 | "Virgin and Child," a mid-16th-century work by Jacopo Carucci, is among the selected gifts on view in "Art for Yale," which opens on Sept. 18. |
“Art for Yale: Collecting for a New Century,” an exhibit of works
acquired by the Yale University Art Gallery in the past decade, will be on
view Sept. 18-Jan. 13.
T H I S
‘Art for Yale’ celebrates
‘outpouring of gifts’ to gallery
The show features more than 300 objects, selected from the nearly 15,700 works
acquired since 1998. The chosen items represent the scope and special strengths
of the gallery’s holdings, from works produced by the ancient cultures
of Asia and the Mediterranean, to masterpieces of African and early American
art, Renaissance paintings and sculpture, Impressionist and early modern art
and contemporary art.
“Art for Yale: Collecting for a New Century” was organized by Jock
Reynolds, the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale Art Gallery; Susan Matheson,
the gallery’s chief curator and the Molly and Walter Bareiss Curator of
Ancient Art; and Joshua Chuang, the Marcia Brady Tucker Assistant Curator of
Photography.
The exhibition will be installed on the first and fourth floors of the gallery’s
recently renovated Louis Kahn building, with other objects installed in the
permanent-collection galleries of its Egerton Swartwout building.
“While the gallery has a long and storied history of attracting the support
of generous and visionary donors, the last 10 years have witnessed an unprecedented
outpouring of gifts, both of artworks and of funds for new acquisitions,” says
Reynolds. “The bequest of the Charles B. Benenson Collection, for example,
in one fell stroke transformed the gallery into one of the nation’s major
repositories of African art.
“This exhibition of recent acquisitions expresses our profound gratitude
to the gallery’s many supporters who have made this spectacular growth
of Yale’s collections possible,” adds Reynolds. “It also pays
tribute to the gallery’s exceptional curators and educators, whose efforts
and expertise have guided us to so many works of quality and importance.”
Matheson notes: “The wealth of recent acquisitions immeasurably enhances
the life of the gallery not only as a public museum but also as a teaching
institution affiliated with one of the world’s most distinguished universities.
Many of these objects have opened up new fields of research and study, while
others are being incorporated into existing Yale University curricula in a
wide range of academic disciplines.”
Among works featured in the exhibition are:
From the Asian Art Collection: A group of five rare and historically important
Korean and Japanese tea bowls, the promised gift of Peggy and Richard M. Danziger.
Dating from the 16th to the 17th century, they reflect the new aesthetic of
simplicity and reverence for nature introduced into tea practices and implements
by Sen no Rikyu¯ (1522-1591), Japan’s most revered master of tea
culture. Other notable acquisitions of Asian art include a 14th-century Japanese
hanging scroll depicting “The Death of the Buddha Sakyamuni (Nehan-zu)”;
a Ming dynasty painting “Eagle in a Landscape Setting”; “Five
Tang Poems,” a handscroll of Chinese calligraphy by Wang Duo from 1642;
and a group of 17th- and 18th-century Japanese folding screens.
From the Early European Art Collection: A Virgin and Child by Florentine mannerist
Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo. Regarded as one of the most important finds
of Renaissance art in decades, the panel has been identified as the only surviving
portion of Pontormo’s “Madonna del Libro” (ca. 1545-1546),
one of the artist’s last and most influential works. Also on view from
the gallery’s acclaimed collection of Italian art are paintings by the
Florentine masters Neri di Bicci and Jacopo Zucchi and by the late Sienese
master Francesco Vanni, as well as stucco relief sculpures by Donatello, considered
Italy’s greatest 15th-century sculptor, and his follower Desiderio da
Settignano. Recent acquisitions from other European schools include two panels
from about 1505-1507 by the anonymous German artist known as the Master of
the Holy Kinship, and paintings by the 17th-century Dutch artist Abraham Bloemaert
and 18th-century French painter Pierre Paul Prud’hon.
