Steven Lauritano at Salon Thursdays at the Dahesh

Once again the Dahesh Museum provides a haven for people passionate about the arts with yet another Salon Thursdays event.  These events are completely free to the public, featuring guest scholars, historians and artists making presentations that instruct and delight.

The Dahesh ushers in May with the delightfully titled Have Caryatids, Will Travel: Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Architecture in Motion, presented by historian Steven Lauritano.  In his presentation, Lauritano will talk about the anonymous, ancient craftsman who first decided to substitute a sculpted female body for a load-bearing column.  This was a new element in the architectural vocabulary: a “caryatid.”  A caryatid is a fixed, structural member who, by virtue of her human form and gesture, suggests a capacity for movement. Such figures appeared only rarely during antiquity, yet the 19^th Century witnessed a surge in popularity for the caryatid, with female architectural supports popping-up across European cities from London to Berlin. By following a sequence of these ‘modern’ caryatids – copied, modified, multiplied and re-deployed in the projects of Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) – Lauritano will showcase a little-appreciated portion of the 19^th Century design world.

Steven Lauritano is a PhD candidate at Yale University in the History of Art Department. Lauritano currently serves as a fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he is completing his dissertation research on the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the re-conception of spolia in 19th-century design.

The Dahesh Museum of Art Gift Shop is located at 145 Sixth Avenue, near the corner Dominick Street, in Manhattan.  This event is free, and starts at 6:30 PM.  The Dahesh is easily accessible from the 1 train to Houston Street, and the C and E trains to Spring Street.  The space is wheelchair accessible, and seating is first come, first served.  For further details about Salon Thursdays and the gift shop, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.

New Season of Salon Thursdays at the Dahesh

Artist Jacob Collins

Once again, the Dahesh collection sponsors a captivating roster of speakers and topics for their popular Salon Thursdays events.  These wonderful events are completely free to the public, and start at 6:30 PM.  They are conducted in the lovely gift shop itself, located at 145 Sixth Avenue, on the corner of Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street.  The events are wheelchair accessible.

Since opening its richly appointed gift shop in 2012, the Dahesh has used the new location as a home for Salon Thursdays lectures, featuring both history and insight from leading arts scholars.   Attendees can also look through the new store, which includes beautiful things for the home, reproduction prints and posters, and an impressive collection of scholarly books on the Classical tradition.

The 2014 Winter/Spring Salon Thursdays is extremely ambitious this year.  Next on the calendar are:

Thursday, February 6: The Artist’s Model in Nineteenth-Century Russia: Images and Reality -- Artists’ models are an essential part of academic studio practice, but their work is often overshadowed by the creative accomplishments of the painters and sculptors who employ them. In this presentation, Margaret Samu opens up the artist’s studio in 19th-century Russia to examine the work of models both inside and outside the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Margaret Samu teaches in the Art History Department of Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University, and also lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she studied 18th- and 19th-century art with an emphasis on Russia and France. In 2007 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and spent a year at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. Dr. Samu is currently working on a book-length project titled Russian Venus.

Thursday, March 6: Orientalist Architecture in New York -- Architectural historian Joy Kestenbaum traces the Orientalist influence on New York City architecture from the mid-19th century through the 1920s, covering buildings and interior spaces that still survive as well as others no longer standing, including the diverse styles, sources and historic context of the City’s temples and synagogues, theaters, park structures, commercial and residential buildings.

Joy Kestenbaum is an art and architectural historian and librarian who served as chair of the New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Art Libraries Society of North America. She has been on the teaching and library faculty of Queens College (CUNY), Pratt Institute, New York Institute of Technology, and Purchase College (SUNY), and was also Director of the Gimbel Art and Design Library at The New School. A consulting historian for numerous award-winning preservation projects, she has also lectured widely on Jewish architects and synagogue architecture.

Thursday, April 3: Designing a Thoroughly Modern Atelier -- Join Jacob Collins, New York City artist, teacher, and founder of the Grand Central Academy, for a provocative, free-wheeling exploration of what led him to found a modern art school patterned after the 19th – century atelier; the challenges of such an endeavor, and the future of classical training for young artists.

