Progress Report on the New Berliner Stadtschloss
Belvedere © Berlin Palace–Humboldtforum Foundation /
Franco Stella
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As reported this past weekend by AFP (via ArtDaily). . .
The German capital celebrated a milestone Friday [12 June 2015] in the rebuilding of its Prussian-era royal palace that is set to house a world history museum billed as the country’s top cultural project. From 2019 the ‘Berliner Stadtschloss’ or Berlin City Palace replica will be the home of the Humboldt Forum global collection, to be curated by the British Museum’s outgoing chief Neil MacGregor, dubbed the “pop star of the museum world” by local media. On Friday, government ministers and culture officials met at what is now a raw concrete and steel structure for the so-called topping-out ceremony that marks the end of the major structural work which started two years ago. MacGregor, who was reportedly hand-picked for the job by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hopes to “tell the story of humanity” with artefacts from Berlin’s many rich collections, ranging from European antiquity to East Asian arts.
The 590-million-euro ($660 million) domed venue is a reconstruction of a historical jewel of Baroque architecture located on the city’s Unter den Linden boulevard, near the Protestant Berlin Cathedral and Humboldt University. The original palace was badly damaged in World War II and its remains blown up by East Germany’s communist regime, which replaced it with its 1970s Palace of the Republic, a giant block with orange tinted windows that housed its assembly and a cultural and recreation centre. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany reunited the following year, bitter debate long raged about whether to keep the communist monument or raze it to rebuild Berlin’s original palace—with the latter option approved by the German parliament in 2007.
The replica, designed by Italian architect Franco Stella, will now be fitted on three sides with baroque sandstone facades recalling the old Hohenzollern palace built between the 15th and 18th centuries, and a fourth modern front facing the Spree River. The Humboldt Forum will house artefacts from Berlin’s Ethnological Museum, Asian Art Museum as well as Humboldt University, libraries and cultural centres. . . .
The full article is available here»
Commemorating the Aboriginal Warrior Pemulwuy
This engraving by Samuel John Neele of James Grant’s image of ‘Pimbloy’ is believed to be the only known depiction of Pemulwuy. It was published in Grant’s The Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery, Performed in His Majesty’s Vessel the Lady Nelson, of Sixty Tons Burthen, with Sliding Keels, in the Years 1800, 1801 and 1802, to New South Wales, 1803 (State Library of New South Wales Q80/18).
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Press release (20 March 2015) from the National Museum of Australia in Canberra:
Defining Moment in Australia’s History
National Museum Honours Aboriginal Warrior Pemulwuy
The life of Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy is commemorated today at the National Museum of Australia as part of its Defining Moments project, which explores key dates that have defined the country’s history over more than 50,000 years.
As Australia’s first Aboriginal resistance leader and a member of the Bidjigal people, Pemulwuy fought the British at Sydney from 1792 by leading attacks on farms, burning crops and dispersing stock in an attempt to starve the settlers out. After surviving a number of battles he was finally killed by settlers in June 1802 at the age of about 52 years. His body was dishonoured with the removal of his head, which was sent to the naturalist Joseph Banks in England. It has yet to be found. The National Museum is working in collaboration with the Ministry for the Arts Museums and Repatriation unit, to undertake research into the possible whereabouts of Pemulwuy’s remains.
The National Museum today [20 March 2015] unveils a plaque in its Main Hall, commemorating Pemulwuy’s campaign of resistance.
The Minister for Education and Training, Christopher Pyne, representing the Australian Government at the ceremony, said Pemulwuy was a figure of Aboriginal defiance, and his legacy remains an important part of Indigenous culture in Australia. “For some years I have been working with Alex Hartman, a member of the National Museum of Australia Council to help find and repatriate the remains of Pemulwuy,” Pyne said. “Pemulwuy’s story is an important one and he deserves to be commemorated in this way.”
