Chinese Bronzes & Korean Ceramics

Whenever people ask me about my job and I tell them I'm the Curator of Art Properties at Columbia University, they inevitably ask me the most obvious question: "What do you do?", or the derivative, "What does that mean?" However, I enjoy most this question-phrased-as-a-statement that requires more thought: "Tell me what a typical day is like for you." The trouble with responding to that is there is no such thing as a "typical day" for me. Sometimes I'm dealing with loans (external exhibitions or on-campus displays). Other days I teach a class about a selection of artwork chosen by a professor. I sometimes meet with potential donors and then process their donations through a variety of channels. I'm frequently in meetings (a LOT of meetings) and dealing with email (a LOT of email) on more things than I can bother relaying. I try to do as much research on art objects in the collection for a variety of projects as I can. Preservation of art objects is also a regular concern. With a universal art collection such as ours, in 1 week I have been known to deal with a public monumental sculpture from 1967, a Dutch portrait from 1626, Polaroids by Andy Warhol, and ancient Chinese bronzes. One of the greatest parts of this job, however, is working directly with the objects themselves, and when I have time to be creative, arranging an installation of these objects can just turn out to make my day a laborious, but fun-filled one.

Today was just one of those days. This semester my department is working with Prof. Robert Harrist and 9 PhD students for a seminar entitled "Chinese Art at Columbia." I was the impetus behind this in that I first presented to him last semester the idea of having students study objects in the collection, especially the works from China on display in our gallery in Low Library. The installation in this room quite literally had not been touched in over 40 years, which means no one had ever done research on them since they were donated by Arthur M. Sackler (yes, that Sackler!) from the 1960s and 1970s. This graduate seminar has begun, and the students are doing their first assignment already, researching and writing about some of our bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynasties (ca.1650-ca.250 BCE). Today, my staff and I moved about 100 objects out of the main gallery space, put most of them in storage, and then reinstalled the Shang and Zhou bronzes in display cases near the seminar room so the students have easier access to them. The photograph you see at the bottom is the new display we set up for the Shang dynasty ritual bronzes. We then did a temporary installation in the original gallery space, putting in 9 cases a selection of Korean ceramics that are also from the Sackler donation. The photograph above is what 3 of those display cases now look like. When the seminar is over, the research by the students will help us reenvision a new installation in the gallery for the Chinese art, with proper signage to educate people about the works, and make them all look better and more up-to-date with modern backdrops.

I confess that I'm extremely proud with how it all worked out today. The installation of the bronzes and ceramics in the cases all came out even better than I had hoped. It was a full day of work to get it all accomplished, and LGS and LV (my staff) did a wonderful job packing and moving everything back and forth between buildings, but it was definitely worth it. We're Art Properties. And we rock!

Animals & Goddesses: Anna Hyatt Huntington

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University has hosted, since the late 1980s, an array of rotating exhibitions, many often directly linked to curriculum programs at the university. The latest is no exception. Entitled Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936, the exhibition is a retrospective of this woman sculptor (1876-1973) who, during at least the first half of the 20th century, was one of New York City's most popular artists. The exhibition was curated by Prof. Anne Higonnet and her seminar students. I had a sneak peak during the installation, and the show is going to be fantastic. Huntington's favored medium was bronze, and she was clearly a student of close observation when it came to animals. Her sculptures are quite amazing in their realism. The work you see here is Cranes Rising, 1934, a gift from the artist to Columbia (photo: Mark Ostrander), which my department (Art Properties) agreed to include in the exhibition. (I must give my art handler LGS credit for working hard on cleaning and waxing the sculpture, and I encouraged everyone involved with the exhibition to consider using this piece as a focal point as it was a Columbia-owned work and properly should be given due credit in a Columbia exhibition.)

In the piece you see here, notice how Huntington shows a flock of cranes first at rest in the marshes, then moving upward in a coil, with the top crane soaring into the sky. It's fascinating how she expressed the sweeping movement in time with such a naturalistic effect, yet still managed to kept the work within a quadrilateral space, reducing the potential "baroque" effect of affected motion and exaggerated theatricality. Her interest in animals clearly hearkens back to the Romantic sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye (1796-1875), who established a career for himself as an animalier, specializing in animals in action--usually in their most violent forms. Barye also produced high-quality reduced bronzes commercially, enabling the middle classes to own fine works of art for their homes, although his practice was highly criticized by the Academy as a form of "selling out." Huntington also sculpted works depicting strong female saints like Joan of Arc and goddesses like Diana, suggesting an affinity for masculinity not only in her choice of subjects but also in the very art of bronze-making itself. Many of her sculptures are large public monuments: the Joan of Arc equestrian statue is less than 10 blocks away from my apartment near Riverside Park! Like Harriet Hosmer, Emma Stebbins, and other great women sculptors of the past, Huntington is arguably a feminist sculptor who takes pride in demonstrating what a woman can do as an artist. The exhibition opens this week and runs until March 15. News about it is already buzzing: an article in The New York Times (scroll down on the page); and The Magazine Antiques has an article written by Higonnet giving a summary of her life and work. 

