Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

Christopher Johns Presents Paper on John Singleton Copley

Christopher Johns, Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art, presented a paper on Saturday, March 21, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in Los Angeles. Its title: “John Singleton Copley in Rome: The Challenge of the Old Masters Accepted.”

The paper was read in the session “American Latium: The Impact of Rome on American Artists in the Long Eighteenth Century,” chaired by Karin Wolfe, Research Fellow, British School at Rome. The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is an interdisciplinary group dedicated to the advancement of scholarship in all aspects of the period—from the later seventeenth through the early nineteenth century.

*John Singleton Copley (1738-1815). Study for “The Ascension,” 1774. Ink (“Bistre”) washes, pen and ink, black chalk, and graphite on off-white laid paper, watercolor. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 23, 2015 in HART, VRC

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“Memento Mori” Exhibit Opens March 12 in the Fine Arts Gallery

The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery celebrates the opening of Memento Mori: Looking at Death in Art and Illustration with a reception on Thursday, March 12, from 5 to 7 pm in Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus. Drawing on the combined resources of the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, the Eskind Biomedical Library Special Collections, local museums, and several private collections, the exhibit, on view through May 23, will reveal multiple perspectives on the nature of death and our attempts to memorialize the dead in order to give meaning to their lives.

The selection of art work attempts to create a greater understanding of the role of death and mourning throughout history. Through this collaborative effort, the Fine Arts Gallery presents an interdisciplinary approach to our awareness of mortality from the sixteenth century to the present.

Material featured within this exhibition ranges from art rooted in the Danse Macabre or Dance of Death, the medieval allegorical concept of the all-conquering and equalizing power of death, to deathbed scenes—a reminder that, in contrast to the way death is often experienced today, the end of life was frequently a gathering of family and loved ones. Other works reveal approaches to funerals and mourning, including artistic tributes to the dead.

The exhibition represents a range of times and cultures and includes works by Ivan Albright, Andrea di Bartoli, Enrique Chagoya, Sue Coe, William Edmondson, Hans Holbein, Käthe Kollwitz, Georges Roualt, Thomas Rowlandson, Stephen Tourlentes, Andreas Vesalius, Werner Wildner, and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

Memento Mori: Looking at Death in Art and Illustration is organized by the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery and co-curated by Joseph Mella, director, Holly Tucker, professor of French studies and professor of biomedical ethics and society, Christopher Ryland, assistant director at the Eskind Biomedical Library, and James J. Thweatt, coordinator for historical collections at the Eskind Biomedical Library.

Save the date for the Flexner Dean’s Lecture: “Memento Mori: Clinical and Historical Readings on Death in Art,” Tuesday, April 14, from 12:00-1:00 pm in Light Hall 208. Panelists include John Sergent, professor of medicine; Leonard Folgarait, professor of history of art; and Holly Tucker, professor of French and professor of biomedical ethics and society. More details to follow.

Gallery hours from March 12 to April 30 are Monday through Friday, 11 am to 4 pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 5 pm; and from May 1 to May 23: Tuesday through Friday, noon to 4 pm, Saturday, 1 to 5 pm, and closed on Sunday and Monday. Free and open to the public, the Fine Arts Gallery is housed in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the western edge of the Peabody College campus. Free parking is available after 5 pm in Lot 95 outside Cohen Hall, off 21st Avenue South on the Peabody campus and across from Medical Center East.

For further information, call the gallery (615.322.0605) or the curator’s office (615.343.1702); or visit vanderbilt.edu/gallery.

*Andreas Vesalius, Flemish (1514-1564)
De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body)
Second Edition, 1555
Bound Woodcuts
The Eskind Biomedical Library Special Collections

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 10, 2015 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART, VRC

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Harnessing a Linked-Open World: Integrating Cross-Discipline Content to Support Digital Humanities

Tasked with supporting the emerging trends in academia, the Visual Resources Center at Vanderbilt University is exploring how to support the increasing interest in cross-discipline research through harnessing the power of linked-open data (LOD). At the core of this mission is developing a searchable database of images and media that can be easily linked through location-based or keyword searches. While the cataloging of this varied content is impossible for any single center, LOD provides the conduit for harnessing the power and possibilities of diverse collections around the world.

Imagine having the ability to pull existing work records from CONA or Built Work Registry into your cataloging workflow and the time that is saved. Patrons could search your collections as well as any number of museums and institutions from a single search box. Accuracy of cataloging would increase by having the Getty and Library of Congress Vocabularies searched directly each time you add an Agent. What would research be like if all these possibilities were available from one database? That is the potential of an LOD system. While content provides access to their collections via LOD triples, there are no tools in place for integrating these various repositories of objects into a cataloging or search tool.

