Interactive Computer Display Press Release
Investigating the Renaissance On Line
The reinstallation of the Renaissance galleries in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, will open to the public on November 1, 1996. The works that comprise the installation form one of the foremost collections of early Italian Renaissance paintings in North America. The core of Sienese and Florentine fourteenth and fifteenth-century paintings will be complemented with strong examples of other Italian, Netherlandish and German paintings, sculpture and decorative arts. Artists represented will include Fra Angelico, Taddeo Gaddi, Fra Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, and Giovanni di Paolo. Investigating the Renaissance is organized by Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator, Stephan Wolohojian, National Endowment for the Arts Intern, and other members of the Fogg's Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts in conjunction with the staff of the Straus Center for Conservation. The installation has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and The Scott Opler Foundation, Inc.
Investigating the Renaissance will be installed in three exhibition galleries, including Warburg Hall, the single largest gallery in the Fogg Art Museum, which is reopening to the public after serving as temporary office space for several years. Fitted with a sixteenth-century Burgundian wooden ceiling, Warburg Hall is historically one of the most distinctive exhibition spaces in North America.
The art of the Renaissance has been central to the Fogg for much of the museum's history, for visitors to the museum as well as for the teaching of the history of art. In recent years, however, the focus of museum practice and art history has shifted and diversified to the extent that this art seems culturally remote for many museum visitors, students and scholars. Investigating the Renaissance is conceived with the twin goals of creating new audiences for these works, and creating new modes of access for those already acquainted with them. The Fogg Art Museum is especially well-placed to rekindle an interest in the art of the Renaissance because of its institutional history, the strength of its early Italian Renaissance holdings and the key role played by the Art Museums' Straus Center for Conservation in the study, presentation and interpretation of these objects.
Investigating the Renaissance is designed with the didactic and investigative components that are proper to a university art museum, presented in an attractive and informative manner to appeal to both students and the general public. The first gallery in the sequence will introduce and explicate the functions and contexts of works of art, employing didactic material in conjunction with works on view. The topics to be presented include the emergence of painting as an art, devotional practices in relation to art, patronage both lay and ecclesiastical, and the refulgence of subject matter drawn from classical antiquity.
The next gallery will be devoted to an investigation of the physical nature of Renaissance art and the various processes involved in making it. The display will include works that have recently been examined by the staff of the Straus Center for Conservation and the Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts, along with the results of their research, and models showing the structure of works of art, for example, gold ground panel paintings.
The third gallery, Warburg Hall, will present examples of Renaissance art in a less obviously didactic manner. It will allow the visitor to apply information learned and issues raised by the materials in the prior two galleries to the art exhibited.
M. Victor Leventritt Symposium
Saturday, November 2, 9:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Recent Developments in the Technical Examination of Early Netherlandish
Painting: Methodology, Limitations and Perspectives
Specialists from Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, and the United States will discuss the latest developments in the application of techniques such as X-radiography, infrared reflectography, and digital image processing. Paintings conservators from the Straus Center for Conservation will also discuss recent projects.
Speakers for the symposium include Maryan W. Ainsworth, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lorne Campbell, National Gallery, London, J.R.J. Van Asperen de Boer, Groningen University, Teri Hensick, Straus Center for Conservation, Peter Klein, Hamburg University, Henry Lie, Straus Center for Conservation, Richard Newman, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gianfranco Pocobene, Straus Center for Conservation, and Ron Spronk, Straus Center for Conservation. Molly A. Faries, Indiana University, will moderate a panel discussion.
The Leventritt Lectures were established in 1985 through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard class of 1935. Their purpose is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and greater Boston communities.
Gallery Talks
Gallery talks are free with the price of admission.
Saturday, November 9
with Stephan Wolohojian, NEA Intern, Department of Paintings, Sculpture,
and Decorative Arts. Fogg, 11:30 a.m.
Sunday, November 17
with Ron Spronk, Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellow, Straus Center for Conservation.
Fogg, 2:00 p.m.
Concert
Sunday, December 15
The Blossoming of Renaissance Choral Style: Musica Sacra will present
Flemish and Italian sacred choral music from the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries by composers Dufay, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Josquin,
Gombert, Clemens non Papa, Gabrieli and Palestrina. Presented in conjunction
with the exhibition Investigating the Renaissance, the performance will
include music for Christmas and Gregorio Allegri's Miserere. Fogg, 5:30
p.m. Concert admission is $5; $4 students and senior citizens. Doors open
one-half hour before concert begins. For further information on concerts,
please call the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs office at (617)
495-4544.