New Book | Academic Writing as if Readers Matter
From Princeton UP:
Leonard Cassuto, Academic Writing as if Readers Matter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0691195797 £19 / $23.
If you want people to read your writing, it has to be readable. In Academic Writing as if Readers Matter, Leonard Cassuto offers academic writers a direct, practical prescription for writing that will be read and understood: Take care of your reader. With a wealth of examples from the arts and sciences, this short, witty book provides invaluable advice to writers at all levels, in all fields, on how to write better for both specialized and broad audiences. Good academic writing depends on connecting with readers, earning their time and attention. Cassuto offers tips and advice on how to sharpen arguments and make complex ideas compelling. He addresses the workings of introductions and conclusions, transitions, signposts, paragraphs, and sentences—all the building blocks of academic writing. He also shows how storytelling and metaphor can make your prose more engaging than you thought possible. And he explains the proper use of that most dangerous of tools: jargon.
This book can make any academic writer—including you—into a better writer. That means becoming a better communicator of the ideas and discoveries you want the world to grasp. For the sake of readers inside the academy and beyond it, Academic Writing as if Readers Matter shows how and why you have to make your writing connect with the people you’re writing for.
Leonard Cassuto is professor of English at Fordham University. He writes a regular column, “The Graduate Adviser,” for The Chronicle of Higher Education, and his many books include The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education.
New Book | The Bookshop
From Penguin Random House (Friss starts his story with Benjamin Franklin’s printing house) . . .
Evan Friss, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore (New York: Viking, 2024), 416 pages, ISBN 978-0593299920, $30.
An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations
Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost. Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who signed books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.
The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.
Evan Friss is a professor of history at James Madison University and the author of two other books: The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s and On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City. He lives with his wife (a bookseller) and two children (occasional booksellers) in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Panel Discussion | Jeremy Bentham’s Books at UCL
From Eventbrite:
Jeremy Bentham’s Books in UCL’s Special Collections
UCL Object Based Learning Laboratory, London, 9 October 2024
An event exploring Jeremy Bentham’s book collection and ways in which it continues to shape UCL’s library holdings today.
It has long been known that the 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham bequeathed a number of his books to University College London (known at the time as the London University). But the contents of the bequest and the faith of the books had remained obscure. A recent discovery of an item-by-item list of the books in the UCL library archives by Colin Penman (UCL Head of Records) and a Bentham expert, Professor Tim Causer, sparked a project to uncover some of Bentham’s books in UCL’s rare book collections, overseen by Erika Delbecque (UCL’s Head of Rare Books). Join UCL Special Collections to hear Colin, Tim, and Erika talk about the project, the discoveries made so far, the process of identifying Bentham’s books, and their significance today. The original list of the Bentham’s bequest, along with some of the books from his library (many heavily annotated by Bentham himself), will be on display. The event is free and open to all, but booking is essential.
The UCL guide to the Bentham Book Collection offers a helpful introduction to our holdings as well as information about researching and accessing this collection. You can also read more about our ongoing research into Bentham’s bequest here.
Wednesday, 9 October 2024
3.00–4.00pm | Panel discussion and collections display
4.00–4.30pm | Collections display and refreshments
New Acquisitions at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art
From the press release (25 September 2024) . . .
Jean Baptiste Greuze, Portrait of a Man, said to be Louis-François Robin, 1790, oil on walnut panel, 26 × 22 inches (South Bend: Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, 2024.008.006).
The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is the beneficiary of a significant gift of paintings, sculptures, and decorative art objects from the estate of Ernestine Morris Carmichael Raclin (1927–2024). Iconic masters from Gainsborough and Reynolds, Houdon to Guillaumin, among many others, are included.
