Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art
The Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art ( Spencer Museum of Art or SMA for short ) is an art museum in Lawrence , Kansas . The museum belonging to the University of Kansas was opened in 1928 as the Kansas Museum of Art and has been named after the patron Helen Foresman Spencer (1902-1982) since the move to a new building in 1978 . The house's collection ranges from ancient Egyptian sculptures to video art from the early 21st century. The focus of the collection is on works of art from Europe from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and American art of the 20th century. In 2007 the museum took over the ethnological collection of the previously independent University of Kansas Museum of Anthropology .
history
The history of the University of Kansas's own art collection goes back to 1917, when the art collector Sallie Casey Thayer donated her collection of around 7,500 objects to the university. This inventory of paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, furniture, carpets, ceramics, works made of glass and other handicrafts should form the basis for an art museum. The museum opened in 1928 as the Kansas Museum of Art in Spooner Hall , an 1894 neo-Romanesque building on the university campus that was previously used as the university library. In the following years, the collection grew continuously through further donations.
At the end of the 1960s, the patron Helen Foresman Spencer donated 4.6 million US dollars for a new museum building to counteract the now cramped spatial situation at the previous location. The building, designed by Robert E. Jenks in the neoclassical style, opened to the public in 1978. It houses the now Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art as well as the Art History Institute Kress Foundation Department of Art History and the Murphy Library of Art and Architecture . In 2007 the Spencer Museum of Art took over the ethnological collection of around 9,500 objects from the former University of Kansas Museum of Anthropology , which is exhibited at the former museum location Spooner Hall .
Collections
Ethnological collection
The ethnological collection includes objects from North and South America, Africa and Oceania. The collection, which until 2007 was the University of Kansas Museum of Anthropology, goes back to the expeditions of the researcher Lewis Lindsay Dyche , who brought extensive Inuit materials from Greenland in 1895 . The collection quickly grew to include other North American objects, such as Navajo carpets and Pueblo Indian ceramics . In 1915, the collection began to be expanded to include objects from Africa. The collection includes, for example, a carved chair from the Chokwe , masks from Ibibio in Nigeria, ivory carvings from the Bakongo and copper figures from the Yoruba .
Antiquities
One of the oldest objects in the small section with ancient finds from the Mediterranean is a c. 3000 BC. A clay vessel from Bab edh-Dhra in today's Jordan. Examples of finds from ancient Egyptian times are a limestone relief with a hunting scene (around 2500 BC), an amphoriskus (600–500 BC ) made of glass and an aryballos (500 BC), a statuette of Isis with Horus as a child, a bronze figure of the goddess Neith (after 650 BC) and a limestone head from a sarcophagus (300 BC) from Ptolemaic times. From ancient Greece comes a around 500 BC. A vase made in BC and the Roman finds include various clay bowls (800–500 BC) and a Tanagra figure from Apulia from the same period. In addition to coins, including one with the portrait of Emperor Probus , the museum has a mosaic with an eros motif (around 200 BC) and a marble torso each of Venus and Apollo (both 1st century AD).
Asian art
By donating Sallie Casey Thayer's collection, a collection of Asian art was part of the museum from the start. This department focuses on Japanese and Chinese objects. The museum shows an extensive collection of woodcuts from Japan, most of which date from the Edo period . The collection also includes examples of calligraphy, such as a scroll by Karasumaru Mitsuhiro (1579–1638), or artistically painted screens with the motif of Fuji by Ike no Taiga (1579–1638). There are also some small sculptures, including a figure of Aizen Myōō in a portable shrine, as well as numerous netsuke , lacquer work, ceramics, fans, textiles and hair accessories such as combs and hairpins in the area of handicrafts .
The Chinese art collection includes ceramics from different periods, including a small bottle with the motif of dancing monkeys and celadon ware from around AD 600 . Among the various Chinese textiles is a Daoist priestly robe from the late 18th century. The collection of Chinese ink paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries is also extensive . There are also Korean ceramics, such as cups from the Goryeo empire (around 1100). The Asian department is supplemented by textiles and carpets from Persia and India.
