Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum to Host Annual Brooklyn Ball

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The Brooklyn Museum will celebrate the major exhibition &#8220American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection&#8221 and the landmark collection-sharing partnership between Brooklyn and the Metropolitan Museum of Art at its annual gala, the Brooklyn Ball, on Thursday evening, April 22, 2010.

The event will begin at 6:30 p.m. with cocktails and hors d’ oeuvres in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing on the fifth floor and an exclusive opportunity to preview American High Style. Featuring some eighty-five masterworks from the newly established Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition traces the evolution of fashion in America from its nineteenth-century European beginnings through the twentieth century. It marks the first time in more than two decades that a large-scale survey drawn from this preeminent collection will be on public view.

Included in the exhibition will be creations by such legendary American designers as Charles James, Norman Norell, and Gilbert Adrian- works by influential French designers including Charles Frederick Worth, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin, Givenchy, and Christian Dior- and works by such first-generation American women designers as Bonnie Cashin, Elizabeth Hawes, and Claire McCardell. Among the objects presented will be Schiaparelli’s Surrealist Insect Necklace, considered by experts to be one of the most important works in the collection- elaborate ball gowns and day wear by Charles James- evening ensembles by Yves Saint Laurent, Halston, Scaasi, and Mainbocher- street wear by mid-twentieth-century designers Vera Maxwell, Claire McCardell, and Elizabeth Hawes- a group of hats by celebrated milliner Sally Victor- and dazzling evening wear by Norman Norell.

The Brooklyn Museum’s groundbreaking collection-sharing partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art went in to effect in January 2009. At that time Brooklyn’s renowned costume collection of 23,500 objects, acquired over the course of a century, was transferred to the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is fully integrated into the Institute’s program of exhibitions, publications, and education initiatives and remains available for exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

Co-chairs for this year’s Ball celebrating American High Style include chef and restaurateur Mario Batali and his wife Susan Cahn, European Editor-at-Large for Vogue Hamish Bowles, New York Times Style Editor Stefano Tonchi, Museum Trustee Stephanie Ingrassia, decorative arts specialist and educator Susan Weber, photographer Annie Leibovitz, fashion designer Zac Posen, and collector Carla Shen.

An interactive dining experience, designed by Jennifer Rubell, whom New York Times senior critic Roberta Smith credits with &#8220laying waste to the prolonged ordeal that is the benefit dining experience,&#8221 will begin at 8 p.m. in the magnificent Beaux-Arts Court on the third floor. The interactive food journey through the Museum is titled Icons and includes drinking paintings, suspended melting cheese heads, and a larger-than-life dessert surprise. A hybrid of performance and installation art, Rubell’s food projects deconstruct the ritual of the meal and are often of monumental scale.

During the evening, the Brooklyn Museum will honor the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and former Mellon Program Officer Angelica Rudenstine. Donald Randel, Mellon Foundation president, will accept the Museum’s highest honor, the Augustus Graham Medal, on their behalf.

Immediately following the Ball, the Museum will host High Style: The After Party in the Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion. The festivities will feature artists’ fashions and dancing to live music.

Tickets to the Ball range from $500 to $1,500, and tables are available from $5,000 to $50,000. All tickets to the Ball include admission to High Style: The After Party. Tickets to the after party start at $75. Tickets may be purchased online through Monday, April 19. You may also download, print, and complete a ticket request form and send it by fax to (718) 501-6139. Further information about ticket options and table purchases is available by e-mailing [email protected] or by phoning (718) 501-6423. Proceeds from the event will support the Museum’s public and education programs.

The Augustus Graham Medal is being presented to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in recognition of its outstanding support of the Brooklyn Museum, including funding for the survey of the costume collection and the endowment of curatorial positions at the Museum. Through the foundation’s generosity, the first complete inventory, collection review, digital photography, and cataloguing of the Museum’s holdings of approximately 23,500 American and European costumes and accessories has been completed. More than 5,800 of the most important works are now available to scholars, students, and the public through ARTstor, an innovative online initiative of the Mellon Foundation that provides access to curated collections of art images and associated data for noncommercial, scholarly, and not-for-profit educational use.

The Augustus Graham Medal is named after one of the founders of the Brooklyn Apprentices Library in 1823. That institution, which Graham nurtured and expanded, grew into the Brooklyn Institute and later became the Brooklyn Museum.

