PAST EXHIBITIONS 2007
Legacy of the Generations: Jacob Lawrence's Legend of John Brown
Up a Hill, Down a Hollow: The Paintings of Mississippi Folk Artist Effie Lee Spell Read
By Howard Finster from God: Man of Visions
November 16 - December 16, 2007
In 1941, under the sponsorship of a Rosenwald Grant, 24-year-old painter Jacob Lawrence began a series of gouache paintings focused on the life of the abolitionist John Brown. More than 35 years later, the artist revisited the series to produce screenprints based on the original, but deteriorating paintings, which were, by then, in the permanent collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The result was a limited edition (60) portfolio of 22 hand-printed screenprints produced by Ives-Sillman, Inc., of New Haven, Connecticut, and published by the Founders Society of the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1978.
The narrative tells the story of John Brown who, while tending his flock in Ohio, first communicated with his sons and daughters his plans of attacking slavery by force. With the support of northern abolitionists, John Brown organized a series of successful covert missions to liberate slaves from southern plantations. In the mid-1850s, Brown led antislavery troops in an effort to make Kansas a free state. But his most famous act was the ill-fated attack on the U.S. Armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Brown was later convicted of treason and hanged in 1859.
Lawrence remarked that, "The inspiration to paint the...John Brown series was motivated by historical events as told to us by the adults of our community...the black community. The relating of these events, for many of us, was not only very informative but also most exciting to us, the men and women of these stories were strong, daring, and heroic; and therefore we could and did relate to these by means of poetry, song, and paint."
America the Beautiful: The Monumental Landscape of Clyde Butcher
September 6 - December 16, 2007
Butcher is known nationally as a conservationist who uses his art to help preserve natural settings nationwide, especially in his home state of Florida. This exhibit features nearly sixty photographs taken all over the country, from Hawaii to Florida and Utah to Maine. Many of the striking photographs were composed in national parks like Yosemite National Park in California and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and are many of the same views captured by Ansel Adams.
Butcher has been the recipient of many national awards and news and media programs during his more than 40-year career, including the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Conservation Award, which is given to a photographer who shows excellence in photography and has contributed to the public awareness of the environment. He also has been honored by the state of Florida with the highest award that can be given a private citizen: the Artist Hall of Fame Award.
Building a College: The Colonial Revival Campus at The College of William & Mary
September 6 - November 12, 2007
The College of William and Mary is well-known for the beauty of its campus. The first and most recognizable buildings were constructed at the beginning of the eighteenth-century. But in the 1920s and 1930s, the College planned and built a Colonial Revival campus adjacent to the original campus that is exceptional in its character and design while remaining compatible with the neighboring buildings. The campus plans and the details of these notable buildings will be included in an exhibition called Building a College: The Colonial Revival Campus at the College of William and Mary.
Building a College will examine the College’s Beaux Arts campus plan and its Colonial Revival buildings and grounds, which were designed by architect Charles M. Robinson and landscape architect Charles F. Gillette. Constructed in the 1920s and 1930s, this ensemble of buildings stands as an exceptionally rich and intact testament to the original designers and their time. The exhibition will also provide a brief introduction to the College’s Colonial Revival campus by reviewing the Colonial campus plan and its buildings, as well as late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century construction at William and Mary.
Stars & Stripes: Rare & Historic American Flags
June 16 - July 29, 2007
People are often surprised to learn that before 1912, lack of a specific design for the American national flag left a great deal open to interpretation and imagination. Given the level of respect our flag demands today, it is difficult to conceive that for the first 135 years of its existence, the star pattern was left up to the whims of its maker. The same was true of the number of points on the stars, not to mention all aspects of the flag’s proportions.
