SAAM Fellowships for American Art History
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
The Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery invite applications for its 2025–26 research fellowships, awarded through the Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program (SIFP). Residencies are available at the graduate, doctoral, postdoctoral, and senior levels. The deadline to apply is October 15.
Scholars from any discipline who are researching topics relating to U.S. art, craft, and visual culture are encouraged to apply, as are those who foreground new perspectives, materials, and methodologies. Fellowships are residential and support full-time research. SAAM is devoted to advancing inclusive excellence in art history and encourages candidates who identify as members of historically underrepresented groups to apply.
The stipend for a twelve-month SIFP fellowship is $45,000 for predoctoral scholars and $57,000 for postdoctoral and senior scholars, with a supplemental research allowance of up to $5,000. Applicants who need less time to complete their research may apply for as few as three months with a prorated stipend. Residencies should take place between 1 June 2025 and 31 August 2026.
SIFP graduate student fellowships are available for ten-week summer terms and carry a stipend of $10,000.
To learn more and apply, click here. With additional questions or for research consultation, email SAAMFellowships@si.edu.
Call for Articles | Sequitur (Fall 2024): Beyond the Veil
From:
Sequitur 11.1 (Fall 2024): Beyond the Veil
Submissions and proposals due by 27 September 2024, for January 2025 publication
Arnold Böcklin, Island of the Dead, 1880, oil on wood, 29 × 48 inches (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26.90).
The editors of SEQUITUR, the graduate student journal published by the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Boston University, invite current and recent MA, MFA, and PhD students to submit content on the theme of Beyond the Veil for our Fall 2024 issue. This issue invites an exploration of the unseen, the unknown, and the realms that lie out of reach of ordinary or earthly perception. What other worlds exist beyond death, within our minds, under the surface, or in the shadows?
Artists have used every medium at their disposal to imagine what these other worlds might look like, going so far as to employ symbolism, abstraction, and surrealism to grapple with the otherworldly. Ritualistic items, religious artifacts, and funerary objects serve as tangible links to the spiritual and the supernatural. On a larger scale, architectural elements like arches, portals, and windows invite us into holy spaces to seek sanctuary or guide transitions from life to death and back again. In this issue, we aim to gather scholarship that focuses on topics beyond the ordinary that consider the myriad ways in which humanity has envisioned and sought access to the mystical, the transcendent, and the liminal.
Possible subjects may include, but are not limited to:
• Otherworlds: the in-between, separation, the unearthly, seen and unseen, obfuscated, hidden, neither here nor there, out of time, secret spaces
• Transience: the beyond, travel, thresholds, liminal spaces, parallels, interstices, passages, portals, doorways, interfaces, windows, brinks
• Death & resurrection: mourning, memory, farewell, remembrance, burial, necropolis, underworld, afterlife, psychopomp, crossing, sanctuary, heaven, ascension, ceremony, rite, rite of passage, religion, holy, sacrament, celebration, life
• The supernatural: spiritualism, phantasmagoria, spectral, ethereal, occult, fantasy, superstition, internment, surreal
SEQUITUR welcomes submissions from graduate students in the disciplines of art history, architecture, archaeology, fine arts, material culture, visual culture, literary studies, queer and gender studies, disability studies, memory studies, and environmental studies, among others. We encourage submissions that take advantage of the digital format of the journal.
Founded in 2014, SEQUITUR is an online biannual scholarly journal dedicated to addressing events, issues, and ideas in art and architectural history. Edited by graduate students at Boston University, the journal engages with and expands current conversations in the field by promoting the perspectives of graduate students from around the world. It seeks to contribute to existing scholarship by focusing on valuable but often overlooked parts of art and architectural history. Previous issues can be found here.
We invite full submissions in the following categories:
Feature essays (1,500 words)
Content should present original material that falls within the stipulated word limit (1,500 words). Please adhere to the formatting guidelines available here.
Visual and creative essays (250 words, up to 10 works)
We invite MArch and MFA students to showcase a selection of original work in or reproduced in a digital format. We welcome various kinds of creative projects that take advantage of the online format of the journal, such as works that include sound or video. Submissions should consist of a 250-word artist statement and up to 10 works in JPEG, HTML, or MP4 format. All image submissions must be numbered and captioned and should be of good quality and high resolution.
We invite proposals for the following categories (abstracts should be no more than 200 words):
Exhibition reviews (500 words)
We are especially interested in exhibitions currently on display or very recently closed. We typically prioritize reviews of exhibitions in the Massachusetts and New England area.