A life-long supporter of the arts, Raclin began collecting in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s, assembling the highest quality works that reflected her taste for old master and nineteenth-century aesthetics. A devoted supporter of the University of Notre Dame, and its first female Trustee, and committed to cultural institutions in and around her home of South Bend, Indiana, Raclin planned the donation to further the University’s mission to foster an appreciation for the greatest human achievements and intellectual exchange. She sincerely wished to encourage the growth of the museum that now bears her name, the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.
“Our mother loved the arts and was devoted to the community in which she lived,” shared daughter, Carmi, and son-in-law, Chris Murphy. “She collected and displayed beautiful things in her home and joyously shared her art collection entertaining people from across the region and country. It is only appropriate that this gift can now be shared with the community she loved through the beautiful new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and the University of Notre Dame.”
Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Miss Barwell, 1785, oil on canvas, 30 × 25 inches (South Bend: Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, 2024.008.014).
The Raclin Bequest includes works from the fifteenth through the early twentieth centuries but is especially strong in eighteenth-century art. A portrait by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a landscape sketch by Hubert Robert, and a fête champêtre by Nicolas Lancret, for example, offer further depth to holdings by French masters Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun and François Boucher already in the University’s collection. Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds bolster the representation of British art in the collection with impressive demonstrations of costume and technique. Jean-Antoine Houdon’s patinated terracotta portrait bust of his infant daughter is the first of its kind in the collection.
The University’s nineteenth-century collection is best known for its French academic works and oil sketches. The Raclin gift complements those holdings with proto-Impressionist, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist examples. Landscapes by Camille Corot and Johan Jongkind are the types of paintings that inspired the Impressionists and heralded a new approach to painting founded on advances in color theory. Hippolyte Petitjean, for example, is most closely aligned with Pointillism, a technique of placing dots or very short strokes of pure color next to each other recognizing that the human eye will combine the colors when viewed at a distance. In his painting of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, he uses a seemingly mechanical technique and further suggests the angst of an increasingly industrialized world by juxtaposing the buttresses of the medieval church with the crane in the foreground loading cargo onto a barge. The lone American work in the gift, John Alexander White’s Reflection, is notable for its synthesis of various avant-garde trends that make it difficult to categorize his work. He combines sinuous lines, abstract shapes, the limited, muted tones of his American compatriot J.A.M. Whistler, and a deep interest in psychological effects and technical experimentation to arrive at a unique revelation of the fin-de-siècle spirit.
Hubert Robert, The Washerwomen of Charenton, 1767–70, oil on cradled panel, 15 × 11 inches (South Bend: Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, 2024.008.011).
“Throughout her extraordinary life, Ernestine Raclin demonstrated time and again her commitment to her local community and to increasing accessibility and appreciation of the arts,” said Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., University president. “We are grateful for her generous support that enabled the creation of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, as well as this additional gift which will delight museum attendees for many generations to come.”
With origins that date to 1875, the University’s art museum is among the first and most esteemed academic art museums in the nation. The Raclin Bequest is cornerstone to a major initiative, 150 for 150: Art for Notre Dame the Sesquicentennial Campaign, to strategically build the collection for students, faculty, researchers, and the nation. The goal is to achieve 150 gifts for 150 years. A gift could be a single object or, as with the Raclin Bequest, an entire collection.
The campaign is focused on Museum collecting priorities including: Art of the Indigenous Americas, European and American Art before 1900, International Modern and Contemporary Art, Irish Art, Sculpture, and Works on Paper (prints, drawings and photographs). Such extraordinary generosity is not limited to the Notre Dame family. Friends, old and new, have stepped forward with great care. The Raclin Bequest and other gifts will debut at the end of the campaign in a major celebratory exhibition in early 2026.
“Although Ernie had long been a supporter of the Museum and generously gifted numerous works to the collection over decades, this gift is quite special,” shares Joseph Antenucci Becherer, PhD, Director and Curator of Sculpture. “To know that she lived with and found profound enjoyment and inspiration in these objects, and wanted to share that with the world, fills the Museum with her spirit of grace, passion, and love of others.”