Given the liberties Americans were afforded in flag design, it is not so difficult to understand why a tasteful degree of text and graphics was almost as permissible as the stripes or stars themselves. American presidential candidates began using the red, white, and blue as a medium for printed campaign advertising as early as 1840. The first on record were made for William Henry Harrison, who served the shortest term ever as our commander-in-chief. Though he contracted pneumonia at his inaugural speech and died just 30 days later, this beloved American figure unknowingly left behind some of the most extraordinary American flags now known to exist. Thus began a sixty-year term in American history, during which time it was perfectly acceptable for seekers of American political office to place their names, faces, and platform slogans on the much-loved symbol of our nation.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, there was a growing shift in public opinion to uphold the Stars and Stripes as a sacred object, worthy of the most scrupulous ethics regarding its use and display. Attempts were made to ban the use of the flag for advertising in 1890 and 1895, but it was not until the year 1905 that the U.S. Congress finally decreed that the use of text or portraits on official insignia of the United States would afterwards be outlawed. Some traditions die hard, however, and this did not entirely eliminate it, but the turn of the new century generally marked the end of an era where politicians sought to woo their constituency with bold and whimsical versions of Old Glory.
The Mark & Rosalind Shenkman Collection of American Flags includes some of the most beautiful and graphic designs known to exist. Some are one-of-a-kind among surviving examples of campaign flags and printed textiles, important Civil War flags and many rare and historic flags. Many were used by the men who sought our nation’s highest office. All serve as an important documentation our past through the mediums of cotton, silk, wool, joined in the fabric of American ingenuity.
Visions of the Soul: Works by Hans Friedrich Grohs
May 5 - July 29, 2007
Hans Grohs was a master artist at the great Bauhaus and worked with and exhibited alongside the foremost German Expressionist artists so well known today including Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandisnsky, Paul Klee and the quintessential German Expressionist, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Grohs also encountered and worked with Edvard Munch and the composer Richard Strauss.
The collection includes well over one-hundred woodcuts that are the only existing, complete sets of a number of themed series. Deeply philosophical and filled with raw emotion, the woodcuts reflect a variety of important influences in Grohs’ work including that of other German Expressionists artists such as Die Brücke (The Bridge) group and the work of Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff and Max Pechstein; Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group; and other outside influences such as nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints and the art of Vincent van Gogh.
For much of his career in Germany from 1913 through the mid 1930s Grohs participated in many art exhibitions together with Käthe Kollwitz, Edvard Munch, Erich Heckel, Emil Nolde, Oscar Kokoschka, Christian Rolfs, Max Pechstein, Ernst Barlach and others. In 1934 he was appointed professor to the Bremen Art Academy, but within a few years things changed abruptly. In 1937, he was labeled by the Nazis as a “degenerate artist” and his art was removed and destroyed from museums and his studio home. This was his private collection of his art that was hidden from the Nazis and miraculously saved.
There is no mistake, however, that Grohs was equal to his contemporaries and his life’s work was preserved by his family to be left as a complete legacy to an institution of education and higher learning. The relationship with the owner of the collection is an ongoing one for over twenty years and there are other Hans Friedrich Grohs works in the Muscarelle collection. Other plans are unfolding with this collection, such as a potential named center of study of German Expressionism and traveling exhibitions, among other things. The growth and support of the Arts at the College of William and Mary was never stronger and the Muscarelle with its College colleagues in the administration and in Arts and Sciences is leading the way.
Wyeth: An American Story
April 21 - May, 2007
The exhibition, organized by Delaware Art Museum, includes more than eighty works of N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth, Carolyn Wyeth, Henriette Wyeth, Peter Hurd and John McCoy. Of special interest are the illustrated private letters of Andrew Wyeth, including drawings of his dogs, his son Jamie, and his hand-painted Christmas cards. The cards and letters offer an exceptionally personal glimpse into the life and mind of this celebrated American icon.
Shown together, this exhibit showcases the Wyeth family’s vast contribution to American art, as well as their unique vision of American life during the Twentieth century. The family’s deeply entrenched love of country, especially their home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and their Maine summer retreat, is apparent in paintings like Andrew Wyeth’s “The Corner.” Many of the works are nostalgic, deeply personal and sensitive, patriotic and beautiful.
Not only do the artists’ works indicate strong ties to the land, but the pieces have a mysterious quality as well. The intrigue of “The Corner,” like many of Andrew Wyeth’s works, is not only what can be seen in the painting, but the surroundings that are mysteriously absent as well. Similar observations can be made about other works in the show, including “Tenant Farmer” and “Blue Door,” lending an air of mystery to the exhibition.
