H / Building Our Future
H/ Building Our Future Harvard University Art Museums Arthur M. Sackler Museum Busch-Reisinger Museum Fogg Art Museum Straus Center for Conservation
Vol. VII, No. 2
Summer 2013
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Exhibitions Sackler to Offer Rare Look at Modern Chinese Painting Beginning November 3, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum will offer a rare look at the ways in which Chinese artists in the second half of the 20th century interpreted and transformed the traditional art of ink painting.
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Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950– 2000 will feature more than 60 works by artists based in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and abroad—a comprehensive survey that includes many paintings not previously exhibited in the West. Chu-tsing Li, a native of China who emigrated to the United States in 1947, is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Kansas at Lawrence and one of the first art historians to establish modern and contemporary Chinese art as a field of study. “Professor Li has assembled the most comprehensive collection of modern and contemporary Chinese ink painting in the West,” said Robert Mowry, Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art at the Sackler and one of Li’s former graduate students. “This exhibition will be one of the first in the United States to survey
Chinese and expatriate art created during the five decades beginning in 1950; the exhibition’s geographical range will allow for easy comparisons among the different schools and trends.”
Transforming the Landscape The 63 works on view are an outgrowth and transformation of the classical landscape tradition established during the Northern Song period (960–1127) and made more abstract by scholar–amateur painters known as literati during the succeeding Yuan (1279–1368) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. By the early 20th century, traditional landscape painting held little allure, as its practice was bound by strict rules governing composition and brushwork. Young Chinese artists were attracted to Western styles, and many traveled and studied abroad.
Funding for the exhibition and its publications was provided by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and from Joel and Lisa Alvord, Winnie and Michael Feng, Dorothy Tapper Goldman, the family of Earle JenShyong Ho, James M. Kemper, Jr., Marilyn J. Stokstad, Jacqueline B. and Alan L. Stuart, Martha Sutherland and Barnaby Conrad III, and Gilbert and Stephanie Zuellig.
With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, “art for art’s sake” became unacceptable, and Taiwan became the nexus of creativity and experimentation. While their mainland counterparts found themselves locked into a rigid socialist realism, painters working in Taiwan experimented with ways to remain connected to their Chinese roots while embracing aspects of the abstract expressionism popularized in the Western world in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Li trained many curators and scholars, including the three organizers of A Tradition Redefined: Mowry; Janet Baker, curator of Asian art at Phoenix Art Museum; and Claudia Brown, professor of art history at the Herberger College of the Arts, Arizona State University at Tempe and research curator of Asian art at Phoenix Art Museum. The exhibition is co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Harvard University Art Museums. After it closes in Cambridge, the show will travel to Phoenix and then to West Palm Beach, Florida, and Lawrence, Kansas.
A Tradition Redefined can be seen at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, from June 3, 2011, through September 1, 2013. Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Sunday, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Wan Qingli, Clearing after Snow, 1983. Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper. tl40379.51. Digital photography by Ken Howie. Page 2
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Max Beckmann, Woman with Mandolin in Yellow and Red, 1950. Oil on canvas. Bayerische Staatsgem채ldesammlungen, Collection Modern Art at the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, tl40320.2. Photo courtesy of the Pinakothek der Moderne.
On View The Harvard University Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Sunday, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Busch-Reisinger Museum Light Display Machines: Two Works by László Moholy-Nagy Through June 4 Making Myth Modern: Primordial Themes in German 20th-Century Sculpture Through May 6 Paintings by Max Beckmann from the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich at the Through August 23
Fogg Art Museum Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) in honor of President Drew Gilpin Faust May 6 through June 11 Contemporary Art from the Harvard University Art Museums Collections Through August 10
Arthur M. Sackler Museum A Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950–2000 June 3 through September 1
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Georgia O’Keeffe, Red and Pink, 1925. Oil on canvas. Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, Class of 1907, by exchange, 2006.49.
Gifts & Acquisitions
“It’s important for students to see original works of art. You can’t tell from a photograph what a painting is, or a drawing, or a print. With the original, you have a better idea of what the artist is doing.”
