Conference | Keywords of Mobility
From ArtHist.net:
Keywords of Mobility: Paradigms of Movement in Premodern Material Culture
The Norwegian Institute in Rome, 6–7 June 2019
The history of art has been engaged with mobility for centuries. Movement, with its limits and potentials, constitutes in several ways a founding principle of the discipline, and its fascination or rejection stands at the core of much of its narrative. But the recent (re)turn to mobility is rapidly reframing many assumptions about the discourses and practice of the discipline itself. How has art history and, more generally, the study of material cultures, absorbed and reacted to the mobility turn? What kind of theoretical frameworks has, does, and will the discipline, in its broader acceptance, foster and promote? How is mobility—whose intangible nature makes it a rather elusive object of study—embraced and developed in art historical projects?
More than a decade after Sheller and Urry’s call for a ‘mobility turn’, this workshop invites scholars of the premodern period to reconsider the role of art history and material studies in a de-sedentarized, mobile world. Our scope is to reflect and redefine a set of critical terms, whose use (and sometimes abuse) is central to current debates. In doing so, we do not intend to propose a ‘grand narrative’ of mobility, but rather to explore a new set of questions, theoretical approaches, and ideas, in order to understand practices, meanings, forces, and impacts of movement in premodern art.
T H U R S D A Y , 6 J U N E 2 0 1 9
9.30 Registration
9.45 Welcome by Christopher Prescott (Director of The Norwegian Institute in Rome)
10.00 Morning Talks
• Mattia Biffis (Oslo), Mobility What? Viewing Movement Tridimensionally
• Yannis Hadjinicolaou (Hamburg), Flying: Falconry as an Image Vehicle
• Bronwen Wilson (Los Angeles), The Itinerary, the Line, and the Limits of the Page
• Hagi Kenaan (Tel Aviv), Visual Network: The Case of Graffiti
13.00 Lunch break
14.30 Afternoon Talks
• Janina Wellmann (Lüneburg), Rhythm: A New Episteme around 1800
• Meha Priyadarshini (Edinburgh), Boats, Bales, and Ballads: The Material and Culture Practice of Transportation in the Early Modern Period
• Piers Baker-Bates (London), Travelling between the Viceroyalties: The Cosmopolitanism of Works of Art within the 16th-Century Hispanic World
• Stefan Neuner (Berlin), The Ferryman and the Obsessed: Connectivity in Urban and Social Space in Venice around 1500 according to Vittore Carpaccio
18.00 Aperitivo
20.00 Dinner
F R I D A Y , 7 J U N E 2 0 1 9
9.50 Welcome by Sam Hardy (The Norwegian Institute in Rome)
10.15 Morning Talks
• Miriana Carbonara (East Anglia), Art and Borders: A Methodology
• Federico Zuliani (Turin), Migrant Bibles: Relocating Objects and Beliefs in Early Modern Europe
• Aron Vinegar (Oslo), On Habit’s Remainder and the Subject Matter of Inertia
13.00 Lunch break
14.30 Afternoon Talks
• Peter Gillgren (Stockholm), Siting: Mobility and Materiality
• Ivo Van der Graaff (New Hampshire), The Architecture of Departure and Arrival in the Early Roman Empire
• Tiffany Racco (Washington DC), The Performance of Speed: Luca Giordano’s Recurring Role as the Fast Painter
17.00 Concluding Remarks
17.30 Visit to the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola
20.00 Dinner
New Book | Inventing Boston
From Yale UP:
Edward S. Cooke, Inventing Boston: Design, Production, and Consumption, 1680–1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-0300232110, $60.
During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Boston was both a colonial capital and the third most important port in the British empire, trailing only London and Bristol. Boston was also an independent entity that pursued its own interests and articulated its own identity while selectively appropriating British culture and fashion. This revelatory book examines period dwellings, gravestones, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and silver, revealing through material culture how the inhabitants of Boston were colonial, provincial, metropolitan, and global, all at the same time. Edward Cooke’s detailed account of materials and furnishing practices demonstrates that Bostonians actively filtered ideas and goods from a variety of sources, combined them with local materials and preferences, and constructed a distinct sense of local identity, a process of hybridization that exhibited a conscious desire to shape a culture as a means to resist a distant, dominant power.
