The Official Blog of the Allen Memorial Art Museum

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.

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.

11am

Happy 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 19^th century painting and his work was extremely influential on many artists of the 20^th 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.

10am

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!

10am

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!).

3pm

Today on the “Podcast of the Week,” we revisit the podcast that started it all - on the exhibition “Out of Albion: British Art from the AMAM Collection.” This ambitious project was the museum’s first attempt at creating audio content and making it available online. Recording took place in the Fall 2008, with the beginning of the spring semester devoted to editing, mixing, and production. It was launched in April 2009, in time for the final weeks of the “Albion” show.

In it, we hear from the organizer of the exhibition, Colette Crossman, then the AMAM Curator of Academic Programs, as well as the two student assistants who worked on the show, Amanda Shubert and Elizabeth Koehn.

A second podcast inspired by the exhibition, focusing on the work of Bridget Riley, is available on the AMAM’s website - here.

12pm

In this week’s edition of “A Podcast a Week,” we hear former AMAM docent, Alyssa Greenberg (OC ‘09), discuss a work that hasn’t been on view for a couple of years - Yayoi Kusama’s “Baby Carriage” from 1964.

Don’t forget about tomorrow night’s “Allen After Hours” - where you can hear our new audio tour featuring collection highlights, and past museum podcasts!

2pm

We continue our series of adding a podcast a week to the AMAM blog, until the museum’s closedown, with a look at a work from our Renaissance collection.

Here, Assistant Professor of Art History Christina Neilson discusses Sofonisba Anguissola’s “Double Portrait of a Boy and Girl of the Attavanti Family,” currently on view in the museum’s Nord Gallery.

11am

We start a new feature today on the AMAM Blog, where we will post a podcast a week until the museum closes (on Wednesday, December 23) for its sixteen-month renovation project.

Today, we take it all back to the very beginning of the museum and focus on the Charles F. Olney collection. Inspired by Oberlin College’s educational ideals, Olney, a Cleveland educator, bequeathed his collection of nearly 8,000 paintings, ivories, and bronzes to the College in 1904 to aid in the teaching of art. Importantly, since Olney’s gift came without restrictions, only the 700 best works were retained. The remainder were sold off during the following decades, with the proceeds used to purchase objects of superior quality, to which Olney’s name was then attached.

Here, Melissa Duffes, AMAM Media, Membership, and Publications Coordinator, talks about Olney’s collection and how it developed.

5pm

This Tuesday, November 10,
will bring our next Tuesday Tea lecture. Dr. Laura Baudot, Assistant Professor of English, will talk on the painting “Dovedale by Moonlight” by Joseph Wright of Derby.

Baudot also regularly offers courses on 18th Century British satire and its cultural heritage. In this podcast, she discusses the use of satire in the works of William Hogarth, along with former Curator of Academic Programs, Colette Crossman. This discussion was held in conjunction with the exhibition, “Out of Albion: British Art from the Allen Memorial Art Museum.”

12pm

Our Tuesday Tea speaker this afternoon at 2:30pm is Classics Professor Kirk Ormand. Today, he will be speaking on “The Finding of Erichthonius” painting in the AMAM collection by Peter Paul Rubens.

Here, Ormand discusses the mythological story of the “Rape of Persephone,” to go along with the painting on the same theme by Adolph Gottlieb (also in the AMAM collection).

10am