Exhibition | Three Centuries of American Prints
From the press release (3 February 2016) for the exhibition:
Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 3 April 3 — 24 July 2016
National Gallery, Prague, 4 October 2016 — 5 January 2017
Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City, 7 February — 30 April 2017
Curated by Amy Johnston and Judith Brodie
John Simon after John Verelst, Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas, after 1710 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Paul Mellon Fund)
A new international traveling exhibition will explore major events and movements in American art through some 150 outstanding prints from the Colonial era to the present. Three Centuries of American Prints from the National Gallery of Art is the first major museum survey of American prints in more than 30 years. Timed to coincide with the National Gallery of Art’s 75th anniversary, the exhibition is drawn from the Gallery’s renowned holdings of works on paper, and features more than 100 artists such as Paul Revere, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Marin, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, Romare Bearden, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Jenny Holzer, and Kara Walker.
Organized chronologically and thematically through nine galleries, Three Centuries of American Prints reveals the breadth and excellence of the Gallery’s collection while showcasing some of the standouts: exquisite, rare impressions of James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne (1879/1880), captivating prints by Mary Cassatt, a singularly stunning impression of John Marin’s Woolworth Building, No. 1 (1913), and Robert Rauschenberg’s pioneering Booster (1967).
The exhibition is bracketed by John Simon’s Four Indian Kings (1710)—stately portraits of four Native American leaders who traveled to London to meet Queen Anne—and Kara Walker’s no world (2010), which recalls the disastrous impact of European settlement in the New World. Both prints address the subject of transnational contact, a theme that runs through the history of American art.
Paul Revere, The Boston Massacre, 1770, hand-colored engraving (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection)
Three Centuries of American Prints features works intended to provoke action, such as Paul Revere’s call for moral outrage in The Bloody Massacre (1770) and Jenny Holzer’s appeal to “Raise Boys and Girls the Same Way” in her Truisms (1977). Others lean more strongly toward visual concerns, such as Stuart Davis’s striking black-and-white lithograph, Barber Shop Chord (1931), and Richard Diebenkorn’s resplendent Green (1986). This duality between prints designed to exhort or teach and ones more weighted to artistic matters is an undercurrent of both the exhibition and the history of American prints.
Since its opening in 1941, the National Gallery of Art has assiduously collected American prints with the help of many generous donors. The Gallery’s American print collection has grown from nearly 1,900 prints in 1950 to some 22,500 prints in 2015. The collection was transformed in recent years by the acquisition of the Reba and Dave Williams Collection, the personal print archive of Jasper Johns, and some 2,300 American prints from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, along with a gift and pledge of 18th- and early 19th-century prints from Harry W. Havemeyer.
“In the past few decades the American collections at the National Gallery of Art have grown vastly in quality and scale. From 2000 until today—thanks to generous donors and acquisitions from the Corcoran Gallery of Art—the collection of American prints has almost doubled and now numbers some 22,500 works,” said Earl A. Powell III, Director, National Gallery of Art. “We are tremendously grateful to hundreds of donors, foremost among them Lessing J. Rosenwald and Reba and Dave Williams, as well as grateful to Altria Group, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art for their vital support.”
The exhibition is made possible by Altria Group in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. This is the twelfth exhibition sponsorship by Altria Group at the Gallery. “For more than 50 years, Altria and its companies have supported visual and performing arts. Our partnership with the National Gallery of Art to share Three Centuries of American Prints is an important way that we’re bringing world-class cultural experiences to our communities,” said Bruce Gates, Senior Vice President of External Affairs for Altria Client Services. The international tour of the exhibition is sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support is provided by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.
The curators of the exhibition are Amy Johnston, assistant curator of prints and drawings, and Judith Brodie, curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings, both at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition catalog is conceived and edited by Judith Brodie, with coauthors Amy Johnston and Michael J. Lewis, the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art History at Williams College. The Terra Foundation for American Art provided additional funding for the exhibition catalog.
Judith Brodie, Amy Johnston, and Michael J. Lewis, Three Centuries of American Prints (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2016), 306 pages, ISBN: 978-0500239520, $60.
Journal18, #1 Multilayered (Spring 2016)
The inaugural issue of J18 is now available!
