Category Archives: Art and Artifacts

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.

The Levine Collection Has Arrived!

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This blog post was created by Maeve Doyle, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art, Bryn Mawr College

This past Tuesday was no ordinary workday in Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. By 10 in the morning, our seminar room in Canaday Library was overflowing with boxes and large bins containing the first shipment of the Jacqueline and Howard Levine Collection. If you’re walking past Canaday 205, be sure to stop and enjoy the sight of us squeezing through wall-to-wall crates of art!

Hyoungee dives in

This new wealth of works on paper is due to the generous gift of Jacqueline and Howard Levine. Jacqueline Koldin Levine, class of 1946, has long been an active member of the Bryn Mawr community, serving on the Board of Trustees from 1979 to 1991. The Levines’ art collection focuses mainly on prints and contains a wide range of examples of European modernism as well as a particular emphasis on American Social Realist movements, such as the Ashcan School. We are tremendously grateful to Jackie and Howard Levine; their donation of this superlative collection will allow Bryn Mawr students to discover, study, and enjoy its works for generations.

Howard Levine & Brian Wallace, Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts, in the Levines’ home gallery, before the collection’s move

Before that can happen, however, we need to integrate these new pieces into our existing collections. That’s down to Hyoungee Kong and me: two students , twenty-two boxes and bins, and 482 works of art (so far!). Our first step is to assign a Bryn Mawr accession number to each object and to make a concordance between the Levine catalogue numbers and the new identifiers. Next we’ll be moving the works out of their temporary boxes and bins and into the archival folders and boxes that will be their permanent homes. While we do this, our eyes will be peeled for the best exemplars of the Levine Collection, which we’ll showcase in an exhibit next year. Our last step will be to catalogue each new addition and to make images and information about the artworks available on the Tri-College TriArte Art and Artifacts Database. We’ve been working closely with Marianne Weldon, Collections Manager, Art and Artifact Collections in Special Collection to complete this mammoth task.

Maeve starts the inventory for a new box; you never know what you’ll find!

As we pull works one by one from their boxes, we’ve come face-to-face with the works of master printmakers of the 20th century and earlier. From the artistic avant-garde of Pablo Picasso or George Grosz to the social commentary of Käthe Kollwitz or the Social Realist artists of the 1920s and 30s, the images are startling, challenging, touching, and beautiful. This is a collection with emotional as well as artistic range. Here is just a taste of what’s to be discovered in the Levine Collection …

Francisco de Goya, Tanto y Mas, 1810, 2012.27.241

Pablo Picasso, Nude (constructed title), 2012.27.457

Moshe Gat, Old Man in a Doorway (constructed title), 2012.27.432

Woodmere Art Museum exhibition features two works from Doris Staffel on loan from the Bryn Mawr College collection

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The Woodmere Art Museum, (9201 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118) is hosting a new exhibit titled ‘Doris Staffel: Painter, Teacher’ that will run through July 28 – September 30, 2012. It focuses on the work of painter Doris Staffel, described as one of Philadelphia’s preeminent abstract painters and colorists. This is the first exhibition to examine Staffel’s entire career, as well as her first solo show in a museum. Along with Staffel’s solo exhibition the Woodmere Art Museum will also be showing a smaller collection of works highlighting three-generations of Philadelphia artists: Staffel’s own teachers, her colleagues, and the students that she taught. Drawn mostly from Woodmere’s permanent collection, it includes several recent acquisitions and promised gifts exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition brings together all fourteen paintings and works on paper by Staffel that are held in the Woodmere’s collection, pieces that represent her various career phases from the 1940s to the present. The two pieces from Bryn Mawr College have been loaned along with other pieces from public and private collections to complete the exhibition.

The two pieces on loan from Bryn Mawr College Special Collections represent the different media within which the artist worked.

The piece below, Dragon’s Teeth, dates from 1984 and is a charcoal on paper (18 3/4 in. x 17 1/2 in.) and is from the William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of
Works by Women Artists, a gift of Bill Scott.

This piece, Enfolding, from 1990, is an acrylic on paper (23 in. x 30 1/4 in.) and is also a gift of Bill Scott. Born in 1921 in Brooklyn, Staffel came to Philadelphia in 1940 to study at the Tyler School of Art where she stayed to teach for twenty-seven years at The University of the Arts in the city. She is described by the Woodmere Art Museum as being an influential figure to younger artists, and her work is displayed in galleries in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the US.

An interview with Staffel in which she discusses her work and life is available on You Tube

For more on the exhibition, please check the Woodmere Art Museum website.