It is critical to note that art is central to learning and research across the academy, and the Museum collections are available to the region, the nation, and beyond. At Notre Dame, the collections are annually utilized by more than forty departments, representing nearly every college and school on campus. Recent research shows that 91% of graduating seniors had visited the museum—an astonishing number. Additionally, the Museum welcomes more than 11,000 K-12 students yearly from a three-state area. Beyond those outreach efforts, the Museum lends works to the highest caliber exhibitions nationwide and worldwide; recently, works were lent to venues in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Washington, DC, among others.
Call for Papers | Recipes and Flavors on the Move
From ArtHist.net:
Recipes and Flavors on the Move: The Circulation of Traditions and Ingredients between the Mediterranean and the American Colonies
Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris, 22 January 2025
Organized by Maddalena Bellavitisl, Corinne Mencé-Caster, and José Manuel Santos Pérez
Proposals due by 21 October 2024
Scholars in recent years have intensified their interest in cultural aspects of the colonial world, going beyond purely historical and social analysis. They have also been looking at the whole context constituted by the expressions and habits related to the daily, intellectual, and artistic life of the local populations and of those who found themselves traveling—in one direction or another—between Europe and the distant lands of ancient or recent discovery. The question thus raised relates to the cultural heritage of the territories concerned, both tangible and intangible heritage, and therefore also a whole series of details belonging to the sphere of the senses and habits most closely linked to local traditions. Among these, of course, the most fundamentally intertwined with popular life and culture is that of food. Therefore, a research direction that looked precisely in this direction was needed, questioning food habits, raw materials, recipes, and flavors.
This workshop therefore proposes a dialogue on colonial culture and food, choosing to set the discussion according to a perspective of exchange and mutual enrichment, with a view to reconstructing paths and narratives that have seen the intertwining of knowledge and traditions. Thus, the first part will be devoted to the interchanges, reception, and perception of Mediterranean food culture in Latin America and vice versa, with a consideration of ingredients, recipes, and tastes, while the second part will focus on material and iconographic culture, considering visual representations that depict this diffusion of flavors and the objects involved in the process.
The organizers, Maddalena Bellavitisl, Corinne Mencé-Caster, and José Manuel Santos Pérez, welcome proposals for 20-minute contributions—in English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese—on interdisciplinary topics addressing the subjects to which the workshop is dedicated. Those who are interested can send a one-page PDF file with an abstract and short bio to maddalena.bellavitis@gmail.com by 21 October 2024. Selections will be made at the beginning of November 2024.
Axel Rüger to Direct The Frick Collection
From the press release (19 September 2024):
Axel Rüger (Photo by Cat Garcia).
The Board of Trustees of The Frick Collection today announced the appointment of leading museum director Axel Rüger as the museum’s next Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Director. He will start in the position in the spring of 2025. Rüger will join the Frick after successful tenures guiding the acclaimed Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Throughout his career as a two-time museum director, he has been recognized as an accomplished arts leader and visionary, with distinct expertise in developing audiences, engaging stakeholders, fundraising, building institutional brands, and producing critically acclaimed exhibitions. Previous curatorial positions have included London’s National Gallery, where he was responsible for the collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch paintings.
“On behalf of the Board, I am thrilled to welcome Axel to The Frick Collection,” said Board Chair Elizabeth Eveillard. “Axel is a rare museum director who embodies a complex set of skills, all of which are of great importance, particularly at this pivotal moment for cultural organizations. As an established museum director, he brings steady, strategic insight, as well as a proven ability to inspire and guide dynamic teams to great achievement. A brilliant mind in the field, he also holds a highly relevant curatorial background. As we prepare to embark on a new era for the Frick, I am confident in his ability to steer us well. I extend my deepest gratitude to Ian Wardropper for his steady leadership of our organization. Ian’s vision and tireless work serve as our foundation as we move forward. I also thank the Search Committee for their support and assistance in this process.”