Journal18, #1 Multilayered (Spring 2016)
A R T I C L E S
• David Pullins, “Stubbs, Vernet & Boucher Share a Canvas: Workshops, Authorship & the Status of Painting”
• Charlotte Guichard, “Scratched Surfaces: Artists’ Graffiti in Eighteenth-Century Rome”
• Kristel Smentek, “China and Greco-Roman Antiquity: Overture to a Study of the Vase in Eighteenth-Century France”
• Dipti Khera, “Marginal, Mobile, Multilayered: Painted Invitation Letters as Bazaar Objects in Early Modern India”
Art history’s material turn, informed by anthropology, material culture, and consumption studies, has prompted new interest in both the physicality and the social lives of artworks. Examining the ways that eighteenth-century art objects were produced, transported, and transformed helps us to understand how they were perceived and reimagined in different cultural and temporal contexts. In the workshops and collective spaces of artistic design and manufacture, objects became the creative products of many minds and many hands, simultaneously and successively. Likewise in their afterlives as commodities and possessions, objects were continually altered through use and re-use, each transaction constituting a reframing—sometimes literal—as objects inhabited new settings or were subjected to damage, aging, or rejuvenation.
This inaugural issue of Journal18 explores the multilayered nature of eighteenth-century art. Our focus is on artworks that bear traces of multiple hands as a result of workshop production, cross-cultural exchange, re-use, restoration, vandalism, or other factors. Among the questions considered are: who were the many people involved in art’s production and reproduction (artists, collectors, scholars, dealers, handlers, and restorers)? How were eighteenth-century artworks made, re-purposed, transported, and conserved? How were they translated across media as well as across time, space, and culture? And what is the creative effect of non-creative acts like accidents or defacement? By taking a ‘multilayered’ approach, the articles in this issue not only reexamine traditional art-historical categories—such as style, originality, or authorship—but also encourage new methodological perspectives and find new meaning in the materiality of art objects.
N O T E S & Q U E R I E S
Woven Gold: Tapestries of Louis XIV – by Robert Wellington
Qing Encounters – by Craig Clunas
A Lacquered Past: The Making of Asian Art in the Americas – by Sylvia Houghteling
Castiglione and China: Marking Anniversaries – by Kristina Kleutghen
A Digitally Usable Period Room – by Anne Higonnet
Ornamenting Louis XIV – by Sarah Grant
Pastel will Travel. Liotard at the Royal Academy – by Francesca Whitlum-Cooper
Ceci n’est pas un portrait: A Curator’s Diary – by Melissa Percival
China in Wonderland – by Michelle Wang
Shock Dog! New Sculpture at the Met – by Paris Amanda Spies-Gans
Issue Editors
Noémie Etienne, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Meredith Martin, NYU and Institute of Fine Arts
Hannah Williams, Queen Mary University of London
Cover image: Detail of Louis-Léopold Boilly, Trompe l’œil, ca. 1804–07. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
New Book | The Mind Is a Collection
From Penn Press:
Sean Silver, The Mind Is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 384 pages, ISBN: 978-0812247268, $65 / £42.
John Locke described the mind as a cabinet; Robert Hooke called it a repository; Joseph Addison imagined a drawer of medals. Each of these philosophers was an avid collector and curator of books, coins, and cultural artifacts. It is therefore no coincidence that when they wrote about the mental work of reason and imagination, they modeled their powers of intellect in terms of collecting, cataloging, and classification.
The Mind Is a Collection approaches seventeenth- and eighteenth-century metaphors of the mind from a material point of view. Each of the book’s six chapters is organized as a series of linked exhibits that speak to a single aspect of Enlightenment philosophies of mind. From his first chapter, on metaphor, to the last one, on dispossession, Sean Silver looks at ways that abstract theories referred to cognitive ecologies—systems crafted to enable certain kinds of thinking, such as libraries, workshops, notebooks, collections, and gardens. In doing so, he demonstrates the crossings-over of material into ideal, ideal into material, and the ways in which an idea might repeatedly turn up in an object, or a range of objects might repeatedly stand for an idea. A brief conclusion examines the afterlife of the metaphor of mind as collection, as it turns up in present-day cognitive studies. Modern cognitive theory has been applied to the microcomputer, and while the object is new, the habit is as old as the Enlightenment.