European paintings and sculptures
The European paintings and sculptures department shows works from the Middle Ages to the present day. The oldest objects include works from the old Italian school, such as an altarpiece from around 1340 Madonna and Child between two angels with a kneeling donor, his wife and child by Guiduccio Palmerucci . This is followed by images of saints such as The Apostles Bartholomew and James the Elder by Neri di Bicci and The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine by Innocenzo Francucci . Also from this period dates the carved glazed terracotta Madonna and Child by Andrea Della Robbia . Agnolo Bronzino , a representative of Mannerism , is represented in the museum with the paintings Posthumous Portrait of Piero Capponi and Maria Magdalena (Young Florentine Woman as Magdalena) . Italian baroque painting can be seen in the collection with works such as Christ in Gethsemane by Jacopo Palma the Younger , David storms Jerusalem by Luca Giordano , portrait of a lady as Sybille by Guido Reni , servant of the Pharaoh by Bernardo Strozzi , romantic harbor scene by Salvator Rosa or one Escape to Egypt by Marco Ricci . An example of modern painting from Italy is a portrait of a girl by Giorgio de Chirico .
Several Baroque works of Flemish and Dutch painting can also be seen. These include Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus by Jacob Jordaens , The Flood by David Teniers the Younger , Mother and Child by Adriaen van der Werff and A Happy Company by Dirck Hals . Examples of portrait painting of this period are the Portrait of a Man by Dirck Dircksz Santvoort and the Paintings Portrait of a Gentleman and Portrait of a Lady by Nicolaes Maes . An interior with children by Jozef Israëls dates from the end of the 19th century .
The museum owns the altarpiece The Flagellation of Christ from German-speaking countries, created jointly by Martin Schongauer and the master of the martyrdom of saints. The Swiss Angelika Kauffmann is represented with the painting Cleopatra kneeling before Augustus and Friedrich von Nerly shows a view of the Vatican . The moonlight scene with castle ruins by Carl Spitzweg represents German Biedermeier painting . Examples of art in the 20th century are The Bleeding Man by Max Oppenheimer , a self-portrait by Otto Dix , Soleil Crocodile by Max Ernst and the 1989 portrait of William Burroughs by Walter Dahn .
English painting is represented with some portraits. These include the Portrait of William Philp Perrin by Thomas Gainsborough and Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Ancrum by Joshua Reynolds . The museum has a depiction of Hamlet by Thomas Lawrence , who is also better known as a portrait painter . The collection includes a mythological picture of Odysseus mocking Polyphemus by William Turner , who is more known for landscape paintings . An example of Pre-Raphaelite art is La Pia de 'Tolomei by Dante Gabriel Rossetti .
The inventory of French paintings is extensive. The landscape painting An Idyll by Claude Lorrain , a portrait of a boy by Jean-Honoré Fragonard and an antique scene Jardin des Monuments (A mother weeps in the cemetery) by Hubert Robert can be seen . By Jean-Léon Gérôme , the museum has a typical image of the Orient fireside chat . Examples of painting by the Barbizon School are washerwomen on the banks of the Oise near Valmondis by Charles-François Daubigny and Landscape near Barbizon by Émile Auguste Carolus-Duran . The Portrait of a Man by Henri Fantin-Latour is possibly a self-portrait by the artist. The seascape Soleil Couchant, Marine by Gustave Courbet is already at the transition to Impressionism . With a characteristic of the painter landscape, Winter on the Seine, Vetheuil is Claude Monet represented in the collection. There are also portraits of Lise Campineanu by Édouard Manet and Monsieur et Madame Hessel a Chatou by Armand Guillaumin . Examples of French symbolism are the paintings Girls Tending Cows by Aristide Maillol and Au Clair de la Lune by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes . There is also contemporary art such as Christian Boltanski's installation Monument Odessa from 1991 .
