BUILDING OUR FUTURE Harvard University Art Museums Arthur M. Sackler Museum / Busch-Reisinger Museum Fogg Art Museum / Straus Center for Conservation VOL. VII | NO. 1 | WINTER 2013
Gifts & Acquisitions Harvard University Art Museums
Donors Give $18.4 Million for Art Endowment
The Art Museums are close to their goal of raising $10 million to fund the operations of the Department of Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts.
BUILDING OUR FUTURE Building Our Future is produced by the Division of Institutional Advancement of the Harvard University Art Museums three times a year. For information about making a gift, please call 617.496.6934. © 2013 President and Fellows of Harvard College
Some $18.4 million has been raised so far to endow the department and its curatorial staff, research, publications, and internships. 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
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.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lake with Sailboats, c. 1912. Graphite and watercolor on white wove paper. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Bequest of Richard B. Sisson.
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, professor of history of art and architecture, guides undergraduates through works by Cassatt, David, Degas, GĂŠricault, and Ingres during an October class at the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Drawings and Photographs.
Tiziano Vecellio, called Titian, Trees Near a Pool of Water, c. 1530. Brown ink over charcoal on cream antique laid paper. Fogg Art Museum, Bequest of John and Alice Steiner.
Hans Memling, Virgin and Child and Maarten van Nieuwenhove, 1487. Oil on oak. Musea Brugge, Hospitaalmuseum Sint-Janshospitaal.
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 2007 when Harry Cooper, curator of modern art, acquired the Fogg’s first paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Joseph Stella, and Willem De Kooning.
Joseph Stella, Dog in Motion, circa 1914. Oil on canvas. Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Dr. Ernest G. Stillman, Class of 1907, by exchange.
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. The collection has been greatly enriched by these and other purchases.
Kara Walker, Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta, from the portfolio Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005. Offset lithograph and screen print. Photo courtesy of Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston.
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.
LIGHT DISPLAY MACHINES Two Works by László Moholy-Nagy at the Busch-Reisinger Museum through June 4
PAINTINGS BY MAX BECKMANN From the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich at the Busch-Reisinger through August 23
KARA WALKER Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) in honor of President Drew Gilpin Faust at the Fogg Art Museum May 6 – June 11
A TRADITION REDEFINED Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950–2000 at the Sackler June 3 – September 1
MAKING MYTH MODERN Primordial Themes in 20th-Century Sculpture at the Busch-Reisinger through May 6
CONTEMPORARY ART From the Harvard University Art Museums Collections at the Fogg through August 10
László Moholy-Nagy, Light Prop for an Electric Stage, 1929–30. Exhibition replica, constructed in 2006, through the courtesy of Hattula Moholy-Nagy. Metal, plastics, glass, paint, and wood, with electric motor. Busch Reisinger Museum, Hildegard von Gontard Bequest Fund.
Exhibition
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.
Wan Qingli, Clearing after Snow, 1983. Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper. Digital photography by Ken Howie.
A 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 students. “This exhibition will be one of the first in the United States to survey Chinese
EXHIBITION INFO
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.
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 Thirty-five artists will be represented, including Liu Guosong (b. 1932) of Taiwan, a founder of the contemporary Chinese ink painting movement and one of the most technically innovative such painters working today. 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 studied abroad. 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.
Funding for the exhibition and its publications was provided by Art Lu Yanshao, Electric Power Station in a Mountain Village, 1976. Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper. Digital photography by Ken Howie.
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 Jen-Shyong 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.
Calendar FELLOWS EVENTS May 15 International and Fogg Fellows visit private collections in New York. May 16–17 Junior Fellows Spring Weekend, coinciding with the Benefit Gala. May 29 Darkness at Noon: Fellows revisit Harvard’s legendary Fine Arts 13 course. June 6 Prelude: Toasting a New Century at the Harvard University Art Museums, a benefit gala, 7 p.m.–midnight. Tickets are limited and must be purchased in advance.
June 17 Junior Fellows visit Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with Peter Nisbet, DaimlerBenz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. July 20 Fellows brunch at a private collection in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. August TBD Fellows events in Maine, date and location to be announced.
Donor Mildred “Micki” Lee at home with David Smith’s Albany XX (1960), a painted steel sculpture she plans to bequeath to the Art Museums.
MEMBERS EVENTS May 15 A Day on Bellevue Avenue: The Art & Architecture of Newport, Rhode Island, 8 a.m.–6 p.m. July 17 Save the Date for a summer trip. Invitations with details will be mailed to members. PUBLIC EVENTS May 1–4 Arts First weekend at the Fogg, Adolphus Busch Hall, and around campus. Open to all and free to the Harvard Community. May 17–18 Community Open House, complimentary admission to members and non-members.
Please note that the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums at 32 Quincy Street will close for renovations on June 30. Highlights of the collections will be on view at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum beginning in September.
Writing & Editing Kathleen Clute Photography Tom Fitzsimmons, Steven Horsch, Katya Kallsen, Allan Macintyre Copyediting Marsha Pomerantz Administration Kerridan Ann Murphy
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