Return to Downton Abbey

According to the PBS countdown, season 4 of that amazing miniseries Downton Abbey begins in just 1 day, 23 hours, and 48 minutes (as of when I'm writing this). I've been raving about this show for the past few years now. But I confess that for some reason I'm just a little less excited this time than I was the last 3 seasons. Is it because of poor Matthew's demise? Is it because I'm uncertain who Lady Mary will turn to for solace? Will something devastating ruin Anna and Mr. Bates's romantic bliss? Will the Dowager Countess not have as many witty lines this season? Or is it that I'm simply concerned that the show is getting too big for its own Edwardian britches and turning into a sappy soap opera? I shall leave you to decide the answer to that question. So far I've been fortunate that I've only heard a few little secrets about the current season (my UK friends have been respectfully quiet not to ruin it for me, thank you very much), and I'm not sure how I feel about what I know. The show has now entered the 1920s, so we're expecting jazz, booze, and more upstairs/downstairs shenanigans, a reminder of the differences between the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-poor who cannot seem to live without one another. I do admit I am looking forward most to seeing Maggie Smith on the screen again as the Dowager Countess. She really does make this show everything it is. And suave actor Julian Ovenden is joining the cast, which should steam things up a bit. I'm definitely geared up for it. Bring it on, Downton! I await your premiere...just as soon as the maid brings me my tea and biscuits.

MWA XXI: Bruegel's Hunters

As I'm writing this, the NYC area is getting slammed in a far-reaching snowstorm (called Hercules? since when do we name snowstorms?). We may get up to a foot of snow by lunchtime tomorrow. Even my job has closed down and given us a snow day off! So what better say to celebrate winter and snow (and our Monthly Work of Art) then with one of the greatest winter-themed paintings ever: The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525-1569; image: Web Gallery of Art). The Flemish-born painter is known for his so-called "peasant" scenes, with their emphases on the working and lower classes toiling at labor or simply playing and drinking. He painted religious and allegorical scenes as well, but his "peasant" genre paintings made him famous during an age when Catholicism was heavily embattled by the rise of Protestantism in the Germanic/Nordic countries, ultimately eliminating opportunities for Christian iconography from the oeuvre of many artists. This painting was one of a series depicting the seasons/months of the year. It was commissioned by the wealthy Antwerp-based merchant Niclaes Jongelinck. Of the six that were commissioned, only five exist today, with this painting representing winter or December/January. Another famous work in Bruegel's series is The Harvesters in the collection at the Met Museum (a painting that Director Thomas Campbell has professed to be one of his most favorite paintings in the collection; see a video about the painting by clicking here). This series of paintings also spawned one of the most erudite and hilarious novels I've ever read, Headlong by Michael Frayn, in which the narrator (a philosophy professor on sabbatical) discovers the missing sixth Bruegel painting and goes on a mission to acquire (i.e. steal) it at any cost.

The Hunters in the Snow is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, a city that is on my list of places I would love to visit. Until I see it live I must rely on reproductions. What fascinates me in this painting is the level of detail and the sweep of perspective that draws you into it. It's as if you can see every feather on the birds and and count how much snow has fallen on the mountains in the background. When you see the painting, you approach it from the left. It is as if you are one of the men returning from their hunt. The trees draw you into the painting as they grow smaller and smaller, and the slope of the landscape pulls you further in as you begin the descent down the hill to the lake and further into the village. You can almost hear the cawing of the blackbirds in the grey, barren sky. The desolation of the season unfolds before you. But the further you travel into the painting, you are at its heart, and you see that it isn't about death but life. Just looking at the number of people figure skating on the frozen lake cannot help but make you grin. These people understand that in the dreariness that is winter and the starkness that is life, there is always a way to find joy. These skaters take in every moment of it. Winter suddenly doesn't seem as cold and stark as it did once before.

Happy 2014!

I kicked off the new year today by visiting the New-York Historical Society, as I suggested I would do in my last post. Their big exhibition has been The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution, a celebration of the international modern art show that arguably revolutionized the history of American art itself with the introduction of Cubism and Fauvism to American audiences. The exhibition gave a survey appreciation of the 1913 show by bringing back many of the most famous works that were on exhibit, but I was actually surprised the show wasn't very large. It was an interesting study of the history and impact of the 1913 Armory show, and I did learn a few new things, but the show didn't impress me as I had expected. In contrast, Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America was much more appealing. Highlighting exquisite grand-manner portraits of wealthy Americans painted from about 1880 to 1920, when the Astors and Vanderbilts ruled New York City's social scene, this exhibition offered interesting ways to consider these portraits as symbols of feminine beauty and masculine virility. One of the stand-out portraits was the one you see here of James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959) painted by the French artist Theobald Cartran (1849-1907). The portrait dates from 1901 when he was 25 years of age, and both his proud, peacock-like stance and hand gestures connect the portrait to a 16th-century work by Bronzino at the Met Museum. Hyde was the chief owner of his father's company, Equitable Life Assurance Society, and soon after this painting was completed he was unjustly accused of a scandalous bungling of the company's assets. He spent the rest of his years as an expatriate living in Paris...as if that were such a tragedy. (Image source: New-York Historical Society)

bklynbiblio readers know I start off the new year with a blog post; last year's coincided with my 400th post! It's been a quiet holiday season for me this year, giving me time to write and catch up on a few things. I've even redesigned the look of bklynbiblio, since I had not changed it in a couple of years. If you're reading this by email and/or through an RSS feeder, go to http://bklynbiblio.blogspot.com to see the new look. I've also activated the mobile version with a slightly different template, so it will read better on iPhones, iPads, etc. And so...here's to another year of blogging, and working toward my 500th post. Happy 2014!