“The Frick is a uniquely special place, and there is not another museum in the world quite like it,” said Rüger. “Since the early 1990s, I have always made a point to visit and admire the museum any time I was in New York City. Leading the Frick—with its spectacular collection of stunning masterpieces, rich history of exhibitions, intimate residential setting, library, and location in such an exciting city—is an irresistible proposition, particularly at this milestone moment. Following the largest renovation in the institution’s history, it’s an exciting time to re-open, develop exciting programs for loyal visitors, and welcome new audiences who have not yet discovered this treasure trove of a museum.”
Rüger’s appointment concludes an extensive, global search for the Frick’s next director, which began in spring 2024 after the announced retirement of Ian Wardropper. During fourteen impactful years at the Frick, Wardropper led the museum and research library through a period of strategic planning and growth, which included the first comprehensive renovation and upgrade of the Frick’s historic buildings in nearly ninety years, an acclaimed series of exhibitions, and a focused acquisitions program that enhanced the institution’s art and library collections. After a temporary relocation to the widely admired Frick Madison, the Frick will reopen its historic buildings at 1 East 70th Street in early 2025.
Rüger currently serves as Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Founded more than 250 years ago, it is the world’s most prominent artist-led institution with a membership of 120 prominent artists and architects, and a collection that includes work by Joshua Reynolds, Angelica Kauffman, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, and contemporary artists such as David Hockney, Tracey Emin, and Antony Gormley. Appointed in May 2019, he steered the organization through the Covid-19 pandemic, including a significant restructuring that steadied the institution. An accomplished fundraiser, he surpassed fundraising goals during his five-year tenure. He also oversaw the £23 million re-development of the Royal Academy Schools and curated two acclaimed exhibitions, including Souls Grown Deep Like the Rivers, Black Artists from the American South in 2023, and a retrospective of the work of British artist Sir Michael Craig-Martin RA, which opened this week. He also oversaw the realization of two Summer Exhibitions, the world’s oldest open-submission show that combines works by Royal Academicians and emerging talents in art and architecture.
Prior to his time at the Royal Academy, Rüger served as Director of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum and sister institution, The Mesdag Collection, in The Hague, which showcases the art assembled by the nineteenth-century seascape painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag and his wife. In these joint capacities, from April 2006 through April 2019, Rüger supervised a staff of 400 and oversaw the two venues, which together attracted more than 2.1 million visitors annually. During his tenure, his many achievements included growing the audience by a third, implementing three strategic plans, realizing a rich program of exhibitions, notable acquisitions and the completion of two major research projects: the new edition of Van Gogh’s letters in 2009 and the Van Gogh Studio Practice Project methods in 2013. He also expanded the capacity of the building by adding a spectacular new entrance hall and a new conservation studio.
From May 1999 to March 2006, Rüger served as Curator of Dutch Paintings 1600–1800 at the National Gallery, London. In this role, he was a member of the senior curatorial team responsible for the display, interpretation, and research of one of the largest collections within the National Gallery, as well as its exhibitions. His specific activities include the reinstallation of the Dutch paintings collection, three major exhibitions (Vermeer and the Delft School, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001; Aelbert Cuyp, with the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2002; and The Dutch Portrait, with the Mauritshuis, The Hague, 2006–07). During this time in London, Rüger was also part of the first cohort of the then newly established prestigious Clore Leadership Programme for leaders in the cultural sector.
Rüger is a Trustee of the Art Fund (UK) and serves on the Advisory Board of Van Lanschot Kempen Bankiers (The Netherlands). He previously served on the Commissie Collectie Nederland (a Dutch government commission), TEFAF Showcase, Apeldoorn Conference series, and the Stitching Praemium Erasmianum. He studied Art History at the Freie Universität in Berlin (Germany), the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), and Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario (Canada). Rüger is fluent in German, English, and
Dutch.
