Category Archives: Art and Artifacts

Theory and practice: Students in Spring course produce exhibition and education program Part 1

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making our worldThe Spring 2013 course “The Curator in the Museum” at Bryn Mawr College mixes theory into practice in the new exhibition “Making our World” located on the second floor of Canaday Library. Through readings and guest lectures related to the broader course theme of analyzing the “institution” of the museum and all its related parts, we integrated these models into our own project exhibition and corresponding education program for local high school students.

The following updates — written and edited by students as part of the team-based approach to the entire project — are reports on our progress along the way. Please let us know your thoughts.

Guest Lecturer Dr. Bruce Altshuler

Student blogger: Adriana Grossman

Bruce Altshuler, New York University

Bruce Altshuler, New York University

On February 18th, the Curator in the Museum class was lucky to have Dr. Bruce Altshuler as a guest lecturer. Dr. Altshuler is currently the Director of the Program in Museum Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University, and part of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA/USA), the American Association of Museums, and the College Art Association. It was particularly exciting to be able to speak to someone currently active in the field of museum studies, given the potential beginnings of a museum studies department at Bryn Mawr College. He is also the author of Salon to Biennial—Exhibitions That Made Art History, Volume I: 1863–1959, and is currently at work on the second volume.

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Though we were all initially a little intimidated by Dr. Altshuler’s background, a congenial tone was set from the very beginning of the class period when he asked us all to introduce ourselves and explain why we were interested in the field of museum studies. Every answer varied, proving just how many other concentrations could lend themselves to the field and how broad the field itself is. Dr. Altshuler himself studied philosophy before entering the art world. He spoke to us about his beginnings in the commercial art world, working as a dealer with Zabriski Gallery. Zabriski Gallery specializes in Dada, Surrealism, American Modernism, photography, and contemporary art, the last of which is Dr. Altshuler’s primary area of interest, along with the history of exhibitions. He then told us a little about his experiences as director of the Noguchi Museum from 1992 to 1998.

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The last topic that we discussed was museum studies. As Dr. Altshuler made clear to us in telling us about his varied career, museum studies is a field that can be applied in a broad range of ways, the direction of which ultimately depends upon personal preference and the research that one chooses to undertake. The Museum Studies program has been offered at New York University for over three decades, and is still relatively young as a field of study. Dr. Altshuler suggested that this was perhaps because the field is hard to define given how much it has to encompass. Indeed, museum studies requires academic work to engage museum theory and practice, including the history of the institutions as well as the artworks within them, as well as preparation to be involved with more hands-on roles in the workings of a museum. (We recently got to do a little hands-on work ourselves, and will continue to be doing so as our class exhibition “Making Our World” progresses.) In other words, it is everything to do with running a museum.

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As was made clear in our discussions with Dr. Altshuler, museum studies is a field that will only continue to grow. Since its inception, it is a field that has come to many different institutions and is still burgeoning, as is evidenced by the suggestion of such a field of study at Bryn Mawr College.

 

 

 

emuseum.net

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Bryn Mawr College Art and Artifacts Collection is now part of emuseum.net. Users can search across a variety of museums, educational and cultural institutions collections all at once!  Thank you to everyone that has been helping us with this ongoing cataloging project!emuseum.net

Bryn Mawr College’s Madonna and Child, by Romare Bearden, on Exhibit in New York

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Today, February 15, 2013, Ashe to Amen: African Americans and Biblical Imagery Opens at the Museum of Biblical Art.  One of the paintings in the exhibition, Madonna and Child by Romare Bearden (above), is on loan from Bryn Mawr College Special Collections.  The exhibition will be open until May 26, 2013 at MOBiA and then it will travel to the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture June 22 – September 29, 2013; and the Dixon Gallery and Gardens October 20, 2013 – January 5, 2014.

More information on the exhibition can be found at: http://mobia.org/exhibitions/ashe-to-amen#slideshow1

More information about Madonna and Child by Romare Bearden can be found at: http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/Obj164044

ANTH B204-001 North American Archaeology

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Today students in North American Archaeology, taught by Professor Richard Davis, used objects from special collections to learn how to examine them. Information about the manufacture and use of the artifacts was gleaned from this visual examination. Students will continue to work with our special collections throughout this course.