Art Exhibitions of 2013

What better way to end the year then by catching an art exhibition! JM and I fought the crowds at MoMA this afternoon so we could catch Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938, about the pivotal years in the Belgian Surrealist's career. The work you see here is entitled The False Mirror, 1928 (image: MoMA) and gives a quick sense of how Magritte's images and titles are plays on one another (the eye is a reflection of the soul? what one sees? of anything?). Alas, his images have become so ubiquitous in reproductive form that upon seeing an outpouring of his paintings such as in this exhibition they become almost tedious and disappointing. Frankly, the curators could have done a better job engaging the viewer with the works (i.e. shouldn't we be addressing the misogyny and violence toward women in his paintings?). We also popped in to see Isa Genzken Retrospective, which turned out to be another prime example of the art style I classify as "Self-Indulgent Crap." Some of her large-scale minimalist sculptures in concrete and wood were interesting, but the rest of it was just mind-numbingly awful. I can't believe this is the same artist who produced the boldly delicate Rose II as part of the New Museum's Facade Sculpture program.

Readers of bklynbiblio know that I visit a number of art exhibitions, but only some stand out for me as the best of the year, and a smaller number ever make it onto this blog. (I attempted to start a "best of" in 2010 but couldn't keep up with it; hopefully we will in the future.) In writing about my top favorite exhibitions, you probably won't be surprised to see that most largely reflect art of the past. But living in NYC I have become more and more attuned to "modern/contemporary art," so I'm always happy when I discover some new artist or great exhibition that can excite me about art post-WWI or post-1980. All that said, it should come as no surprise that my favorite exhibition of the year was clearly Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900, which I saw at the National Gallery of Art, but which had opened in London the previous year at the Tate. Although I was readily familiar with most of the works in the show, it was great to see so many of them from different museums and private collections brought together again for an exhibition that documented the accomplishments of these talented artists who sought to be modern through inspiration from the past. The image you see here is the book jacket for the exhibition catalogue. (See more of my thoughts on the show here.) My second favorite exhibition this year--and I hesitate to call it that, as it is more of an installation and performance--was Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet. Held at the Cloisters, this sound-based piece captured the spirit of its medieval origins not only with the musical composition but with the architectural space, a medieval chapel. They were made for one another. Listening to all of the recorded voices individually as they surrounded you made you feel as if the entire recorded motet was a living, singing sculpture, albeit one that existed in space and time and not in person. You had to close your eyes to experience it best, and it came close to a transcendental art experience.

My third favorite exhibition of the year was Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity at the Met. The idea that the Impressionists and their contemporaries were inspired by current trends in fashion and the rise of bourgeois industry were first explored in art history nearly 20 years ago. But the bringing together of important French paintings from the 1860s and 1870s and juxtaposing them with fashion from the day--including some of the same gowns or accessories depicted in the paintings--made for a fabulous exhibition. The mannequins wearing the clothes helped make the paintings come to life. In addition to seeing great paintings by Manet, Monet, and Morisot, lesser-known brilliant artists like Tissot were given their due acknowledgment as well. This was definitely an exhibition worth seeing. (Image: installation view of Gallery 3: The White Dress, Met Museum).

Among my other favorite exhibitions of the year were Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument and Edward Burtynsky: Water, excellent photography shows curated by my friend & colleague Russell Lord in New Orleans. The Parks show played with a journalistic story and opened your mind to understanding so much more about how photographs are manipulated and reframed to tell a story. In contrast, the Burtynsky large-scale photographs of water-themed images were simply mind-blowing and beautiful. (Read more of my thoughts on these shows here.) At Brooklyn Museum, the exhibitions on to El Anatsui's monumental sculptural detritus installations and Sargent's jewel-like watercolors turned out to be a counterpoint in beauty (see more of my thoughts here). And Edwardian Opulence at the Yale Center for British Art was an extravagant, jam-packed plethora of art and cultural artifacts from the post-Queen Victoria period (see more of my thoughts here). Honorable mentions for this year also go out to: David d'Angers: Making the Modern Monument at the Frick, a small but informative exploration into the life and career of this 19th-century French sculptor; Beauty and Revolution: Neoclassicism, 1770-1820 at the Staedel Museum, Frankfurt, a show of important classical paintings and sculptures, Canova and Thorvaldsen taking center stage (part of my Zurich/Frankfurt tour this year); NYC 1993 at the New Museum, on art of a century ago; and monographic shows on the ever-queer Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt at MoMA P.S.1 and Eleanor Antin at the Wallach Gallery at Columbia. 

