Exhibition | Edges of Books
I regret that notice of this exhibition at RIT’s Cary Graphic Arts Collection slipped by me, but the catalogue is still available. -CH
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Edges of Books
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, 1 October — 14 December 2012
Edges of Books examines a familiar form from an unfamiliar perspective. When books are on display it is usually their spines, covers, text, or illustrations that are featured. These are the familiar parts of the books—the parts that modern readers have come to interact with the most. Edges of Books takes a different approach, uncovering a tradition that extends back centuries in which the edges of books were important sites for information and decoration. A selection of artifacts from 1518 to the present will inspire visitors to view books in new and exciting ways.
Steven K. Galbraith, Edges of Books: Specimens of Edge Decoration from RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection (Rochester: RIT Press, 2012), 74 pages, ISBN: 978-1933360690, $17.
Steven K. Galbraith is Curator of the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts Collection. He has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Ohio State University and an M.L.S. from the University at Buffalo. Prior to coming to RIT, he was the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Books at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and the Curator of Early Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Ohio State University. He is the author of works on early English printing, English Renaissance literature, rare book librarianship, and book conservation and digitization.
Round Table Session | New Database: Authors Writing on Art in France
Next month at INHA, as noted at Le Blog de l’ApAhAu:
Auteurs d’écrits sur l’art en France, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 4 April 2013
Présentation de la base Auteurs d’écrits sur l’art en France (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) à l’occasion de sa mise à la disposition de la communauté scientifique par l’intermédiaire de l’application Agorha
L’histoire de l’art s’est constituée en France à partir de discours aux formes, aux intentions et aux constructions multiples dont l’émergence, entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècles, a accompagné des pratiques savantes aussi diverses que la création, la collection, l’érudition et la préservation des vestiges du passé. La base de données Auteurs d’écrits sur l’art en France (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) donne accès à la diversité de ces traditions intellectuelles. Près de 700 notices personnes et 4000 notices bibliographiques composent un répertoire bio-bibliographique introduisant à un vaste corpus d’auteurs et de références telles que recueils biographiques, études antiquaires, littérature de voyage et guides, conférences académiques, textes descriptifs, techniques, théoriques ou critiques. Complément du Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art actifs en France de la Révolution à la Première Guerre mondiale, cette nouvelle base de données ne constitue pas seulement un formidable outil documentaire mais dévoile également le processus de construction de la discipline Histoire de l’art comme creuset dans lequel des traditions intellectuelles variées ont fusionné pour donner naissance à un nouveau discours sur l’art passé et présent.
Conference | British Women Travelers in Lyon
Next month at the Musées Gadagne de Lyon, as noted by Hélène Bremer (the programme is available as a PDF here) . . .
Les Voyageuses Britanniques à Lyon
Musées Gadagne de Lyon, 5-6 April 2013
Détail Le pont Morand en aval du quai de Retz et les Brotteaux, aquarelle et gouache, 18e siècle © musées Gadagne / T. O’Neill
Ce séminaire de recherche interdisciplinaire accueillera des anglicistes, des historiens, des géographes, des spécialistes des études de genre et proposera d’analyser un corpus inédit de récits de voyages publiés par des femmes britanniques au cours du « long XVIIIe siècle », ce qui correspond dans l’historiographie britannique à la période qui s’étend entre la « révolution glorieuse » de 1688 et le début du règne de la reine Victoria en 1837.
Partant d’interrogations à la croisée de plusieurs champs disciplinaires, ce séminaire propose d’étudier la place et le rôle de la ville de Lyon dans l’itinéraire des voyageuses britanniques. La démarche sera comparative et envisagera les représentations féminines de la ville de Lyon par rapport à d’autres étapes du Grand Tour mais aussi par rapport à celles que l’on trouve dans les récits masculins. À partir du modèle lyonnais, notre travail s’inscrira dans le sillage d’études récentes sur la féminisation du Grand Tour.
