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 | SPRING 2013
Harvard University Art Museums
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
FROM THE DIRECTOR
Celebrating the Next Step As you review this edition of Building Our Future, we are busy preparing for the exciting months ahead. We have planned “A Suite of Celebrations” in February and March to honor our historic building here at 32 Quincy Street, which will be closing for renovations on March 30. I hope you will make some time between now and then to take part in the festivities, which will culminate in a black-tie benefit gala on March 17. Maisie K. Houghton and Bruce Beal, who are chairing the Gala Committee, have worked tirelessly to organize a spectacular evening for more than 400 people: cocktails and dancing in the Fogg’s Calderwood Courtyard and dinner across the street in Harvard Yard. Mingling with the attendees will be a group of honored guests: artists featured in the exhibitions, leading museum directors who were educated at Harvard, former directors of many of our museums, and University officials.
Other events planned for the spring include student performances in the Calderwood Courtyard and Adolphus Busch Hall during Arts First weekend, March 1–4, and a community open house the weekend of March 17–18. While the renovations we have planned for Quincy Street will take a few years, we are already anticipating our improved quarters. In 1927, when the collections moved into their new Quincy Street building, the Fogg became the first museum in the world to unite under one roof the elements that director Edward W. Forbes and associate director Paul J. Sachs considered essential to an education in the fine arts. In addition to galleries and study rooms, there were lecture halls, a research library, and conservation laboratories. The institution grew, eventually to include the Busch-Reisinger and Arthur M. Sackler museums. Now, 80 years on, the University is committed to creating a state-of-the-art facility for the next century of students, scholars, and the public. The new museum will physically
Jennifer Allen, project manager for collections inventory and move planning, drapes ancient mosaic fragments in plastic.
embody our core values—intimacy, quality, accessibility, and collaboration—in an innovative design by architect Renzo Piano. I urge you to stop in and view the plans, models, and drawings in an exhibition organized by deputy director Richard Benefield, opening on March 18. In the meantime, there are many details to attend to—not the least of which is moving the majority of works in our collections. As you can imagine, this will be no ordinary move. None of this activity would be possible without the generous support of our community, for which we are deeply thankful.
Thomas W. Lentz Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director Harvard University Art Museums
Bowl with Inscriptions, Persian, Northeastern Iran or Uzbekistan, late 9th–10th century, Samanid. Earthenware with underglaze slip painting. Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art.
On View
MAKING MYTH MODERN Primordial Themes in German 20th-Century Sculpture at the Busch-Reisinger Museum Through January 3
OVERLAPPING REALMS Arts of the Ancient Islamic World and India at the Fogg Through February 15
GODS IN COLOR Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum Through January 20
TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER At the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts February 28 – April 6
ON THE PATH OF MADNESS Representations of Majnun in Persian,Turkish, and Indian Painting at the Sackler Through February 10
LONG LIFE COOL WHITE Photographs by Moyra Davey at the Fogg February 28 – June 30 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.
Attributed to Sultan Muhammad, Lovers’ Picnic, Painting from a Manuscript of the Divan (Collected Works) of Hafiz, c. 1526–27. Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper. Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Stuart Cary Welch in honor of Edith Iselin Gilbert Welch.
Exhibition
Painted Statues? Gods in Color Shows Ancient Sculpture’s True Palette
For centuries, Greek and Roman sculpture has been associated with the simplicity of plain marble: shape and stone, unadorned. But an eye-opening new exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum reveals that classical statuary was far from austere. In fact, it was elaborately painted in startlingly exuberant hues.
Peplos Kore. Original: Greek, c. 530 BC, Acropolis Museum, Athens. Color reconstructions by Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann. Photo courtesy Stiftung Arch채ologie.
EXHIBITION INFO
Gods in Color can be seen at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, until January 20, 2013. HOURS
Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; Sunday, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
Reclining Lion. Original: Greek, c. 550 BC, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Color reconstruction by Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike KochBrinkmann. Photo courtesy Stiftung Archäologie.
A JOLT OF COLOR
Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity, on display September 22 through January 20, features some 20 copies of Greek and Roman sculptures, painted as research suggests they were when first made. Visitors may be amazed by the flamboyant palette: bright red, tropical green, and electric blue—hardly the noble white marble most people associate with classical sculpture. “People have become used to white marble statues,” said Susanne Ebbinghaus, George M. A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art. “After all, the sculpture that survives from antiquity has been around for a long time; it was frequently exposed to the elements and sometimes surely also scrubbed clean upon recovery. Color became clearly apparent on sculpture excavated during the 19th century at various sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Even though specialists have long been aware of this, their knowledge has done little to change popular perception.”