As always, there were great shows I missed, which I shall regret, including The Boxer: An Ancient Masterpiece at the Met and the Rain Room at MoMA. But fortunately there is still time to see a few shows that have opened and are ongoing for a few weeks or months more, especially The Armory Show at 100: Modern Art and Revolution at the New-York Historical Society. Hm...I may even go to see that on New Year's Day!

Auction Sales of 2013

Considering today is Christmas Eve, it seems rather appropriate to blog about the work you see here: A Christmas Carol, 1867, oil on panel [image: Sotheby's]. The painting is by the Pre-Raphaelite/Aesthetic artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). The picture reveals many of Rossetti's interests at this time, from the beautiful woman in a bower to the connections of the visual with music as a timeless, experiential art form. But the reason why I'm showcasing this Victorian picture is because the painting was sold at Sotheby's London on December 4 and earned a record-high sale for Rossetti, coming in with the hammer price of £4,562,500 ($7,475,200). This actually beat the sale for a Rossetti color charcoal drawing of Proserpine that had just been a record high for him a few weeks earlier at £3.3m ($5.3m). Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic art continues to rise in popularity...an ongoing testament to the recent Oxford conference following up on the successful exhibition held at Tate Britain, that I saw in Washington, D.C., and then went on to Moscow and Tokyo.

That said, auction prices for Victorian art still pale in comparison to the market for post-WWII art, which continues to skyrocket, with more and more sales coming in at the $100+ million mark. As I noted in last year's post on auction sales of 2012, 10 of the highest-priced auction and private sales have all taken place since 2006. We can now extend that to point out that the top 17 spots for the most paid for art in auction/private sales have all taken place over the past 10 years! According to a recent article in Businessweek, "the top 10 auction lots of 2013 raised $752.2m, a 27 percent increase from 2012 and an 82 percent jump from 2011." Trends in the art-buying auction world are showing that the "tres nouveaux riches" are from China, Russia, and the Middle East. (Not coincidentally these are the same groups who are also buying up high-end real estate all over Manhattan, leaving the Everyman little chance of ever being able to own property in NYC.) Art, more than ever before, is a commodity, something to be flipped and sold at a profit. Museums cannot even compete in this new art market. Jed Perl, art critic for the New Republic, has written an interesting editorial about this, noting how the super-rich are ruining for the rest of us the ability to appreciate art.

Three major auction records were broken this year for post-War art. Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, sold on November 12 at Christie's New York for $142,405,000 hammer price (see my blog post about this here), making it currently the highest amount ever paid at auction. Andy Warhol's Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 1963, silkscreen ink and silver spray paint on canvas [image: Sotheby's], broke Warhol's record when it sold on November 13 at Sotheby's New York for $105,445,000. Finally, Jeff Koons's Balloon Dog (Orange) stainless steel sculpture, 1994-2000, sold at the same Christie's sale as the Bacon for $58,405,000, giving Koons the record for the most money paid at auction for a living artist's work.

Keeping track of the most money paid for works of art can be tricky, as most resources combine auction and private sales. One example is theartwolf.com, and another is this Wikipedia entry. Both focus on paintings and they also account for inflation and current value (which is both helpful and distracting, as it alters the ranking of "most valuable"). Extracting data from these and other sources, I've put together my own Top 5 Auction Sales of Works of Art. I have no doubt it will change each year, but this is how things stand as of today.

1. Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, oil on canvas in three parts, sold Nov. 2013, Christie's New York, $142.4m.
2. Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1895, pastel on board, sold May 2012, Sotheby's New York, $119.9m.
3. Pablo Picasso, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 1932, oil on canvas, sold May 2010, Christie's New York, $106.5m.
4. Andy Warhol, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), 1963, silkscreen ink and silver spray paint on canvas, sold Nov. 2013, Christie's New York, $105.4m.
5. Pablo Picasso, Garçon a la pipe, 1905, oil on canvas, sold May 2004, Sotheby's New York, $104.1m.

MWA XX: David's Nativity

Although I've never had the opportunity to study in-depth "Northern Renaissance art" (i.e. paintings by Netherlandish painters such as Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling), like others I find them to be some of the most beautiful paintings in the history of art. The crisp linearity and precision of draftsmanship is complemented by rich jewel-like colors, making so many of these paintings among the most precious in European art. Many of the works are altarpieces and Catholic in nature, as they pre-date the spread of the Protestant Reformation and thus the removal of Christian imagery (idolatry as it was called) in favor of the Word (Bible) alone. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a number of these works, largely because they were collected by Gilded Age industrialists at a time when a number of these early painters were barely known. Gerard David (ca. 1455-1523), born in the Netherlands and active in the now-Belgian city of Bruges, was but one of these highly-respected and talented painters of their day.

