Exhibition | Love & Play: A Pair of Paintings by Fragonard
From the museum’s press release:
Love & Play: A Pair of Paintings by Fragonard
Toledo Museum of Art, 24 January — 4 May 2014
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The original wardrobe malfunction might have originated more than 250 years ago, at the hands of a 20-something Frenchman named Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Fragonard was only beginning to discover his niche as a portrayer of thinly veiled eroticism when he painted an errant body part peeking out from his subject’s frilly 18th-century dress. The resulting work of art, Blind Man’s Buff, and its companion, The See-Saw, comprised a pair of paintings that must have delighted his patron with symbolic depictions of seduction.
The two works will be reunited for the first time in 25 years in a special focus exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art titled Love and Play: A Pair of Paintings by Fragonard, on view January 24 until May 4, 2014 in Gallery 28. It’s the first in the Museum’s Encounters series, concentrated shows and installations that pair exceptional works of art in new or interesting ways.
Blind Man’s Buff, part of the Museum’s collection, and The See-Saw, on loan from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, will be displayed alongside two engraved copies of the paintings, a terracotta sculpture by Clodion and a small selection of French decorative arts of the period.
“They’re risqué, they’re provocative—and the artist intended these canvases to be seen together,” said Lawrence W. Nichols, William Hutton senior curator of European and American painting and sculpture before 1900. “So to reunite these two very important paintings by one of the most significant French artists of the 18th century is quite an exciting opportunity.”
Painted in Paris in the first years of the 1750s, they were likely commissioned by Baron Baillet de Saint-Julien and subsequently passed through the hands of private 18th-century collectors, a Parisian comte and a Rothschild. When they came onto the open market in 1954, they were finally separated. (more…)
Exhibition | Late Barbarians
Now on at London’s Gasworks:
Late Barbarians
Gasworks, London, 24 January — 9 March 2014
Matts Leiderstam, After Image (Portrait of a Gentleman), 2010
Gasworks presents the group exhibition Late Barbarians, which includes video, photography, and sculpture by Juan Downey, Lili Dujourie, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Matts Leiderstam, and Chris Marker.
Focusing on the notion of corporeal memory, the exhibition explores how shifting social codes and cultural values have been embodied in historical Western European art and architecture. The exhibition takes its title from an expression by German sociologist Norbert Elias, which suggests that our future descendants may eventually consider us to have lived during an extended medieval period, implying that we share far greater affinities with our Barbarian ancestors than we might like to think. Similarly, the works on show question linear interpretations of history, invoking a present that is haunted by the gestures of our ancestors.
Paying particular attention to art historical representations of the body, works range from photographs that propose a queer re-reading of the gestures depicted in Renaissance paintings (Matts Leiderstam) to abstract, single-take “dances to camera” that attempt to divorce particular habits of the body from their entrenched social connotations (Lili Dujourie) and a virtual exhibition tour that takes place in the online world of Second Life (Chris Marker). In addition, Juan Downey’s video essay The Looking Glass (1981) decodes the iconography of the mirror in well-known artworks by Velázquez, Holbein and Picasso, and a new commission by Sidsel Meineche Hansen entitled His Head (2013–) comprises a clay sculpture and symposium that together examine the human head, separate from the body, as a symbol of patriarchy and power.
Late Barbarians is the second exhibition of The Civilising Process, a yearlong programme of exhibitions and events at Gasworks inspired by Elias’ eponymous 1939 book, which looks at the development of the tastes, manners and sensibilities of Western Europeans since the Middle Ages. Between October 2013 and November 2014 Gasworks is working with invited artists, designers, curators and researchers to tackle a wide range of issues raised by this book in an attempt to understand their relevance for contemporary debates and practices.
The Civilising Process comprises five exhibitions, a programme of interdisciplinary events, contributions to Gasworks’ online platform Pipeline, and a printed publication.
Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH United Kingdom
Conference | The Production of Ornament
From the conference website:
The Production of Ornament: Reassessing the Decorative in History and Practice
University of Leeds, 21-22 March 2014
Registration due by 28 February 2014
The descriptive terms ‘decorative’ and ‘ornamental’ are in many ways synonymous with superfluity and excess; they refer to things or modalities that are ‘supplementary’ or ‘marginal’ by their very nature. In the West, such qualitative associations in made objects intersect with long-standing and inter-related philosophical oppositions between ‘form’ and ‘matter’, ‘body’ and ‘surface’, the ‘proper’ and the ‘cosmetic’. Accordingly, this has weighed both on determinations of value in artistic media, and on the inflexions of related histories – particularly histories of ‘non-Western’ art, design and culture, where a wide range of decorative traditions are deemed unworthy of critical attention.
Yet such frameworks are no more historically stable than they are culturally universal. To take one very clear and ‘central’ counter-example, decoration in some strands of Renaissance architectural theory (Filarete, Alberti) emerged as a rigorous codification of meaning, as an essentially functional (political) language. In many ways the history of ornament may itself be seen as a process of marginalisation of such ways of thinking, and the separation of ornament from any form of social practice.
This two-day conference seeks to explore the various ways in which ornament might be regarded as itself productive of its objects and sites. How might the technologies, techniques, and materials of ornament be related to the conception and transformation of modes of object-making? How might ornament be understood to inform its objects, disrupting the spatial categories of ‘surface’ and ‘structure’, and the temporal models in which ornament ‘follows’ making? What are the relations between ornament and representation, and what is at stake in the conventional oppositions between these categories? What are the roles of ornament in larger dynamics of copying, hybridisation and appropriation between things? In what ways have practices and thinking on ornament staged cultural encounters, and engendered larger epistemological and social models?
Tickets cost £15/£8, and include lunches and refreshments. To book a place email Dr Richard Checketts and Dr Lara Eggleton at production.of.ornament@gmail.com by Friday the 28th of February.
F R I D A Y , 2 1 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
10:00 Coffee/tea and registration
10:45 Richard Checketts and Lara Eggleton (University of Leeds), Welcome and Introduction
11:00 Emma Sidgwick (University of Leuven), ‘Late Antique Strigillation: The Abstract Iconography and Embodied Mediation of a Holy Productive Power’
11:40 Catherine E. Karkov (University of Leeds), ‘Entanglement, Enchantment, Stone: The Materiality of Ornament in Tenth-Century Leeds’
12:20 Carol Bier (Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley / The Textile Museum, Washington D.C.), ‘Is Ornament Ornamental? Geometry Made Manifest in Islamic Architecture’
13:00 Lunch
14:30 Soersha Dyon (Independent Scholar), ‘Unravelling the Arabesque’
15:10 Jason Nguyen (Harvard University/ Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris), ‘Communauté ornament: Law and Labour in Late Seventeenth-Century Paris’
15:50 Coffee and tea
16:30 Keynote 1, Alina Payne (Harvard University)
S A T U R D A Y , 2 2 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
10:00 Keynote 2, Susanne Kuechler (UCL), ‘The Quest for Affinity: The Ornament in Perspective’
11:15 Coffee and tea
11:30 Todd P. Olson (University of California, Berkeley), ‘Sticky Figures: Reconciling Pattern and Mimesis in Early Modern Prints’
12:10 Elizabeth Athens (Yale University), ‘Monstrosity, Ornament, Ecology: William Hogarth’s Natural Knowledge’
12:50 Frances S. Connelly (University of Missouri-Kansas City), ‘Rogue Ornament or Poetic Monster: Giambattista Vico and the Ornamental Grotesque’
1:30 Lunch
2:30 Sabrina Rahman (Northumbria University), ‘The Politics of Ornament: Historiographical and Ethnological Practices of the Austrian Werkbund’
3:10 Mark Crinson (University of Manchester), ‘The Ornamented Ceiling in New Brutalism’
3:50 Closing remarks and discussion
5:00 Drinks reception
Exhibition | A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes
Press release from Sue Bond:
A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany
The Courtauld Gallery, London, 30 January — 27 April 2014
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 30 May — 7 September 2014
Curated by Rachel Sloan
John Robert Cozens, A Ruined Fort near Salerno, ca. 1782
watercolour on paper (The Courtauld Gallery)
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Organised as a collaboration between The Courtauld Gallery and The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, this exhibition explores aspects of Romantic landscape drawing in Britain and Germany from its origins in the 1760s to its final flowering in the 1840s. Bringing together twenty-six major drawings, watercolours and oil sketches from both collections by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Samuel Palmer, Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Philipp Fohr, and Karl Friedrich Lessing, it draws upon the complementary strengths of both collections: the Morgan’s exceptional group of German drawings and The Courtauld Gallery’s wide-ranging holdings of British works. A Dialogue with Nature offers the opportunity to consider points of commonality as well as divergence between two distinctive schools. Together, these drawings exemplify Friedrich’s understanding of Romantic landscape draughtsmanship as ‘a dialogue with Nature’.
