A l’occasion de la commémoration du 150e anniversaire de la
Restauration de Meiji, cette exposition mettra en lumière les nombreux
bouleversements liés à l’ère Meiji (1868-1912), qui fut une révolution sans
précédent pour le Japon comme pour le Monde.
Cette exposition abordera différents aspects de la modernisation du
Japon et de l’internationalisation de la production artistique à travers les
différentes techniques artistiques. Elle rassemblera, entre autres, des
exemples d’orfèvrerie, des cloisonnés, des photographies, des textiles, des
peintures, des bronzes, des céramiques afin d’illustrer les mutations opérées
dans la société tout entière et dans l’art en particulier. Elle fera découvrir
de grands noms de l’art tel Kawanabe Kyosai ou Shibata Zeshin. Les liens entre
artistes et créateurs au Japon et en Europe seront également évoqués par des
rapprochements entre œuvres japonaises et occidentales contemporaines. Cet
événement permettra de montrer la richesse des collections européennes
publiques (MNAAG, Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum) ou privées, de
découvrir un chapitre de l’histoire des arts trop méconnu et de montrer en quoi
le Japon inventa lui aussi un « japonisme ».
Cabinet of Curiosities at
the Houston Museum of Natural Science (all photos by the author for
Hyperallergic)
HOUSTON — At the turn of
the 17th century, Ferrante Imperato, a well-to-do apothecary from Naples, had a
truly impressive collection of natural history curios. From skeletons to
seashells to swordfish, Imperato’s collection was a microcosm of how he, and
his fellow European curiosi, encountered and catalogued the then-known natural
world. When Imperato published a catalogue of his collection in 1599,
Dell’Historia Naturale, he included a fold-out, engraved illustration of how he
stored everything in floor-to-ceiling cabinets and bookshelves chockfull of
books and natural history bric-a-bracs. With an alligator on the ceiling to
taxidermied birds on the shelves, Imperato’s collection and its organization
quickly came to epitomize Renaissance Europe’s Wunderkammer — cabinet of
curiosities — and has for centuries.
The Houston Museum of
Natural Science (HMNS) has brought Imperato’s 16th-century engraving to life in
its Cabinet of Curiosities exhibit. On the second floor of the museum, nestled
between the Halls of Texas and African Wildlife, the HMNS has faithfully
recreated a Renaissance cabinet of curiosities, right down to the sprightly
lyre music plucking away in the background. The exhibit has the ethos and
aesthetic of Imperato’s Renaissance cabinet, complete with a school of
pufferfish hanging from the ceiling.
Cabinet of Curiosities at
the Houston Museum of Natural Science
The Houston exhibit has
been a part of the museum for over a decade but is coming to a close in
December. As a whole, it’s well worth a visit — few other exhibits, if any, so
authentically balance the science, natural history, and aesthetics so inexorably
intertwined in Europe’s early cabinets of curiosities.
Historically, cabinets like
Imperato’s contained a plethora of objects from the natural world, like gems,
corals, and fossils, as well as cultural artifacts from archaeological sites or
ethnographic travels. Most cabinets of curiosities also included paintings and
antiquities, in addition to maps, globes, and automata. Fundamentally, the
purpose of the cabinet of curiosities was to inspire awe and wonder about the
natural world and humankind’s place in it. The more exotic or striking the
object — the more obscure its provenance — the more cultural cachet it carried
for the collector.
Cabinet of Curiosities at
the Houston Museum of Natural Science
The Cabinet of Curiosities
at the HMNS has all of these sorts of curios and more. Turn one way, and you
see a row of bovid antlers hanging over a doorway across the room from African
pottery. Turn another direction, and elephant tusks frame the fireplace with a
mounted rhino head. In Imperato’s engraving, we see that the doors to the
cabinets holding his collections are open, inviting us to peer at the objects
contained inside. The HMNS also encourages visitors to open cabinets and
drawers. (The hordes of school-kids running through the Cabinet of Curiosities
weren’t sure whether items could be touched, but plenty of them pointed to
African spears and asked their field trip chaperones whether those were like
the ones from Black Panther.)
For hundreds of years,
cabinets of curiosities have been considered forerunners of encyclopedias and
of later museum institutions. But they’re more than just the physical
manifestations of how bits and pieces of the natural world found their ways to
the elite collectors of Europe. Cabinets of curiosities were the products of
their historical context, organized by those who did the collecting — the
European elite — and those who were collected. In other words, cabinets of
curiosities are not just the physical curios of their collections — they’re the
power dynamics of collecting and colonialism that followed the development of
natural history for centuries.