Viva Woman! at Brooklyn Museums March 6

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The Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturdays events attract thousands of visitors to free programs of art and entertainment each month. March’s First Saturday celebrates the talent and power of women throughout history. Highlights include the new exhibition Kiki Smith: Sojourn on view in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art- a special performance by renowned Haitian vocalist Emeline Michel- a screening of Deepa Mehta’s Water- a discussion by author Staceyann Chin of her new book The Other Side of Paradise- and a dance party hosted by DJ Mary Mac.

SCHEDULE OF PROGRAMS

5 p.m. Gallery Tour
Join a Museum Guide for a tour of the exhibition To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt.

5-11 p.m. Object of the Month
Spend some time with the sculpture Mother with Child in the African galleries. A special activity takes place in front of the artwork at 8 p.m.

6-8 p.m. Music
Emeline Michel blends Haitian compas, twoubadou, and rara with jazz and other types of world music. Part of the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert Series.

6-8:30 p.m. Film
Water (Deepa Mehta, 2005, 117 min., PG-13) examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi, India, in 1938. A question-and-answer session with Gayatri Gopinath, Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at New York University, follows the screening. Free timed tickets are available at the Visitor Center at 5:30 p.m.

6:30-8:30 p.m. Hands-On Art
Create a clay figure inspired by one of history’s powerful women. Free timed tickets are available at the Visitor Center at 5:30 p.m.

7 p.m. Curator Talk
Yekaterina Barbash, Assistant Curator of Egyptian Art, highlights images of women and goddesses in the exhibition Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets. Free timed tickets are available at the Visitor Center at 6 p.m.

7-8 p.m. Discussion
Filmmaker Barbara Hammer talks about her new book Hammer! and her involvement in the feminist movement. Free timed tickets are available at the Visitor Center at 6 p.m.

8 p.m. Curator Talk
Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, discusses Kiki Smith and her work. Sign Language-interpreted. Free timed tickets are available at the Visitor Center at 7 p.m.

8:30 p.m. Young Voices Gallery Talk
Student Guides on female figures throughout the ancient Egyptian collection.

9 p.m. Book Club
Jamaican performance artist Staceyann Chin discusses her memoir, The Other Side of Paradise.

9-11 p.m. Dance Party
DJ Mary Mac hosts a dance party highlighting the queens of hip-hop and soul.

Throughout the evening, a cash bar will offer beer and wine, and the Museum Cafe will serve a wide variety of sandwiches, salads, and beverages. The Museum Shop will remain open until 11 p.m.

Some First Saturday programs have limited space and must be ticketed- lines for free tickets often form 30 minutes in advance. Programs are subject to change without notice. Museum admission is free after 5 p.m. Museum galleries are open until 11 p.m. Parking is a flat rate of $4 from 5 to 11 p.m.

For more information, visit www.brooklynmuseum.org.

Photo: Staceyann Chin. Photo Courtesy of the Artist

Brooklyn Museum To Host Major Andy Warhol Exhibit

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Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the title of a major touring exhibition that will run June 18 to September 12, 2010 at the Brooklyn Museum (Robert E. Blum Gallery, 1st floor, and Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th floor). The exhibit is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late works of American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987). With nearly fifty works, the exhibition reveals the artist’s vitality, energy, and renewed spirit of experimentation. During this time Warhol produced more works, in a considerable number of series and on a vastly larger scale, than at any other point in his forty-year career.

It was a decade of great artistic development for Warhol, during which a dramatic transformation of his style took place alongside the introduction of new techniques. He continued to create his screen-printed portraits, but he also reengaged with
painting. In the late 1970s, Warhol developed a new interest in abstraction, first with his Oxidations and Shadows series, and later with his Yarn, Rorschach, and Camouflage paintings. His return to the hand-painted image in the 1980s was inspired by collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, and Keith Haring.
The exhibition concludes with Warhol’s variations on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, one of the largest series of his career. Andy Warhol: The Last Decade provides an important framework for understanding Warhol’s work by looking at how he simultaneously incorporated the screened image and pursued a reinvention of
painting.

The exhibit is being organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum. The exhibition was
curated by Joseph D. Ketner II, Henry and Lois Foster Chair of Contemporary Art, Emerson College, Boston. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is organized by Sharon Matt Atkins, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum.

A catalogue published by Prestel accompanies this exhibition.

Tour: Milwaukee Art Museum, September 26, 2009–January 3, 2010- Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, February 14–May 16, 2010- Baltimore Museum of Art, October 17, 2010–January 9, 2011.