Friedrich claimed that ‘the artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself’. His words encapsulate two central elements of the Romantic conception of landscape: close observation of the natural world and the importance of the imagination. The display opens with a selection of drawings made in the late 18th century. The legacy of Claude Lorrain’s ideal vision is visible in both Jakob Philipp Hackert’s magisterial view of ruins at Tivoli, near Rome, and in Thomas Gainsborough’s more informal rendering of a rustic cottage among rolling hills, while cloud and tree studies by John Constable and Johann Georg von Dillis demonstrate the importance of drawing from life and the observation of natural phenomena. This newfound emphasis on drawing out of doors extended to amateur artists as well, exemplified by two remarkable sketchbooks by dilettante draughtsmen, the composer Felix Mendelssohn and the British naval officer Robert Streatfeild.
The important visionary strand of Romanticism is brought to the fore in a group of works centred on Friedrich’s Moonlit Landscape and The Jakobikirche as a Ruin and Samuel Palmer’s Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park. These are exemplary of their creators’ intensely spiritual vision of nature as well as their strikingly different techniques, Friedrich’s painstakingly fine detail contrasting with the dynamic freedom of Palmer’s penwork.
The final grouping shows Romantic landscapes at their most expansive and painterly, featuring Turner’s St Goarshausen and Katz Castle, one of fifty watercolours inspired by his first visit to Germany in 1817 and his highly atmospheric late rendering of a full moon over Lake Lucerne, as well as Friedrich’s subtle wash drawing of a coastal meadow on the remote Baltic island of Rügen. The exhibition closes with three small-scale drawings revealing a more introspective and intimate facet of the Romantic approach to landscape: Theodor Rehbenitz’s fantastical medievalising scene, Palmer’s meditative Haunted Stream and, lastly, Turner’s Cologne made as an illustration for The Works of Lord Byron (1833), which underscores important links between literature and the visual arts in the ongoing exchange of ideas between Britain and Germany.
A Dialogue with Nature is the first exhibition to be organised jointly by The Courtauld’s IMAF Centre for Drawings and The Morgan Library & Museum’s Drawings Institute. The accompanying publication will feature an essay by Matthew Hargraves (Yale Center for British Art and Morgan-Courtauld Fellow) and individual catalogue entries for each work by Rachel Sloan (The Courtauld Gallery).
From Athena Books/Paul Holberton:
Matthew Hargraves and Rachel Sloan, A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2014), 84 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372667, $25.
Alexander Sturgis Appointed Director of the Ashmolean
From the press release (January 2014) . . .
The University of Oxford is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Alexander Sturgis as the new Director of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. He will take up the appoint- ment on 1 October 2014, succeeding Professor Christopher Brown CBE, who has been the Museum’s Director since 1998.
Dr Sturgis has had a distinguished career as the Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath, since 2005 and previously held various posts over 15 years at the National Gallery, London, including Exhibitions and Programmes Curator from 1999 to 2005.
Welcoming the appointment of Dr Sturgis, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Andrew Hamilton, said: “We are delighted that Dr Sturgis has agreed to come to Oxford to lead the Ashmolean. The Museum has undergone a substantial transformation in recent years under the outstanding leadership of Christopher Brown. I am fully confident that Dr Sturgis will take forward with equal distinction the next stage of the Ashmolean’s development.”
Professor Ian Walmsley, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic Services and University Collections), said: “I am looking forward very much to working with Dr Sturgis as he develops a strategy for the Ashmolean that continues its exceptional trajectory and maximises the contribution of its outstanding collections, both to the teaching and research of the University and to the Museum’s exciting range of activities involving the general public.”
