Tag: Art Collecting

Review | Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at the NGV | Katrina Grant

Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great at the National Gallery of Victoria International until the 8th November 2015. We enter the exhibition face-to-face with Catherine the Great in a portrait by Swedish artist Alexander Roslin. The Empress was not altogether impressed by the portrait, declaring that Roslin had made her look like ‘a Swedish cook, coarse and simple.’ Despite Catherine’s reservations, the portrait (which shows the Empress in ‘Slavonic’ dress, fastened with a diamond buckle and pointing toward a bust of Peter the Great) proved to be a successful representation and was copied numerous times. The painting is flanked by two busts of the philosophes Voltaire and Diderot by the little-known French sculptor Marie-Anne Collot. On some level, both men had an almost personal friendship with Catherine. In one letter, Voltaire complimented her as an ‘enlightened despot’…

Lecture | The Artist as Collector: Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Collection of Art | Donato Esposito

Dr Donato Esposito will present a lecture on Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the first and most famous President of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, focussing upon his activities as a collector of art. Dr Donato Esposito was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, London (1999-2004). He co-curated the exhibition “Sir Joshua Reynolds: the acquisition of genius” at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery in 2009. He was recently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He is currently working on a monograph on Reynolds as an art collector. Date: Wednesday 29th July, 6:30pm Venue: theatre D, Old Arts Building, University of Melbourne Parkville Website: https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/5480-the-artist-as-collector-sir-joshua-reynolds-and-his-collection All Welcome. Free to attend.  

Forum | New acquisitions: The art of collecting and giving

A panel of prominent artists, collectors, curators and specialists will consider the motivations, passions and idiosyncrasies of contemporary art collectors and those driven to give. Potter director Kelly Gellatly will chair the conversation. The panel includes: Doug Hall AM, writer and critic. Director of Queensland Art Gallery|GOMA 1987–2007 and Australian Commissioner for the Venice Biennale 2009 & 2011. Mandy Hall, Joyce Nissan collection, established in 2003, and art educator. John Nixon, artist and donor, who is represented in all Australian state museum collections. Date: 2-3:30pm, Saturday 27th July Venue: The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Swanston St, Parkville. Free event but you need to RSVP via The Potter website here

Art History Seminars at Melbourne University | Semester 2

The program for art history seminars at the University of Melbourne for semester 2  is below. All seminars are held in The Linkway, John Medley Building, 4th floor (running between the East and West Towers), between 1-2 pm. All welcome. August 7              Anthony White | University of Melbourne Folk Machine: Fortunato Depero’s Cloth Pictures 1920-1925   August 21            Susanne Meurer | University of Western Australia Johann Neudörffer’s “Nachrichten” (1547): calligraphy and historiography in early modern Nuremberg   September 11   Gerard Vaughan | Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne Museum Culture Today: Possibilities and Inhibitions   September 25   Toshio Watanabe | The University of the Arts, London Forgotten Japonisme: taste for Japanese art in Britain and North America 1910s – 1960s   October 9            Penelope Woods |  Centre for Emotions, University of Western Australia The Intentionality of Spectatorship: Emotions in…

EVCS | Catholic Collecting and Patronage in Eighteenth-century England: The Lords Clifford of Chudleigh – Matthew Martin

European Visual Culture Seminar Catholic Collecting and Patronage in Eighteenth-century England: The Lords Clifford of Chudleigh Matthew Martin The years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 have been seen as a period of decline into provincialism for England’s Catholic Gentry and Aristocracy. A close examination of the activities of some of the leading recusant families of the eighteenth century as patrons and collectors suggests quite the opposite. Denied a role in the political life of the country, many Catholic families sought to accrue status through engaging in building, gardening and commissioning and collecting art. In this they emulated their Protestant peers, but Catholic families pursued these activities in a fashion which also expressed a uniquely English Catholic identity. This paper will examine the patronage and collecting of the Lords Clifford of Chudleigh as a case study in this phenomenon. Matthew…

Public Lecture | The Archbishop’s Piranesis: an unlikely collection for nineteenth-century Melbourne – Colin Holden

The Archbishop’s Piranesis: an unlikely collection for nineteenth-century Melbourne? Dr Colin Holden The lecture focuses on the greatest single collection of art among the Baillieu Library’s Rare Books, which is a complete set of the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) whose images of classical ruins and Roman baroque streetscapes distil much of the culture of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, and are masterpieces of eighteenth-century printmaking. Besides their intrinsic aesthetic value, the provenance of this set has an interesting connection with the University — they were part of the library of James Alipius Goold (1812-86), the first Catholic archbishop of Melbourne and a founding member of the University’s Council. This lecture examines their wider context: Goold’s extensive library, his training in Italy, collecting of art and interest in classical architecture, and the presence in several other nineteenth-century Melbourne homes and…

Dr Gerard Vaughan – Collecting Correggio

Collecting Correggio Dr Gerard Vaughan Join NGV Director Dr Gerard Vaughan to hear the stories behind the NGV’s recent acquisition, Renaissance masterpiece Madonna and Child with the infant Saint John the Baptist by Correggio. Date: Thursday 8th December, 2011, 6:00pm for a 6.30pm start. Venue: Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International (enter North Entrance, via Arts Centre forecourt) Cost: $20 NGV Member / $25 Adult (includes glass of sparkling wine on arrival) Bookings: Ph +61 3 8662 1555, 10am-5pm daily Event code M1159 Website: http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/programs/public-programs/ngv-members-collecting-correggio

