India: the Mughals and the British. Both encounters reshaped Jodhpur’s cultural landscape, introducing objects, artists, languages, architectural styles and systems of administration that influenced the royal identity of the Rathore dynasty. Through some 250 objects from Indian courtly life, most never before seen outside of Jodphur, the exhibition illuminates how the Rathores acquired and commissioned objects amidst these cross-cultural exchanges to leverage patronage, diplomacy, matrimonial alliances, trade, and conquest.

Drawn primarily from the collections of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust and the private collections of the royal family of Jodhpur, the exhibition marks the first time that most of these treasures—including paintings, decorative arts and furniture, tents, canopies, carpets, textiles, and weapons—will be seen outside of their palace setting at Mehrangarh Fort and the first time they will travel abroad. The foundations of the Fort, carved out of a rocky hillside 400 feet above Jodhpur, were laid by the Rathores in 1459 as a military stronghold. The Fort, famously described by Rudyard Kipling as “a palace that might have been built by Titans and colored by the morning sun,” has been the seat of the Rathore dynasty since then, serving as a royal residence, a center of cultural patronage, and a place of worship for the royal clan. Today, it houses the collection of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, which was established in 1972 by the current dynastic head of the Rathore clan, His Highness Maharaja GajSingh II of Marwar-Jodhpur, and remains one of the most important and best-preserved collections of fine and applied arts from the Mughal period of Indian history. A handful of carefully chosen objects from other notable collections, including The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, complete the presentation, while large-scale photomurals will evoke the stunning setting of the Mehrangarh Museum, where H. H. Maharaja Gaj Singh II continues to preserve the living heritage of Jodhpur.

“Peacock in the Desert is the result of a landmark partnership, marking the first time the Mehrangarh Museum Trust has shared so many of the treasured objects of their collection,” commented Gary Tinterow, MFAH director. “We are deeply honored and grateful to be the first U.S. organization to present this show, and for the opportunity to provide visitors this unprecedented experience of India’s rich cultural history.”

“The fort of Jodhpur-Mehrangarh has been preserved as a record of the lives and legacy of the Rathores,” added His Highness Maharaja GajSingh II. “I look forward to sharing the artistic and cultural heritage of my country, India, and the city of Jodhpur and its people, with new audiences across North America.”

Dalchand, Maharaja Abhai Singh on Horseback, Jodhpur, ca. 1725, opaque watercolor and gold on paper (Mehrangarh Museum Trust; photograph by Neil Greentree).

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Three central, underlying themes woven throughout Peacock in the Desert build upon recent and emerging scholarship to deepen visitors’ understanding of the multifaceted character of a traditional Indian kingdom:
• Interconnections: The relationships between palace and town, urban and rural, central empire and subsidiary kingdom, as well as those that resulted from migratory trade routes, marital alliances, and military partnerships/confrontations, all led to a dynamic crosspollination of new ideas and belief systems, which found brilliant expression in fine and decorative arts, architecture, design, performing arts, and more.
• The role of women and artisans: Contrary to the popular assumption that royal women were quietly hidden away, the exhibition explores the crucial role they played as agents of cultural change and patrons of the arts, showcasing how the gender roles, social etiquette, and aesthetic practices employed by women influenced the identity of Indian courts.
• Royal patronage and the continuity of tradition: An exploration of the royal courts and the ways they were able to preserve India’s cultural traditions, while at the same time absorbing and incorporating external influences.

These themes offer a new perspective on the cosmopolitan culture of the royal courts of the Marwar–Jodhpur region, communicated through the careful juxtaposition of objects, interpretive materials, and immersive installation within the exhibition’s six interlinked sections.

Tradition and Continuity: The Royal Wedding Procession
The exhibition opens with a dramatic recreation of a royal wedding procession with video projections of actual footage from royal weddings performed in the 20th century. Featuring elephant howdahs (seats), horse and elephant mannequins adorned with traditional wedding regalia, and royal insignia, this immersive environment introduces visitors to the role that marital alliances played in the lives of the citizens of Marwar-Jodhpur and in the development of the region’s aesthetic traditions.