National Museum director Mathew Trinca said Pemulwuy was a hero to Aboriginal people. “Pemulwuy’s daring leadership impressed enemies and comrades alike and the story of his concerted campaign of resistance against British colonists should be more widely known,” said Trinca.
Bidjigal elder Uncle Vic Simms said, “What the Museum is doing is so important for getting the history right about Pemulwuy as a Bidjigal man, who resisted and rebelled against the settlers and stood up against them when they were giving blackfellas such a hard time.”
Defining Moments is a National Museum project supported by patrons, the Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG and Mr Michael Ball AM. Under the project, the National Museum is releasing online content for an initial list of 100 Defining Moments and is encouraging people to contribute their own ideas on historical dates of importance. The Museum’s list is a starting point for discussions and is not intended to be definitive.
Helen Jacobsen on The Wallace Collection’s Sphinx Clock, 1781
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This afternoon at The Wallace Collection:
The Wallace Collection Treasure of the Month, April 2015 | Sphinx Clock, France, 1781
Gallery Talk by Helen Jacobsen, The Wallace Collection, London, 27 April 2015
In the late summer of 1777, Queen Marie-Antoinette wagered her brother-in-law 100,000 livres that he could not build a ‘pleasure house’ in less than 100 days; she lost the bet and the charming Pavillon de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne was the result, although the interiors took several years to complete. Designed by the comte’s architect, François-Joseph Bélanger (1744–1818), it was intended for parties and enjoyment, with a billiard room, a dining room and a salon on the ground floor. Everything was in the latest neo-classical taste, executed by the group of talented decorators, sculptors and cabinet-makers around Bélanger and d’Artois.
The walls of the circular salon were decorated with panels of painted and gilded stucco decoration in the Antique style made fashionable by English and French architects such as Robert Adam and Charles-Louis Clérisseau, while the silk curtains and velvet chairs were of ‘English green’. Bélanger designed a clock for the room that reflected this decoration and when it was finally delivered in 1781 it was considered to be of such superb workmanship that it sat under a glass shade on the chimneypiece. The king’s clock-maker, Jean-Baptiste Lepaute (1727–1801), charged d’Artois the enormous sum of 7,500 livres for the clock, and also made one for his older brother, the comte de Provence. This clock is most likely the one made for Bagatelle. . . .
More information about the clock is available here»
A gallery talk on the clock by Helen Jacobsen, Senior Curator and Curator of 18th-Century Decorative Arts will take place Monday, 27 April 2015, at 1:00pm.
Edouard Kopp Appointed Curator of Drawings, Harvard Art Museums
Press Release (21 April 2015) from the Harvard Art Museums:
The Harvard Art Museums are pleased to announce the appointment of Edouard Kopp as the Maida and George Abrams Associate Curator of Drawings in the museums’ Division of European and American Art. Kopp comes to the museums from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where he was associate curator of drawings and was responsible for French and later Germanic drawings. At the Getty, Kopp organized exhibitions devoted to French landscape, Germanic drawings, the artist Gustav Klimt, and 18th-century French drawings from Los Angeles collections. He has recently co-curated two international loan shows: The Work of Nature: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau, which will be displayed at the Getty and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, in 2016–17; and an exhibition focused on the sculptor and draftsman Edme Bouchardon, which will be on view at the Musée du Louvre and the Getty in 2016–17.
Kopp has published widely on the drawings of French sculptor Edme Bouchardon, and on the 18th- century French collector Pierre-Jean Mariette, in journals such as Master Drawings and The Burlington Magazine. He has contributed to exhibition catalogues on French prints from the age of Louis XIV, Edgar Degas and his method, and French landscapes, and he is co-author of the forthcoming catalogues for the Théodore Rousseau and Edme Bouchardon exhibitions described above. He is currently revising his doctoral dissertation for publication by Getty Publications in 2016.