Jacob Collins is the founder and director of the Grand Central Academy in Manhattan and is a respected artist, teacher, and role model in the field of contemporary realism. Combining a technique reminiscent of the nineteenth-century American realists with a freshness of vision scarcely encountered among today’s traditional painters, Collins’ works form that rarest of unions where classic beauty and striking originality meet as harmonious equals. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College and attended the New York Academy of Art, École Albert Defois. Collins’ work has been widely exhibited in North America and Europe and his work is included in several American museums.

Thursday, May 1: Have Caryatids, Will Travel: Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Architecture in Motion -- When an unknown ancient craftsman first decided to substitute a sculpted female body for a load-bearing column, a curiously contradictory element entered the architectural vocabulary: a “caryatid” is a fixed, structural member who, by virtue of her human form and gesture, suggests a capacity for movement. Such figures appeared only rarely during antiquity, yet the nineteenth century witnessed a surge in the caryatid’s popularity, with female architectural supports popping-up across European cities from London to Berlin. By following a sequence of these ‘modern’ caryatids – copied, modified, multiplied and re-deployed in the projects of Karl Friedrich Schinkel – Steven Lauritano considers how and why this particular motif contributed to the Prussian architect’s conception of historicist design.

Steven Lauritano is a PhD candidate at Yale University in the Department of the History of Art. Currently, he serves as a fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he is completing his dissertation research on the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the re-conception of spolia in 19th-century design.

Thursday, June 5: Nineteenth-Century Exoticism and the “Oriental African” -- At once compelling and repulsive, the figure of the black “Oriental” represented the ultimate exotic “other,” the inverse of the European, and helped to define the complex topography of nineteenth-century Orientalism in a variety of ways. Black figures embodied sexuality, aggression, servitude, barbarism, and ethnographic degeneration, defining themselves and by association, the Orient. Art historian Adrienne L. Childs addresses the dynamics of race and the exotic in the cultural consciousness of the 19th century.

Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian and curator. She specializes in race and representation in European and American art from the eighteenth century through the twentieth century, with a particular interest in exoticism and the decorative arts.

Your correspondent is a great believer in the Dahesh and its mission.  It is the only institution in the United States devoted to academic art of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  The genesis of the collection was assembled by Salim Moussa Achi (1909-1948), who envisioned a museum of academic European art.  Perhaps one day the dream will become a reality once again.  For the past several years the Dahesh has been a museum without walls, as significant portions of this important collection have traveled the world in various shows and exhibitions.  For further details about Salon Thursdays and the gift shop, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.

Salon Thursdays at the Dahesh

It looks like the season has started – we just received word from the Dahesh Museum of Art Gift Shop with the schedule of their third season of Salon Thursdays.  These wonderful events are completely free to the public, and start at 6:30 PM.  They are conducted in the lovely gift shop itself, located at 145 Sixth Avenue, on the corner of Dominick Street, one block south of Spring Street.  The events are wheelchair accessible.

Since opening its richly appointed gift shop in 2012, the Dahesh has used the new location as a home for Salon Thursdays lectures, featuring both history and insight from leading arts scholars.   Attendees can also look through the new store, which includes beautiful things for the home, reproduction prints and posters, and an impressive collection of scholarly books on the Classical tradition.

The 2013 Autumn/Winter Salon Thursdays looks as if the new season is even more ambitious than the last.  Next on the calendar are:

Thursday, October 3: Exhibiting Biblical Art in the Age of Spectacle -- In recent years, the idea that modernity is defined by secularity has begun to break down. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the continued relevance of religious subject matter in modern art, but also in the relationship between religion and the practices of exhibition. Using examples like the World’s Fairs, Holy Land reconstructions, and the evolution of the modern gallery, Sarah Schaefer explores the ways in which religion and exhibition have informed each in the past two centuries.

Sarah Schaefer is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Columbia University, and a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 2013-2014 academic year. She previously worked at the Morgan Library and Museum, and has presented her work in New York, Los Angeles, England, and Germany. Her dissertation examines the biblical art of Gustave Doré, arguing that these images were significant for negotiating modern forms of biblical representation.