Book or exhibition catalog reviews (500 words)
We are especially interested in reviews of recently published books and catalogs (1–3 years old).
Interviews (750 words)
Please include documentation of the interviewee’s affirmation that they will participate in an interview with you. Plan to provide either a full written transcript or a recording of the interview (video or audio).
Research spotlights (750 words)
Short summaries of ongoing research written in a more casual format than a feature essay or formal paper. For research spotlights, we typically, but not universally, prioritize doctoral candidates who plan to use this platform to share ongoing dissertation research or work of a comparable scale.
To submit, please send the following materials to sequitur@bu.edu by 27 September 2024:
• Your proposal or submission
• Recent CV
• Brief (50-word) bio
• Your contact information in the body of the email: name, institution and program, year in program, and email
• Subject line: ‘SEQUITUR Fall 2024’ and the type of submission/proposal
Please adhere to the formatting guidelines available here. Text must be in the form of a Word document, and images should be sent as .jpeg files. While we welcome as many images as possible, at least one must be very high resolution and large format. All other creative media should be sent as weblinks, HTML, or MP4 files if submitting video or other multimedia work. Please note that authors are responsible for obtaining all image copyright releases before publication. Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission or proposal the week of 7 October 2024 for publication in January 2025. Please contact the editors (sequitur@bu.edu) with any questions.
Lecture | Miriam Schefzyk on German Cabinetmaker in 18th-C. Paris
Jean-Francois Oeben and Roger Vandercruse, Tabletop of a mechanical table, ca. 1761–63, oak veneered with mahogany, kingwood, and tulipwood, with marquetry of mahogany, rosewood, holly, and various other woods; gilt-bronze mounts; imitation Japanese lacquer; replaced silk (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.60.61).
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This fall at BGC:
Miriam Schefzyk | Parisian Dreams: German Migrants and Cabinetmaking in 18th-Century Paris
A Françoise and Georges Selz Lecture on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 2 October 2024, 6pm
Paris has long been a privileged destination for many, but there was a particularly significant migration that began in the seventeenth century and gathered strength during the eighteenth century: that of German cabinetmakers. Hardworking and aspiring to wealth, recognition, and a better life, these numerous artisans made Paris into the most important center in the furniture and luxury trade of the time. Many of them rose to important positions as masters or leaders in the guild, and some even obtained royal privileges and titles. Their furniture was regarded as the incarnation of French taste and is still viewed as evidence of the supremacy of French decorative arts today. In this lecture, Miriam Schefzyk will examine the living and working conditions of these artisans and how their background as migrants significantly shaped the framework in which these extraordinary pieces of furniture were created.
$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people associated with a college or university, people with museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members.
Miriam E. Schefzyk is the associate curator of decorative arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum and previously worked at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin. She studied art history at the universities of Marburg, Berlin, Münster, and Paris, earning a PhD in a joint French-German doctoral program. A specialist of French decorative arts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, her research focuses on Parisian furniture, artistic transfer, social history, and materiality. Her book Migration und Integration im Paris des 18. Jahrhunderts: Martin Carlin und die deutschen Ebenisten (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2022) was awarded the Marianne Roland Michel Foundation Prize for its important contribution to French art and will soon be published in French.
Lecture | Mia Jackson on the Birds of Louis-Denis Armand
Louis-Denis Armand, Parrots, ca. 1750–70
(Paris: Galerie Dragesco-Cramoisan)
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This fall at BGC:
Mia Jackson | Flights of Fancy: The Birds of Louis-Denis Armand (1723–1796)
A Françoise and Georges Selz Lecture on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 11 December 2024, 6pm
Mia Jackson will talk about her recent exhibition, Flights of Fancy, the first ever survey of the life and work of the recently rediscovered Sèvres painter Louis-Denis Armand (1723–1796), now celebrated as one of the foremost painters of birds. Very few artisans from the eighteenth century have left us such a detailed biography; over thirty drawings by Armand survive, and research into the drawings and their inscriptions (by Jackson and collaborator Bernard Dragesco) has revealed a wealth of detail about the artist, his life, his work, and even his political opinions.