Conference | Extra Extra! The Visually Altered Book
This weekend at The Huntington . . . with more information at this Huntington blog posting by Park and Smyth:
Extra Extra! The Material History of the Visually Altered Book
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 27–28 September 2024
Organized by Julie Park and Adam Smyth
Richard Bull’s copy of A collection of the loose pieces printed at Strawberry-Hill, approximately 1750–1801 (The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens).
Join scholars in the field as they discuss extra-illustration, a historical word and image practice in which readers altered their books by adding their own visual elements to them. A book is thus physically expanded—sometimes dramatically so—and fundamental categories of book, art, and object become destabilized. As it considers extra-illustration’s flowering in late 18th- and early 19th-century England, this conference will also move back and forward in time and will venture well beyond a traditional Anglo American paradigm (through Europe, Australia, Mexico, and Japan). Working with an expansive definition of this long-standing but highly mutable practice, examples will range from modified medieval manuscripts to contemporary artists’ books and botanical books with ephemeral plants pressed inside their pages.
For questions about this event, please contact researchconference@huntington.org.
Funding provided by the Zeidberg Lecture in the History of the Book.
f r i d a y , 2 7 s e p t e m b e r
8.30am Registration and coffee
9.00 Welcome
• Susan Juster (The Huntington), Julie Park (Penn State University), and Adam Smyth (Balliol College, Oxford University)
9.15 Session 1 | Reframe / Remake
Moderator: Julie Park (Penn State University)
• Luisa Calè (Birkbeck College, University of London) — William Blake In and Out of Gibbs’ Kitto Bible: Ways of Seeing the Conversion of Paul
• Carolin Gluchowski (Oxford University) — Illuminating the Void: The Intricate Interplay of Added Illuminations in the Bodleian Library’s Manuscript Ms. e. Mus. 160
10.45 Break
11.00 Session 2 | Place / Moment
Moderator: Luisa Calè (Birkbeck College, University of London)
• Julie Park (Penn State University) — Extra-Illustrated Manuscript as Memory Palace: Archiving the House of the Walpoles
• Adam Smyth (Balliol College, Oxford University) — Extra-Illustration in England: 1650, 1777, 2013
12.30 Lunch
1.30 Session 3 | Dialogue / Discord
Moderator: Karla Nielsen (The Huntington)
• Jeanne Britton (University of South Carolina) — The Letter as Image: Illustrating the 18th-Century Correspondence of Ignatius Sancho with Laurence Sterne
• Nicole Reynolds (Ohio University) — ‘This Bomb Under My Monument’: Extra-Illustration and the War Books Controversy – Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves
3.30 Study Session (for speakers only)
s a t u r d a y , 2 8 s e p t e m b e r
9.30am Registration and coffee
10.00 Session 4 | Gather / Scatter
Moderator: Adam Smyth (Balliol College, Oxford University)
• Molly Duggins (National Art School, Sydney) — Cut-and-Paste Cabinet: Major James Wallis’ 1840s Album of Colonial New South Wales
• Anna Svensson (Uppsala University) — A Thistle or a Rose? Probing the Thorny Question of Pressed Plants in Printed Books from the 16th to the 20th Centuries
• Tony White (SUNY Purchase) — Frisson and Serendipity: Loose Leaves on the Loose in International Artists’ Books
12.00 Lunch
1.00 Session 5 | Business / Leisure
Moderator: Stephen Tabor (The Huntington)
• Travis McDade (University of Illinois College of Law) — Humorous Phases of the Law: Irving Browne’s Extra-Illustrated Life in 19th-Century America
• Whitney Trettien (University of Pennsylvania) — The Calculated Risk of Book Destruction: Book Collecting and Calculating Technologies in 19th-Century America
3.00 Break
3.15 Closing remarks by Julie Park and Adam Smyth
Exhibition | Paris, 1793–1794
Opening at the Musée Carnavalet:
Paris, 1793–1794: A Revolutionary Year
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, 16 October 2024 — 16 February 2025
Musée de la Révolution française, Vizille, 27 June — 23 November 2025
Curated by Valérie Guillaume, Philippe Charnotet, and Anne Zazzo
For the first time, the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris, renowned for its collections on the French Revolution, will single out one key year in the revolution—without a doubt the most complex: ‘Year II’ of the Republican calendar, covering the period from 22 September 1793 to 21 September 1794.