Edward S. Cooke, Jr. is the Charles F. Montgomery Professor of the History of Art at Yale University.
More information about the book is available from the Paul Mellon Centre.
Exhibition | Printing the Pastoral
Jean-Baptiste Huet, Activities on the Farm, ca.1795, copperplate-printed cotton, 89 × 72 inches
(Saint Louis Art Museum)
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Press release (15 May 2019) for the exhibition:
Printing the Pastoral: Visions of the Countryside in 18th-Century Europe
Saint Louis Art Museum, 24 May — 1 December 2019
Curated by Genevieve Cortinovis and Heather Hughes
The Saint Louis Art Museum presents Printing the Pastoral: Visions of the Countryside in 18th-Century Europe, a free exhibition examining the early development of one of the most recognizable textile genres: copperplate-printed cotton, popularly known as toile.
Nicolaes Berchem, ‘The Shepherd Playing the Flute’, etching; sheet: 8 × 6 inches (Saint Louis Art Museum).
Toile has remained popular since its inception more than 250 years ago, when technological advances allowed textile printers to exploit the type of copperplates long used by artists to print on paper. Artisans were then able to create nuanced, intricate designs, and their creativity flourished. The emergence of copperplate-printed textiles coincided with the taste for scenes of country life and other pastoral imagery in Europe. Middle- and upper-class audiences clamored for fabrics patterned with idyllic scenes of shepherds, ladies on swings, amorous couples, and village celebrations. Textile printers responded, drawing inspiration from a wide variety of sources.
This exhibition reveals the nostalgia for pastoral themes common to 18th-century textile consumers and art collectors by pairing furnishing fabrics, ceramics, and paintings with prints by—or after—Rembrandt van Rijn, Nicolaes Berchem, Paulus Potter, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and François Boucher. A reconstructed bed, complete with coverlet and curtains, illustrates the visual impact of these innovative fabrics in the 18th-century home. Printing the Pastoral includes a number of textiles never before exhibited at the museum, including a recent gift of printed cottons from Richard and Suellen Meyer and a loan from the Missouri History Museum of an important early English copperplate-printed textile.
The exhibition is curated by Genevieve Cortinovis, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, and Heather Hughes, senior research assistant and manager of the Study Room for Prints, Drawings and Photographs.
Associate textile conservator Miriam Murphy installs Printing the Pastoral: Visions of the Countryside in 18th-Century Europe at SLAM.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw Named Director of History at NPG in DC
From the press release (23 May 2019) . . .
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has appointed Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, undergraduate chair and associate professor of history of art at the University of Pennsylvania, as the museum’s new director of history, research and scholarship / senior historian. Shaw will work with the History, Curatorial, and Audience Engagement departments to strengthen the museum’s scholarly programs and be a thought leader on the connections between portraiture, biography and identity in America. Shaw is the first woman to hold this senior position at the National Portrait Gallery.
“I have long admired Gwendolyn’s scholarship and her particular focus on looking at contemporary issues through the lens of both history and portraiture,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “Her research has spanned chronologies from the 17th century through today, merging interests in fine arts with those of popular culture. I am looking forward to having Gwendolyn help us think in fresh ways about our nation’s history as we reinstall our galleries in conjunction with a major upgrade to our lighting systems, and I know she will introduce audiences to larger social, historical, economic, and political topics of conversation and debate.”
Shaw is already well known to the National Portrait Gallery. She is a current member of the PORTAL = Portraiture + Analysis advisory board, the museum’s scholarship and research arm; and in 2016 she served as the senior fellow and host scholar of the museum’s Richardson Symposium: Racial Masquerade in American Art and Culture. Recent books published by the Portrait Gallery feature her writing. For example, her essay “‘Interesting Characters by the Lines of Their Faces’: Moses Williams’s Profile Portrait Silhouettes of Native Americans” was written in 2018 for the exhibition catalogue Blackout: Silhouettes Then and Now, and she also penned “Portraiture in the Age of the Selfie,” the lead essay for the catalogue that accompanied the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.
