ADVANCE SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS-FALL 1997 - SPRING 1998

EDITORS: The following information is current as of August 25, 1997. Please disregard all previous schedules. It includes ongoing exhibitions and exhibitions that will open between September 1997 and April 1998, with some exhibitions continuing through 1998. This is not a comprehensive schedule. Information is subject to change: please check all titles and dates with the Public Relations office prior to publication. Thank you.

About Face: Artists' Portraits in Photography

Through October 19, 1997 (Fogg Art Museum)

Drawn from the Art Museums' collections, About Face: Artists' Portraits in Photography explores artists portraits in photography from the invention of the medium to the present day. The exhibition assumes a broad view, presenting imagery which evinces the diverse conventions of portraiture in photography through which concepts of aesthetics, identity, and culture are constructed and/or subverted. Among the artists whose work is featured are Mathew Brady, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier, Paul Strand, George Platt Lynes, Dora Maar, Aaron Siskind, Lee Friedlander, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, Kiki Smith, Tina Barney, Nick Waplington, Yasumasa Morimura, and Gary Schneider. About Face is organized by Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham Sr. Associate Curator of Photographs.

Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah

Through November 2, 1997 (Arthur M. Sackler Museum)

Organized by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Asia Society, New York, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence, this unprecedented exhibition-the first in the United States devoted to the artistic production of a single Rajput court-offers a unique view of pre-modern India through seventy paintings, drawings, and utilitarian works of art from the royal collections of the former state of Kotah (modern Rajasthan), one of the most prolific artistic centers in north India from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Gods, Kings, and Tigers was curated by Stuart Cary Welch, curator of Islamic and later Indian art emeritus, Harvard University Art Museums. Support for Gods, Kings, and Tigers has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, federal agencies, Corning Incorporated, Metropolitan Life Foundation, the Joseph H. Hazen Foundation, Inc. and the Edward Austin Waters Exhibition and Special Project Fund.

Fragments of Antiquity: Drawing Upon Greek Vases

Through December 28, 1997 (Fogg Art Museum)

The exhibition celebrates the acquisition and publication of a recently acquired collection of Greek black-figure and red-figure vase fragments by the Art Museums. The fragments come from 182 different vases that document almost two centuries of vase-painting, from the early sixth to the late fifth centuries B.C. The exhibition examines the vase-painting style of Greek artists in general, as well as masterworks by individual artists, including Sophilos, the Berlin Painter, Onesimos, Makron, and Douris. A large selection of the vase fragments are on display with Greek vases from the Art Museums' permanent collection, as well as loans from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fragments of Antiquity is organized by Aaron J. Paul, curatorial research associate in the Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics, and author of the essay and catalogue publishing this collection in the Art Museums' Spring 1997 Bulletin.

Wall Drawing #830: Four Isometric Figures with Color Ink Washes Superimposed

Opening September 1997-ongoing (Arthur M. Sackler Museum lobby)

A major new wall drawing by conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, one of our generation's premier draftsmen, occupies four walls in the lobby of the Sackler Museum. Comprising four large-scale geometric shapes on fields of primary colors, the drawing dramatically amplifies and animates the Sackler's double-height entry space.

The Art of Kotah at Harvard

September 20 through November 30, 1997 (Arthur M. Sackler Museum)

Organized by Stuart Cary Welch, curator of Islamic and later Indian art emeritus, Harvard University Art Museums, and Rochelle Kessler, acting assistant curator of Islamic and later Indian art, this exhibition complements and augments Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah. Paintings from the Art Museums' collection and from a private collection will be on display.

In/Tuition: A Seminar's Engagement with Joseph Beuys

September 20 through December 7, 1997 (Busch-Reisinger Museum)

The exhibition, drawn from the Art Museums' recently acquired comprehensive collection of the work of Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), is organized by Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and curated by students in his spring semester seminar at Harvard College. Not intended as a survey of Beuys' extensive and multifarious career, the exhibition will address selected issues and problems, as part of the Busch-Reisinger Museum's ongoing engagement with the work of Beuys, surely the most influential figure in post-war German, and indeed European art. Beuys is known for his shamanistic artist's persona, his political engagement, and his provocative, emotionally resonant art in a challenging variety of materials and media.

