Here’s a hint: This weekend is the 100^th anniversary of the first Armory Show. You may have heard the Armory story on NPR recently. Still need more help?

You know I’m always saying that art transforms lives. The 1913 Armory Show was one of those transformational moments for art in the United States, but also for the Columbus Museum of Art. This is the art event that changed Ferdinand Howald’s life—turning him into a collector and an art patron. Howald’s collection went on to form the heart of our internationally renowned Modernist Collection. It literally transformed our destiny.

Now about those two paintings above. Both were in the 1913 Armory Show! The one on the right is Middleton Manigault’s Clown which we acquired in 1999. Manigault was the first artist that Howald purchased. The painting on the left is George Bellows’s Mrs. Albert M. Miller—for long-time Columbusites, she was Dixie Miller’s mother-in-law. Bellows entered the portrait in the Armory Show only two months after painting it. We acquired it in 1974 from the Arnold family.

And that’s the rest of the story.

- Nannette

The Institute of Museum and Library Services today announced Columbus Museum of Art, Cuyahoga County Public Library of Cuyahoga County, and The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County of Cincinnati as National Medal for Museum and Library Service finalists. The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor conferred on museums and libraries for service to the community and celebrates institutions that make a difference for individuals, families, and communities.

Medal finalists are selected from nationwide nominations of institutions that demonstrate innovative approaches to public service, exceeding the expected levels of community outreach. This year’s finalists exemplify the nation’s great diversity of libraries and museums and include an aquarium and marine science center foundation, conservatory and botanical gardens, county library systems, individual libraries, children’s museums, an art museum, science centers, and more, hailing from across the country.

“Museums and libraries serve as community gathering places and centers for lifelong learning, and we are very proud to announce Columbus Museum of Art, Cuyahoga County Public Library of Cuyahoga County, and The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County of Cincinnati as finalists for the 2013 National Medal,” said Susan Hildreth, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. “This year’s finalists exemplify the many wonderful ways museums and libraries can respond to the needs and wants of the communities they serve.”

“Several years ago, we decided we wanted CMA to be a resource for our community and embraced the idea of becoming a visitor-centered Museum that fostered creativity and promised great experiences with great art for everyone,” said CMA Executive Director Nannette V. Maciejunes. “We’re incredibly honored to be recognized as finalist for this prestigious award and excited that the work we’ve done is resonating with our community.”

Finalists are chosen because of their significant and exceptional contributions to their communities. IMLS is encouraging community members who have visited Columbus Museum of Art to share their story on the IMLS Facebook page, www.facebook.com/USIMLS.  National Medal for Museum and Library Service winners will be announced this spring.

To learn more about the 2013 National Medal finalists, visit www.imls.gov/medals.

The holidays are a time for giving. Here at the Museum, we are committed to giving back to our community. Here’s a year-end wrap-up of 12 gifts the Columbus Museum of Art gave to Central Ohio this year:

12. Memories. CMA gave every single Columbus City Schools 5^th grader an art experience to remember — free of charge.

11. Great art. Our Radical Camera exhibition was hailed as “stirring” and “one of the top ten photography shows” of the year.

10. Community treasures. Most of us will never own a Monet but as a community, we own seven.

9. Civic pride. Our Marvelous Menagerie exhibition showcased an ancient mosaic that toured The Met in New York City, The Field in Chicago, The Louvre in Paris and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio.

8. Joy. Our Sparking Imaginations tour lets people with dementia and their caregivers relax, refresh, and enjoy time together.

7. A moment of beauty.  Our new acquisition Endeavor, by glass master Lino Tagliapietra, is quickly becoming a community favorite.

6. The Wonder Room. Columbus Parent called it one of the 200 Reasons Columbus is a great place to raise a family.

5. Better doctors. Our Art of Analysis program is teaching tomorrow’s pediatricians and cardiologists how to listen and look closer.

4. An artistic outlet. Programs and events at the Museum tap into the creativity that lives in all of us.

3. Unique experiences. Our Summer Art Workshops connected kids in Ohio with kids China via Skype.

2. Free Sundays. Enough said.

1. A promise of more to come. In 2013, we bring you our hotly anticipated Rothko show.

If you enjoyed any of these gifts, give a year-end gift of $1.20, $12, $120, or whatever you can to CMA to help us continue to make a difference.

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and inspiring new year.