In this photo students are examining a stone blade, one of over 1600 stone tools in the college’s holdings.

 

 

Among the other objects used for today’s class were pottery, pipes and one stone game piece called a “chunky stone”.  For more information about the game Chunkey see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunkey.

 

 

 

 Interested in knowing more about the anthropology collection?…..

The anthropology collection includes more than 8,000 objects from around the world. Frederica de Laguna (Class of 1927), the founder of Bryn Mawr’s Anthropology Department, was instrumental in the creation and growth of this important collection in the 1950s and 1960s.

The largest portion of the anthropology holdings is the William S. Vaux Collection, a gift from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, which includes archaeological artifacts from North, Central, and South America and pre-historic Europe.

Other important collections include the Twyeffort-Hollenback Collection of Southwest Pottery and Native American Ethnography, the George and Anna Hawks Vaux ’35, M.A. ’41 Collection of Native American Basketry; the Ward and Miriam Coffin Canaday ’06 collection of Pre-Columbian ceramics and Peruvian textiles; and pieces collected in Oceania by retired anthropology professor Dr. Jane Goodale.

African Collection

One of the highlights of the anthropology collection is the African collection, which has grown rapidly since 1990, when Bryn Mawr alumna Margaret Feurer Plass ’17 bequeathed to the college select pieces from her private collection. A world-renowned Africanist, Plass traveled and collected for forty years. A major addition to the collection during the 1990s was the donation of more than 270 African art objects by Mace Neufeld and Helen Katz Neufeld ’53. Bryn Mawr Professor of Anthropology Philip Kilbride has supplemented these collections with ethnographic objects he collected in East Africa in the 1960s.

Asian Art Collection

The Asian holdings include Helen B. Chapin’s (Class of 1925) collection of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scrolls, porcelains, lacquerware, terracottas, bronzes, and wood and stone artifacts. Also included in the Asian collection are imperial Japanese art and artifacts from the Elizabeth Gray Vining (Class of 1923) Collection, which she assembled while she was tutor to the Crown Prince (present Emperor) of Japan.

Special Collections, students, and living artists

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Guest writer Christina Lisk (Bryn Mawr 2014) is one of 15 student ambassadors participating in Docu-Commencement, a Bryn Mawr College Special Collections artist residency/exhibition project that began with four artists –Kay Healy, James Johnson, Jennifer Levonian, and Gilbert Plantinga – spending all or most of the weekend of Commencement 2012 on campus and will culminate in an exhibition that opens in late October. In August, Lisk attended and documented studio meetings with Healy and Levonian; she and other student ambassadors will continue to participate in the development of this project.

Kay Healy—A Closer Look

By Christina Lisk

I recently accompanied Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts Brian Wallace and Master’s candidate in the History of Art Amy Wojceichowski to meetings with Kay Healy and Jennifer Levonian, two of four artists developing new works as part of Docu-Commencement, a residency and exhibition project organized by Special Collections.

Kay Healy, Untitled (video still from work in progress), 2012, digital image, dimensions variable; courtesy the artist

Healy, who works out of a studio space in South Philadelphia, and who recently debuted a long-term installation artwork at the Philadelphia airport, focuses her work on textiles and printmaking.  The emphasis of her work is on the relationships between sociological differences, such as class, sexuality, and race, and individual memories. With these materials, and through these relationships, Healy ponders whether or not it is possible for one to truly return home. This question holds particular importance for Bryn Mawr, as many students call this campus “home” after their time in college ends. Healy and the other three Docu-Commencement artists spent 24 hours “in residence” during commencement weekend this past May; the artists are all developing new artworks to be shown on campus beginning in late October.

Healy intends to show her work in and outside of Canaday Library. While she is still pursuing a number of different possibilities, Healy is looking at installing an 8 foot wide replica of an orange couch she saw in Goodhart on Canaday’s walls. Televisions around campus may play a stop-action film of a similar orange couch being consumed by a garbage truck. Outside, silkscreened replicas of furniture will be placed on various buildings throughout campus. The decay of these replicas will be closely observed, and may have an appearance in both the exhibition and the daily lives of Bryn Mawr students.

