Enfilade

From the press release (3 February 2016) for the exhibition:

Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 3 April 3 — 24 July 2016
National Gallery, Prague, 4 October 2016 — 5 January 2017
Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City, 7 February — 30 April 2017

Curated by Amy Johnston and Judith Brodie

John Simon after John Verelst, Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas, after 1710 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Paul Mellon Fund)

A new international traveling exhibition will explore major events and movements in American art through some 150 outstanding prints from the Colonial era to the present. Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art is the first major museum survey of American prints in more than 30 years. Timed to coincide with the National Gallery of Art’s 75th anniversary, the exhibition is drawn from the Gallery’s renowned holdings of works on paper, and features more than 100 artists such as Paul Revere, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Marin, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, Romare Bearden, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Jenny Holzer, and Kara Walker.

Organized chronologically and thematically through nine galleries, Three Centuries of American Prints reveals the breadth and excellence of the Gallery’s collection while showcasing some of the standouts: exquisite, rare impressions of James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne (1879/1880), captivating prints by Mary Cassatt, a singularly stunning impression of John Marin’s Woolworth Building, No. 1 (1913), and Robert Rauschenberg’s pioneering Booster (1967).

The exhibition is bracketed by John Simon’s Four Indian Kings (1710)—stately portraits of four Native American leaders who traveled to London to meet Queen Anne—and Kara Walker’s no world (2010), which recalls the disastrous impact of European settlement in the New World. Both prints address the subject of transnational contact, a theme that runs through the history of American art.

Paul Revere, The Boston Massacre, 1770, hand-colored engraving (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection)

Three Centuries of American Prints features works intended to provoke action, such as Paul Revere’s call for moral outrage in The Bloody Massacre (1770) and Jenny Holzer’s appeal to “Raise Boys and Girls the Same Way” in her Truisms (1977). Others lean more strongly toward visual concerns, such as Stuart Davis’s striking black-and-white lithograph, Barber Shop Chord (1931), and Richard Diebenkorn’s resplendent Green (1986). This duality between prints designed to exhort or teach and ones more weighted to artistic matters is an undercurrent of both the exhibition and the history of American prints.

Since its opening in 1941, the National Gallery of Art has assiduously collected American prints with the help of many generous donors. The Gallery’s American print collection has grown from nearly 1,900 prints in 1950 to some 22,500 prints in 2015. The collection was transformed in recent years by the acquisition of the Reba and Dave Williams Collection, the personal print archive of Jasper Johns, and some 2,300 American prints from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, along with a gift and pledge of 18th- and early 19th-century prints from Harry W. Havemeyer.

“In the past few decades the American collections at the National Gallery of Art have grown vastly in quality and scale. From 2000 until today—thanks to generous donors and acquisitions from the Corcoran Gallery of Art—the collection of American prints has almost doubled and now numbers some 22,500 works,” said Earl A. Powell III, Director, National Gallery of Art. “We are tremendously grateful to hundreds of donors, foremost among them Lessing J. Rosenwald and Reba and Dave Williams, as well as grateful to Altria Group, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art for their vital support.”

The exhibition is made possible by Altria Group in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. This is the twelfth exhibition sponsorship by Altria Group at the Gallery. “For more than 50 years, Altria and its companies have supported visual and performing arts. Our partnership with the National Gallery of Art to share Three Centuries of American Prints is an important way that we’re bringing world-class cultural experiences to our communities,” said Bruce Gates, Senior Vice President of External Affairs for Altria Client Services. The international tour of the exhibition is sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support is provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.

The curators of the exhibition are Amy Johnston, assistant curator of prints and drawings, and Judith Brodie, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings, both at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition catalog is conceived and edited by Judith Brodie, with coauthors Amy Johnston and Michael J. Lewis, the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History at Williams College. The Terra Foundation for American Art provided additional funding for the exhibition catalog.

Judith Brodie, Amy Johnston, and Michael J. Lewis, Three Centuries of American Prints (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 306 pages, ISBN: 978-0500239520, $60.