Mia Jackson has been curator of decorative arts at Waddesdon Manor since 2017. She studied French and Philosophy at the University of Oxford then completed an MA in eighteenth-century French decorative arts at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her doctoral thesis entitled “André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) and Paper: Prints and Drawings in the Workshop of an Ébéniste du Roi” was completed at Queen Mary, University of London in 2016. She previously worked in the Prints and Drawings Department at the British Museum, the Wallace Collection, and English Heritage. Eighteenth-century France is her area of expertise, in particular the links between works on paper and the decorative arts.
Exhibition | Flights of Fancy: Birds at Waddesdon
Now on view at Waddesdon:
Flights of Fancy: Birds at Waddesdon
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, 22 May – 27 October 2024
Curated by Mia Jackson
Snuff-box with Sèvres porcelain plaques, 1758, painted by Louis-Denis Armand (Waddesdon Image Library, photo by Mike Fear).
Flock to Waddesdon this summer for a celebration of birds. Throughout the Manor, Aviary, and Gardens discover a range of bird-themed exhibitions, events, and activities for all the family.
Flights of Fancy is a rare chance for bird enthusiasts and art lovers alike to explore this beautiful subject through our birds and remarkable displays of porcelain, paintings, drawings, and prints. The exhibition features the life and work of the recently rediscovered Louis-Denis Armand (1723–1796), a painter at the world-famous Sèvres porcelain manufactory. Widely acknowledged as the most talented bird painter at Sèvres, his birds were initially ‘flights of fancy’, drawn from his wild imagination but as time went on, they gained ornithological accuracy. He also drew exotic birds from life, picking and choosing elements to combine and exaggerate. Waddesdon’s own impressive collection of Sèvres painted by Armand includes ten vases from the 1750s and 60s and important pieces from the Razumovsky dessert service. These are displayed alongside nearly 50 loans from private collections and from the Musée national de céramique at Sèvres.
Exhibition | The King’s Horses: The Marly Horses
From the press release for the exhibition (a companion to the show Horse in Majesty on view at Versailles):
The King’s Horses: The Marly Horses, Masterpieces of Equestrian Art
Musée du Domaine Royal de Marly, 7 June — 3 November 2024
Curated by Karen Chastagnol
The Royal Estate of Marly, once a hunting residence of kings and the setting for the monumental Marly Horses, has always given an essential role to the horse. From transportation and aristocratic entertainments to military activities, equestrian buildings and artistic representations, horses have taken over the estate in various forms. Through a hundred paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, accessories, and archival documents, the Museum of the Royal Estate of Marly presents, on the occasion of the equestrian events of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, an original exhibition dedicated to the role of the horse at the Estate of Marly, from Louis XIV to the French Revolution.
Karen Chastagnol, ed., Les chevaux du roi: Les chevaux de Marly, chefs-d’œuvre de l’art équestre (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2024), 104 pages, ISBN: 978-8836657919, €28. With contributions by Ambre Bozec, Valérie Carpentier-Vanhaverbeke, Annick Heitzmann, Carlos Pereira, and Benjamin Ringo.
The full press release is available here»
The Burlington Magazine, August 2024
The long 18th century in the August issue of The Burlington—and special thanks to The Burlington for making Rosalind Savill’s article available to Enfilade readers for free.
The Burlington Magazine 166 (August 2024) — Decorative Arts
a r t i c l e s
Unidentified artist, Portrait of Paul Crespin, ca.1726, oil on canvas laid on board, 114 × 90 cm (London: Victoria and Albert Museum).
• Lucy Wood and Olivia Fryman, “The 1st Duke of Devonshire’s ‘Queen Mary’ Beds at Devonshire House, Chatsworth, and Hardwick Hall,” pp. 780–809.
In 1696 the 1st Duke of Devonshire purchased two beds that had belonged to Mary II, one of which was made by Louis XIV’s upholsterer, Simon Delobel. Documents and fragments of its crimson velvet embroidered hangings record a lost example of Stuart state furniture of the highest quality.
• Stefano Rinadli, “Six Horses for the King of Poland: Making and Staging a Diplomatic Gift at the Court of Louis XIV,” pp. 810–25.
In July 1715 Augustus the Strong of Saxony-Poland received a splendid present from the Sun King: a team of six Spanish stallions, each equipped with embroidered trappings and a pair of elaborate flintlock holster pistols. Documents published here for the first time help establish the gift’s political context and chronology and provide detailed insight into the payment and the identity of all the craftsmen involved.
• Teresa Leonor M. Vale, “Eighteenth-Century English Silver for King João V of Portugal,” pp. 826–33.
