Friday, September 3, 2010
September 3: Feast of St. Gregory the Great
Thursday, August 19, 2010
August 19: Birthday of William Jefferson Clinton
Opened in November 2004 with Silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification under the United States Green Building Council LEED for New Construction program, the Polshek Partnership-designed building later earned Platinum Certification under LEED-EB (LEED for Existing Buildings) in 2007. This puts it in the forefront of a trend that another favorite institution of mine, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, has bolstered: http://www.artmuseumgr.org/home/page/Video%3A+GRAM%27s+Green+Design
Not without political and aesthetic controversy--which is somehow fitting--the Clinton Presidential Center and Park has transformed Little Rock into a tourist destination. Polshek Partnership (now Ennead Architecture: see http://www.ennead.com/#/projects/clinton-presidential-center for wonderful photos) designed the building as a cantilevered structure that strives toward the proximate Arkansas River in a gesture that embodies the President's goal of "building a bridge to the 21st Century." The views in every direction are stunning, and the Great Hall--generously rentable for community events, including the Arkansas Symphony's chamber music series--has become one of the city's signature spaces.
The permanent exhibits in the library, which Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed (more good photos: http://www.raany.com/html/proj_04/portProj_Clinton.html) are an engaging combination of artifact, reproduction (e.g. the Oval Office replica) and interactives. In recent years the Center has brought in a variety of changing exhibitions, from motorcycles to Peter Max to art by Islamic women, with artistic quality sometimes taking a back seat to novelty and relevance to the "post-presidential agenda." In this way, however, it fills a role as kunsthalle that already established institutions such as the Historic Arkansas Museum (http://www.historicarkansas.org/) and the Arkansas Arts Center (http://www.arkarts.com/) cannot and should not attempt to fill.
The building was dedicated in a pouring rain on November 11, 2004. I will always remember sitting in that miserable deluge, entertained by Bono and The Edge (playing a piano that was later refurbished and donated to the Arkansas Arts Center, where I worked at the time--still grateful) and seeing all the surviving U.S. Presidents cheerfully sitting with rain pouring down their collars, enjoying the rare if bone-chilling moment when politics is set aside and history begins.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
July 3: Feast of St. Thomas, REVISED
My friend Fr. Fred Ball points out that Caravaggio's graphic description of this encounter, while it is what most of us imagine happened, goes a step beyond the scriptural account. We are only told that, in response to Jesus' invitation to touch his wounds, Thomas responds, " my Lord and my God." As Caravaggio depicts the episode, Thomas seems already to be comprehending without touching, as he stares straight ahead, or perhaps within. The other two apostles, meanwhile, have a keen curiosity about the corporeality of the event.
So did the early church. A relic purported to be a fragment of the bone of the index finger of St. Thomas which touched the wound of the resurrected Christ is housed in the reliquary chapel of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome. I wrote my dissertation on this church (see September 14, below), have contemplated this relic many times, and have saved a black-and-white postcard image of it, displayed in the monstrance to the left of the crucifix, for almost thirty years. Si non e vero, e ben trovato.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Croce_in_Gerusalemme#Passion_relics).
Thursday, July 1, 2010
July 1: Birthday of John Singleton Copley
Indeed, for some 240 years now, viewers have found the expression of the unnamed little girl in this portrait inexplicably unpleasant. One gets the feeling that she and Copley did not enjoy the many hours they spent confined together during the making of this picture. I have always wished I could like her, but I don't.
What I have always liked is her lovely pink satin dress with the lace and blue ribbon trim on the sleeves. And I came to like it even better when I sewed a replica of it for the TMA's "Halloween Fantasy" event, when staff members and volunteers dressed up and brought the paintings to life in the galleries. And I liked it better still when I was able to convince my daughter, then about 10, to wear it and hand out prizes (not candy!) to the children coursing through the museum.
There is more to say about Copley, of course, and about this painting. But I will end here with a birthday salutation to the artist, born on this date in 1738, and congratulations to Brian P. Kennedy, who was named TMA's ninth director just yesterday (www.toledoblade.com/article/20100630/NEWS16/6300310).
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
June 30: Birthday of Henry Moore
Friday, April 23, 2010
April 23: Birthday of J.M.W. Turner
Even this alley view conveys the magical quality of Venetian light and the romantic allure of the city called La Serenissima, the most serene. The angelic, double-sailed boat, reflected in the still water, is a bright and poetic focal point among the softly blurred, low horizontals of the distant architecture. Sky occupies the majority of the canvas, with gathering wispy clouds that read simultaneously as landscape elements and the self-conscious tracks of the artist's hand.
This is my favorite painting at the Toledo Museum of Art. When I worked there, I visited it often--when I was stuck, frustrated, uninspired, often after the galleries closed to the public and it was lit with only the indirect glow of the laylights above. Had the building caught fire, I would have run to retrieve it. While I could say even more about it, for reasons I can't explain it comforted me, then as now, beyond words.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
April 21: The Birthday of John Muir
First proposed in 1903, the O'Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River was begun in 1913 and completed 10 years later. The Hetchy Hetchy Reservoir, which provides drinking water and electricity to 2.4 million Californians, is still opposed by the Sierra Club, which Muir co-founded in 1892. Bierstadt's painting of the unspoiled valley is an emblem of the effort to restore Hetch Hetchy, which continues nearly 100 years later(http://www.hetchhetchy.org/artistic_visions/bierstadt_holyoke.html).
Bierstadt's painting, completed in 1875, was the founding gift to the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum the next year. Like many of Bierstadt's works, it is of a stunning scale and utterly mesmerizing glow, especially in the modestly-sized galleries at my alma mater's fine museum. An unrepentant Italophile for the entirety of my undergraduate career, I ignored this fine and important painting, a lapse which I now repent and for which hereby attempt in some small way to attone.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
March 15: The Return of Christopher Columbus
On March 15, 1493 Christo-pher Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage to the New World Even before it transpired, the voyage sparked the imaginations of many, notably King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, depicted in the painting here by Eugene Delacroix of 1839 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_columbus). His return from his "discovery" of a hitherto unknown part of the world, specifically the Bahamas, further inspired not only the Spanish monarchs but also many other explorers. Having hoped to find a route to India ("the Indies" becoming the misleading label for the lands he happened upon), Columbus brought back not the lucrative spices that were the valued commodity he sought, but instead examples of the gold artifacts and exploitable human resources he found.
The Toledo Museum of Art acquired this picture in 1939, an event that attracted the attention of the UP and that was published in at least one distant newspaper (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1977&dat=19390223&id=WpI0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=I6sFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4890,4931380).
Somewhat atypical of the loose, dramatic brushwork and dramatic and exotic subject matter for which he was most famous, The Return of Christopher Columbus is nonetheless Romantic in its luminous color and theatrical depiction of the faraway and glamorous. Its pendant, Christopher Columbus and His Son At La Rabida, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, is a deliberately more restrained work depicting the uncertainty and hardship that preceded the uncertain voyage http://www.nga.gov/collection/pdf/gg93en.pdf.)