In his role at the Harvard Art Museums, Kopp will oversee the museums’ collection of drawings dating from before the 20th century. This collection is considered to be the finest and most comprehensive of any university art museum in the United States, and ranks among the most important public collections in the country. He will be actively engaged in the development of exhibitions, public lectures, and other programming, and will play an integral role in the regular rotation of works on paper within many of the museums’ galleries. He is also responsible for the stewardship of the drawings collection, including identifying key works for acquisition.
“We are thrilled to welcome such an accomplished scholar and art historian to the Harvard Art Museums,” said Ethan Lasser, interim head of the Division of European and American Art, and the Margaret S. Winthrop Associate Curator of American Art. “Edouard brings a fresh perspective and rigorous eye to the storied collection of drawings, and his enthusiasm will engage audiences across the University and visitors from around the world.”
“I am thrilled to have the invaluable opportunity to work with one of the finest drawings collections in the United States—and especially to do so within the unique and stimulating context of a university art museum,” said Kopp. “This is a living collection at a major institution with a strong tradition of encouraging firsthand, up-close study of original works of art. I look forward to interacting with students, faculty, and the wider community of scholars, collectors, and art lovers.”
Before his time at the Getty, Kopp worked as a researcher for the Weiss Gallery in London, and also for Waddeson Manor, a National Trust estate in Buckinghamshire, England. He served as a teaching assistant while a graduate student at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he received his Ph.D. with a dissertation entitled “Edme Bouchardon: Learned Draughtsman of the Eighteenth Century (1698–1762).” He has a master’s degree in modern art, also from the Courtauld, and wrote his thesis on the Austrian graphic artist Alfred Kubin (1877–1959). He also holds a master of science in management from the Grenoble Graduate School of Business.
The Harvard Art Museums’ collection of approximately 12,000 drawings (from before the year 1900) includes major masterpieces from American and principal European schools. Among the strengths are 17th- and early 19th-century French works, including the most extensive holding of drawings by Ingres, Géricault, and David outside of France. The collection also excels in Italian Renaissance works by Carpaccio, Perugino, and Michelangelo, among others. Works by German and Netherlandish masters such as Dürer, Holbein, Bruegel, and Rembrandt are well represented, as are 19th-century British works by Blake, Beardsley, and the Pre-Raphaelites. In the American school, the collection includes more than 20 Homer watercolors, drawings and pastels by Whistler, and an incomparable grouping of more than 500 drawings and sketches by Sargent.
Colin Bailey Named as New Director of the Morgan
Press release (16 April 2015) from the Morgan:
The Board of Trustees of the Morgan Library & Museum today announced the appointment of Colin B. Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, as the Morgan’s new director. He succeeds William M. Griswold who left last year to head the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Colin B. Bailey, Photography by Randy Dodson, © FAMSF
“We are delighted that Colin Bailey has agreed to become the new director of the Morgan,” said Lawrence Ricciardi, president of the museum’s board. “He is a scholar of the highest order with an impressive record of leadership at a number of outstanding museums. Moreover, he has extensive knowledge of New York cultural institutions and of the philanthropic world, and also brings to the Morgan valuable international experience.”
Bailey is a highly regarded specialist on 18th-century French art and a recognized authority on the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Art History from the University of Oxford. Prior to joining the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Bailey held a variety of positions over thirteen years at New York’s Frick Collection, including serving as deputy director and the Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator.
“To direct the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has been an extraordinary privilege,” Bailey said, in accepting the position at the Morgan. “But the opportunity to return to New York and lead an institution with the reputation of the Morgan was irresistible. Its collections are not only among the most recognized internationally, but also among the most diverse, touching on so many forms of creative expression, from drawing and literature to music, photography, and the arts of the ancient and medieval worlds. There is no place quite like it in the United States, and I look forward to working with its staff, trustees, and supporters to maintain and deepen the Morgan’s preeminent role as a cultural institution—one with the highest standards and a commitment to making its holdings widely accessible.”