João V of Portugal acquired works of art from Rome and Paris; analysis of diplomatic correspondence illustrates how he also commissioned objects from Britain in the 1720s, notably spectacular examples of silverware. These included and exceptionally large and renowned silver-gilt bath by Paul Crespin, the Huguenot silversmith who lived and worked in Soho, London.
Detail of the bottom tray of worktable mounted with two trays, attributed to Bernard II van Risenburgh, ca.1761–63. Table: wood, green varnish and gilt-bronze mounts, 68.6 × 36.8 × 30.5 cm; trays: Sèvres soft-paste porcelain, green ground, enamel colours and gilding, 32 × 26 cm (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 58.75.45).
• Rosalind Savill, “From Storeroom to Stardom: The Revelations of Two Sèvres Porcelain Trays,” pp. 834–47.
Two porcelain trays set into a Rococo table in the early 1760s, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are reassessed and here confirmed as Sèvres. Their subjects are probably the family of the Marquis de Courteille, Louis XV’s representative at the porcelain factory, and their intimate representation in this manner is almost unique in eighteenth-century Sèvres.
The full article is available for free here»
r e v i e w s
• Elizabeth Savage, Review of two exhibition catalogues: Edina Adam and Julian Brooks, with an essay by Matthew Hargraves, William Blake: Visionary (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020); and David Bindman and Esther Chadwick, eds., William Blake’s Universe (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2024), pp. 862–65.
• John Pinto, Review of the exhibition catalogue, John Marciari, Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2023), pp. 865–67,
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Rosario Inés Granados, ed., Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial Latin America (University of Texas Press, 2022), pp. 867–69.
• Camilla Pietrabissa, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Anita Viola Sganzerla and Stephanie Buck, eds., Connecting Worlds: Artists and Travel (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2023), pp. 870–72.
• Giullaume Kientz, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Víctor Nieto Alcaide, ed., Goya: La ribellione della ragione (ORE Cultura, 2023), pp. 872–74.
• Timothy Wilson, Review of Marino Marini, Maiolica and Ceramics in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, translated by Anna Moore Valeri (Allemandi, 2024), pp. 876–77.
• J. V. G. Mallet, Review of Caterina Marcantoni Cherido, Maioliche italiane del Rinascimento (Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 2022), pp. 877–79.
• Aurora Laurenti, Review of Esther Bell, Pauline Chougnet, Sarah Grandin, Charlotte Guichard, Corinne Le Bitouzé, Anne Leonard, and Meredith Martin, Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliotheque nationale de France / Promenades de papier: Dessins du XVIIIe siècle des collections de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (Clark Art Institute and BnF Editions, 2023), pp. 883–84.
• Clare Hornsby, Review of Christopher M.S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, and Karin Wolfe, eds., American Latium: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour (Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, 2023), pp. 884–86.
• Lydia Hamlett, Review of John Laycock, William Kent’s Ceiling Paintings at Houghton Hall (Houghton Arts Foundation, 2021), p. 887.
• Lin Sun, Review of Shane McCausland, The Art of the Chinese Picture-Scroll (Reaktion Books, 2023), pp. 887–88.
Exhibition | Sonya Clark: The Descendants of Monticello
Blinking eyes appear in the windows of Declaration House as part of Sonya Clark’s installation The Descendants of Monticello. Thomas Jefferson resided at the site while writing the Declaration of Independence, together with his enslaved valet Robert Hemmings. The original house was razed in 1883; it was reconstructed in 1975. (Photo by Steve Weinik/Monument Lab).
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From Philadelphia’s Monument Lab:
Declaration House | Sonya Clark’s The Descendants of Monticello
Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, 24 June — 1 December 2024
Declaration House is a public art and history exhibition presented by Monument Lab at Independence National Historical Park that explores the site where Thomas Jefferson and Robert Hemmings spent several months in Philadelphia during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The project poses a central question: What does the Declaration of Independence mean to us today? By moving Hemmings to the center of this moment in history, the project seeks to illuminate the entangled legacies of freedom and enslavement at the core of our nation’s founding.
