Exhibition | Meant to Be Shared: Prints from the Arthur Ross Collection
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Piazza di Monte Cavallo (View of the Piazza di Monte Cavallo [now the Piazza del Quirinale with the Quirinal Palace]), from Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome), 1750, etching (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, The Arthur Ross Collection).
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Press release (11 December 2015) from the Yale University Art Gallery:
Meant to Be Shared: Selections from the Arthur Ross
Collection of European Prints at the Yale University Art Gallery
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 18 December 2015 — 24 April 2016
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, 29 January — 8 May 2017
Syracuse University Art Galleries, Syracuse University, 17 August — 19 November 2017
Curated by Suzanne Boorsch
The Yale University Art Gallery is delighted to announce Meant to Be Shared: Selections from the Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints at the Yale University Art Gallery, an exhibition presenting highlights of the more than 1,200 prints donated to the Gallery in 2012 by the Arthur Ross Foundation. Beginning in the late 1970s, philanthropist Arthur Ross (1910–2007) avidly collected works of art by some of the most renowned Italian, Spanish, and French printmakers of the last several centuries for his eponymous foundation. Highlights of the Arthur Ross Collection include works by Francisco Goya, the first artist whom Ross collected; Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s images of ancient and 18th-century Rome, which reflect Ross’s love of classicism and the Eternal City; and Édouard Manet’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven.
The Arthur Ross Collection comprises three major segments. The largest is a group of some 800 18th-century Italian works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Giovanni Antonio Canal (called Canaletto), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his sons, and others. A group of close to 200 prints by the Spaniard Francisco Goya includes the three intriguing and enigmatic series of etchings he made in the second decade of the 19th century, during which Spain suffered, first, Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion, and then, with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the repressive rule of King Ferdinand VII. The third segment consists of about 200 French prints by some of the greatest artists of the 19th and 20th centuries: Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.
This inaugural exhibition features 19 of Goya’s profoundly mysterious Disparates (Los proverbios) (Follies [Proverbs]) series, made around 1816 to 1819 but not published in Goya’s lifetime, for fear of the Inquisition. Ten images from the Tauromaquia (The Art of Bullfighting; 1815, published 1816) series and nine of the Desastres de la guerra (Disasters of War; ca. 1810–11, published 1863) are on display as well. The installation also highlights illustrations of great works of literature—one of the salient themes of the French work—including Delacroix’s 13 lithographs illustrating William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1834–43) and some of his illustrations for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (1827, published 1828), and Manet’s truly revolutionary illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (1875).
An entire gallery is devoted to views of places that might have been visited on the Italian segment of the Grand Tour, the cultural tour of Europe that was deemed an essential cap to the classical education of young gentlemen, especially those from Britain. Sparkling views of the Venetian region by Canaletto set the stage. The largest section is devoted to Rome; this part of the exhibition features a spectacular six-by-seven-foot map of the Eternal City, published in 1748, designed by the surveyor Giovanni Battista Nolli, and 20 of Piranesi’s Vedute (Views; ca. 1748–60) of Rome. The final area focuses on images of Pompeii and Paestum, in southern Italy, where in the mid-18th century rediscoveries of ancient sites excited the intelligentsia across Europe.
The title of the exhibition, Meant to Be Shared, reflects the raison d’être of the collection. Arthur Ross collected these prints for his foundation with the express purpose, in the words of his widow, Janet C. Ross, “to lend first-class prints … to educational institutions in the United States and abroad that would not otherwise have access to such objects for study and enjoyment.” In this spirit, the inaugural exhibition travels to the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in early 2017, and to the Syracuse University Art Galleries, New York, later that year. Gallery staff members have partnered with Harn Museum Director Rebecca M. Nagy and Syracuse University Art Galleries Director Domenic Iacono to plan ways to use the prints as teaching tools at each institution—including related university courses, public programs, and close-looking sessions—throughout the run of the exhibition. Suzanne Boorsch, the Gallery’s Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings and curator of the exhibition, explains, “Far and away the most difficult aspect of preparing this exhibition was to make a selection from the abundance of riches that constitute this extraordinary donation. The possibilities that the Arthur Ross Collection offers for exhibition, research, and teaching are virtually endless, and, indeed, this inaugural exhibition and the collection catalogue are just the beginning of the rewards to be reaped by the study and enjoyment of this gift.”