His scenes, such as this work from the Met, The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard, ca. 1510-15, focus on traditional Christian imagery, but often reveal the secrets of his own interest in landscape painting. Just look in this detail over the shoulder of Joseph and you can see the shepherds peering through the window with an exquisite landscape stretching into the distance. The birth of Christ is the subject of the triptych, but the angels positioned beside the open window together echo the connections between God and nature. It's a powerful image, with many layers of meaning. According to the curators, "despite the joyful moment depicted, the figures all wear somber expressions, foreshadowing Christ's eventual suffering and sacrifice." The saints on the two end panels are Jerome and Leonard, but the donors kneeling before them remain unidentified, reminding us how much more we have to learn about the history and reception of these gems in Western painting. Gerard David himself was lost to history and only rediscovered in the mid-1800s. For more about his extensive life and work, see the Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

And to all my bklynbiblio readers, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Lucy in Color?

I Love Lucy was ALWAYS a big deal in my family when I was growing up. The story of an immigrant musician who marries a crazy redhead who comes up with the most ridiculous shenanigans? This was basically the story of my mother and father's marriage. Not coincidentally, my red-headed mother in particular loved the show. By the time I ever watched the show with her, it was in reruns during the '70s, but it was originally on in the '50s and remains one of the funniest comedies in the history of television. Watching an episode today is as hilarious now as it was then. There is a timelessness to their stories because, as absurd as the plots are, they somehow still seem feasible. Plus, Lucy, Ricky, Ethel, and Fred were likable people you could imagine having as your neighbors (or your family, for that matter), especially if you were New Yorkers! I Love Lucy today remains charming in part because it's in black-and-white, giving it a nostalgic sensibility that makes you think of days gone by. But CBS is now apparently experimenting with that nostalgia. This coming Friday, December 20th, they are playing 2 Christmas episodes of the sitcom-colorized them. The purist in me is horrified by this, of course. When Ted Turner in the 1990s started colorizing old movies, the technology was so bad it ruined the films. And yet, looking at the sneak peek reel on YouTube, there's something about it that makes it look like a Mad Men-like historic recreation of a 1950s sitcom, filmed for the first time now. Lucy's red hair is too orangey-red, so it's not perfect, but the high-quality of the coloration does some reinvigorate it. Plus, it still seems funny though, so I'm looking forward to watching this on Friday night. The YouTube clip is below, or click here to view it.

HBA Interview

I'm pleased to share the news that I was recently interviewed about my interests in British art and my new job at Columbia. The interview has just been published as the first "member profile," a new feature in the Historians of British Art Newsletter (Fall/Winter 2013), with questions posed by Editor Catherine Roach, Asst. Prof. of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth Univ. (You may recall that she was one of the speakers at my Why Victorian Art? symposium back in 2009). The picture you see here was published with the interview and shows me on the campus of Columbia posing with Henry Moore's Three-Way Piece: Points, 1967. For your reading pleasure, here's the interview. I think it gives readers a good overview of my art historical interests and the scope of my job as Curator of Art Properties. Enjoy!

Member Profile:

Roberto C. Ferrari, Curator of Art Properties

Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University

What drew you to the field of British art? I’ve always been an Anglophile. Although my father is Italian, my mother’s side of the family is of English descent and I credit Nana (my maternal grandmother) as the source of my interest in all things British. Her parents were Victorian immigrants from Lancashire and, despite only an eighth-grade education, she was surprisingly well-read. We would partake of tea and biscuits while she told me stories about Elizabeth and Essex or the King and Mrs. Simpson. From there I gradually discovered British art, and like many a young Romantic fell for the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. (Rossetti’s La Ghirlandata and Burne-Jones’s Beguiling of Merlin are still two of my favorite paintings.) Once I began studying the Pre-Raphaelites, I discovered the underappreciated art and life of Simeon Solomon and began doing work on him. My interest in British art soon expanded to nineteenth-century sculpture as well. My interest in British art has been a gratifying experience.

Where did you do your graduate work, and on what topic? I earned my M.A. in Humanities from the University of South Florida, where I wrote my thesis on the fatal woman motif in paintings by Rossetti and poetry by Swinburne. I also earned my M.A. in Library and Information Science from USF. After many years as a librarian, I went back to school and earned an M.Phil. degree and my Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, graduating in May 2013. My dissertation was on the Anglo-Roman sculptor John Gibson, best known for reintroducing polychromy in sculpture with his Tinted Venus, although I go beyond his interest in polychromy to consider other aspects of his long, productive career.

What projects are you currently working on? Two essays from my dissertation on Gibson will be published in book collections over the next few years. I recently gave a presentation at the Pre-Raphaelite conference in Oxford on Solomon’s 1860 painting The Mother of Moses, discussing issues of race and religion. I am turning that into an article, with a related spin-off article focusing just on his mixed-race model Fanny Eaton. My colleague Carolyn Conroy (University of York) and I continue to update the Simeon Solomon Research Archive (http://www.simeonsolomon.com), adding more digital images of his work and exploring the possibility of publishing his correspondence on the site as well.