Shaw, who received her doctorate in art history from Stanford University, has focused for more than two decades on race, gender, sexuality, and class in the art of the U.S., Latin America, and the Caribbean. In 2000, she was appointed assistant professor of history of art and African and African American studies at Harvard University, and in 2005, she began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2012, she has served as the chair of the undergraduate program in the History of Art Department. Shaw has published extensively, and her most widely read titles include Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker (2004) and Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century. She has curated several major exhibitions, notably Represent: 200 Years of African American Art for the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2015) and Kara Walker: Virginia’s Lynch Mob and Other Works, for the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey (2018).
Exhibition | Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri
Press release (13 May 2019) from The Getty:
Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri
Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades (Los Angeles), 26 June — 28 October 2019
Curated by Kenneth Lapatin
The Getty Villa is modeled on the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, an ancient Roman villa buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Rediscovered in the 1750s and explored further in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Villa dei Papiri has yielded spectacular colored marble and mosaic floors, frescoed walls, a large collection of bronze and marble statuary, and a unique library of more than a thousand papyrus scrolls (from which it gets its name). Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri presents many of the most significant artifacts discovered in the 1750s, along with recent finds from the still active archeological site, and explores ongoing efforts to open and read the badly damaged papyri.
“The Villa dei Papiri is one of the most luxurious private residences of the ancient classical world ever discovered and one which had an important role in the early history of archeology. Especially important are its unique collection of ancient bronze statuary and antiquity’s only surviving library of papyrus scrolls, which provide an unprecedented insight into the philosophical interests of its aristocratic Roman occupant—none other than the father-in-law of Julius Caesar,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Among the most impressive of these finds is a rare bronze sculpture of a drunken satyr, which, as part of a collaborative conservation project with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN), is undergoing analysis and conservation treatment in our conservation studios before going on display in the exhibition.”
Potts adds, “For several decades, we have worked closely with Italian colleagues and institutions in conserving, protecting, researching and celebrating Italy’s extraordinary cultural heritage. We are delighted now to be collaborating with MANN, the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano (PA-Erco), and the Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele” di Napoli (BNN) in organizing this exhibition. We have had several successful collaborative conservation projects with MANN over the past few years including, most recently, their monumental funerary vessel (krater) from Altamura in 2018, and three of their splendid bronzes: the Ephebe (Youth) in 2009, the Apollo Saettante in 2011, and the over-life-size sculpture of Tiberius in 2013.”
The Villa dei Papiri was a sumptuous private residence on the Bay of Naples, just outside the Roman town of Herculaneum. Deeply buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, it was rediscovered in 1750 when well-diggers struck a spectacular circular multi-colored marble floor that belonged to the luxurious Roman villa (a full-scale replica of this floor decorates the Getty Villa’s Temple of Hercules gallery). Under the sponsorship of King Charles VII, Karl Weber, a Swiss military engineer in the royal guard, was entrusted with excavating the site. Weber directed a crew of conscripts and convicts to dig a series of shafts and tunnels to seek and remove the most impressive finds to augment the collections of the recently established Royal Herculanean Museum. Although his superiors were chiefly interested in recovering artifacts to enhance the royal collections, Weber carefully recorded their findspots and architectural contexts.
Weber’s excavation plan of the Villa dei Papiri, on display in the exhibition, provides detailed evidence for the layout and decoration of the building, including discovery dates and locations of sculptures, frescos, papyri, columns, pools, fountains, gutters, hinges, and other architectural features. In the early 1970s, when J. Paul Getty decided to replicate the Villa dei Papiri for his museum in Malibu, his architects relied on Karl Weber’s eighteenth-century plan, since the original building remained inaccessible underground. They also employed elements from other ancient structures discovered around the Bay of Naples.
“It is only fitting that the first major exhibition on the Villa dei Papiri takes place at the Getty Villa, which is a recreation of the famous villa in Herculaneum,” says Kenneth Lapatin, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Recreating the Villa dei Papiri appealed to Mr. Getty because of its association with Julius Caesar through his father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the villa’s supposed owner. Getty often compared himself to ancient Roman rulers and particularly admired Julius Caesar and the emperor Hadrian, a fellow art collector and villa owner. Although Getty, unlike Hadrian, did not live in his villa, his reconstruction was a key component in his attempts to refashion himself from a Midwestern businessman into a European aristocrat.”