Donors Give $18.4 Milions for Art Endowment
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he Art Museums are close to their goal of raising $10 million to fund the operations of the Department of Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. Major donors to the endowment are: the Bolton Fund for American Art; Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence J. Lasser; Catherine Coolidge Lastavica, MD; Mr. and Mrs. Herbert C. Lee and their son, Thomas H. Lee; Mr. and Mrs. Michael Maher; Elizabeth Gosnell Miller; Mr. and Mrs. Daniel A. Pollack; Mr. and Mrs. Charles O. Wood III; the Henry Luce Foundation; and several anonymous donors. Donor Mildred “Micki” Lee said recently that she supported the campaign for one reason: the students. “It’s important for students to see original works of art. You can’t tell from a photograph what a painting is, or a drawing, or a print. With the original, you have a better idea of what the artist is doing.”
The holdings were enhanced in 2006 and 2007 when Harry Cooper, curator of modern art, acquired the Fogg’s first paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Joseph Stella, and Willem De Kooning. The O’Keeffe work is a 1925 canvas, Red and Pink; the Stella is a small oil sketch made circa 1914 titled Dog in Motion; and the De Kooning is one of his most important early works, Untitled (The Cow Jumps over the Moon), from about 1938. In addition, the Fogg purchased eight prints by Mary Cassatt that were part of the artist’s own “studio collection” of hundreds of experimental proofs and unpublished prints. The Cassatt prints, made in 1890–91, are various proof states and an exquisite final impression of The Bath, which depicts a woman holding her naked baby beside a bathtub.
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Brown ink over charcoal on cream antique laid paper. Fogg Art Museum, Bequest of John and Alice Steiner, 2004.67.
02 Théodore Géricault, Four Studies of a Severed Head, 1819. Graphite on cream laid paper. Fogg Art Museum, Bequest of Richard B. Sisson and through the generosity of Anthony and Celeste Meier.
03 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lake with Sailboats, c. 1912. Graphite and watercolor on white wove paper. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Bequest of Richard B. Sisson.
04 Attributed to Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian, An Idyll: A Woman Seated under a Tree with a Child and a Standing Halberdier in a Landscape, 1505–10. Oil on panel. Fogg Art Museum. Kate, Maurice R., and Melvin Seiden Special Purchase Fund in honor of Konrad Oberhuber and Sydney Freedberg; Richard Norton Memorial Fund; and Richard Norton Fund, 2007.106.
05 Joseph Stella, Dog in Motion, circa 1914. Oil on canvas. Fogg Art
Gifts & Acquisitions
01 Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian, Trees Near a Pool of Water, c. 1530.
Museum, Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, Class of 1907, by exchange, 2006.19.
06 Prince Sh¯otoku at Age Two, Kamakura period, c. 1292. Japanese cypress; assembled woodblock construction with polychromy and rock-crystal inlaid eyes. Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Promised gift of Walter C. Sedgwick in memory of Ellery Sedgwick Sr. and Ellery Sedgwick Jr.
07 Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Studies of a Rooster, c. 1896. Colored chalk on beige antique laid paper. Fogg Art Museum, Bequest of Richard B. Sisson and through the generosity of Anthony and Celeste Meier.
08 Hans Memling, Virgin and Child and Maarten van Nieuwenhove, 1487. Oil on oak. Musea Brugge, Hospitaalmuseum Sint-Janshospitaal.
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Events Calendar MAY P 1-4 Arts First weekend at the Fogg, Adolphus Busch Hall, and around campus. Open to all and free to Harvard Community. F 15 International and Fogg Fells visit private collections in New York. M 15 A Day on Bellevue Avenue: The Art and Architecture of Newport, Rhode Island, 8am-6pm.
F 16-17 Junior Fellows Spring Weekend, coinciding with the Benefit Gala.
P 17-18 Community Open House, complimentary admission. F 29 Darkness at Noon: Fellows revisit Harvard’s legendary Fine Arts 13 course.
JUNE F 6 Prelude: Toasting a New Century at the Harvard University Art Museums, a benefit gala, 7pm-midnight. Tickets are limited and must be purchased in advance. F 17 Junior Fellows visit the Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Resinger Museum.
JULY M 17 Save the Date for a summer day trip. Invitations with details will be mailed to all Members. F 20 Fellows brunch at a private collection in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.
AUGUST F TBD Fellows event in Maine, to be announced.
László Moholy-Nagy, Light Prop for an Electric Stage, 1929–30. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Hildegard von Gontard Bequest Fund, 2007.105.
Fellows Events Members Events Public Events