The Rathores of Marwar
This section introduces the desert landscape of Marwar-Jodhpur, its diverse peoples, and the exhibition’s central protagonists: the Rathore clan that ruled the region from the 13th to the mid-20th century. Highlights include illuminated manuscript pages that illustrate the scenery of the region and detail the history of the dynasty; an exquisite wood and glass Mahadol (palanquin); textiles, such as turbans worn by various members of the desert community; and a model of the Mehrangarh Fort, in silver.

Conquest and Alliance: The Rathores and the Mughals
The arrival of, and eventual takeover by, the Mughal Empire in 1561 began centuries of political and military alliances brokered between the Mughals and the Rathore clan. This section examines the movement of objects throughout these alliances in the 16th and 17th centuries, presenting ornate sabers, daggers, and rifles alongside 17th- and 18th-century paintings and illustrations of court and war scenes. The section culminates in the extraordinary 17th-century Lal Dera tent, one of the oldest, if not the only, intact Indian court tent of its time.

Zenana: Cross-cultural Encounters
In this section, paintings, carpets, textiles, jewelry, along with intricately-carved sandstone jalis (screens), from behind which women viewed courtly activities, evoke the setting of a royal zenana, the womens’ wing of a Rathore palace. Here, the zenana is explored as a dynamic cosmopolitan space that not only housed women and objects, but also functioned as a preserver of intangible cultural traditions through the propagation of heirlooms, rituals, and dress throughout the centuries. Among the furnishings shown in this section is an exceptional wood baradari (pavilion).

Durbar: The Rathore Court
As Mughal influence began to decline in the late 18th century, the Rathore durbar (royal reception) capitalized on its diminished power by attracting artists and craftsmen from their weakened court. This, in addition to the growing trend of exchanging artworks as gifts, led to a period of intense creativity in artistic and decorative production and a cross-fertilization of Mughal and Rathore styles, as indicated by the woven canopy and textiles, finely crafted arms and armor, and 18th- and 19th-century paintings on view.

The Raj
Extravagant, large-scale objects immediately convey the tone of the last section of the exhibition, which explores the most dramatic period of transformation in Jodhpur’s history, triggered by the arrival of the British in 1818. Garments, paintings, decorative arts, and a 1944 Stinson L-5 Sentinel aircraft illustrate the influence of the British on the region and the unprecedented scale on which Jodhpur royalty began to embrace modernity and western culture as the movement for Indian independence—eventually granted in 1947—gained traction.

Peacock in the Desert is curated by a team of scholars and professionals from India: Dr. Mahrukh Tarapor, senior advisor for international initiatives at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dr. Karni Singh Jasol, director of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur; the late Martand Singh, chief consultant from the Mehrangarh Museum Trust; and Dr. Angma Dey Jhala, associate professor at Bentley University, who serves as project advisor and volume editor for the accompanying catalogue.

Distributed by Yale UP:

Karni Jasol, with contributions by Peter Alford Andrews, Robert Elgood, Catherine Glynn, Karni Jasol, Angma Jhala, Shailka Mishra, and Giles Tillotson, and edited by Angma D. Jhala, Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2018), 296 pages, ISBN: 9780300232967, $85.

Peacock in the Desert traces the evolution of royal identity in the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur in southwestern Rajasthan from the 17th century to the establishment of independence after 1947, presenting the area as a microcosm of India’s extraordinarily vibrant culture. An international team of contributors has contextualized these regional narratives in relation to external—and even global—forces. The book thus offers a new perspective on the acquisition and commissioning of objects through patronage, diplomacy, matrimonial alliances, trade, and conquest. It sheds fresh light on the influential role of women at the royal courts and examines monarchies as lenses onto cross-cultural relationships, the unrecognized roles of groups marginalized in earlier accounts, cultural heterodoxy, and large-scale multicultural exchange. Exploring these webs of connection, Peacock in the Desert makes a transformative contribution to scholarship. Its multidisciplinary approach to artistic and cultural exchange offers pathbreaking insights, adding crucial chapters to the story of India’s royal visual splendor.

