PAST EXHIBITIONS 2006
10th W&M Faculty Show
October 28, 2006 - January 7, 2007
Participants included William & Mary Faculty William Barnes,
Linda Carey,
Suzanne Demeo,
Michael Gaynes,
Marlene Jack,
Brian Kreydatus,
Brad McLemore,
Nicole McCormick,
Elizabeth Mead,
Ed Pease,
and Heidi Schneider
Medici in America, Natura Morta: Still-Life Paintings of the Medici Collections
& Carravaggio's Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge
November 11, 2006 - January 7, 2007
For three centuries the Medici dynasty dominated Florence, capturing an era and leaving a powerful legacy that has ever since been associated with the commercial and artistic renaissance of Europe. The Medici patronage and power spurred a creative and intellectual rebirth, which brought Europe from the Middle Ages into the modern world. The Medici family used their influence to help make Florence the cultural center of Europe. Through the support of Arte del Cambio, the bankers guild in Florence dominated by the Medici family, public art flourished.
Among the vast Medici collections bequeathed to the city of Florence in perpetuity is an extensive collection of still life paintings, the Natura Morta. Today, these paintings are housed in the great Medici villas and Florentine museums, including the world-renowned Ufizzi and the Galleria Palatina. This exhibition of Italian, Dutch, Flemish and French paintings and Italian pietra dura (colored stone works) from the Medici collections, offered a rare and unique opportunity to see exemplary works of Renaissance and Baroque art from one of the finest collections of art existing in the world today. Noted paintings in the exhibit include very large works by the premier still life painter to the Medici family, Bartolomeo Bimbi, important Dutch artist Willem van Aelst, Flemish painter Jan van Kessel, rare Italian women artists including Giovanna Garzoni and Margherita Caffi, and still life master painters Jacopo da Empoli, Cristoforo Munari, and Bartolomeo Ligozzi. Read More...
The Tsars' Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Russian Decorative Arts Under the Romanovs
Russian Realist Paintings by Byacheslav Zabelin: The Wurdeman Collection
Tradition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs from Hillwood Museum & Gardens
August 26, 2006 - October 8, 2006
The Tsars' Cabinet highlighted 200 years of decorative arts under the Romanovs, from the time of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century to that of Nicholas II in the early twentieth century. Many of the over 100 pieces in the exhibition were designed for the public or private use of the Tsars or other Romanovs. The exhibit includes many pieces from significant porcelain services made by the Imperial Porcelain Factory, starting from Empress Elizabeth and Catherine the Great to Nicholas and Alexandra. Visitors will see items featured at State Banquets at the Kremlin and other Imperial Palaces, as well as items designed for the Tsar’s private use aboard the Imperial Yachts. Among the rare items will be two pieces from a service Catherine the Great ordered for her grandson, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, as well as pieces from services presented by Augustus III of Saxony and Frederick the Great to the eighteenth century Russian Tsarinas.
The exhibit also featured 200 years of glassware, from a beaker from the time of Peter the Great to glassware for the Imperial Yachts and a vase made by the Imperial Glass Factory that the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna kept on her desk in Denmark after the Russian Revolution. Russian enamels from the late nineteenth century will include a major jewel casket made by the Ovchinnikov firm and presented to Tsar Alexander III’s Minister of the Interior, as well as the work of Fedor Ruckert and the workmasters of the Faberge firm. This exhibition was organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
Lewis Cohen: Five Decades, Drawings & Sculptures, A Retrospective
April 8 - June 4, 2006
This exhibition represented work completed over a period of fifty years. There are over one hundred and thirty works in the exhibition and is representative of all phases of Cohen’s work. The earliest work in the exhibition, a drawing, was completed when he was fifteen years old and the most recent works—five sculptures—were completed in 2006. Most of the drawings have never been exhibited before. Several of the sculptures have been exhibited but not together in one venue.
Tapestries: The Great Twentieth Century Modernist
January 21 - March 26, 2006
Tapestries: The Great Twentieth Century Modernists featured artworks by Picasso, Matisse, Calder, Kandinsky, and many of their contemporaries, who were inspired to transform their own compositions into monumental wall hangings. The twenty tapestries brought together by the Trust for Museum Exhibitions from both European and American collections offer a fresh perspective on twentiethth-century Cubism and its intriguing relationship to the time-honored tradition of weaving. The exhibition also presents an innovative approach to the centuries-old medium of textile art.
The interplay between the artists and weavers, and the interplay among the Cubist masters, offered us unique insights into the tradition of tapestry and its surprising impact on 20th-century Cubism. Artists, such as those presented in this display, were well aware of contemporary artistic trends, styles and techniques, and often responded to such influences in their own works. The same type of interchange also exists in the medium of tapestries.
Eloquent Vistas: The Art of Nineteenth-Century Landscape Photography
From the George Eastman House Collection
November 5, 2005 - January 8, 2006
This exhibition of 78 photographic landscapes reveals an imaginative spirit. Spanning the second half of the nineteenth century and the East to the vast “new” West, the images include daguerreotypists’ views of Niagara Falls, remnants of Civil War landscapes, and quiet eastern streams. An expanding network of railroad lines and their promoters provides us with images of graceful bridges and curving valleys lined with small industrial towns. Picturesque waterfalls are meant to draw people to growing towns in the upper Midwest. Images from the explorations of the spectacular West: Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Green River, and the West Coast are undeniably impressive.
Eloquent Vistas included well-known photographers of the era: Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Eadweard Muybridge, William Henry Jackson, John Moran, Carleton E. Watkins, William H. Rau, William Bell, and others. These men documented the land for government-sponsored geological and geographical surveys, for the railroad companies, and for the tourist trade. Many accomplished their commissions in a truly artistic way, so that today, we appreciate their images more for their aesthetic value than for their topographical depiction of place. This exhibition celebrates their achievements. |