Drunken Satyr, 1st century BC – 1st century AD, bronze
(Naples: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli)
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One of the most significant finds recovered in the 1750s was a first-century bronze statue of a Drunken Satyr in dynamic motion. The middle-aged figure was praised by the eighteenth-century German scholar J. J. Winckelmann as one of the most beautiful bronze statues to survive from antiquity. The satyr, a mythical follower of the wine god Bacchus, wears a pine wreath with flower clusters and has pointed ears, small horns, wild hair, and wattles. He snaps his right thumb and middle finger in a gesture associated by ancient authors with Bacchic abandon. A replica of the satyr can be found in the Getty Villa’s Outer Peristyle pool.
The ancient Drunken Satyr, which is usually on view in Naples, arrived to the Getty early in October 2018 for conservation treatment and analysis as part of a collaborative project with MANN. The project aims to identify past interventions—what was done to the statue in both ancient and early modern times to repair it, stabilize it, or change its appearance. There will also be an investigation of any potential instabilities, including metal corrosion and the connection between the statue’s various parts, as well as their connections to its early modern stone base. In collaboration with their colleagues at MANN, Getty conservators will also evaluate possible aesthetic issues, considering how to best display the sculpture to enhance viewers’ appreciation of its artistry. How the statue was originally manufactured will also be explored through techniques such as X-radiography, endoscopy, technical imaging, and non-invasive analytical methods.
Another important discovery was the cache of approximately 1,100 papyrus scrolls recovered from the ancient villa in 1752–54, which constitute the only surviving library from the classical world. Camillo Paderni (ca. 1715–1781), the first director of the royal museum in Portici, was the first to attempt to open the carbonized scrolls by slicing the scrolls lengthwise, cutting through their charred outer ‘bark’ to expose the writing. The texts were copied for study and eventual publication, and then the papyri were scraped to reveal additional layers. In 1753, Father Antonio Piaggio, a curator of manuscripts at the Vatican, devised a more successful system, inventing and refining a series of unrolling machines, one of which is on view in the exhibition.
In the late 1900s and early 2000s, advanced imaging technologies enhanced the legibility of the previously opened papyri. Today, they offer the prospect of digital unrolling and decipherment of the hundreds that remain closed. An in-gallery video addressing recent attempts to virtually open and read the scrolls will also be part of the exhibition. In addition, a group of papyrus scrolls on loan from Bibiloteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele” in Naples, which will be on display for the first time in the US, will undergo a major research project at UCLA of imaging and virtual unscrolling prior to being placed in the exhibition. The results of the project will be available later in the summer after the exhibition opens.
Most of the texts opened to date are Greek philosophical treatises, particularly by Philodemus of Gadara (about 110–30 BC), a follower of Epicurus. The Athenian philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC) founded a popular school called the Garden, which recognized pleasure as the greatest good. Images of Greek intellectuals, including busts of Epicurus, and other artifacts, such as a bronze piglet and a portable sundial, recovered from the Villa dei Papiri, further reflects the owner’s interest in Epicurean philosophy and rhetoric.
The rooms and gardens of the Villa dei Papiri were enlivened by approximately 90 sculptures in bronze and marble depicting mythological figures, athletes, rulers, statesmen, poets, and philosophers. Portraits of eminent figures of the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) predominate, which reflects the particular interests of the villa’s owners in Hellenistic philosophy and politics. The arrangement of the sculptures also appears to have been programmatic, presenting particular groupings that invited viewers to compare the accomplishments and failings of the subjects as well as the artistic styles of the works.
Runner, 1st century BC – 1st century AD, bronze, 119 inches high (Naples: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli; photo by Giorgio Albano).
For wealthy Romans, otium, or leisure, presented a chance to forget the concerns of urban life, abandon worry about politics or business (negotium). A seaside estate such as the Villa dei Papiri was the perfect place for an escape. Its owners could host elaborate banquets where guests were surrounded by art, sating both their gastronomic and aesthetic appetites. Gardens, baths, and athletic spaces, as well as long walkways for undistracted contemplation, invited visitors to pause and discuss the representations of mythological figures, men of letters, and famous statesmen. The exhibition will include many of these ancient bronze and marble representations, not far from their replicas on display throughout the Getty Villa’s gardens, including two famous figures of bronze runners.