Declaration House presents the exclusive premiere of Sonya Clark’s The Descendants of Monticello, a public artwork that brings the historic house to life through a monumental montage featuring the blinking eyes of Robert Hemmings’ collateral descendants and others who are related to the over 400 people enslaved at Monticello, including descendants biologically related to Jefferson. Declaration House also includes public programs with creative residents Jeannine A. Cook and Ty ‘Dancing Wolf’ Ellis, and a Welcome Station during summer weekend hours at the historic house where visitors are invited to respond to the project’s central question with hand-drawn responses that will be collected by Monument Lab and shared with Independence National Historical Park to inform future programming and reflection ahead of America’s Semiquincentennial in 2026.
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Philip Kennicott wrote about the installation for The Washington Post (12 August 2024). More information, including additional press coverage, is available at Monument Lab.
Exhibition | Wonders of Creation: Art and Science in the Islamic World
Star map depicting the Northern and Southern celestial hemispheres (with constellations inscribed in Devanagari), India, Jaipur, ca. 1780, ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper (Chicago: Pritzker Collection; photo by Michael Tropea).
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From the press release (11 July) for the exhibition:
Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World
The San Diego Museum of Art, 7 September 2024 — 5 January 2025
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2025
Curated by Ladan Akbarnia
The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) invites visitors to explore sources of wonder in the exhibition, Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World. The exhibition explores intersections of science and craft in Islamic material culture and contemporary art through the framework of a 13th-century text by Zakariyya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini describing the wonders of the universe.
This trailblazing exhibition, organized by Ladan Akbarnia, Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art, showcases over 200 extraordinary works of art and objects from the eighth century to today. Using wonder as the vehicle to introduce and explore Islamic culture, Wonders of Creation illuminates the global impact of science and artistic production from the Islamic world while introducing new audiences to its diverse geographies and multifaceted visual cultures. With treasures including lavishly illuminated and illustrated manuscripts, fine textiles, luster-painted glass and ceramic wares, astrolabes and star maps, talismans, inscribed precious stones, and architectural marvels, visitors will gain a deeper appreciation of ingenuity and craftsmanship spanning 13 centuries across the Islamic world.
Nastulus, Astrolabe, 101 AH (ca. 720), 18 × 22 cm (Kuwait: al-Sabah Collection). The note at the Google Arts & Culture page describes this as “the earliest dated Islamic astrolabe.”
The exhibition presents works from more than 30 lenders, including major loans from The al-Sabah Collection, Dar Al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait; and the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (IAMM). Works from the IAMM are on loan to the US for the first time. In addition to selections from these prestigious collections, visitors will also see contemporary commissions specifically for the exhibition by artists Ala Ebtekar and Hayv Kahraman, along with works by other prominent contemporary artists. The Museum has also commissioned Mamluk joinery samples made by master craftsman Hassan Abou Zeid of the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation to introduce a hands-on opportunity for guests and commissioned two contemporary replicas of a 17th-century Persian astrolabe by Taha Yasin Arslan to further evoke a sense of awe throughout the exhibition. Wonders of Creation is designed to invite visitors to explore the marvels of the heavens and the earth and admire the crafts and customs of humanity.
“We are thrilled to present this groundbreaking exhibition to our visitors with support from the Getty through its PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative,” says Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director and CEO at The San Diego Museum of Art. “This exhibition celebrates the rich cultural heritage and enduring legacy of Islamic civilization, inviting audiences of all backgrounds to discover and appreciate its profound and diverse contributions.”
Qazwini’s text, The Wonders of Creation and the Rarities of Existence, is a revolutionary cosmography that meticulously details the universe, blending scientific knowledge with fantastical anecdotes, portraying all phenomena as signs of divine creation. The author, an Islamic judge and professor, emphasized wonder as a path to knowledge, urging readers to contemplate natural marvels to deepen their understanding of God and the cosmos. Today, his work remains influential, offering insights into Islamic culture and inspiring curiosity about natural phenomena. The exhibition invites visitors to explore some of the world’s wonders in the spirit of Qazwini’s call to wonder.
Wonders of Creation is part of Getty PST Art, an arts initiative that brings together more than 70 exhibitions from organizations across the Southern California region, all exploring intersections of art and science. Funding for this exhibition is made possible with support from Getty through its PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wonders of Creation is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, and additional support is provided by Bank of America, Lani and Joe Curtis, Tatiana and Robert Dotson, Diana and Fred Elghanayan, Drs. Nasrin Owsia and Behrooz Akbarnia, The Nissan Foundation, and A.O. Reed. Institutional support is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture and the members of The San Diego Museum of Art.