Bryn Mawr student-curated exhibition described in a new book

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Through our Special Collections, Bryn Mawr offers a unique opportunity for students to use great literature in the form in which it first appeared, antique cookbooks, the working papers of important scholars, letters between the earliest administrators of the College, ancient pottery, original Japanese prints, and hundreds of other objects in their classes and research. Every year the curators work with dozens of classes and hundreds of students on projects that range from single classroom visits to semester-long collaborations.
In Fall 2007, fourteen undergraduate students joined a class that gave them a unique opportunity to work with medieval manuscripts for the entire semester, drawing on Bryn Mawr’s substantial collection of these beautiful hand -made volumes. As part of the class, students planned and created an exhibition with the books that ran in the Rare Book Room the following Spring. Marianne Hansen, Curator and Academic Liaison for Rare Books and Manuscripts, worked with the class throughout the semester and through the duration of the show. She spoke on her experience at a professional meeting (Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association), and her paper has just been published in a new book on the use of special collections and archives in undergraduate education.

You can read the article without borrowing the book by looking it up in the open access repository of the scholarship and publications of the Bryn Mawr community (on Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College), at http://repository.brynmawr.edu/lib_pubs/11/. Click the download button to read:

Marianne Hansen. “Real Objects, Real Spaces, Real Expertise: An Undergraduate Seminar Curates an Exhibition on the Medieval Book of Hours,” in Past or Portal?: Enhancing Undergraduate Learning Through Special Collections and Archives. Eleanor Mitchell; Peggy Seiden; Suzy Taraba, editors. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. 2012.

Lockwood de Forest at Bryn Mawr College

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Among the numerous holdings of the College’s Special Collections is an impressive and historically important assortment of furniture and decorative fixtures designed by the artist Lockwood de Forest. The value of De Forest’s pieces lies not only in their intrinsic beauty and status as fine examples of the East Indian Craft Revival but also in their inextricable link to the history of the College. More than a century has passed since these objects were first incorporated into the fabric of the Bryn Mawr campus and for much of that time many have been used and reused in the capacity for which they were originally intended, namely as furnishings for various public spaces. As a result of their prolonged service to the community and the frequent shifting of their locations on campus, records for many of the De Forest pieces remain incomplete. In an effort to remedy this situation, Special Collections staff and student workers have embarked upon a project to inventory and catalog the College’s holdings of Lockwood de Forest furniture and decorative objects.


Lockwood de Forest Carved Teak Sofa

Born in New York in 1850, De Forest had begun his career as a painter, enjoying some moderate success in academic circles. For his livelihood, however, he relied upon his talents as a decorative artist and dealer in exotic goods. Inspired by the architecture and ornament of Egypt, the Middle East and India, many of De Forest’s interior designs included elaborately carved or painted furniture as well as walls and ceilings embellished with stenciled patterns or pierced brass appliqués.


Lockwood de Forest Pierced Brass Appliqué

De Forest’s relationship with Bryn Mawr College spanned the course of several decades, from the mid-1890s to the mid-1910s. In 1894, M. Carey Thomas, who had served as Dean of the College since 1885, became its second president and her residence, known as the Deanery, underwent significant renovation. The original five-room wooden farmhouse, located on the site now occupied by Canaday Library, was expanded and remodeled in order to meet the growing needs of the new president. Thomas called upon De Forest to decorate the interior spaces of the newly enlarged Deanery.


Deanery Dining Room, 1896

It is likely that she commissioned him to decorate and furnish her offices in Taylor Hall at this time as well. Ten years later, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, a Baltimore railroad heiress and long-time friend of Thomas, came to live at the Deanery, bringing with her many of the furnishings from her Baltimore residence. Garrett too had been a patron of De Forest and among the items she transferred to Bryn Mawr were a number of pieces of his East Indian furniture. The Deanery’s final and most extensive renovation, which transformed it into a palatial forty-six room residence, began in 1908 with De Forest serving once again as the interior design consultant. In addition to his work in the Deanery, he also played a significant role in the design of several other campus buildings, including the entrance vestibule and Great Hall of Thomas Library. As a result of De Forest’s long-term engagement at Bryn Mawr, the College became a repository for a substantial collection of his carved and stenciled furniture as well as for a number of his pierced brass appliqués.


Deanery Sitting Room ca. 1908

M. Carey Thomas retired in 1922 at the age of sixty-five but lived out much of the rest of her life in the Deanery. By 1932, the building and most of its contents had been given to the Alumnae Association for use as a center and inn. Under the Alumnae’s administration, various changes were made to the structure and decoration of the Deanery in order to adapt it to its new, more public role. Serious efforts were, however, made to “preserve the flavor and the atmosphere” of the Thomas era Deanery and many of the De Forest furnishings remained in situ until the Deanery was demolished in 1968.