Bailey has previously been deputy director and chief curator at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, senior curator at the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas, and held curatorial posts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles earlier in his career.
He has been responsible for many celebrated exhibitions. These include Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting (2012); Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection (2009); and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780) (2007), all mounted at the Frick Collection in New York; Renoir Landscapes, 1865–1883 (2007), The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard: Masterpieces of 18th-century French Genre Painting (2003), and Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age (1997), at the National Gallery of Canada; and The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David (1992), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His book, Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris, was awarded the Mitchell Prize for the best art history book of 2002–2003, and in 2011 he authored the well-received Fragonard’s Progress of Love at The Frick Collection.
Bailey has taught graduate seminars in 18th-century French art at Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, and the City University of New York Graduate Center, and has acted as a spokesperson in video, podcast, and broadcast media nationally and internationally. An Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres since 2010, Bailey has been recognized by the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture with its 2013 FIAC Excellency Award. He is also a board member of the Burlington Magazine Foundation and the Scientific Committee of Arthéna.
The Morgan Library & Museum’s holdings, which number well over a half million objects, are principally in the western European and American traditions. Its collections of drawings and prints, books and bindings, and illuminated manuscripts are preeminent among U.S. institutions. Literary, historical, and music manuscripts holdings, as well as other specialized collections, are also considered among the world’s greatest. The museum’s critically acclaimed 2006 addition by award-winning architect Renzo Piano deftly connected three historic buildings dating to the 19th and early 20th centuries around a central, glass-enclosed court. The expansion also doubled the museum’s gallery space, allowing the institution to mount over a dozen special exhibitions a year. In 2010, the Morgan restored for the first time its landmark 1906 McKim building, which was the personal library of the museum’s founder, financier and philanthropist Pierpont Morgan.
Bailey becomes the Morgan’s sixth director. Belle da Costa Greene became the first director of the newly public institution in 1924, having presided over the private Morgan library since 1906. She was succeeded by Frederick B. Adams, Jr. in 1948, Charles Ryskamp in 1969, Charles E. Pierce, Jr. in 1987, and William M. Griswold in 2008.
Australia’s NPG Acquire Portrait of William Bligh
Press release from the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra:
Attributed to John Webber, Portrait of William Bligh, in Master’s Uniform ca. 1776 (Canberra: National Portrait Gallery)
On Tuesday, 31 March 2015, the National Portrait Gallery unveiled an exciting new acquisition of irrefutable importance to all Australians. Portrait of William Bligh, in Master’s Uniform (c. 1776), attributed to John Webber, is one of the earliest portraits of the contentious, historical figure and extends the Gallery’s remarkable collection of early colonial portraits.
On the occasion of the launch of the National Portrait Gallery Foundation, President Sid Myer announced the acquisition, made possible by a most generous act of benefaction. He paid special tribute to Canberra philanthropists, Sotiria Liangis and John Liangis, for their assistance in funding the purchase of this striking and masterful work. Director, Angus Trumble, said he was overjoyed with the purchase, one which the Gallery had been contemplating for some time. “The work, purchased by the Gallery through Christie’s in London, has a very high level of indisputable national significance to Australia, and the Gallery is immensely appreciative to the Liangis family for their support,” he said.
Portrait of William Bligh, in Master’s Uniform will take its place alongside another John Webber painting: the Portrait of Captain James Cook RN (1782), acquired in 2000 by the Commonwealth Government with the generous benefaction of Robert Oatley and John Schaeffer. Webber spent three years at sea with Cook and was the artist on the Resolution.
The life of William Bligh (1754‒1817) offers up a handful of the most remarkable episodes in the history of Britain’s maritime empire. Bligh’s epic journey to Timor with his companions in a small open boat the 3,600 miles whence they were ejected from H.M.S. Bounty remains an astonishing feat of navigation by the stars. Bligh’s misfortune was not merely to have gone through the ordeal of mutiny aboard the Bounty, but to have faced insurrection in Sydney during his tenure as fourth Governor of New South Wales. The Rum Rebellion of 1808 damaged Bligh’s reputation, but he was vindicated in London and promoted to vice-admiral of the blue. He ended his enormously eventful career by mapping Dublin Bay.