Antonio Carnicero Mancio, The Ascent of a Montgolfier Balloon at Aranjuez, ca. 1784, oil on canvas, 169 × 280 cm
(Madrid: Prado)

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Now on view at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum:

Goya and the Enlightenment Court / Goya y la corte ilustrada
CaixaForum, Zaragoza, 28 September 2017 — 21 January 2018
Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, 14 February — 28 May 2018

Curated by Manuela Mena and Gudrún Maurer

Having studied in Italy, Francisco de Goya (Fuendetodos, Zaragoza, 1746 – Bordeaux, 1828) moved to Madrid in 1775 and was first employed at the court of Charles III to work on the production of tapestry cartoons on hunting themes for El Escorial. Goya achieved recognition some years later when he was first appointed painter to the King (1786) then First Court Painter (1799). Despite this success at court, Goya maintained his connections with his native Zaragoza, and his correspondence with his childhood friend Martín Zapater offers proof of this ongoing relationship with his circle of friends and relatives while also providing crucial information on the progress of his career. The Prado’s exceptional loan of 13 original letters offers the documentary counterpoint to Goya as court painter and this is in fact the essential argument of the exhibition, which moves between Goya’s success at the courts of Charles III and Charles IV and the persistent echoes of his origins through his continuing contact with those closest to him.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Grape Harvest, or Autumn, 1786, oil on canvas, 268 × 191 cm (Madrid: Prado).

Co-organised by the Museo Nacional del Prado, Fundación Bancaria “la Caixa” and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Goya and the Enlightenment Court will be on display from 14 February until 28 May 2018, having previously been on view at the CaixaForum, Zaragoza. Curated by Manuela B. Mena and Gudrun Maurer, Chief Curator and Curator in the Department of 18th-century Painting and Goya at the Museo del Prado respectively, the exhibition brings together 96 works, many of which (71, of which 52 are oil paintings and the rest documents and examples of the decorative arts) come from the Museo del Prado. The remaining works on display comprise 9 paintings from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum’s own collection and further loans from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico, the Museo de Zaragoza, the Fundación Colección Ibercaja, the Sociedad Ecónomica Aragonesa de Amigos del País and a number of private collections.

In addition to the core group of canvases and cartoons by Goya, the exhibition also features works by other important 18th-century artists such as Luis Paret, Mariano Maella, José del Castillo, Luis Meléndez, Antonio Carnicero and Lorenzo Tiepolo, which together provide a context and also reveal the remarkable originality of Goya’s work. Finally, the exhibition includes examples of the above-mentioned correspondence with Martín Zapater, in addition to miniatures, prints and examples of the decorative arts.

Along with extensive restoration carried out for to this exhibition, the research undertaken has revealed new information, reflected, for example, in the presentation of a new portrait and a miniature of Martín Zapater painted by Goya and by Francisca Ifigenia Meléndez respectively, as well as the attribution to Agustín Esteve of a copy of Goya’s lost portrait of Ramón Pignatelli. Other new discoveries to be seen in Bilbao include the recently restored portrait of Pantaleón Pérez de Nenín and the presentation in context of Luis Paret’s remarkable View of Bermeo, a work recently acquired by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.

Major sections of the exhibition address
1  ‘Zaragoza, my heart, Zaragoza, Zaragoza’
2  Goya and Madrid, 1775: Hunting
3  The Enlightenment Court: Meeting Points
4  Friendship and Success
5  Female Refinement in the 18th Century
6  Portraits of Basques and Navarrans

Manuela B. Mena Marqués, Gudrun Maurer, and Virginia Albarrán, Goya y la corte ilustrada (Madrid: Prado, 2018), 216 pages, ISBN: 978 849900 1944, 39€.

