Zahi Hawass, the famed face of Egyptian archaeology, will speak at the de Young this Saturday, revealing new discoveries
Widely known as Egypt’s Indiana Jones, the renowned archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is speaking this Saturday, 2-3:30 pm, at the de Young’s Koret Auditorium, coinciding with the opening of the traveling Egyptian blockbuster, “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” (August 20, 2022 – February 12, 2023). Sponsored by FAMSF’s Ancient Art Council, this is the first of four guest lectures associated with the Ramses exhibition. Anyone who has ever encountered the charismatic Hawass on the National Geographic or Discovery channels or caught his reality show, “Chasing Mummies: The Amazing Adventures of Zahi Hawass,” on the History Channel knows they’re in for a treat. His thrilling in-the-trenches stories have revitalized interest in Egyptian archaeology around the world.
Dr. Hawass will regale the audience with the discoveries at Saqqara, which has proven to be treasure trove that keeps on giving. Saqqara is where the oldest complete stone building complex in history was erected and where as many as 16 different Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs are thought to have planned and built their pyramids. Hawass will tell of a new pyramid in Saqqara; the name of a previously unknown queen; and the discovery of 57 shafts of coffins and mummies. He will also discuss the ongoing excavation at Gisr el Mudir, in Saqqara, and the uncovering of major statues dating back 4,300 years ago found while searching for the missing pyramid of the Third-Dynasty King Huni. He will touch upon recent excavations in the Valley of the Kings and the search for Nefertiti and Ankhesenamun (King Tut’s wife) and the use of DNA analysis to complete the family tree of Tutankhamun. The presentation will conclude with the amazing find of the Lost Golden City, near Luxor—considered the most important discovery of 2021
After earning a degree in Egyptology in Cairo, at age 33, Hawass earned a Fulbright fellowship, came to America, and completed his Ph.D. in Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. In 2002, during Mubarak’s rule, he was appointed as Egypt’s Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which in 2011 became the Ministry of State for Antiquities. During his tenure, Hawass revolutionized archaeological site management in Egypt and revitalized its museum system, opening 15 museums to the public and initiating the construction of 20 more, including The Grand Egyptian Museum, slated to open in fall 2022 as the largest archaeological museum in the world with an extensive archaeological collection of some 50,000 artifacts and the full tomb collection of King Tutankhamun.
Hawass is a bold advocate for Egyptians reclaiming Egyptology and has successfully repatriated more than 5,000 artifacts. In 2020, he formed a committee that has been focusing efforts on the return of five priceless Egyptian artifacts: the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum; an exquisite bust of Nefertiti (1345 BCE) at Berlin’s Neues Museum; the Dendera zodiac sculpture (ca. 50 BCE) in the Louvre Museum; a statue of Hemiunu (Old Kingdom) at the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; and a bust of Prince Ankhhaf (ca. 2520-2494 BCE) located in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. So far, those institutions have refused.
ARThound’s Ramses coverage: “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” opens August 20 at the de Young—rare lion cub mummy and stunning virtual reality experience add to the buzz
Details: Lecture is 2-3:30 pm at the de Young’s Koret auditorium. Free but requires a ticket which will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis at 1 pm, just outside the Koret auditorium. Seating is limited and unassigned.
Admission to “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs,” is separate. Different prices for weekdays vs. weekends. FAMSF members free for one visit only; additional visits require $23 member tickets. Non-member Adult prices: weekdays: $35; weekend $40.
Saturday, August 20, is free Saturday, which includes general museum entrance and all exhibits that do not have a surcharge, including Faith Ringgold: American People, covering 50 years of the trailblazing Harlem-born African American artist’s work, the first retrospective celebrating her in almost 40 years (through November 27).
“Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” opens August 20 at the de Young—rare lion cub mummy and stunning virtual reality experience add to the buzz
Closing summer with a bang, we’re off to ancient Egypt. “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs,” opens Saturday, August 20, at the de Young Museum. The first exhibition about Ramses the Great in over 30 years and the first ever in San Francisco, this multimedia extravaganza has the de Young as the second stop on its global tour. Fresh from its world premiere at HMNS (Houston Museum of Natural Sciences) where it received rave reviews, it includes 180 objects, the most important trove of treasures related to Ramses the Great ever to leave Egypt.
Many of these items are newly discovered and have never toured before. Among the rarest finds are recently excavated mummies of lion cubs from the Saqqara necropolis—a vast ancient burial ground, some 30 miles south of Cairo, that once served the Ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis—as well as treasures discovered in the royal tombs of Dahshur and Tanis.
The de Young promises gallery after gallery of royal statues, sarcophagi, spectacular masks, magnificent jewelry, and ornate golden tomb treasures all revealing the fabulous wealth of the pharaohs, the astonishing skill of ancient Egyptian tomb builders, and the superb workmanship of Egyptian artists. Drone photography, immersive video and multimedia productions, and life-size photo-murals will re-create pivotal moments from Ramses’ life, including his monumental building projects and his triumph in May 1274 BC over the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh (near the modern Lebanon–Syria border), considered the largest chariot battle ever fought. This exciting blending of art, history, and technology that will expand our understanding of Ramses’ as the most celebrated pharaoh of the New Kingdom, Egypt’s golden age.
“This is a once in a lifetime experience,” said curator Dr. Renée Dryfus, recently named FAMSF’s George and Judy Marcus Distinguished Curator in Charge, Ancient Art, who organized the exhibit’s presentation for the de Young. “These objects are coming from Egypt’s major museums and when they go back to Egypt, I doubt you will be seeing them again for many generations.”
Jewelry held a significant place in the lives of the ancient Egyptians, anchoring social status and helping them transcend into the afterlife. You’ll want to take your time with the exhibit’s stunning jewelry, noting its generous use of gold and semi-precious stones, intricate craftsmanship, and a built-in language of protection to ward off evil. If you’re like me, you’ll probably also be asking yourself why there is no tech gimmick that lets viewers try these on these exquisite pieces and imagine themselves as Egyptian royalty.
Ramses and his many wives and children wore elaborate gold earrings, bracelets, rings and necklaces, examples of which are on display. They considered gold to be “the skin of the gods.” An ornate single gold earring bears the name of Ramses the Eleventh. Ramses II was so revered that, after his death, nine more Pharaohs bore his name. The three rows of decorations are tiny cobras snakes wearing sun disks and Atef crowns rearing up to strike anyone who dares to harm the King.
A gorgeous collar, made of six rows of carnelian, feldspar, and glass paste beads with the bottom row droplets representing flower buds is one of the treasures discovered in the Hawara tomb of 12th dynasty Princess Neferuptah, daughter of Amenemhat III (who ruled around 1860-1814BC). Neferuptah lived roughly 500 years before Ramses II. The solid gold ends are shaped as large falcon heads—symbolizing protection in the afterlife by the falcon god, Horus. At 36 cm wide, roughly 14 inches, it has considerable weight and employs an opulent counterweight at the back to help prevent the collar slipping down the chest while being worn. This necklace bears a striking resemblance to a collar found within the innermost coffin of Tutankhamun, who lived roughly 200 years before Neferuptah and was buried with six collars, each with exquisite gold falcon head ends. One of these collars, which was discovered draped over Tut’s thighs, employs a very similar design scheme to Neferuptah’s collar and has the same droplet beads, representing flower buds, as its final row. The exhibit also includes the breathtaking 22nd dynasty cuff bracelet of Sheshonq II, a masterpiece in gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, carnelian and faience and a huge inlaid eye of Horus.
