May 29 through September 26, 2004
At The Fogg Art Museum (more about the Fogg)

The New Fogg under Construction on Quincy Street, 15 March 1926. Harvard University Art Museums Archives, ARCH.2003.5. Photograph: Katya Kallsen, HUAM.

The first Fogg Art Museum opened in 1895 in a modest Beaux-Arts structure on the northern edge of Harvard Yard and featured mostly plaster casts and electrotype copies for teaching. Beginning in 1915, Edward W. Forbes and Paul J. Sachs, the Museum's director and assistant director, sought to refashion its collection and pedagogical mission. Their idea was that learning and research in the field of art would be better shaped by studying objects, images, techniques, and texts in a single space. During the 1920s, they built the fund-raising mechanisms, collections, faculty, and research resources that ultimately realized their vision of a "fine arts laboratory." When the new Fogg opened in the present building in 1927, it was the first structure designed for the specialized training of art scholars and museum professionals in North America. The story of the reinvention of the Fogg forms a significant chapter in the history of art institutions in the United States and Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. This exhibition is organized by Kathryn Brush, professor of art history, University of Western Ontario.

Press Release