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5 A V R I L 2 0 1 3
14.15 Ouverture du Colloque, Mariaanne Privatsavigny (Directrice du Musée Gadagne) et Isabelle Baudino (ENS de Lyon, LIRE)
14.30 Conférence Inaugurale — Patrick Vincent, (Université de Neufchâtel) Remembering the Mules: Les voyageuses britanniques dans les Alpes
Présidence: Catherine Delmas (Université Grenoble 3)
15.30 Nicolas Bourguinat (Université de Strasbourg), Le séjour de Miss Berry à Lyon
16.00 Nicole Pellegrin (CNRS, ENS), Couples en Voyages: Les Cradocks à Lyon en 1784
16.45 Pause
17.00 Gilles Bertrand (Université Grenoble 2, IUF), Lyon dans le Voyage d’Italie: Tradition consolidée
ou expérience mouvante ( XVIII – début XIX siècle)
17.30 Bernard Gauthiez (Université Lyon 3), L’espace évoqué par les voyageuses anglaises à Lyon, confronté à l’espace réel
20.00 Dîner du colloque
6 A V R I L 2 0 1 3
9.00 Accueil des Participants, Présidence: Gilles Bertrand (Université Grenoble 2, IUF)
9.30 Stephen Bending (University of Southampton), Anne Plumptre, Antoine-François Delandine and the Destruction of Lyons
10.00 Stéphanie Gourdon (Université Lyon 2), Lyon, the Opulent City: La vision politique d’Helen Maria Williams sous la Terreur dans Letters from France
10.45 Pause
11.00 Isabelle Baudino (ENS, LIRE), Lyon: A celebrated place of education
11.30 Tino Gipponi (Fondazione Maria Cosway, Lodi), Maria Cosway a Lione
12.30 Buffet au Café Gadagne, Présidence: Stephen Lloyd (Knowsley Hall)
14.00 Clare Hornsby (Benedictus College), Ellis Cornelia Knight as Artist, Writer and Traveller in Eighteenth-century Italy
14.30 Silvia Blasio (Università di Perugia), L’iconografia di Lione nel’ opera di William Marlow
15.15 Pause
15.30 Freya Gowrley (University of Edinburgh), A Temple to Travel: The grand tour souvenir and the construction of feminine identity in the aesthetic programme of À la Ronde, Devon
16.00 Hannah Sikstrom (University of Oxford), A Quest for Authenticity: The Constructed Identities of British Female Travellers in 19th-Century Italy
Exhibition | British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art
Some of the offerings for those of you who will be in Cleveland next month for ASECS. From the museum’s website:
British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland Museum of Art, 8 February — 26 May 2013
The British drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art have received less attention than the renowned Italian and French drawings but are eminently worthy of such. The collection includes works by some of the best-known artists in the history of English art, such as Thomas Gainsborough, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, and Edward Burne-Jones. Important recent acquisitions include a highly finished wash drawing exemplary of John Flaxman’s neoclassical style, an 18th-century double-portrait in pastel by Daniel Gardner, and a watercolor in pristine condition describing the Surrey countryside at sunset by Samuel Palmer. The exhibition features approximately 50 works from the collection along with a small group of loans from private collections, ranging from the 18th century through the Edwardian period, and will be accompanied by a collection catalogue. This is the inaugural exhibition of a new series exploring highlights from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection of drawings.
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From the publisher:
Heather Lemonedes, British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art (London: D. Giles, 2013), 152 pages, 978-1907804229, $45.
This volume, the first in a new series, presents outstanding drawings from the permanent collection of works on paper at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It features 50 highlights, along with a small group of loans from private collections, ranging from the 18th century through to the Edwardian period. Fragile and light sensitive, opportunities to see such treasures are rare and for that reason are all the more to be celebrated. Many are published here for the first time, such as Francis Cotes’s breathtaking portrait of Lady Mary Radcliffe and an exquisite female nude drawn in coloured chalk by William Mulready.
Heather Lemonedes is curator of Drawings at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Prior to her arrival at the museum in 2002, she worked as a specialist in the Print Department at Christie’s, New York and supervised the Print Study Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She was awarded a Samuel H. Kress
Foundation Travel Fellowship in the History of Art for
research on her dissertation, “Paul Gauguin’s Volpini
Suite,” in 2004.