Deanery Dining Room, 1965

With the destruction of the Deanery came the dispersal of the Lockwood de Forest furniture and decorative items. Some were retained by the College and reused in the new alumnae house at Wydham or in various offices and other public spaces on campus. Several pieces, which had been displayed together in one of De Forest’s original Deanery interiors, were relocated to The Haffner Language and Culture House where a scaled-down version of the De Forest sitting room was reconstructed in an attempt to preserve some sense of the Deanery’s former splendor.


De Forest Swing in the Dorothy Vernon Room, Haffner

Two side chairs went on long-term loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of these is currently on display in the museum’s American Gallery. Others of the De Forest furnishings were sold.


De Forest Side Chair on Loan to the PMA

Interest in the life and works of Lockwood de Forest is ongoing in both academic and museum circles, with the College’s holdings of De Forest furnishings serving as an important resource for researchers and curators. Roberta Mayer’s 2008 monograph on De Forest, for example, includes an extensive analysis of his relationships with Mary Garrett, M. Carey Thomas and Bryn Mawr College. Several area museums have expressed an interest in borrowing items from the College’s De Forest collection for upcoming exhibitions.

As part of recent endeavors to update and refine records for Special Collections art and artifacts, a new project has been undertaken, the goal of which is to inventory, photograph and catalog all of the Lockwood de Forest pieces remaining on campus. In addition, the conservation needs of individual objects are being assessed and several minor restorations have already been accomplished. It is hoped that the information gained through these efforts will make the De Forest furnishings more accessible to members of the Bryn Mawr College community and to outside scholars alike.

Joelle Collins
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Classical & Near Eastern Archaeology

A link to the History of the Deanery online: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_books/7/

Three Little Maids

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In my first few weeks of work as a Graduate Assistant in Special Collections this year, I catalogued and accessioned a collection of Gilbert and Sullivan memorabilia donated to the College by Ivy Reade Relkin, ’50. It was easy to date and identify most of the objects based on manufacturers’ markings, but this painted bronze figurine had none; its condition suggested that it might be significantly older than the other objects in the collection. A hand-written note enclosed in the donation file indicated that the figurine was a souvenir given at the opening night of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, at London’s Savoy Theatre in 1885. The Mikado was an instant success, and remains one of the most popular pieces of musical theater ever written; if this figurine, which depicts the “Three Little Maids,” really was distributed at the play’s very first public performance, it would be an exciting find.

I decided to see whether the assertion in the note could be confirmed. My research led me first to the Harvard Theatre Collection, a department of the Houghton Library of rare books and manuscripts.  The bronze figurine was new to them. “We are in the midst of processing our own sizeable collection of G&S material compiled by our late curator, Frederic Woodbridge Wilson,” a curatorial assistant wrote in response to my inquiry. “[Wilson] was, all kidding aside, quite fond of figurines, and yet I cannot find a single item that would be similar to yours or presented on a similar occasion. In fact, we haven’t any figurines at all…we have cookies, candy bars, playing cards–all manner of souvenirs and memorabilia–and not one figurine!”

At Harvard’s suggestion, however, I began to explore the extensive — and friendly — world of Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados. I discovered a collection of Gilbert and Sullivan-themed ceramics at Cal State Northridge, a web archive with links to G&S “clip art” as well as to librettos and plot summaries, and the website of a group that produces the duo’s comic operas in Central Texas. I contacted various collectors and was referred from enthusiast to enthusiast; finally, one correspondent expressed certainty that the figurine had not, in fact, been distributed at the Savoy Theatre on the Mikado’s opening night.  He added, “I’ve never seen it described as a production souvenir before, though I suppose it’s possible—perhaps in Vienna where Mikado was performed on several occasions, by the D’Oyly Carte and others, in the late 1880s.” A second G&S maven confirmed the opinion: “It was not a first night souvenir [nor was it] ever a D’Oyly Carte souvenir. It’s actually a Vienna bronze made in the mid 90s.”

The Gilbert and Sullivanists had reached a consensus: the “Three Little Maids” figurine was not a memento from Mikado’s opening night. It was however, an early example of the kinds of playful collectibles that continue to circulate among enthusiasts, who form a community that is as vibrant in 2012 as it was in the late nineteenth century.

S. Backer

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/

Special Collections staff at American Association of Museums annual conference

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This week, Marianne Weldon, Collections Manager for Art & Artifacts, attended the American Association of Museums (AAM) Creative Community in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Marianne represented Bryn Mawr in two events: by participating in a panel discussion called “Out from Behind the Scenes: Bringing our Work Forward” and in the Marketplace of Ideas, a poster-type session called Collaboration and Education, where she shared our work on digital workflows and collection documentation using digital photography.

Well done, Marianne!

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