Vanderbilt University History of Art Blog

Student Research Symposium Slated for April 18

Angela Romano, Elizabeth Furman, Christi Weinhuff, and Margot Danis are the featured speakers at the second annual Student Research Symposium on Wednesday, April 18, at 7:00 p.m. in Cohen 203, with a reception in the atrium following the event.

Paper topics include The Influence of Mathematics on Egyptian and Greek Sculpture (Elizabeth Furman); Ethical and Legal Questions Raised by the Elgin Marbles (Angela Romano); Mama/Reciprocal Energy: Reciprocity as an Agent of Identity Formation in the Works of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (Christi Weinhuff); Journey to Self-Discovery: Blurring the Boundaries of Performance Art in the Work of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (Margot Danis).

Sponsored by the Department of History of Art and the Vanderbilt History of Art Society, the symposium will be documented on video for future posting on the departmental website.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 14, 2012 in Events, HART

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James Wescoat to Address Water as Unifying Theme in Mughal Landscape

James Wescoat, MIT’s Aga Khan Professor of Architecture, will address “Water and Work in the Mughal Landscape” in a public lecture on Thursday, April 5, 4:10 p.m. in 203 Cohen Hall on the Peabody campus. An expert on the grand Mughal gardens built in the 16th and 17th centuries in what is now India and Pakistan, Wescoat applies his insights from South Asia’s distant past to the use of water in contemporary America as well as Asia.

“Water has been the unifying theme in my work, especially the study of water-conserving design across different scales, regions, and cultures,” said Wescoat, who has charted a new course in the study of water. “Water is to landscape what energy is to buildings.”

Wescoat is affiliated with The Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture, which is dedicated to the study of Islamic architecture and urbanism, visual arts and conservation and rehabilitation in the Islamic world.

The lecture is sponsored by the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities Sacred Ecology Seminar and the Department of History of Art’s Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture Series, Vanderbilt University. Parking is available in lot 95 in front of Cohen Hall by the 21st Avenue South entrance or on 18th Avenue South on the eastern edge of Peabody campus. ~Fay

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on April 2, 2012 in HART, Lectures

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Betsey Robinson Receives Prestigious Book Award

Betsey Robinson’s book, Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia, volume 2 in the “Ancient Art and Architecture in Context” series of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Princeton University, 2011), has received the 2011 PROSE award for Anthropology and Archaeology by the Professional Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers.

Robinson, associate professor of history of art and classical studies, was captivated by Peirene during her first visit to Corinth in 1996. “Peirene struck me at once as a unique monument,” she said. “I’d imagined it to be a great fountain on the forum like so many others, and was surprised to find its façade well below the forum and facing away from it, tucked into the landscape instead of towering over it. As I worked on Corinthian fountains and the ‘culture of water’, Peirene’s longer history caught my attention.”

Her interdisciplinary approach to Peirene merges archaeology, art history, architecture, mythology, historiography, hydrology, chemistry and microbiology. Reflecting her major interest in visual and contextual analysis, the volume tells the story of the celebrated Peirene fountain, the evolution of the site of Corinth around it, and the history of excavation from 1898 to the present.

Robinson remains interested in the classical culture of water, from the poetics of springs to fountain design. She is the Jacque Voegeli Fellow and co-director of the 2011/2012 Warren Center Fellows Program, “Sacred Ecology: Landscape Transformations for Ritual Practice.” She is currently pursuing a comparative study of landscape, monuments, politics, and rituals at Delphi and the Thespian Valley of the Muses, both in central Greece, in the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. The Valley of the Muses is a sanctuary owned and operated by the Thespians in honor of those female deities who inspire poets and musicians, and Delphi, a seat of Apollo, god of music and creativity.

“By their very essence these two sites are musical, and musical competitions were central to their religious rites,” said Robinson. “What fascinates me about these two mountain sanctuaries, though, are the resonances between the natural settings, ritual practices, and monumental development.” ~Fay

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 21, 2012 in HART, VRC

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Reflections of the Dutch Golden Age: Etchings by Adriaen van Ostade opens March 15

After Rembrandt, Adriaen van Ostade was the major Dutch etcher of the seventeenth century. An exhibit of Ostade’s etchings from the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery will be on display from March 15 through May 11 in the Fine Arts Gallery in Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus. The opening reception is on Thursday, March 15, from 5 to 7 pm.

Ostade was one of a number of seventeenth-century Dutch artists who specialized in genre themes, scenes drawn from daily life rather than from religious, mythological, or literary sources. Ostade’s work deals primarily with peasant life, a topic explored in the previous century by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Of the 50 known etchings by Ostade, Vanderbilt holds 34 as part of our collection of Dutch prints that numbers more than 100 works. Several included in this exhibition are early states of individual prints illustrating Ostade’s working methods. The etchings are representative of Ostade’s range of subjects: images of rural tradesmen, parents with their children, village fairs, itinerant peddlers, and quack doctors.