Now on view at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon:

I Am Here! / Autoportraits: De Rembrandt du Selfie / Facing the World
Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 31 October 2015 — 31 January 2016
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 26 March — 26 June 2016
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 16 July — 16 October 2016

Curated by Dorit Schäfer, Stéphane Paccoud, and Imogen Gibbon

Joseph Vivien, Self-portrait with Palette, 1715–20

The Staatliche Kunsthalle of Karlsruhe, the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon established a partnership in 2011. The first exhibition to be created within this frame is on the theme of self-portraits and it will open in Lyon in spring of 2016.

The exhibition contains over 130 works from three major European museums, from the Renaissance period up to the 21st century, including paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs and videos. A specific genre in itself, self-portraits contain much information about their creators as well as their historical and social environment. At a time when selfies have become a true societal phenomenon, one that characterizes the digital era, the study of the traditions and usage of self portraits is more pertinent than it has ever been.

The exhibition offers a major chance to study the practice of self-portraits by artists in various forms that will be exhibited in seven sections
• The artist’s gaze
• the artist as a nobleman
• the artist at work
• the artist and his circle
• role-play
• the artist in his time
• the artist’s body

Ich Bien Hier! Von Rembrandt zum Selfie (Cologne: Snoeck, 2016), 284 pages, ISBN: 978-3864421389. French and English editions will also be available.

Staatliche Kunsthalle de Karlsruhe
Pia Müller-Tamm, Director
Alexander Eiling, Curator
Dorit Schäfer, Curator, Drawings and Prints

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
Stéphane Paccoud, Chief Curator, Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Sculptures
Ludmila Virassamynaïken, Curator, Old Masters Paintings and Sculptures

National Galleries of Scotland
Michael Clarke, Director General
Imogen Gibbon, Curator

From the Belvedere:

Princely Splendour: The Power of Pomp / Fürstenglanz: Die Macht der Pracht
Winter Palace, Vienna, 18 March — 26 June 2016

Anton von Maron, Emperor Joseph II with the Statue of Mars, 1775 (Vienna: KHM-Museumsverband)

The exhibition Princely Splendour: The Power of Pomp explores collecting in the Baroque period and uses the transformation of Prince Eugene’s Winter Palace into a modern museum as an opportunity to look back to princely splendor, Baroque galleries, and the art of order. At the heart of the exhibition are the lavish catalogues of the major European Baroque galleries, proclaiming the prestige of their creators and also marking the origins of modern exhibition and art catalogues. They document princely ideals of beautiful interiors, provide glimpses behind concepts of Baroque (re)presentation and reflect classification systems, ‘public’ accessibility, and display practices typical of the period. These original collection catalogues are combined with portraits of the princes and a selection of paintings from their collections. The exhibition is the first to explore this phenomenon from a pan-European perspective and compare the most important princely collectors from the Baroque period.

Princely Splendour demonstrates the importance that Europe’s former ruling dynasties attached to their art collections. For centuries, owning art was used as a way of flaunting power. This development was accompanied by the increasing status of artists, particularly painters, in the emerging Baroque period. Talented artists became the favourites of princes and securing their services for the court, and the exclusive rights to their work this entailed, were further ‘puzzle pieces’ in the power structure. At the height of the Baroque period outstanding talents, such as Peter Paul Rubens, could even be promoted to diplomats and enjoyed the status of ‘painter princes’.

The exhibits include Theatrum Pictorium (Theatre of Painting), published by court painter David Teniers the Younger in 1660. This lavishly illustrated work is a testimony to the Habsburg Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s passion for collecting and represents the birth of these elaborately designed books with printed reproductions of the artworks. Also featuring in the exhibition are Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Tableaux du Cabinet du Roi created under France’s King Louis XIV; the Dresden Galeriewerk under August III, elector of Saxony and king of Poland; as well as a Prodromus, a type of preview compiled under the Austrian Emperor Charles VI in Baroque Vienna around 1720–30 with over one thousand planned painting reproductions grouped into miniature tableaus. This pan-European show features outstanding loans from the Louvre and other museums, with the state portrait of the French Sun King from the Palace of Versailles as the exhibition’s highlight.