Exploration of the Villa dei Papiri was abandoned in 1764 and remained entirely buried for more than two centuries until new excavations were undertaken in the 1990s and 2000s. Renewed interested brought to light a portion of the building’s atrium as well as lower levels that were unknown in the eighteenth century.
Among the new discoveries were rooms with colorful mosaic floors and spectacular frescoed walls and stuccoed ceilings. Finds also included a seaside pavilion and swimming pool, where archaeologists recovered two marble sculptures and luxurious wood and ivory furniture components, on view here for the first time. These recent excavations helped clarify the chronology of the villa, which is now thought to have been built around 40 BC, with the seaside pavilion added around AD 20. Ongoing research continues to advance our understanding of the initial finds from the site.
Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri was organized in collaboration with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Parco Archeologico di Ercolano, and Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli “Vittorio Emanuele III”, and with the generous participation of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. The exhibition is made possible with major support from Elizabeth and Bruce Dunlevie. It is generously supported by The Spogli Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Villa Council and the Italian Cultural Institute.
The exhibition is curated by Kenneth Lapatin, curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles on ancient art and its modern reception, including Guide to the Getty Villa (2018); The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection (2012); Luxus: The Sumptuous Arts of Greece and Rome (2015); and Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World (2015).
Kenneth Lapatin, Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2019), 296 pages, ISBN: 978-1606065921, $65.
Getty Appoints Naoko Takahatake Curator of Prints and Drawings
Press release (May 2019) from The Getty:
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) announced today the appointment of Naoko Takahatake as Curator of Prints and Drawings.
“Naoko Takahatake is a gifted curator and has extensive expertise working with works on paper of the greatest importance,” said Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute. “She has been a prominent colleague and critical figure in the field here in Los Angeles and internationally. We are excited to welcome her to the GRI, where she will be responsible for our exceptional collection of works on paper. I’m confident she will help us expand and present our already broad holdings in meaningful ways.”
Takahatake comes to the Getty from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she has been curator of prints and drawings since 2010, overseeing the collection of Old Master works on paper. At LACMA she curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions of prints and drawings from the Renaissance to the contemporary, most recently The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy in 2018, which travelled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She also engaged in several collaborative research projects with conservators and conservation scientists, and led a major grant-funded project to reorganize and inventory the entire prints and drawings collection. Before her tenure at LACMA, she was an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Old Master Prints at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. She previously served as Research Associate at the Center for Advance Study in the Visual Arts and as Michael Bromberg Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.
“The GRI is home to more than 30,000 works on paper that together illustrate a comprehensive and multi-faceted overview of the history of printmaking from the Renaissance to today,” said Marcia Reed, chief curator at the Getty Research Institute. “Dr. Takahatake has an important role as caretaker of this truly one-of-a-kind collection. I am thrilled that we have found a curator with the knowledge and vision to lead our work in this area.”
Takahatake earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Italian from Vassar College, and her master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Oxford, the latter with a dissertation on the print industry in 16th- and 17th-century Bologna. A specialist in Italian Renaissance and Baroque print history, her scholarly research interests include the technical study of printmaking processes and the history of print publishing and collecting. Her catalogue on Italian chiaroscuro woodcuts was a finalist for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award in 2019. She is a member of the editorial board of Print Quarterly, and has published numerous papers, essays, and articles and participated in major symposia internationally.
”It is an immense pleasure and privilege to be joining the curatorial team at the GRI, with its notable collections and research resources,” said Takahatake. “The Getty’s profound commitment to advancing the appreciation of the history of prints and drawings has inspired audiences in Los Angeles and internationally. I am looking forward to participating in its outstanding programs of exhibitions, education, and scholarship, while helping to expand the collection.”
Takahatake starts at the Getty Research Institute in July.
Print Quarterly, June 2019
Francisco Goya, Tan poco (So little), plate 36 of the Disasters of War, ca. 1810–13, etching and aquatint, 157 × 205 mm
(London: British Museum)
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The eighteenth century in the current issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 36.2 (June 2019)
A R T I C L E S
Natalia Keller, “On Goya’s Disasters of War, Plates 69 and 36,” pp. 139–45.