David Roberts: Nineteenth-Century Views of Egypt and the Holy Land,
on Loan from Friends of the Reeves Center
February 10 - April 8, 2007
David Roberts traveled in the Middle East for eight months between September 1838 and May 1839 sketching major Pharaonic monuments along the Nile, the architecture and urban context of medieval Cairo, and the Biblical and historic sites of the Holy Land. In London, his friend, the renowned Belgian lithographer Louis Haghe transformed Roberts rich portfolio into the folio prints which were published in the six volumes of The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia. This lavishly produced tome supplied the place of travelogues for a Victorian public eager to know the world. The publication was one of the most ambitious and most expensive publishing ventures of the 19th century, and it is from among the 248 plates in this elaborate work that the current exhibition is drawn.
David Roberts was the first professional artist to make a grand tour of the eastern Mediterranean area, and the first to return with such a beautiful and complete portfolio. His pre-photographic views are of lands and peoples and contexts not yet touched by the Westernizing and modernizing winds unleashed by Napoleon’s Expedition of 1798. Queen Victoria headed a pre-publication subscription list that included most of the Crowned heads of Europe, the most important ecclesiastical prelates, as well as John Ruskin, the authoritative art critic. The success of Roberts’ drawings was immediate and began in his own time. Today, the appeal of his work not only continues, it increases.
The Faithful Samurai: Kuniyoshi Woodblock Prints
February 10 - April 8, 2007
The Faithful Samurai will include artifacts, swords and costumes to complement the woodblock prints. In addition, one display describes the techniques of woodblock printing and the Japanese print tradition. All of the prints featured in The Faithful Samurai were gathered through more than twenty years of collecting by Professor David R. Weinberg, a scholar who has published one of the definitive books on the prints of Kuniyoshi’s Seichū gishi den (Stories of the true loyalty of the faithful samurai) and its sequel, Seichū gishin den (Stories of the true hearts and faithful loyalty) series. The Faithful Samurai represents the first national tour of selections from the David R. Weinberg Collection. The exhibition was originally organized by the Michigan Oriental Art Society, and toured by Exhibits USA, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the story of the samurai’s revenge and to mark the Society’s own thirtieth anniversary.
Curated by Caroline H. Williams, an art historian and expert on the art of Egypt and the Middle East, organized by the Muscarelle Museum and the Reeves Center for International Studies, and exhibited simultaneously, David Roberts: 19th-Century Views of Egypt and the Holy Land from Friends of the Reeves Center will take visitors along the Nile, to Cairo, and the biblical sites of the Holy Land through nearly forty lithographs from Williamsburg area collectors. David Roberts is among the best known of the “Orientalist” painters. His beautiful and beguiling scenes possess great documentary and anecdotal value. In the mid-19th century they gave an avid public a real representation of what he had seen; one nuanced with ambience, drama, and detail. One hundred and fifty years later they still offer the best glimpse of the eastern Mediterranean area before photography.
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Contemporary Native American Paintings and the Response to Colonization ... Anniversary of the Begining ... Begining of the End
February 10 - April 8, 2007
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is one of the most acclaimed Native American artists in history and one of the foremost female artists working in America today. Smith, whose work also hangs in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum in New York, calls herself a cultural art worker. Through her art, she addresses tribal politics, human rights and environmental issues of today, many times with biting humor. Her groundbreaking work also incorporates elements of her heritage, especially focusing on the myths and legends of her ancestors.
When asked to describe herself and her work, Smith has said she is “a harbinger, a mediator and a bridge builder. My art, my life experience, and my tribal ties are totally enmeshed. I go from one community with messages to the other, and I try to enlighten people.”
Smith was raised on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and has had more than eighty solo exhibitions over the past thirty years. She has also curated more than thirty exhibitions of Native American Art, and lectured at more than 185 universities, museums and conferences nationwide. She has also founded artists group sand organized grassroots protests to express concern for the land and its native people.
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