Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

Vivien Fryd Delivers Paper on Kara Walker at Popular Culture Association Conference in Seattle

Vivien Fryd, professor of history of art, delivered a paper addressing “Kara Walker’s About the Title:  Anti-Euro-American Colonialism and Imperialism” in the Popular Art, Architecture, and Design area of the Popular Culture Association Conference held in late March in Seattle, WA.

Kara Walker’s About the title—I had wanted to title this “sketch after my Mississippi youth” or “the excavation” as I pictured it a sort of introduction to the panorama to come. However the image, which is partly borrowed, is of an Indian mound–painted by Mr. J. Egan in 1850 is meant to remind the dear viewer of another place altogether, from which we suckle life.  Perhaps my rendering is too subtle . . . . (2002) expands the scope of her condemnation of racial politics in the United States, which usually refers to the perversity of slavery in the pre-Civil War antebellum past and its effect on the present, and also implicates the mistreatment of Indian remains.

Walker depicts a nineteenth-century excavation of an Indian mound appropriated from John J.  Egan’s multi-paneled Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (1850). She broadened her powerful critique of the transnational slave trade, southern slavery, and post-Civil War racism to also include post-colonialist discourse— Euro-American colonialism and imperialism, which is referenced in her enormous drawing.  About the title embodies anti-colonial discourse as an extension of her better known anti-racist discourse; and it both extends and complicates Walker’s oeuvre to include references to the problematic and forced contributions of African slaves to the traumas experienced by native peoples.  In this work, she collapses past and present, textual and visual, the fictional and actual to expose the past wrongs against African Americans and Indians as a “rememory.”

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 8, 2016 in HART, Lectures, VRC

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Christopher Johns to Lecture on Francisco Goya and the Alba Family at the Frist Center for Visual Arts

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes began his career as a painter in service to the Bourbon royal family and to a select cluster of noble families, including the Floridablanca, the Osuna, and especially the Alba.  In his noon lecture on April 7 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Christopher Johns, Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art,  will trace the evolution of Goya’s career, with special emphasis on his portraits of the  13th Duchess of Alba.

Johns will begin with the context of the Spanish Enlightenment, which informed Goya’s earlier artistic development, and then discuss the horrors of the French occupation and resulting civil war, which Goya reflected in key works during his forties.   The lecture also will pay special attention to Goya’s final isolation in the Quinta del Sordo—the house of the deaf man—where he indulged his darkest thoughts in a series of images unparalleled for their condemnation of the human condition.

The lecture is presented in conjunction with the current exhibit that is drawn from one of the oldest and most significant private collections in Europe. Treasures from the House of Alba: 500 Years of Art and Collecting features works by Goya, Murillo, Rubens, Titian, and more from the splendid palaces of the Alba dynasty in Spain.  Co-organized by the Meadows Museum and the Casa de Alba Foundation, the exhibition brings together more than 130 works of art dating from antiquity to the twentieth century.  This is the first major exhibition outside Spain of works from the collection of the House of Alba—a prominent Spanish noble family with ties to the monarchy since the fifteenth century.

Free and open to the public, the lecture will be held in the auditorium of the Frist Center located in downtown Nashville at 919 Broadway..

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828). The Duchess of Alba in White, 1795. Oil on canvas, 75 5/8 x 51 3/16 in.   Dukes of Alba Collection, Liria Palace, Madrid

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 6, 2016 in Events, HART, HART in Nashville, Lectures, VRC

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Elizabeth Moodey Featured Lecturer at University of Wyoming’s Visiting Artists Series

Elizabeth Moodey, assistant professor of history of art, was invited by the Department of Art at the University of Wyoming to present a lecture as part of their Visiting Artists Series.  Her lecture on March 9 was entitled “Laying Out the Case for Crusade in a Medieval Chronicle.”

Moodey also taught a seminar in their Northern Renaissance class on mining a series of comic stories from the court of the Duke of Burgundy, Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles (The Hundred New Tales), for evidence in two art history projects.

Moodey teaches the history of illuminated manuscripts, the culture of the Burgundian court, and the art of medieval Europe at Vanderbilt, with an emphasis on materials and technique and questions of patronage.