Tell us about your current post as Curator of Art Properties at Columbia University. As Curator of Art Properties, I oversee the art collections at Columbia. Few people are aware that Columbia even has a permanent art collection. Unlike other ivy-league schools, Columbia decided not to establish an art museum, but they did collect art from the time of its foundation as King’s College in 1754. By the 1950s an administrative body known as Art Properties was established to oversee the art collections, and the first curator was hired soon afterward. When the Wallach Gallery was established in the late 1980s, Art Properties was merged with it, but with the retirement of my predecessor it was decided that the two departments would be separated. This has allowed my department to revitalize interest in the art collections for educational and display purposes. The collection contains nearly 15,000 objects and ranges from Etruscan pottery and Buddhist sculpture to hundreds of portrait paintings and nearly 900 photographs. With my two full-time staff members and occasional interns, we are responsible for the organization and care of the collections, including inventory, exhibition and loan programs, conservation, photographic services, and so on. An educator at heart, I am pleased that we have begun new initiatives bringing art objects into the classroom, allowing students the rare opportunity to study closely and handle objects in a way they never could in other settings.

Are there any British works in the Columbia collections that you'd like to highlight? The art collections at Columbia are culturally diverse and include a few great examples of British art. Henry Moore’s bronze sculpture Three-Way Piece: Points, 1967, a gift from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation (1967.20.1), is a highlight in our public outdoor sculpture. We have some wonderful portraits in the grand manner tradition, including Joseph Highmore’s King George II, ca. 1750 (C00.62), and Joshua Reynolds’s Sir George Grenville, ca. 1764 (C00.442). The Plimpton bequest in 2000 added to the collection about 60 portraits of noteworthy British men and women by painters such as Thomas Lawrence and Martin Archer Shee. We also have a number of prints by William Hogarth and other British artists.

Do you have any advice for student members who might want to follow a similar career path? The job market for art historians is very challenging right now. My advice to any prospective student member is to follow her/his dream in studying what s/he wants in British art, but to be aware of the bigger picture in the art world, particularly trends and names in modern and contemporary art. Apply for lots of grants and fellowships, network as much as possible, and keep one’s mind open to alternative career choices. One never knows how things will evolve.

First Snowstorm: 2013-2014 Fall/Winter

Much of the country has been going through rather horrific weather, with record low temperatures and a lot of snow. It's even snowed in Dallas/Ft. Worth already! This is clearly unseasonably early for this much snow, especially since Winter hasn't even officially started yet. Today, the NYC area got its share. The snow started about 8am, coming down hard. Sometime after noon it trickled to flurries, and by 3pm it was done and already melting. I wasn't sure at first I could call it an official snowstorm, but the snow did stick and we got at least 2 inches, so I'm declaring this our first official snowstorm of the season.

Here are two pictures showing areas at Columbia University with the snow accumulating. My colleague TG took the picture of Alma Mater, the bronze sculpture by Daniel Chester French, gathering snow on her head and outstretched hand. I took the other one with my iPhone showing the view from Avery Hall's front steps looking west. I don't mind first snowstorms when they're toward the beginning of Winter. It seems picturesque and right somehow. I'm sure by the end of February, however, I will be SO ready for Spring.

Books of 2013

I've become rather fond of this time of the year...the crispness of late autumn weather is in the air...turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie are about to be served...and the first "best of" lists of the year come out, most notably the "100 Notable Books of 2013" by The New York Times, as selected by the editors of the NYT Book Review. bklynbiblio readers may recall that I've been using this annual list to recap some of my own particular reads over the course of the year (e.g. 2012 back to 2008). As in the past, their list is divided into 50 fiction/poetry and 50 non-fiction books. And as I've also written in the past, I rarely if ever find myself reading anything on the list the same year that it's published. Surprisingly, though, this year I can make a "notable" exception! I was excited to pick up Amy Tan's latest novel, The Valley of Amazement, on the day it was released a few weeks ago, and even more delighted that it made the NYT list for this year. It's the book I'm reading right now too, so it's a convergence of my interests coming together rather nicely, I must say. The novel recounts the passing decades of an American courtesan and her mixed-race daughter living in Shanghai in the early 1900s. My taste for Tan's books have varied. I liked The Joy Luck Club and I rave to this day about The Hundred Secret Senses, but her others haven't been as engaging, in my opinion. However, this one so far is capturing my attention very quickly.

There isn't much on the NYT list in non-fiction that is of interest to me this year, although I do like the idea of a biography by Jill Lepore (Book of Ages) about Benjamin Franklin's sister Jane, a mother of 12 who kept on a lifetime correspondence with her famous colonial brother. On the fiction side of things, I already had on my wish list a few of the novels that have made it onto the NYT list (I guess I have good taste?!): The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (art-related coming-of-age book), The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (19th-century New Zealand; this also won the prestigious Booker Prize), and David Leavitt's The Two Hotel Francforts (gay love affair between two married men in 1940s Lisbon).