Mr Bernard Taylor, Chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, said: “I am so pleased that Xa Sturgis has decided to come to the Ashmolean. His great success at the Holburne Museum and his previous time at the National Gallery, working closely with Neil McGregor, prepares him well for leadership of this great museum. His past work in the use of collections in education, in arranging successful exhibitions, and in raising visitor numbers six-fold at the Holburne gives him the experience base to build upon the considerable success the Ashmolean has enjoyed in recent times.”
Responding to his appointment, Dr Sturgis said: “I am thrilled to be appointed the next Director of the Ashmolean. It is a huge honour to be given the chance to lead one of the country’s great museums, however hard it will be to leave the Holburne after eight exceptionally happy and eventful years. I look forward to working with the Ashmolean team and Oxford University to build on all that has been achieved at the Museum in recent years.”
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Sturgis’s bio from the Holburne Museum:
Alexander Sturgis studied Modern History at Oxford (1982–85) before completing a PhD in Art History at the Courtauld Institute, London (1985–90).
He joined the National Gallery, London in 1991 where he spent 14 years first as Education Officer (1991–99) and then as Exhibitions and Programmes Curator (1999–2005). During this time he also served as the Director’s Curatorial Assistant helping to set up the Regional Museums Task Force. His exhibition credits at the National Gallery include Seeing Salvation (2000), Telling Time (2000), Bill Viola: The Passions (2003), and Rebels and Martyrs: The Artist in the Nineteenth Century (2006). His list of publications includes Faces (1999) Telling Time (2000) Understanding Paintings: Themes in Art Explored and Explained (2000), and Rebels and Martyrs: The Artist in the Nineteenth Century (2006). He was appointed Director of the Holburne Museum in 2005.
Book and Display | Baroque and Later Ivories in the V&A
From the V&A:
Baroque and Later Ivories in the V&A
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 25 January — 28 September 2014
This is a display of a number of sculptures from the outstanding collection of baroque and later ivories in the V&A, including German, Austrian, Netherlandish, French, British and Hispanic works. A range of objects will be seen: portrait busts, tankards, statuettes, and devotional reliefs. Carved and turned ivories were highly treasured items throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They might render dramatic mythological scenes, present exquisitely carved portrait likenesses on a small scale, or depict religious narratives. This small exhibition celebrates the recent publication of a catalogue of these ivories at the V&A.
From the V&A Shop:
Marjorie Trusted, Baroque and Later Ivories in the V&A (London: V&A Publishing, 2013), 544 pages, ISBN: 978-1851777679, £85.
Over 500 baroque and later ivories from the V&A’s outstanding collection are illustrated and discussed in this scholarly catalogue. This publication includes every ivory sculpture made after 1550 from a collection comprising German, Austrian, Netherlandish, British, French, Italian, Scandinavian, Russian and Spanish pieces, as well as examples from the Philippines, Goa, Sri Lanka and South America. The range of objects is extensive: statuettes, reliefs, tankards, boxes, cabinets, snuff rasps and cutlery handles are all represented. These small-scale sculptures might render dramatic scenes from mythology, present exquisitely carved portrait likenesses on a small scale, or depict religious narratives. The high quality of the V&A’s holdings is readily apparent; leading ivory sculptors to be found here include Francis van Bossuit, Benjamin Cheverton, Balthasar Griessmann, Joachim Henne, Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke, David Le Marchand, and Balthasar Permoser. In addition to detailed entries on each piece, the Introduction summarises the history and techniques of baroque and later ivory carving, while indexes of subjects and artists, in addition to a comprehensive bibliography, provide a full scholarly apparatus.
Marjorie Trusted is Senior Curator of Sculpture at the V&A. She has published and lectured widely, specializing in European art from the seventeenth century onwards, in particular British and Spanish sculpture. Her books include Spanish Sculpture (V&A 1996), British Sculpture 1470–2000 (co-author, V&A 2002), The Making of Sculpture (V&A 2007), and The Arts of Spain (V&A 2007).