1789, the year of the Storming of the Bastille and The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, is often considered to be the glorious year of the Revolution and even to embody the French Revolution in its entirety. It is the year during which Paris established itself as the capital of the Enlightenment and Revolutions. But compared to the clarity of ’89’, ’93’ appears much darker and thornier. As it was just coming to an end, this long political year spanning from the spring of 1793 to the summer of 1794 had already found a name: the ‘Terror’. Fabricated for political reasons, the word points to the authoritarian transition that the republican regime had undergone. And yet, the years 1793–94 are also the years that some, confident in their ability to reinvent history, called ‘Year II’: a year defined by its breaking with the past and its revitalising of revolutionary utopias. The exhibition is a collection of more than 250 works of all kinds: paintings, sculptures, objects of decorative arts, historical and memorial objects, wallpaper, posters, pieces of furniture… And all translate collective histories and incredible individual fates. These varied objects reveal a context imbued with collective fears and state violence, but also with extraordinary daily activities, feasts, and celebrations.
Paris, 1793–1794: Une année révolutionnaire (Paris Musées, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605903, €39.
Scientific commission
• Valérie Guillaume, director of the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
• Philippe Charnotet, assistant curator and head of the numismatic collection at the Musée Carnavalet
• Anne Zazzo, chief curator, head of the historical and memorial objects collection at the Musée Carnavalet
Scientific committee
• Jean-Clément Martin, professor emeritus of History of the French Revolution at the University Paris I
– Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Alain Chevalier, director of the Musée de la Révolution Française – Domaine de Vizille
• Aurélien Larné, archivist at the Ministry of Justice – Department of the Archives, Documentation and Cultural Heritage
• Marisa Linton, professor of Modern History at the University of Kingston – London
• Guillaume Mazeau, senior lecturer of Modern History at the Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Allan Potofsky, professor of Modern History at the Université Paris-Cité
• Charles Eloi Vial, curator of the Libraries for the Department of Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
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Note (added 7 July 2025)— The posting was updated to include the second venue, the Musée de la Révolution française, where the exhibition is titled 1793–1794: Un Tourbillon Révolutionnaire.
Exhibition | Figures of the Fool
Opening next month at the Louvre:
Figures of the Fool: From the Middle Ages to the Romantics
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 16 October 2024 — 3 February 2025
Curated by Élisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam
Fools are everywhere. But are the fools of today the same as the fools of yesteryear? This fall, the Musée du Louvre is dedicating an unprecedented exhibition to the myriad figures of the fool, which permeated the pictorial landscape of the 13th to the 16th centuries. Over the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the fool came to occupy every available artistic space, insinuating himself into illuminated manuscripts, printed books and engravings, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and all manner of objects both precious and mundane. His fascinating, perplexing and subversive figure loomed large in the turmoil of an era not so different from our own.
The exhibition examines the omnipresence of fools in Western art and culture at the end of the Middle Ages, and attempts to parse the meaning of these figures, who would seem to play a key role in the advent of modernity. The fool may make us laugh, with his abundance of frivolous antics, but he also harbours a wealth of hidden facets of an erotic, scatological, tragic or violent nature. Capable of the best and of the worst, the fool entertains, warns or denounces; he turns societal values on their head and may even overthrow the established order.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Yard with Madmen, 1794 (Dallas: Meadows Museum).