Wonders of Creation will be on view at The San Diego Museum of Art from 7 September 2024 until 5 January 2025. It will then travel to the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College. The exhibition is complemented by a full-color catalogue with original research and contributions from leading international scholars, a scholarly symposium, artists in conversation, family-oriented art-making workshops, performances, and other programming for the community.
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Also worth noting is this recent study of al-Qazvini’s The Wonders of Creation from Edinburgh UP:
Stefano Carboni, The Wonders of Creation and the Singularities of Painting: A Study of the Ilkhanid London Qazvīnī (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 456 pages, ISBN: 978-1474461399, $65.
A beautifully illustrated study of the so-called London Qazvini, an early fourteenth-century illustrated Arabic copy of al-Qazvini’s The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existing Things. One of a handful of extant illustrated codices produced under the Mongols of Iran, this unique manuscript gathers earlier Mesopotamian painting traditions, North Jaziran-Seljuq elements, Anatolian inspiration, the latest changes brought about after the advent of Mongols and a large number of illustrations of extraordinary subjects which escape proper classification. In this lavishly illustrated volume Stefano Carboni offers a stylistic analysis and discussion of the manuscript’s miniatures, a presentation and description of the 368 extant paintings that illustrate the codex, and a partial critical translation of the related Arabic text. This is the first time that sections throughout the whole text are available in English.
Stefano Carboni is the director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Western Australia and adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia. He is author and editor of several books including Glass from Islamic Lands: The Al-Sabah Collection (2001) and Venice and the Islamic World 828–1797 (2007).
Exhibition | Magnified Wonders: An 18th-Century Microscope
From the press release (17 July) for the exhibition:
Magnified Wonders: An 18th-Century Microscope
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 10 September 2024 — 2 February 2025
Curated by Miriam Schefzyk and Arlen Heginbotham
Compound Microscope with a Micrometric Stage, early 1750s, gilt bronze, iron, enamel, shagreen (sharkskin), and glass (Getty Museum, 86.DH.694.1).
The J. Paul Getty Museum presents Magnified Wonders: An 18th-Century Microscope, an exhibition showcasing a French microscope from Getty’s collection as both a scientific instrument and Rococo work of art during the Age of Enlightenment. On view at the Getty Center from 10 September 2024 until 2 February 2025, the exhibition highlights this object’s cultural and historical context and reveals its technical complexity. It is one of only ten existing microscopes of this type in the world, and Getty is the only museum in the United States with one in its collection.
Made in Paris around 1751, the microscope features advanced micrometers for precision measurement, and specialized accessories for viewing many types of specimens. It is nearly identical to the one used by the French king Louis XV. Aristocrats and amateur scientists used this microscope to explore the mysteries of the natural world, illustrating the social élite’s interest in scientific inquiry.
“It is remarkable that this microscope is still in perfect working order,” says Arlen Heginbotham, conservator of decorative arts conservation at the Getty Museum. “The quality of the optics is truly impressive, and the gears and dials still function smoothly and precisely.”
The Getty microscope will be on display alongside its lavish leather case containing lenses, tools, and specimen slides of natural curiosities. The exhibition highlights the scientific and social context of this instrument through a selection of illustrated scientific publications from the period, drawn from the collections of the Getty Research Institute. Robert Hooke’s famous Micrographia will be on view, a publication that features illustrations of specimens that he explored with the compound microscope. Video and digital presentations will demonstrate the fully functional microscope’s uses and capabilities and allow visitors to view period illustrations of microscopic specimens.
“It is incredible to think about how this microscope opened up a whole new cosmos heretofore invisible to the naked eye,” says Miriam Schefzyk, associate curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Getty Museum.
While the microscope is a complex scientific instrument, it is also a unique work of art in the Rococo style. A dominant style in France from the 1730s through the 1750s, it was applied to all artworks, including decorative arts, gardens, interiors, and even scientific instruments. Inspired by nature, its major characteristics are C and S curves, asymmetrical composition, and dynamic movement. The exhibition will also feature several prints with designs that include these distinct Rococo motifs, as well as a wall clock made by Jacques Caffieri, highlighting the similarity of its elaborate design in gilt bronze.
Magnified Wonders: An 18th-Century Microscope is co-curated by Miriam Schefzyk, associate curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Getty Museum, and Arlen Heginbotham, conservator of decorative arts conservation at the Getty Museum.
This exhibition is part of PST ART, a Getty initiative presenting over 70 exhibitions at institutions across Southern California tied to the theme Art & Science Collide.
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