The Imperial Picture Gallery’s move from Vienna’s Stallburg to the Upper Belvedere presented an ideal opportunity to compile a new guide to the collection. This small-scale publication provides an insight into the concept and organization of the new hanging which, when compared with other European galleries, reveals a completely new, rationalized order. Increasingly, large albums were being replaced by more reasonably priced shorter catalogues, reflecting the public’s wishes to enjoy the collection in the form of handy guides. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, the opening of aristocratic collections to a new, wider public went hand in hand with the evolution of these gallery catalogues.

Agnes Husslein-Arco and Tobias G. Natter, ed., Fürstenglanz: Die Macht der Pracht (2016), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-3902805973, 39€.

Press release from Hampton Court:

The Empress and the Gardener
Hampton Court Palace, London, 28 April — 4 September 2016

Curated by Sebastian Edwards

A remarkable collection of watercolour paintings and drawings once owned by the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia will go on show at Hampton Court Palace this spring, as part of the nationwide commemorations marking the 300th anniversary of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s birth. Never displayed before, the exhibition of almost 60 intricately detailed views of the palace, park and gardens vividly captures Hampton Court during the time when Capability Brown served there as Chief Gardener to King George III. The intriguing history of this collection, which lay forgotten in the stores of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia for over two centuries, will be explored in The Empress and the Gardener.

Arguably Britain’s most famous landscape gardener, Capability Brown served as Chief Gardener to King George III at Hampton Court Palace from 1764 to 1783. The job came with a handsome salary and residence at the palace, but Brown, who famously transformed landscapes across the country, actually did very little to change the palace’s Baroque formal gardens, choosing instead to preserve them out of respect for his predecessors. Nevertheless, by the time he moved into royal service, he was already operating a busy landscaping business, and winning international acclaim as one of the most famous proponents of the ‘English Style’ of landscape design.

Famously a voracious consumer of foreign culture, Catherine the Great was a great admirer of all things English, declaring to the philosopher Voltaire that “Anglo-mania rules my plantmania.” She built herself an ‘English Palace’ and ‘English Park’ at her palace at Peterhof, with the help of British designers but was unable to find a Capability Brown of her own. Seizing a lucrative opportunity, a figure in the shadows, John Spyers, assistant to Brown, sold two albums of his detailed drawings from Brown’s home and workplace, Hampton Court Palace, to the Empress for the huge sum of 1,000 roubles.

Quite how Spyers managed to achieve this extraordinary coup remains a mystery, but ironically the Empress found herself the possessor of an album of drawings of a palace landscape which Brown himself had barely touched. The albums, which alone had cost Catherine a tenth the price of creating her new gardens, disappeared in her collection at the Hermitage (now the State Hermitage Museum) and lay forgotten for over two centuries before being rediscovered by Hermitage curator Mikhail Dedinkin in 2002.

Today, the Spyers views are a unique survival: the richest and most revealing record of how Hampton Court gardens looked when Brown was in charge. Together they are considered one of the most complete visual records of any historic landscape ever captured before the dawn of photography. From rare glimpses of the ordinary people who lived in or visited the palace and its gardens, to evocative details of Hampton Court’s celebrated courtyards, passageways and picturesque corners, they explore an almost-forgotten period in the palace’s history in vivid detail.

The Empress and the Gardener will see these rare works go on public display for the first time, in the very setting that inspired their creation. The exhibition will also feature contemporary portraits of Capability Brown and the Empress Catherine, previously unseen drawings of Catherine’s ‘English Palace’ in the grounds of Peterhof near St. Petersburg and several pieces of the famous ‘Green Frog’ dinner service, a triumph of British design created for the Empress by Wedgwood, featuring images of some of the celebrated landscapes where Brown worked across England.

Sebastian Edwards, exhibition curator, said, “We are thrilled to be able to present this remarkable window into a forgotten Georgian era in the palace’s past, in the year when garden lovers up and down the country are celebrating the 300th anniversary of Capability Brown’s birth. We hope that after enjoying The Empress and the Gardener our visitors will follow in John Spyers’s footsteps, out into Hampton Court’s magnificent gardens and discover how they have changed over the centuries.”

