Spring 2012 Lecture Series
Ink, Wood, Copper, Stone: Identifying the Techniques of Prints
Dr. Eric Denker, Senior Lecturer in the Education Department, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
2 PM, Sunday, March 18, 2012
Combs Hall 139
Ink, Wood, Copper, Stone will provide technical and creative insight into the origination, duplication, and originality of prints. Dr. Denker will include a description of the materials employed in making prints, the techniques and tools used in working on the various surfaces, and the means to distinguish between woodcuts, engravings, etchings, lithographs and reproductions. Those who attend will be able to apply the knowledge gained in the lecture to our spring exhibition Making an Impression: Prints from the Permanent Collection.
Renaissance Innovations in Color Printing and Etching
Gregory Jecmen, Associate Curator of Old Master Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
2 PM, Sunday, April 1, 2012
Combs Hall 139
During the late 15th and early 16th century, two new forms of printmaking were invented: printing woodcuts in color and the intaglio technique of etching. The printer and publisher Erhard Ratdolt (1447-1528) was the first to print images in multiple colors from separately carved wood blocks, first in Venice, and then after 1486 in Augsburg. Around 1500, also in Augsburg, Daniel Hopfer (c. 1470-1536), a trained decorator of armor, was probably the first artist to make a print from an etched plate. This talk will focus on these two new innovations, highlighting some of the most important color woodcuts and etchings of the Renaissance. This lecture is based on the upcoming National Gallery of Art exhibition Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475-1540, opening September 30, 2012 and closing December 31, 2012.
Fall 2011 Lecture Series
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Art & Nature: Reflections on the Sublime
The Contemporary Sublime
Dr. Robert Hobbs, Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair in American Art at Virginia Commonwealth University
2 PM, Sunday, September 18, 2011
Combs Hall 138
Join us for a lecture with Dr. Robert Hobbs, renowned late modern and post-modern art historian, in conjunction with our Art & Nature: Reflections on the Sublime exhibition. Dr. Robert Hobbs has held the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at Virginia Commonwealth University since 1991 and has been a visiting professor at Yale University since 2004. He has published widely and has curated dozens of exhibitions, many of which have been shown at important institutions in the U.S. and abroad.
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Van Gogh, Lichtenstein, Whistler: Masterpieces of World Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Mysteries of The Night Café: Hidden Key to the Spirituality of Vincent Van Gogh
Dr. Cliff Edwards, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University
2 PM, Sunday, October 30, 2011
Combs Hall 138
Join us for a lecture with Dr. Cliff Edwards, professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Van Gogh, Lichtenstein, Whistler: Masterpieces of World Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Dr. Edwards explores the spirituality of one of the world’s most beloved artists, Vincent Van Gogh, through one of Western art’s most mysterious paintings, The Night Café. Enter the imagination of Van Gogh through the books he read, the art he admired, and the people with whom he identified, and arrive at startling conclusions that include a new and deeply spiritual understanding of a café after midnight and the “night prowlers” who inhabit it.
This program has been organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and is supported by the Paul Mellon Endowment.
Jasper Francis Cropsey: The Hudson River School and a True American Landscape
Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
2 PM, Sunday, November 13, 2011
Join us for a lecture with Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Van Gogh, Lichtenstein, Whistler: Masterpieces of World Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The Hudson River School represents the first native school of American Art. Dating from the 1820s, it was a loosely organized group of painters who took as their subject the unique naturalness of the American continent, starting with the Hudson River region in New York, but eventually extending in time and space all the way to California and the 1870s. Jasper Francis Cropsey, a first–generation member of the Hudson River School, died in anonymity but was rediscovered by galleries and collectors in the 1960s and remembered as the American painter of Autumn.
This program has been organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and, is funded, in part, by the Jean Stafford Camp Memorial Fund.
Spring 2011 Bus Trip
On March 1, 2011, the UMW Galleries sponsored a bus trip to Washington, DC. The trip was planned in conjunction with the lecture Prehistoric Cyprus: An Introduction and an Appraisal, part of our 2011 lecture series. The February 14 lecture was given by Stuart Swiny, director of the Institute of Cypriot Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. It highlighted the island country’s most remarkable artistic achievements and architectural remains and featured objects from the exhibition Cyprus: Crossroads of Civilization at the National Museum of Natural History.
On the trip, we visited the Cyprus exhibition and had the opportunity to inspect at close range Cypriot objects that dated from the earliest prehistoric settlements to the middle ages. We then went on a guided “highlights” tour of the Sackler Gallery’s Asian collections to tie in with our Beyond the Silk Road: Asian Art from the Permanent Collection exhibition, which opened in March.
