• 14 Plays
  • Cindy Sherman, Why We Love HerAllen Memorial Art Museum

Professor Wendy Kozol on Why We Love Cindy Sherman

Wendy Kozol is a professor of Comparative American Studies. Her research and teaching interests include feminist theories and methodologies, visual culture studies, transnationalism and popular media, citizenship, militarization, and human rights activism.

She regularly uses the AMAM collection in her teaching, including the photographs of Cindy Sherman.

Untitled Film Still #53 (Blonde: Close-Up with Lamp), 1980

Cindy Sherman, American, b. 1954
Untitled Film Still #53 (Blonde: Close-Up with Lamp), 1980
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Donald Droll in honor of Chloe Hamilton Young
1984.18

Untitled Film Still (#55, Blonde in Alley), 1980

Cindy Sherman, American, b. 1954
Untitled Film Still (#55, Blonde in Alley), 1980
Gelatin silver print
Ellen H. Johnson Bequest
1998.7.131

  • 0 Plays

Comic about Comic Workshop

Curator of Education Jason Trimmer was interviewed on local radio WEOL’s “Morning Show with Jeff Thomas” this morning about the upcoming comic art workshop, sponsored by the AMAM and FAVA. The workshop runs on consecutive Saturdays, beginning on October 30 through December 4.

While often thought of as the exclusive domain of superheroes, the comic art tradition dates back at least a hundred years to the publication of The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault in 1895, the first Sunday supplement comic strip to use word balloons.

The class will look at the development of the medium and some of its landmark creations that influenced popular culture. Students will learn the different skills used in the creation of a comic book page, including layout, penciling, inking, and lettering, and explore the many different styles and techniques that professional artists use. The workshop will conclude with the creation of a mini-comic compiling their best work.

This collaboration between the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts (FAVA) and the AMAM continues into its second decade. Created especially for middle- and high-school aged students, workshops feature an intensive studio based course focusing on artwork or media represented in the AMAM collection.

All materials and instructional books are provided free of charge. The class is currently full, but we are adding names to a waiting list, and we do plan to offer the class in the future! So, please contact the AMAM if you are interested in adding your student’s name to our mailing list.

beyond oberlin - beyond the classroom

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s website now features a page highlighting works from the AMAM collection now on display at the CMA. This page includes web texts and podcasts written by Oberlin College students from the spring 2010 module course—Exhibition Practicum: Installation and Interpretation of 17th-19th c. Art from the AMAM at the CMA. This module was co-taught by Andria Derstine, AMAM Curator of Collections and Curator of European & American Art, and Jon Seydl, the CMA’s Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos, Jr., Curator of European Painting and Sculpture.

These Oberlin students, majoring in various disciplines, made regular visits to the CMA to learn about the history and display of European art and got acquainted with behind-the-scenes aspects of museum work, such as storage, conservation, art handling, installation, exhibition design, and publication. In addition to the web-based resources, the students also wrote gallery labels, now included in the CMA installation.

Podcast Recording

Oberlin College student Amanda Tobin and Curator of Education Jason Trimmer record a podcast for the module class.

The works on view include paintings by Batoni, Lawrence, Hogarth, Van de Venne, Hobbema, Chardin, Boucher, Oudry, Lagrenée, and Boilly, as well as sculptures, one by the 18th-century artist Francesco Bertos and one cast in the 17th century after a model by Giambologna. Recently, an AMAM miniature by Frédéric Dubois was installed in a special case the CMA recently fabricated for the display of such works.

The AMAM works will be on view in Cleveland through February 2011. 

  • 10 Plays
  • Bust of Isis PriestAllen Memorial Art Museum

Happy International Museum Day - the podcast of the week is back! Oberlin College 2009 graduates Lindsey DuPertuis and Robert Schuster discuss a favorite from the AMAM’s ancient art collection, the Roman “Portrait of an Isis Priest.” 

Roman Portrait of an Isis Priest

The Future of "Audio" Tours?

This New York Times article offers an interesting look at what many museums across the country are already doing to offer more resources and ‘education-on-demand’ to their visitors. Creating content-rich multimedia tours has been much on the mind of educators at the AMAM over the past several months. Some of what is mentioned in this article we could do, and some of it we can’t. Please feel free to share with us any experiences you have had with the new generation of handheld guided tours, and any suggestions for what you might like to see us do. And while you’re at it, check out what we have already done!