Cleveland Museum of Art Acquires Newport Desk and Bookcase
Press release (9 February 2013) from the Cleveland Museum of Art:
Desk and Bookcase, Newport, Rhode Island, ca. 1780-95. Plum pudding mahogany, red cedar, chestnut, white pine and brass; 240 x 108 x 65 cm. (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Daniel Harvey Buchanan, a retired Case Western Reserve University professor, in memory of his wife Penelope Draper Buchanan and her mother Dorothy Tuckerman Draper, this desk and bookcase dates from ca. 1780-95, a rich period of cabinetmaking in Newport, Rhode Island, just after the American Revolution. The work is attributed to the master cabinetmaker John Townsend or his brother Thomas Townsend based on stylistic similarities to other known case pieces by this leading cabinetmaking family of Newport. Commissioned by Oliver Wolcott, Sr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Connecticut, the desk has an unbroken provenance from its first owner by descent through the Wolcott, Tuckerman, Minturn and Draper families to its final owners, Penelope and Harvey Buchanan.
Dorothy Draper (1889–1969), Penelope Buchanan’s mother, displayed the desk and bookcase in her fashionable New York apartment at the Carlyle Hotel until coming to live in Cleveland in 1965. Dorothy Draper was a world-renowned interior designer and established the first interior design company in the United States in 1923. She had a regular column in Good Housekeeping Magazine and in 2006, Dorothy Draper was honored in a retrospective exhibition of her work by the Museum of the City of New York. According to Stephen Harrison, curator of decorative art and design, “This gift celebrates the extraordinary stewardship of one family in preserving such an important relic of American history from the eighteenth century. Such a gift is transformative in the development of our American collections. We could not have otherwise acquired such a masterpiece in the American furniture market today.” Harrison further stated, “This work will join other colonial-era masterpieces in the museum’s American galleries as a testament to the remarkable craftsmanship of American cabinetmakers in the eighteenth century.”
The quality of the workmanship in this desk and bookcase is superb and displays masterful embellishments known only to the finest Newport case pieces. For example, the use of “plum pudding” mahogany, a type of wood that is extremely rare and named for the blemishes in it that resemble the raisins in a plum pudding along with inset panels with canted corners (a decorative angled corner). Only one other example exhibiting canted corners on the upper panels is known to exist, making this piece extremely rare in the world of Newport furniture. The case also has stop-fluted corner pilasters (columns); carved “cupcake” finials (flattened finial with a corkscrew extending from it); and highly sophisticated drawer details. In addition, it retains its original brass pulls and escutcheons, and there is evidence of original finish inside the desk top. The Oliver Wolcott Desk and Bookcase augments the Cleveland Museum of Art’s small but choice collection of early American furniture and is now on view in the American Colonial Gallery.
Fellowships | Seeing Things: Early Modern Visual and Material Culture
From CRASSH at Cambridge:
Fellowships | Seeing Things: Early Modern Visual and Material Culture
Six-month or 12-month Fellowships to be held from January 2014 to September 2015
Applications due by 16 May 2013
The Centre for Research in Arts, Social Societies and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge and the Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) at the University of Southern California / Huntington Library invite applications for Visiting Fellowships in Early Modern Visual and Material Culture, to be held between January 2014 and September 2015. These fellowships are part of the collaborative programme Seeing Things: Early Modern Visual and Material Culture CRASSH / EMSI will appoint up to four fellows over the period (two fellows for twelve months each or 4 fellows for six months each). Fellows will spend half of their fellowship at CRASSH and half at the Huntington Library, San Marino.
During their residencies in each institution, fellows will be expected to conduct research on a topic in early modern (1400-1800) visual and material culture and to participate in the life of CRASSH / EMSI. There are no geographical restrictions on research topics, but proposals related to the special collections and museum holdings of Cambridge and the Huntington will be particularly welcome. In addition to carrying out independent research, fellows will be expected to deliver at each institution a master class for early career researchers and graduate students, on a topic of their choice.
Eligibility
The fellowships are open to postdoctoral scholars at any career stage.
Provision
The Fellowships are non-stipendiary. Successful candidates will be provided with a contribution to their accommodation costs for up to six months in each location (local rates will apply) and return travel from their home institution to both destinations, workspace, and access to libraries and special collections.
