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Warm wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving later this month! There is much to celebrate at the Museum in November. Come see wonderful new acquisitions highlighted in our new exhibition of
Art from the Northern Plains, opening on November 9th. And in November we begin a new feature: a work on paper of the month. Enjoy the opportunity to savor Alberto Giacometti's sketch of a young woman captured in the spring of 1963. We also invite you to use your imagination in responding to John Sloan's
Sunday Afternoon in Union Square-details below. Finally, for all those who have been enticed by
The Ivory Mirror, we urge you to take advantage of its final month on view. The opportunity for further reflections awaits the first weekend in November during the symposium "Last Things: Luxury Goods and Memento Mori Culture in Europe, ca. 1400-1550." The event is free and open to the public.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Anne Collins Goodyear & Frank H. Goodyear
Co-Directors
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
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OPENING SOON
Art from the Northern Plains
Art from the Northern Plains celebrates the Museum's recent acquisition of a painting on muslin of a Sun Dance ceremony by an unidentified Lakota artist. Created in the late nineteenth century, during a period when the U.S. government had outlawed the Sun Dance and subjugated tribes onto reservations, it attests to the continued Native resistance to American westward expansion, to the vitality of traditional ceremonies, and to evolving modes of creative expression within Lakota society.
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CLOSING SOON
The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe
Closing November 26, 2017
This exhibition represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the rich visual culture of mortality in Renaissance Europe. The appeal of the "memento mori," featuring macabre imagery urging us to "remember death," reached the apex of its popularity around 1500, when artists treated the theme in innovative and compelling ways. Exquisite artworks-from ivory prayer beads to gem-encrusted jewelry-evoke life's preciousness and the tension between pleasure and responsibility, then and now.
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This light-hearted painting revels in the pleasures of early twentieth-century New York City. John Sloan, a member of the group of realist artists known as "The Eight," believed that contemporary American art should celebrate the commonplace. About his artistic practice, Sloan once said, "I saw the everyday life of the people, and on the whole I picked out bits of joy in human life for my subject matter." The Museum's
Sunday Afternoon in Union Square, 1912, exemplifies this idea.
This month we challenge our readers to suggest playful captions for this painting, imagining what these friends may have been discussing, or shedding light on the scene itself. Please submit your ideas to
cbaljon@bowdoin.edu by November 17th. The Museum staff will select a caption to appear in the December E-Bulletin. The winner will receive a 20% discount on their next purchase in the Museum shop!
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Work on Paper of the Month
On the title page of the weekend edition of the newspaper "Arts," published May 27 and 28, 1963, Alberto Giacometti captured with a few lines a young woman standing at the bar in a fashionably short dress. Curiously, the celebrated artist superimposed the figure on graphic elements of the page, as if reinterpreting the newspaper's layout as a space to inhabit by the figure. The cropped colors of the header in blocks of yellow and blue, a bold dotted vertical divider, and the negative space suggest a cafe, the storied habitat of Parisian artists and intellectuals.
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The Ivory Mirror Symposium
Those who have seen
The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe are well acquainted with a startlingly macabre array of images of death and decay. The upcoming symposium held in conjunction with
The Ivory Mirror, "Last Things: Luxury Goods and Memento Mori Culture in Europe, ca. 1400-1550," is organized by guest curator Stephen Perkinson, Peter M. Small Associate Professor of Art History, and offers an opportunity to explore more fully this lesser known dimension of the Renaissance.
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Become a Member of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art
We hope you'll visit the Museum this fall! There are several exhibitions, featuring art from ancient times to the present, on view for your enjoyment.
For more information, please check our home page, or contact Caroline Baljon, Membership and Programs Coordinator, at (207)-725-3276.
The support of our members helps us to realize future exhibitions, public programs, and educational offerings, which are always open to students and the general public free of charge. Membership offers special access to events and serves as a connection to a community of students and faculty who are actively engaged at the Museum. If you are not already a member, we hope that you will show your support for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art by
joining today
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calendar
November 2
Bowdoin Slam Poets Society
7:00 pm
Museum of Art
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November 3
Symposium, day one: Last Things: Luxury Goods and Memento Mori Culture in Europe, ca. 1400-1550
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Kresge Auditorium
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November 4
Symposium, day two: Last Things: Luxury Goods and Memento Mori Culture in Europe, ca. 1400-1550
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Kresge Auditorium
more
November 9
"Death, Beauty, and Metaphysics: Art, Science, and Memento Mori in Early Anatomical Representation"
4:30 pm
Kresge Auditorium
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November 11
"Blue Heron: Songs of Love and Death"
2:00 pm
Bowdoin College Chapel
November 14
The Ivory Mirror Film Series: It Follows
7:00 pm
Kresge Auditorium
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November 16
Gallery Conversation: Frank Goodyear and Johna Cook '19
4:30 pm
Museum of Art
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November 18
Family Saturday
10:00 am
Museum of Art
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Novmeber 29
Members' Preview Day: The Holiday Sale in the Museum Shop
10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Museum of Art
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November 29
Members' Evening at the Museum
5:00 pm
Museum of Art
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November 30
"How an Uprising Became a Revolution"
4:30 pm
Kresge Auditorium
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Banner image:
Autumn, (detail), oil on canvas, by Benjamin Foster, American, 1852-1926,
is in the permanent collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
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