Capriccio: The Video

A few weeks ago, I showcased Meera Thompson's work on bklynbiblio, coinciding with the opening of her new show at the Atlantic Gallery. I hinted in that post about a project in the works, and I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that project now has happened. I have participated in a collaborative venture with Meera Thompson and filmmaker Anna Fahr to create a video about Meera's work. I provide art commentary, positioning Meera's work in the longer trajectory of art history, while Anna did the videography and editing. We're quite proud of the end result, as I hope you'll agree. To see more of Anna's documentary work, click here or click here. If you cannot see the video below, you can see it on YouTube by going to http://youtu.be/2k24lxeZfcg?hd=1.

London, Llandudno, and Leeds

In April I announced that I was an invited guest speaker at a conference on Polychromy and Its Environments: New Perspectives on Colour and the Display of Nineteenth-Century Sculpture at the Henry Moore Institute. That time is now upon us. I'll be heading to London first, and ending in Leeds, but I must say that I'm rather excited that I'll be traveling with my cousin HA to Llandudno, Wales for 2 nights. It will be my first time to Wales, and we'll be stomping through John Gibson's birth land in and around Conwy on the north shore of the country. On the list of things to do is visit Bodelwyddan Castle (above) in Rhyl, where some of Gibson's sculptures are on display as long-term loans from the Royal Academy of Arts. I'm sure I'll be posting on Facebook and blogging as time permits. See you soon! Or, as they say in Welsh, Gweler chi cyn bo hir! I can't even begin to think how you would pronounce that.

MWA IV: Leonardo's Ginevra

Back in March, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. announced they were releasing high-resolution digital images of more than 20,000 objects from their collection in an ongoing attempt to make these public domain works more widely available for both commercial and non-commercial purposes using the highest quality museum-produced photography. This is a tremendous coup for educators and the public alike, as the removal of specific fees for publishing and other uses inevitably will draw more people's attentions to the NGA's collection in support of their open access policy. You can read more about their open access policy here. bklynbiblio readers will recall that the Yale Center for British Art previously had done something very similar last year. Other museums will follow, for sure. In celebration of the NGA's move forward, I've selected Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci, ca. 1474-78, as June's Monthly Work of Art. Rather than give my own thoughts on the beautiful portrait, here's just a small piece of what the curators at the NGA have to say about it: "She was the daughter of a wealthy Florentine banker, and her portrait—the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas—was probably commissioned about the time of her marriage at age 16. Leonardo himself was only about six years older. The portrait is among his earliest experiments with the new medium of oil paint; some wrinkling of the surface shows he was still learning to control it. Still, the careful observation of nature and subtle three–dimensionality of Ginevra's face point unmistakably to the new naturalism with which Leonardo would transform Renaissance painting. Ginevra is modeled with gradually deepening veils of smoky shadow—not by line, not by abrupt transitions of color or light." You can read more about the painting by clicking here. To search and download NGA images for your own use, click here.