Nannette Maciejunes
Columbus Museum of Art Executive Director

First, I need to confess that I am a royal watcher. I remember being in college in 1973 and getting up early with my friends to watch Princess Anne’s wedding and several years later watching as Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. Sadly, I also remember Diana’s funeral as I was in London for a courier trip immediately following her death. I stood on the street and watched the procession and then went to Hyde Park where thousands of people gathered to watch the funeral televised on these huge soccer screens.

Today, I woke up early to enjoy a much happier occasion, the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. Her gown was stunning, the ceremony was gorgeous, however, I was horrified to hear an American commentator repeatedly refer to Westminster Abbey as having been built in the “11th century.” So, in honor of Catherine Middleton,  Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge, (who I recently discovered is a fellow art historian), I would like to clarify that,according to Westminster’s own website, “The present church, begun by Henry III in 1245, is one of the most important Gothic buildings in the country, with the medieval shrine of an Anglo-Saxon saint still at its heart.”

While Gothic architecture originated in France (think Notre Dame), those beautiful, high, pointed,  arches throughout Westminster clearly mark it as one of the great Gothic buildings of England.  Had it been constructed in the 11th century, the arches would have been rounded, characteristic of the  Romanesque (or Norman) architecture of the time.

History lesson aside, the wedding was beautiful and I join with the rest of the world in wishing the couple much happiness.

Nannette Maciejunes
CMA Executive Director

On April 3, 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. According to news reports, several of his associates have also been reported missing and his family has yet to be informed of his arrest, although officials have said he is being held for “economic crimes.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/15/ai-weiwei-lawyer-designer-disappear

Every group makes a unique and significant contribution to the Museum’s mission of “creating great experiences with great art for everyone”. The Docents connect people and art and are the link between what is displayed in the Museum and how the visitor experiences a personal sense of discovery.

Each year Auxiliary groups make a substantial financial contribution that now totals in the millions. Signature fundraising events like Decorators’ Show House, Art in Bloom, and ArtFusion, sponsored by Women’s Board, Beaux Arts and the young professionals’ group Art netWork, are Columbus favorites.

Sessions Society and Art Escapes are special interest Auxiliaries that encourage an in-depth art experience by sponsoring visits to collectors’ homes, artists’ studios, galleries, and world-wide travel to art destinations. The Garden Club is the care-taker of our Sculpture Garden and host of the summer concerts. Volunteers not affiliated with a group are valuable assistants to the Museum staff and help with Museum events.

We thank each and every volunteer for making the Museum and our community a better place.

The entire staff of the Columbus Museum of Art

When a museum has such a close connection to an artist, their passing is felt deeply.  However, George’s work, like his life and his presence, gave voice to such eloquent and genuine advocacy against the effects of indifference and inequality that for me his loss is especially poignant.  Though an incredibly quiet and private man, his actions and his art were nonetheless fiercely engaged in social change.  In an interview with me, he described his Windows series, begun in the early 1950s, as “a challenge.  I believed in racial intermarriage.  And I wanted to paint about that.”  Indeed, the works constitute an explicit challenge, though one characteristic of Tooker in its humanist approach.  The paintings reveal through open windows interracial couples whose sensual, suffused beauty compel us to admire, and even desire, rather than reject the lovers’ intimacy.  In explaining his and his partner William Christopher’s decision to travel to Selma, Alabama, in 1965 to participate in the memorial service for slain activist James Reeb, Tooker simply and plaintively stated that “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called for people to come to Selma, and we went.  To march in Selma.”

Maybe to me the message in Tooker’s work that never fails to stop the mundane train of my own thoughts upon every viewing is the profound effect on each other we humans are capable of.  The pain caused by benign neglect, the unsympathetic dismissal adults have for the feelings of children, the acute physical and emotional pain of grief.  Or, on the other hand, the tender absorption of the way a man caresses his lover’s hair or the innocent curiosity of a boy peeking over the edge of a table.  In these I am brought to pause at the beauty, the wonder and mystery, in the simple connection of one human to another and at the shame when it is denied.  Tooker not only reminds me that compassion and regard reside at the basis of true community, whether of two or two million souls, but he also reminds me that painting can give profound and affective voice to this consequential truth.