*Miniature of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1419-1467).  Attributed to the circle of the Master of the London Wavrin, Bruges (London, British Library:  Harley MS 6199), f. 57v.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 6, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Mireille Lee Speaks at University of Louisville Spring Lecture Series

Mireille Lee, assistant professor of history of art, was among several scholars participating in a spring lecture series at the University of Louisville examining “Women in the Ancient Mediterranean World.”

Her March 3 lecture was entitled “Mirror, Mirror:  Reflections of Femininity.”  A specialist in Greek art and archaeology, Lee has a particular interest in the construction of gender in ancient visual and material culture.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 5, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Fine Arts Gallery Event Spotlights Blair School of Music Faculty and Student Composers on March 29

Join the HART department and the University Fine Arts Gallery on March 29 at 7 p.m. for a special evening of music in the Cohen Gallery and the inaugural performance of four short compositions to be presented in conjunction with Close Readings: American Abstract Art from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Collection.  A reception will follow the performance.

The evening will spotlight Blair School of Music faculty composers Michael Alec Rose and Michael Slayton, and two student composers, Charlie Hackemer and Ian Herrera, each of whom has responded to works within the exhibition with a new composition.  Blair students, including those participating in the exchange program with the Royal Academy of Music, London, will perform these works.

This event is free and open to the public, and parking will be available free of charge in Lot 95, accessible from 21st Avenue South.  Those unable to attend the evening program on March 29 will be able to access the recordings on the Fine Arts Gallery’s website and on mobile platforms, such as smart phones and tablets, within the exhibition.

Free and open to the public, Close Readings: American Abstract Art from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Collection will remain on view through May 26.  Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, 1–5 p.m. through April 25.  Gallery hours  from April 26 through May 26 are Tuesday through Friday, noon–4 p.m.,  Saturday, 1–5 p.m., and closed Sunday and Monday.

Close Readings is supported by a generous gift from the Terra Foundation for American Art on behalf of board member Greg Williamson, with additional support provided by the Ewers Gift for Fine Art. It is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Mella.  For further information, please visit vanderbilt.edu/gallery.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 29, 2016 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

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HART VRC Staff Attend ARLIS/NA + VRA 2016 Joint Conference, Seattle, WA

Art-affiliated librarians en masse may not sound like anyone’s idea of a wild time, but HART’s Visual Resources Director Chris Strasbaugh and Assistant Curator Millie Fullmer certainly had a “Sleepless in Seattle” experience during last week’s ARLIS/NA + VRA 2016 joint conference.  ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America) and VRA (Visual Resources Association) share much in common with many of their members belonging to both organizations. Hence, it comes as no surprise that every four years an ambitious joint conference is held.

Starting off with a bang, the opening reception was hosted by the Seattle Art Museum, whose collection boasts Native American, ceramics, Australian Aboriginal, American and European art, in addition to a temporary exhibition of New York artist Kehinde Wiley.  Owing to a rather crowded schedule typical of a joint conference, sessions, meetings, workshops, and tours began at the early hour of 7 a.m. and went late into the evening.  Session highlights included: “Connecting the Past to the Present: Promoting Cultural Understanding through Collections and Exhibitions,” where speakers discussed controversial collections and exhibitions at their institutions; “Scope Drift: New Roles and Responsibilities in Visual Resources,” which addressed changes in VR that included new and challenging media formats, open access initiatives, teaching, repository development, data management, and specialized labs dealing with GIS, 3D printing, scanning, and design.

As a VRA board member, Chris had a major role on the planning committee of the joint conference and if that wasn’t enough, a last minute cancellation resulted in his putting together a presentation on the fly.  Fortunately it was on a subject dear to our VR director’s heart: “Do it, Make it:  Current Initiatives and Advice on Creating a Makerspace in Academic Libraries and Visual Resources Centers.”  Not to feel out done, Millie presented on the open source, digital publishing platform Scalar as part of the panel on “Engaging Technologies: change the way visual and print resources are used and discovered through media-rich software and technologies.”  It was her first time presenting and to help with nerves she included plenty of humorous visuals and jokes.

Millie also participated in the poster session, where she discussed our homegrown digital asset management system DIMLI and its exciting partnership with The Getty to launch a linked open data version of controlled vocabularies.  Many attendees at the conference were quite interested in adopting DIMLI for their own digital collections, which plans to launch via GitHub in mid April.