By examining lived environments and embodied habits from 1660 to 1800, Silver demonstrates that the philosophical dualism that separated mind from body and idea from thing was inextricably established through active engagement with crafted ecologies.
Sean Silver teaches literature at the University of Michigan. Sean Silver’s The Mind is a Collection is a two-part intellectual project featuring a virtual museum (about museums) along with his book, The Mind is a Collection, which serves as both scholarly study and an exhibit catalogue.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
C O N T E N T S
Preface: Welcome to the Museum
Introduction
Case 1. Metaphor
1 John Locke’s Commonplace Book
2 John Milton’s Bed
3 Mark Akenside’s Museum
Case 2. Design
4 Robert Hooke’s Camera Obscura
5 Raphael’s Judgment of Paris
6 A Gritty Pebble
7 An Oval Portrait of John Woodward
8 A Stone from the Grotto of Egeria
9 Venus at Her Toilet
Case 3. Digression
10 The Iliad in a Nutshell
11 A Full Stop
12 A Conical Roman Tumulus
13 The Reception of Claudius
14 Addison’s Walk
Case 4. Inwardness
15 William Hay’s Stone
16 Two Calculi Cut and Mounted in a Small Showcase
17 An Ampulla of the Blood of Thomas Becket
18 A Blue-Bound Copy of The Mysterious Mother
Case 5. Conception
19 A Blank Sheet of Paper (1)
20 A Folio Sheet with Two Sketches of a Single Conception
21 A Triumph of Galatea
22 Joshua Reynolds, William Hunter
Case 6. Dispossession
23 A Shilling
24 A Book of Accounts
25 A Blank Sheet of Paper (2)
26 A Ring Containing a Lock of Hair
27 The Lost Property Office
28 The Skeleton of Jonathan Wild
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Exhibition | Maria Merian’s Butterflies
From the Royal Collection Trust:
Maria Merian’s Butterflies
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 15 April — 9 October 2016
The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, 17 March — 23 July 2017
Curated by Kate Heard
I had the plates engraved by the most renowned masters, and used the best paper in order to please both the connoisseurs of art and the amateur naturalists interested in insects and plants.
—Maria Sibylla Merian
In 1699, the German artist and entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian set sail for Suriname, in South America. There she would spend two years studying the animals and plants which she encountered, aiming to explore the life-cycle of insects (then only partially understood). Those studies led to the publication of the Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (the Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname), a luxury volume which brought the wonders of Suriname to Europe.
Maria Merian’s Butterflies tells Merian’s story through her works in the Royal Collection, acquired by George III. Many are luxury versions of the plates of the Metamorphosis, partially printed and partially hand painted onto vellum by the artist herself. Over three hundred years after they were made, these meticulous, brilliant works celebrate a woman whose art and whose story are enduringly popular.
Maria Merian’s Butterflies is shown at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace with Scottish Artists 1750–1900: From Caledonia to the Continent.
The catalogue is available in the U.S. and Canada from The University of Chicago Press:
Kate Heard, Maria Merian’s Butterflies (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2016), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1909741317, £15.
Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) trained as an artist under her stepfather in Nuremberg. Fascinated by butterflies and moths from an early age, she studied the insect life cycle through the animals she found in local fields and gardens, recording her discoveries in meticulous watercolors and prints. After she moved to Amsterdam in 1691, Merian became interested in the wildlife of Suriname, which she encountered in the collectors’ cabinets and botanical gardens in the city. Merian’s fascination with Suriname led her to undertake a trip to the country, then a Dutch colony, to study insects in their natural habitat. Between 1699 and 1701, she worked in Suriname, making expeditions around the country to collect specimens, rearing butterflies and moths and recording their eating habits and metamorphoses.
Merian’s work in Suriname was published on her return to Amsterdam as the Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, or The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname. This groundbreaking book presented the insects that Merian had studied, with each insect life cycle shown on the correct host plant—an approach which has seen her described as ‘the first ecologist’. Merian’s illustrations are scientifically rigorous, but they are also beautiful, reflecting her training as an artist in the still-life tradition. Her approach to scientific illustration would be adopted by many of the natural historians who followed her.