Francisco Goya (1746–1828) paid careful attention to both the visual and textual components of his compositions. The concise titles accompanying the images of his prints were an important reflection of their author’s intention. The article highlights how posthumous changes made by the Royal Academy to the Disasters of War series substantially changed their meanings. The change from Nada. Ello lo dice to Nada. Ello dirá has been noted and discussed. An explanation and interpretation of Goya’s hitherto overlooked original title Tan poco (‘So little’), which was erroneously changed to Tampoco, is here proposed.
N O T E S A N D R E V I E W S
Stephen Bergquist, “Reversed States of Two Landscapes by Crescenzio Onofri,” pp. 181–85.
“Onofri’s etches oeuvre consists of twelve landscape prints after his own series of paintings of 1696, five with mythological subjects, in larger format, and seven in pure landscape, in smaller format” (183). Bergquist corrects the misidentification in The Illustrated Bartsch (volume 45, 1990) of two states of two of the landscape prints: The Double-Arched Bridge and A Waterfall.
Caspar David Friedrich, Woman Seated under a Spider’s Web (Melancholy), ca. 1803, woodcut, 171 × 121 mm (Philadelphia Museum of Art).
Elizabeth McGrath, Review of Temi Odumosu, Africans in English Caricature 1769–1819: Black Jokes, White Humor (Brepols, 2017), pp. 185–88.
Temi Odumosu’s book addresses the black figure in British satirical prints by artists such as Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, Isaac and George Cruikshank, and Richard Newton, some of it a low-point in the history of racist imagery. Odumosu demonstrates how the ultimate target of the satire is almost always white people, the black characters in the prints being there as agents, or simply elements, in the mockery of others. Through her dedicated researches, Odumosu has uncovered a mass of new information and teased out previously baffling contemporary references, including to popular songs, theatre, and opera. In short, the book is, according to McGrath, “a triumph of historical scholarship which has particular importance for and relevance to the understanding of society in Britain today” (188).
Peter Prange, Review of John Ittmann, ed., Enchanted World of German Romantic Prints, 1770–1850 (Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 226–31.
John Smith Philipps bequeathed his collection of about 8,500 German prints to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. “In 1985 it was purchased by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a first exhibition entitled Art and Nature: German Printmaking, 1750–1850 followed in 1992. It is now the subject of the extensive volume The Enchanted World of German Romantic Prints, 1770–1850. . .” (227).
P U B L I C A T I O N S R E C E I V E D
• Florian Knothe, Pascal-François Bertrand, Kristel Smentek, and Nicholas Pearce, Imagining Qianlong: Louis XV’s Chinese Emperor Tapestries and Battle Scene Prints at the Imperial Court in Beijing, exhibition catalogue (Hong Kong University Press, 2017), p. 208.
• The Multigraph Collective, Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation (The University of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 208.
• Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, et al., Ercolano e Pompei: Visioni di una scoperta / Herculaneum and Pompeii: Visions of a Discovery (Skira, 2018), pp. 208–09.
• Nicola Streeten and Cath Tate, eds., with contributions by Sheila O’Connell, Simon Grennan, Elizabeth Crawford, Carol Bennett, and Sofia Niazi, The Inking Woman: 250 Years of British Women Cartoon and Comic Artists (Myriad Editions, 2018), p. 209.
Hogarth’s ‘William Wollaston and His Family’ to Remain in Leicester
William Hogarth, William Wollaston and His Family in a Grand Interior, signed and dated 1730, oil on canvas, 99 × 125 cm (Leicester: New Walk Museum and Art Gallery).
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Press release (24 May 2019) from the UK’s Art Fund:
An important painting by 18th-century English artist William Hogarth has been saved for the nation following a crowdfunding campaign and support from Art Fund. The painting William Wollaston and His Family in a Grand Interior has been acquired by the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester where it has been displayed on a loan basis for 75 years. The work was acquired via the Acceptance in Lieu scheme following the ‘Save the Hogarth Campaign’, which raised over £500,000.