Visitors can also enjoy the optional Ramses & Nefertari: Journey to Osiris, a thrilling 10 minute and 30 second VR (virtual reality) experience featuring the Positron Voyager Chair, a VR platform that moves and vibrates so that you can actually sense what ancient Egypt was like as you tour of two of Ramses’ most impressive monuments—Abu Simbel and Nefertari’s tomb—led by the spirit of Nefertari, the pharaoh’s beloved queen. While we’ve all had our share of dubious new media experiences in museums, this seems the perfect blending of immersive entertainment and teaching experience, bound to bring out the kid in all of us and mesmerize the kids we bring along with us.
Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photo: Sandro Vannini, courtesy FAMSF
Ramses II, believed to be a god on Earth, ruled for 67 years as part of the 19th Dynasty, in the 13th century before Christ. He fought the Hittites, signed the world’s first official peace treaty and fathered over 50 sons and 50 daughters, the most children of any pharaoh. His reign corresponded with a great flourishing of the arts and he undertook an unparalleled building program, creating the great temples at Karnak and Luxor, erecting enormous temples, obelisks, and statues and expanding Egypt’s empire.
His tomb is located in the Valley of the Kings, the final resting place of New Kingdom pharaohs for over 500 years. Because his tomb was plundered in ancient times, “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” doesn’t actually include any objects from Ramses’ tomb but, instead, includes objects from royal tombs found elsewhere in Egypt, providing an idea of the extraordinary objects that Ramses’s tomb must have included.
“Kings before and after Ramses erected colossal statues of themselves, but none are larger or greater in number than those commissioned by Ramses the Great,” said Renée Dreyfus. “The temples he erected, statues he commissioned, monuments he inscribed throughout Egypt and Nubia, and funerary temple and royal tomb he built were reminders of his earthly power and closeness to the gods. The proliferation of his name led to it becoming almost a synonym for kingship.”
After closing in February, 2023, the exhibit heads to Europe, where its first stop is the Parc de la Villette cultural complex in Paris (April – September 2023).
Details: “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” is August 20, 2022 through November 12, 2023. Advanced ticket purchase is essential; a great number of timed tickets have already been sold. Different prices for weekdays vs. weekends. FAMSF members free for one visit only; additional member tickets $23. Non-member Adult prices: weekdays: $35; weekend $40.
Additional VR experience: Ramses & Nefertari: Journey to Osiris, FAMSF members free. Non-member Adult price: $18 both weekdays and weekends.
The Obama Portraits at the de Young—so much better in person, fascinating symbolism—through August 14
Installation view of “The Obama Portraits Tour,” de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2022. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy FAMSF. Left, “Barack Obama” by Kehinde Wiley, oil on canvas, 2018. Right, “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama” by Amy Sherald, oil on linen, 2018. Both: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
There’s just no substitute for seeing art in person and letting the experience hit you full force. The official portraits of President Barak Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald at the de Young Museum are stopping people in their tracks—it’s not the usual quick selfie and move on type of viewing. Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and unveiled in February 2018, these presidential likenesses are strong and stunning, each in their own way. They speak to what each of us holds in our hearts and memories of the Obama’s and their era and challenge us to dig deeper. As presidential portraits go, they are highly unorthodox and have broadened discussion on portraiture, challenging staid conventions of representing political leaders, and influencing how Black American identity is shaped in the public realm. Wiley and Sherald were chosen by the Obamas and are the first African-American artists to paint portraits of the president and first lady, our first African American first family, for the National Portrait Gallery. The Obama Portraits Tour has been traveling since June 2021 and the two paintings leave the de Young on August 14 for their seventh and final stop, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and then return to their permanent home at the National Portrait Gallery. It’s estimated that 4 million people have already seen them on this tour.
“I am struck by their magnificence,” said an impassioned Timothy Anglin Burgard, Distinguished Senior Curator and Curator-in-Charge of American Art at FAMSF. “They really have been become secular pilgrimage objects. I’m inclined to remove the word secular; they’ve got a spiritual aspect…The Obamas represent the realization of the American dream and that’s entangled in our perception of these artworks.”
Three years after their unveiling, nearly every stylistic detail in these portraits has been researched and and there’s a hook for almost everyone. They are displayed side by side and several feet apart within the gallery. Your first take is how dramatically different the two portraits are from each other stylistically, speaking completely different languages, and then you notice the differences in their size and scale. At 7 feet tall, Barack Obama’s portrait is a foot taller than Michelle Obama’s and he is painted roughly 10 percent larger than life-size; whereas she is slightly smaller than life-size. This is highly unconventional for husband and wife portraits, but attests that each portrait was created independently.
Kehinde Wiley’s Barack Obama
The vibrant flower power struck a strong chord with me: the entire painting is teaming with vegetation. Obama sits surrounded by a mass of verdant foliage which threatens to engulf his chair and him, wrapping around his feet, creeping over his shoulder. A respectable power-affirming setting has long been the norm for presidential portraits, setting a tone of honor and remembrance. A garden portrait like this is beyond rebellious but well within Kehinde Wiley’s oeuvre. Wiley, 42, attended San Francisco Art Institute. He grabbed the attention of the art world and media almost immediately after earning his MFA from Yale in 2001. He employs the power of images to address the historic invisibility of blacks in art and has created series of works that inject black people, usually men, into old-master European royal portraits. He tends to foreground his subjects in colorful and highly intricate all-encompassing patterning. His iconic 2005 portrait of rapper LL Cool J, also at the National Portrait Gallery, employs an almost florescent intricately repeating ornamental backdrop. As Wiley remarked at the unveiling, “There is a fight going on between he (Obama) in the foreground, and the plants that are trying to announce themselves at his feet. Who gets to be the star of the show?”
The flowers each symbolize an aspect of Obama’s personal history. The purple African lily symbolizes Obama’s Kenyan heritage (Wiley’s father is Nigerian); the white jasmine represents his Hawaiian birthplace and time spent in Indonesia; the multicolored chrysanthemum signifies Chicago, the city where Obama grew up and eventually became a state senator. The three red rosebuds, the official flower of Washington D.C., represent new beginnings. The overall message is the flowering or dawning of a new era in a nation that finally has its first Black President. But these exquisite flowers are also all struggling to emerge, a metaphor for Obama’s own struggle to emerge from obstacle after obstacle.
There’s also the idea of camouflage. Obama had to be very careful about both concealing and revealing himself. Often, he was often seen as black man before he was seen as president. Certain moments in his presidency— in 2012, when he spoke at the interfaith prayer vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre; in 2013, when Trayvon Martin was shot, when he said that could have been his own son; in 2015, when he sang “Amazing Grace” during the eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a shooting at a Charleston church—the walls came down and he spoke as a father, as a man mourning and we had an inkling of the great difficulty he had navigating race relations which were so central to his presidency.
Obama himself is depicted in a serious pose, seated with arms crossed, looking straight ahead, wearing a dark suit with an open-collar shirt and no tie. He wears his gold wedding band and a Rolex Cellini reference 50509, with a white gold case.
In part, the portrait seems inspired by George P.A. Healy’s 1869 portrait of Abraham Lincoln—the carved wooden antique chair, the alert forward pose, and thoughtful expression. But instead of the austere darkness that threatens to engulf Lincoln, Wiley substituted plants infused with light and energy. Lincoln is one of Obama’s heroes, a role model, so much so that Obama launched his first presidential campaign in Lincoln’s hometown, Springfield, Illinois, and cited the 16th president numerous times during his two terms in office. Obama even requested that Wiley’s portrait of him be unveiled on February 12, Lincoln’s birthday. Paul Stati, the Washington Post art critic, wrote in his February 13, 2018 review, “(Wiley) is not just channeling Healy, he’s linking the Obama presidency to Lincoln’s — painting Obama as the rich fulfillment of the promise of Lincoln’s abolition of slavery.”