From the American Art Collection: American Realist Thomas Eakins’s watercolor “John
Biglin in a Single Scull” (1873), a gift of Paul Mellon. The painting
is one of the pivotal works by leading 19th- and 20th-century American painters
recently acquired by the gallery, which is one of the nation’s premier
repositories of American art. Other works in the exhibit include Gerald Murphy’s “Bibliothèque
(Library)” (1926), one of only seven surviving paintings by the artist;
Stuart Davis’ “Combination Concrete #2” (1956-1958), an important
late work by one of America’s most original pioneers of modernism; and
recently acquired works by John Brewster Jr., Ralston Crawford, Sanford Gifford,
Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, Walt Kuhn, Charles Sheeler and Everett
Shinn. The show will also feature watercolor-on-ivory miniatures and items
from the gallery’s collection of American decorative arts.
From the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection: Impressionist and Postimpressionist
works, including Claude Monet’s “Camille on the Beach at Trouville” (1870);
a still life by Paul Cézanne, “Bouteille, verre, et citrons (Bottle,
Glass, and Lemons)” (1867-1869); and Edgar Degas’ sculpture “Dancer
Ready to Dance, with Right Foot Forward” (1882-1895); as well as works
by Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin and Alfred Sisley.
The show will also feature German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters’ six-foot-high
assemblage “Merzbild mit Regenbogen (Merz Picture with Rainbow)” (1920/39),
as well as works by his contemporaries: Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, George
Grosz and Pablo Picasso. Selections of contemporary art will include works
by Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, Martin Puryear, Edward Ruscha,
Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, David Smith and Wayne Thiebaud.
From the African Art Collection: A Senufo rhythm pounder from the Charles B.
Benenson Collection of African art, a 2004 gift to the gallery. Other works
on view from the collection — comprising more than 500 objects, primarily
masks and ritual objects from Central and West Africa — include a Bamileke
mask, a Fang female reliquary figure, and a Yoruba maternity figure with a
basket in the form of a rooster.
From the Prints, Drawings and Photographs Collections: The prints of Gabriel
de Saint-Aubin’s “Les deux amants” (The Two Lovers) (1750),
two etched self-portraits from the 1970s by Chuck Close, and one of Helen Frankenthaler’s
1998 series of six woodcuts inspired by the Japanese literary classic “The
Tale of Genji.” Also on view will be recently acquired drawings, ranging
from Jacques-Louis David’s study of an antique statue, made during his
first trip to Rome, around 1775-1780, to a group of ink and graphite drawings
by American modernist Philip Guston; and new additions to the gallery’s
collection of photographs, including works by Eugène Atget, Walker Evans,
Robert Frank, Judith Joy Ross, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Nathan Lyons and Robert
Adams, whose entire body of vintage “master sets” was recently
acquired by the gallery.
From the Ancient Art and Art of the Ancient Americas Collections: From the
Roman and Greek acquisitions, a Corinthian alabastron (a vessel for perfumed
oils), produced around 610-600 B.C.; a fifth-century B.C. Greek bronze of a
running gorgon; a third-century B.C. Etruscan mirror with incised decoration;
a Hellenistic marble head of Aphrodite; and a Roman marble statue of the Emperor
Commodus as a boy, dated a.d. 172/173. Among the recent additions to the gallery’s
holdings of art of the ancient Americas on view will be a Mayan quadruped vessel
with bird and fish motifs (250-400 a.d.), an Aztec ceramic head of a deity
(ca. 1440-1521) and a gold crown (900-1550) produced by the Lambayeque culture
of Peru.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, “Art
for Yale: Collecting for a New Century,” available in hardback for $35
at the gallery’s bookstore. The publication includes an essay by Reynolds
and commentaries on selected objects by curators, scholars, and students.
The exhibition and its attendant publication are supported by the Robert Lehman
Endowment and Janet and Simeon Braguin Funds with additional support provided by Carolyn H. Grinstein and Gerald Grinstein, B.A. 1954, Dr. Jane Frank Katcher
and Gerald Katcher, LL.B. 1950, H. Christopher Luce, B.A. 1972, Jan Perry Mayer and Frederick R. Mayer, B.A.
1950, Anna Marie Shapiro and Robert F. Shapiro, B.A. 1956; and an endowment
created with a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Yale University Art Gallery, located at the corner of Chapel and York streets, is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m.-5
p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; until 8 p.m. Thursday (September-June); and 1-5 p.m.
Sunday. For further information, visit the website at http://artgallery.yale.edu or call (203) 432-0600.
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