Thursday, November 7:  Seeing through Paintings -- How does one restore an art work from the damages of time or natural disaster?  How can collectors distinguish a real work of art from a fake?  Artists, collectors, museums, and galleries often call on conservator Rustin Levenson. Find out what she does and how she does it during her illustrated talk, and stay for a book signing.

Rustin Levenson is the President and Founder of Rustin Levenson Art Conservation Associates of New York and Miami: she has B.A. Wellesley College; a Diploma in Paintings Conservation, Fogg Art Museum, and Harvard University. She served on the Conservation staff of the Fogg Museum (1969-1973), the Canadian Conservation Institute (1973-1974); The National Gallery of Canada (1974-1977); and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1977-1980). She has co-written with art historian, Andrea Kirsh, Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies and written chapters for The Expert vs. the Object.

December 5:  The Other Orient: China in the Nineteenth Century -- If China had represented the “Orient” in the eighteenth century, the Islamic world usurped that role in the nineteenth. But, throughout the nineteenth century, the interest in China and Chinese art remained vivid, yet the meaning they held for the West changed. This changed meaning, in the larger context of nineteenth-century Orientalism, is the focus an illustrated lecture by the distinguished scholar Dr. Petra Chu, PhD.

Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, PhD is Professor of Art history and Museum Studies at Seton Hall University where she co-Founded and directed the MA Program in Museum Professions., She has two doctorates one from Columbia University, NY and the other from Utrecht University, Holland. The recipient of numerous fellowship and awards, and was most recently named a Fellow Getty Research Institute. She helped found and served as Managing Editor for Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (www.19thc-artworldwide.org) and was the president and board member of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art.  Among her many publications,  Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Art  (co-edited with Laurinda S.Dixon) is considered a landmark in art history.

Your correspondent is a great believer in the Dahesh and its mission.  It is the only institution in the United States devoted to academic art of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  The genesis of the collection was assembled by Salim Moussa Achi (1909-1948), who envisioned a museum of academic European art.  Perhaps one day the dream will become a reality once again.  For the past several years the Dahesh has been a museum without walls, as significant portions of this important collection have traveled the world in various shows and exhibitions.  In conjunction with the new store location, the Dahesh has completely revamped their Web site, and readers are urged to visit it to learn about the collection and travelling shows: http://www.dahesh-museum.org/.  For further details about Salon Thursdays and the gift shop, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.

The Dahesh Unveils 2013 Lineup of Salon Thursdays

Since opening its richly appointed gift shop at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York last autumn, the Dahesh Museum of Art has used the new location as a home for Salon Thursdays, a stimulating series of lectures where leading arts scholars provide free programs starting at 6:30 PM.   The new site also houses the offices of the Dahesh, allowing museum administrators to better work together on travelling shows and creating a tentpole in Hudson Square to possibly reopen the museum downtown.  The new store also includes beautiful things for the home, reproduction prints and posters, and an impressive collection of scholarly books on the Classical tradition. 

The 2013 Winter/Spring Salon Thursdays program has just been announced, and it looks as if the new season is even more ambitious than the last.  Next on the calendar are:

February 7: Frick Buys a Freak: Dagnan-Bouveret and the Development of the Frick Collection, presented by Ross Finocchio, PhD, celebrated scholar of the Frick Collection.  He will explain how Henry Clay Frick’s one purchase changed American taste and the art market of his day.

Mach 7: 19^th Century Commercial Photography in Egypt: Inside Pascal Sebah’s Studio, presented by Alia Nour, Assistant Curator at the Dahesh, who will discuss the life and work of Pascal Sebah, who supplied Cairo’s tourists and local elites with images of a romantic east more than 100 years ago.

April 4: The Invention of Comics, presented by Pat Mainardi, PhD, traces the origins of comics and graphic novels to late 19^th Century Europe in what promises to be a fascinating show.

May 2: Inspired by Landscape: Women of the Hudson River School, presented by art historian Jennifer C. Krieger, introduces the 19^th Century woman who painted the magnificent scenery of the Hudson River Valley despite prevailing prejudices.