In his presentation this week at the Visual Resources Association’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado, Chris Strasbaugh, director of the Visual Resources Center, will explore the next stage of development of tools that have the potential to interact and share metadata and media among institutions: Harnessing a Linked-Open World: Integrating Cross-Discipline Content to Support Digital Humanities With these tools still in the planning stage, Strasbaugh will highlight many of the problems that arise as well as the potential for harnessing such a powerful tool. As the digital humanities transform the way faculty, students, and researchers are solving problems once thought specific to their discipline, LOD is providing visual resources professionals a way of matching these needs with diverse and ever-changing content.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 9, 2015 in Events, HART, VRC

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Mireille Lee Awarded Fellowship to Study Ancient Greek Mirrors

The University of Cincinnati has awarded a Tytus Fellowship to Mireille Lee, assistant professor of history of art and classical studies, for her current research on ancient Greek bronze mirrors. This summer Lee will spend two months in residence at the Burnam Classics Library at UC, widely regarded as the best in the country for classical art and archaeology.

Lee will investigate ancient metallurgy and methods of production as well as modern conservation practices. This research will be essential for the identification of fakes and forgeries in the corpus of ancient bronze mirrors, which have largely gone undetected.

*Bronze mirror with a support in the form of a draped woman, Greek Classical, mid-5th century BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art 1972.118.78. Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 9, 2015 in HART, VRC

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Katherine Rinne to Present Goldberg Lecture on March 12

Between 1560 and 1630, in a dramatic burst of urban renewal activity, the religious and civil authorities of Rome sponsored the construction of aqueducts, private and public fountains for drinking, washing, and industry, and the grand ceremonial fountains that are the Eternal City’s glory.

Urban designer and historian Katherine Rinne, adjunct professor in the Architecture Program at the California College of the Arts, will address “the waters of Rome” in the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Thursday, March 12, at 4:10 p.m. in 203 Cohen Hall. Her lecture is entitled “From Renaissance to Baroque: Water and Fountains in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” with a reception to follow in the atrium.

Rinne specializes in topics related to site and regional design with an emphasis on infrastructure, water history, and current issues related to urban development and water scarcity. She is the project director of Aquae Urbis Romae: The Waters of the City of Rome, an interactive cartographic 3,000-year history of the relationships between hydrological and hydraulic systems and their impact on the urban development of Rome, Italy. Aquae Urbis Romae examines the intersections between natural hydrological elements, including springs, rain, streams, marshes, and the Tiber River, and constructed hydraulic elements, including aqueducts, fountains, sewers, bridges, and conduits, that together create the water infrastructure system of Rome. This research project is published by the University of Virginia where Rinne is an associate fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities.

The Waters of Rome: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Birth of the Baroque City (Yale University Press, 2011), her pioneering study of the water infrastructure of Renaissance Rome, received the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize for Landscape History sponsored by the Foundation for Landscape Studies in 2011 and the Spiro Kostof Book Award for Urban History in 2012 by the Society of Architectural Historians. The Kostof Award recognizes the work that, focusing on urbanism and architecture, provides the greatest contribution to our understanding of historical development and change.

In her book Rinne presents a unified vision of Rome during the baroque period that links improvements to public and private water systems with political, religious, and social change. Tying together the technological, sociopolitical, and artistic questions that faced the designers during an age of turmoil, Rinne shows how these public works projects transformed Rome through innovative engineering and strategic urban planning.

Sponsored by the Department of History of Art and the Archaeological Institute of America, the Goldberg Lecture is free and open to the public. Limited 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.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 4, 2015 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Tara Zanardi’s Goldberg Lecture Rescheduled for April 9

Tara Zanardi, assistant professor of art history at Hunter College, will present the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Thursday, April 9, at 4:10 p.m. in 203 Cohen Hall. The lecture, originally slated for Thursday, February 19, has been cancelled due to inclement weather. Zanardi will address “Porcelain Pleasures and the Allure of the East: Charles III and China.” A reception will follow in the atrium of Cohen Hall.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 18, 2015 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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Malcolm Bell to Examine the Sicily of Archimedes on February 26

Malcolm Bell III, professor emeritus of Greek art and archaeology with the McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia, will deliver an Archaeological Institute of America lecture on Thursday, February 26, at 6 pm at the Nashville Parthenon in Centennial Park. In his lecture, entitled “Sicily in the Age of Archimedes,” Bell will examine works of art and architecture from Syracuse and the outlying cities, including Morgantina in east central Sicily where he has conducted fieldwork since 1980.