The Gallery’s mission of sharing its collections broadly honors both the legacy of Arthur Ross and the value of the work he collected. Jock Reynolds, the Gallery’s Henry J. Heinz II Director, states, “We are grateful that the Arthur Ross Foundation has chosen the Gallery to be the steward of this remarkable collection, ensuring its proper care and always sharing it generously with active learners of all ages.”
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P R O G R A M M I N G
Gallery Talks
Wednesday, December 9, 12:30 pm
“Piranesi’s Rome: The Vision of an 18th-Century Architect and Printmaker,” Jakub Koguciuk, Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Renaissance Studies, Yale University
Wednesday, February 24, 12:30 pm
“Bullfighting: Audience and Perspective in Prints by Antonio Carnicero, Francisco Goya, and Pablo Picasso,” Ian Althouse, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Yale University
Wednesday, February 24, 1:30 pm
“Las corridas de toros: Audiencia y mirada en el arte de Antonio Carnicero, Francisco Goya y Pablo Picasso” (in Spanish), Ian Althouse
Wednesday, April 13, 12:30 pm
“Intensité, Obscurité, Frivolité: The Proliferation of Print Media in 19th-Century France,” Lisa Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Senior Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery
Ryerson Lectures
Thursday, January 21, 5:30 pm
“Goya’s Prints in Context,” Janis A. Tomlinson, Director of University Museums, University of Delaware, Newark
Friday, February 5, 1:30 pm
“The Marriage of Venice and Rome, or What Makes Piranesi Great?,” Andrew Robison, the Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Friday, April 1, 1:30 pm
“From Paris to Tahiti: Paul Gauguin’s Innovative Prints,” Elizabeth C. Childs, the Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in Saint Louis
Performance
Thursday, March 31, 5:30 pm
Chamber Music of the 18th Century, Tiny Baroque Orchestra
Studio Programs
Friday, February 12, 1:30 and 3:00 pm
Printmaking Workshops
Inspired by the over 1,200 prints in the Arthur Ross Collection, Mauricio Cortes Ortega, M.F.A. candidate, and Caroline Sydney, SM ’16, both of Yale University, invite visitors to explore the art of printmaking. In this hands-on workshop, participants learn the basic techniques of intaglio printing and create a unique print of their own. Space is limited. Registration required; please call 203.432.9525.
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The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:
Suzanne Boorsch, Douglas Cushing, Alexa Greist, Elisabeth Hodermarsky, Sinclaire Marber, John Moore, and Heather Nolin, with a foreword by Janet Ross, Meant to Be Shared: The Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 196 pages, ISBN: 978-0300214390, $60.
This important volume offers the first comprehensive look at the Arthur Ross Collection—more than 1,200 17th- to 20th-century Italian, French, and Spanish prints—and is published to mark the inaugural exhibition of the collection in its new home at the Yale University Art Gallery. Highlights include superb etchings by Canaletto and Tiepolo; the four volumes of Piranesi’s Antiquities of Rome, as well as his famous Vedute (Views) and Carceri (Prisons); Goya’s Tauromaquia in its first edition of 1816; an extremely rare etching by Edgar Degas; and numerous other 19th-century French prints, by Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and others. The accompanying essays discuss the life of Arthur Ross, a significant philanthropist who funded several arts institutions; the formation of the collection and the art-historical significance of the works; and several thematic approaches to studying the collection, reinforcing its legacy as an important teaching resource.
Exhibition | No Cross, No Crown: Prints by James Barry
James Barry, A Grecian Harvest Home, from the series The Progress of Human Culture, 1792, etching and engraving in black ink, 17 ½ x 20 15/16 inches (Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame: The William and Nancy Pressly Collection acquired with funds made available by the F. T. Stent Family, 2015.001.014).
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Press release (27 October 2015) from the Snite:
No Cross, No Crown: Prints by James Barry
Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, 24 January — 17 April 2016
The Snite Museum of Art will present an exhibition of 28 monumental prints by James Barry, the eighteenth-century Irish provocateur whose work challenged the British art establishment and questioned the government’s policies. The exhibition No Cross, No Crown: Prints by James Barry will be on view from January 24 through April 17, 2016.
