Author Archives: mweldon

Behind the Scenes – Conservation

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Today, paintings conservator Serena Urry conserved the painting Madonna and Child by Romare Bearden in preparation for an upcoming traveling exhibition.  In the image above she is consolidating a small scratch in preparation for inpainting.

Below is a before treatment photograph showing the entire image area.

After consolidation, the painting was surface cleaned with a mild enzymatic solution (above) then in-painting was performed in areas of abrasion (below).

After giving the in-painting time to dry the painting will be re-framed with new glazing in preparation for the upcoming traveling exhibition Ashe to Amen.  For more information about the exhibition see:

http://mobia.org/exhibitions/ashe-to-amen#slideshow1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the Scenes – Ongoing Collections Care

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Moche Stirrup Spout Before Treatment (69.1.3)

As part of the care of the collections, fine art, artifacts, rare books and other materials occasionally need to be sent to specialists for treatment.

During the Spring 2012 semester seven objects from Bryn Mawr College’s art and artifact collections were sent to the Conservation Center at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts for conservation treatment.  The images shown here are of a Moche vessel treated by one of the graduate students at the Conservation Center of New York University.

Moche Stirrup Spout During Treatment (69.1.3)

 

 

Moche Stirrup Spout After Treatment (69.1.3)

 

Additionally four Greek pots from the Archaeology collections were conserved during the Spring and Summer of 2012 by Julie Baker, a local objects conservator with the Art Conservator’s Alliance.

Objects recently treated will be on display in Canaday Library on the Second Floor
beginning in September 2012.

More information about the Conservation Program at NYU can be found on their website at:http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/conservation/index.htm.

More information about the Art Conservators Alliance can be found at:http://www.artconservatorsalliance.com/

Information about the American Institute for Conservation can be found at:http://www.conservation-us.org/

Current Student Projects: Friends of the Library Summer Undergraduate Intern Hyoungee Kong

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It has been three weeks since the Levine Collection arrived at Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. This generous gift from Jacqueline and Howard Levine has been cause for great excitement among all the members of the Collection department, especially those who, like me have been fortunate enough to work directly with the newly arrived pieces of art. While delving into the trove of artworks and helping to organize and catalog them, I have had priceless experiences that have encouraged and catalyzed my passion in art history.
The Levines’ art collection consists hundreds of prints, thus providing me with the rare opportunity to study numerous prints in minute detail. As for my art historical training, I have been exposed to and focused on paintings and sculptures; there simply weren’t that many opportunities to concentrate on studying prints. In the process of cataloguing the Levine Collection, however, I could scrutinize many prints and thus absorb technical and historical knowledge that I was hardly aware I was lacking, and I could acquire theoretical knowledge through practical experience. Every day was as if I was visiting an artist’s studio.

Andre Derain
(Chatou, France, 1880-1954, Garches, France)
L’Enfant
Color Woodcut
11 1/4 in. x 8 3/4 in.
Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine ’46 and Howard H. Levine

 

This fortune to study prints closely also provided a discovery of new aspects of the artists whom I thought I knew well. Last week, I came across two prints by André Derain, a French Fauve I studied last spring in Paris. His works that I had seen were all paintings with fierce, vivid colors. However, his prints that I found in the Levine Collection showed hardly any of his well-known Fauve characteristics. This discovery of new facet of Derain’s art let me observe the artist anew and have a better sense of how his art had developed.
The intimate contact with each work of art is another gift I was given from the Levine Collection. Physical proximity to the artworks made my experiences with them profoundly personal; by handling and assessing a piece of art closely, I have an individual and lively conversation with it. Each encounter with a piece of art becomes unique due to this direct contact, and thus creates an intimate connection between me and the work. This is, without exception, a very emotionally powerful event.
The Levine Collection has provided me with a precious opportunity to learn about and to communicate with art. This good fortune has been a catalyst for my passion in what I have been studying and will be a great encouragement to continue my journey to become an art history scholar. I truly thank Jackie and Howard Levine, who made this wonderful gift to the Special Collections. I would also like to thank Marianne Weldon, Collections Manager for Art and Artifacts in Special Collections, and Brian Wallace, Curator/Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts of Bryn Mawr College, who have helped me discover and further appreciate the treasures of this donation.