When you look at the armchair Wiley painted, the assumption is made that it is resting on an unseen bed of soil but the bottoms of Obama’s shoes are not touching solid ground, his left foot which tilts slightly upwards. “He seems to be weightless and defying gravity, possibly levitating,” suggested Timothy Burgard. “It’s fascinating that both artists arrived independently at visual solutions that suggest or create an aurora of spirituality or even religiosity.”
Amy Sherald’s Michelle Obama
The former First Lady’s striking portrait also defies convention. Executed in flat neutral grayed-out tones, a bare-armed Mrs Obama is set against a solid light blue background and gazes directly at, or right through the viewer, giving the impression her thoughts directed inwards. Her hair falls in loose curls just beyond her shoulders, framing her angular face with its strong jawline. It’s abstracted, more impression than detail. Her seated posture is relaxed, with legs crossed. She’s resting her chin on her hand, elegantly depicted with long slender fingers. She’s wearing a black and white maxi dress with a billowing skirt that spreads to the bottom of the portrait.
New Jersey-based Amy Sherald, 49, stayed true to her distinctive style of portraiture: paintings of self-assured, black people in stylish clothes against colored backdrops that contrast with their faces, which are uniformly grisaille. When Sherald got the Obama commission, she was just beginning to move into the national spotlight after putting her career on hold for four years as she navigated family health issues and her own heart transplant. She’d had a few solo shows and was known within the contemporary art world but needed national exposure to boost her name recognition. The Obama portrait did just that. She got her first first full-fledged New York solo show, “The Heart of the Matter” at Hauser & Wirth, in September 2019 which New York Times art critic Roberta Smith called “magnificent, stirring” (9.16.2019 review). She has since gone to several museum shows and made the news in December 2020 when her portrait, “The Bathers” (2015), sold for $4.2 million at Phillips, over 20 times its estimated sale price. The portrait offered a counter-representation to the genre of European paintings whose white subjects, relaxing near bodies of water and wearing bathing suits or in the nude, are described as bathers.
Sherald has said many times that she uses gray-toned skin to take race out of her portraits and force viewers to look deeper. Those neutral gray tones also give her subjects, especially Mrs, Obama, a timelessness. The de-emphasis of precise facial features invites the viewer to question who the subject really is, an issue Mrs. Obama must have grappled with continually as she navigated all of her roles, playing a slightly different version of herself to suit the occasion. There’s a strong physicality to the portrait which is unusual in a first lady’s portrait. While many people have commented on Obama’s strong arms in this portrait, I didn’t see the prominent muscular definition in her biceps and forearms which I and so many admire: she works out and it shows but not so much here.
The dress is the most discussed aspect of the portrait: a bold arm-bearing white halter-style maxi dress with a geometric pattern in pink, red, and chartreuse, designed by Michelle Smith of the label Milly and was based on a look from her Spring 2017 collection. At the portrait’s unveiling in 2018, artist Amy Sherald said it reminded her of a Gee’s Bend quilt and the colors reminded her of Mondrian. This dress, so distinctive from the conservatively-styled, solid-colored choices selected for most National Gallery’s presidential portraits, has garnered so much attention and commentary that in 2021 it was displayed along with the portrait at the National Gallery in 2021. It was immortalized further in the Showtime series The First Lady, with Viola Davis as Obama. It is emblematic of Obama’s fashion-forward style which became bolder the longer she occupied the East Wing. She championed upstart American designers, was fond of bold colors, and metallics, and wasn’t afraid to show some skin. At 5’11”, with her body and confidence, she could pull off almost any look.
Michelle Smith remarked in Vogue (February 12, 2018) that, more than being a high-fashion statement, the simple cut cotton dress is “a people’s fabric. The dress has pockets. It is easy and comfortable…The halter neck exemplifies Michelle Obama’s confidence to show her arms and shoulders. It is forward thinking and she is comfortable. The dress speaks to her in that she is modern, clean, and forward thinking.”
I’m missing Obama’s infectious empowering smile, wishing that more of her were revealed in this portrait but evoking my individual memories of her is not what this portrait is about. These are the first presidential portraits by African American artists ever to be commissioned for the National Gallery. They are intended to solidify the legacy of our first African President and First Lady who defied all expectations. The portraits are perfect in their unwavering unconventional beauty, a strong public statement of who we are as Americans.
Details:
The Obama Portraits Tour closes August 14, 2022. Requires additional timed ticket and a General Admission de Young ticket. The de Young also has a fitting companion experience— Faith Ringgold: American People, covering 50 years of the trailblazing Harlem-born African American artist’s work, the first retrospective celebrating her in almost 40 years (free with General Admission museum ticket through November 27). Pre-purchase tickets online in advance. ars (free with General Admission museum ticket through November 27). Pre-purchase tickets online in advance.
San Francisco’s museums are reopening this week: What to see
An installation view from “Calder-Picasso,” at the de Young museum, the first major museum exhibition to explore the artistic relationship between Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso, two of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century. Image courtesy: FAMSF
The Asian Art Museum, de Young Museum and SFMOMA all reopen to the public this week, after three plus months of closure. The Asian reopens this Thursday, March 4, followed by de Young on Saturday, March 6, and SFMOMA on Sunday, March 7. The news came today after Mayor London Breed’s announcement that San Francisco has entered the red tier, allowing cultural institutions to operate at 25% capacity. What that means for viewers is a combination of mask mandates, social distancing, and timed entry tickets to regulate capacity. What this means for museums, who rely desperately on the revenue from visitors, is cash flow. With the Bay Area’s vaccine rollout petering along, about to roll into full swing, and new highly transmissible variants of the virus that have cropped up in the Bay Area, it goes without saying that limiting community spread should be our highest priority. If you do decide to go, exercise every caution.
Each museum offers new, substantial exhibitions, installed during their recent pandemic closure. The Asian has Zheng Chongbin: State of Oscillation, an installation in dialogue with the museum’s ongoing transformation project. Working in the Osher Gallery, the Marin-based artist created ink paintings, videos, and an ephemeral chamber suffused with overlapping video imagery that heighten awareness of our bodies moving through space. In the museum’s Bogart Court, panels in varying transparency and patterns are suspended below skylights, directing the flow of natural light and manipulating sight-lines to create a novel spatial experience. The free flow of light and exploring ideas of transparency also informed architect Gay Aulenti’s impressive 2003 renovation of the Asian. After Hope: Videos of Resistance is comprised of 50 short videos made by artists across Asia and the Asian diaspora. Memento: Jayashree Chakravarty and Lam Tung Pang comprises two large-scale works that allow viewers to travel through Kolkata and Hong Kong, exploring the modern city as both a personal and political landscape.
The Asian will have free admission on Sunday, March 7, and will continue with free first Sunday of every month going forward.
The de Young is offering the traveling blockbuster, Calder-Picasso, which makes its first U.S. stop in San Francisco. Conceived and curated by Alexander Calder’s grandson Alexander S. C. Rower and Pablo Picasso’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, it features over 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs. The exhibit is focused on both artists’ occupation with “the void” and how they transformed our conceptions of form and space—and thus the very definition of art itself.
New at the de Young is Nampeyo and the Sikyátki Revival, an installation of 32 pots by Nampeyo (ca 1860-1942), the renowned Tewa-Hopi potter. Examples of Hopi pottery from Nampeyo’s era and works by four generations of her descendants will be juxtaposed with her masterpieces.
