Category Archives: Friends of the Library

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.

 

 

 

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.

PA Now Papers at Bryn Mawr College

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The Library has a strong collection of items relating to women’s studies and women’s history. A donation from the Pennsylvania branch of the National Organization for Women (PA NOW) this spring doubled our preexisting collection of papers from the group. The earlier donation covered the 1970s through mid-1980s, while the new addition brings the collection up to 2007.

The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966 and is the largest feminist organization in America. Core issues that the group has been active in include abortion/reproductive rights, violence against women, and ending racism and sexism. PA NOW was founded in 1971, and the earliest dated materials in the collection date back to the very beginning.

The PA NOW papers consist of materials saved in the office files of the organization: articles, pamphlets, newsletters, meeting transcripts, convention planning documents, records of the political action committee, and publications from groups other than PA NOW, both for and against various issues.  The collection is substantial, occupying over 15 feet of shelving, and covering a very wide range of topics in addition to the major issues: information on legislators, pornography, disability, aging, child welfare, family medical leave, inequities in health insurance, body image, sexual assault/ abuse, violence against women, equal pay – issues that affect the lives of all women.

The bulk of the collection consists of internal administrative documents. The organization tended to focus on one key issue at a time. The organization’s support for the Equal Rights Amendment during the early 1970s is reflected in the quantity of materials dedicated to the issue. Abortion was a major issue for PA NOW in the 1980s. The papers provide many pro-choice arguments, support the right to abortion under both usual and unusual circumstances, and debate the rights of spouses, partners, family members, and the community to prevent abortions.

Office documents covered state and political news, updates from other women’s organizations, and information about women’s conferences held in other countries, such as China. Legal documents from the Philadelphia region listing PA NOW as amicus curiae demonstrate the organization’s activity and role as an authority on women’s rights in the local area.

The collection also contains a small amount of ephemera, including T-shirts, buttons, and posters, the majority of which focus on LGBT issues, abortion, and racism.

A guide to the collection will soon be publicly available.

More information about PA NOW can be found at: http://www.panow.org/pages/keyissues.htm

Heather Davies is one of two Friends of the Library Undergraduate Interns.

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

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.