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Grand Scale: Monumental Prints
in the Age of Dürer and Titian
Davis Museum and Cultural Center,
Wellesley College
March 19 – June 8, 2008
Wellesley, MA – The Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College
presents an astounding exhibition of monumental works on paper in Spring 2008. (The opening reception is March 19 from
6-8pm). Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian is a major loan exhibition that highlights the little-studied
phenomenon of large-scale printed imagery in Renaissance Europe. In the fifteenth century, prints were essentially limited
by the size and shape of single sheets of paper and the size of a standard press. In
the sixteenth century, however, a variety of impulses led to the expansion of printed imagery beyond these confining boundaries.
Ambitions to rival paintings and other large-scale images prompted print ensembles to expand horizontally into frieze-like
sequences and up and out to mimic murals or tapestries. They achieved these effects by combining coordinated blocks to build
single compositions and sheets, at first mainly woodcuts and then increasingly engravings and etchings. The nearly fifty sixteenth-century prints included in the exhibition are rarely exhibited, and many of
them have received scant scholarly attention.
Grand Scale: Monumental Prints in the Age of Dürer and Titian will be shown
at the Davis Museum as well as at Yale University Art Gallery and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With the exception of an
exhibition of giant woodcuts in Germany in the 1970’s, this will be the first exhibition to explore this genre in printmaking
by some of the most important artists and printmakers of their day.
SYMPOSIUM
March 20 Thursday
Grand Scale: Symposium
9:30am
– 5:30 pm
Collins
Cinema
Speakers from the U.S., Canada and Europe will expand on the new perspectives provided in the Grand Scale catalogue
on oversize prints and initiate the next generation of research. Eva Allan, Yale University;
Michael Bury, University of Edinburgh; Tom Conley, Harvard University; Christopher Heuer, Princeton University; Louis Marchesano,
Getty Research Institute; Thomas Schauerte, Universität Trier; Ashley West, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Bronwen Wilson, University
of British Columbia
The symposium is free and open to all but as space is limited, registration
is required. Please visit our web site to register.
http://www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu/whatsnew/grand_scale_symp_reg.html
This project is funded by major gifts from the
Marjorie and Gerald Bronfman Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, and Wellesley College Friends
of Art with additional funds from International Fine Print Dealers Association, Lindsay Mace Joost ’88 Acquisition Fund,
S. Jane Burrell Lacy ’49 and Benjamin Lacy Endowed Fund for Acquisitions and Programs, Claire Freedman Lober ’44
Program Endowment, E. Franklin Robbins Art Museum Endowment, Constance Rhind Robey ’81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions,
June, Feinberg Stayman ’48 Art Fund, Judith Blough Wentz ’57 Museum Programs Fund, and Mary Tebbetts Wolfe ’54
Program Endowment.
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Davis Museum and Cultural Center hours and information
New: Public tours led by Museum Docents from March 19-June 8 are offered
free of change on Wednesdays at 1pm and Sundays at 2pm.
The Davis Museum
is open Tuesday–Saturday, 11am-5pm, Wednesday until 8pm, and Sunday 12noon-4pm. Closed Mondays and holidays. Admission is free. The Center is located on the Wellesley
College campus, 106 Central Street in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Parking is free and available
in the lot behind the museum. Additional parking is available in the Davis Parking Garage.
For docent
tour information, please call 781-283-3382. The museum, Collins Café and Collins Cinema are wheelchair accessible and wheelchairs
are available for use in the Museum without charge. Special needs may be accommodated by contacting the Director of Disability
Services, Jim Wice at 781-283-2434 or at jwice@wellesley.edu. Level access with power door at main entrance.
FREE ADMISSION. FREE PARKING. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
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Jem Southam: Upton Pyne
Davis Museum and Cultural Center,
Wellesley College
March 19 – June 8, 2008
Wellesley, MA – The Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College
will feature Jem Southam: Upton Pyne this spring. One of the most significant photographers working in Britain today, Jem
Southam creates photographic narratives of landscapes transformed by time and humans. Upton
Pyne chronicles the evolution of a small pond, the result of industrial waste on the site of a former manganese mine near
his home in Cornwall, England. The artist describes the series as a “collection
of histories” gathered during regular walks to the pond between 1996 and 2001. By recording this unassuming place through
shifting seasons and various people’s attempts to improve it, Southam’s photographs ask us to reexamine notions
of meaning and beauty in the landscape. The Opening Reception at the Davis Museum
is Wednesday, March 19 from 6-8pm. Admission and parking are free.
The exhibition features twenty-one large-format photographs structured in the
three parts. The first follows the efforts of one neighbor, who strove to transform the pond into his own notion of Eden,
replete with fish, flowers, and benches for contemplation. After three years he suddenly stopped and the pond once again fell
into disuse. Part two sees another resident take over, this time with the goal
of making it into a suburban-style leisure area, including picnic tables and swing-sets.
In the final segment, Southam stands at the pond’s edges and turns his camera out, connecting the pond and viewers
of the photographs with the surrounding landscape.
