Post Tagged with: "controversies"

A Late Vermeer — Or is it?

A Late Vermeer — Or is it?

We read Martin Gladwell’s Blink for my museum studies seminar — a bestseller that focuses on the importance of those inexplicable moments of intinct. In the first chapter, he talks about the Getty Kouros  controversy.  Curators at the Getty, looking over the Greek statue for months, became convinced of its authenticity and purchased it at great price; yet others, such as Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan, saw it at first glance and simply knew it could not be real.  Whether or not the Kouros is a forgery or not remains unknown, but Gladwell argues that those first glace, gut-instinct moments should not be ignored.

Attributed to Vermeer, A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Click image for larger view)

I had a “blink” moment in front of the controversial Vermeer now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I wrote about a few months ago.  As I walked through the Italian Renaissance rooms to the Dutch Golden Age galleries, I was completely ready to dismiss the Vermeer as a fake.  After all, in reproductions we’d viewed in my seminar, it looked so preposterous: a huge yellow shawl, blank walls, ringlets in her hair and those hands (click the image to the right to view it closeup, and you’ll understand what I mean).  But when I walked in to the room, turned the corner, and marched straight up to the little painting, the first thought that popped into my mind was: Wow, it really is a Vermeer.

It took me a good twenty minutes or more in the room — happily, surrounded by almost all of the Met’s authenticated Vermeers for comparison — to put my fingers on exactly why my gut instinct was so positive.  The second thought in my mind was when I looked at the ribbons in the figure’s hair.  They are painted with such care but at the same time such simplicity — a single pulling of bright red paint, a few daubs of white — that immediately made me think of a very similar detail in the Louvre’s Lacemaker (see gallery below): the red and white threads pooling over the pincushion are painted with just as much care.  Interestingly, the ringlet hairstyle I’d originally considered so odd appears in that very painting, too. Moreover, the Lacemaker is about the same size as this intimate, small painting.

Saturday, March 14, 2009 3 comments
On the Rose Art Museum

On the Rose Art Museum

Editor’s Note The upsetting story of the Brandeis Trustees’ decision to close the Rose Art Museum and sell the entire collection has been circulating the internet for a while now.  My decision to go into art history and museum work was largely due to my wonderful experiences at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar, and so I was deeply disturbed and saddened by what happened at Brandeis.  Below is an excerpt from an article in the Vassar student newspaper written by our equally concerned contributor, Gabrielle, on the event.  If you are interested in encouraging this decision to be revoked, please sign the ‘In Opposition to the Closing of the Rose Art Museum’ petition. –Chelsea

Art is a profitable commodity and always has been. But this is not an art auction at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Brandeis is a reputable academic institution, and its art museum, much like Vassar’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Gallery, is an indispensable resource for students, professors and members of the community. Furthermore, the Rose Art Museum has always supported itself by raising its own funds independently of the University. It prides itself on works of art from private donors, to many of whom the plan to close the museum was seen as a bald-faced insult.

[...] The Trustees are robbing the Brandeis community of a significant resource, and they’re tainting the University’s reputation in the process. Instead of cutting costs in multiple areas of the University, the trustees are striking a blow solely to the visual arts, compromising Brandeis’ reputation and credibility as a higher learning institution. Even if the Trustees were to re-open the museum in the future, under better economic conditions, who would donate to it, now that its reputation has been sacrificed?

The imperativeness of appreciating the resources available to us as students of the liberal arts is reinforced by Brandeis’ abrupt decision to close its art museum. Being able to study in an environment that values cultural exploration and resources is a luxury, not an entitlement. In a declining economy, nothing is certain and nothing can be taken for granted—least of all art.

Read Gabrielle’s full article at the Miscellany News website.
For more information on this topic, see the most recent article in the NY Times, which reports that the building will “remain open as a teaching and studio facility;” Tyler Green’s Q&A with Michael Rush, Rose Art Museum director; as well as CultureGrrl’s wrap-up of the responses to the incident.

Monday, February 16, 2009 0 comments
A Controversial Vermeer, Now at the Met

A Controversial Vermeer, Now at the Met

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Attributed to Vermeer, A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image from EssentialVermeer.com

About a year ago, I took a Vermeer seminar in which we discussed all of the works in Vermeer’s ouevre — even those most unlikely candidates… one of which was the piece at left.  This small painting surfaced most recently in 2004 in an auction at Sotheby’s, was sold to a private bidder, who sold it again, and has been under the radar ever since.

Until now, that is: this controversial little painting is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until around June.  Walter Liedtke, the curator of Dutch paintings at the Met, as well as the former paintings conservationist of the Rijksmuseum, endorse this painting as a late, authentic Vermeer.

I haven’t seen it myself yet, but I can definitely tell you I’ll be at the Met sooner rather than later to catch a glimpse of it.  Until then, share your thoughts — is it real, or as some art historians contend in this post-van Meergeren era of Vermeer studies, probably a fake?

A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, at the Met until June | Via CultureGrrl
(If you’re interested in the provenance of this work, see this article from the Sotheby’s sales catalogue.)

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 0 comments