Renovation Update - Green Edition

The museum’s renovation project has begun on the north side of the Cass Gilbert building with the excavation of the north lawn to accommodate an 18-well geothermal field.

Digger - North Side

















The geothermal well system will optimize energy performance for the museum and significantly reduce carbon emissions. In addition to geothermal, the project includes water efficient landscaping; water use reduction; recycling of construction materials; and use of recycled and regional materials.

Click here to listen to our renovation podcasts, including lead architect Sam Anderson’s discussion about the project’s sustainability efforts.

After the project is completed, Robert Morris’s expanded aluminum sculpture, Untitled (1969), will be reinstalled over the geothermal well field.

Morris "Untitled"












  • 11 Plays
  • Cezanne's Viaduct at L'Estaque and the Neuroscience of VisionAllen Memorial Art Museum

AMAM Cezanne paintingHappy Birthday, Paul Cézanne!

On January 19, 1839, Paul Cézanne was born in the town of Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. Leaving his studies early, Cézanne moved to Paris in 1861 and began to paint with Camille Pissarro. Consistently rejected by both the Paris Salon and various art schools, Cézanne returned to the south of France in 1870, thus also avoiding conscription in the war with Prussia. There he began to study nature and to experiment with landscape painting. By 1872, Cézanne was again working closely with Pissarro before participating in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874. Cézanne’s paintings were singled out for particularly harsh criticism by the French press. However, by the late 1890s, his paintings began to be noticed by younger artists and he is now considered one of the masters of 19th century painting and his work was extremely influential on many artists of the 20th century. (Read more).

Cézanne’s Viaduct at l’Estaque (Le Viaduct à l’Estaque) from 1882 has been a highlight of the AMAM’s collection since it was acquired in 1950. This painting is part of a group of twenty works that will be lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the AMAM’s renovation project. In this podcast, Oberlin College Professor of Neuroscience Mark Braford discusses the AMAM’s Cézanne painting as an analogy to the way scientists now believe the optical system works.

Cézanne painted at least one other view of the viaduct at l’Estaque that dates between 1879 and 1882, Le Viaduct à l’Estaque in Helsinki. The facture of that painting includes much of the diagonal stroke that characterized Cézanne’s work shortly before the moment of the Oberlin canvas.

  • 13 Plays
  • Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints - Envisioning Edo's Splendor; the Floating World and BeyondAllen Memorial Art Museum

The Last Podcast of the Week! The last podcast of 2009!

Today, we focus on another aspect of the AMAM’s strong collection - the numerous Japanese woodblock prints donated to the museum by Mary A. Ainsworth. Several of these works were on display during the 2008-09 academic year in the exhibition ‘Envisioning Edo’s Splendor: “The Floating World” and Beyond.’ Here, Oberlin College students Matt Gin and Amanda Tobin discuss ukiyo-e prints and the culture of the Edo Period.

A small selection of Japanese woodblock prints is on view in the current exhibition, “Starry Dome” - and you still have a couple more days to check it out before the museum closes for its renovation!

Happy Holidays! Check back to the AMAM blog in 2010 for more podcasts, updates on the museum’s renovation project, and information about public programs!

  • 11 Plays
  • Dovedale by Moonlight by Joseph Wright of DerbyAllen Memorial Art Museum

Joseph Wright of Derby, "Dovedale by Moonlight"Today we continue our “Podcast of the Week” series with a discussion between two great Oberlin College professors about a great work from the AMAM collection.

Nick Jones, Professor of English, and Peter Swendsen, Assistant Professor of TIMARA, talk about how they used the work “Dovedale by Moonlight” in their course “Landscapes, Soundscapes, Wordscapes.”

This discussion exemplifies the use of the museum’s collection within the college curriculum. Likewise, “Dovedale by Moonlight” is currently featured in the exhibition “Starry Dome: Astronomy in Art and the Imagination,” which supported the Oberlin College course “Introductory Astronomy,” as well as the International Baccalaureate unit “Where We Are in Space and Time” in the K-5 curriculum in the Oberlin City Schools.

“Starry Dome” runs through Wednesday, December 23 (as does the museum!).