It was easier to begin my 45-minute looking experience at William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Homer and His Guide than it was at Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park, the subject of my last “Slow Art” post. I have loved Bouguereau for about four years now, ever since I gave gallery talks on his work at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, PA. Like Jean-Honoré Fragonard, he is not the most respectable artist for an art historian or museum educator to love: his work is sentimental, it doesn’t really push boundaries, and it is on the whole pretty safe. But I have always been drawn to the way he paints—his style is luminously realistic, ridiculously meticulous. He is one of the few painters whose figures always seem to me about to jump off the canvas.
Author: Chelsea Emelie Kelly
Have you ever looked at a work of art for a half-hour straight?
In college, one of my favorite art history professors required that we spend at least a half-hour sitting in front of the work of art we were researching and sketch it, getting intimate with the figures, setting, lines and brushstrokes within it, and immersing ourselves in the choices the artist made. While looking for forty-five minutes at Kirchner’s Street at Schöneberg City Park, that was exactly what I did.
Art in Bloom 2011 is in full swing! Huge flower displays are being wheeled through the galleries. Floral designers are snipping, arranging, considering, and re-arranging. Hundreds of garden goodies line the gallerias. There is a gelato cart, yes, you read that right, a gelato cart, parked near our beloved Coffee with a Conscience. And the best part of all—it smells so good in the galleries!
So I have a little game for you when you come visit us this weekend!
How well do you know Art in Bloom?
Can you find the locations of ALL of the following photos and detail shots!? If you’re the first person to identify everything correctly in the comments below, I’ll send you two free passes to come see our Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century exhibition before it closes in May! Check out the photos after the jump. Just write down the Mystery Photo number (it’s in the captions), as well as your best description of the space, gallery name, or gallery number. Good luck!
In early March, twenty-two teachers joined us at the Museum for a free Teacher’s Night that focused on the recently unveiled Charles Prendergast installation in Gallery 15 on the Main Level. We got a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art not only for the installation (the beautiful Prendergast objects featured are almost all from their collection), but also for a Teacher’s Night inspired by the works! Here’s an inside look at the planning for the event as well as the event itself…
Categories
The “Write” Stuff
Imagine this: On a balmy (that is, 35-degree!) Tuesday morning this week, twenty fourth grade students were quietly scattered throughout Windhover Hall. Parent chaperones milled about, but these nine- and ten-year-olds were nearly silent. Why were these fourth graders so quiet, driven, focused?
They were writing.
All of my friends and coworkers can attest to just how ridiculously excited I was after the Packers and the Steelers won the playoff games. Full confession, though—it’s not because I’m a football fan. Nah. It’s because I knew this meant my current workplace, Milwaukee Art Museum, of course, and my former workplace, the Carnegie Museum of Art (yep, I’m from the ‘Burgh), would be pitted against each other in the now-annual Super Bowl Art Bet.
What’s the smallest thing on view in the galleries right now? These netsuke might just be it. In fact, they’re so tiny that you may have missed them the last time you were in the Asian Art Gallery. Don’t feel bad—just go back and visit them. They’ll be happy to see you. These quirky little figurines seem trivial and cutesy (a squirrel holding grapes?) but they actually served a very important purpose in Japanese society. Not too shabby for a little object no bigger than your thumb.
The Museum Collection contains endless stories. Our paintings hold narratives of mythological legends; decorative art objects tell us of life way-back-when; contemporary art puts our finger on the pulse of what is going on now. But have you ever traced a story through the Collection? There are many ways to do this: you could follow an artist’s work through his or her lifetime, a collector’s vision (Mrs. Bradley, Mr. Layton, the list goes on…), or you could really veer off the beaten track and follow the story of a material—you know, what an art object is made out of. One of our super-star materials? Marble!
Categories
Satellite: Final Projects
In mid-December, the Satellite High School class came to a close. After fourteen weeks of gallery time, sketching, and even the occasional field trip, our class culminated with a big event: the final project. Students chose one work of art—any work of art—in the entire Museum Collection to research, write a sample gallery label, and create their own artwork in response to it. Then, on December 15, they gave us a short presentation about what they discovered and what they created.
So your family members (or out-of-town friends, or in-laws, take your pick!) are in town for the holidays, presents have been opened, feasts eaten, and now you need to entertain them. Naturally, you bring them to the Museum, knowing that you’ll be able to impress them with the architecture, a work of art in and of itself. But you want to impress them in the galleries, too; you want to show them something so incredible that it’ll even stun the know-it-all of the group.