James Barry (1741–1806) was born in Cork, made his artistic debut in Dublin, and was awarded membership in the Royal Academy in London in 1773, although he was later expelled for his belligerence and acrimony. The series of six murals he painted to decorate the Great Room of the Royal Society of Arts in Adelphi from 1777 through 1783 is his claim to fame. Included in the exhibition is a complete set of the prints he made after these grand paintings, once referred to as Britain’s answer to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Barry’s prints are significant in the history of printmaking and eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic studies for their scale, their technical innovations, and the role they played in the artist’s creative process. These are not mere reproductive prints, but rather charts illustrating Barry’s evolving positions on hot political and artistic issues of the day. Peppering his religious and historical works with portraits of his contemporaries, such as the philosopher Edmund Burke and the politician William Pitt, the ensemble reads like a Who’s Who of British society in the late 1700s.
The Snite Museum acquired the prints in 2015 from Nancy and William Pressly, the latter being the foremost scholar on James Barry and professor emeritus of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art at the University of Maryland. Pressly said, “Over the years, as I looked and relooked at these prints, I was amazed at both the subtlety and richness of Barry’ process, but he never pursued virtuosity for its own sake: all is in the service of his passion to transform his audience, a transformation, however, that places great demands on his viewer.”
Pressly’s book James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (Cork 2015) received the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History in 2015.
The acquisition of eighteen of the prints was made possible by a generous gift from the F. T. Stent Family of Atlanta with ten additional prints donated by the Presslys. No Cross, No Crown: Prints by James Barry is made possible by the Snite Museum General Endowment.
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Programs
• Public reception Friday, February 12, 2016, from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
• Gallery Talk at 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, February 17, by Patrick Griffin, Madden-Hennebry Professor of History.
• Gallery Talk at 12:30 p.m., Friday, April 1, by William Pressly, Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of Maryland.
• Lecture, 4:00–5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 2, “An Irishman’s Address to the English Establishment: James Barry’s Murals at the Society of Arts in London” by William Pressly, Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of Maryland.
All programs are free and open to the public.
Exhibition | John Akomfrah: Vertigo Sea
Still from John Akomfrah, Vertigo Sea, 2015; three channel HD video installation, colour, sound, 48 minutes. Smoking Dogs Films.
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From Arnolfini:
John Akomfrah: Vertigo Sea
Venice Biennale, 5 May — 22 November 2015
Arnolfini, Bristol, 16 January — 10 April 2016
Turner Contemporary, Margate, 8 October 2016 — 8 January 2017
The Whitworth, Manchester, TBA
Vertigo Sea, a three-screen film, first seen at the 56th Venice Biennale as part of Okwui Enwezor’s All the World’s Futures exhibition, is a sensual, poetic and cohesive meditation on man’s relationship with the sea and exploration of its role in the history of slavery, migration, and conflict. Fusing archival material, readings from classical sources, and newly shot footage, the work explicitly highlights the greed, horror and cruelty of the whaling industry. This material is then juxtaposed with shots of African migrants crossing the ocean in a journey fraught with danger in hopes of ‘better life’ and thus delivering a timely and potent reminder of the current issues around global migration, the refugee crisis, slavery, alongside ecological concerns.
Shot on the Isle of Skye, the Faroe Islands and the Northern regions of Norway, with the BBC’s Bristol based Natural History Unit, Vertigo Sea draws upon two remarkable books: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) and Heathcote Williams’ epic poem Whale Nation (1988), a harrowing and inspiring work which charts the history, intelligence and majesty of the largest mammal on earth.
As part of the exhibition, a new work Tropikos (2016) will also be shown. Set in the sixteenth century and using the writings and memoirs of a number of seafarers as its raw material, this single channel film is a Brechtian costume drama which merges Shakespeare’s The Tempest with true accounts of the journeys to and dreams of the ‘New World’. Exploring the point in history when Britain’s economic exploitation of Africa began, this work focuses on the waterways of the South West and their relationship to the slave trade, referencing larger themes of colonialism, maritime power and loss.
Shown together, these two lyrical and melancholic films propose a ‘voyage of discovery’, a meditation on water and the unconscious, referring specifically to the passage of migration into the UK. Placed in the context of Bristol, the films connect to this city’s complicated maritime history and its position as port—a point at both the start and end of epic journeys in the past and the present.