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From Artbooks.com:

Mikhail Dedinkin and David Jacques, The Hampton Court Albums of Catherine the Great, (London: Fontanka 2016), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1906257224, £32 / $45.

This album publishes, for the very first time, 100 hitherto unknown watercolours/drawings of Capability Brown’s designs for Hampton Court Palace gardens. These were purchased by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia through her own gardener James Meader, a disciple of Capability Brown, and then forgotten in the Hermitage stores. John Spyers, the artist to whom the albums have been attributed by Hermitage curator Mikhail Dedinkin, was Brown’s surveyor. Catherine the Great paid the huge sum of 1,000 roubles for them in the early 1780s and they were clearly bought as Capability Brown drawings. Almost no other visual material about Hampton Court and its gardens and park at the period when Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was the resident Royal Gardener has survived, so the importance of these views, which have never been published or on exhibition before, cannot be overstated.

From the Monnaie de Paris:

Jannis Kounellis
Monnaie de Paris, 11 March — 30 April 2016

Jannis Kounellis, Libertà o Morte. W Marat W Robespierre, 1969.

At Monnaie de Paris (the Paris Mint), Jannis Kounellis has composed a dramatic sculpture throughout the thousand square metres of the 18th-century exhibition rooms of this Palace beside the Seine. Eminently present, concrete, irreducible, the new exhibition by Kounellis imposes a direct experience on visitors, without intermediaries.

“I come to Paris empty-handed, like an old painter.” This is what Kounellis said a few months ago in response to the invitation by Monnaie de Paris, which hosts this figure of contemporary art, at the origin of the Arte povera movement. As a painter, Kounellis designed his exhibition at Monnaie de Paris as a fresco. He had already, in 1972, crossed the boundaries of painting with Da inventare sul posto, a work accompanied by a dancer and a violinist.

In the 18th-century Monnaie de Paris salons, the paintings are staged through an installation of metal trestles. This army of cold metal will captivate visitors with its size and the contrast with the architecture and décor of the Palace: columns, marble, ornaments, gilt…

Jacques-Denis Antoine, Hôtel de la Monnaie, 1767–75
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Jannis Kounellis offers a true experience to visitors. He had already positioned living energy alive, animal or human, at the centre of his work with the incomparable 12 live horses in 1969. But also in Nabucco in 1970 or quarters of hanging meat, or the Stommeln Pullheim Synagogue exhibition where fish evolved into a plate threatened with a knife in 1991.

Kounellis is inspired by Monnaie de Paris, the oldest company in the world and part of the heart of the last factory in Paris where know-how and industry intermingle to create his ‘new project’. The artist appeals to the visitor and raises the question of how a work is produced. It is in the technique, in the craft of the workshops, in the intuitive use of shapes and at the modelling stage that the artist’s project for Monnaie de Paris is born. The work Libertà o Morte. W Marat W Robespierre, 1969 will be presented in the exhibition as well as Da inventare sul posto which will echo the beating heart of the coin presses of Monnaie de Paris, embodying the strength, the rhythm, the orchestration.

A special public program will be performed by Etel Adnan with poetry and musical sessions on 17 March and 28 April at 7pm. Transmitted live on RAM Radioartemobile and broadcast on the Monnaie de Paris website, these rendez-vous will form part of a unique selection of radio archives.

Christophe Beaux, Jannis Kounellis, and Chiara Parisi, Jannis Kounellis (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2016), 64 pages, ISBN 978-3775741590, 30€. In French and English.

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From the Palladio Museum:

Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World / Come costruire un mondo nuovo
Palladio Museum, Vicenza, 23 September 2015 — 28 March 2016

Curated by Guido Beltramini and Fulvio Lenzo

Visitors are introduced to the exhibition by a mirror reflecting the busts of Palladio and Thomas Jefferson. This raises the initial question in the show: how are forms and ideas ‘reflected’? Why, in this case, was an architect from a province in Northern Italy adopted as a model for the construction of the architecture of the New World?