June 6: Multiple Images: Reproducing Academic Art 1850-1900, presented by Donato Esposito, PhD, outlines how methods of art reproduction evolved and made academic painting among the most well-known of all images in the 19^th Century.

Your correspondent is a great believer in the Dahesh and its mission.  It is the only institution in the United States devoted to academic art of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  The genesis of the collection was assembled by Salim Moussa Achi (1909-1948), who envisioned a museum of academic European art.  Perhaps one day the dream will become a reality once again.  For the past several years the Dahesh has been a museum without walls, as significant portions of this important collection have traveled the world in various shows and exhibitions.  In conjunction with the new store location, the Dahesh has completely revamped their Web site, and readers are urged to visit it to learn about the collection and travelling shows: http://www.dahesh-museum.org/.  For further details about Salon Thursdays and the gift shop, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606. 

Esther Pasztory Will Discuss Artist Jean-Frédéric Waldeck at The Dahesh Museum Gift Shop

This week readers can return to the Dahesh Museum of Art Gift Shop, located at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York for another edition of the Salon Thursdays series.  Salon Thursdays is a free program where leading arts scholars provide illustrated lectures, and on November 1st at 6:30 P.M. the Dahesh presents Jean-Frederic Waldeck: A Nineteenth-Century Artist Painting Exotic Mexico, courtesy of Esther Pasztory, Professor of Pre-Columbian Art History at Columbia University.  She will discuss the life and work of this quirky Orientalist who went to Mexico and made the ancient Mayans and Aztecs vivid in an entirely modern way.  Professor Pasztory is the author of Jean-Frédéric Waldeck: Artist of Exotic Mexico, a fascinating look at this controversial figure.  For further details, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.

The life of Jean-Frédéric Waldeck (1766-1875) is shrouded in mystery.  He gave his birthplace as Paris, and Prague and Vienna, and alternated between claiming that he was English, Austrian or German.  Depending on circumstances, he also claimed to be a Baron, a Duke or a Count.

What is certain is that he went to Mexico when he was 60 years old to copy the newly discovered Maya ruins of Palenque and other Mesoamerican centers.  His representations of Mayan and Aztec art were the first produced by a European artist, and as such, were seen through a Neoclassic lens.  Waldeck eventually went native, painting his Mayan mistress and scenes of everyday life.

Because of the many half-truths and sometimes outright falsehoods he told over his lifetime (including that he participated in major exploratory expeditions that have no record of his involvement), Waldeck’s reputation has now been of interest mainly to scholars and archivists.  Professor Pasztory took some time from her busy schedule to talk about Waldeck and her upcoming lecture with The Jade Sphinx:

Can you please tell us a little about your talk at the Dahesh this Thursday?

I’m going to talk about Waldeck’s life and work; first about the inaccuracies people have perceived in the work and why they do not value him, and, also about my discovery that there are inaccuracies in his work because he was mainly more interested in art than he was in illustration.  I will also provide insight on various paintings he made while he was in Mexico.

Waldeck tried to approach Mayan and Aztec art through a European artistic tradition – what were the values or pitfalls of such an approach?

Let’s put it this way: Waldeck tried to be everything.  He tried to be an illustrator, he tried to be an artist, and he tried for anything in his era he could probably be in order to make fame and fortune.  And by being a Neoclassic artist, he was able to see the naturalistic and beautiful aspects of Mayan art that his contemporaries would not see.

Waldeck has not been taken seriously by scholars, and his work, mostly hidden in archives, is unknown to most art historians.  Is it time for a reassessment?

I definitely think so.  I think he is an artist like the Orientalists of the 19th Century, but rather than go East, he went West.  And he was interested in the exotic, and he gave us some fascinating images of the exotic in the Americas.

In my cursory look at Waldeck’s biography, I see that he sometimes said he was various different European nationalities.  He often claimed royal titles.  How were you able to get your arms around such an elusive figure?

It was not that difficult.  We don’t know where he was born, but it’s probable that it was in Prague or Vienna.  When he was a child (and we don’t know how old), he went to Paris, France, where he operated as a French artist.  All of his journals are in French, there are no German or foreign language words in his notes.  So though he was not of French birth, he was French by his upbringing.