From the Massachusetts Historical Society via Kickstarter:

The Massachusetts Historical Society has spent the last two years delving into its collections to uncover stories as told by various examples of clothing, fabric, accoutrements, and associated manuscripts. Through this process, textiles that have largely been divorced from their familial ties have been reunited with family papers. Later this year, we hope to share them with the world through Fashioning the New England Family, a project encompassing a publication, exhibition, and online presentation. But we need your help to bring these stories to life.

What is Fashioning the New England Family?

This is a project that will make accessible the dynamics of fashion, textiles, and costume across the span of our history. The MHS will produce an exhibition and companion volume to fully explore the ways in which the multiple meanings of fashion and fashionable goods are reflected in patterns of consumption and refashioning, recycling, and retaining favorite family pieces.

This is a unique and significant endeavor. Many of the items that will be featured in the project have been out of sight, having never been exhibited for the public or seen in living memory. The publication and exhibition will give scholars, students, and professionals in fields such as fashion, material culture, and history the chance to see these items for the first time; encourage research; and, provide the possibility for new discoveries. For the public, it is an opportunity to view in detail painstaking craftsmanship, discover how examples of material culture relate to significant moments in our history, and learn how garments were used as political statements, projecting an individual’s religion, loyalties, and social status. It may allow some to recognize and appreciate family keepsakes but it will certainly help us all to better understand the messages we may have previously missed in American art and literature. The MHS is dedicated to producing the exhibition, but we need your help to create the companion volume. Our project page will be updated with fun facts, images, and video clips throughout the month of February.

Why Create a Companion Volume?

Planned as a high-quality, full-color publication, this volume will serve both as a record of the exhibition and as a testament to the importance of the textiles and garments it illustrates and describes. The themes and subject matter pursued in the exhibition also provide the frames of reference for the book, which will include a preface by Catherine Allgor, President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and a foreword by Anne E. Bentley, MHS Curator of Art and Artifacts. The primary author of the publication and guest curator of the exhibition is Dr. Kimberly S. Alexander.

What’s in the Budget?

While the entire project will cost around $100,000, we have set a Kickstarter campaign goal of $15,000 to produce the companion volume. We want to provide as many people as possible the opportunity to be part of this project. The companion volume is a natural fit for both the Kickstarter community and our mission to make this project as widely accessible as possible. The companion volume will be a lasting resource, serving as both a record of the exhibition and as a testament to the importance of the textiles and garments it illustrates and describes. We are counting on you and other members of the Kickstarter community to make this publication a reality.

What are the Rewards?

First and foremost—our gratitude! The ability to produce a companion volume remains the primary goal of the Society’s Kickstarter campaign. A gift at any level will go towards helping us bring this project to life. All donations also come with an opportunity to be named and publicly thanked as a Kickstarter backer on the Society’s project page. Donations at $15 and more also receive a set of postcards, exclusive to Kickstarter. A successful campaign also means that backers of the project at $50 or more on Kickstarter will be the first to receive the Fashioning the New England Family companion volume.

Backers of the project at higher levels get even more opportunities to engage with and learn about our textile collection. Be sure to check out the special event invitations, tours, and behind-the-scenes opportunities different rewards offer for supporting this project. If our project is completed and the goal is met, you will be asked to fill out a survey so that we can send you your rewards. The MHS is unable to provide your rewards or recognize any gift you made unless the informational survey is completed. Once rewards are shipped, please allow an additional 4–6 weeks for your reward(s) to ship internationally. Note: we are not responsible for international custom fees.

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About the MHS

Founded in 1791, the Massachusetts Historical Society is an invaluable resource for American history, life, and culture. Its extraordinary collections tell the story of America through millions of rare and unique documents, artifacts, and irreplaceable national treasures. As the nation’s first historical society, the MHS strives to enhance the understanding of our nation’s past and its connection to the present, demonstrating that history is not just a series of events that happened to individuals long ago but is integral to the fabric of our daily lives. Its collections are accessible to anyone with an interest in American history. Beyond research, the MHS offers many ways for the public to enjoy its collections including thought-provoking exhibitions, publications, engaging programs, seminars, and teacher workshops.