Bligh has become for Australians a mythic figure. There has been a bellwether William Bligh in every phase of Australian history—the martinet versus the brilliant cartographer and genius of navigation; the deeply misunderstood versus the merely blinkered man; the blackguard versus the gentleman and officer of the Royal Navy, steeped in its sometimes brutal disciplinary code; the angry tyrant versus the lonely husband and victim of circumstance, stoutly defended again and again, as a matter of principle, by their Lordships of the Admiralty.
Trumble said, “This portrait represents a different William Bligh. Here he is represented at the age of about 25, several years before his marriage, wearing the uniform of sailing master, already skilled in navigation and seamanship, no doubt ambitious for himself, his men and his vessel, shortly before he was hand-picked by James Cook to go aboard H.M.S. Resolution, on which the artist John Webber also sailed.”
British Museum Director, Neil MacGregor, to Retire
From The British Museum:
Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum. Copyright Jason Bell.
Neil MacGregor announced to his colleagues at the British Museum this morning [8 April 2015] that he has decided to step down as Director at the end of December 2015.
MacGregor said, “It’s a very difficult thing to leave the British Museum. Working with this collection and above all with the colleagues here has been the greatest privilege of my professional life. But I’ve decided that now is the time to retire from full-time employment and the end of this year seems a good time to go. The new building has been completed, so we at last have proper exhibition space, new conservation and scientific facilities, and first class accommodation for our growing research activities. We have built strong partnerships with fellow museums across the UK, and are rapidly expanding our programme of loans and training around the world.
The Museum is now ready to embark on a new phase—deploying the collection to present different histories of the world. It is an exhilarating prospect, and it will start with the new Islamic Galleries and with plans for the future of the Old Reading Room.
The Museum is in a strong position to respond to these energising challenges. It has a distinguished international Board under a new Chairman Sir Richard Lambert. To everything it does the BM brings the highest levels of professionalism. Around the world it is a valued partner and the Board has clearly defined the British Museum’s role as a worldwide resource for the understanding of humanity, to be made available as widely and as freely as possible.”
MacGregor added, “Although I shall no longer be working full-time I shall be involved in a number of projects. I shall be working with the BBC and the BM on a new Radio 4 series on Faith and Society. I shall be chairing an Advisory Board to make recommendations to the German Minister of Culture, Monika Grütters, on how the Humboldt-Forum, drawing on the outstanding resources of the Berlin collections, can become a place where different narratives of world cultures can be explored and debated. In Mumbai, I look forward to working on the presentation of world cultures with the CSMVS Museum and its Director Mr Sabyasachi Mukherjee under whose tenure it has emerged as one of the finest and most active museums in South/South East Asia.”
The full press release is available here»
Researchers Revisit Fragonard’s ‘Young Girl Reading’
Press release (2 April 2015) from Washington’s NGA:
Researchers were able to establish that Portrait of a Woman with a Book existed as a ‘complete’ painting for at least six months before it was changed into Young Girl Reading. The composition once showed a woman with her head turned outwards, looking at the spectator. She wore a large feathered headdress dotted with colored beads, a thinner neck ruffle than in the subsequent painting, and she was illuminated by a frontal light source. An amorphous folding shape in the background behind her was suggested to be a curtain on the basis of precedents in 17th- and 18th-century French portraiture.
Details of Young Girl Reading, the near infrared hyperspectral image (HSI) and the x-ray florescence (XRF) scan for the element mercury (thought to show the presence of vermilion) are shown alongside a simulation of Portrait of a Woman with a Book, generated by cross-referencing various imaging techniques (simulated image by Becca Goodman and Denis Doorly).
