"Bacchus" travels to Washington, DC and Florence, Italy

Above: The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus, c. 1490, Piero Di Cosimo, Italian, oil on panel, Museum purchase, 1937.76

As news spreads of Raphael’s Renaissance masterpiece, The Small Cowper Madonna, arriving at the Worcester Art Museum on loan from the National Gallery of Art, some may be interested to know that there is a related story of a Renaissance masterpiece temporarily departing from Worcester’s collection. The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus, the much loved and highly imaginative painting by Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522), will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, scheduled to run from February 1 – May 3 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition will then travel to the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, Italy where it will be on display from June 23–September 27.

In preparation for this major exhibition that is being billed as a ‘once in a lifetime Piero di Cosimo retrospective’, I recently spent considerable time in the museum’s conservation department treating the painting to improve its appearance and ensure its safe travel. The treatment included selective removal of upper layers of synthetic varnish that had developed a hazy appearance since their application in 1971 and 1985. An underlying thin layer of natural resin varnish was left in place and a new conservation-grade varnish was applied in order to achieve the proper saturation and surface sheen. The treatment also included inpainting minor losses and past retouches that had discolored. By reducing the visual impact of the losses and discolored retouches, viewers can now appreciate more fully the illusion of depth, form, and clarity of detail achieved by the artist.

In addition to the conservation treatment, museum preparator Trevor Toney worked with the conservation department to equip the painting with a sealed climate chamber to ensure that proper preservation conditions be maintained throughout its travels. The appearance of this treasured and important painting is now much improved and the painting is certain to be a highlight while on exhibit at the NGA, the Uffizi, and again at WAM upon its return in the fall of 2015.

Learn more about The Discovery of Honey by Bacchus

- Philip Klausmeyer, Conservation Scientist and Paintings Conservator

access magazine redesign

We hope you enjoy the newly re-designed issue of access magazine. After seven issues over the course of two years, we thought it was time for a “re-fresh.”  Our aim was to create a more organized look that pushed collection and exhibition imagery to the foreground, while keeping the design contemporary and unobtrusive. We hope the design changes make access more accessible visually and informationally. 

The re-design includes:

• A table of contents 

• Improved legibility with a simpler grid structure

• More white space to make artwork from the collection really “pop”

• Reduced number of fonts, continuing to feature Arial (ubiquitous web font / referencing tech)

• An overall look and feel that is contemporary, yet timeless 

• A special, pull-out insert, which uses our new mascot, Helmutt, to engage kids and families in WAM exhibitions

Click here to view a digital copy of the Winter issue of access magazine

- Kim Noonan, Publication and Graphic Design Manager

Armormaking the way you never imagined it

I’m delighted to report that the Museum has just acquired a first-edition copy of Politura Armorum (Polishing Armor), plate 17 from the series Nova Reperta (Modern Discoveries), dating to the 1580s. The series celebrates inventions and other discoveries made after the fall of ancient Rome, and its contents range from windmills and gunpowder to oil painting and stirrups. The designs were created by Jan van der Straet, a Netherlander who relocated to Italy to design tapestries and wall-paintings for wealthy clients (who knew him by his Latinized name Johannes Stradanus). Stradanus kept his professional contacts in Antwerp, sending copies of his designs to colleagues who could render them as copperplate engravings for the mass market.

Today we imagine armor being made by a lone craftsman at his forge, but armormaking was actually an industrialized process by the 1500s. Polishing Armor shows water-powered grinding and polishing wheels, churning out mass-produced armor components for the ever-growing armies of the early modern age. The legend reads “Polishing Armor: Swords, axes, all the arms of war, are polished nowadays, but were not in Antiquity.” The print is one of surprisingly few realistic representations of the making of armor in the period, and therefore an excellent addition to the arms and armor of the Higgins collection.

- Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Curator of Arms & Armor and Medieval Art

New Acquisitions – 2014

This past calendar year was quite the whirlwind for the Registrar’s office. Most notably, we packed, catalogued and transferred about 2,000 objects from the John Woodman Higgins Collection. We also were kept busy with various loans associated with the Knights! exhibition and other gallery rotations. So the day to day operations of our department had to keep going throughout the Higgins Armory collection transfer!