Positioning Nature and Industry: A Selection of Contemporary Art from the Busch-Reisinger Museum

October 4, 1997 through October 11, 1998 (Busch-Reisinger Museum)

The exhibition will explore the break-down of the ideological boundary that separates nature from technology through the work of a handful of artists: Joseph Beuys, Konrad Klapheck, K.H. Hödicke, Franz Bernhard and Per Kirkeby. Each artist presents a view of nature and industry that allows us to critically examine how we perceive our physical surroundings. Positioning Nature and Industry is organized by Sara Krajewski, 1996-97 Werner and Maren Otto Curatorial Intern in the Busch-Reisinger Museum. A complementary selection of works on paper is available for viewing in the study room of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Paragons of Wisdom and Virtue: Later East Asian Figure Painting

October 18, 1997 through August 30, 1998 (Arthur M. Sackler Museum)

The exhibition will introduce a selection of later Chinese, Korean, and Japanese figure paintings drawn from the Art Museums' permanent collection and from several local private collections. The paintings range in subject matter from civil officials, historical figures, and beautiful women to amateur poets, Taoist immortals, and Buddhist monks. The principal subjects of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting are landscapes, figures, and the flora and fauna of nature. Although the landscape, with its towering mountains and rushing streams, was the most important subject of later East Asian painting, it was never the only focus. Indeed, before the tenth century in China, and before the fifteenth century in Korea and Japan, the human figure claimed pride of place as the painter's principal subject. The goal of figure painting was never the celebration of the human form, as in Western art, but the presentation of paragons of wisdom and virtue whose noble deeds and lofty attainments might inspire emulation. Portraits of ancestors and likenesses of historical personages found favor, especially in China, while genre paintings rose to popularity in Korea and Japan. Such genre scenes recorded all aspects of daily life, from street scenes and domestic interiors to theatrical performances and ceremonial processions. Paragons of Wisdom and Virtue is organized by Robert D. Mowry, curator of Chinese art.

Rome and New York: A Continuity of Cities

November 1, 1997 through January 4, 1998 (Fogg Art Museum)

The exhibition, prepared by members of an undergraduate seminar on the history of prints, will examine how images of Rome and New York combine to form a profound lineage from the classical era to the contemporary moment on the threshold of the twenty-first century. Urban images range from those customarily accepted as 'fine art' by artists such as Piranesi, Lozowick, and Pennell to topographical views, maps, and advertising posters. Independent of their creators' intentions, the prints have a functional purpose which moves beyond artistic representation. They convey the idea of Rome as an ancient center of power and religion and New York as the epitome of the modern city. Certain images, however, run in direct opposition to these conventional views, and this contradiction sets up an intriguing exchange where each city has the flexibility to embody the other's popular traits. There are particular notions, ideals and images which are permanently associated with one city or the other and which emphasize the essence of each city, but at the same time they stress a continuous theme through which both cities are bound. These distinctions and continuities provide the framework for this exhibition. Rome and New York is organized by Marjorie B. Cohn, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints.

"Drawing is another kind of language": Recent American Drawings from a New York Private Collection

December 13, 1997 through February 22, 1998 (Arthur M. Sackler Museum)

Organized by James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums, this exhibition will present nearly one hundred drawings by contemporary American artists from a celebrated New York private collection. This is the first exhibition to be presented from a collection widely considered to be among the most important of its kind in the United States. Among the artists represented will be Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Eve Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Smithson, Robert Ryman, Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, Mel Bochner, David Jeffrey, Sara Sosnowy, Carole Seborovski, and Richard Serra. The exhibition will open at the Sackler and travel to Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Kunst-Museum Ahlen, Germany; and Academie der Kunste, Berlin. It will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by Dieter Schwartz, director of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur and a specialist in contemporary American art, and by Christian Schneegass, professor of art at the Berlin Akademie der Kunste, with extensive catalogue entries by Pamela Lee, assistant professor of modern art at Stanford University, and Christine Mehring, a Ph.D. candidate in modern art at Harvard University.

