Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

Book Explores Illuminated Manuscripts of Crusader History

Elizabeth J. Moodey, assistant professor of the history of art, considers Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy from 1419 to 1467, as a patron of history writing and of illuminated manuscripts in her new book entitled Illuminated Crusader Histories for Philip the Good of Burgundy (Brepols Publishers, 2012). Among Moodey’s interests are the history of illuminated manuscripts, the culture of the Burgundian court, and the art of medieval Europe, with an emphasis on materials and technique and questions of patronage.

Philip the Good distinguished himself as a patron of illuminated histories and historical romances, and as host of the most lavish entertainment of the middle ages. The Banquet of the Pheasant was a response to the Fall of Constantinople, and it was staged to enlist support for the coming crusade. Two splendid tributes to heroic crusaders from the duke’s family tree, commissioned in the 1450s, provide an opportunity to bring these elements of his reputation—bibliophile and would-be crusader—under the same lens. Our perception of the Charlemagne Chronicle in Brussels (BR, MS 9066-68) and the Jerusalem Chronicle in Vienna (ÖNB, Cod. 2533) is enhanced when we consider other examples of “crusade literature” and remember the perennial goal of recovering Jerusalem.

This study of the visual and literary projects that supported Philip’s efforts to launch a crusade, long after the days of the “classic” crusades, sets these manuscripts in the context of his court’s interest in history writing and updated historical romances, and against the background of the French crusading tradition and the Burgundian incarnation that succeeded it.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on January 4, 2013 in HART, VRC

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Gallery Exhibit of Tim Hetherington’s Photographs Closing Soon

Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold, Photography by Tim Hetherington will be on view through Thursday, December 6, in the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery in Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus.

Tim Hetherington, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and British photojournalist, documented the experience of war from the perspective of the individual, mostly in West Africa and the Middle East. Through his photography, writing, and films, Hetherington offered new ways to look at and think about human suffering. On April 20, 2011, while covering the conflict in Libya, Hetherington and fellow photographer Chris Hondros were killed by Libyan forces in a mortar attack on the besieged city of Misrata.

The exhibition entwines documentary photography, oral testimony, and memoir to explore the dynamics of power, international complicity, and the search for justice in recent Liberian history. Hetherington lived in Liberia on and off for several years, documenting with his Hasselblad the chaos and agony of war and the painful, slow reconciliations that followed.

Hetherington was the recipient of Columbia University’s Alfred I. DuPont Award for excellence in broadcast journalism, a UK NESTA National Endowment Fellowship and four World Press Photo prizes, including the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year.

The Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery is located in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the western edge of the Peabody College campus. Gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday; noon to 8 p.m., Thursday; and 1-5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 28, 2012 in Fine Arts Gallery, VRC

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Future of Electronic Books in Art, Art History, and Architecture

Recent shifts in the museum, technology, and rights-management worlds have convinced Patricia Fidler, publisher of Yale University Press’s art and architecture list, that scholarly art-history publishing has a promising digital future. An interesting read is Jennifer Howard’s article, “Art Publishers Look to Yale Press for Glimpse Into Their Digital Future,” that appeared in the October 15 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 28, 2012 in Technology, VRC

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Vivien Fryd to Lecture on Faith Ringgold in Paris on December 6

Vivien Green Fryd, professor of history of art, will lecture on “The Transgenerational Trauma of Slavery in Faith Ringgold’s Slave Rape Story Quilt ” in Paris on December 6 at the Terra Foundation for American Art Europe. Fryd is currently the Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art at the Freie Universität, Berlin.

Faith Ringgold’s Slave Rape Story Quilt (1984-1985) challenges the viewer to witness, acknowledge, and remember the individual and transgenerational trauma of slavery

during the Middle Passage and on southern plantations. Combining painting, quiltmaking, and text, this storytelling quilt constructs a fictional first-personal slave narrative in which the heroine, born into slavery, a progeny of rape, and a victim of rape, journeys from sexual slavery to freedom, from silence to speech. Ringgold thus follows the tradition of the classic, propagandistic fugitive slave narratives, published by whites, that became a unique American literary form by the mid-1840s, as forceful and moving first-person accounts intended to arouse antislavery sentiments.