Exhibition | The Image of the European City
From the Correr:
The Image of the European City from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
Museo Correr, Venice, 8 February — 18 May 2014
Curated by Cesare De Seta
Pierre-Antoine Demachy, Panoramic View of Tours,
1787 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours)
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The fascinating context of the European city from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment is evoked in this exhibition through an extraordinary iconographic repertory comprising over a hundred paintings, prints and drawings from prestigious public and private, Italian and foreign collections.
Ever since the Middle Ages, towns have been a favoured subject in European painting and a means for a state to promoate itself and show off its virtues. The exhibition brings together those global images of an especially high quality that for centuries were the only or most persuasive means for showing off the beauty and wealth of Europe’s leading cities. The exhibition starts with Italy, the first to introduce the imago urbis thanks to the invention of perspective in the early years of the 15th century, providing a fascinating manifesto of the ambitions of popes, princes and sovereigns. Following a chronological and geographic itinerary, the visitor can then travel virtually through cities transformed by time, which for the most part no longer exist in the same way.
For more information, see the press release, available here»
Call for Papers | The Period Room: Museum, Material, Experience
The Period Room: Museum, Material, Experience
The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham, 19–20 September 2014
Proposals due by 31 March 2014
Since the late 19th century the Period Room has been a consistent presence in the public museum, and yet over the past 25 years the Period Room has become a contentious museum object, leading many museums to question the legitimacy of the Period Room as an effective and appropriate method of display and interpretation. As dislocated fragments, often remodelled to fit the spaces of the museum, the Period Room is, for some, a signifier for the inauthentic, an outmoded method of display and a representation of unfashionable museum interpretation. The problems associated with Period Rooms are exacerbated by the fact that they are large and bulky objects, difficult and expensive to redisplay or reinterpret. Many museums retain their Period Room displays, but the recent changes in the perspectives on Period Rooms have also led a number of museums in the UK, Europe and the USA to reconsider their continued relevance as museum objects, to dismantle and deaccession the displays, and in some cases to repatriate the Period Rooms to their places of origin (if that still exists of course).
This conference, held at the Bowes Museum, which redisplayed its own collection of Period Rooms in 2007–10, aims to consider the Period Room from a wide variety of perspectives in order to address some key questions about Period Rooms and the history of Period Rooms display in Museums: Should Period Rooms be considered objects in their own right, or merely ‘contexts’ for related material? How, and in what ways, did Period Rooms satisfy ideas of museum interpretation, and how and why did these attitudes change? What was the role of the evolving frameworks of national/local heritage in the appearance of Period Rooms in museums? What were/are the theoretical, technical and aesthetic frameworks for the display of Period Rooms in museums? How, and in what ways, is the Period Room different from, or similar to, the Historic Interior?
We invite papers to explore these themes and relationships from a wide range of perspectives and from a wide range of organisations, institutions and disciplines, from academics (historians, art historians, literary and film historians), museum curators and professionals, exhibition designers, technicians and craft-workers):
Themes for consideration may include:
• The processes of the circulation, display and redisplay of Period Rooms
• The dealers, merchants, decorators, collectors, and museum curators and their roles in the changing taste for the Period Room
• Case Studies of Period Rooms—the history of specific displays in museums and other public institutions; their provenance, removal and reconstruction; display and interpretation
• The philosophical history of the Period Room as a particular mode of engagement with the past—as an historical space, as a space of historical empathy, and as an immersive environment
• The material and technical aspects of Period Room display—the challenges of redisplay in museum contexts, what the objects reveal about the history of their making and the history of museum interpretation.
• The ‘Period Room’ in literature, film and visual culture— how was/is the Period Room/Historic Interior imagined, and what can these perspectives tell us about how we engage with the Period Room in the museum?
Please send abstracts of no more than 400 words to the conference organisers:
Dr Mark Westgarth (University of Leeds), m.w.westgarth@leeds.ac.uk
Dr Jane Whittaker (The Bowes Museum), jane.whittaker@thebowesmuseum.org.uk
Dr Howard Coutts (The Bowes Museum), howard.coutts@thebowesmuseum.org.uk
Exhibition | Georgians: 18th-Century Dress for Polite Society
From Bath’s Fashion Museum:
Georgians: 18th-Century Dress for Polite Society
Fashion Museum, Assembly Rooms, Bath, 25 January 2014 — 1 January 2015
…it being absolutely necessary that propriety of dress should be observed at so polite an assembly as that at Bath. Captain William Wade, Master of Ceremonies, New Assembly Rooms Bath 1771.