Also, continuing at the de Young is Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, which opened in March 2020, was impacted by pandemic closure, and has been extended through May 2.
The de Young will offer free admission on Saturday, March 6 and continue with free Saturdays moving forward,
SFMOMA reopens with Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis, featuring new works by seven Bay Area artists ― Carolyn Drake, Rodney Ewing, Andres Gonzalez, James Gouldthorpe, Klea McKenna, Tucker Nichols, and Woody De Othello ― in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented social upheaval of 2020. Bay Area Walls, which spreads across three floors of the museum, is a series of commissions by local artists that continues the museum’s investigation of the pandemic and unfolding crises of 2020. It features works by Erina Alejo and Adrian L. Burrell, Liz Hernández, Muzae Sesay, and the Twins Walls Company (Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong). The museum’s New Work gallery will showcase new works by conceptual artist Charles Gaines, emerging from his interest the controversial Dred Scott Decision of 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Missouri Compromise and decreed that Black people were not U.S. citizens and therefore could not sue for their right to freedom.
Before their public reopening, both the de Young and SFMOMA will have member preview days. SFMOMA will be free to the public on March 7 and tickets can be reserved online starting Wednesday, March 3 at roughly 10 a.m. Due to safety protocols in place which limit the number of visitors, reserving a ticket beforehand is essential. For more details on ticketing, admission and safety protocols, visit the websites: Asian Art Museum, de Young and SFMOMA.
interview: curator Karin Breuer─“Ed Ruscha and the Great American West,” at the de Young through October 9, 2016
The de Young Museum’s newest exhibit, “Ed Rusha and the Great American West,” through October 9, 2016, is chock-full of Ruscha’s visual poetry. Sure to put smiles on Bay Area faces is “Honey….I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic To Get Here.” 1984, 76 x 76 inches, oil on canvas, on loan from private collection, © Ed Ruscha.
Sixty years ago, Ed Ruscha, moved across country from Oklahoma to Los Angeles to study art at what would become Cal Arts. Ever since, the celebrated artist, now 78, has been exploring the West’s expansive cultural and physical landscape. “Ed Rusha and the Great American West,” at the de Young Museum through October 9, 2016, examines Ruscha’s fascination with the Western United States, shifting emblems of American life, and the effects of time on this restless landscape. Ninety-nine of the artist’s prints, photos, paintings, and drawings fill the de Young’s Herbst exhibition galleries on the bottom floor, giving us an opportunity to see the originals of artworks we all know from prints and posters, including his mythic Hollywood signs and Standard gasoline stations.
“Ed Ruscha defies easy categorization,” says Karin Breuer, who curated the show and is curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, where she has worked for over 25 years, succeeding Robert Flynn Johnson. “He’s known as a pop artist, conceptual artist, surrealist and, early on, was identified with the West Coast pop movement, the so-called “cool school” of art. He’s adept at painting, photography, printmaking and has created wonderful artist’s books. He’s well known for using words as subjects in his imagery and letter forms.”
At the show’s press conference, I spoke with Breuer about Ed Ruscha and her framing of this expansive exhibit and our interview is below. I also spoke with Max Hollein, FAMSF’s new director, who headed Frankfurt’s Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection (2006-16) and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2001-16). After 15 years in Deutschland, this German headed West to helm FAMSF, the largest public arts institution in Northern California, and officially began work on June 1. His impressive skill packet includes overseeing the Städel Museum’s expansion and its digital initiatives platform which entailed collaborating with the tech industry to make the museum’s collections fully and pleasantly accessible online. Naturally, he’s quite interested in working with the Bay Area’s tech industry as well. I asked him what attracted him to the Bay Area─
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and, right now, it’s filled with so much energy. There’s a real transformation occurring as it moves to an even higher level and our two museums will be a part of this rising tide. Basically, museums are not places that you visit; they are gathering places. I want to make our museums even more welcoming and relevant and part of that is making our education efforts even stronger and more connected to the contemporary culture.
There’s no better welcome to the Bay Area for Hollein, who says he has loved Ed Ruscha’s Hollywood signs “for ages”, than a huge show exploring Ruscha’s wry and poetic take American contemporary culture.
Karin Breuer, curator of “Ed Rusha and the Great American West” and curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, pictured with Ed Ruscha’s “Coyote,” a 1989 lithograph in the FAMSF collection. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Here is my conversation with the savvy Karin Breur whose long-standing dialogue with Ruscha and hard work have produced a show with depth that is a delight to behold─
Why frame this show around the “Great American West”?
Karin Breuer: It was an easy and purposeful decision. I wanted to reverse a trend I’ve observed in exhibits with artists of Ed’s caliber─staying away from their ‘regionalism’ for fear that leads to a provincial look at an artist’s work. Instead, I thought, why not examine this. He’s been an artist who by choice went to school in Los Angeles and has lived there for 60 years and has depicted aspects of the West often in his work. As I kept looking more and more at the work, I realized there’s a story there from the very beginning, when he came out to art school at the age of 18 and traveled West from Oklahoma, all the way up to today where he’s looking at his Western environment and observing change. The show contains works from 1961 to 2014, a huge expanse of time, but it’s not a catch-all retrospective.
Has he drawn on the Bay Area at all?
Karin Breuer: No, not at all; it’s mostly the Southwest that has been his focus and stomping ground. Last night, however, I heard him say that it’s only recently that he’s come to appreciate San Francisco and the Bay Area. He’s decided that it’s the most beautiful city in the world but, he said, it may be ‘too beautiful’ for him to handle as subject in his art. There was kind a stay-tuned aspect to that though. He’s created a very interesting portfolio of prints called “Los Francisco San Angeles” where he combines street grids from both cities into one image and I think that’s the one effort that he’s made so far to connect the two cities. These are not in the exhibit.
Ed Ruscha, “Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas,” 1963. Oil on canvas, 64 7/8 x 121 3/4 inches, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Do you have a personal favorite?
Karin Breuer: I always thought I did but, every time I walk into the galleries, I seem to change my choice. I’m still very much in love with “Pyscho Spaghetti Western” and it’s because it depicts a roadway with a lot of garbage, trash, and debris that he has treated as beautifully as a still life. I find that so evocative of not only his quirky subject matter but also of the West and how it’s changed since he first took to the open roads in 1956.
Ed Ruscha, “A Particular Kind of Heaven,” 1983. Oil on canvas, 90 x 136 1/2 inches. FAMSF © Ed Ruscha.
What is the FAMSF’s collecting relationship with Ruscha? When did you really start building the collection?
Karin Breuer: Our relationship goes back to 2000, when we acquired Ruscha’s print archive and we came into a collection of over 350 prints at that time. He continues to contribute to this: each time he makes a print and it’s published, we get an impression of that print. He’s very prolific and we love that. We now have about 450 prints, one drawing, and one beautiful painting. For the new de Young building, we commissioned Ed to create a tripych─two panels that would be added to his 1983 painting “A Particular Kind of Heaven,” which we already had in our possession. You will see a lot of these works in the galleries.
What was his reaction to the show’s concept?
Karin Breuer: I pitched it to him early on and he liked it and he lent us works from his personal collection and helped facilitate loans from private collectors. Now that the show is up, he’s been very positive. This is a very appropriate time for this show as its Ed’s 60th anniversary in California.
“Rodeo,” 1969. Color lithograph, 17 x 24 in. Published by Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles. FAMSF © Ed Ruscha
Do you know if he has a favorite word?