Photo: Andy Warhol at the Jimmy Carter White House during a reception for inaugural portfolio artists in 1977. Courtesy the National Archives.

Exhibit: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864

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&#8220Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864&#8243- is the title of an exhibition that will run January 29th to October 17th at the Brooklyn Museum (Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, 4th floor). The exhibit will present a selection of artworks and historical objects celebrating the contributions of women to the mid-nineteenth-century Sanitary Movement, which organized Sanitary Fairs in major cities in the Northeast to raise money for the Civil War effort. Although the U.S. Sanitary Commission was headed by men, most of its work was accomplished by thousands of women volunteers. In Brooklyn, women’s organizations orchestrated the hugely successful Brooklyn and Long Island Sanitary Fair.

Highlights of the exhibition include a rare doll made by a young woman named Eliza Lefferts and sold at the Brooklyn Sanitary Fair in 1864- engravings created by Winslow Homer- and the rare book History of the Brooklyn and Long Island Fair, February 22, 1864. The Herstory Gallery is dedicated to exhibitions that elaborate on the lives and
histories of the 1,038 women who are named in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, installed permanently in the adjacent gallery. Represented on The Dinner Party table is Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the country’s first female physician and a dedicated pioneer of the Sanitary Movement.

The exhibition has been organized by Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Photo: &#8220Brooklyn Sanitary Fair, 1864. View of the Academy of Music as seen from the stage.&#8221 Brooklyn Public Library. Brooklyn Collection.

Rarely Seen Tissot Watercolors On View

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Many of the iconic watercolors illustrating the New Testament by 19th-century French painter James Tissot, including many images related to the Nativity are on view at the Brooklyn Museum only through January 17, 2010. James Tissot: The Life of Christ includes 124 watercolors, selected from a complete set of 350 in the Museum’s collection. It marks the first time in over twenty years that any of these images have been on public view, in large part because of the extreme fragility of watercolors.

Among the scenes related to the birth of Christ that are included in the exhibition are The Annunciation, Saint Joseph Seeks a Lodging in Bethlehem, The Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, The Magi Journeying, and The Adoration of the Shepherds.

Born in France, James Tissot (1836-1902) enjoyed a successful career as a society painter in London and in Paris before experiencing a religious vision, after which he began the ambitious project of illustrating the life of Christ, an undertaking that took a decade. It resulted in carefully researched, detailed images that were widely exhibited before rapt audiences in Europe and the United States.

In 1900, at the urging of John Singer Sargent, the entire series was acquired by the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the precursor of the Brooklyn Museum, for the then huge sum of $60,000. The significant acquisition increased by several times, the then small art collection of the fledging museum.

A selection of images from the exhibition, including several of the Nativity-related watercolors, is available for press use.

Photo: James Tissot (French, 1836-1902) The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1886-94, Brooklyn Museum

Who Shot Rock And Roll Photography Exhibit Opens

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Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present, which will run from October 30, 2009–January 31, 2010 at the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor of the Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway) features more than 175 works by 105 photographers, including many rare and never-before-exhibited photographs, that gave the music its visual identity. The exhibit is being billed as the first major museum exhibition on rock and roll to put photographers in the foreground, acknowledging their creative and collaborative role in the history of rock music. From its earliest days, rock and roll was captured in photographs that personalized, and frequently eroticized, the musicians, creating a visual identity for the genre.

The photographers were handmaidens to the rock-and-roll revolution, and their images communicate the social and cultural transformations that rock has fostered since the1950s. The exhibition is in six sections: rare and revealing images taken behind the scenes- tender snapshots of young musicians at the beginnings of their careers- exhilarating photographs of live performances that display the energy, passion, style, and sex appeal of the band on stage- powerful images of the crowds and fans that are often evocative of historic paintings- portraits revealing the soul and creativity, rather than the surface and celebrity, of the musicians- and conceptual images and album covers highlighting the collaborative efforts between the image makers and the musicians.

Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present is organized by the Brooklyn Museum with guest curator Gail Buckland.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book by Gail Buckland titled Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955-Present, published by Alfred A. Knopf, with support from the Universal Music Group.

Photo: Henry Diltz (American, b. 1938). Tina Turner, Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles (detail), October 1985. Chromogenic print. © Henry Diltz

James Tissots Life of Christ Watercolors Exhibit

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The exhibition James Tissot: &#8220The Life of Christ&#8221 will include 124 watercolors selected from a set of 350 that depict detailed scenes from the New Testament, from before the birth of Jesus through the Resurrection, in a chronological narrative. On view from October 23, 2009, through January 17, 2010, it marks the first time in more than twenty years that any of the Tissot watercolors, a pivotal acquisition that entered the collection in 1900, have been on view at the Brooklyn Museum.