From the Art Institute of Chicago:

Mirroring China’s Past: Emperors, Scholars, and Their Bronzes
Art Institute of Chicago, 25 February — 13 May 2018

Curated by Tao Wang

Artist Unknown, Court Beauty, Qing Dynasty, Late Kangxi Reign, between 1709 and 1723 (Beijing: The Palace Museum).

Chinese bronzes of the second and first millennia BC are some of the most distinctive achievements in the history of art. Exquisitely ornamented, these vessels were made to carry sacrificial offerings, to use in burial, or to commemorate family in public ceremonies. When they were found by emperors centuries later, these spiritually significant objects were seen as manifestations of a heavenly mandate on a ruler or dynasty and became prized items in imperial collections. This exhibition—the first to explore how these exquisite objects were collected and conceptualized throughout Chinese history—presents a rare opportunity to experience a large number of these works together in the United States.

Unlike Greek and Roman bronze sculptures of human and animal forms, most objects from Bronze Age China (about 2000–221 BC) were vessels for ritual use. Beginning with the Song dynasty (960–1279), emperors unearthed these symbolic works and began collecting them, considering them to be evidence of their own authority and legitimacy as rulers. Several 18th-century portraits of Emperor Quianlong include his bronze collection, demonstrating how ancient bronzes came to play a critical role in imperial ideology and self-fashioning. In addition to impressive collections, the royal fascination with bronzes led to the creation of numerous reproductions and the meticulous cataloguing of palace holdings. These catalogues are works of art themselves, with beautiful illustrations and detailed descriptions.

From the 12th century onward, scholars and artists also engaged in collecting and understanding ancient bronzes, especially their inscriptions. Unlike emperors, who commonly employed art to promote and implement political and cultural policies, scholars regarded bronzes as material evidence of their efforts to recover and reconstruct the past, and they occasionally exchanged them as tokens of friendship. Today ancient bronzes still occupy a prominent position in Chinese culture—as historical or nostalgic objects and as signifiers of an important cultural heritage that inspires new generations, as seen in the works of contemporary artists on view in this presentation.

Mirroring China’s Past brings together approximately 180 works from the Art Institute of Chicago’s strong holdings and from the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Shanghai Museum, and important museums and private collections in the United States. By providing viewers with a new understanding of ancient bronzes and their significance through time, the exhibition illuminates China’s fascinating history and its evolving present.

The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

Tao Wang, ed., with essays by Sarah Allan, Jeffrey Moser, Su Rongyu, Edward L. Shaughnessy, Zhixin Jason Sun, Tao Wang, Zhou Ya, Liu Yu, and Lu Zhang, Mirroring China’s Past: Emperors, Scholars, and Their Bronzes (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2018), 296 pages, ISBN: 9780300228632, $60.

A lavishly illustrated book that offers an in-depth look at the cultural practices surrounding the tradition of collecting ancient bronzes in China during the 18th and 19th centuries.

In ancient China (2000–221 BC) elaborate bronze vessels were used for rituals involving cooking, drinking, and serving food. This fascinating book not only examines the cultural practices surrounding these objects in their original context, but it also provides the first in-depth study tracing the tradition of collecting these bronzes in China. Essays by international experts delve into the concerns of the specialized culture that developed around the vessels and the significant influence this culture, with its emphasis on the concept of antiquity, had on broader Chinese society. While focusing especially on bronze collections of the 18th and 19th centuries, this wide-ranging catalogue also touches on the ways in which contemporary artists continue to respond to the complex legacy of these objects. Packed with stunning photographs of exquisitely crafted vessels, Mirroring China’s Past is an enlightening investigation into how the role of ancient bronzes has evolved throughout Chinese history.

Tao Wang is Pritzker Chair of Asian Art and curator of Chinese art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

From The Frick:

Canova’s George Washington
The Frick Collection, New York, 23 May 2018 — 23 September 2018
Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova, Possagno, 10 November 2018 — 22 April 2019

Curated by Xavier Salomon and Peter Jay Sharp in collaboration with Mario Guderzo

Antonia Canova, George Washington, 1818; Gesso (Possagno: Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova).