Karin Breuer: No, and I think if you ask him, you won’t get a straight answer either. There are some words that appear in different forms. The word “adiós,” for example, also “rancho” and “rodeo”…those are three words that appear in different forms in my show, that he took on the in the 1960’s. I wouldn’t say that he continues to use them but they percolate in his vocabulary.
When did his fascination with words begin?
Karin Breuer: I know that in college, he had a job in a topography workshop and later he worked as a graphic designer, so words have been a part of his thinking for a very long time. He keeps lists of words that have captured his attention in notebooks and has said that words have temperatures and when those words become really hot that’s when he uses them in his art.
Ed Ruscha, “Hollywood,” 1968, color screenprint, 171/2 x 44 7/16 inches, published by the artist, FAMSF © Ed Ruscha
Now that you’ve spent a lot of time with his work, what makes it so powerful for you?
Karin Breuer: I think it’s the sense of humor that is in almost every single image; it’s wonderful─very dry, very laconic. He’s that kind of a personality too. I never cease to be amazed when I see something new coming from him─he’s got such a fertile mind, always thinking, always looking and discovering, and then reacting. Some of his latest paintings feature exploded tire treads that are called ‘gators’ by truckers. He treats these as beautiful objects and they almost look like angels’ wings. I just think to myself, that’s really unexpected, brilliant.
What sparked your interest in becoming a curator?
Karin Breuer: I’m the curator of prints and drawings and the inspiration came in college. I was a college as an art history student during the Vietnam War and there was a lot of social protest on campus. I was scratching my head thinking what does art history have to do with this? The world is changing, am I doing the right thing? A beloved professor of mine showed slides of Goya’s “Los Caprichos” and “The Disasters of War” and the light bulb went off. I said to myself ‘prints!’…they can have a political impact and everyone can afford prints…this is a very democratic medium. So, I went to graduate school to focus on prints and drawings, a realm of socially relevant art history.
“The End, 1991,” Lithograph, 26 3/16 x 36 13/16 in. Published by the artist. FAMSF © Ed Ruscha
What about your career at the de Young?
Karin Breuer: I’ve been here 31 years. When I joined in 1985 as an assistant curator, it was a pretty sleepy institution, as many museums were back in the day. I stayed on and worked my way up, which is kind of unheard of in the younger generations now days, but the Achenbach has only had three professional curators (E. Gunter Troche (1956-71); Robert Flynn Johnson (1975-2007), including myself. We’ve changed dramatically and dynamically and I have to say that I am absolutely thrilled about Max Hollein’s arrival here. Already, his energy and enthusiasm are having an impact on us.
Details: “Ed Rusha and the Great American West” closes October 9, 2016. Hours: The de Young is open Tues-Sun 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. and on Fridays (through November 25) until 8:45 p.m. Admission $22; with discounts for seniors, college students. Audio guides: $8. The de Young Museum is located in Golden Gate Park at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive. Street parking is available for 4 hours and there is a paid parking lot with direct access to the museum.
FAMSF ancient art curator, Renée Dreyfus, speaks Thursday, June 12, 2014, at the de Young on “Masters of Fire: The Copper Age in the Holy Land”
Renée Dreyfus, FAMSF curator in charge of ancient art and interpretation will speak at the de Young Museum on Thursday, June 12, at 1 PM about “Masters of Fire: The Copper Age in the Holy Land,” the exhibition which opens June 28, 2014 at the Legion of Honor. Curator lectures provide insight into exhibition conception and artifacts and are a wonderful way to get the most out of an exhibition. Image: Hedgehog Highlights
Renée Dreyfus, curator in charge of ancient art and interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) will speak at the de Young Museum on Thursday, June 12, at 1 PM about Masters of Fire: The Copper Age in the Holy Land, the exhibition which opens June 28 at the Legion of Honor. Dreyfus, who always has lots of historical information readily at hand, will speak about artifacts that especially intrigue her and will set the stage for the anitquities that arrive later this month. If you do go, check the front rows for Colin Bailey, the new FAMSF director (he celebrates one year at the helm this month). He’s been at the several of the recent talks I’ve attended and it’s a pleasure to see him supporting and motivating museum staff and visiting scholars by engaging with their scholarship.
In 1961, Israeli archaeologists discovered over 400 copper objects wrapped in a straw mat at Naḥal Mishmar (West of the Dead Sea) hidden in a natural crevice that would be called the “Cave of the Treasure.” One of the greatest hoards of antiquity, these objects were so spectacular that they define an important era in Southern Levantine (modern-day Israel and surrounding lands) history now called the Chalcolithic (copper-stone) or Copper Age (5500–3500 BC).
Masters of Fire is the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition that explores the metallurgical revolution that produced these objects and how this led to significant changes in the technology, ritual, and especially the lifestyles of the Levant. The exhibition is organized by NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) and the Israel Antiquities Authority in collaboration with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
“The copper crowns and maces, or standards, found here testify to the amazing technical skill of the ancient smiths and artists who already knew the lost-wax process of casting,” said Renée Dreyfus who will address unknowns—whether or not the people who created these objects considered them as arts or ritual objects. “Of the 80 copper standards found in the Cave of the Treasure, no two are identical, proving that each was cast separately in an individual mold. This astonishing hoard of 429 remarkable objects also reveals the growth of prestige, status, and social rank.”
Copper objects from the Cave of the Treasure, hoard Nahal Mishmar, Late Chalcolithic period, 4500–3600 BC. Copper, lost wax technique. Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel Museum. Photo: courtesy FAMSF
“The term “Copper Revolution” has been used by scholars to describe the changes in social organization that occurred at this time,” continued Dreyfus. “Archaeologists have tracked the fragments of ore that were mined in Jordan and traced how they were carried almost one hundred miles into southern Israel to be crushed, repeatedly heated, and carefully smelted into small ingots. Once the copper was extracted, it was heated again and cast in open molds to make simple tools or weapons. However, the extraordinary discoveries in the Cave of the Treasure at Nahal Mishmar represent a very different path in metallurgy. The copper objects found there were made using the complicated lost-wax casting technique. These works are far more elaborate than any other copper creations known from this period. Whatever the original source of this hoard—whether a major religious or political center—the intricate scepters, crowns, and other copper objects must have been the accouterments of an elaborate ceremonial display. The Copper Age is therefore an early example of a society in which the ruling elite could afford prestige objects that were produced as symbols of its power.”
Originally from New York City, Dreyfus is a celebrated curator of ancient art. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in philosophy. She then went on to Brandeis University to receive her M.A. in Ancient Mediterranean Studies and finished her doctorate in Ancient Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley. She speaks several ancient languages, is very active in the FAMSF’s Ancient Arts Council. She was recently appointed to the newly formed visiting committee of the J. Paul Getty Museum that appraises the J. Paul Getty Trust on the museum. Some of Dreyfus’ publications include: deYoung: Selected Works (2006); Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series) co-authored with Catharine H. Roehrig, and Cathleen A. Keller (2005); Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar, Volume 2 (1997) co-authored with Ellen Schraudolph; California Palace of the Legion of Honor (1995); The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1994) co-authored with Melissa Leventon.
Details: Talk by Renée Dreyfus is Thursday, June 12, 1 PM at the Koret Auditorium at the de Young Museum. Tickets are $3 members, $4 non-members. No advance purchase or reservations required. It is not necessary to have an entry ticket to the de Young to attend the lecture. If you would like to enter the de Young Museum, tickets are $10 adults, $7 seniors, FAMSF members free. Tickets to Modernism from the National Gallery of Art are $24 to $11 for non-members and free for FAMSF members. The exhibition, Masters of Fire: The Copper Age in the Holy Land is June 28, 2014-January 4, 2105 at the Legion of Honor.