Can a Bryn Mawr student really return home after graduation? Come answer that question through Healy’s work. For more information on Kay Healy and her projects, please see the images below or visit http://www.kayhealy.com

Jennifer Levonian—A Closer Look

By Christina Lisk

Have you ever seen another Bryn Mawr student and wondered “What is her story? What has happened to her during college?”  Jennifer Levonian, a Philadelphia-based painter and animation artist, explores this question in the intricate, detailed portrait of Bryn Mawr College she is in the midst of developing for Docu-Commencement, a Special Collections artist project. One of four artists participating in Bryn Mawr’s first artist residency/exhibition, Levonian examines campus culture through intricate paintings of dorms and students. Current Bryn Mawr women will recognize people and places from their “home” instantly. Those who are unfamiliar with Bryn Mawr’s most intimate settings will see obscure, yet significant elements of Bryn Mawr in Levonian’s work.

Jennifer Levonian, Untitled (digital still from work in progress), 2012, digital image, dimensions variable; courtesy the artist and Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia

 

Levonian is converting these paintings into a 5 to 7 minute video animation that tells linked stories about Kaitlin, a fictitious Bryn Mawr student. One of Kaitlin’s stories includes pushing through an academic year, a process illustrated with paintings named for Bryn Mawr College students’ final essays. Another tale from Kaitlin’s life includes her job at Wal-Mart, where she observes people paying with food stamps and discovers she is the only worker at her Wal-Mart who attends college. How does each story end? What stories does Bryn Mawr College have to tell? Come learn the answer through Levonian’s work.

A talk by Levonian and the other three artists will be held before the Docu-Commencement opening reception at Canaday Library on October 25th, 2012. For more information on Jennifer Levonian, please attend the upcoming artist’s talk and the exhibition, or, in the meantime, visit http://www.jenniferlevonian.com/.

 

Conversations with the Past: Francisco Amighetti’s ‘Susana’

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This post appears in conjunction with the exhibit Conversations: Selected Works from the Jacqueline Koldin Levine ‘46 and Howard Levine Collection (Class of 1912 Rare Book Room, Canaday Library, September 10 – October 14, 2012).

This blog was written by Maeve Doyle, graduate student in History of Art and co-curator of the Conversations exhibit.

An art historian is in many ways a detective. Works of art are rarely explicit about their origins or the intentions of their makers; it’s up to the art historian to reconstruct an object’s historical context. I’m sure I’m not alone in sometimes imagining my research as a criminal investigation when I’m hot on the heels of an elusive document or picture. But one doesn’t need the comparison to a Sherlock Holmes adventure to heighten the sense of triumph at the moment of discovery.

In planning Conversations, the exhibition showcasing the Jacqueline Koldin Levine ’46 and Howard Levine Collection, we in Special Collections had a lot of detective work ahead of us in order to find out more about these newly acquired works. One of the most striking works in the collection – by Costa Rican artist Francisco Amighetti – offered me a juicy clue as to how to understand it. The image shows a naked woman restrained within the clutches of three grotesque, lecherous figures, and the pencil inscription beneath the wood engraving print titles the work “Susana”.

Francisco Amighetti, Susana
Wood engraving, 1986
Bryn Mawr College Special Collections 2012.27.441

The image alone presents a nightmarish scene, its reality stripped to the colors of black, white, and red, the space reduced to a spare landscape at the last moments of sunset, and its figures overrun by the driving forces of sexual desire and fear. The inscription of the name “Susana” adds another layer to this dark fantasy by connecting it to a narrative – that is, the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders.

The story of Susanna is told in Chapter 13 of the Book of Daniel, a chapter now considered apocryphal (one reason why Susanna is less familiar to readers today). Because Daniel 13 isn’t in any modern bible, I looked to an older edition – from the 17th century – to reacquaint myself with Susanna’s story. As I did, I was surprised to find something closer to a modern cop or courtroom drama than the salacious violence of Amighetti’s print. The dramatic moment of the biblical story is not the city elders’ attempt to rape pious Susanna, but her subsequent trial, at which she calls on God to defend her from their false accusations of adultery. God inspires a man in the crowd, Daniel, to come to Susanna’s defense. In a classic cop-show twist, Daniel questions the elders separately and traps them in a lie, exposing their guilt and Susanna’s blamelessness. The people of Babylon stone the elders to death and everyone else lives happily ever after.