Thomas Jefferson, Plan of the Rotunda of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville: Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)

The answer is linked to another fundamental question: what is Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence and was the third president of the United States, doing in a museum of architecture? The reason is that he more than any other American shaped the face of the new nation through art, architecture and regional planning. Visionary but also pragmatic, he was both a man of action and an intellectual who knew Latin and Greek. And he was convinced that the New World could only be built through reason and beauty.

Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World is the first-ever exhibition dedicated to the great American Palladian in Europe. It will enable visitors to explore Jefferson’s world, his art collections, architectural designs, dreams, and also his contradictions, through drawings, sculptures, precious books, architectural models, films and multimedia. The exhibition also features 36 photographs by Filippo Romano, the result of a photographic survey specifically conducted in Virginia in Spring 2014. There are also three precious original bozzetti (models) by Antonio Canova for a statue of George Washington, commissioned by Thomas Jefferson. Visitors can enhance their experience of the exhibition by downloading a free smartphone app with descriptions by the curators and so move through the rooms accompanied by their words.

The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Mario Valmarana, the still greatly cherished professor at the University of Virginia who devoted his life to creating bridges between Palladio’s Veneto and Jefferson’s Virginia. Sponsored by Roberto Coin, the exhibition has been made possible thanks to the support of the Regione del Veneto, the Fondazione Cariverona and Dainese, and is the result of collaboration with the Fondazione Canova di Possagno and the Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin, Einsiedeln, Switzerland. The exhibition is also part of a joint project developed with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, which in October 2014 staged the photographic exhibition Found in Translation: Palladio-Jefferson, A narrative by Filippo Romano.

The exhibition has been curated by Guido Beltramini and Fulvio Lenzo, with the support of an Advisory Committee, chaired by Howard Burns (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa), and composed of James Ackerman (Harvard University), Bruce Boucher (University of Virginia), Travis C. McDonald (Corporation for Jefferson’s Poplar Forest), Damiana Paternò (IUAV, Venice), Mario Piana (IUAV, Venice), and Craig Reynolds (University of Virginia). The catalogue (available in English or Italian) is published by Officina Libraria. The exhibition layout has been designed by Alessandro Scandurra.

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The catalogue is available from Artbooks.com:

Guido Beltramini and Fulvio Lenzo, eds., Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2016), 176 pages, ISBN: 9788897737780, $30.

The catalogue offers an opportunity to acquire a deeper understanding of Jefferson’s architecture and, at the same time, leads to a clearer understanding of Palladio himself. Jefferson looked to Palladio because he was the architect of one of Europe’s few republics in which administrative power was in the hands of landed gentlemen who avoided the ostentation of princely manners and spent long periods of time in the countryside.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), a cosmopolitan figure with rural roots, was a master of the knowledge of his time. He drafted The Declaration of Independence (1776), and thus founded a new view of the proper relation between governed and government. Jefferson was the architect of the new America, not just in a political sense, but in a literal sense as well. Architecture had an important place in his personal and public agenda. A self-taught architect, Jefferson buildings are among America’s most famous: Monticello, the Virginia State Capitol, and the University of Virginia are the starting points of American classical architecture. Jefferson was guided by his admiration for Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture, which provided him with key architectural forms and ideas. Palladio showed him how the admired building types of the ancient Romans could be adapted to modern purposes and provide a rational, harmonious framework for living and for building a new society.

Guido Beltramini is Director of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza. Fulvio Lenzo is Associate Professor in the history of architecture at the Universita IUAV di Venezia, Venice.