“Cabinets collections can
be beautiful, certainly, but they also speak to a history of colonial violence:
museums aren’t created in a vacuum,” curator and doctoral candidate in history
of science, Elaine Ayers, explained to me. Ayers, who is unaffiliated with the
HMNS exhibit, points out that, “Displaying puffer fish alongside stuffed
alligators evokes a sense of environmental diversity and provokes curiosity,
but it also gestures towards the extractive processes by which these
taxidermied specimens arrived at their new homes.”
Cabinet of Curiosities at
the Houston Museum of Natural Science
While the Cabinet of
Curiosities exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is a fantastic
recreation of a Renaissance phenomenon in natural history, it lacks
contextualizing information about what one is seeing, why those curiosities
might be part of a cabinet, or any sort of history about the science of natural
history. There are no labels, tags, or explanatory schema to walk visitors
through their experience or to explain what costs, economic or social, were
incurred in procuring these items historically. (There is a short wooden plaque
at the beginning of the exhibit that offers a couple of sentences about the
history of the creation of cabinets of curiosities.) Although the lack of
labeling is, interestingly enough, historically accurate for cabinets of
curiosities, not informing visitors of what they’re seeing and why isn’t doing
any service to natural history — especially at a time when museums and their
visitors are pushing for more transparency about the context of artifacts on
display.
“I believe, however, that
there is still a necessary place for wonder in museums,” Ayers offers. “I would
love to see a display that drew on these captivating early modern aesthetics,
but — at the very least — provided audiences with full attribution of the collection
and preparation of specimens to the indigenous peoples, women, and middle-class
practitioners who exist silently in the halls of museums.”
It’s been over 400 years
since Ferrante Imperato published his catalogue. If the Houston Museum of
Natural Science’s exhibit is any indication, cabinets and their curiosities
continue to inspire audiences with awe and wonder about the natural world.
Cabinet of Curiosities
continues at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through December 31.
To Dream Avant-Garde
acknowledges the artistic innovators of today — those who push the cultural
status quo in their work.
Sarah Rose Sharp
To Dream Avant-Garde at
Hammond Harkins, installation view (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — There are
at least two schools of thought around notions of the avant-garde. One defines
it narrowly as linked to the period of modernism in contemporary art, from the
late 19th century into the mid-20th century, while another associates it more
broadly by the earmark of vanguardism — that is to say, a tendency to push the
cultural status quo. Put another way: one version casts the avant-garde as a
fixed canon, to which entry is permanently closed. The other considers it a
kind of ongoing party, which any like-minded and counter-cultural artist may
join.
As a number of the artists
participating in To Dream Avant-Garde, curated by Alteronce Gumby at Hammond
Harkins Galleries, are engaged in rather exciting and extremely current
practices, we can assume the avant-garde in this case represents the latter
view, rather than the former. The show includes work by young guns like Aaron
Fowler and Tariku Shiferaw, as well as that of long-established practitioners
like Faith Ringgold, who grew up in Harlem on the heels of the Harlem
Renaissance — the centennial of which is being celebrated citywide in Columbus
this year. To Dream Avant-Garde is Hammond Harkins’s piece of dedicated
programming within I, Too Sing America: The Harlem Renaissance at 100, and
unsurprisingly, every featured artist and participant is reflective of the
collective flourishing of artists of color in the mainstream, due in part to
the influence of that movement.
“As an acknowledgment to
those innovators, who were also dreamers of an American identity and country to
call their own,” wrote Gumby in his curatorial statement, “the artists in this
exhibition display a survey of ideas, intention and materials that invoke the
legacy and culture of Harlem.”
Through a series of
eclectic choices, Gumby extends his cohort beyond a sense of kinship — which is
ultimately a compulsory kind of relationship — into an air of riffing and
conversation more characteristic of friendship. From Lucia Hierro’s digital
print collages mounted on felt pillow-like canvases that were expressly
forbidden from being hung on walls, to a partition by Eric N. Mack, comprised
of pegboard panels embellished with rope and acrylic, to a series of hanging
blown-glass ornaments containing evocative hand-stitched iconography by Leslie
Jimenez, and Tschabalala Self’s loose, figurative study of cans of incense,
there is a feel of abstraction on the edges of everyday objects. This kind of
culture-bending is, arguably, owed its own chapter within the mapping of the
avant-garde, a kind of remaking and customization of Duchampian readymades; a
different approach to cultivating the stuff of life to the stuff of art…………….
“Puccini in Love”surveys
mostly well-known love duets from Puccini’s canon. Because the music will be
familiar to opera aficionados, the album’s success or failure depends on
whether the interpreters can make the familiar fresh.