The exhibition has been organized by Judith F. Dolkart, Associate Curator, European Art, and will travel to venues to be announced. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue of the complete set of 350 images, to be published by the Museum in association with Merrell Publishers Ltd, London.

Born in France, James Tissot (1836-1902) had a successful artistic career in Paris before going to London in the 1870s, where he established himself as a renowned painter of London society, before returning to Paris in 1882. He then began work on a set of fifteen paintings depicting the costumes and manners of fashionable Parisian society women. While visiting the Church of St. Sulpice in the course of his research, he experienced a religious vision, after which he embarked on an ambitious project to illustrate the New Testament.

With the same meticulous attention to detail that he had applied to painting high society, he now created these precisely rendered watercolors. In preparation, he made expeditions to the Middle East to record the landscape, architecture, costumes, and customs of the Holy Land and its people, which he recorded in photographs, notes, and sketches, convinced that the region had remained unchanged since Jesus’s time. When he returned to his Paris studio he drew upon his research materials to execute the watercolors, concentrating on this project to the exclusion of his previous subject matter.

Unlike earlier artists, who often depicted biblical figures anachronistically, Tissot painted the many figures in costumes he believed to be historically authentic. In addition to the archaeological exactitude of many of the watercolors, the series presents other, highly dramatic and often mystical images, such as Jesus Ministered to by Angels and The Grotto of the Agony.

Tissot began the monumental task of illustrating the New Testament in 1886 and first presented selections at the Paris Salon in 1894 (before the series’ completion), where they were received with great enthusiasm. Press accounts on both sides of the Atlantic reported emotional reactions among the visitors: some women wept or kneeled before the works, crawling from picture to picture, while men removed their hats in reverence.

In May 1901 the 350 watercolors, newly mounted in gold mats and reframed, went on view for the first time on Eastern Parkway- records seem to indicate they remained on nearly continuous display until the 1930s. Since then, in part because of conservation concerns, they have only rarely been shown, and then only small portions of the series, most recently in late 1989 through early 1990.

Photo: James Tissot. Jesus Goes Up Alone onto a Mountain to Pray, 1886-94. Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum Launches Smart Phone Gallery Tours

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Visitors to the Brooklyn Museum with mobile phones with Internet access can now create their own gallery guides to the permanent collections through a first-of-its kind program launched last week. Museum attendees who bring their Web-enabled phones will also be able to suggest works of art to fellow visitors. Based on the visitor’s initial selections, the guide will generate additional recommendations about works to see.

Anyone who wants to will now also be able to create sets of annotated objects, which function as customized tours, through the Museum Web site, www.brooklynmuseum.org. These tours may be shared with friends and featured on the Museum Web site for other visitors. The Brooklyn Museum Web site now contains images and brief information on more than 11,000 objects from its comprehensive holdings, which range from antiquity to the present and
include nearly every culture.

For example, a visitor to the ancient Egyptian galleries containing more than 1,200 objects might focus on the Old Kingdom section, encompassing Dynasties 3 through 6, from 2675 through 2170. There, they might select a limestone group statue depicting a man, his wife, and their small son that was the first major work of Egyptian art ever exhibited in America. Given their interest in this statue, the program then might suggest that the visitor look at three elaborately painted wooden tomb statues depicting a man at various stages of his life and an exquisite alabaster statue of the child King Pepy II seated on the lap of his mother.

Through the aggregation of data provided by visitors and their individual tastes, the guide is designed to grow more intelligent as more visitors use it and more data is supplied. The new customized guide will be free to all visitors and may be used on any Web-enabled mobile phone.

The guide is designed as a mobile Web application, specifically engineered for the small screen of a mobile device. The object data displayed within the application is drawn from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection online and combined with the social element that each visitor contributes while in the gallery during their visit.

Eventually, the data generated by visitors using the guide in-house will be exported back into the collection online to form a recommendation system on the Brooklyn Museum Web site.

This project was developed by Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology, with assistance from Jennifer Bantz, Manager Interpretive Materials, Brooklyn Museum. The Web application was engineered in-house by Paul Beaudoin, Programmer, Brooklyn Museum.