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C O N T E N T S

Palladio in America, James Ackerman
Jefferson and Palladio, Guido Beltramini
Jefferson: Architecture and Democracy, Fulvio Lenzo
Photographing Jefferson, Filippo Romano
Palladianism in America Before Jefferson, Bruce Boucher
The National Survey Grid and the American Democracy, Catherine Maumi
Jefferson’s Creation of American Classical Architecture, Richard Guy Wilson
Jefferson and the First Public Statues in the United States, Giovanna Capitelli
Canova and the Monument to George Washington, Mario Guderzo
Palladio: Materials and Building Techniques Damiana, Lucia Paterno
Jefferson Builder, Travis McDonald

Enrtries for Monticello, Virginia State Capitol, President’s House, Poplar Forest, Bremo, Barboursville, University of Virginia

Bibliography
Exhibition Checklist

The exhibition closes in Paris this weekend:

Faces of Terror: Violence and Fantasy from David to Delacroix
Visages de l’effroi: Violence et Fantastique de David à Delacroix
Musée de la Vie Romantique, Paris, 3 November 2015 — 28 February 2016
Musée Municipal, La Roche-sur-Yon, 19 March — 19 June 2016

With a collection of more than 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures by David, Girodet, Gericault, Ingres and Delacroix, Faces of Terror presents French forms of fantastical Romanticism. This darker part of 19th-century art reveals a certain strength of spirit and provides a fascinating perspective on imagination during the romantic period.

Romanticism, although often reduced to a feeling of discontentment among the people of the 18th century that was generated by the upheavals of the time, without a doubt expresses the feeling of disenchantment of a whole generation, built on the ruins of the Ancien Régime and the tumult of the French Revolution. In the overflow of extreme emotions these artists skilfully found subjects for a new kind of aesthetic, exploring the dark side of the human soul, at a time when dreams and the irrational were emerging from the latency of Reason and the spirit of the Enlightenment period.

From the end of the 18th century, the form of Neoclassicism adopted by the greatest artists depicted the death of heroes and portrayed the violence of tragedies from ancient history, simultaneously justified by both moral values and academic proprieties. Terror, political upheaval and Napoleonic war generated a much more blatant perspective of horror that was no longer the prerogative of historical paintings. During the period of the Restoration of the monarchy, the development of the mainstream press led to broadcasts of reports of bloody violence across the country, which became topical issues for artists.

The Romantic period focuses on the supernatural and sometimes morbid, and depicts—thanks to an abundant but often unknown production of works of art—a crude reality as well as the strange, dusky figures of spectres and devils from the literature and poetry of the time. This dialogue with the supernatural is notably depicted in representations of the myth of Ossian, or in the success of Dante’s work with the torment of the condemned.

Jérôme Farigoule and Hélène Jagot, eds., Visages de l’effroi: Violence et fantastique de David à Delacroix (Liénart, 2015), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-2359061475, 26€.

Mantua purportedly worn by Helena Slicher for her marriage to Aelbrecht baron van Slingelandt on 4 September 1759
(Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum)

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Now on view at the Rijksmuseum:

Catwalk, 1625–1960
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 20 February — 16 May 2016

Curated by Bianca du Mortier; designed by Erwin Olaf

For the first time, the Rijksmuseum presents a large selection of its diverse fashion collection in an exhibition designed by world-renowned Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf.

From February 20 through May 16 2016, six galleries of the Philips Wing will be dedicated to fashion of the Dutch from 1625 to 1960. Starting with garments worn by members of the Frisian branch of the house of Nassau in the Golden Age, the exhibits will feature vibrantly coloured French silk gowns and luxurious velvet gentlemen’s suits of the eighteenth century, classically-inspired Empire dresses, and bustles of the Fin de Siècle—culminating in twentieth-century French haute couture by Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.

Wedding dress, 1759; photo by Erwin Olaf, model is Ymre Stiekema.

As Rijksmuseum Curator of Costumes Bianca du Mortier explains, “The garments presented in this exhibition reflect the stories of the people who wore them. In fashion, the choices of the wearer count—they make him or her a trendsetter or a follower. Even today the clothes of the very rich and powerful always convey a conscious or unconscious message. In that respect, nothing has changed over the last 330 years. These choices are restricted by such factors as budget, opportunity, age, social status, climate, personal likes and dislikes and so forth. And when presented in a museum, there is a final selection: the selection of the Rijksmuseum.”