Born in Bristol, England, in 1950, Southam is a reader in Photography at the
University of Plymouth. In 2005, he published Landscape Stories, the first comprehensive
collection of this work. Other publications include The Red River (1989), The
Raft of Carrots (1992), The Shape of Time (2000) and The Painter’s Pool (2006).
Jem Southam: Upton Pyne also recently appeared at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, and the
Yale Center for British Art.
Jem Southam: Upton Pyne is funded by the
Linda Wyatt Gruber (Class of 1966) Photography Fund, Kathryn Wasserman Davis ’28 Fund for World Cultures and Leadership,
Elizabeth Bein Keto '48 Endowed Memorial Art Fund, the Wellesley College Art Department, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Wellesley College co-sponsors include the Botanic Gardens and Environmental Studies Program.
RELATED PROGRAMS
A series of talks by landscape photographers will be presented in conjunction
with the exhibition. All of the artists – Jem Southam, Esteban Pastorino,
and Jane Marsching – create work concerned with the relationship between humans and the natural world.
March 18, Tuesday
Lecture by Jem Southam
11:10 am - 12:20pm
Collins Cinema
Presented as part of Art Department Professor Patricia Berman’s History
of Photography class
Open to the public
The exhibition will be installed and open by 10:00 am on Tuesday, March 18
for those attending the lecture.
March 19, Wednesday
Opening Reception
6-8pm
Conversation with Jem Southam and Dabney Hailey
7:30pm
Davis Museum: Wolfe Gallery
Open to the public
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February 28 through June 30, 2008
HARVARD’S FOGG ART MUSEUM PRESENTS FIRST MAJOR SURVEY AND
MUSEUM EXHIBITION OF MOYRA DAVEY’S PHOTOGRAPHS
Exhibition is the first to present a comprehensive look at the artist’s 20-year career
Moyra Davey’s work focuses on the humble and mundane accumulations of everyday objects
such as stacks of newspapers, books, records, and money. Her images of domestic interiors
feature dust, bookshelves, and the stuff that accumulates on top of refrigerators. Her New York
City street pictures focus on the disappearing world of newspaper vendors. Shying away from
contemporary practices of large-scale, digitally manipulated, and staged photography, Davey
works on a small scale—typically in 20 x 24 inch format—and prints her own work. Her
modest scale encourages viewers to focus their attention and consequently increase their
awareness of everyday life.
Davey’s photographs and videos have been featured in exhibitions at Alexander and Bonin,
New York; American Fine Arts, Co., New York; Artists Space, New York; the International
Moyra Davey, Greatest Hits, 1999.
Chromogenic color print, 20 x 24 in.
Collection of the artist. Photo: courtesy of the artist.
CAMBRIDGE, MA (November 27, 2007)—The
Harvard University Art Museums present Long Life
Cool White: Photographs by Moyra Davey, on view
from February 28 through June 30, 2008, at
the
Fogg Art Museum. This exhibition of 40
photographs marks the first survey of Davey’s work,
and her first major exhibition in a museum. The
photographs on view provide a comprehensive look
into Davey’s 20-year career, which has included
multiple solo and group exhibitions in galleries and
group exhibitions in museums in the United States
and Canada.
Harvard University Art Museums— Moyra Davey
11/27/07 Page 2 of 6
Center of Photography, New York; LACE, Los Angeles; the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art
Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal; Massimo Audiello Gallery, New York, and the Rena
Bransten Gallery, San Francisco; as well as other galleries and museums. She recently
collaborated with Jason Simon on a video for 50,000 Beds, a project by Chris Doyle at Artspace
in New Haven, CT, and is currently one of twelve founding members of Orchard, a cooperative
exhibition and event space in New York City’s Lower East Side. She was also one of
ten recipients of the 2004–05 award from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation.
Helen Molesworth, Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art, curated
the exhibition, and collaborated closely with the artist on this survey. “Working with Moyra
Davey on this exhibition has been a lesson in subtlety; whether it’s how one looks at the
overlooked or how one threads together passages from numerous books, Davey’s work
invariably offers a kind of intellectual and aesthetic “time out.” She slows things down and
hushes the room so that everyone can not only have their own thoughts but can hear them as
well.”
Also an established author, Davey has written The Problem of Reading (2003), an essay
ruminating on the act of reading, and edited Mother Reader: Essential Writings
on Motherhood
(2001), a compilation of writing by artists and writers on the struggles and joys of being a
creative producer and a mother. In her essay “Notes on Photography & Accident” in the
accompanying catalogue, Davey expounds on the idea that “accident is the lifeblood of
photography.” With an interest in traditional photography’s reliance on the notion of accident,
she contemplates the philosophical and psychological problems posed by photography, largely
by parsing the work of Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and Janet Malcolm.
Though h er photographs of cluttered desks are interspersed with this essay,
they are not
intended to function as illustrations; rather, they run parallel to her questioning of the
differences between photographers and writers and the similarities between taking photographs
and taking notes.
Molesworth was appointed in February 2007 as the Art Museums’ first full curator of
contemporary art. Since her appointment, she has become the first incumbent of the Maisie K.
Harvard University Art Museums— Moyra Davey
11/27/07 Page 3 of 6
and James R. Houghton Curatorship of Contemporary Art, an important gift that supports the
Art Museums’ mission of collecting contemporary art.