Cataloging Manuscript Pages – A Highlight: Pope Clement VII’s ruling on the Marriage of the de Herreras

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Papal Bull of Clement VII

Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections hold a number of remarkable medieval and early modern manuscript pages that are currently cataloged only in paper records. In order to make these documents and their unique information available to scholars and researchers, we have expanded our efforts to add information about these materials to our online resources. The records will include high quality digital images of these manuscripts. These images will not only allow researchers to view the manuscripts in their entirety, but also ensure the information in them survives in the event that they deteriorate further, or become lost or destroyed in the future.

 

Since January, we have cataloged a wide range of single page and other short manuscripts which are diverse with respect to their provenance, date, language, and content. The earliest manuscripts that we have, though few, are not even medieval – they are Greek papyrus fragments which date to the 1st and 2nd century CE, and likely come from Egypt. In a collection of fifty-nine medieval manuscripts donated by Sigmund Harrison in the 1980’s, we have pages of religious texts such as breviaries, missals, and copies of the bible. These are written in Latin and are dated from the 11th century CE to the 16th century. Additionally, the Harrison collection contains a medical text on the common cold written in Latin, a liturgical calendar with the names of local saints, a page from a German accounting book, four pages from an Italian accounting book index, and French legal documents.

Currently we are cataloguing manuscripts in the Felix J. Usis collection. Six papal bulls comprise only a part of this extraordinary collection. A papal bull, a legal document issued by a pope, is named after the bulla by which the document is sealed. Originally, bullae were made of clay or wax, but in time, the definition was extended to refer to pendent metal seals.

Two of these papal bulls date to 1529 CE and were issued by Pope Clement VII (born Giulio de’ Medici). Clement VII, known for refusing to annul King Henry VIII’s marriage to Queen Catherine, here played a role in the marriage of another couple. This time, however, his permission to marry was requested and granted. The documents connected with the two papal bulls suggest that a local clergyman wrote to the pope on behalf of Antonio de Herrera and Barbara de Herrera to see if it would be alright if they married one another. Why did they need permission? They were cousins.

The papal bull contains Clement’s response. Typically it was not permitted for blood relations to be united (copulari) in marriage. In this case, however, the cousins were related only in the third and fourth steps of blood relation (tertio…et quarto…consanguinitatis gradibus). Therefore, these two de Herreras might marry one another. The Pope added that anyone petitioning him for a similar reason should receive the same answer.

 Jennifer Hoit

Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

Staff presentation at Association of Academic Museums and Galleries conference

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digital image courtesy Belshe/Prown, artistsdigital image courtesy Belshe/Prown, artists

As part of broad efforts by Special Collections to cultivate connections among individuals, disciplines, and institutions, Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts Brian Wallace recently traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to present a paper at the Association for Academic Museums and Galleries 2012 conference: http://www.aamg-us.org/conference12.php. In “Town/Gown Connect: Leveraging Community Assets Across the Campus,” Wallace and co-presenter Shari Osborn (Community Activist and Museum Educator at the Locust Grove/Samuel Morse Museum and Mansion in Poughkeepsie, NY) discussed ways campus arts programs can connect campus and community audiences, artists, and other stakeholders.

One of the two case studies Wallace and Osborn used in their presentation, Carrying, a 2010 project by artist collaborators Belshe/Prown (http://www.belsheprown.com/), addresses a topic of great interest to campuses and their surrounding communities – the difficult and all-too-often newsworthy topic of gun violence on campuses. Carrying consists of 50 signs – each bearing the rules governing the carrying of concealed weapons on campuses in each of the fifty states – designed to be temporarily installed across a collaborating campus and an adjoining town, village, or other municipal entity. As presented in New Paltz, New York – by the Village and Town of New Paltz and by the Dorsky Museum at the State University of New York at New Paltz – Carrying served to bring individuals and entities together, to highlight cooperation on a potentially contentious issue, and to galvanize broader public – and campus – awareness of the often-overlooked connections between town and gown.