Vertigo Sea is presented in Bristol with support awarded to Arnolfini through Arts Council England’s Strategic Touring Fund. During 2016 and 2017 Arnolfini will lead a national tour of the work to venues across the UK including Turner Contemporary, Margate and The Whitworth, Manchester. Tropikos is a 70th Anniversary Commission for the Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London, with the River Tamar Project and Smoking Dogs Films.
John Akomfrah is an artist and filmmaker whose works are characterised by their investigations into personal and collective histories and memory, cultural, ethnic and personal identity, post-colonialism and temporality. Importantly, his focus is most often on giving voice to the experience of the African diaspora in Europe and the USA. A founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, his work has been shown in museums and exhibitions around the world including the Liverpool Biennial; Documenta 11, Centre Pompidou, the Serpentine Gallery; Tate; and Southbank Centre, and MoMA, New York. A major retrospective of Akomfrah’s gallery-based work with the Black Audio Film Collective premiered at FACT, Liverpool and Arnolfini, Bristol in 2007. His films have been included in international film festivals such as Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, amongst others. He has recently been shortlisted for the Artes Mundi 7 prize.
Exhibition | Reading, Writing, and Publishing Black Books
Interior of the African Meeting House in Boston, completed in 1806,
as restored by Shawmut to its 1855 state.
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As noted at History of the Book at Harvard:
Freedom Rising: Reading, Writing, and Publishing Black Books
African Meeting House, Museum of African American History, Boston, 8 January 2015 — May 2016
The Museum of African American History’s Black Books exhibition and complementary programming examine historical and cultural implications of learning to read and write, as well as publishing the works of free and formerly enslaved African American voices. Free black communities from Boston and beyond began sharing books, newspapers, periodicals, poems, and other writings to advance campaigns for freedom from the Colonial period through the 19th century and for personal expression and enjoyment. These pioneering wordsmiths continue to inspire gifted writers to use their published works as agents for social change. To celebrate their passion for free speech and draw parallels across the ages, Black Books places 18th- and 19th-century African American authors from the Museum’s collection of rare books in dialogue with more contemporary works. The exhibit and programs feature a wide array of selected genres, including poetry, fiction, autobiography, medicine, military experience, sociology, and music. Lead partners: National Park Service, Boston African American National Historic Site and Suffolk University’s Mildred F. Sawyer Library, where the Museum’s book collection is housed.
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From a November 2011 press release, celebrating the restoration and reopening of the African Meeting House:
The African Meeting House, built and opened in 1806, is the oldest extant African American church building in the nation constructed primarily by free black artisans. Over more than 200 years, this three-story brick structure has served diverse communities in Boston, as a church, school, and vital meeting place in the 1800s, and a synagogue in the 20th century. In 1967, Sue Bailey Thurman, wife of the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, founded the Museum of African American History, which acquired the African Meeting House in 1972. This National Historic Landmark is the crown jewel in the Museum’s collection of historic sites on Boston’s Beacon Hill and Nantucket. . . .
The Museum of African American History is New England’s largest museum dedicated to preserving, conserving and accurately interpreting the contributions of people of African descent and those from Boston and across the nation who found common cause with them in the struggle for liberty, dignity, and justice for all. Founded in 1967 and opened in 1986, its Boston and Nantucket campuses feature two Black Heritage Trails and four historic sites; three are National Historic Landmarks. They tell the story of organized black communities from the Colonial Period through the 19th century. Exhibits, programs, and educational activities showcase the powerful history of individuals and families who worshipped, educated their children, debated the issues of the day, produced great art, organized politically, and advanced the cause of freedom through a strategic network of Northern coastal communities. . . .
Exhibition | Beyond Measure: Fashion and the Plus-Size* Woman
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It’s not an eighteenth-century exhibition per se, though the starting point is Joseph Siffred Duplessis’s Portrait of Madame de Saint-Maurice (mention of which also opens Ruth La Ferla’s review of the exhibition for The New York Times) . . . From the exhibition website:
Beyond Measure: Fashion and the Plus-Size* Woman
80WSE, New York University, 13 January — 3 February 2016
Curated by Tracy Jenkins with Dévika Kanadé, Julie Smolinski, Lauren
Wilson, Meg Pierson, Mem Barnett, Shelly Tarter, and Ya’ara Keydar
The Masters of Arts Candidates in New York University’s Visual Culture: Costume Studies Program proudly present their annual exhibition entitled Beyond Measure: Fashion and the Plus-Size* Woman , on view at 80WSE, New York University Steinhardt School’s gallery space, from January 13th to February 3rd, 2016. The exhibition explores the shifting discourse surrounding the plus-size woman in relation to fashion and the body. Through a series of objects, the exhibit will examine the plus-size woman’s place within fashion and its defining entity—the fashion industry—from the perspectives of designers, manufacturers, the general public, and the individual women themselves.