 

Despite the rain, Seattle was a fabulous city to host the conference and as part of the convocation, attendees were treated to a fascinating talk by keynote speaker Sarah Bergmann, the creator of the “Pollinator Pathway.” The closing reception was held at Seattle Public Library, an extraordinary building built in 2014 and designed by Rem Koolhaas (of the Netherlands) and LMN Architects of Seattle.  ~ Millie Fullmer

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 18, 2016 in Events, HART, Technology, VRC

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Exhibit of American Abstract Art Opens March 17 in Cohen Art Gallery

Close Readings: American Abstract Art from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Collection opens this spring in celebration of recent gifts from the esteemed collections of Sarah-Ann and Werner Kramarsky and Edna and Monroe Kornfeld, while also drawing on the considerable strengths of the university’s permanent collection.  An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, March 17, from 5 to 7 p.m. in Cohen Memorial Hall.

The exhibition features the unique interpretations of more than 35 faculty and students from disciplines across the university, providing fresh, new insights into how we look at art.

Close Readings will feature a wide range of abstract art by some of America’s most prominent artists, including Josef Albers, William Anastasi, Ross Bleckner, Stuart Davis, Sam Durant, Sam Gilliam, Cheryl Goldsleger, Seymour Lipton, Robert Motherwell, Harvey Quaytman, Martin Puryear, and Mark di Suvero.

Shifting away from the traditional exhibition with its singular “voice” of the curator, participating faculty and students have each chosen a work to “read” closely.  Representing diverse disciplines and centers including the departments of Sociology, Physics and Astronomy, History of Art, Art, Philosophy, Anthropology, English, Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Mathematics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology, the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, and the Owen Graduate School of Management, among several others, these responses, often overlapping for a single artwork, give insight into the value of close observation in every field.

Their readings demonstrate that abstraction can be an excellent entry point into art appreciation and observation, according to Joseph Mella, director of the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery and curator of the exhibition.  “Once we remove the need to find a narrative more commonly associated with representational art, it frees us to the pleasures of looking for its own sake,” he said.  “The wide range of readings found within the exhibition remind us that abstract art, by its very nature, encourages multiple perspectives in its viewers.”

In collaboration with the Fine Arts Gallery, Blair School of Music professors Michael Alec Rose and Michael Slayton, along with two of their students, have responded to works within Close Readings with four new musical compositions.  The inaugural performance of these works will take place in the Fine Arts Gallery on Tuesday, March 29, at 7 p.m.  A reception will follow. This program is free and open to the public.

All of the submitted close readings, including those in musical format, will be collected in a companion blog to the exhibition accessible via the gallery’s website. For those unable to attend the program on March 29, the musical compositions also will be available on mobile platforms, such as smart phones and tablets, within the exhibition.

Free and open to the public, Close Readings: American Abstract Art from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery Collection will remain on view through May 26, 2016.  Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday, 1–5 p.m. through April 25. From April 26 through the exhibition’s closing on May 26, gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, noon–4 p.m.; and Saturday, 1–5 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday.

Close Readings is supported by a generous gift from the Terra Foundation for American Art on behalf of board member Greg Williamson, with additional support provided by the Ewers Gift for Fine Art. It is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Mella.

*Untitled by Ross Bleckner, digital chromogenic print, 2009. Gift of Melissa and Scott Tannen, BA’99.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 15, 2016 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC

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Goldberg Lecturer to Examine Islamic Gardens as Fully Sensory Environments on March 30

“Islamic gardens were fully sensory environments, delighting the eyes, nose, ears,” described D. Fairchild Ruggles, an historian of Islamic art and architecture and professor of landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  “The fleeting sensations made by a fountain’s spray or the scent of a rose do not last in the body or in the garden—both living entities—but they leave traces in poetry, visual images, and architecture.”

Ruggles will deliver the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Wednesday, March 30, at 4:10 p.m. in Cohen Hall 203 followed by a reception in the atrium. Her lecture is entitled “Beyond Vision: Embodied Senses in Islamic Gardens” in which she will explore how to study so ephemeral an art form as the garden.

Ruggles is the author of two award-winning books on gardens: Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (2000), and Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (2008).  Her research examines the medieval landscape of Islamic Spain and South Asia and the complex interrelationship of Islamic culture with Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism and the precise ways that religion and culture are often conflated in the study of these.