Compared to the last couple of years, my number of books read since last year's post on this topic is down from 29 to 20. I will claim it's because I've had a leaner year due to my dissertation, move, and new job. In the world of art history, I read Elizabeth Prettejohn's The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture (2012), an interesting theoretical take on how classicism has been misappropriated as anti-modern and why that needs to change (I have a review on the book coming out soon). I've also read a few exhibition catalogs on the life and art of Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944), the New York-based modernist painter whose work is still little known outside America. This is more related to my work life at Columbia now; I'll be posting about Stettheimer in the months to come.

My fiction reads over the past year began during last year's post when I was reading Richard Mason's History of a Pleasure Seeker (2011), which was interesting and a fast read, but not as enthralling as I had hoped. I also read Toni Morrison's Home (2012) while I was in San Francisco this summer; that book had been on the NYT 2012 list. I can't say it was among my favorites she's written, but Morrison is more about the way she writes then the storyline at times. Among my other fiction reads were A. S. Byatt's A Biographer's Tale (2001), F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920), John Knowles' A Separate Peace (1959), and a few mysteries by Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie. However, the two great fiction reads for me this year was a collection of short stories by Anton Chekhov (1890s)--truly a brilliant short-story writer--and George Eliot's masterpiece Middlemarch (serialized 1871-72; book 1874). I cannot believe I had not read Eliot's novel beforehand, and my friend MT insisted on changing that when she gave me the book as a thank-you gift. I can't say Eliot's book was as entertaining of a Victorian novel as, say, Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now (1875), but Eliot's novel is one of the most through-oriented I've ever read. It secretly masks as a feminist novel but concentrates on the roles men and women expect one another to play in society. Even more challenging, it questions the measurement of success, through monetary means, corruption, or intellectual prowess, and makes you sympathize with even the characters you're not particularly fond of. And then, just when you think it might never happen because of its crucial emphasis on the mind, a romantic twist that you hoped for is finally achieved, and you suddenly realize that the greatest moments in life sometimes are the ones that are the least important to the world at large. Middlemarch has one of the most beautifully written, poignant endings; the last two paragraphs simply made me cry. The book is a masterpiece because it explores the mind, the heart, and the soul, and forces you to confront for yourself which of these are most important to you, the reader, after all.

MWA XIX: Millet's Turkeys

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) was one of the great landscape and Realist painters of nineteenth-century France. Like his contemporaries Courbet and Rousseau, he was considered a radical in his day. Looking at his landscapes like the work you see here, Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys, 1872-73 (image: Metropolitan Museum of Art), one is challenged to understand why these works at one time were radical. The scene is Barbizon, where Millet lived with his second wife and numerous children from 1849 until his death. Barbizon was originally a village near the forest at Fontainebleu 60 km (37 miles) southeast of Paris, but from the 1830s on, when many artists started to visit to paint landscapes en plein air (outdoors), the village grew in size and by the end of the century had become a major tourist town. Millet trained as a history and portrait painter, but eventually found his artistic calling with scenes of peasant farmers working the fields around Barbizon. His break from the tradition of painting idealized subjects, to instead paint the lowest members of society--glorifying them with Biblical allusions--led to a backlash among critics and academics that his work was a threat to the fine art traditions of the day. Millet's most famous paintings with these subjects include, for instance, The Angelus, 1857-59 (depicting a farming couple in the field taking a break to pray; see an image of the work here). In the painting here, Millet presents the starkness of the end of the Fall season. The trees are bare, a gust of wind is blowing, and the only person in the scene has her back to the viewer, huddled in her full-length cloak against the elements. A storm is brewing. Only the turkeys seem unaffected, going about their business, eating and wandering about, unaware the woman holds a stick to steer them back to their pen. Millet and his contemporaries started something new with the sketch-like quality of their finished paintings. They were able to use the short brushstrokes to convey a vitality to the scenes presented. It was a technique the Impressionists picked up on and perfected from this period on. Despite its gloom and doom, this painting charms me because of the turkeys and how carefree they are, not only in their movement but in how he painted them. The turkeys also seemed rather appropriate as this month's Monthly Work of Art. Happy Thanksgiving!

Random Musings 15

Big news in the art world last night! More major auction records were broken at the Christie's New York post-war and contemporary art sale. The sale itself brought in a record-high amount of $691.58 million, and there were record high sales for major artists, including one that put Jeff Koons at the top for most-paid-at-auction-for-a-living-artist. The really big news of the night, however, was when Francis Bacon's triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud, 1969, stole the show, selling for the hammer price of $142.4 million, becoming the most money ever paid for a work of art at auction. (The actual sale price was $127m; the rest was the buyer's premium that goes to the auction house.) The previous record happened last year with a version of Munch's Scream selling for $119. (Here is more on my past musings about these records and art sales.) You can see the trio of framed works by Bacon in the image above (source: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times), hovering over the crowd as the frenzy of the auction took place. I'm wondering if some wise ass will claim that as a triptych each piece should only count for 1/3 of the hammer price and thus be much lower. For the record, Bacon worked in triptychs over and over, and even though the three pieces are framed separately, that doesn't mean they're separate works. Unlike the Scream, which was quite a big deal but not life-altering to me, I must confess that this sale excites me because I'm a fan of Bacon's work. Long-time readers may recall my post about Bacon's rise in fame back in 2008, just prior to the big retrospective exhibition that was being planned for London, New York, and Madrid. I find Bacon's work visceral; it hurts to look at it. If you think you can hear the scream in Munch's painting, you will feel in your gut the heart-wrenching agony bellowing from Bacon's paintings. Despite the pain and angst, though, there's something also energizing about his pictures. They are both figurative and abstract in a way that makes you question what you think figurative and abstract actually mean. And in my chats with painters, I've discovered they love him as a painter. His brushstroke and use of colors dazzle them and demonstrate amazing skill and handling that make him a rival to Picasso and Matisse as the leading painters of the 20th century. And now that he carries the highest record ever paid at auction for a single work of art, few can doubt hereafter his awesome presence in modern art. For more about the auction, see the news report by Carol Vogel in the NYT. Some of CultureGrrl's observations about the sale and Christie's bizarre disclaimer on buyer and seller buy-ins shows that the old days of equality in auction sales are long gone.

