SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETED GALLERY TALKS AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS

Gallery talks take place at the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum (both at 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge) and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (485 Broadway, Cambridge). All are free to the public with the price of Art Museums' admission ($5.00; $4.00 senior citizens; $3.00 non-Harvard students; free under 18, on Saturday mornings, and to Harvard affiliates). Hearing assists are available for gallery talks at the front desk.

American sign language interpreters will be available for the following gallery talks.
Call (617) 495-2397 for further information.

Saturday, April 19
The Art of Identity: African Scultpure from the Teel Collection
with Aimée Bessire, co-curator of the exhibition. Fogg, 11:30 a.m.
Trudy Jeffers, Interpreter

This exhibition 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. Few artistic subjects are more important than identity. Representations of identity provoke important questions across a range of cultures and genres, impacting our reading not only of persona, but also issues of gender, religion, place and forms of governance. Identity provides a valuable lens for understanding the way the arts of Africa embody and display recognizable aspects of selfhood, community and nation. The diverse collection of sculptures in The Art of Identity illustrates the complexity of art traditions in Africa and offers the opportunity to examine issues of identity in African art.

Saturday, May 24

Worlds Within Worlds: The Richard Rosenblum Collection of Chinese Scholars' Rocks
with Melissa Moy, research assistant, Department of Asian Art. Sackler, 11:30 a.m.
Kellie Stewart, Interpreter

The first major exhibition and study of its kind in the West, Worlds Within Worlds includes eighty rocks of diverse types. They date from the Song (960-1279), Yuan (1279-1368), Ming (1368-1644), and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, with a few coming from the twentieth century. In reference to collected rocks, "date" refers not to geological age but to a rock's date of first appreciation as a work of art. Chinese connoisseurs had recognized the special aesthetic and spiritual qualities of rocks at least by the Tang dynasty (618-907)long before "found art," "environmental art," or "ecological art" gained recognition and acceptance in the West. Numerous references to scholars' rocks and their aesthetic merits appear in the writings of Su Shi (1036-1101) and Mi Fu (1051-1107), the quintessential literati statesmen who typified the Northern Song period (960-1127); in addition, at least one book on rocks had appeared by early Southern Song times (1127-1279). The rocks selected by Robert Mowry for
inclusion in Worlds Within Worlds illustrate the full range of scholars' rocks, in terms of size, material, aesthetics, and stylistic evolution.

Saturday, May 31
From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll: The Peasant Genre in 17th-Century Dutch Drawings and Prints
with Anna C. Knaap, exhibition curator. Fogg, 11:30 a.m.
Janice Cagan-Teuber, Interpreter

The drawings and prints brought together in this exhibition highlight not only the thematic variety of lowlife and festive imagery, but also the various technical means artists employed to record such peasant themes on paper. They range from mannerist woodcuts, black and red chalk figure studies, preparatory sketches in brown ink, a grisaille oil sketch and virtuoso etchings to gemlike watercolors. Many of the preparatory sketches and studies did not leave the artist's studio, but served as stock for future reference and inspiration, whereas the prints and finished drawings found a ready market with prosperous urban collectors. In Haarlem the peasant genre arose alongside the growing desire of the urban elite to retreat in the country. City dwellers increasingly acquired country estates, while those who could not afford such homes would go on day trips to enjoy the forest and dunes surrounding Haarlem. At this time lowlife and landscape pictures became popular with urban collectors who sought to extend their pleasurable experience of the local countryside into the confines of their city homes. But the images that lowlife artists created, although grounded in reality, were far from accurate representations of the sometimes deplorable conditions of the peasantry in seventeenth-century Holland.