It should not surprise anyone that aside from receiving the arms and armor collection, we had active acquisitions in our other curatorial departments of Contemporary, Asian and PDP.

Some of these objects are now on view, such as Andy Warhol’s Red Book #136 (2014.625) located in Gallery 321. This Red Book consists of twenty (20) Polaroid photographs taken around 1972 of individuals associated in the life of Andy Warhol. All of the prints are currently on display along with the actual Red Book.

 If you would like to see what else we acquired during the year 2014, we have created a collection to view online. In this online collection, all of the objects are displayed with images. Which ones are you most excited to see on display?

Click here view New Acquisitions – 2014

- Sarah Gillis Assistant Registrar, Image Management

A Gallery Makeover

Do you know how, when you remodel one room in your house, the other rooms suddenly need remodeling too?  The same thing happens at WAM.  Right before KNIGHTS! opened last March, we ripped out the grey carpet in the Hiatt Gallery, which had been there since the wing opened in 1983, and replaced it with beautiful wood floors. It’s made a huge difference and contributes to the clean, updated look of the exhibition.
                 

The problem was …  it made one of our other main exhibition spaces, one story below, really look like it needed a makeover.  Our gallery for changing exhibitions of prints, drawings, and photographs – where Perfectly Strange just closed – also hadn’t been updated since the 80s (the carpeted baseboards must have looked great over thirty years ago). And, to give us even more flexibility in that space, we are installing movable walls, so each show can have its own unique configuration, and putting in energy-efficient LED lighting.

The new floors – and walls -- will debut with the opening of Uncanny Japan: The Art of Yoshitoshi on Saturday, February 28th.

The exhibition will certainly be beautiful…and so will the new floors.

- Jon L. Seydl, Director of Curatorial Affairs

20th-century Galleries Rotation

The most recent rotation in the 20th-century galleries has just been installed, including work by Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Roy Liechtenstein, and Tom Wesselmann, as well as two recent acquisitions, a set of Polaroids by Andy Warhol and a fantastic video by Christian Marclay. Please check it out!

 - Jon Seydl, Director of Curatorial Affairs

WAM’s First Acquisition

Left: William Morris Hunt, Helen Mary Knowlton (American, 1832-1918), 1880, oil on canvas, 102.2 x 76.8 cm (40 1/4 x 30 1/4 in.), Worcester Art Museum (MA), Gift of Helen M. Knowlton, 1896.1

How many of you are always surprised when you read a museum label and discover that a given work was, in fact, painted by a woman?  Many of us do, and this reaction is partly due to our embedded cultural beliefs of the “male artist” trumping female artists in quality of work.  I do not aim to ruffle feathers here, as the Guerilla Girls have already successfully made strong awareness to other Museums about their lack of female artists on their walls.  But the fact remains; we expect most paintings and sculptures before the Modernism period to have been created by men.

What might equally surprise you is to know that our very first accessioned work at the Worcester Art Museum (1896.1) was by a woman, Ms. Helen Mary Knowlton.  She donated to the museum a portrait of William Morris Hunt, who was her teacher for many years.

I enjoy this painting as Mr. Morris, rather later on in his life, contemplatively gazes at something to the left—what is out of view for us.  I also enjoy his beard, which greatly exceeds the lack of hair on his head!  Knowlton’s painting encapsulates Morris’ years of gained wisdom and his achieved status in life with a subtly muted paint pallet. It’s warm, inviting. One almost wants to sit and enjoy a cup of a coffee with Mr. Morris and listen to his stories.

Knowlton was a successful woman during the 19th century, actively painting and teaching, as well as being a critic of local shows for a Boston newspaper.  A native of Worcester, the acquisition of Knowlton’s work as the first into an early encyclopedic art museum evokes much profound symbolism and meaning.   This acquisition emulates the respect for local Worcester artists that the museum has always had, as well as the disregard for gender in defining what is considered “high” art.

- Sarah Gillis, Assistant Registrar, Image Management