As a complement to the works by Ostade on view, a selection of prints by several of his contemporaries, including Nicolaes Berchem, Ferdinand Bol, Cornelis Dusart, and Rembrandt van Rijn, are featured, along with a sixteenth-century engraving after Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Reflections of the Dutch Golden Age: Etchings by Adriaen van Ostade from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery is organized by the Fine Arts Gallery and features the research of Fine Arts Gallery interns Rebecca Bratt, Katherine Calvin, and Katherine Bookout. The exhibition is curated by Joseph S. Mella, director.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on March 14, 2012 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery

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Sculpture from Fine Arts Collection in Guggenheim Exhibitions

Upcoming Guggenheim exhibitions in New York and Spain will include a John Chamberlain sculpture from the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery collection.

Chamberlain’s 1960 work “Maz” will appear in John Chamberlain: Choices, a comprehensive examination of the late artist’s work and his first U.S retrospective since 1986. Joseph Mella, director of the Fine Arts Gallery, recently traveled to New York to oversee its installation.

John Chamberlain: Choices is scheduled for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from February 24 to May 13, 2012, before traveling on to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where it will be on view from March through September 2013.

Born in Rochester, Indiana, Chamberlain (1927–2011) rose to prominence in the late 1950s with energetic, vibrant sculptures hewn from disused car parts, achieving a three-dimensional form of Abstract Expressionism that astounded critics and captured the imagination of fellow artists. Chamberlain frequently violated the formalist prohibition deriding the use of color in sculpture. He chose to adapt uncommon, recycled materials in his work, such as the slick, industrial palette of defunct auto bodies.

His balanced sculptures accentuated the deep volumes and eccentric folds that he managed to achieve by squeezing or compressing the metal and then welding the disparate elements into highly developed, collage-like compositions.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on February 10, 2012 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery

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Arts of Japan Exhibit Opens January 12 in the Fine Arts Gallery

In observance of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Asian American Student Association at Vanderbilt University, the Fine Arts Gallery will hold an opening reception for its winter exhibit, The Arts of Japan, on Thursday, January 12, from 5 to 7 pm in the atrium of Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody campus.

More than 1,300 objects compose this portion of the Fine Arts Gallery’s collections, encompassing both fine and applied art. Highlights include two six-panel screen paintings: an early seventeenth-century work illustrating scenes from the Tale of Genji and an eighteenth-century work featuring vignettes of daily life in Kyoto, each a masterful example of Japanese painting executed in mineral colors and gold leaf; a wide range of fine ceramics from blue and white porcelain to works by artists associated with the rebirth of the Japanese folk art movement; and textiles, scrolls, paintings, and rare books.

The exhibit will also feature outstanding examples of graphic arts by such influential Ukiyo-e artists as Utagawa Kunisada I, Utagawa Hiroshige, and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, along with artists associated with the twentieth-century shin hanga movement that revitalized traditional Ukiyo-e techniques with a modern sensibility.

The Arts of Japan is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Joseph S. Mella, director. The exhibit will feature the research of Fine Arts Gallery interns and research associates Rebecca Bratt, Meredith Novack, Ashley Pakenham, and Christine Williams.

The exhibit is on view in the gallery from January 12 through February 26 in Cohen Memorial Hall, 1220 21st Avenue South, on the Peabody campus. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 12-4 pm; Thursday, 12-8 pm; and weekends, 1-5 pm. The gallery is closed during academic breaks. For more information, call 615.343.1704 or visit www.vanderbilt.edu/gallery.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on January 11, 2012 in Events, Fine Arts Gallery, HART

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Romantic Art and the Natural Sciences: Focus of Goldberg Lecture on January 19

Dorothy Johnson, Roy J. Carver Professor of Art History, University of Iowa, will deliver the spring 2012 Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture on Thursday, January 19, at 4:10 p.m. in room 203 of Cohen Hall on the Peabody campus. Her lecture is entitled Elective Affinities: Romantic Art and the Natural Sciences from Girodet to David d’Angers.