Lecture: Gerard Vaughan ‘Sex, Lies and Theft in the Late Eighteenth-Century: the Underbelly of the Taste for the Antique’

Sex, Lies and Theft in the Late Eighteenth-Century: the Underbelly of the Taste for the Antique Dr Gerard Vaughan AM, Director, National Gallery of Victoria The possession of antiquities of quality defined the taste of European elites of the late 18th century. As demand far outstripped supply, the search for antiquities often resulted in rampant forgeries, deception and criminal behaviour. Gerard Vaughan will offer a glimpse of the underbelly of neo-classical taste, discussing the antics of these passionate collectors and their dealers, and the strategies they devised to fulfil their desire. Presented by The Friends of the Gallery Library. Date: Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 6pm for 6.30pm Venue: Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, (enter North entrance, via the Arts Centre forecourt) Cost: Friends of the Gallery Library: Free, please give your name and specify that you…

Call for Papers: Early Modern Merchants as Collectors

Call for Papers Early Modern Merchants as Collectors Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, June 15-16, 2012 Deadline: May 31, 2020 Context In 1615, Vincenzo Scamozzi highlighted the importance in Venice of the merchant-collectors Bartolomeo dalla Nave and Daniel Nijs by including descriptions of their collections in his L’Idea della architettura universale.  Scholarship has also moved beyond the consideration of the artist and the patron as the principal protagonists in the history of collecting.  As a result, merchants are now being regarded by historians as influential collectors in their own right. With the 1985 publication of The Origin of Museums, a collection of conference papers edited by Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor, the Ashmolean Museum became established as a leading institution for research in the history of collecting. Recently re-opened with innovative galleries displaying objects exploring the theme ‘Crossing Cultures Crossing Time’, the new Ashmolean now affords an opportunity to re-visit the 1985 conference topic and not only to…

NGV Lecture: The history of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection and presentation of modern art, from 1870 to the present

NGV Programs presents: The history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection and presentation of modern art, from 1870 to the present Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman, Nineteenth Century, Modern and Contemporary Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Join us for an evening lecture on twentieth century art by the 2011 Australian International Cultural Foundation Visiting Scholar and discover how The Met’s collecting practices aided in the creation of other New York institutions such as MoMA and the Whitney. This lecture is generously supported by the Australian International Cultural Foundation, an affiliate of Art Exhibitions Australia. Date: Thursday 24th March, 6pm. Venue: Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, NGV International (enter North Entrance, via Arts Centre forecourt), NGV International. Cost: Free. Bookings not essential but seats are limited.

MAN Opinion – David R. Marshall: Thoughts on the NGV’s Latest Acquisition

Opinion – David R. Marshall Thoughts on the NGV’s Latest Acquisition It was announced last week that the National Gallery of Victoria has acquired a new work: a late, and very Raphaelesque work, by Francesco Francia and his sons, Virgin and Child with the young Saint John in a garden of roses (c. 1515). We hope to hear more about this on the MAN website in due course, but here it may be worth noting the shabby treatment of the announcement in the Sunday Age. Over a picture of the director with the new painting was the heading ‘Gallery fights ‘moribund’ tag’. This turns out to be the complaint, here voiced by the journalist responsible for the item, Gabriella Coslovich, that the NGV does not have enough contemporary art. The editors of The Age have seen fit to give Coslovich a…

EVCS – Vincent Alessi on Van Gogh’s collection of illustrations

Vincent Alessi ‘It’s a kind of Bible’: A thematic and stylistic analysis of van Gogh’s collection of English black-and-white illustrations During his life Vincent van Gogh assembled a number of important collections, including approximately 2,000 black-and-white popular illustrations. Cut from illustrated newspapers, the majority of the works in this collection were from two pioneering English publications, the Illustrated London News and The Graphic. To date, these illustrations has been widely neglected; scholars have acknowledged the influence of English illustration on Van Gogh’s work, but little has been done in analysing the actual print collection. Why did van Gogh build the collection? Why did he choose certain illustrations over others? What was its thematic and stylistic structure? This paper aims to reveal the complex thematic and stylistic structure which underpins van Gogh’s extensive collection, revealing the influence it had on the…

Australian Art Industry Networks: Artists, Agents, Markets and Museums

Australian Art Industry Networks: Artists, Agents, Markets and Museums Keynote Speakers: The Hon Peter Garrett, AM, MP, Minister for the Arts and Sam Leach, 2010 Archibald and Wynne Prize winner Thursday 15 – Friday 16 July, 2010, University of Melbourne Australian Art Industry Networks brings together a broad range of specialist speakers from all corners of the art world to discuss and debate a host of current issues affecting the industry today. It will investigate the inter-connections between various elements of the Australian art world – from artists and collectors, to commercial galleries and the auction houses, through to critics, government agencies and museums. Topics to be considered include the implications of the recently introduced resale royalty scheme, the current state of the Australian Aboriginal art industry, the potential impact of the Cooper Review recommendations, and the recent legal rulings…