In 1816, the North Carolina Senate commissioned a full-length statue of George Washington to stand in the State House in Raleigh. Thomas Jefferson, believing that no American sculptor was up to the task, recommended Antonio Canova (1757–1822), then one of Europe’s most celebrated artists. The first and only work Canova created for America, the statue depicted the nation’s first president in ancient Roman garb, per Jefferson’s urging, drafting his farewell address to the states. It was unveiled to great acclaim in 1821, and people traveled from far and wide to see it. Tragically, only a decade later, a fire swept through the State House, reducing the statue to just a few charred fragments.

Canova’s George Washington examines the history of the artist’s lost masterpiece, probably the least well known of his public monuments. It brings together for the first time Canova’s full-sized preparatory plaster model (which has never left Italy), four preparatory sketches for the sculpture, and related engravings and drawings. The exhibition also includes Thomas Lawrence’s 1816 oil portrait of Canova, which, like the model and several sketches, will be on loan from the Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova in Possagno, Italy, the birthplace of the artist. The exhibition is organized by Xavier F. Salomon, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator, in collaboration with Mario Guderzo, Director of the Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova, the Venice International Foundation, and Friends of Venice Italy Inc. Following its presentation at the Frick, the exhibition will be shown in Italy at the Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova in Possagno in the fall of 2018.

The accompanying catalogue will include correspondence relating to the commission, as well as essays by Salomon, Guderzo, and Guido Beltramini, Director of the Palladio Museum in Vicenza, Italy.

Catalogue details are available here»

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Opening this December at the Petit Palais:

Jean Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826): Builder of Fantasy / Bâtisseur de fantasmes
Petit Palais, Paris, 11 December 2018 — 31 March 2019
Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, 4 October 2019 — 5 January 2020
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 2020

Curated by Laurent Baridon, Jean-Philippe Garric, Martial Guédron, Corinne Le Bitouzé, and Christophe Leribault

Six months before he died impoverished and forgotten, Jean-Jacques Lequeu donated one of the most singular and fascinating graphic oeuvres of his time to the French National Library. The set of several hundred drawings, presented here in its entirety for the first time, is a testimonial to the solitary and obsessive downward spiral of an exceptional artist that goes well beyond the first steps of an architectural career. Using the precise technical tool represented by the geometric working drawing made in wash, which he filled with handwritten notes, Lequeu scrupulously described the monuments and imaginary factories that filled his imaginary landscapes, rather than carrying out projects. But this initiatory journey, which he made without leaving his studio and enriched with figures and narratives from his library, this pathway that led him from temple to bush, from artificial grotto to palace, from kiosk to subterranean labyrinth, resolved itself as a quest to find himself. To see everything and describe it all—systematically, from the animal to the organic, from fantasy and raw sex to the self portrait—became the mission he assigned to himself.

As a typical representative of the artisanal class, who tried, with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, to rise socially and break free of the world of trades, Lequeu quickly became disenchanted with the new order and the new hierarchies. Lequeu—the child of his century, the century of licentiousness and Anglo-Chinese gardens—nevertheless pursued an entirely free and singular path. Reduced to employment in a subordinate office, ignored by those in place, now far from his roots, but freed of social or academic pressure, he stalked his dreams with the obstinacy of a builder and without compromise.

Curators

Laurent Baridon, Professor at University of Lyon II; Jean-Philippe Garric, Professor at University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; Martial Guédron, Professor at the University of Strasbourg; Corinne Le Bitouzé, General Curator, Deputy Director of the Department of Prints and Photography at the French National Library; Christophe Leribault, Director of the Petit Palais

Laurent Baridon, et al., Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Batisseur de fantasmes (Paris: Norma, 2018), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-2376660217, $65.

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Note (added 2 January 2018) — The original posting did not include details for the catalogue.

Note (added 23 September 2019) — The posting was updated to include information on the two U.S. venues: the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston and The Morgan Library & Museum in New York.