Directions/Parking: The de Young Museum is located at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, at John F. Kennedy Drive, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Enter Golden Gate Park (JFK Drive side) at 8th Avenue for 4 hour free street parking. For direct access to the Music Concourse Parking facility, turn right on Fulton and then left on 10th Avenue.
The remarkable jewels of Bulgari are the de Young starting this weekend—lecture by noted jewelry historian Amanda Triossi this Friday evening
On a break from shooting “Cleopatra,” Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton strolled along Rome’s via dei Condotti to Bulgari. “Richard was so romantic that he’d use any excuse to give me a piece of jewelry,” Taylor wrote. “He’d give me ‘It’s a beautiful day’ presents or ‘Let’s go for a walk’ presents. Over the years I’ve come to think of these as my ‘It’s Tuesday, I love you’ jewelry.” When they married for the first time— his second, her fifth—he gave her this necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back at the Christies auction in 2011 for $6,130,500. Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage
While the renowned jeweler Bulgari is always associated with Italy, Rome in particular, the Bulgari family actually hails from the small Greek village of Kallarrytes in the Pindhos mountains of Epirus, not far from Albania, noted for its silver carvers. The talented and ambitious silver chaser, Sotirios Bulgari, arrived in Italy in 1881 with roughly 80 cents but, with hard work and ingenuity, soon had a flourishing business. The very first Bulgari shops, which opened in Rome in the 1880’s, carried fine jewelry and items of personal adornment including necklaces, rings and ornate silver buckles and objects. It wasn’t until the decades following World War II that the house developed what would come to be known as the “Italian school” of jewelry design, reinterpreting forms derived from Greco-Roman classicism and the Italian Renaissance. Bulgari became famous for mixing semiprecious stones with diamonds, mounting ancient coins in gold jewelry, and creating easy-to-wear pieces made with unusual color combinations.
The influences and glorious history of the house are presented in The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, 1950-1990, at San Francisco’s de Young Museum opening this Saturday, September 21. The 150 pieces on view will be a revelation to both jewelry and design lovers. The exhibition takes a decade-by-decade look at Bulgari’s innovations in jewelry design. It includes several pieces from their Elizabeth Taylor collection, heavy on emeralds and diamonds of astounding size and quality, that were reacquired at the famous 2011 Christie’s auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).
Guest Lecture Friday September 18, 7:15 PM: Amanda Triossi, Jewelry Historian, Author, and curator of the Bulgari Heritage Collection will give a talk and multimedia presentation about Bulgari’s rich legacy.
Triossi knows Bulgari like no one else. Along with co-author Daniela Mascetti, she wrote the first ever book on the jeweler in 1996—Bulgari (Abbeville, 1996)—and also co-authored the revised version, Bvgari (Abbeville, 2007). I have been pouring over this book for days now—a luscious big art book with hundreds of dazzling pictures and sketches which tells the story of the famous family and traces the progression of the distinctive Bulgari style as well as the distinct architecture of the Bulgari shops all over the world. She’s also co-authored, with FAMSF curator Martin Chapman, the exhibition catalog, The Art Bulgari: La Dolce Vita and Beyond, 1950-1990 just out for the de Young show.
(Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, Tickets $3, free for members Reservations required. Click here to make a reservation and purchase tickets.) The auditorium will open at 6:30 pm to ticket holders only. Does not include museum admission or entry to the special exhibition The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, 1950–1990. Access to special exhibitions and the permanent collection requires additional fees and tickets.
“Tubogas” choker, 1974, two-color gold with Greek silver coins, 27.5 x 7 cm,
Bulgari Heritage Collection, inv. 404 N607. © Antonio Barrella Studio Orizzonte
Details: The Art of Bulgari: La Dolce Vita & Beyond, 1950–1990, opens to the public on Saturday, September 21 at the de Young Museum and closes February 17, 2013. The exhibition opens to members on Friday, September 20, 2013. The de Young Museum Adults $20–$22, seniors 65+ $17–$19, students with current ID $16–$18, youths 6–17 $10–$12, members and children 5 and under free. Prices subject to change without notice.is located at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Tickets: Admission: $20-$22 adults; $17-$19 seniors; $16-$18 college students with ID; $10-$12 youths 6–17. (These prices include general admission.) Members and children 5 and under are free. General admission is free the first Tuesday of every month. Tickets can be purchased on site and on the de Young’s website: deyoungmuseum.org. Tickets purchased online include a $1 handling charge.
It’s International Museum Day and admission is FREE Friday, May 16, at the de Young and Legion of Honor
“Girl With a Pearl Earring,” Johannes Vermeer, 1665, 44.5 x 39 cm. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park is the first North American venue for the exhibit “Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis.”
A fabulous Friday freebie—in celebration of International Museum Day, visitors to the de Young Museum and Legion of Honor can enjoy free general admission all day on Friday, May 17, 2013. Doors open at 9:30 a.m. Tickets to see Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis and Rembrandt’s Century will be only $15 instead of $25. Both of these shows close on Sunday June 2, so there are just three viewing weekends remaining.
The de Young will also be open 9:30 am-5:15 pm on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27. Regular admissions fees do apply.
International Museum Day: Every year since 1977, International Museum Day is held worldwide sometime around May 18. In 2012, 32,000 museums from 129 countries on five continents participated in the event.
Details: The de Young Museum is located at Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
Finally! The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announces a New Director, Colin Bailey, from the Frick Collection
Colin Bailey, deputy director and chief curator of the Frick Collection in New York, is the new director of the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco. He starts on June 1, 2013.
After much anticipation, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF) named its new director today, filling the position left vacant since the death of John Buchanan 15 months ago. Colin Bailey, currently associate director and chief curator of the Frick Collection in Manhattan and a noted curator and award-winning author will step into the position on June 1, 2013. Bailey was selected after an exhaustive year-long international search by a 13-member selection committee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s Board of Trustees. The announcement was made today at 1 p.m. at the de Young Museum at a highly attended press conference officiated by FAMSF president and board chair Diane B. Wilsey (Dede) with guest speaker San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee. At today’s press conference it was made clear that Bailey will initiate a new mandate “moving beyond the museums’ reputation as a home for blockbuster exhibitions to focus more on its permanent collections.”
Diane B. Wilsey said of Bailey, who did not attend today’s press conference, “we all agree that Colin has the qualities that will elevate the museums to the next level.” She added that Bailey will keep “the focus on curatorial excellence, art historical relevance, and continued service to our community.” She also added that John Buchanan had been a lot of “fun to work with” and that that Colin was also “fun.”
Wilsey’s camaraderie with the late Buchanan was legendary and the two, whom ARThound dubbed “the dynamic duo” were responsible for the coup that brought the celebrated French Impressionism shows to San Francisco in 2010. (Read about that here.)
Mayor Ed Lee spoke enthusiastically of Bailey’s selection, acknowledging the difficulty of the search process and thanking the Board of Trustees. In a video shown at the press conference, (watch it below), Bailey said the appointment is “a dream come true,” and his purpose in The City will be “to conserve, to show, to educate.”