Joseph Siffred Duplessis, Portrait of Madame de Saint-Maurice, 1776 (exhibited in Paris at the Salon of 1776), oil on canvas (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
As a complicated cultural construct itself, the very term ‘plus-size’ evokes a myriad of reactions, thus, “after careful consideration from the curators of the exhibit, the term ‘plus-size’ is used here for its association with fashion, the primary focus of this exhibition,” said curatorial director of the exhibit, Tracy Jenkins. The fashion industry has played an undeniable role in enabling the stigmatization of larger women’s bodies. Despite consumer needs, plus-size fashion has traditionally been given little sartorial energy. Yet women of all physiques have had to clothe themselves, and thus have stood somewhere in relation to the fashion system. The plus-size woman’s place within the history of the body and her space within the fashion industry is presented here through a diverse set of objects emphasizing her relationship to gender and body politics as well as cultural attitudes toward beauty and health.
These objects, among others, will include an early twentieth-century photograph of A Ticket to Nettie the Fat Girl, representing one of the earliest views of greater weight being equated with greater immorality, and the fetishization of the supposedly deviant body. In a series of advertisements from the mid-twentieth century, women considered undesirably skinny were encouraged to consume dietary supplements to add ‘sex-appealing curves’. Their younger counterparts from the same era who weighed ‘more than average’ were deemed ‘Chubbies’ by pattern companies, presented through the Simplicity Chubbie Pattern in this exhibit. It is not until the 1990s that the plus-size woman in fashion takes center stage when model and muse Stella Ellis took the fashion world into bold new territory as she strode the high fashion runways alongside ‘straight size’ models. Presented in the exhibit is a 1992 photograph of Ellis in bespoke Jean Paul Gaultier, representing her collaboration with the designer, and her photographer, who championed Ellis’s look. Attention will also be paid to the plus-size woman’s relationship with fashion in recent years. These objects will include images of plus-sized models using padding during photo shoots, which has drawn comparisons to the use of Photoshop to create unattainable ideals of beauty. Throughout this presentation of objects and media, ranging from historical to contemporary, this exhibition aims to present the plus-size woman taking her place as a woman of and in fashion.
Thursday, 28 January 2016, 5–9pm
To celebrate the opening of Beyond Measure: Fashion and the Plus-Size* Woman, the NYU M.A. Costume Studies Candidates will host a reception and panel discussion. The opening will be held at the gallery space at 80WSE where attendees are encouraged to explore the exhibit as well as meet with the curators. Starting at 7:00, a panel discussion will be held at NYU (location TBD). The event will include a keynote speech by Professor Leah Sweet, Parsons the New School for Design, and followed by a discussion with plus-size model and muse Stella Ellis, Eden Miller, the first plus-size designer to show at New York Fashion Week and Buzzfeed writer Kaye Toal. Please confirm attendance RSVP@beyondmeasurenyu.com.
In conjunction with Beyond Measure: Fashion and the Plus-Size* Woman, a mobile web app will be available to explore the exhibition beyond the walls of 80WSE. This will include supplemental multimedia material including videos, images, and discussions with the curators.
Beyond Measure: Fashion and the Plus-Size* Woman is organized by curatorial director Tracy Jenkins, a faculty member in NYU’s M.A. Costume Studies Program and by the co-curators: Dévika Kanadé, Julie Smolinski, Lauren Wilson, Meg Pierson, Mem Barnett, Shelly Tarter, and Ya’ara Keydar, Masters of Arts Candidates in New York University’s Visual Culture: Costume Studies Program.
Exhibition | Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude
Working replicas of John Harrison’s three remarkable timekeepers (H1, H2, H3) are highlights of the Ships, Clocks & Stars exhibition at Mystic Seaport; pictured is a detail of H3. Photo by Andy Price/Mystic Seaport.