Amighetti, however, shifts the focus in the story to the moment of the elders’ threat against Susanna. The two surprise her while she is bathing alone in her husband’s garden and threaten her with a choice: either submit to their sexual demands, or face death under a false accusation of adultery. Passages from Amighetti’s print illustrate the assault on Susanna’s safety and privacy vividly: the single, bulging eye of the attacker on the lower left, or the contrast of the attacker’s black-red hand against Susanna’s white skin.

      
Francisco Amighetti, Susana, details
Wood engraving, 1986
Bryn Mawr College Special Collections 2012.27.441

Amighetti is not alone in this decision; in fact, it is the moment of Susanna’s confrontation with the elders – not her trial or their punishment – that is most often depicted in artistic representations of the story. In fact, the popularity of Susanna in the 16th and 17th centuries appears to have less to do with the moral dimensions of her story, and more to do with the opportunity to showcase the nude female form in painting. Indeed, the Susannas of Tintoretto and Peter Paul Rubens show little resistance to the elders’ invasion of the orchard: almost uniformly, these artists transform a scene of attempted violation into a representation of female sexual availability. (The striking exceptions are the Susannas of Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the rare female artists of the 17th century.)

While Renaissance artists transformed the biblical Susanna into an object for male voyeurism, Amighetti takes his representation one step further. He looks to representations from classical mythology of the rape of mortal women, often by supernatural men: Zeus carried Europa and Io away to serve his pleasure; Paris eloped with Helen with little thought to the consequences for Troy; Eros awakened the young Psyche to the world of sensual love and marriage. In art from the 16th through the 19th centuries, these scenes of kidnapping and rape were almost always refigured as an erotic experience for the always-willing woman. A print in Bryn Mawr’s collection, made after a painting by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, is a classic example of the genre, and it is easy to compare the poses of Amighetti’s Susanna and Prud’hon’s Psyche as she is carried away by the god of love’s cherubic accomplices.

Henri Charles Müller, The Rape of Psyche
Engraving, after a painting by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, 1st half of the 19th century
Bryn Mawr College Special Collections VP.279

In Amighetti’s print, however, the angelic assembly is replaced by a host of grotesque, lecherous attackers. And despite the similarities in Psyche’s and Susanna’s postures, Susanna’s response is ambiguous. With her eyes half closed and her arms pinned behind her back, it is unclear whether she is overcome by ecstasy or terror – and whether Amighetti is participating in the same visual traditions that characterize representations of Susanna, or if he is reacting against them. I still have a lot of questions about Susana – but this is where art history differs from detective work. Where Sherlock Holmes prides himself on having an answer to any question still remaining at the end of a tale, I always hope that the answers I find will raise even more questions.

One of Bryn Mawr College’s Lockwood de Forest Chairs Travels to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

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Later this month a side chair, ca. 1881-1886, designed by Lockwood de Forest will go to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on loan for one year, with the option to renew.  The side chair, will be on exhibition in the galleries at the Virginia Museum of Fine arts as early as this Fall.  Below is a detail of the of the design on the chair.

Photographs by Karen Mauch.

For more information about Lockwood de Forest and additional works designed by him in Bryn Mawr’s Collection see:Lockwood de Forest: Furnishing the Gilded Age with a Passion for India by Roberta A. Mayer.

Renaissance Relief Reinstalled

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Yesterday a reproduction plaster relief of the Tabernacle or Ciborium in the Medici
Chapel Church of Santa Croce in Florence was re-installed on the 2nd floor of Taylor Hall. It is a late 19th century reproduction after the original mid-15th century work by Mino da Fiesole (1429 – 1484).

To safely install the four-part plaster relief, a metal armature was constructed to support each section separately.  This insures that the weight of each piece is supported by the structure and not by the sections of the relief beneath.  The armature was installed first.

Then each section of the relief was installed one at a time, starting at the bottom, by professional art installers.




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