Selecting from over
4 million objects, director Wes Anderson and his partner, illustrator Juman
Malouf, have curated a unique, genre- and century-crossing exhibition at the
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.
Wes Anderson and
Juman Malouf with Sabine Haag in front of a hall of portraits in Vienna
(KHM-Museumsverband/Rafaela Proell)
Larger-than-life
personalities
Celebrity curations
are nothing new for the Kunsthistorisches Museum. But many of the 400 objects
on display in "Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin," curated by director Wes
Anderson (center) and illustrator and designer Juman Malouf (l), can be seen
for the first time in the museum. Working with museum director Sabine Haag (r),
the pair selected objects from 14 collections, including the Old Masters.
"The Spitzmaus
Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures from the Kunsthistorisches Museum"
is a unique title for an exhibition. Then again, this is no ordinary show.
Opening on November
6, 2018, the palatial Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna — which houses one of
the world's foremost fine arts collections — features 400 items chosen from its
14 collections of more than 4 million objects. Dating back as early as ancient
Egypt and spanning more than 5,000 years, the items were hand-picked by
American director Wes Anderson and his partner, the author and illustrator
Juman Malouf.
A complimentary
aesthetic: Twee
Renowned for
producing unusual movies with complex plots, Anderson has gained cult status
for cultivating a highly stylized aesthetic — one which fans will nearly
instantly recognize. Although Anderson himself has said his films are the
product of collaborative efforts with the others on each project — "You
cannot end up with the same thing if you change those names and keep mine"
— there is a common thread tying Anderson's movies together: the look.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
(picture-alliance/dpa/20th Century Fox/M. Scali)
Colorful, nostalgic,
original: Anderson claims to not have a unique aesthetic, yet his art is easily
recognizable
While some critics
have referred to the aesthetics of Anderson's work in a derogatory way,
labeling it as "twee," the author Marc Spitz finds both Anderson and
the idea of twee a good thing in contemporary society.
Writing in 2012,
shortly after Anderson's film The Royal Tenenbaums was released, Spitz said
that the twee "were souls with an almost incapacitating awareness of
darkness, death and cruelty, who made the personal choice to focus on essential
goodness and sweetness. They kept a tether to childhood and innocence and a
tether to adulthood as is required by the politically and socially
active."
That aesthetic — and
the thread tethering the innocence of childhood with the political and social
activism of adulthood — has come through in the curation led by Anderson and
Malouf. As has a certain nostalgia, a glance back at the dynasties of bygone
eras.
Curation by trial-and-error
From a Qing Dynasty
vase to a bugle belonging to the Austrian court wardrobe to an Indonesian
actor's mask, the selection of objects cuts across centuries, medium and genre.
The selection is a compendium of artifacts tied together in a manner only
Anderson and Malouf could create.
Instead of
displaying the objects by era or separating them by collection, the artists
chose unusual placements — hanging a portrait of a seven-year-old falconer
(Emperor Charles V) alongside one of a four-year-old dog owner (Emperor
Ferdinand II). Anderson explains their selection process in the accompanying
catalog as such, "We do harbor the humble aspiration that the
unconventional groupings and arrangement of the works on display may influence
the study of art and antiquity in minor, even trivial, but nevertheless
detectable ways for many future generations to come."
"True: one of
the Kunsthistorisches Museum's most senior curators (educated, of course, at
the University of Heidelberg) at first failed to detect some of the, we
thought, more blatant connections; and, even after we pointed most of them out,
still questions their curatorial validity in, arguably, all instances. But,
should our experiment fail on these levels, we are, nevertheless, confident it
will, at the very least, serve the purpose of ruling out certain hypotheses,
thereby advancing the methods of art history through the scientific process of
trial-and-error. (In this case, error.)"
Pencil sketch of two nude sculptures (Juman
Malouf)
Malouf, a writer and
illustrator, created sketches of several of the exhibits
An idea inspired by Warhol
One of the museum's
curators, Jasper Sharp, worked closely with the guest curators while also
allowing them freedom during the selection process. "Their approach was
governed from the very beginning by intuition and excitement," Sharp
writes in the exhibition catalog.
Noting the
historical significance of the museum galleries in which the objects are
presented, he writes, "it feels entirely appropriate that the exhibition
is being presented within the rooms of the Kunstkammer, in whose origins we can
find the very earliest strategies of display, systems of order and
organization, and play of relationships between objects."
The idea for the
guest curatorship, he goes on to say, was not his own but was inspired instead
by Andy Warhol's work across three museums in 1969-1970, which resulted in the
exhibition "Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol."