One of the most beloved paintings in the National Gallery’s permanent collection, Young Girl Reading (c. 1770) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, shows a young woman in profile, reading the book in her hand. It is now clear that a completely different face was painted underneath, that of an older woman looking out towards the viewer. Using groundbreaking imaging techniques and new art historical investigation, Yuriko Jackall, assistant curator of French paintings, John Delaney, senior imaging scientist, and Michael Swicklik, senior paintings conservator, all at the National Gallery of Art, recovered and reconstructed this first composition, a fully-realized, ‘lost’ painting newly referred to as Portrait of a Woman with a Book.
Their research was sparked by the discovery, at a June 2012 Paris auction, of a drawing by Fragonard showing the Washington picture as a woman looking out at the viewer. The drawing further indicated that the Gallery’s painting once belonged to a series of 18 so-called ‘fantasy figures’, an ensemble painted for a single commission about which many details are still unknown. Today, these works have been dispersed among distinguished private collections and public institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, the Clark Art Institute, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In the 1980s, x-radiography had indicated the presence of another composition beneath Young Girl Reading, but many details including the extent to which the artist had altered his canvas remained unknown. In the last decade, innovations in imaging technologies have provided completely new ways to examine paintings. Using a diverse range of methodologies combining traditional high-resolution color imaging, digital x-radiography, and cross-sectional analysis with chemical information from Delaney’s newly developed, high sensitivity, near infrared hyperspectral imaging (HSI) camera and x-ray fluorescence (XRF) scanning sensor, Jackall, Delaney, and Swicklik investigated the process by which Fragonard changed one composition into the other. The technology was developed recently at the Gallery as part of an ongoing initiative to create new analytical imaging tools for conservation led by Delaney. Funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon and Samuel S. Kress Foundations and a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Gallery and George Washington University (GWU). Image-registration algorithms designed by GWU’s Murray Loew and his team aided in the reconstruction of the prior composition.
At crucial points in their work, Jackall, Delaney, and Swicklik relied upon the expertise of colleagues across the Gallery, particularly in the departments of science, conservation, and imaging and visual services. Swicklik, who had previously written a pioneering article on the use of varnish in French painting, was critical in making sense of Fragonard’s painting technique. Jackall, an expert in 18th-century French painting, brought to the project an unusually deep network of contacts in France, having studied and worked there for a decade prior to her move to Washington, DC. In addition to conducting archival research, she consulted the Paris-based Fragonard specialist, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, one of the first to discover the drawing when it appeared at the Paris auction.
Moving forward on their research on the ‘fantasy figures’ and Young Girl Reading, Jackall, Delaney, and Swicklik plan to investigate other works in Fragonard’s series, in cooperation with institutions and individuals. Young Girl Reading was a gift of Mrs. Ailsa Mellon Bruce in memory of her father, Mr. Andrew W. Mellon, in 1961. The National Gallery owns 13 paintings, 21 drawings, and 17 prints by Fragonard.
The findings of Jackall, Delaney, and Swicklik, as well as Dupuy-Vachey’s preliminary study of the place of the drawing in Fragonard’s artistic practice (translated from the French by Jackall), appear in the April 2015 issue of The Burlington Magazine.
The Huntington to Open New Education and Visitor Center
Press release (5 March 2015) from The Huntington:
The new Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center will open to the public on April 4, 2015, offering the 600,000 annual visitors to The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens a dramatically improved experience, replete with six and a half acres of gardens interspersed with beautiful facilities for dining, shopping, meeting, seeing a lecture or performance, or attending a class.
The Rose Hills Foundation Garden Court in the new Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Photo: Tim Street-Porter
The front, northernmost section of the complex opened to the public in January, making available to visitors a new and substantially larger Huntington Store, a new specialty coffee shop, and a new full-service admissions and membership area. The rest of the visitor center, opening on April 4, features a 400-seat auditorium, a large café with indoor/outdoor seating and garden views, four multi-use classrooms, meeting and event spaces, and an orientation gallery—all arranged amid new, beautifully landscaped, drought-tolerant gardens.