American art
The museum shows the art of the United States from the founding of the country to the present day. One of the earliest American artists was Benjamin West , of whom the biblical painting The Inspiration of The Prophet Isaiah from 1782 is in the collection. There is a still life with strawberries by Severin Roesen , who came from Germany, based on European painting from the 17th century. John Singleton Copley , one of the early American portrait painters, is represented in the museum with the Portrait of Elizabeth Copley (Mrs. Gardiner Greene) . There is also another example of American portrait painting of the first half of the 19th century with the Portrait of Bishop Littlejohn by Rembrandt Peale . The landscape painting of this time is mainly influenced by the Hudson River School . The museum shows In the Simmental, Switzerland by Thomas Cole , Jersey Meadows by Martin Johnson Heade, and Sunset on the Plains and A Western Landscape by Albert Bierstadt . Moreover, there is of George Inness work The Gleaners , Gossip and Summer Sunshine and Shadows .
The museum owns the ocean view Cloud Shadows by Winslow Homer , one of the most famous landscape painters in the United States . This is followed by works of Impressionism , such as the landscape painting maker Landscape by Theodore Robinson , Sunset Glow by William Merritt Chase or the portraits La Nourrice Ecossaise (The Scottish Nurse) by Mary Cassatt and Portrait of Alexander Webb Weir by Julian Alden Weir . Other portraits from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the collection include Portrait of Mrs. Daniel Curtis by John Singer Sargent , Lady in Green by Thomas Dewing and Laughing Girl by Robert Henri . The sculptor's Studio and Ranston House, Dorset are in the museum by the painter Walter Gay , who specializes in interior views . It also owns the painting Stampeding the Wagon Train by Frederic Remington , who is known for his depictions of the Wild West, and the bronze sculpture The Bronco Buster , which depicts a cowboy riding a horse.
The collection contains examples of American realism from the first half of the 20th century, such as the landscape painting Near Sundown by Grant Wood or the rural scenes Kansas Wheat Scene and The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley by Thomas Hart Benton . In contrast to this are the rather non-objective works Portrait of a Day - First Day and Portrait of a Day - Second Day by Georgia O'Keeffe . Norman Rockwell's illustrations of everyday American life, Facts of Life and Getting Ready for a Date, date from the period after the Second World War . The museum is showing the abstract painting Red, Black, Blue by Ellsworth Kelly , a representative of the Hard Edge art movement . The art movement of Pop Art includes works 1, 2, 3 Outside by James Rosenquist , drummer by Larry Rivers and FUN by Robert Indiana . There are also works of Abstract Expressionism such as Rome Studio by Philip Guston or Figure Before Blackness by Robert Motherwell . One of the more recent works is the 2005 work White House by Afghan video artist Lida Abdul .
Works on paper
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The collection of works on paper includes a large inventory of drawings, prints and photographs. In addition to works by Asian artists, there are European engravings, including by Albrecht Dürer , Hans Sebald Beham and Lucas Cranach the Elder , architectural views by Giovanni Battista Piranesi or etchings by James Ensor and lithographs by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . In the photography department, the collection ranges from works by Étienne Carjat to Eadweard Muybridge to Diane Arbus . Other works come from Claude Cahun , Ansel Adams , Robert Frank , Berenice Abbott , Karl Blossfeldt , Alfred Stieglitz and Andy Warhol .
European and North American handicrafts
In addition to handicrafts from Asia, Africa and Native American works, the museum has an extensive inventory of objects from European handicrafts. These include ceramics and porcelain, such as Italian majolica from the 15th century, English ceramics from the Wedgwood factory , French porcelain from the 17th century or an ivory-decorated tankard from the English jeweler Robert Garrard I from 1822. There are also various pieces of furniture as well as table clocks, for example from Jeremias Metzger .
American handicrafts include everyday objects ( Americana ) such as traditional quilts , but also furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries and examples of modern design. The glass and ceramic objects include a bowl from 1925 from the workshop of Louis Comfort Tiffany and a vase from 1928 by the artist Victor Durand .
literature
- Elizabeth Broun (Ed.): Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, Handbook of the collection . University of Kansas, Lawrence 1978, OCLC 610980476 .
Web links
- Official website (English)
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 38 ° 57 ′ 34.4 " N , 95 ° 14 ′ 40.7" W.