Maria Merian’s Butterflies tells Merian’s story through her works in the Royal Collection. The core of these is a set of plates from the Metamorphosis, partially printed and partially drawn on vellum, which were acquired by George III as part of his extensive scientific library. Over three hundred years after they were made, these meticulous, brilliant works celebrate a woman whose art and whose story are enduringly popular.
Kate Heard is Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, Royal Collection Trust. Her previous publications include High Spirits: The Comic Art of Thomas Rowlandson (2013) and she is Deputy Editor of the Journal of the History of Collections.
Huntington’s American Art Galleries to Open in June and October
Press Release (24 March 2016) from The Huntington:
Portrait of a Woman with a Bowl of Cherries, ca. 1770–80, oil on panel, 28 × 23 × 2 1/2 in. (San Marino: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens; Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection; photo by Fredrik Nilsen)
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California announced today that its new 8,600 square-foot addition to the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art will open on October 22. Named after the lead donors for the $10.3 million building project, the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Wing includes 5,000 square feet of gallery space with an inaugural exhibition of more than 200 works from the Fieldings’ esteemed collection of 18th- and early19th-century American works—including paintings, furniture, and related decorative art—some of which are promised gifts to The Huntington. The exhibition will offer important insights into the world of American art practice and culture of the time.
“The collection, display, and contextualization of historical American art is among our chief priorities,” said Laura Skandera Trombley, president of The Huntington. “And the educational and inspirational value of the new wing is immeasurable. It will bring to light unforgettable works made with American originality, and is sure to delight and surprise visitors of all ages. We are profoundly grateful to Jonathan and Karin Fielding for their vision and generosity.”
In related news, the original portion of the Scott Galleries, which has been undergoing reconfiguration and reinstallation, will reopen on June 18. It will feature a new room highlighting works from the Gail-Oxford Collection, a recent bequest to The Huntington of 18th-century works of American decorative art; a redesigned Dorothy Collis Brown Wing displaying works by Arts and Crafts architects Charles and Henry Greene; sweeping, long sightlines across galleries; and improved visitor flow. Also opening in the original portion of the building on June 18 is a focused loan exhibition, Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Bilingual Photography and the Architecture of Greene & Greene in the Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing (on view through October 3).
Designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners, who also designed the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery (a 2005 addition to the same building), the new Fielding Wing features eight new rooms for art display as well as a stately glass entrance and lobby on the south side of the building that mirrors those on the north side. The entrance, along with a reconfiguration of some of the rooms of the existing building, will improve visitor flow and make entering the galleries (that will total 26,000 square feet of display space) more inviting and intuitive. The new entry will draw visitors to the galleries naturally, with the glass lobby serving as a beacon from a popular path that leads through the Shakespeare Garden from the Huntington Art Gallery, where the renowned European art collection is displayed. In addition, the entry allows easy access to and from the historic Rose Garden Tea Room and Café. Frederick Fisher and Partners also are designing the inaugural exhibition. With this expansion of the Scott Galleries (the third since 2009), The Huntington will be the home of one of the largest displays of historic American art in the Western United States.
“While the Fieldings have been collecting American art for a relatively short time, they have developed a focused and important body of historical works,” said Kevin Salatino, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Collections at The Huntington. “We plan to highlight these in a creative installation that enhances their educational content as well as their powerful aesthetic qualities.”
With more than 700 examples of American painting, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal, needlework, and other related decorative arts, the Fieldings’ collection is widely regarded as one of the most significant of its kind in the United Sates. The initial display of works will be grouped variously by the function of the objects, the materials from which they are made, and through the themes that they embody.
In its rich diversity, the Fielding Collection offers a rare opportunity to explore early American history through objects made for daily use and through images of the everyday people who used them. Highlights of the collection include a rare painting on panel made about 1834 by Sheldon Peck (1797–1868) portraying Samuel and Eunice Judkins, residents of Ulster County, New York; a striking portrait of a woman with a bowl of cherries, painted on panel about 1770 to 1780; a high chest of drawers made about 1774 by the Connecticut-based Eliphalet Chapin (1741–1807); a Windsor low-back settee with distinctive steam-bent arm rail made in Lancaster County, Pa., between 1760 and 1780; a rare pair of needlework pockets from about 1775, used by a woman to carry sewing implements and other items; and a Connecticut tall-case clock, with richly painted decoration and wooden works, signed by Riley Whiting (1785–1835) and made in Windsor, Conn., between 1819 and about 1828.