Normally, ARThound does not repost news from other websites or journalists but Janos Gereben, emailed me his article for the The Examiner (sfexaminer.com) about today’s appointment of Bailey and his reporting on his salary is excellent. Janos has written a series of articles leading up to today’s appointment, which can be found at www.sfexaminer.com. He shared with me that he got Bailey’s earnings at the Frick using old-school reportage—he looked up his tax records which are publicly accessible. Here then quoting Janos…
FAMSF president and board chair Diane B. Wilsey announcing the appointment of Colin Bailey as the new FAMSF director. Wilsey has run the FAMSF since the death of John Buchanan 15 months ago. Photo: Geneva Anderson
“From a small but world-renowned private institution, Bailey is moving to a San Francisco city government organization, which is responsible for the de Young and California Legion of Honor museums. He will manage 550 employees, some on The City’s payroll, most paid by the nonprofit Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums (COFAM).
Frick operates on a $22 million budget, has 330,000 visitors a year, against FAMSF’s 1.6 million visitors and $54 million operating budget.
Compensation, at least on paper, doesn’t reflect those differences in size: Bailey’s salary at the Frick was $235,000 in FY 2011, according to the latest IRS report available.
His position here is “Director of Museums, City and County of San Francisco Classification 0963, Department Head III,” which has a base salary under $100,000; he is expected to receive additional funding and perks from private sources and COFAM.”
Today’s press conference was scheduled for noon but began close to 1 p.m. due to late running Board of Trustees meeting, where Bailey was officially approved. The scuttlebutt among the press, impatient for the show to get on, ran the gamut from speculation about the delay in announcing a new director to criticism of Wilsey’s leadership during the recent period of curator dismissals and staff resignations to the organization’s press relations team which has recently been in flux. Several FAMSF curators were in attendance and they too seemed to eagerly await the announcement, one acknowledging that things had been “unsettled.”
At the press conference, Wilsey explained that the board meeting was delayed until today, to give Bailey “the courtesy of talking his own [Frick] board, which he did yesterday.” This, she said, enabled Bailey “to give proper notice.” He will start at FAMSF on June 1, 2013. She did not explain why the trustees’ meeting itself ran late.
Colin Bailey, the new Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in an introductory video screened at today’s press conference
More about Colin Bailey: Born in London, Bailey earned his doctorate in art history at Oxford University. He specializes in 18th- and 19th-century French art, was named Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994 for his contribution to French culture and was promoted to Officier in 2010. He also held a residency under Henri Loyrette, the former president and director of the Louvre in Paris. He has been chief curator of the Frick since 2000, when he narrowly lost the competition for the museum’s directorship. Previously, he worked at the Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kimbell Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada, where he was deputy director and chief curator. He is returning to California 30 years after a fellowship at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.
He has organized more than two dozen exhibitions, including the recent Renoir, Impressionism and Full-Length Painting at the Frick, many of which have represented new scholarship and have been praised for providing keen insights into individual artists. Other exhibitions include Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery; Renoir’s Landscapes, 1865-1883; and Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Bailey’s many publications include The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David; Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: The Annenberg Collection; and Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris, the book that won the Mitchell Prize.
Diane B. Wilsey and Colin B. Bailey, the new director of FAMSF, who will start June 1, 2013. Photo: Bill Zemanek
Colin Bailey and his partner will be spending the Easter holiday here in the Bay Area, having Easter dinner with Wilsey at her home and finalizing the signing on a spacious apartment that the couple will share with their dog. Details on the dog to follow…
ARThound’s most recent coverage of the Frick Collection— ARThound in New York: A Dresden goldsmith and court jeweler works his magic and catalogues it in small booklets—“Gold, Jasper and Carnelian” at The Frick Collection through August 19, 2012
Time after Christmas? The de Young’s Paley Collection show closes on Sunday, December 30, 2012—it’s gorgeous, includes many of Modernism’s masterworks, and is doable in 90 minutes
Paul Gauguin, “The Seed of the Areoi” (1892), Oil on burlap, 36 1/4 x 28 3/8 inches, The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of MoMA.
William S. Paley’s story is legendary: the determined son of a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who was in the cigar business, Paley built Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the United States. He married two legendary American beauties—Dorothy Hart Hearst and style icon Barbara ”Babe” Cushing Mortimer and he enthusiastically built one of the 20th century’s greatest private art collections. It was his first wife Dorothy and her friends, like Averell Harriman, who in the early 1930’s, first introduced him to European Impressionist and post-Impressionist artworks and he was smitten. Soon, he was avidly courting Matisse and buying the best artworks of pioneering modern masters Cézanne, Gaugin and Picasso. Upon his death in 1990, Paley’s legendary collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures went to the William S. Paley Foundation which transferred it to MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), where it went on display in 1992. Highlights of that collection are on display through Sunday, December 30, 2012, at the de Young Museum, the exclusive West Coast venue for The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism which opened September 15, 2012.
The exhibition of over 60 artworks from Paley’s remarkable collection is the perfect post-Christmas excursion. If you saw the phenomenal “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” at SFMOMA (2011) and liked it, you’ll appreciate this collection too, which also reads like the tops hits of Modernism. Unlike the Steins who were expats living in bohemian Paris and collecting works directly from avant-garde painters like Matisse and Picasso, Paley’s early collecting was a function of his European travels and he often paid top dollar for works that caught his fancy. But the tastes of these powerful collectors more than overlapped—Paley actually purchased several paintings that were originally owned by the Steins. If you think you’re experiencing déjà vu while walking thorugh this show, you may well be. A few of the Picasso’s were at SFMOMA in 2011 for “The Steins Collect.”
The exhibition hosted by the de Young includes major works of Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, with significant works by Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Roualt, and Andre Derain. Not to be missed masterpieces include Gauguin’s “The Seed of the Areoi” (1892) from the artist’s first visit to Tahiti (first gallery); Degas’ large-scale pastel and charcoal “Two Dancers” (1905) (second gallery); Picasso’s celebrated monumental painting, “Boy Leading a Horse” (1905-1906) (next to last gallery), Derain’s vibrant Fauve painting “Bridge over the Riou” (1906) (final gallery), and Matisse’s “Odalisque with a Tambourine” (1925-26) (next to last gallery).
Paul Gauguin, “Washerwomen” (1888), Oil on burlap, 29 7/8 x 36 1/4 inches, The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of MoMA.
As you enter the Herbst Exhibition galleries, you are hit by the color in these artworks and the tremendous power of color to convey emotional energy. Gauguin’s large and vibrant “The Seed of the Areoi,” painted during the artist’s first trip to Tahiti in the 1890’s opens the exhibition. The immensely popular painting retells a Polynesian version of a universal story of creation and Gauguin’s mistress is the model for the queen of the Areoi clan. Masterful is the only word for its color, from the complementary purple against yellow in its background to the neighboring shades of brown, yellow and red in its foreground. While Gauguin claimed he found this palette in the natural Tahitian landscape and in villages, scholars point out that no such colors co-existed naturally there at the time. While pleasing to our modern eyes, his palette would have also been quite shocking to his turn-of-the-century European audience.
Equally enchanting is a smaller Gauguin gem, “Washerwomen,” which he painted during his two-month stay with Vincent van Gogh at Arles in 1888. Four women are shown bent over on their knees on a riverbank, lost in the timeless rhythm of scrubbing. With postures evoking those adopted by figures kneeling in prayer, Gauguin superimposed a symbolic meaning on the tranquil scene that links these women to religious ritual practice and to the larger cycle of life.
Henri Matisse, “Odalisque with a Tambourine,” Nice, place Charles-Félix, winter 1925–1926,
Oil on canvas, 29 1/4 x 21 7/8 inches, The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of MoMA.