William Hogarth was born in London at the end of the 17th century and is best known for his moral series including A Rake’s Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode and his prints such as Beer Street and Gin Lane. He was also recognised for his ‘conversation pieces’—informal group portraits that depict a large amount of people who were often families.
William Wollaston and His Family in a Grand Interior is a conversation piece that depicts the family of William Wollaston, who was MP for Ipswich from 1733 until 1741. Hogarth was commissioned to paint the piece following a period of mourning for the family after the death of William’s elder brother Charlton Wollaston, the former head of the family. This is reflected in the black clothing of some of the sitters, as well as the cloths hung over the wall decoration and Charlton’s bust on the mantelpiece. The painting has been passed down through the Leicester Wollaston family, who have lived in the county of Leicestershire since 1652.
The work will remain on display to the public until 6 September 2019, before being removed for conservation cleaning in preparation for a series of public events and and an exhibition dedicated to the work and Hogarth in early 2020.
Stephen Deuchar, Director of Art Fund, said: “This is such a great acquisition for Leicester—a real coup to have acquired a work of such landmark significance to both Hogarth’s career and the wider history of 18th-century British art. We are delighted to have helped.”
Exhibition | The Sweetness of Life
From the Norton Simon:
The Sweetness of Life: Three 18th-Century French Paintings from The Frick Collection
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 14 June — 9 September 2019
Jean-Siméon Chardin, Lady with a Bird-Organ, 1753 (?), oil on canvas (lined), 20 × 17 inches (New York: The Frick Collection).
Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, the eminent 19th-century historians of French art and society, baptized the 1700s the ‘century of women’. Though 18th-century women did make strides in the sciences, literature, and the arts, they were most often portrayed in genre scenes pursuing leisurely, quotidian pleasures and tasks. Three superb 18th-century French genre paintings from The Frick Collection in New York, part of an ongoing reciprocal exchange program, are on view this summer at the Museum. These artfully constructed visions of contemporary life and fashion, as depicted by François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, provide viewers with an intimate look at the lives of middle-class French women of the 1740s and 1750s. The paintings will be installed in the Museum’s 18th-century Rococo gallery among its own works by Chardin and Boucher, as well as paintings by Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
S E L E C T E D P R O G R A M M I N G
• David Pullins (Assistant Curator, The Frick Collection), Female Models in the ‘Century of Women’: From Fiction to Reality in Chardin, Boucher, and Greuze
Saturday, 15 June, 4:00pm
• Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell (Fashion Historian), Fashioning the Feminine in 18th-Century France: Dress, Desire and Domesticity in Three Works from The Frick Collection
Saturday, 24 August 24, 4:00pm
Lonnie Bunch to Lead the Smithsonian
From the press release (28 May 2019). . .
Photo of Lonnie Bunch III, by Michael Barnes, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents announced today it elected Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, effective June 16.
Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016. He oversees the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history.
Bunch’s election is unprecedented for the Smithsonian: He will be the first African American to lead the Smithsonian, and the first historian elected Secretary. In addition, he will be the first museum director to ascend to Secretary in 74 years.
“Lonnie Bunch guided, from concept to completion, the complex effort to build the premier museum celebrating African American achievements,” said John G. Roberts, Jr., Smithsonian Chancellor and Chief Justice of the United States. “I look forward to working with him as we approach the Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary, to increase its relevance and role as a beloved American institution and public trust.”
Bunch, a public historian, has spent more than 35 years in the museum field, where he is regarded as one of the nation’s leading figures in the historical and museum community. He and the Board of Regents are committed to driving forward the priorities and direction of the Smithsonian’s 2022 strategic plan.
“I am humbled and honored to become the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,” Bunch said. “I am excited to work with the Board of Regents and my colleagues throughout the Institution to build upon its legacy and to ensure that the Smithsonian will be even more relevant and more meaningful and reach more people in the future.”
The Regents’ 11-member search committee was co-led by Board Chair David Rubenstein and Board Vice Chair Steve Case.
“Lonnie is a deeply respected scholar, educator and leader,” Rubenstein said. “In looking for someone who would shepherd the Institution into the future, we wanted to find a special person with equal parts talent and passion. Fortunately, the ideal choice for our next Secretary was already an integral part of the Smithsonian family.”