Mathew Brady's Portraits: Images as History, Photography as Art

January 24 through April 12, 1998 (Fogg Art Museum)

Organized by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., this traveling exhibition is the first modern exhibition devoted to the career of Mathew Brady (1823?-1896). Best known today for his photographic documents of the Civil War, Brady's contemporaries admired him for his portraits, which they called historic works of art. The exhibition will recreate the atmosphere of Brady's studios in New York and Washington during the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s. Unique daguerreotypes, majestic Imperial photographs, tiny cartes de visite, original glass-plate negatives, Brady's client register, cameras, chairs, and posing stands, as well as paintings, prints, and sculpture based directly on Brady's photographs, will be on display. The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Mathew Brady and the Image of History by Mary Panzer, curator of photographs, National Portrait Gallery, with an essay by Jeana Foley. Mathew Brady's Portraits is organized at the Harvard University Art Museums by Deborah Martin Kao, Charles C. Cunningham, Sr., Associate Curator of Photographs.

Sketches in Clay by Gianlorenzo Bernini

Opening February 28, 1998 (Fogg Art Museum)

In 1937, in one of its most far-sighted and spectacular purchases ever, the Fogg Art Museum acquired twenty-seven Italian baroque terracotta sculptures, fifteen of which are studies by the greatest sculptor of the seventeenth century, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). They include saints and allegorical figures, but perhaps most memorable are the extraordinarily vivid angels, seemingly descending directly from a heavenly realm in swirls of flowing drapery. 1998 is the quartercentenary of Bernini's birth, and this event is being marked by exhibitions in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C., as well as in Rome. As the guardian of the most important body of his intimate work-in-progress, the Harvard University Art Museums is dedicating a permanent collection gallery to these sculptures. Most of them have not been on public exhibition for many years and they return to view following the most comprehensive study of such a body of material ever undertaken. The results of this collaborative research by members of the Fogg's Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Art, and the Straus Center for Conservation will inform the innovative reinstallation and will be published as an issue of the Art Museums' Bulletin. Sketches in Clay by Gianlorenzo Bernini is organized by the Fogg's Margaret S. Winthrop Curator, Ivan Gaskell, and Andrew W. Mellon Intern, Colette Czapski Hemingway.

Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe: Fuseli to Menzel

April 4 through June 7, 1998 (Arthur M. Sackler Museum)

A selection from the most comprehensive and important private collection of German drawings and watercolors from the age of Goethe, this traveling exhibition will explore the range and significance of drawings in Germany around 1800, from the age of Enlightenment through the Romantic era until the early realism of Menzel. Consummate draughtsmen like Caspar David Friedrich, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Johann Georg von Dillis, and Adolf Menzel will be represented in depth, as will Romantic silhouettes by Philip Otto Runge and his contemporaries, and architectural studies by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leo von Klenze. Among the typically Romantic subjects well-represented in the collection are portraits, especially artists' portraits, landscapes, and the phenomenon of the English garden. Exceedingly rare in the private and public collections of the United States, these drawings and watercolors will afford the viewer an opportunity to study beautiful works from the greatest era of German draughtsmanship. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue. Drawings and Watercolors in the Age of Goethe is organized at the Harvard University Art Museums by William Robinson, Ian Woodner Curator of Drawings, and Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator, Busch-Reisinger Museum.

LONG-TERM INSTALLATIONS IN THE PERMANENT COLLECTION GALLERIES

Listed below are descriptions of thematic installations in the permanent collection galleries. These installations usually hang for one to three years. If you are planning or organizing a trip to the Harvard University Art Museums in the future please check with the Public Relations office on the status of these installations.