Begun in earnest in 1979, when the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation of Pasadena made a major gift to The Huntington in memory of art collector, patron, and philanthropist Virginia Steele Scott (1905-1975), The Huntington’s collection of American art has grown from an initial 50 paintings to nearly 13,000 objects. Recent acquisitions include works by Milton Avery (1885-1965), Richard Estes (b. 1932), Sargent Claude Johnson (1888–1967), and Helen Lundeberg (1908–1999), as well as the Gail-Oxford Collection of 18th-century decorative art.
First opened in 1984 with 6,800 square feet of gallery space, the Scott Galleries were expanded to 16,300 square feet with the addition of the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery and completely reinstalled in 2009 to cover the history of art in the United States from the colonial period to the mid-20th century. In July of 2014, The Huntington expanded the display of American art further by opening more than 5,000 feet of gallery space focusing on works of 20th-century art in an area previously used for storage.
Exhibition | Visions of Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century
From the Dallas Museum of Art:
Visions of Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century
Dallas Museum of Art, 16 March — 23 October 2016
Hubert Robert, Hermit in the Colosseum, 1790, oil on canvas, Lent by the Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation 29.2004.2
Visions of Antiquity in the 18th Century brings together prints, drawings, and objects from the DMA’s collection that reflect the taste for all things Greek and Roman during the 18th century. This was a period of great interest in ancient civilizations, as the discovery of archaeological ruins, such as Pompeii in 1748, stimulated enthusiasm for antiquarianism. The constant stream of tourists supported a booming market for printed and drawn images of Roman views, such as the etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi on view in this exhibition. The interest in the style à l’antique gave rise to incredible artistic fertility in the 1700s, influencing architecture, decorative arts, painting and sculpture, fashion, festival decorations, and prints. The works displayed at the DMA provide a snapshot of this period of discovery and intense curiosity about classical antiquity.
Exhibition | Masterpieces of British Silver: Highlights from the V&A
Edward Feline, Christening Cup and Cover, 1731 (The Rosalinde
and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the V&A)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release for the exhibition, via Art Daily (28 March 2016) . . .
Masterpieces of British Silver: Highlights from the Victoria and Albert Museum
Liang Yi Museum, Hong Kong, 21 March — 18 August 2016
Curated by Tessa Murdoch and Lynn Fung
Liang Yi Museum celebrated the launch of its landmark exhibition Masterpieces of British Silver: Highlights from the Victoria and Albert Museum, featuring a total of 46 historical and contemporary silver pieces from the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), unveiled for the first time in Asia. The show will run for six months until August 2016.
“We are thrilled to unveil our newest exhibition in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Our strategic partnership represents Liang Yi’s commitment to bringing the highest quality decorative arts to Hong Kong, allowing the public to appreciate these rare and treasured objects. The significant display has been carefully curated to offer insight into the global outlook of British silver, as well as the enduring influence that contemporary design holds in our creative ecology,” said Lynn Fung, Director of Liang Yi Museum.
The works in Masterpieces of British Silver boldly combine ancient practices with modern technological developments, reflecting trends in taste and design across continents. The exhibition begins with seven examples of historical silver from the renowned Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, the foremost collection of its kind and currently under the stewardship of the V&A. Dating from the 16th to the early 19th century, these objects provide a visual framework to the movements, designs and techniques that inform contemporary silver. The show continues with 39 dramatic sculptural pieces from the V&A’s permanent collection, created by notable contemporary silversmiths and showcased alongside original designs and sketches. Ranging from the entirely abstract to the startlingly representative, conceptual and functional pieces by modern day masters of silver such as David Clarke, Michael Rowe, Gerald Benney and Michael Lloyd demonstrate the diverse influences from which contemporary silverwork in Britain draws inspiration—from the flowery ostentation of 18th century Rococo to the minimal simplicity of Scandinavian design.