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Press release (20 August 2015) for the exhibition, which was earlier on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich:
Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 11 July 2014 — 4 January 2015
Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, 19 September 2015 — 28 March 2016
Mystic Seaport proudly presents Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude, on tour from England for a limited time only. The award-winning exhibition, produced by the National Maritime Museum in London and sponsored by United Technologies Corp., reveals the race to determine longitude at sea. Spurred on by the promise of rich rewards, astronomers, philosophers, and artisans—including John Harrison and his innovative timekeepers—finally solved one of the greatest technical challenges of the 18th century.
For centuries, longitude (east-west position) was a matter of life and death at sea. Ships that went off course had no way to rediscover their longitude. With no known location, they might smash into underwater obstacles or be forever lost at sea. For a maritime nation such as Britain, growing investment in long distance trade, outposts and settlements overseas made the ability to accurately determine a ship’s longitude increasingly important.
Ships, Clocks & Stars celebrates the 300th anniversary of the British Longitude Act of 1714, which offered a huge prize for any practical way to determine longitude at sea. The longitude problem was so difficult that—despite that incentive—it took five decades to solve it. Through the latest research and extraordinary, historic artifacts—many from the collection of the National Maritime Museum and never before displayed outside the UK—the exhibition tells the story of the clockmakers, astronomers, naval officers, and others who pursued the long ‘quest for longitude’ to ultimate success.
In recent years, John Harrison has been cast as the hero of the story, not least in Dava Sobel’s bestselling book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Ships, Clocks & Stars provides a new perspective on this famous tale. While John Harrison makes a good story and his marine sea-watch was vital to finally solving the problem of longitude, this was against a backdrop of almost unprecedented collaboration and investment. Famous names such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, James Cook, and William Bligh all feature in this fascinating and complex history. Crucially, it was Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne’s observations and work on the Nautical Almanac at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich that demonstrated the complementary nature of astronomical and timekeeper methods. Combined, the two methods lead to the successful determination of longitude at sea and changed our understanding of the world.
“Mystic Seaport is very proud to bring Ships, Clocks & Stars to New England to tell this important story of scientific discovery, innovation, creativity, perseverance, and even adventure as different parties raced to find a solution,” said Steve White, president of Mystic Seaport. “This exhibit is more than the story of longitude: it is the story of human problem-solving, and it is as relevant today as it was in the eighteenth century.”
Exhibition | Forbidden Fruit: Chris Antemann at Meissen
Chris Antemann in collaboration with Meissen®, Covet, 2013
©Chris Antemann and Meissen Couture®
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Closing this weekend in Pittsburgh, the exhibition opens in Bellevue next month:
Forbidden Fruit: Chris Antemann at Meissen
Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 27 September 2014 — 19 April 2015
The Frick, Pittsburgh, 3 October 2015 — 10 January 2016
Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington, 26 February — 29 May 2016
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, 22 September 2016 — 5 February 2017
In 2012, Oregon-based sculptor Chris Antemann was invited to participate in the Art Studio program of the legendary Meissen Porcelain Manufactory. During the program she collaborated with the Meissen master artisans on unique pieces and a series of limited editions of her sculptures, resulting in a grand installation that reinvents and invigorates the great porcelain figurative tradition.
Using the Garden of Eden as her metaphor, the artist created a contemporary celebration of the 18th-century banqueting craze. Inspired by Meissen’s great historical model of Johann Joachim Kändler’s monumental Love Temple (1750), Antemann created her own 5-foot work. Stripping the original design back to its basic forms, she added her own figures, ornamentation, and flowers, as well as a special finial with three musicians to herald the guests to the banquet below. Employing her signature wit and formal references to classic Baroque Meissen figurines, Antemann has invented a new narrative on contemporary morality through her one-of-a-kind porcelain figures in a setting that evokes the decadence of Boucher and Watteau.
