WAM Collections Staff on Twitter

Above: Untitled (Flower Plant), William Henry Hunt (British, 1790-1864), after Simon Watts (British, 1716-possibly 1775), 1827, hand-colored etching on cream wove paper, sheet: 20 x 24.5 cm (7 7/8 x 9 5/8 in.), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hall James Peterson, 1982.154.

Hello everyone! I’ve introduced myself in past posts, but I must now do so in a more formal method as I’ll be your official collection representative on our Twitter account @WorcesterArt! I’m Sarah Gillis, our Assistant Registrar for Image Management. I catalogue the art, assist with photographing it, and work hard to ensure that our objects and their information get to you via our online collections search.

What will I be tweeting? I’ll share neat objects that I come across while working in our collection stores, what’s going on at other Museums, and other such collection-related events/facts.

I’m thrilled to be joining our Twitter team because I can give you the behind-the-scenes access that visitors only dream of. The fact that I’m surrounded by history every day still boggles my mind, and it’s only fair to share this dream job with you all!

How will you know that I’m posting? Just look for my unique signature handle of –WAMCollections at the end of the tweet.

Visit Worcester Art Museum on Twitter
View our online collections search

- Sarah Gillis, Assistant Registrar for Image Management

Samurai! Murals Live in Lancaster Lobby

When WAM began working with Samurai! guest curator Eric Nakamura, we knew that having a visible public component was a must. Our Lancaster Street Lobby has large, white walls that have been crying out for ART. We decided to take this amazing opportunity to invite contemporary artists involved with the Samurai project to explore the topic in this well-trafficked lobby.

The three artists selected were Andrew Hem, Mari Inukai, and Audrey Kawasaki.

Andrew Hem is a Los Angeles painter who is well-versed in large-scale murals on buildings. Originally a graffiti artist, Hem moved away from this towards street art, studying at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His final image of the Samurai figure is inspired by Raphael’s The Cowper Madonna, now on display in our galleries.

Mari Inukai is originally from Japan, and also now resides in Los Angeles. She studied at the California Institute of the Arts. She is known for her smaller scale paintings and strong use of figures in her work. Mari demonstrated her deep connection with her daughter by including her in armor on the right side of the mural.

Audrey Kawasaki is originally from Japan, studied art at Pratt in New York, and now resides in Los Angeles. Although she is traditionally known as a gallery artist who creates painstakingly detailed portrait illustrations, this was her first mural.









The most exciting part of this project took place during installation, when school groups, fans of the artists, staff, and general members of the public dropped in to watch the artists work. Going forward, we plan to make the Lancaster Lobby a more welcoming center for visitors that includes art at its core.

 The Samurai murals will stay on view until May 2016.

Learn more about Samurai!
See work-in-progress photos on Flickr

Press:
The mural to the story - Worcester Magazine
Majestic murals at Worcester Art Museum - Worcester Telegram & Gazette

- Katrina Stacy, Associate Curator of Education

Videos of WAM Lectures Available Online

The Worcester Art Museum's Master Series lectures, held on the Third Thursday of the month on select dates throughout the year, have been a joy to share with our public. These talks have highlighted objects on loan or within our permanent collection, giving insights into some of the most celebrated artists and works of art throughout history.

I am pleased to share with you the video of our February Master Series lecture, led by Linda Wolk-Simon. Her talk, entitled "God is In the Details: Backgrounds (and Foregrounds) in Raphael's Madonnas," sheds light on The Cowper Madonna, on loan to us from the National Gallery of Art through September. This event was filmed by our new partner, the WGBH Forum Network. Forum is a public media service of WGBH that collects thousands of video and audio lectures from the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policymakers, and community leaders, and makes them available to the public for free. Our March and April lectures were also filmed for distribution by Forum, which is a thrilling new addition to our educational offerings, and of great benefit to our public. We will share these videos with you as soon as they are made public.

Learn more about The Cowper Madonna on WGBH Forum Network
Learn more about The Cowper Madonna on worcesterart.org

- Katrina Stacy, Associate Curator of Education

Recent Installation: Arrangement in Pink and Gray

Right: Arrangement in Pink and Gray (Afternoon Tea), 1894 Edmund Charles Tarbell (American, 1862–1938) Gift of Howard Freeman, in honor of Esther Freeman, 1995.73

The Museum recently installed an important painting by Edmund Charles Tarbell in its American decorative arts gallery. Arrangement in Pink and Gray (Afternoon Tea) was one of the artist’s most celebrated works, winning the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design in 1894, and the Temple Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1895.