Invited by Jean and
Dominique de Menil to draw from the collections of the Rhode Island School of
Design, Warhol selected items from the museum's storage as an experiment that
responded to de Menil's questions: "What would happen if some important
contemporary artist were to choose an exhibition from the reserves? If the only
organizing principle would be whether or not he liked whatever he saw? Would
the result be different from having a storage show chosen by a curator? Or by
anyone? If the artist who selected the materials were strong enough, would he
impose his personality on the objects? And If he were famous enough, would it
not oblige the curious to look?"
The answers Warhol
provided both in his selection and in his methods for presentation, Sharp
writes, "were provocative and unconventional, assaulting the principles of
connoisseurship and established institutional yardsticks for considering the
relative value of objects."
While Warhol's
answers have continued to inspire museum directors even today, the questions
are being posed anew with each guest curatorship.
Whether the twee universe
of Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf will oblige the curious to look will be seen
in the number of visitors to the Viennese Museum to see the exhibition, which
will move to the Fondazione Prada in Milan in October 2019.
Richard Tucker Award, spoke
with the Met’s Jay Goodwin about singing the title role of Boito’s Mefistofele.
Your Met career goes back
to 2003, when you were a winner of the National Council Auditions. But our
audiences really started to get to know you with your official Met debut in
2013 as Pistola in Falstaff. Since then, you’ve given nearly 40 performances in
important roles. But Mefistofele is different, offering a rare opportunity for
the bass to be the star of the show.
How have you gotten yourself ready?
I actually feel very
prepared. The part is a natural fit for my voice—a true bass-baritone part that
sits right in my wheelhouse. Also, Robert Carsen’s production is well known,
and I’m very familiar with it. So for me, it was just a matter of learning the
text and getting it all in my head. I’m definitely ready to go.
How do you get in the right
frame of mind to play this character?
Well, he’s the devil, and
anytime you get to play the devil, you have a great opportunity to have fun.
That’s the key with Boito’s Mefistofele: He’s having a great time. He’s the
devil that you root for—or at least I do. For him, it’s not life or death. It’s
a wager, a game. So all the way through, up until the very end, he needs to be
having fun.
Many people know Boito as
the librettist for Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, but fewer know him as a
composer. How would you describe his music?
The music is incredible,
and he grabs you right at the outset with unbelievable choral music that’s
worth the price of admission on its own. Eventually, you get everything from
French grand opera to Italian lyricism to Wagnerian influences. And just
because it’s called Mefistofele doesn’t mean there isn’t great music for the
tenor and the sopranos. The tenor part is gorgeous all the way through—very
difficult, but gorgeous. And the opera has some of the most beautiful music for
soprano that you’ll ever hear. I really think it deserves a bigger place in the
repertoire.
When Mefistofele was last
performed at the Met in 2000, Samuel Ramey was at the head of the cast. How
does it feel to follow in his footsteps?
Well, to do any role that
Sam made famous is a special challenge. I actually had a chance to speak with
him about doing this part. He was very encouraging, but said that the costume
department would have to add about six inches to the pants because of my
height. [Laughs] And by the way, that’s another aspect of this production—the
costumes. Mefistofele is basically half-naked the whole time, so that’s been
part of my preparation as well.
I was going to ask if
you’ve been spending extra time in the gym.
Absolutely. Although a
friend suggested that I show up in terrible shape so that nobody could say I
got the part because I looked good. [Laughs]
El color rosa y la
amplia familia de rosados, desde el pastel al fucsia, del nácar al frambuesa,
son los protagonistas de La vie en rose, una exposición temporal que profundiza
en los aspectos técnicos y simbólicos asociados al uso de este color en la cultura
occidental, especialmente a través de su uso en la moda.
Las múltiples
tonalidades de rosa remiten a los periodos en los que han sido más utilizadas,
aquellos en los que las técnicas tintóreas permitieron su aparición o en los
que sencillamente se difundieron como moda. Esa misma lectura histórica revela
una transformación paulatina de sus significados, que ha adquirido en la
cultura contemporánea un gran poder performativo y requiere un análisis desde
la perspectiva de género.
La colección del
Museo ofrece innumerables ejemplos de utilización del rosa en el textil y la
indumentaria desde el siglo XVIII hasta la actualidad, así como amplias
muestras de la cultura material española con la misma característica, desde
carteles publicitarios a útiles de cocina. A partir de ellas, se ha establecido
un discurso expositivo que se completa con piezas custodiadas por otros museos
como el Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas o el Museo Arqueológico Nacional,
además de colecciones privadas como la de Antoni de Montpalau.
Comisariado: Lucina
Llorente y Juan Gutiérrez Coordinación: Ana Muñoz Producción: Museo del Traje
Lugar: sala de exposiciones, planta baja