Exhibition | Blood in the Sugar Bowl
Opening in the spring at Stanford:
Blood in the Sugar Bowl
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, 6 April — 4 July 2016
Curated by Rachel Newman
Josiah Wedgwood, Covered Sugar Bowl, ca. 1785–95, stoneware (Cantor Arts Center Collection, 1989.154.a-b)
This exhibition focuses on sugar plantation slavery during the peak of the sugar trade, the late 18th to mid-19th century. On display are sugar bowls from the Cantor’s collection, Henry Corbould’s illustration Fashionable Women Pouring Tea, James Gillray’s caricature The Anti-Saccharites, several volumes from Stanford University Libraries Special Collections including James Hakewill’s beautiful plantation views from his 1821 Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica and William Blake’s depictions of slave torture in his 1777 Narrative, of a five years’ expedition, against the revolted Negroes of Surinam. Personalizing the slave narrative are Benjamin M’Mahon’s Jamaica Plantership and other audio excerpts of texts written by slaves and sugar plantation employees. D. R. Wakefield’s 2004 series Resistance Is Useless: Portraits of Slaves from the British West Indies is also on display.
Student curator: Stanford PhD candidate and Mellon Curatorial Research Assistant Rachel Newman
Exhibition | Portals to the Past: British Ceramics, 1675–1825
William Greatbatch, Tea Canister, Soup Plate, Teapot; Fenton, Staffordshire, England, 1765–1770, cream-colored earthenware, lead glaze (Charlotte: The Mint Museum)
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From The Mint Museum:
Portals to the Past: British Ceramics, 1675–1825
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, opening 16 January 2015 (running for two years)
The Mint Museum’s collection of eighteenth-century British pottery and porcelain is widely respected for its scope and quality. The collection numbers over 2,000 objects and includes important examples of both salt-glazed and dry-bodied stoneware from Staffordshire; tin-glazed earthenware from Bristol, Liverpool, and London; and cream-colored earthenware from Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire. Notable eighteenth-century porcelain factories represented include Chelsea, Bow, and Vauxhall in London, Longton Hall in Staffordshire, Worcester, Bristol, and others. Individual works in the collection are exceptional because of their rarity, craftsmanship, provenance, or as representative examples of particular types or methods of production or decoration.
William Littler, Sweetmeat Stand; West Pans, East Lothian, Scotland, 1765–70, earthenware, lead glaze (Charlotte: The Mint Museum)
British Ceramics 1675–1825 presents more than 200 highlights of this collection in a new installation in the Alexander, Spangler, and Harris Galleries at Mint Museum Randolph. The objects are interpreted through a variety of thematic lenses—function, style, manufacturing technique, maker—to encourage visitors to engage with the objects in ways they find personally meaningful and interesting. The exhibition includes many objects that have never before been on view, as well as contemporaneous works of art in from the Mint’s holdings in other media, including paintings, furniture, fashion, and silver.
The exhibition’s opening follows the December release of a 270-page, illustrated catalogue, British Ceramics 1675–1825: The Mint Museum, produced by the museum in collaboration with D. Giles Limited, London. Both the catalogue and the exhibition honor the fiftieth anniversary of the museum’s purchase of the Delhom Collection of British and European ceramics.
Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675–1825 is presented by the Delhom Service League, ceramics affiliate of The Mint Museum, with additional support provided by Moore & Van Allen.
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From Giles:
Brian Gallagher, Barbara Stone Perry, Letitia Roberts, Diana Edwards, Pat Halfpenny, Maurice Hillis, and Margaret Ferris Zimmerman, British Ceramics 1675–1825: The Mint Museum (London: D. Giles Limited, 2015), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804366, £50 / $80.
British Ceramics 1675–1825 is an important and visually stunning new publication which highlights 200 of the best pieces from the The Mint Museum’s collection, selected on account of their rarity, craftsmanship, notable provenance, or as important examples of particular types, or methods of production, or decoration. Each object is illustrated in colour, and is accompanied by a catalogue entry including title, manufacturer, date, medium, marks, dimensions, description of other unique physical aspects (inscriptions or quote on the body of the vessel), provenance, previous publication history and exhibition history. Descriptive text for each piece covers unusual and pertinent aspects of its manufacture and history.