One of the highlights of this exhibition is that it provides “a unique opportunity to see masterpieces of silver from the privately assembled Gilbert Collection before the V&A’s Gilbert Galleries reopen to the public in London in November,” says Dr. Tessa Murdoch, Head of Metalwork Collections at the V&A. Standout pieces from the exhibit include “the graceful silver swan, which epitomises Arthur Gilbert’s taste. He also collected the very best examples of historic silver from the famous London workshops of Paul de Lamerie and Paul Storr and from the most celebrated historic collections.”
Alongside Masterpieces of British Silver, Liang Yi Museum’s acclaimed exhibition, A History of Evening Bags, has been extended due to its positive reception. Providing an intimate perspective to complement the show-stopping silver exhibits, the 250 pieces of European vanities from Liang Yi’s permanent collection display techniques that parallel those used on silver. With an assemblage of haute vanities commissioned from the houses of Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Boucheron among others, the two exhibitions provide a valuable opportunity to contextualise these prized objects, which embody and signify the styles and social structures of different periods.
“As we look forward to the second anniversary of Liang Yi Museum, we cannot think of a better exhibition to mark the occasion. The two shows concurrently explore the continuation of virtuoso artistry in silver and metalwork and celebrate the vision of our Museum: design, craftsmanship and heritage. The parallel collections reflect a dedicated effort to foster cross-cultural dialogue and contribute institutionally to Hong Kong’s art scene, setting a benchmark for private museum practices,” continues Fung.
Symposium | Jesuits and the Arts in China
From the symposium programme:
Jesuits and the Arts in China
Department of Fine Arts, The University of Hong Kong, 11–12 April 2016
A research symposium exploring the role of the Jesuits in the production of art and architecture in China in the 17th and 18th centuries. Hosted by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong and funded by the Arts Faculty’s Strategic Research Theme in China-West Studies. With no registration necessary, the symposium is free and open to the public. For information, contact Professor Greg Thomas, gmthomas@hku.hk
M O N D A Y , 1 1 A P R I L 2 0 1 6
2:00 Welcome
2:10 Gauvin BAILEY (Queen’s University) keynote talk: The Migration of Forms in the Art of the Jesuit Missions in Japan and China
3:15 Tea break
3:30 SONG Gang (University of Hong Kong): Printing Tianxüe: The Ascendance of Catholic Imprints in 17th-Century China
4:15 QU Yi (Nanjing University of the Arts): Alphabetic Characters in European Images and their Influence in China
T U E S D A Y , 1 2 A P R I L 2 0 1 6
10:00 Greg THOMAS (University of Hong Kong): Religious Negotiation in the Decoration of the Western Palaces at Yuanming Yuan
10:45 CHIU Che Bing (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture and School of Architecture Tianjin): The Jesuits and the Representation of Yuanming Yuan in the West
11:30 Tea break
11:45 YU Pei-chin (National Palace Museum Taipei): Issues Related to the Production of Ceramics as Seen in the Letters of Père François Xavier d’Entrecolles
12:30 Lunch break
2:30 Kee Il CHOI (art consultant, U.S., and University of Warwick): The Talented Mr. Panzi: A Jesuit Painter and His Lamentable Debut at the Qing Court
3:15 Marco MUSILLO (Kunsthistorisches Institut): Global Hagiographies versus Local Praxis: Giuseppe Castiglione in Jesuit History and in the Painting Workshop (1700–1766)
4:00 Reception
Expansion Plans for The Frick Collection, Part II
Press release (24 March 2016) from The Frick:
The Frick Collection’s Fifth Avenue garden and facade, looking toward 70th St. (Photo: Galen Lee, The Frick Collection)
The Frick Collection announced that it is entering into the next phase of planning for the upgrade and enhancement of its facility, which encompasses a constellation of buildings, wings, and additions constructed between 1914 and 2011. Following the withdrawal of the 2014 design proposal and a subsequent period of extensive study, Frick leadership has developed a new approach to upgrading and expanding its facilities that enhances opportunities for intimate engagement with great works of art and preserves the Frick’s gardens. The ongoing planning includes the creation of new exhibition, programming, and conservation spaces within the institution’s built footprint.