Details are available here»
Call for Papers | Movement: The Body and Object in Motion
Graduate Student Symposium| Movement: The Body and Object in Motion
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 4 October 2013
Proposals due by 30 April 2013
The graduate students in the History of Art program at Cornell University invite abstracts for papers to be presented at the Graduate Student Symposium to be held on October 4th, 2013. This year’s symposium, “Movement: The Body and Object in Motion,” will feature a keynote lecture presented by Dr. Coco Fusco and will explore the theme of movement in visual culture via three panels consisting of three speakers each.
Movement in visual culture is a fundamental theme across all media and periods. Movement defines both the pre-modern and modern periods in all their complexities, as peoples are colonized and decolonized, orders are invented and moved, tourists visit sites, products are shipped from other continents for consumption, and wars are waged around the globe. It is manifest in the journey of the soul through life and in its final voyage into death. Movement also creates a narrative for objects and ideas as they travel with people. Possible panel ideas include but are not limited to: migration, diaspora, grand tour, tourism, slavery, across realms, exchange/trade, urban planning
and the movement of the body/political body, spiritual movement, movement of objects and cultural property.
The graduate students in the department of History of Art at Cornell University welcome the submission of abstracts for papers from graduate students. We invite papers from a broad range of periods, from prehistoric to contemporary, and from a broad range of disciplines. Submission is open to graduate students in art history, archaeology, conservation, museum studies, classics, anthropology, sociology, and beyond. Please send a 250-word abstract of your paper, a list of two or three possible panel themes your paper may fit, a current CV, and contact information by April 30, 2013 to cornellgradsymposium@gmail.com.
Traveling to Ithaca: Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport, Lansing, NY (15 mins from Cornell University). Please also look here for additional information and alternatives on how to reach Ithaca. We are happy to facilitate shared lodging/travel costs among speakers.
Exhibition | Stradivarius at the Ashmolean
From the Ashmolean Museum:
Stradivarius
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 13 June — 11 August 2013
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Photo by Merlin Cooper, 2005, Wikimedia Commons
Antonio Stradivari (c.1644–1737) – or Stradivarius as he is usually known – is the only maker of musical instruments whose name ranks alongside those of the great composers. For the first time will twenty of his instruments, from guitar to cello to violin, be on display together in the UK. While the details of his life are not as familiar as those of Vivaldi or Mozart, his name succeeds in evoking a creative genius in the popular imagination. The Ashmolean’s summer 2013 exhibition will feature twenty of the world’s most important musical instruments, some of which have never been shown in public, on loan from international collections: from the early Silvestre violin of 1666, to the Fountaine violino piccolo, the Boissier-Sarasate of 1713, to his later violins of the 1730s. It will also show a recreation of Stradivarius’s workshop where visitors will be able to follow the creation of a violin from a log of spruce through to the finished instrument.
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From ACC Distribution:
Charles Beare, Peter Beare and Jon Whiteley, Stradivarius (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2013), 200 pages, ISBN:
9781854442758, $40.
Antonio Stradivari is, perhaps, the only maker of violins who ranks alongside Van Gogh and Turner as an artist. A household name to many, he is associated with secret formulae and mystical processes ensuring his instruments are sought after by the world’s greatest soloists. He excites controversy, although none of his violins have raised so much heated debate as the Ashmolean’s Messiah, making headline news some ten years ago when doubt was cast on its age. Stradivari’s birthplace is unknown, he may have been born in 1644, and even his apprenticeship to Nicola Amati is uncertain. He died rich and famous in Cremona in 1737. Since then his instruments have increased in fame and are now regarded as supreme examples of the violin-maker’s craft. Despite the great fame of Stradivari’s violins, there has never been a monographic exhibition of his work in the UK. It will include 30 instruments, representative of Stradivari’s range and output across the years, alongside exceedingly rare examples of stringed instruments other than those of the violin family.
The prize items to be featured in the exhibition are already in the Ashmolean: The Potter, The Messiah and the guitar of 1688, all works of the greatest rarity. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue will allow the public to see the work of one of the greatest violin makers of all time. Stradivarius also presents the most recent research on Stradivarius’ instruments.