Coins of Alexander the Great

Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Alexander the Great (336-323 B.C.) left a remarkable legacy of political and artistic change in the wake of his dazzling military conquests in the fourth century B.C. His rapid ascendancy and lasting importance are well-documented in the coins of the ancient world, and this display of coins offers a sampling of his numerous depictions. Opened 1996.

The Art of Identity: African Sculpture from the Teel Collection

Fogg Art Museum

The installation brings together selections of African sculpture from the William E. and Bertha L. Teel Collection, an extraordinary group of arts from sub-Saharan Africa that were compiled over nearly thirty-five years. This diverse collection of sculptures illustrates the complexity of art traditions in Africa and offers an opportunity to examine issues of identity in African art. The Art of Identity is organized by Suzanne Blier, professor of African art and architecture, Harvard University, and James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums. It is co-curated by Suzanne Blier, Aimée Bessire and Mark Bessire. Support for the installation and related programs was provided in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. Opened 1996.

Investigating the Renaissance

Fogg Art Museum

The works that comprise this reinstallation of the Renaissance galleries 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 is complemented with strong examples of other Italian, Netherlandish and German paintings, sculpture and decorative arts. Artists represented 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 of Paintings, 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, the Getty Grant Program, and the Scott Opler Foundation, Inc. Opened 1996.

Sublimations: Art and Sensuality in the Nineteenth Century

Fogg Art Museum

One common perception of the nineteenth century is that it was an era of strict propriety, often masking secret vice. The intention behind this installation is to bypass the prurience and ethical self-congratulation implicit in such a view and to demonstrate how the arts of this period in Europe and North America engaged unapologetically with the senses. In doing so, they helped define various arenas of social and personal life, such as worship, the service of food and drink, and bodily adornment, as well as the-integrally related-construction of sexuality. The paintings and objects exhibited have been selected for the sensual-often erotic-charge they convey when viewed together as artifacts for the construction of sexuality, both female and male. Sublimations is organized by Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of Paintings. Opened 1996. 

The Persistence of Memory: Continuity and Change in American Cultures

Fogg Art Museum

The installation, organized by Timothy Anglin Burgard, former Henry Luce Foundation Associate Curator of American Art, consists of approximately sixty paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts objects. The persistence of memory, personal and collective, living and historical, has been a determining force in American cultures. It occupies an especially prominent place in a country whose Native American histories could be encompassed by the life spans of five consecutive centenarians. Immigrant histories perhaps constitute the most important component of the culture of memory in the Americas, and include Native American memories of the pre- and post-European contact periods; African American memories of unrecorded African origins, involuntary enslavement, and liberation; and Euro-American memories of separation, acculturation, and assimilation. The attendant tensions between the past and the present have fostered often competing desires to preserve and recover historical memories, or to renounce them and embrace an undefined future. The objects in The Persistence of Memory have been selected and displayed to suggest that the power of culture and the survival of its artifacts are determining forces in the development of American social discourse. Opened 1995.

Circa 1874: The Emergence of Impressionism

Fogg Art Museum

Organized by Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of Paintings, this selection of paintings reflects the emergence of impressionism as a form of pictorial practice. These works were made shortly before the time of the first impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874 and demonstrate the variety of what became known as the "new painting," which was not merely a single style. The installation includes works by Bazille, Boudin, Jongkind, Monet, Degas, and Renoir. Opened 1995.

France and the Portrait, 1799-1870

Fogg Art Museum

Organized by Ivan Gaskell, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of Paintings, this installation explores the changing conventions and practice of portraiture in France between the rise and power of Napoleon and the fall of the Second Empire. The installation examines how individuals' images were fashioned in the context of the many and frequent political and social changes that France underwent in these decades, and includes paintings, sculptures, miniatures, and photographs by such artists as David, Ingres, and Couture. Opened 1995.