Within the newly renovated Hall Napoléon, this exhibition, which brings together over 300 works from 90 French, European and American institutions, brings us on a one-of-a-kind journey through Northern European art (English, Flemish, Germanic, and above all French), illuminating the profane aspects of the Middle Ages and revealing a fascinating era of surprising complexity. The exhibition explores the disappearance of the figure of the fool with the Enlightenment and the triumph of reason, and its resurgence at the end of the 18th century and all throughout the 19th. The fool then became a figure with which artists identified, wondering: ‘What if I were the fool?’
The exhibition is curated by Élisabeth Antoine-König, Senior Curator in the Department of Decorative Arts, and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, Senior Curator in the Department of Sculptures, Musée du Louvre.
With the support of the Cercle des Mécènes du Louvre, the Fondation Etrillard and the New York Medieval Society.
Élisabeth Antoine-König and Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, eds., Figures du Fou: Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques (Paris: Musée du Louvre éditions / Gallimard, 2024), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-2073073037, €45.
Exhibition | An Actor with No Lines — Pierrot
Watteau, Pierrot, also known as Gilles, detail, ca. 1718–19, oil on canvas, 1.84 × 1.56 meters
(Paris: Musée du Louvre).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
This exhibition opens in October at The Louvre in conjunction with the The Fool . . .
A New Look at Watteau: An Actor with No Lines — Pierrot, Known as Gilles
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 16 October 2024 — 3 February 2025
Curated by Guillaume Faroult
Watteau’s Pierrot, formerly known as Gilles, is one of the most famous masterpieces in the Louvre’s collection. This enigmatic work, which has long raised questions for art historians, is currently undergoing conservation treatment at the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, after which time it will be the focus of a spotlight exhibition.
Louis Crépy after Antoine Watteau, Self-Portrait (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Nothing is known about the painting before it was discovered by the artist and collector Dominique Vivant Denon (1747–1825), Director of the Louvre under Napoleon. It soon came to be regarded as a Watteau masterpiece and garnered praise from renowned writers and art historians. It has often been seen as reflecting a certain image of the 18th century—mischievous, cynical, or melancholy, depending on the author and the era. Its fame boosted the return to favour of 18th-century art in the age of Manet and Nadar.
The exhibition will present the findings of the conservation project, approaching this wholly original work—whose attribution to Watteau has sometimes been questioned—both as part of the artist’s oeuvre and in the cultural and artistic context of the time. Alongside many other paintings and drawings by Watteau, there will be works by his contemporaries: painters, draughtsmen, engravers (Claude Gillot, Antoine Joseph Pater, Nicolas Lancret, Jean Baptiste Oudry, Jean Honoré Fragonard, etc.), and writers (Pierre de Marivaux, Alain-René Lesage, JeanFrançois Regnard, Evaristo Gherardi), with special emphasis on the rich theatrical repertoire of the time.
As soon as the painting entered the Louvre in 1869, via the bequest of Louis La Caze (1798–1869), it became a favourite with generations of viewers. Its powerful appeal is partly due to its outstanding quality, but also to its originality for the period and to the mystery surrounding its production.
The exhibition will also explore the painting’s rich and varied critical reception and its far-reaching artistic legacy. This powerful, enigmatic image has greatly inspired French writers, including Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, George Sand, the Goncourt brothers, and Jacques Prévert. The painting has also influenced photographers, filmmakers, and musicians (Nadar, Marcel Carné, Arnold Schoenberg), as well as visual artists (Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Juan Gris, James Ensor, Georges Rouault, and Jean-Michel Alberola), driving them to new creative heights.
The show will explore the fascinating conversations between these great creative minds and Watteau’s enigmatic painting, even as it resonates harmoniously with the Figures of the Fool exhibition scheduled for the same dates in the Hall Napoléon.
Guillaume Faroult, Revoir Watteau: Un comédien sans réplique. Pierrot, dit le Gilles (Musée du Louvre Éditions and Liénart Éditions, 2024), 240 pages, €40.
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