The six Matisses in the exhibition attest to his stature as the legendary colorist and master of red. From his 1903 “The Musketeer,” which is an early expression of his understanding of how color can be used to block spatial relationships to his bold “Odalisque with a Tambourine” (1924-5), “Woman with a Veil (1927) and “Seated Woman with a vase of Amaryllis (1941), we see his imaginative pairings of natural forms of flowers, fruit, women juxtaposed against the simple geometry of inanimate objects such tables, walls, floor tiles to create motifs bursting with energy and sensuality and color. The placement of these spectacular Matisses alongside eight of Picasso’s paintings and drawings acknowledges the great rivalry between the two artists who engaged in a kind of mental chess game all of their adult lives. Picasso, the younger of the two, was always trying to get Matisse to notice him while Matisse was no doubt jealous of Picasso’s flamboyance and success. Paley appreciated the genius of both.
Pablo Picasso’s “Boy Leading a Horse” (1905-6) has been given its own wall in one of the later exhibition galleries. The painting was originally owned by Gertrude Stein and was at SFMOMA for “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” (2011). Paley bought it in the 1930’s while he was on a ski trip in Saint-Martiz, Switzerland, after it was carried into the lobby of the Palace Hotel by the famous Swiss art book publisher Albert Skira, who also served as his dealer of sorts. The painting has been smuggled out of Nazi Germany by the dealer Justin Thannhauser and given to Skira to sell and he went right to the Paley, who immediately fell for it. This important work from Picasso’s Rose Period (1904-6) marks a point in Picasso’s career when his work was on the brink of ingenuity and, at the same time, steeped in history. As William Rubin, MoMA’s former Director Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture, explains in the catalogue, the work was pivotal in the context of the artist’s oeuvre and within the spectrum of art history as a whole. Picasso both draws inspiration from his contemporaries and demonstrates his extensive art historical knowledge, even referencing as far back as Ancient Greek sculpture. Ruben also suggests that boy in the painting, P’tit Louis, acts as the artist’s surrogate and that the work can be read as Picasso himself leading his loyal steed into the future, into the age of Cubism.
Other Picasso pieces included in the show are “Nude with Joined Hands” (1906) inspired by Picasso’s trip to the Pyrenees village of Gósol with his muse Fernande and “The Architect’s Table” (1912), his highly abstract Analytical Cubist masterpiece.
Pablo Picasso, “Boy Leading a Horse” (Paris, 1905–1906), Oil on canvas, 86 7/8 in. x 51 5/8 inches, The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of MoMA.
As an avid grower of old European roses and gardener, I was struck by the paintings of flowers in the exhibition. Édouard Manet’s “Two Roses on a Tablecloth,” is less than 8 inches high but captures what we gardeners live for. With its creamy impasto of peachy yellow and off white and the softest pink, Manet alludes to the ephemeral beauty and pure delight of the rose in the peak of its bloom. The placement of the roses on the table away from water which would sustain them mirrors Manet’s own fragility at the time. His painting was inspired by the numerous bouquets that visitors brought to him in the winter of 1882-83, when he was mortally ill.
Henri Rousseau’s delightful naïve still-life “Flowers in a Vase” (1901-02) alludes to the vibrancy that flowers can bring to any setting. While the painting seems freely executed,Rousseau took great care in the arrangement and coloration of the flowers as well as in creating the green that runs through the bouquet’s foliage, the complimentary green wall behind the arrangement and the ornamental spray of green ivy at the bottom of the composition.
Renoir’s “Strawberries” (circa 1905), featuring freshly-picked bright red strawberries loosely laid out on a creamy linen tablecloth beside a delicately patterned tea cup is poetical. The appeal of the freshest possible food with no fuss is timeless.
As for the exhibition’s many sculptures, the small and simply-posed terra cotta nudes of the French Catalan artist Aristide Maillol are exquisite. Their faces are quite crude, showing no emotion but the compositions in totality convey a myriad of complex feelings. Maillol took his inspiration from early classical sculptors but imposed his own modern and expressive take on form, creating fluid and rhythmic female portraits. In contrast to Maillol stands the detailed perfection of Auguste Rodin’s “The Burghers of Calais,” a half-dozen small commemorative portraits meant to depict the varied and complex emotions the six burghers of Calais actually underwent as they offered their lives to save their fellow citizens from King Edward III during the Hundred Year’s War.
Aristide Maillol, “Seated Woman with Chignon,” 1900, Terracotta on black marble base, 6 7/8 x 4 x 5 inches, The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of MoMA.
Mid-way through the exhibition is a fascinating series of large-scale color photographs that show many of the paintings showcased in Paley’s 20-plus-room apartment at 825 Fifth Avenue in New York City, where he lived with his second wife, socialite “Babe” Paley. Their brightly colored and patterned apartment occupied a full floor in one of the most prestigious buildings in Manhattan and was decorated by the renowned Sister Parish and Albert Hadley (or Parish-Hadley), the French firm of Jansen (which assisted with the Kennedy White House), and Billy Baldwin. Picasso’s “Boy Leading a Horse” was the first thing people saw as they entered the front door and stepped onto the 18th- century parquet floors which perfectly accentuated the natural hues in painting’s lower register. The foyer was the only room where people remained standing. In the other rooms, intimacy and comfort were the rule and smaller artworks were gracefully intermingled with furnishings and personal objects. As William Ruben writes in the catalogue “Paley’s collecting was entirely personal. He thought of his paintings as the most important elements of a seamless private world…” (p. ix)
Catalogue: The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism (revised 2012, 176 pages, $39.95, on sale for $29.88) lets you get acquainted with the artworks that Paley lived with. The catalogue was originally published in 1992 to accompany an exhibition celebrating MoMA’s acquisition of his extraordinary personal art collection. This newly-redesigned edition of the book has been released to accompany the collection’s second tour throughout the United States and Canada, which commences at the de Young. Authored by William Rubin, MoMA’s former Director Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture, and Matthew Armstrong, the catalogue is organized in alphabetical order by artists. It devotes at least two full pages to each artwork in the collection—a full page photo and at one full page of analysis by Rubin, who worked with Paley as he made his purchases.
Édouard Manet, “Two Roses on a Tablecloth,” (1882-83), Oil on canvas, 7 5/8 inches x 9 1/3 inches, The William S. Paley Collection, courtesy of MoMA.
The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism was organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, (MOMA) with which Paley began a long affiliation in 1937. Serving as trustee, chairman of the Painting and Sculpture Committee, president of the Museum and chairman of the Board, Paley was chairman emeritus from 1985 until his death in October 1990.
For other ARThound coverage of the Paley and Nureyev exhibitions, click here.
Details: The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism closes Sunday, December 30, 2012. The de Young Museum is located at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Parking: By entering Golden Gate Park from 8th Avenue (at Fulton Street), you can park for free for 4 hours on the street on John F. Kennedy Drive and have easy access to the museum. Otherwise, enter on 10th Avenue (at Fulton) and park at the Music Concourse Garage (M-F $4.50/hour and $5/hour on weekends). Tickets: $20 Adults; $16 seniors, students with I.D.; $10 youth 6-17; members and children free. Fee includes access to all museum collections and exhibitions including Rudolf Nureyev: A Life in Dance (October 6, 2012 – February 17, 2013). More information: (415) 750-3600 or deyoung.famsf.org.
Exhibition Venues: September 15-December 30, 2012—de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; May 2- September 8, 2013—Portland Museum of Art in Maine; October 10, 2013-January 5, 2014—the Fine Arts Museum of Quebec; and 2014—the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Related Lecture: “The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism,” Docent Lecture by Rita Dunlay, Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 2:15 p.m., Koret Auditorium, Free to public. Museum admission is not required.
ARThound 