He didn’t go into Mexico until his late middle age.  The great mystery of Waldeck is that we don’t know a great deal about his early life.  He made a lot of grand statements about the expeditions he was on, but they can’t be proven.  The only part of his life that we can prove is that period in Mexico.  He went to Mexico specifically to paint the Mayan ruins that he came across in a lithographer’s studio in England.  (He was working in England at the time.)

Please tell us about your book, Jean-Frédéric Waldeck: Artist of Exotic Mexico.

What I tried to do was situate Waldeck in his time, and within the aesthetic ideas of his time.  What would his background and training bring to the Mayan ruins?  Actually, he brought a great many books with him, as he was an intelligent and learned person.  So I was mainly interested in the context through which he saw these things.  I also thought he was an interesting 19th Century artist – not a major one, but certainly an important minor one.

Do you have other books in the works?

Yes – Aliens and Fakes, which is about the crazy theories people have about the origins of Native Americans; things like extraterrestrials, and Lost Tribes of Israel and trans-Pacific travel.  All of these strange theories people come up with to explain the existence and heritage of an entire people.

I’ve always found that pseudoscience both fascinating and a little ridiculous.

I think I don’t want to poke fun at it – that’s all too easy.  I want to explain why people believe in these ideas, why it made sense to them, and why it still does, to some extent.  It’s a phenomenon that does not want to go away.

The Dahesh Museum Launches Salon Thursdays, Offering Free Lectures at Their New Downtown New York Gift Shop

Last week your correspondent was invited to the grand opening of the new gift shop of the Dahesh Museum of Art, located at 145 Sixth Avenue in New York.  For the past several years the Dahesh has been a museum without walls, as significant portions of this important collection have traveled the world in various shows and exhibitions.  In conjunction with the new store location, the Dahesh has completely revamped their Web site, and readers are urged to visit it to learn about the collection and travelling shows: http://www.daheshmuseum.org.

The new space is also the location of an upcoming series called Salon Thursdays, where leading scholars of the arts will provide free programs starting at 6:30 PM.  For further details, call the Dahesh at 212.759.0606.  The initial series of Salon Thursdays include:

October 4: Aida: One Woman, Two Nations, and Verdi’s Egyptomania, presented by Fred Plotkin, celebrated author, scholar and blogger on all things opera.  His blog, Operavore (http://www.wqxr.org/#!/people/fred-plotkin/) is highly recommended to anyone interested in Opera and Classical Music.

November 1: Jean-Frederic Waldeck: A Nineteenth-Century Artist Painting Exotic Mexico, presented by Esther Pasztory, Professor of Pre-Columbian Art History at Columbia University, who will discuss the life and work of this quirky Orientalist who went to Mexico and made the ancient Aztecs vivid in an entirely modern way.

December 6: Making Their Mark: Drawing by Academic Artists in the Nineteenth Century, presented by Dr. David Farmer, Director of Exhibitions at the Dahesh, which will explore the role of drawing in the development of those artists who trained in the academies and ateliers of Europe and America in the 19^th Century.

The new store is a treat for aesthetes of all stripes, including beautiful things for the home, reproduction prints and posters, and an impressive collection of scholarly books on the Classical tradition.  More importantly, the offices of the Dahesh are now in one location, allowing museum administrators to better work together on travelling shows and creating a tentpole in Hudson Square to possibly reopen the museum downtown.

Your correspondent is a great believer in the Dahesh and its mission.  It is the only institution in the United States devoted to academic art of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  The curators and scholars there have worked tirelessly to reassert the work of Europe’s academic tradition in the broader context of European and American 19^th Century art.  They have managed to do this elegantly, despite the dismissal of academics chocking on a shallow, Post Modernist aesthetic, and a rapacious art market suspicious of actual beauty.  The genesis of the collection was assembled by Salim Moussa Achi (1909-1948), who envisioned a museum of academic European art.  Perhaps one day the dream will become a reality once again.

Tomorrow we will share a few words with Fred Plotkin, first speaker in the Salon Thursdays series and blogger at Operavore.