To the modern eye, colorful reproductions of famous ancient monuments such as panels from the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus may seem garish, because sculptors since the Renaissance have modeled their works on an ideal informed by the apparently plain white marbles of Greek and Roman antiquity. By now, however, scholarship has firmly established that ancient statuary was routinely painted or gilt and was often embellished with metal attachments and glass and stone inlays. Ancient texts describe skillfully painted statues, indicating that color was an integral part of the object. Important examples of marble sculpture with significant traces of paint include statuary from the Athenian Acropolis, pedimental figures from the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina, and slabs of the Alexander Sarcophagus from the royal necropolis of ancient Sidon, in what is now Lebanon. Reproductions of these objects will be on view. Researchers used ultraviolet light and raking light (extreme side light that illuminates surface details) to see the remains of painted decoration; they employed various scientific techniques to determine the chemical makeup of specks of pigment. Malachite from Greece, for example, produced the color green, cinnabar from Spain and Istria yielded red, and azurite from Italy, Spain, and the Sinai created bright blue.
HEAD OF CALIGULA One of the many objects on view is a reproduction of the marble head of the Roman emperor Caligula, who ruled from AD 37 to 41. Traces of paint have survived between the lips and on the eyes, eyebrows, hair, and even the skin of the original, which is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. The usual means of replicating the head—making a mold—would have damaged the remaining pigment. Instead, scientists used noncontact 3-D laser scanning to develop an exact computer model of the original. The data were then transferred to a machine shop, where a computer-controlled machine replicated the emperor’s head in marble. The copy was then painted to re-create the appearance of the original. Most of the other color reconstructions in the exhibition are of Greek sculpture. They include grave monuments, statuary
set up in sanctuaries to honor the gods, and architectural sculpture from temples and treasuries. Visitors to the Sackler will be able to decide for themselves whether they prefer monochrome or painted sculpture. In the galleries, the colorful reproductions are juxtaposed with Harvard’s own Greek and Roman statuary in its current, colorless state. Egyptian and Near Eastern reliefs, also from the Sackler’s collection, show that other civilizations were using color as well. And bronze sculpture is known to have been colored too, with inlays in different metals, as seen on a bronze head from the Glyptothek in Munich. Visitors can also see films that document the research and the processes involved in making the reconstructions.
Portrait of Caligula. Original: Roman, c. AD 37–41, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Color reconstruction by Vinzenz Brinkmann, Ulrike KochBrinkmann, Sylvia Kellner, and Jan Stubbe Østergaard. Photo courtesy Stiftung Archäologie.
Funding for the exhibition and its publications was provided by Christopher and Jean Angell, Walter and Ursula Cliff, Mark B. Fuller, the German Consulate General Boston, the German Foreign Office, Evangelos Karvounis, James and Sonia Kay, Roy Lennox and Joan Weberman, Marian Marill, Markus Michalke, Sharmin and Bijan MossavarRahmani, Samuel Plimpton, Laura and Lorenz Reibling, the Ida & William Rosenthal Foundation, and two anonymous donors.
Calendar FELLOWS EVENTS
The next few months will bring a number of exciting programs for our Members, Fellows, and donors. Please join us!
December 4 Fogg and International Fellows Day in NYC. January 19 A preview and celebration of Classified Documents: The Social Museum of Harvard University, 1903–1931 with an introductory talk by the curators. February 9 Junior Fellows event at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York March 1 A celebration of Multiple Strategies: Beuys, Maciunas, Fluxus with an introductory talk by Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.
March 12 Fellows Day in NYC with visits to museum and private collections. March 13 Junior Fellows evening at a private print collection in New York. March 27 Curator’s Choice seminar and reception with William W. Robinson, Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings. April 4 A preview and celebration of The Last Ruskinians: Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Herbert Moore, and Their Circle with an introductory talk by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., curator of American art.
Layla and Majnun, India, Punjab Hills, Basohli or Nurpur, c. 1725. Opaque watercolor on paper. Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Friends of the Fogg Art Museum Fund, 1971.96.
TRAVEL January 12–20 The Fogg and Inter-national Fellows travel to Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma.
March (dates to be announced) Fogg and International Fellows tour Tunisia and Libya. MEMBERS EVENTS December 13 Members Holiday Bash, Fogg and BuschReisinger Museums, 7:00–10:00 p.m. April 19 Spring exhibition celebration: gallery talks, tours, and an evening reception.
For more information about joining the Fellows program or about Fellows events, please contact Jennifer Klahn at jennifer_klahn@harvard.edu or 617.496.5317.
Writing & Editing Kathleen Clute Photography Tom Fitzsimmons, Steven Horsch, Katya Kallsen, Allan Macintyre Copyediting Marsha Pomerantz Administration Kerridan Ann Murphy
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