Fryd will argue that Ringgold represented the intergenerational transmission of trauma as postmemory, the relationship of previous generations to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but nevertheless were transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right, though they can never be fully understood nor recreated.

Fryd is the author of Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815-1865 (Ohio University Press, 2001; reprint Yale University Press, 1992) and Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper (University of Chicago Press, 2003). She is currently writing a book manuscript entitled Representing Sexual Trauma in Feminist American Art, 1960-present. She has published articles in The Art Bulletin, The American Art Journal, The Winterthur Portfolio, American Art, National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Common-place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life, Continuum, Traumatology, and other journals. Her essays appear in a number of edited books, including Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, ed. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster (HarperCollins, 1992), Critical Issues in American Art, ed. Mary Ann Calo (Westview Press, 1998), and Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars, and Honky-Tonk Bars, ed. Cecelia Tichi (Duke University Press, 1998).

Free and open to the public, Fryd’s lecture will begin at 5 p.m. in the Terra Foundation for American Art Europe at 29 rue des Pyramides.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 26, 2012 in Events, HART, VRC

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HART Society to View Carrie Mae Weems Exhibit on November 9

Join the Vanderbilt History of Art Society for ARTini: Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts on Friday, November 9. Shaun Giles, educator for outreach at the Frist, will lead an informal conversation about some of the works included in the exhibition.

The group will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the parking lot in front of Cohen Hall, and the carpool will leave for the Frist shortly thereafter. Please RSVP through Anchorlink or email Emma Trawick (emma.c.trawick@vanderbilt.edu), Lexi McColl (alexandra.a.mccoll@vanderbilt.edu), or Laura Payne (laura.l.payne@vanderbilt.edu) and indicate whether you can drive and how many passengers you can bring.

Carrie Mae Weems is a socially motivated artist whose works invite contemplation on issues surrounding race, gender and class. Increasingly, she has broadened her view to include global struggles for equality and justice. This retrospective, which is composed of more than 200 objects—–primarily photographs but also written texts, audio recordings, fabric banners and videos—–will provide an opportunity to trace the evolution of Weems’s career over the past 30 years.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 7, 2012 in Events, HART, VRC

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Julia Murray to Deliver Goldberg Lecture on Thursday, November 8

Julia K. Murray, professor of art history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will deliver the Goldberg Lecture in Art History on Thursday, November 8, at 4:10 p.m. in Cohen Hall 203. Her lecture is entitled “The Cult of Confucius and the Shrine of His Robe and Cap.”

Sponsored by the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture Series (department of history of art), department of religious studies, and the Asian studies program, the lecture is free and open to the public. Cohen Memorial Hall is at 1120 21st Avenue South on the western edge of the Peabody College campus. Parking is available in Lot 95, the 21st Avenue parking lot across from Medical Center East. For more information, call the history of art department at 615.322.2831.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 6, 2012 in VRC

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Opera at Ingram Hall Inspired By Paintings of Edward Hopper

Vanderbilt Opera Theatre (Gayle Shay, director) and Vanderbilt University Orchestra (Robin Fountain, conductor) will present Operas in One Act—two contemporary operas, each one act long, on November 9 (8-10 p.m.) and November 11 (2-4 p.m.) at Blair School of Music’s Ingram Hall. Later the Same Evening, written in 2007 by Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer John Musto, with a libretto by Mark Campbell, will bring to life iconic works by the celebrated American artist Edward Hopper whose urban scenes are among the most enduring images of the 20th century.

Five of Hopper’s paintings capture moments of profound loneliness and a sense of estrangement: Room in New York (1932), Hotel Window (1955), Hotel Room (1931), Two on the Aisle (1927), and Automat (1927) all depict New York scenes that convey a sense of solitude that one can feel in the city. The opera imagines the lives of the figures in these paintings and connects them as characters—both directly and tangentially—on one evening in New York City in 1932.

The second opera, Three Decembers, was written in 2008 by Jake Heggie. The libretto by Gene Scheer is based on an unpublished play by Terrence McNally. Composer Heggie will be in residence at Blair during production week as part of Blair’s BMI Composer-in-Residence program, working with the student performers.