“In establishing an endowed curatorship of contemporary art, we have renewed our
commitment to living artists and the unique inspiration and discoveries they enable us to share
with scholars, students, and the wider public,” said Thomas W. Lentz, Elizabeth and John
Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. “This exhibition, Davey’s first
museum retrospective, reflects our intention to highlight the work of artists who are not yet part
of the canon, but from whom we have a great deal to learn.”
Featured Works
The entryway to the gallery features 100 of Davey’s Copperheads (late 1980s–early 1990s), in
a 10 x 10 grid form under Plexiglas. This series, taken with a macro lens, depicts extreme closeups
of President Lincoln’s profile on various pennies. Each image shows a different penny
whose surface has been nicked, scarred, gouged, and tarnished, or a combination of all
mutilations that make it sometimes impossible to discern the profile. Other works feature LP’s,
as in Shure (2003) or Greatest Hits (1999), focusing on the persistence of analog technologies
in our digital age. Books and magazines play an enormous role in Davey’s oeuvre in such
works as Early (1999), Newsstand No. 3 (1994), and Yma
(1999). In Davey’s pictures, books
accumulate wildly, mimicking the feeling of endlessness one has in a library; but books also
gather dust, and Davey’s pictures are as much about how books can produce feelings of entropy
and death as they are about the ability of books to propagate knowledge.
Credits
Funding for the exhibition and accompanying publication was provided by a grant from The
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts .
Catalogue
The catalogue that accompanies this exhibition includes an introduction by Helen Molesworth
and an essay by Moyra Davey entitled “Notes on Photography & Accident.” Also included are
Harvard University Art Museums— Moyra Davey
11/27/07 Page 4 of 6
a transcript of Davey's video Fifty Minutes and 67 color photographs. The catalogue is
published by the Harvard University Art Museums and distributed by Yale University Press.
Carpenter Center Exhibition
Two or Three Things I Know About Her , an exhibition also curated by Helen
Molesworth, is
running concurrently at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, adjacent to the Fogg Art
Museum, at 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA. The exhibition is on view February 28 through
April 6, 2008, and features Moyra Davey’s video Fifty Minutes, along with video, sound, and
slide pieces by fellow artists Wynne Greenwood, K8 Hardy, Sharon Hayes, and Ulrike Müller.
Please see www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/2or3things.html for more information.
Harvard University Art Museums— Moyra Davey
11/27/07 Page 5 of 6
Exhibition Programming
Opening Celebration
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Join us for this festive evening of contemporary art!
Complimentary admission for all.
6:00 p.m., Carpenter Center Auditorium
Between the Sheets: Two or Three Things We Might Have Said to Each Other
Lecture by Catherine Lord, professor of studio art, University of California at Irvine
7:00–9:00 p.m., reception and viewing of the exhibitions in the Fogg Art Museum and
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts:
Long Life Cool White: Photographs by Moyra Davey
On view February 28 through June 30, 2008
Fogg Art Museum, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
Two or Three Things I Know About Her
On view February 28 through April 6, 2008
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
M. Victor Leventritt Symposium
MODERN/AGE
Saturday, April 5, 2008
10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Arthur M. Sackler Museum, lecture hall
Free admission
Speakers include:
Emily Apter, New York University
Bill Brown, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor,
The University of Chicago
Bill Horrigan, Director of Media Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts
Robin Kelsey, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
Chris Krauss, Otis College of Art and Design
Helen Molesworth, Maisie K. and James R. Houghton Curator of Contemporary Art
Eric Rosenberg, Associate Professor, Art and Art History Department, Tufts University
Harvard University Art Museums— Moyra Davey
11/27/07 Page 6 of 6
The Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are one of the world’s leading arts institutions,
comprising the Fogg Art Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum,
Straus Center for Conservation, Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, HUAM
Archives, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis.
The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their
collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an
integral part of the Harvard community, the three art museums and four research centers serve
as resources for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is
welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia,
and other programs.
For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation’s
premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role
in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.
Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum are located at 32 Quincy Street,
Cambridge. Adjacent to them is the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, located at 485 Broadway. Each
museum is a short walk through Harvard Yard from the Harvard Square MBTA station.
Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.; Sunday 1:00–5:00
p.m.; closed
on national holidays.
General admission is $9; $7 for senior citizens; and $6 for students. Paid
admission includes
entrance to all three Art Museums, including study rooms, public tours, and gallery talks.
Admission is free for Harvard University ID holders, Members of the Art Museums,
Cambridge Public Library cardholders, and visitors under 18 years of age. Admission
is
free to all on Saturdays before noon. More detailed information is available at 617-495-9400 or
on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.
The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural
Council.
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For more information about this exhibition or the Harvard University Art Museums, please
contact:
Jennifer Aubin, Public Relations Coordinator Geetha Natarajan, Account Executive
Harvard University Art Museums Resnicow Schroeder Associates
tel 617-496-5331; fax 617-496-9762 tel 212-671-5157
jennifer_aubin@harvard.edu gnatarajan@resnicowschroeder.com
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