Photograph courtesy Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

The images here include digital versions of several of the signs, as well as a photograph of co-presenter Shari Osborn and the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum curator Diane Mullin with the Minnesota Carrying sign: intrigued by the project as both activism and art, Mullin requested that Wallace and Osborn deposit the sign in the Weisman’s collection, which focuses on public art and the emerging field of social art practice (http://www.weisman.umn.edu/).

Crowdsourcing Simon Fokke Prints

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Please help us identify the publication in which these Simon Fokke prints were originally published.  We believe they were all part of the same publication.

 

The images can also be found at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmc_art_and_artifacts/sets/72157629599046138/

Archaeological Textile Studies Course – space for 2 additional students at this time

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California Institute for Peruvian Studies comes to Bryn Mawr College

Join us for the CIPS Archaeological Textile Course this summer! This year we are offering a course centered on the tools and techniques employed in the analysis of archaeological textile materials of ancient Peru and introduce students to the archaeology of the Andes.

Students will learn to identify, analyze and document the features of ancient textiles (fiber, spin and ply structure, weave structure, iconography, and various other techniques) by examining archaeological textiles from various sites in Peru from the impressive Bryn Mawr collection, and by learning how to spin and weave the Andean way. The course includes lectures on the art and archaeology of pre-Columbian Andean cultures, guest lectures by archaeologists and fiber artists, and field trips to local museums.

This course is suited to art and archaeology students, museum professionals and textile enthusiasts of any age.

Bryn Mawr: June 3rd-8th (one week)

Course Fees: $1200 for residential students, $750 for day students

Cost includes lodging on Bryn Mawr’s campus (double occupancy) for residential students, all meals (group meals and lunch for day students), workbook and course supplies, and transportation and museum admission for all excursions. Cost does not include transportation to and from Bryn Mawr, meals taken away from the group, personal expenses, alcoholic beverages, or insurance.

For more information, contact Dr. Anne Tiballi at cipstextiles@gmail.com

Need Images?

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Looking for images of art or artifacts? Tri-college staff, faculty and students please consider using our TriArte database to get images from the college’s special collections holdings. Go to triarte.brynmawr.edu and browse collections by searching or perhaps selecting featured collections to get you started. When you find images you like, simply right click on them and save them to your computer.  Feel free to use them! Some objects even have rotating .mov files attached, and coming soon, we will also begin to add zoomified images, so you’ll be able to see collections objects up-close and personal.

If you do not have a tri-college login, we do plan on making this resource available outside the tri-college community by the end of 2012 . . . so keep checking back and we will make another post when the site goes live on the web.

Colors of Greece: The Art and Archaeology of Georg von Peschke

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We’ve spent the past few days installing Colors of Greece: The Art and Archaeology of Georg von Peschke: reconfiguring walls, painting the gallery, producing labels, and beginning to unwrap, check, and place the artworks.

Brian Wallace, Curator/Academic Liason for Art and Artifacts working with Kostis Kourelis, Exhibition Curator and Steve Tucker, Exhibition Designer

This morning, our guest curator Kostis Kourelis took a break from working with designer Steve Tucker and curator Brian Wallace to reflect on the experience of seeing years of research take the form of an exhibition.

Kourelis noted the advantages accruing to him, as a scholar, arising from the opportunity he has had to view Peschke’s artwork in this new context, just a few short weeks after the exhibition, presented in a different arrangement, closed at Franklin & Marshall College. “Links between the works—thematic, narrative, and formal connections—are so clearly articulated in the exhibition that new subjects—the cultural role of architecture, for example—have presented themselves to me as important topics for future research.”

Kourelis also made mention of the way in which the exhibition links the history and culture of Bryn Mawr to artistic, intellectual, and political developments in the world. Peschke’s connection with Bryn Mawr archaeologists, so well documented in the exhibition, is a kind of scaffolding onto which current students can bring together their knowledge of college and world.

Exhibition Designer Steve Tucker Installing Text

 

Alix Smith: States of Union

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ON VIEW NOW

Please be sure to stop by to see the six works by New York artist Alix Smith in Carpenter Library (B Level).

Alix will give a public lecture on her recent photographic series States of Union in Carpenter 21 on March 15 at 4pm.

Support for this program comes from the Center for Visual Culture, The Pensby Center, the Program in Gender & Sexuality Studies, and the Student Art Club.