“After working at the Smithsonian in various capacities over three decades, and then birthing a wildly successful startup within the Smithsonian, Lonnie has the benefit of knowing the Smithsonian intimately,” Case said. “Now Lonnie will bring his insights and passion to reimagining the Smithsonian of the future, and creating a culture of agility and innovation to expand the Institution’s impact. The Regents stand ready to support Lonnie’s vision for driving cross-institutional collaboration to create a virtual Smithsonian that can reach everybody, everywhere.”
Under Bunch’s leadership, the National Museum of African American History and Culture came to life. When he started as director in 2005, he had one staff member, no collections, no funding and no site for a museum. Driven by optimism, determination and a commitment to build “a place that would make America better,” Bunch transformed a vision into a bold reality. The museum has welcomed about 4 million visitors and compiled a collection of 40,000 objects. The museum is the first “green building” on the National Mall. He rallied donors of every level and worked with Congress to fund the museum through a public-private collaboration.
Previously, Bunch was the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history (2001–05). There, he led a successful capital campaign to transform the Historical Society in celebration of its 150th anniversary, managed an institutional reorganization and began an unprecedented outreach initiative to diverse communities.
A prolific and widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from the black military experience to the American presidency to the impact of race in the American West. He has also written extensively about diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums.
Bunch’s Smithsonian experience spans three museums: the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum.
Bunch held a number of positions at the National Museum of American History from 1989 through 2000. As the museum’s associate director for curatorial affairs from 1994 to 2000, he oversaw the curatorial and collections management staff. While assistant director for curatorial affairs (1992–94) at the museum, Bunch supervised the planning and implementation of the museum’s research and collection programs. As a supervising curator for the museum from 1989 to 1992, he oversaw several of the museum’s divisions, including Community Life and Political History.
Bunch began his Smithsonian career as an education specialist and historian at the National Air and Space Museum from 1978 to 1979.
Bunch was curator of history and program manager for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1989. While there, he organized several award-winning exhibitions, including The Black Olympians, 1904–1950 and Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850–1950. He also produced several historical documentaries for public television.
Born and raised in the Newark, New Jersey, area, Bunch has held numerous teaching positions at universities across the country, including American University and George Washington University, both in Washington, D.C.
Bunch has served on the advisory boards of the American Association of Museums, the Association of African American Museums, the American Association for State and Local History and ICOM-US. Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. In 2005, Bunch was named one of the 100 most influential museum professionals of the 20th century by the American Association of Museums.
In 2017, Bunch was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That same year, he was given the President’s Award at the NAACP Image Awards, and the Greater Washington Urban League presented him with the Impact Leader Award. In 2018, the Phi Beta Kappa Society presented Bunch with the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities, and the National Education Association honored him with the Award for Distinguished Service to Education.
Bunch received his master’s (1976) and bachelor’s (1974) degrees from American University in Washington, D.C., in African American and American history. He is married to Maria Marable-Bunch, associate director for museum learning and programs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Bunch succeeds David Skorton, a board-certified cardiologist, who is leaving the Smithsonian to become president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges.
The Search Process
In December 2018, the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents formed an 11-member committee to search for a Secretary to succeed Skorton. The committee was assisted by the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles. Rubenstein and Case co-chaired the committee. The Regents committee and search firm conducted meetings with key Smithsonian stakeholders and employees to solicit their views on the types of skills and experiences the next Secretary would need; they used those conversations to develop a position specification and evaluation framework. The committee conducted interviews in April and May; the full Board of Regents voted on the new Secretary May 28.
About the Board of Regents
The 17-member Board of Regents is the governing body of the Smithsonian. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and the Vice President of the United States, both ex officio members of the Board; three members of the Senate; three members of the House of Representatives; and nine citizen members, nominated by the Board and approved by Congress in a joint resolution signed by the President of the United States.
About the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846, with a generous bequest from British scientist James Smithson (1765–1829) to found at Washington an establishment for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex, with 19 museums and the National Zoological Park. The Smithsonian’s collections document the nation’s history and heritage and represent the world’s natural and cultural diversity. The total number of objects, works of art and specimens at the Smithsonian is estimated at nearly 155 million, including more than 146 million scientific specimens and artifacts at the National Museum of Natural History.
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