The exhibition is designed by world-renowned Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf. He states, “The challenge and honour of designing this exhibition . . . for the most extraordinary museum in the Netherlands came at exactly the right moment for me. For several years now I’ve been exploring alternative ways to present my photographic work and to integrate it in installations, sound, video and films as means to immerse viewers in a world that fires and challenges their personal imaginations and, ultimately, sparks a stimulating dialogue between the viewer and the work on view.

Highlights include
• A pair of underpants belonging to Hendrik Casimir I, Count of Nassau Dietz (1612–1640)
• The widest dress in the Netherlands: Helena Slicher’s (1737–1776) wedding gown or mantua, which she supposedly wore at her marriage to Aelbrecht baron van Slingelandt (1732–1801) on 4 September 1759
• An exceptionally precious and fragile dress of blonde silk bobbin lace (1815–1820)
• A silk taffeta cocktail dress by Cristóbal Balenciaga (1951–1952)

The Rijksmuseum’s fashion collection totals some 10,000 items , with men’s, women’s and children’s attire and accessories spanning the period from 1700 until 1960. In addition, the History Department owns the earliest Dutch costumes, worn in the seventeenth century by the Frisian branch of the Nassau family and by the Stadtholder and King William III. Being the oldest costumes collection in the country, having begun in 1870, acquisitions initially emphasized on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but over time gradually expanded to include the first half of the twentieth century. All of the garments comes from the wardrobes of upper-class Dutch men and women, but they were not necessarily made in the Netherlands. Foreign fashion houses and fabrics from all the leading textile-manufacturing countries around the world are amply represented. Acquisitions for the collection are based on historical significance, such as a post-war dress made of silk RAF pilots maps; design relevance, such as Yves Saint Laurent’s 1965 ‘Mondrian dress’; and costume-historical importance, such as a silk taffeta cocktail gown by Cristóbal Balenciaga (1951–1952). Most items were donated or bequeathed, supplemented with purchases.

To coincide with the exhibition, the Rijksmuseum is publishing a richly illustrated ‘Collection Book’ – Costume & Fashion, authored by Curator of Costumes Bianca du Mortier, with contributions from the museum’s textile restorers, fellow conservators, and a specialized colour analyst. The photography is by Rijksmuseum photographer Carola Van Wijk in collaboration with Frans Pegt. Various activities will be organized in conjunction with the exhibition, including a series of lectures by the catalogue’s authors and external experts.

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Symposium | Fashion in Museums: Past, Present, and Future
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 21–22 April 2016

Not only the curator’s and conservator’s point of view will be presented, but also the administrator’s—who is often unfamiliar with costume and fashion’s different requirements and has to be convinced of the steep costs of a fashion exhibit. Experts from leading national and international institutions will present their insights: a conference not to be missed!

Over the past two decades most of the blockbuster fashion exhibitions around the world have centered around present day fashion designers and were more or less offered to the respective institutions as a complete package including the extensive marketing and publicity apparatus of the fashion brand. This is a far cry from Diana Vreeland’s original concept (1983–84) of a museum celebrating a contemporary designer—in her case Yves Saint Laurent—by presenting a retrospective curated by the museum and presented by them.

In a speech delivered by renowned fashion journalist Suzy Menkes (International Vogue Editor) at the Rijksmuseum in June 2015 she called for a return to museum curated exhibitions based on in-depth research of their own collections which hold so many amazing yet unexplored treasures. With the exhibition Catwalk, Fashion at the Rijksmuseum, the museum puts a renewed step in this direction by presenting a cross-section of its costume collection—the oldest in the country—in a setting designed by renowned Dutch photographer, Erwin Olaf.

Speakers
• Gieneke Arnolli (Fries Museum, Leeuwarden)
• Ninke Bloemberg (Centraal Museum, Utrecht)
• Bianca du Mortier (Rijksmuseum)
• Johanna Hashagen (Bowes Museum, UK)
• Johannes Pietsch (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich)
• Ellinoor Bergvelt and Christine Delhaye (University of Amsterdam)
• Angelika Riley (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg)
• Alexandra Bosc (Palais Galliera, Musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris)
• Mila Ernst (Digitaal platform Modemuze)
• Sue-an van der Zijpp (Groninger Museum)

Details are available here»