Contents: Introduction by James Ehnes; essay on Stradivarius by Charles Beare; essay on Stradivarius’ work including dendrachronology of the instruments; “The luthier’s perspective: How Stradivari violins are built and what makes them so good?” by Peter Beare; catalogue entries; technical information.
Charles and Peter Beare are directors at the successful violin dealers Beares. Peter is a qualified luthier. Jon Whiteley is the Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Art, specializing in paintings drawings and musical instruments.
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From Music at Oxford:
The Dawn of the Stradivarius with James Ehnes and La Serenissima
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 14 June 2013
In association with The Ashmolean Museum’s extraordinary forthcoming exhibition of the world’s finest Stradivarius instruments, Music at Oxford is proud to present this collaborative concert. Canadian virtuoso and Stradivarius player James Ehnes will perform unaccompanied music by Bach and Paganini on a number of Stradivarius violins and discuss what’s unique about them and the sound they produce. This will be the first time one player has ever had the opportunity to do so in a concert setting. Award-winning period ensemble La Serenissima will follow this by performing a programme of music from the age of Stradivarius by Vivaldi, Valentini and their contemporaries.
This event will open the exhibition, a fascinating exploration of the master maker’s work featuring the largest collection of Stradivarius instruments ever assembled as well as audiovisual footage featuring James Ehnes. Don’t miss this exciting event, our 2012-13 season closer. Tickets are bound to be in great demand so please do book early.
Exhibition | Life at the Château de Prangins in the 18th Century
From the museum’s website:
Noblesse Oblige! Life at a Château in the 18th Century
Swiss National Museum, Château de Prangins, beginning 23 March 2013
Château de Prangins, 2005
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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Château de Prangins is bringing its past to life and showcasing its historical heritage. From 23 March 2013 the former reception rooms, comprising the salon, dining rooms and libraries, will be revealed in their original grandeur as the backdrop for the new permanent exhibition. Boiseries in their original colours, textiles with lustrous motifs and false-marble decorations create the perfect surroundings for 600 objects from the era.
Noblesse Oblige! Life at a Château in the 18th Century is devoted to the everyday life of a noble family in the Vaud region at the end of the 18th century and explores important issues of cultural history. The exhibition offers an insight into the life of a baron and the way in which he manages his estate, his duties and obligations, his family and social life. Each of the nine rooms is devoted to a specific topic that mirrors its original function: hospitality, wealth and lighting in the salon, servants in the butler’s pantry, and the taste for reading in the library.
Two audioguides – one for adults, the other for younger audiences – and specially produced films featuring the voices of the inhabitants allow visitors to immerse themselves in life at a château.
Project manager: Helen Bieri Thomson
The Met and Crystal Bridges to Share Portrait of Alexander Hamilton
Press release (14 March 2013) from Crystal Bridges:
John Trumbull, Portrait of Alexander Hamilton, 1792. Oil on canvas, 86 x 58 inches (219.1 x 146.1 cm)
An iconic full-length portrait by the celebrated Revolutionary-era painter John Trumbull of Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury under President George Washington, will join the permanent collections of both Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, thanks to a gift from the painting’s owner, the global wealth manager and investment bank Credit Suisse.
Each institution will own a half share of Portrait of Alexander Hamilton (1792), which is currently on view at Crystal Bridges and has been on loan from Credit Suisse and on view since the museum opened. The painting will travel to the Metropolitan Museum in summer 2013 and return to Crystal Bridges in 2014. In subsequent years, each museum plans to exhibit the painting for two-year periods, when it will be integrated into the galleries and, on occasion, included in special exhibitions at each museum.
“We are very grateful to Credit Suisse for the generous gift of this distinguished portrait of Alexander Hamilton, whose political and legal acumen put him at the center of the founding of the new American republic, and whose key contributions to business and banking in Federal-era New York City effectively established the financial marketplace in this country,” stated Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “As the greatest known portrait of Hamilton and one of the finest civic portraits from the Federal period, this painting is a splendid addition to our fine collection of portraits of American political leaders. We are pleased and honored to share this remarkable work with Crystal Bridges.” (more…)
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