September and October at Local Museums

In an effort to interest students in the often-impressive exhibits and holdings at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Kimbell Art Museum (and others), I'm making an effort to post information on events and to link this blog to class schedules and course home pages. I hope to do this bi-monthly.

It sometimes amazes me how little time my students spend looking at the real thing--as opposed to digital images projected on a screen. I hope that by alerting you all to current events I can remedy this situation.  Most area museums offer free entry to their permanent collections, and often provide free-entrance days or reduced prices to special exhibits for students. Check home pages to find out when.

Most of the offerings listed below are focused on topics covered in Art History 2. But since most of the Art History 1 students will be moving on, it certainly wouldn't hurt to get a heads-up on some of what we'll be discussing next quarter.

The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Fort Worth is home to three commendable art museums: the Kimbell, the Modern, and the Amon Carter.  A major exhibition of Impressionist paintings from Paris's Orsay Museum is arriving on October 19 at the Kimbell, and will be in place until January 25, 2015: Faces of Impressionism: Portraits from the Musée d'Orsay. It focuses on works by major players in the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movements: Caillebotte, Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Renoir. Since we spend little enough time on portraits in class, this might be a good way to augment your visual repertoire. Alas, it doesn't get here in time for the Formal Analysis assignment, but next quarter's Art History 2 inmates will have a chance to take advantage of it.

The permanent collection at the Kimbell does, however, contain holdings from the Baroque, Rococo, Romantic, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist periods, many of which are currently on exhibit in the new Renzo Piano Pavilion.

The Dallas Museum of Art

Currently on exhibit is a rather wonderful collection called Saturated: Dye-Decorated Cloths from North and West Africa, which might be of interest to fashion folk, and also provide some insight into African influence on modern European art.

As a reward for anyone who actually reads this post, Art History 2 students may select works from Mind's Eye: Masterworks on Paper from David to Cézanne for their formal analysis (elsewhere I've restricted the assignment to paintings rather than drawings or pastels); just make sure any chosen works are in color.  It runs until October 26 in the Chilton Gallery.

Those of you who were intrigued by the Käthe Kollwitz print I showed as an introduction to German Expressionism might want to see Käthe Kollwitz: A Social Activist in the Era of World War I. It's up until November 16 on the second level. Since these are monochrome prints and drawings, though, they won't qualify for the analysis essay. They might, however, acquaint you with a wider sense of her work, and would be of particular interest to drawing students and animators.

Coming soon: If you're not completely fed up with still-life painting, you might want to see Bouquets: French Still-Life Painting from Chardin to Matisse, which opens on October 26 and runs through February 8 of 2015.  This promises to provide a panorama of still-life works that can demonstrate the enduring impact of the genre.

And finally, arriving on November 15, a collection of works by Jackson Pollock, called Blind Spots will feature his "Black Pourings," painted between 1951and 1953.  Unlike the more colorful works we study in class, these are all made with black enamel and oil--and the exhibit will contrast the two periods (including earlier works from 1947-1949).  This is an important exhibit because the DMA is the only venue.

Please let me know if you find this new feature helpful, and I'll be happy to keep it up.  Happy museum-going!

Image credit: Edgar Degas's L'Absinthe, 1876, will be featured in the Kimbell Faces of Impressionism show.  Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Welcome and/or Welcome Back

The first day of a new quarter always represents promise: everything's looking up for the moment, and there are slews of new faces and names to remember (something that grows more and more difficult for me every year), as well as new experiences to, well, experience.

To start things off I thought I'd mention some events of potential interest to student-artists occurring around the country and here in Dallas.

The first of these is the Dallas Museum of Art's new exhibit of fifteenth-century funerary sculptures, The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy. They provide an unforgettable example of the Renaissance reconciliation between Classicism and Christianity, with exquisite small-scale depictions of grief. I'll work on an extra-credit assignment for those who need a little inspiration to get to the exhibit--but you really shouldn't need to be coaxed.

Of particular interest to anyone studying anatomy and life drawing, The National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) is featuring selections from its library in an exhibit on The Body Inside and Out: Anatomical Literature and Art Theory. The brochure can be downloaded in .pdf format (8 pages) and contains some useful information on the history of visual understanding about the body.

The Meadows Museum at SMU has scored something of a coup in exhibiting El Greco's Pentecost as part of a three-year alliance with the Prado Museum in Madrid. The Meadows collection focuses on Spanish and colonial art, and the new partnership can only prove to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In honor of one of the themes we'll be pursuing in my Humanities class (memory), take a look at the Museum of Modern Art's education pages--this one featuring Salvador Dalí's Persistence of Memory, with an explanatory video. Although I'm not one of Dali's acolytes, most of my students find him irresistible, and this seemed like a way to acquaint you with what MoMA has to offer. If you find yourself in St. Petersburg, Florida about a hundred days from now, you could also visit the new Dalí Museum, which has been under construction for the past two plus years.

A new feature of this blog will focus on discovered work by new artists: those I didn't know existed until I ran into them on the web, or until my students mentioned them to me. The first of these is Turgo Bastien, a Haitian-born abstract artist whose work reminds me of the scarification designs and Luba memory-boards we'll talk about in the Humanities class. His mixed media piece, Another Call From Africa, opens this post.

Have a great quarter, People. Let's do some good work and have fun.

Image credit: Turgo Bastien, Another Call From Africa, 2009. Via Wikimedia Commons.