The Sicily of Archimedes consisted of the Hellenistic kingdom of Syracuse in the eastern third of the island. Before falling to Rome in 212 BCE, the Syracusan kingdom had enjoyed a productive half-century of peace, which was a period of innovation and invention in many areas. The royal administration of King Hieron II created rational new political relationships with the cities of the kingdom based on fairness, and contemporary material culture, as seen in architecture, sculpture, and mosaics, was characterized by striking innovation. The intellectual character of the age was influenced by the thought and discoveries of the great scientist and mathematician Archimedes, who was killed in the siege of Syracuse.

The AIA Norton Lecturer for 2014-2015 and director of the excavations at Morgantina, Bell holds his degrees from Princeton University. His areas of research are Classical archaeology and Greek and Roman art and architecture, particularly that of Sicily. He has published The Terracottas volume of Morgantina Studies (Princeton, 1982), and is currently working on a volume on the city plan and public buildings in the same series. Bell is also interested in the influence of Classical art and architecture in the United States, and works in progress include a monograph on Vitruvius’ influence on the design of the University of Virginia, and an article on the origins of the plan of Savannah.

Free and open to the public, Bell’s lecture is sponsored by the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park, and Vanderbilt’s Department of Classical Studies and Department of History of Art. Those who plan to attend the AIA lecture on February are encouraged to call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 13, 2015 in HART, Lectures, VRC

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HART Society Sponsors Valentine’s Day Celebration

Join the HART Society for cookie decorating, Valentine’s Day card crafting, and fun on Friday, February 13, at 4 p.m. in the Visual Resources Center, room 134 of Cohen Hall. Students, faculty, and staff are welcome.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 11, 2015 in Events, HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

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HART Department Awards Downing Grants for Spring Semester

The History of Art Department recently announced the recipients of the 2015 Downing Grants for the spring semester. They are Hannah Ladendorf, Sujin Shin, Emily Torres, and Erin Verbeck. The Downing Grant is a competitive award made in the fall and spring to juniors and seniors whose research in history of art courses would benefit from travel to museums, galleries, and other sites.

Ladendorf is researching Jean Honore Fragonard’s ensemble The Progress of Love, an iconic Rococo work rejected by its original patron, Louis XV’s mistress Madame du Barry, and now installed in its own room at the Frick Museum in New York. Ladendorf is taking the Art at the Court of Louis XV seminar taught by Christopher Johns, Goldberg Professor of History of Art.

Shin will work on material in the Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art Gallery in New York for her paper on the significance of religion in Alfredo Castañeda’s Libro de Horas (Book of Hours), a series of fifty-two illustrated poems named for the medieval prayerbook. Shin attends the seminar entitled Twentieth-Century Mexican Art: Painting, Cinema, and Literature, taught by Leonard Folgarait, professor of history of art.

Torres, who is writing on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, will travel to see the Detroit Industry murals and an exhibition of the couple’s work, both at the Detroit Art Institute. She will consult the Institute’s archives for photographs, recordings, correspondence, and preparatory sketches related to their work in the city. Torres is a student in Folgarait’s seminar.

Verbeck, also one of Folgarait’s seminar students, will travel to Dartmouth College for her examination of a mural by José Clemente Orozco, Gods of the Modern World from The Epic of American Civilization, focusing on the contrasting representation of women in Depression-era Mexico and the United States.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 11, 2015 in HART, Student/Alumni, VRC

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Tara Zanardi to Present Goldberg Lecture on February 19

Tara Zanardi, assistant professor of art history at Hunter College, will present the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Thursday, February 19, at 4:10 p.m. in 203 Cohen Hall. Her lecture is entitled “Porcelain Pleasures and the Allure of the East: Charles III and China,” with a reception to follow in the atrium.

“Tara Zanardi’s scholarly interests engage the art and visual culture of Spain and its global empire during the long eighteenth century,” said Christopher Johns, the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art.

Zanardi (PhD, University of Virginia) teaches courses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art that consider a wide range of topics—art and politics, the development of museums, national identities and cultural representations, fashion, gender, and global exchange.

She has published widely in a number of scholarly journals, including Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte and Eighteenth-Century Studies, and has received numerous prestigious fellowships. Her first book, Majismo and the Pictorial Construction of Elite Identity in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Penn State University Press) will appear later this year.

Her new book project, titled Global Exchange and Tropical Play: Chinerìa in Spanish Visual and Material Culture, focuses on “the deployment of colonial exoticisms in Spain and its empire, attempting to understand in the political and artistic context why certain artistic choices were made and others avoided,” said Johns. Zanardi will explore the highly fashionable and “exotic” eighteenth-century decorative mode of chinoiserie in primarily two major sites, the royal palaces of Madrid and Aranjuez. It will be the first in-depth analysis of chinoiserie in Spanish interior design, textiles, and decorative arts.

Sponsored by the Department of History of Art, the Goldberg Lecture is free and open to the public. Limited 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.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on January 27, 2015 in Events, HART, Lectures, VRC

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