As the next step in this process, the Frick is issuing a request for qualifications (RFQ) to select architectural firms, which are being invited to submit their credentials based on their relevant experience and expertise. The institution is planning to announce a finalist later this year and will work together with the selected architect to further define the expansion program, with initial designs expected to be unveiled in 2017.
Home to one of the world’s leading collections of fine and decorative arts, The Frick Collection is noted for the contemplative atmosphere of its galleries, which were previously the principal rooms of the private residence of Henry Clay Frick. It also houses the Frick Art Reference Library, one of the top five art historical research centers in the world. Although its collections, attendance, and public programs have grown significantly over the past decades, the Frick’s facilities have not undergone a significant upgrade since the 1970s. Many of the Frick’s critical functions are currently constrained—from the presentation, care, and conservation of its collections, to education programs and basic visitor services—having been retrofitted into spaces in and adjacent to the former residence.
The project will open to the public—for the first time—new areas of the historic Frick home, reorganize and upgrade existing spaces in the Frick’s buildings, and renovate underground facilities. It will create a more natural flow for visitors throughout the buildings, while enhancing and upgrading the behind-the scenes facilities to enable professional staff to work more efficiently and effectively. At the same time, the expansion will preserve the distinctively residential character and intimate scale of the house and its gardens, both those original to the residence and in more recent additions.
“We enter the next phase of our expansion process energized by the promise of an enhanced facility that will address the Frick’s urgent programmatic and museological needs, while ensuring that the institution will continue to do what it does best—provide intimate encounters with exceptional artworks in spaces designed for tranquil contemplation,” said Dr. Ian Wardropper, Director of The Frick Collection. “We look forward to developing a design that advances these goals and reflects our passion for preserving the unique character and qualities that define the Frick experience.”
The project will include:
• The opening to the public—for the first time—of a suite of rooms on the second floor of the historic house for use as exhibition galleries. Originally the private living quarters of the Frick family, these rooms will retain their residential scale and are uniquely suited to the presentation of small-scale objects from the Frick’s permanent collection.
• The creation of a new gallery within the 1935 building for the presentation of special exhibitions. This new space, contiguous to the permanent collection galleries on the main floor, will help to facilitate a dialogue between the Frick’s holdings and works in loan shows, and will enable the Frick to keep more of its permanent collection on view throughout the year.
• The creation of dedicated, purpose-built spaces to accommodate the Frick’s roster of educational and public programming, scaled to the institution’s programs and mission.
• The reconfiguration of existing visitor amenities to create more streamlined circulation, offer a clearer public connection between the museum and Frick Art Reference Library, and ensuring easy access for the Frick’s audiences, including those with disabilities.
• The establishment of state-of-the-art conservation spaces to ensure that the former house and the Frick’s esteemed art and research collections will continue to receive the highest caliber of professional care.
Further details on the enhancement and expansion plan, including square footage and project cost, will be determined together with the architectural team that is selected.
Originally constructed in 1913–14 by Carrère and Hastings, the Frick house has been expanded several times in response to the growth of its collections and the needs of the public. In the 1930s, architect John Russell Pope undertook the conversion of the family home into a public museum, nearly doubling its original size, and demolishing the adjoining library building that had been added in 1924 in order to construct a larger library to accommodate its growing collections. An additional expansion occurred in 1977, which included the creation of the 70th Street Garden. In 2011, the Portico Gallery was created by enclosing an existing loggia.
Lecture | 17th- and 18th-Century Dutch Design in the Global Marketplace
Thursday at The Nelson-Atkins:
Catherine Futter, Reflecting on 17th- and 18th-Century Dutch Design in the Global Marketplace
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 31 March 2016
In this series, connected with the exhibition Reflecting Class in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, four Nelson-Atkins curators reflect on themes presented in the exhibition, including the importance and legacy of 17th-century Dutch painting and depictions of the social classes in art. Works from across art-historical periods and the museum’s collections will be discussed.
With the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and the reach of the Dutch East India Company, Dutch designs spread to distant lands as far away as the American colonies and China. Join Catherine Futter, Director, Curatorial Affairs, for this talk that explores Dutch influence in ceramics, furniture, silver and other decorative arts.
Thursday, March 31
6-7 pm | Atkins Auditorium
Tickets required
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