Additionally she has edited or co-edited numerous works, including Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies (2000), the award-winning Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision (2007), Cultural Heritage and Human Rights (2007), Intangible Heritage Embodied (2009), On Location (2012), and Islamic Art and Visual Culture: An Anthology of Sources (2011).

Sponsored by the Department of History of Art, the Goldberg Lecture is free and open to the public.  Parking is available in Lot 95 outside Cohen Hall, off 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus and across from Medical Center East.  For more information, call the department at 615.322.2831.

*The Alhambra, view of the Courtyard of the Lions and fountain basin, Granada, Spain (above);  Courtyard in the Palace of Pasha ‘Abd al-Kari (also known as Dar al-Aman), Fez (below)

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Ruggles will deliver a second lecture, “Water and the Transformation of the Early Islamic Landscape,” on Thursday, March 31, at 2:35 p.m. in Buttrick 101 on the Peabody campus.  Free and open to the public, this lecture is sponsored by The Eos Project, an initiative to promote greater understanding of environmental issues through diverse disciplines and channels across Vanderbilt, and the Department of History of Art.

“Using an array of water technologies, early Islam transformed the desert in ways that stimulated the economy and produced not only new productive landscapes but gardens for pleasure,” said Ruggles.  “But to understand how this happened, we must set aside the historical fascination with the four-part form of chahar bagh (literally, “four gardens”) as an expressive symbol, and instead look at gardens as environmental systems that served living societies.”

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 15, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Christopher Johns Examines Chinoiserie in the Context of Church and State Politics

Christopher Johns, Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art, has written a groundbreaking study that examines chinoiserie—European works of art and visual culture that were influenced by Chinese art—in the context of church and state politics, with particular focus on the Catholic missions’ impact on Western attitudes toward China and the Chinese.  In his book,  China and the Church: Chinoiserie in Global Context, recently published by the University of California Press,  Johns demonstrates that the emperor’s 1722 prohibition against Catholic evangelization, which occurred after almost 150 years of tolerance, prompted a remarkable change in European visualizations of China in Roman Catholic countries.

China and the Church considers the progress of Christianity in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, examines authentic works of Chinese available to the European artists who produced chinoiserie, and explains how the East Asian male body in Western art changed from “normative” depictions to whimsical, feminized grotesques after the collapse of the missionary efforts during the 1720s.

Johns noted that the seed of his book project was “planted in the gorgeous gardens of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, the famed imperial residence of the Habsburg dynasty,”  in 2007, where he and a colleague “both noticed the omnipresence of East Asian art works and of objects produced in Europe but inspired by the Chinese and Japanese originals available to Western artists from a wide variety of sources.”

Their discussions continued long after leaving Vienna and ultimately led to an invitation to help direct a two-week seminar at the University of Kansas in the spring of 2009.  As the Franklin Murphy Visiting Professor, Johns presented material on baroque and eighteenth-century chinoiserie to the seminar students paired with one public lecture at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas and another at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.  These seminar meetings and public lectures formed the basis of the present book.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 14, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Kevin Murphy: Universities as Vanguards of Historical Preservation

The current issue of Vanderbilt Magazine (Winter 2016) features an article on a new campus land-use plan entitled “A Plan for All Seasons.”  Speaking at the all-day Vanderbilt University Land Use Symposium held on campus in early November, Kevin Murphy, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities and chair of the Department of History of Art, emphasized that land-use plans, especially for centuries-old institutions like universities, often make an important and lasting impact:  “Universities have been, and should continue to be, leaders in terms of preservation as well as incubators of architectural design.”

Murphy led a session entitled “Things of Quality Have No Fear of Time:  Campus Environments, Design and Preservation.” Betsey Robinson, associate professor of history of art and classical studies, also spoke at the symposium, addressing “First Principles:  Lessons in Land Use and Planning from Ancient Greece.”

The symposium was an initial step in the process of developing a campus land use plan, which is intended to articulate a comprehensive vision for the university’s footprint and to provide a basis for campus stewardship that enhances the university’s mission, according to Eric Kopstain, Vice Chancellor for Administration.

*Blueprint of a Vanderbilt University campus plan developed in 1905 by George Kessler

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 14, 2016 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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