Victor of Crete, Nativity (1660-1676), oil on wood panel, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Felton Bequest, 1949
To all our regular visitors and subscribers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. MAN will be having a short break over Christmas, but will be back in mid-January.
Our subscriber base has grown considerably over the past year - we now have almost 1000 email subscribers (you can subscribe by popping your email in ‘Subscribe’ box on the right hand side of our website).
Our thanks to those who have written Exhibition Reviews over the past year and to those who have sent us items for inclusion on the site.
Below is the latest in interesting News and Opinion on art and art history from around the internet in case you need something to read over the break. There is also a short list of jobs and calls for papers as well - I will continue to post these (and other things) on twitter over the break so follow me there if you are a tweeter.
See you in the New Year!
kind regards
Katrina and the MAN team
News and Opinion
Lee Siegel revisits Leo Steinberg’s ‘The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion’ and considers whether Pope Francis woudl agree with Steinberg.
David Packwood has written a thoughtful essay on ‘Reverie, nature and the Modern Museum’ where he takes up the questions the need for the viewing of art in a museum to be ‘refreshed by views of nature’ (a claim The Getty makes for its particular museum experience), could it actually ‘neutralize reverie in front of paintings in the museum’?
Auction House Christie’s has placed a price on the art in Detroit Institute of Art, as the option of selling it to pay off the cut’s debt continues to be considered. Since the emergency manager Kevyn Orr proposed it as a possibility there has been much debate and concern over the fate of the museum collection. Peter Schjedahl in the New Yorker first advocated the sale and then promptly retracted. Tweets from a panel on the issues surrounding the fate of the collection held by the held by International Foundation for Art Research in October can be read here. A petition started by Jeffrey Hamburger continues to gather signatures here.
Don’t miss our latest Exhibition Review of the Art Gallery of New South Wales ‘America: Painting a Nation, reviewed by Diane Kirkby.
Ron Radford responds to the criticism of ‘Australia‘, the exhibition presented this year at the Royal Academy in London in partnership with the NGA.
A claim that the NGVs ‘Head of a Man’, originally believed to be by Van Gogh, was looted from the collection of Richard Semmel by the Nazi’s is being investigated, with the possibility of restitution. A more detailed report from The Age here.
The British Library has puts 1,000,000 images onto Flickr and into the public domain, now free to reuse and remix.
This article from the New York Times ‘Does Art make you Smart?’ has been doing the round for the past month, based on research/observations carried out at the Crystal Bridges Museum in the US. The research was also used in an earlier article to argue that museums make you more tolerant - a the study ahs been looked at more closely and more critically by the Grumpy Art Historian here.
The story of how a working class couple, Herbert and Dorothy Vogel, ‘in just four decades, assembled one of the most important private art collections of the 20th century, stocking their tiny apartment floor-to-ceiling with Chuck Close sketches, paintings by Roy Lichtenstein, and sculptures by Andy Goldsworthy.’
Review of ‘Antoniazzo Romano: Pictor Urbis’ at Palazzo Barberini in Rome until February 2nd 2014.
New book on Bernard Berenson - his life and legacy discussed in article by Marco Grassi. Another review here.
Claes Oldenburg holiday card to Samuel Wagstaff, 196- via Archive of American Art
Opportunities
Fellowship | Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies and Middle East Studies (Brown University, DOF, Italian Studies) - 30th June, 2014
Fellowship | Research Fellowship in History or History of Art, University of Oxford - deadline 13th January 2014
Fellowship | Terra Foundation for American Art Europe , Residence in Giverny, France - deadline 15th January 2014
Job | Temporary Associate Professor/Assistant Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History, University of Hong Kong -Department of Fine Arts - deadline 30th January 2014
Job | Associate Curator of Australian Paintings, Sculpture and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, Art Gallery of South Australia - deadline 23 January 2021
Job | Senior Lecturer (History and Theory), Monash Art, Design and Architecture, Monash University - deadline 9th February 2014
Job | University Lectureship in Medieval Italian Studies (University of Cambridge) - deadline
CFP | Contemporary Outsider Art (Melbourne, October, 2014) - deadline February 26th 2014
CFP | Looking for Leisure. Court Residences and their Satellites, 1400-1700 (Prague, 5-7 June 14) - deadline 31 January 2014.
CFP | Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici (Magnus Etruriae Dux) (pdf) (Florence, 29-30 May 2014) - deadline 1 March 2021
CFP | Cosmopolitanism, Aestheticism, and Decadence, 1860-1920 (Oxford, une 2014) - deadline 3rd March 2014.
CFP | On the future of (social) history of art Art History Supplement, March 2014 - deadline 15th February, 2014