Among some other musings I've been storing up... About two weekends ago, AA and I took a short getaway trip to New Orleans for some R&R. We got to see the RL-DGs and their new baby NGL, plus play with the ever-adorable dog Penny. But RL--officially and professionally Russell Lord, photography curator--also had some incredible exhibitions on that we went to see. Edward Burtynsky: Water at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans was just beautiful. His photographs shot around the world highlight the importance of water in our lives and the ways in which we control it. The images are dazzling and breath-taking. He creates such complex compositions in colors so vibrant you would swear you were looking at abstract paintings. The image below is one of a number of these beautiful pictures (image: Dryland Farming #2: Monegros County Aragon Spain, 2010; copyright Edward Burtynsky). To top that show off, Russell also curated the thought-provoking exhibition Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Here, Russell explored how Parks's 1948 photographic essay, published in Life magazine about a Harlem gangster named Leonard "Red" Jackson, actually revealed a cropped, edited form of sensationalist journalism that belied the truth behind what Parks really saw in this so-called gang leader struggling to live an everyday life as a black youth in Harlem. Both of these shows are just fascinating, so everyone should go see them if you're in New Orleans. And while you're there, you can check out his third exhibition, a "best of" in the photography collection at NOMA.

For photography and architecture buffs who love New York City, there is a new fun website that appeals to all those people who love seeing pictures of cities and landmarks "then and now." Called NYC Grid, it allows you to use a yellow dividing-line bar over photographs to see how landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and surrounding areas changed from the past to now. It's quite an amazing tool and demonstrates how fun Internet technology can be at times. There are currently only 32 works you can do this too, but the site has fun photography of different neighborhoods worth perusing as well.

Have you ever wondered how music sounded in ancient Greece and Rome? Mathematically and chromatically, scholars had determined in the past how it was constructed. Now with some clever tinkering of musical instruments, a scholar at Oxford University has demonstrated how Greek music sounded. You can read more about this interesting study here from the BBC, and click here to listen to a few of the recordings of vocal and instrumental music (in association with Archaeology magazine).

Finally...(drum roll, please!)...imagine my devilish delight when I discovered that my all-time favorite Disney villain, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, was being given her own biopic in non-animated form! I haven't seen a Disney movie like this in eons, so I'm looking forward to this. Maleficent really was wicked...and could turn into a dragon too. How cool is that? Angelina Jolie plays her in the film...creepy! OK, it's also a bit bizarre, I know, but still...it's Maleficent! Here's the trailer for the film...

First Snowfall: 2013-2014 Fall/Winter

About a year ago today we had our first seasonal snowfall, but it turned into a major snowstorm...and then never snowed again for the rest of the season! And now this morning we have snow flurries! It's not really sticking, so no expectations (wishes?) for an actual snowstorm, but it's a start to the season. It's not easy taking pictures of snow falling, but this is the best one I could come up with using my iPhone outside my apartment building about 8am this morning. Notice the little slanted white streaks...that's the snow.

DW: Day of the Doctor

It's been almost a year since I last posted about that time traveling (television) genius, Doctor Who! And although the last segment of episodes earlier this year were...well, acceptable, but not the greatest...I have very high hopes for the special 50th anniversary episode premiering on November 23rd! After all, it brings back Dr. David Tennant and reportedly many of the other earlier Doctors in a segment that celebrates 50 years of this British sci-fi show. John Hurt returns too as...well, I guess he's another future incarnation of the Doctor? I'm confused. But, I must say, I'm also rather excited, even if I have little idea what's actually happening in the episode, although Queen Elizabeth I makes another appearance in mid-1500s England, and the Daleks get to scream "Exterminate!" as they take great pride in doing. We do know that Dr. Matt Smith is leaving the show and Peter Cabaldi is stepping in as more-mature Doctor #12, so I wonder if this upcoming episode will actually be Smith's last one, that he will regenerate into the newest Doctor at the end, as has happened in previous incarnations. In any case, the good news is that we won't have to wait too long to find out. And to whet your appetite, here's a teaser of what's coming. And can I say again...Dr. David is back!!! I really do think he was awesome.