Free and open to the public, the performances are sponsored by Susan and Drew Pinsky (in gratitude for Helene Stanton’s great musical influence on their family), BMI, and the Mary Cortner Ragland Master Series Fund.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 5, 2012 in Events, VRC

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Sheri Shaneyfelt Receives Award for Excellence in Teaching

Sheri Shaneyfelt, senior lecturer in Renaissance and Baroque Art and director of undergraduate studies, has won the 2012 Harriet S. Gilliam Award for Excellence in Teaching. The Gilliam Award, established in 1995 in memory of Harriet S. Gilliam, B.A., 1966, recognizes a lecturer or senior lecturer who has achieved excellence in teaching undergraduates. Nominations are reviewed and ranked by student members of Phi Beta Kappa, after which the Arts and Science dean selects a winner. Shaneyfelt received a cash award and an engraved Mississippi Julep pewter cup.

Shaneyfelt (Centre College, B.S.; Vanderbilt University, M.A.; Indiana University at Bloomington, Ph.D.) specializes in Italian Renaissance Art; she also teaches courses in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Art at Vanderbilt. She has served as a lecturer in art history at The Umbra Institute, Perugia, Italy, and The Institute for Fine and Liberal Arts at Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, Italy.

Her research has been published in the Burlington Magazine and in Studying and Conserving Paintings, a joint publication of the Kress Foundation and the Institute for Fine Arts Conservation Center at New York University. An article recently published in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte establishes the graphic style of the painter Giannicola di Paolo, an important associate of Pietro Perugino. Shaneyfelt’s current studies continue her focus on Renaissance Umbria and the artistic culture of Perugia circa 1490.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on November 5, 2012 in HART, VRC

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Noted Archaeologist to Discuss Jezreel Expedition on November 5

Norma Franklin, noted field archaeologist, Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, who recently launched the Jezreel Expedition in what was an ancient Israelite city and fortress, will lecture at the Parthenon on Monday, November 5. Her talk, Jezreel: The View from Jezebel’s Window, will begin at 7 p.m.

The fertile Jezreel and Harod valleys, with their copious springs, provided ideal conditions for both agriculture and grazing in the northern kingdom of Israel. It was these ideal conditions that ensured that Jezreel was continously occupied from the earliest times until the present day.

The Book of Kings tells a dramatic story about Jezreel. The prophet Elijah is pitted against King Ahab of Israel and his wife Jezebel for acquiring a coveted vineyard by plotting the murder of its owner, Naboth. In addition, King Jehu brings retribution to Jezreel by killing Jezebel and 60 sons of Ahab.

Excavations at Jezreel are now being aided by airborne laser technology to enhance understanding of the site and its surroundings. Franklin, a founding member of Tel Aviv University’s Megiddo Expedition, will provide perspective on Jezreel’s importance by highlighting the key economic and military roles that it played not only during the biblical period but also in more recent times.

“Dr. Franklin made enormous contributions to the excavation of Megiddo, and she is now bringing her considerable skills to the dig at the famous site of Jezreel,” said Doug Knight, Drucilla Moore Buffington Professor of Hebrew Bible and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. “Her lecture will be fascinating and inspiring.”

Franklin, who has taught field techniques to many Vanderbilt archaeology students, is a frequent lecturer at archaeological and biblical conferences. She has appeared in numerous documentaries for the History Channel, National Geographic and the BBC. She is co-directing the Jezreel Expedition with University of Evansville Professor Jennie Ebeling.

Franklin’s lecture, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, Vanderbilt’s Jewish Studies Program, the Divinity School, and the departments of anthropology, classical studies, history, history of art (Goldberg Lecture Series) and religious studies, as well as the Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park.

Call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat. For more information, email Knight at dak@vanderbilt.edu or call 615.322.2776.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on October 30, 2012 in Events, HART, VRC

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Christopher Johns Lectures at University of Iowa Museum of Art

Christopher Johns, Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of History of Art, delivered a lecture entitled Images of Rule in the Age of Revolution: Napoléon Bonaparte and Antonio Canova on October 16 at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Sponsored by the Elliott Society, the lecture was featured in conjunction with the exhibition Napoléon and the Art of Propaganda, a visual chronology of more than 120 drawings, prints, paintings, sculpture, manuscripts, medals, and objets d’art from the private Parisian collection of Pierre-Jean Chalençon, on display through January 29, 2013.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on October 30, 2012 in HART, VRC

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