The $68 million project broke ground in April 2013. An additional $10 million has been raised to endow the new facilities’ operations. Designed by Architectural Resources Group, the Education and Visitor Center consists of 52,000 square feet of educational facilities and visitor amenities. The design of the complex of buildings and gardens harmonizes with the original early 20th-century Beaux-Arts architecture on the property (once the estate of Gilded Age railroad magnate, real estate developer, and collector Henry E. Huntington). The landscape, designed in concert with the architecture by the Office of Cheryl Barton, reflects the local Mediterranean climate as well as both the agricultural and elegant estate history of the 207-acre Huntington grounds. Much of the new construction replaces existing facilities built in 1980 that no longer accommodated the needs of Huntington visitors, scholars, or staff. The project also includes the addition of 42,000 square feet of underground space to house The Huntington’s growing collections of original historical research materials as well as provide institutional storage.
The Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center was funded entirely with private contributions, with a lead gift from Charles T. Munger.
Snite Museum Acquires Pressly Collection of James Barry Prints
James Barry, The Phoenix or The Resurrection of Freedom, 1775/ca. 1790, etching and engraving with traces of aquatint, 17 x 24.1 inches (plate). Snite Museum of Art, gift of William and Nancy Pressly in honor of the Stent Family, 2015.002.001.
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Press release (30 January 2015) from the Snite Museum of Art:
Snite Museum Expands Irish Art Collection at the University of Notre Dame with the William and Nancy Pressly Collection of James Barry Prints
The Snite Museum of Art announces the acquisition of a significant portfolio of 28 prints by the quixotic Irish artist James Barry (1741–1806). Rich in symbolism and technically inventive, these new additions to the collection promise to enhance the University of Notre Dame’s position as a leading center for Irish, eighteenth-century, art historical, and trans-Atlantic studies. The artist’s dramatic compositions, grand scale, and heroic subjects offer visitors, connoisseurs, students, and scholars much to contemplate and enjoy.
“This is a first-rate acquisition of one of the most influential artists of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. It will be thrilling to see how our students in early American, Irish, and British history interpret such a rich and complex set of materials,” said Patrick Griffin, chair and Madden-Hennebry Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
James Barry, King Lear and Cordelia, etching and engraving, 1776/1791, 19.5 x 22.2 inches (sheet). Snite Museum of Art, The William and Nancy Pressly Collection acquired with funds made available by the F. T. Stent Family, 2015.001.001.
Included in the portfolio are many rare, lifetime impressions of some of the Catholic artist’s most provocative images skewering British society or weighing in on contentious current events, such as the war in the American colonies. Barry was a member of the Royal Academy but was eventually expelled for his belligerence and acrimony.
Printmaking for Barry was more than just an opportunity to market his ideas to a wide audience. Self-taught in the arts of printmaking, he used it to work out iconographical and compositional problems. It was part of his creative process, and the prints can be used to chart his ever-evolving positions on political issues and his increasing technical acumen. Multiple states of the same print in which the more experimental aquatint technique was effaced in favor of conventional engraving suggest the artist’s lamentable concession to a market that did not appreciate his innovations. He was one of the earliest practitioners of lithography shortly after its invention around 1800, a singular example of which is also part of this portfolio.
This remarkable collection was built over four decades by Nancy and William Pressly, 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’s 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.”
Barry produced over 40 prints during his career. The William and Nancy Pressly Collection represents more than half of that production, making the University of Notre Dame and the Yale Center for British Art the two largest repositories of his work in the United States.
The acquisition of eighteen of the prints was made possible by a generous gift from the F. T. Stent Family with ten additional prints donated by the Presslys themselves.
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