Johnson’s area of specialization is 18th and 19th century French and European art. She has published articles on Chardin, the Romantic child, Rousseau and landscape painting, myth in French art, David d’Angers, Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David, among others. She is the author of Jacques-Louis David: Art in Metamorphosis (Princeton University Press, 1993), Jacques-Louis David: the Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis (Getty Museum Monograph Series, 1997) and is editor and contributing author of Jacques-Louis David: New Perspectives (University of Delaware Press, 2006). Her latest book, David to Delacroix: the Rise of Romantic Mythology (University of North Carolina Press) appeared in the spring of 2011.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Metered parking is available in front of Cohen Hall by the 21st Avenue South entrance or on 18th Avenue South on the eastern edge of Peabody campus.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on January 10, 2012 in HART, Lectures

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Professor Thomas B. Brumbaugh, 1921-2011

It is with regret that we announce the death of Thomas Brendle Brumbaugh, professor emeritus, on December 18, 2011. He retired in 1985 from a lengthy career teaching art history survey, American art, nineteenth-century art, and Indian art at Vanderbilt, where he received the 1968 Madison Sarratt Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. His scholarly interests ranged widely, from Ingres to Indian numismatics, and he published many articles on American painting, sculpture, and architecture, including “An Artist and His Model: Abbott H. Thayer and Clara May,” The American Art Journal, vol. 10 (May 1978). He was co-editor of Architecture of Middle Tennessee: The Historic American Buildings Survey and co-author of The Art of Gerald Brockhurst. Many alumni, undergraduate as well as graduate, will recall his erudition, his anecdotes, his kindness, and his humor. His profound influence and love of art led many of his students to pursue teaching careers in art history.

As a youth in Pennsylvania, Brumbaugh began collecting stamps and autographed correspondence. Several public collections have benefited from his collecting, notably the Archives of American Art and the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, on whose website intern Beatrice Kelly wrote the following:

Thanks to his eagle’s eye for diamonds in the rough that would augment the worth of the collection, Brumbaugh managed to acquire letters from a number of famous figures in the 19th and 20th century American art scene, including Thayer, Widener, George de Forest Brush, Samuel Coleman, and Maria Oakey Dewing…. The Thomas B. Brumbaugh collection of 19th and 20th century American artists’ correspondence doesn’t simply give the researcher a lopsided, art-focused view of those years, it paints a beautiful, multi-dimensioned picture of the time, covering everything from formal commissions for paintings to friendly invitations to dinner; from plain scenes of daily life to heart-wrenching appeals for forgiveness.

A letter from Henry Miller to Brumbaugh, now in Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library, offers a tantalizing glimpse into the way Brumbaugh obtained materials for his collection. Miller sends it in 1943 “as an example of [his] handwriting and asks to be placed in the album near Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Rimbaud, or Louis-Ferdinand Celine, ‘Not beside an American! (Unless Walt Whitman.)’ Miller says he understands the joy given by such a collection, ‘I have looked with tears in my eyes at the script (under glass) of Hugo, Balzac and others in France. Are you interested at all in the science of graphology? What is it precisely that appeals to you in these items? The marvelous thing would be to know when and where, under what precise circumstances, these pages were written.’

Brumbaugh also enriched the holdings of the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery. According to Joseph Mella, director of the Gallery, he gave more than 200 paintings, drawings, and prints during his career as an art historian and collector. While his generous gifts often reflected his scholarly interests in such American artists as Thayer and Brockhurst, they also were an indicator of his inquisitive eye that ranged far and wide. Among the works he presented to the Fine Arts Gallery are interesting works by such prominent artists as Isabel Bishop, Honoré Daumier, John Flaxman, John Henry Fuseli, Hendrick Goltzius, Sir Francis Seymour Hayden, Martin Lewis, Roy Lichtenstein, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, George Romney, Ansei Uchima, and Rembrandt van Rijn. These are works of art the Gallery continually draws on to constitute the basis for many exhibitions today, and for years to come. 

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on January 3, 2012 in HART

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Vivien Fryd Presented Lecture at UW-Madison in October

Professor Vivien G. Fryd was one of a select few alumni from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s graduate program to present a talk at the symposium, “Art History as a Window on Global Culture: New Research,” celebrating 85 years of education, research and enrichment for generations of students, faculty, and community at large. Her lecture, “Ringgold’s Slave Rape Story Quilt: Representing Transgenerational Sexual Trauma,” took place at the end of October 2011.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on October 30, 2011 in HART

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Alumnae Featured at History of Art Roundtable on October 21

As part of Vanderbilt’s Homecoming 2011 events, the History of Art Roundtable will feature four Vanderbilt alumnae in a panel session on Friday, October 21, from 3:30 to 4:15 pm in Cohen Hall 203. Martha Campbell BA’06, Katie Delmez BA’95, Anna Dubose BA’01, and Susan Knowles BA’74, MLS’75, MA’86, will discuss their careers related to their undergraduate major in art history.

A reception for History of Art alumni, current students, and faculty will be held in the Cohen Hall Grand Atrium from 3:30 to 5 pm.

Posted by vrcvanderbilt on October 20, 2011 in VRC

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