Arrangement in Pink and Gray illustrates Tarbell’s preference for a limited palette of soft, muted colors. He greatly admired the paintings of James McNeill Whistler, who often titled his works as though they were musical compositions—calling them arrangements, nocturnes, symphonies—to draw attention to their harmonies of color and tone. (His Arrangement in Black and Brown: The Fur Jacket, also in this gallery, is one such example.) Tarbell quite pointedly adopted these color concerns in his Arrangement in Pink and Gray, even borrowing Whistler’s titling strategy to highlight his aesthetic influence.

Browse the Worcester Art Museum collections online

- Elizabeth Athens, Assistant Curator of American Art

Wonder Woman in Knights!

Knights! explores the mythic dimension of the knight as a superhero, leading to our exciting inclusion of Batman in the exhibition. Batman, the Dark Knight, uses power for good, but we are still left with the dilemma that arms and armor—weapons—empower a patriarchal, often violent, culture, a fact that we have explored in the photojournalism displays within Knights!

This year we decided to present a female superhero by adding a Wonder Woman comic. We soon discovered in the recent bestseller by Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, that Wonder Woman’s development was fascinating, including roots in the early 20th-century women’s movement. In the comic currently on view, Wonder Woman epitomizes the mythological struggle between Venus and Mars, the gods of love and war, and between women and men.

 Created by William Moulton Marston in 1941, Wonder Woman is the most popular woman superhero of all time, a feminist icon inspired by the women in Marston’s life. Marston collaborated with his wife Sadie Holloway in developing the lie detector test. Marston and Holloway lived in an extended relationship with Olive Byrne, collectively raising the children of both couples. Byrne was the niece of another influential woman in Marston’s world, Margaret Sanger, an early 20th-century proponent of free love and voluntary motherhood, and the founder of the modern birth control movement.

Like most superheroes, Wonder Woman has weapons, but they are mostly non-lethal, like her bracelets and her lasso (which compels truth telling, like Marston’s lie detector test!). Her Amazon bracelets bring to mind early suffragettes who shackled themselves to the railings of government buildings. In the comic currently on view in Knights!, Wonder Woman warns that “violence is a boomerang turning against you.”

Wonder Woman ties together various threads in our approach to arms and armor, encapsulating questions of gender and violence explored in the comic book and in the historic armor on display in Knights! She introduces a female point of view, opposing the militarism and violence of traditional patriarchy in ways that emphasize love and nonviolence. Additionally, Wonder Woman, like Batman, makes clear the connection to today’s pop culture, bridging centuries-old arms and armor to the contemporary imagination.

Learn more about the exhibition Knights!

- Marcia Lagerwey, Curator of Education

2015 Studio Classes Faculty Exhibition

The Higgins Education Wing will exhibit artwork created by faculty members of the Studio Class Programs department from April 8 – May 18, 2015. The 2015 Faculty Exhibition presents the work of 22 artists who currently teach at the Museum in the areas of painting, sculpture, graphic design, mixed media, printmaking, and photography. The exhibition features a wide range of visual practices, spanning many genres and media.

As working professional artists and educators who balance their own art making with teaching at WAM, the faculty exhibition allows students, the community, and the public the opportunity to experience the diversity of approaches each artist employ. WAM’s Class Programs faculty is a strong and diverse group, exploring a range of traditional and contemporary mediums and themes.

The exhibition is free and open to the public.
The Higgins Education Wing is open Sunday–Saturday, 9am–5pm.

Click here for more information about WAM faculty and classes

- Ashley Occhino, Manager of Studio Class Programs

On View: Abraham Lincoln Photograph

To mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War on April 9, 1865, the Museum has placed on display its only photograph of Abraham Lincoln, which shows the president posed with Union troops at Antietam.

The photographer of the plate, Alexander Gardner, was known for taking some of the most affecting images of the war. The realities of camp life and the carnage of the battlefield were among his many subjects, but he was perhaps most recognized for his portraits of Lincoln. The Museum’s plate was one of a hundred photographs included in Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1865–66), an illustrated, two-volume work intended as a history of the conflict and its aftermath. Curiously, Gardner made no mention in the book of the president’s assassination on April 14, 1865—less than a week after the war’s end—and instead portrayed him towering over his soldiers, still very much alive.

View the photograph on the second floor outside the Knights! gallery.

Browse the Worcester Art Museum collections online

- Elizabeth Athens, Assistant Curator of American Art