Brian Gallagher is the curator of Decorative Arts, The Mint Museum. Barbara Stone Perry is the former curator of Decorative Arts, The Mint Museum. Letitia Roberts is an independent scholar and consultant, and the former senior international specialist for European Ceramics and Chinese Export Porcelain at Sotheby’s, New York. Diana Edwards is a prolific writer and lecturer on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British ceramics, and advises numerous ceramics organizations. Pat Halfpenny is a highly respected expert on Staffordshire pottery, and is curator emerita of Ceramics and Glass and retired Director of Museum Collections at Winterthur Museum, Delaware. Maurice Hillis has published extensively on eighteenth-century English pottery and porcelain, and is the former chairman and current president of the Northern Ceramic Society, United Kingdom. Margaret Ferris Zimmermann lectured on ceramics for the Delhom Service League’s orientation program at The Mint Museum for many years and is the former editor of the American Ceramic Circle Journal.
Exhibition | Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Francis Towne, Inside the Colosseum, 1780
(London: The British Museum)
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Press release for the upcoming exhibition:
Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
The British Museum, London, 21 January — 14 August 2016
Curated by Richard Stephens
2016 is the bicentenary of Francis Towne’s death and his historic bequest to the British Museum of 75 uniquely beautiful watercolours made on his visit to Italy in 1780–81. To celebrate this generous gift the watercolours are all on display here—at their heart are 52 views of Rome that have not been shown together since 1805. Towne’s decision to give the Museum such a major group of his drawings, so that they could be seen in the wider context of a collection that charted the history of the graphic arts from its Renaissance beginnings, was both strategic and pioneering as it set a pattern for artists to donate their work that endures to this day, as seen in the recent gift of 200 prints made by the American artist Jim Dine.
Francis Towne, Near the Arco Scuro, 1780, watercolour with pen and ink and some gum arabic, 320 x 467 mm (London: The British Museum)
Towne was born in London in 1739 where he later trained and then moved to Exeter. He tried unsuccessfully to gain recognition in the London art world, and failed to be elected to the Royal Academy on eleven separate occasions. Towne gained artistic recognition in his posthumous legacy at the British Museum. At the start of the 20th century, through these watercolours, Towne became the poster boy for the ‘new Georgian’ revival of interest in 18th-century art. The clarity and abstracted economy of Towne’s watercolours were not only admired by the public but also by early 20th-century modernists, and he is today recognised as one of Britain’s greatest watercolour artists.
Through Towne’s vision, the exhibition will explore Enlightenment Britain’s relationship with the classical past and Ancient Rome. Towne travelled to Rome in 1780–81 during a period of political crisis in England when America was in revolt, a French invasion of England was anticipated and a highly divisive general election had just concluded. Towne, and his social circle, viewed ancient Rome as a catastrophic precedent for what they perceived as a corrupt ruling power in England. The ruins that Towne depicted in his landscapes signified a warning to contemporary society not to suffer the same fate as the fallen Roman Empire.
Italy had a transformational effect on Towne’s work. When Towne first arrived in Rome he started making excursions north of city, making rural sketches instead of focusing on the ancient monuments. Towne’s delicate early studies were eventually replaced with large scale bolder work when Towne depicted such subjects as the Colosseum and other iconic Roman ruins. The experience of Rome was much different in the 18th century, few ruins had been excavated and tourists were free to explore them.
When Towne returned to England in 1781, these watercolours played a central role in his subsequent career. Although he was never accepted by the London art establishment, he organised an exhibition of his life’s work in 1805 with the Museum’s watercolours at its centre. Towne bequeathed the watercolours of Rome and others to the British Museum in 1816, with a further selection by his executors arriving in 1818.
A new open access catalogue raisonné of Francis Towne’s work by the guest curator of this exhibition, Dr Richard Stephens, will be published online in early 2016 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
The illustrated leaflet for the exhibition is available as a PDF file here»
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P R O G R A M M I N G
All events are free
Decline and Fall: Francis Towne and the Ruins of Rome
Tuesday, 26 January, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by exhibition curator Richard Stephens.
Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Friday, 5 February, 13.30–14.15, BP Lecture Theatre. Booking essential.
Exhibition curator Richard Stephens gives a 45-minute illustrated introduction to the exhibition.
Theory and Practice in Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Friday, 19 February, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by Timothy Wilcox, independent scholar.
The Selective Eye: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Thursday, 21 April, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by art historian and curator Anne Lyles, independent speaker.
Magick Land? Francis Towne and His Response to Rome
Friday, 6 May, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by Jonny Yarker, Director of Lowell Libson Ltd.
Decline and Fall: Francis Towne and the Ruins of Rome
Wednesday, 15 June, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by exhibition curator Richard Stephens.
Enfilade
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