The Fashion Museum’s special exhibition for 2014, Georgians, celebrates the museum’s situation in the Georgian Assembly Rooms in Bath. The new exhibition will present a selection of the finest fashions worn by those attending Assemblies, and other glittering occasions of 18th-century life.
An Assembly was defined at the time as “a stated and general meeting of the polite persons of both sexes for the sake of conversation, gallantry, news and play.” As Bath grew in popularity in the 18th century, there was a need for a grand Assembly Room in the fashionable upper town, and in 1771 the New Rooms, designed by John Wood the Younger and financed by public subscription, opened to the public. Today, the New Rooms are known as the Assembly Rooms and are the location of the world-famous Fashion Museum.
Georgians will include over 30 original 18th-century outfits and ensembles from the museum’s world-class collection, including gowns made of colourful and richly patterned woven silks, as well as embroidered coats and waistcoats worn by Georgian gentlemen of fashion. A highlight of the exhibition will be a trio of wide-skirted Court dresses dating from the 1750s and 1760s (held out by cane supports known as panniers, from the French word for baskets), the early years of the reign of King George III. The grand finale of Georgians will include 18th-century-inspired fashions by five top fashion designers: Anna Sui, Meadham Kirchhoff, Vivienne Westwood, Stephen Jones, and AlexanderMcQueen. All are influenced by the 18th-century aesthetic, and all (in different ways) show how the elegance and grace of Georgian dress continues to inspire fashion today.
Winterthur Acquires Fraktur Collection
Recently noted at ArtDaily:
Andreas Kolb, Fraktur, ca. 1785 (Winterthur Museum)
Photo by Jim Schneck
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Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library announces a landmark acquisition from the estate of Pastor Frederick S. Weiser (1935‒2009) containing a large religious text signed by Andreas Kolb that is widely regarded by scholars and collectors as one of the greatest Pennsylvania German fraktur ever made. Fraktur is a Germanic style of decorative work on paper. As one of the largest acquisitions in the museum’s history, it includes 121 fraktur plus nearly 200 textiles and other items in addition to Pastor Weiser’s extensive research papers.
“Winterthur is honored to have acquired this exceedingly important collection. We thus preserve the legacy of an extraordinary scholar and establish Winterthur’s already excellent collection of Pennsylvania German decorative arts as among the top few institutional holdings,” said Winterthur Director Dr. David P. Roselle.
A prolific writer and longtime editor of the Pennsylvania German Society, Pastor Weiser is considered one of the foremost scholars and collectors of Pennsylvania German decorative arts. He published numerous books and articles on Pennsylvania German arts and culture in addition to directing several major research projects that resulted in publications and exhibitions. “Pastor Weiser’s exceptional collection will be preserved largely in its entirety at Winterthur, where it can be studied alongside his extensive research files, which were donated by his estate to the Winterthur Library,” said J. Thomas Savage, director of museum affairs at Winterthur.
Assembled by Pastor Weiser over a span of more than forty years and with a careful eye to collecting the most significant or rare examples, the collection includes many objects acquired directly from descendants of the original owner or maker. Many objects were featured in Pastor Weiser’s publications, exhibitions, and lectures and represent a core group of well-documented pieces on which scholars rely. Linda Eaton, Winterthur’s John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw director of collections and senior curator of textiles, added, “We are thrilled to bring the Weiser collection to Winterthur, where the historical and artistic significance of this exceptional collection will be preserved and made accessible to a broad audience.”
Additional highlights from the Weiser fraktur collection include a large alphabet made in 1795 by Jacob Otto, a joiner and fraktur artist who worked in Lancaster County; a spiritual clockworks attributed to itinerant artist Friedrich Krebs; several dozen small drawings that were given to students by their schoolmasters as rewards for good behavior or academic performance; certificates for birth, baptism, and confirmation; bookplates, writing samples (Vorschriften), and cutworks (Scherenschnitte); religious texts, tunebooks, and hymnals; and New Year’s greetings, valentines, and assorted drawings of buildings, people, flowers, and animals. (more…)
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