M. Melissa Wolfe
Curator of American Art
Columbus Museum of Art

George Tooker, Cornice

George Tooker, Lunch

So, after the initial “No, I don’t think we have anything in the collection tied to St. Patrick or to Ireland,” I got, “Well, now wait a minute, there is that painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Lady Gertrude Fitzpatrick, let me see…” And, as I sat on the phone and listened, “Huh, her father was John Fitzpatrick, 2^nd Earl of Upper Ossory, oh, and look, his earldom was of the Irish Peerage.”

Great! I have my tie to Ireland, I’ll send out a quick message over Facebook and Twitter, oh, but hold on, there’s another email. “HENRI!!!!   His Fish Basket boy was done in Ireland, and he’s known for his portraits of Irish children.” Really, Robert Henri? But, I thought he was known for his works in New York? And here the flood gates open, “Well, I thought it was from NYC too, until Rachel Trinkley turned in her essay on the painting.  Excerpts below:

Robert Henri likely painted The Fish Basket during one of his extended stays in Ireland in the 1920s.  Henri and his wife Marjorie, an emigrant, first took an extended visit to the country in 1913.  They returned nearly ten years later, in 1924, at which point the couple purchased Corrymore House on Achill Island, County Mayo, off the northwest coast of the mainland.  Here, Henri spent a series of springs and summers depicting “…the Irish peasant, whose love, poetry, simplicity, and humor have enriched my existence, just as completely as though each of these people were of my own country and my own hearthstone.”

Fish Basket portrays a young boy with dark piercing eyes staring directly out from the picture, his rosy, vibrant complexion and protruding ears contrasting against the muddied background and dark palette of his clothes.  The boy holds a basket in his lap for collecting fish, his source of income.

Residents happily make the trek to Henri’s studio; he painted nearly 140 portraits during his time on the island.  Such shared love is felt in Henri’s portraits.  There is a vitality and energy present in the application of paint and in the matter-of-fact stares of the individuals. The portraits resonate emotionally with viewers; it is easy to like them.  Henri advocated the importance of emotions in The Art Spirit, the consummate teacher’s publication that, part-manual, part-manifesto, is still in print today.  “The man who wants to produce art must have the emotional side first,” wrote Henri.“The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.”

Art Speaks. Join the Conversation.
Nancy Colvin
Marketing and Communications Manager

Reynolds, Sir Joshua English Collina (Lady Gertrude Fitzpatrick) 1779

Henri, Robert American The Fish Basket 1926

Art Speaks. Join the Conversation.
Melissa Ferguson
CMA Director of Marketing and Communications

The exhibition opened on November 27 and will extend through May 1, 2011.  Incidentally, most museums now require a staff member to accompany paintings lent internationally; this applies nearly world-wide.  In my duties as courier, in Chicago I watched as both crated works were put on pallets in Alitalia’s air freight terminal and several hours later, from the passenger waiting area, I observed the freight pallets being loaded onto the Boeing 767, which flew to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport.  Thankfully, I flew in the passenger compartment on a half-full flight.  Serving as a courier involves a great deal of waiting and Rome’s airport, especially its cargo terminal, was my first long spell waiting; waiting for Italian customs and Alitalia’s cargo crew to bring the pallet to the appointed spot to be unloaded.  On the same flight was the Registrar from the Joslyn Museum of Art in Omaha, Nebraska, which had lent a large Monet to the same exhibition.  Finally, after a few dicey moments with a new customs official, who seemed to be completely unaware of the international shipment of artwork for exhibitions as well as the duties of a courier (accompagnatorein Italian), the crated paintings were loaded into an unmarked van and we set off in a follow car on the six hour drive to Genoa.  In between dozing off and on, pit stops at the Italian equivalent of Speedway, numerous tunnels and falling darkness and rain, we arrived in Genoa around 7:30 PM.  Once our crated pictures had been safely locked away in the galleries at the Palazzo Ducale, it was off to the hotel, a hot shower, change of clothes, and a delicious meal of fettuccine with monk fish and artichokes at the hotel’s very good restaurant.

The next day was a free day since our crated paintings were required to acclimatize for at least 24 hours in their new locations.  Although It was raining, I set out with the Joslyn’s Registrar to explore the town and our first stop was the Jesuit church (the Gesù) near the Palazzo Ducale.  Someone later told me that this church is the most important Baroque (17^th century) church outside Rome and I can well believe it.  Every surface of the interior is covered with multi-colored marble mosaic or gilt.  And the altarpieces, all recently restored, are magnificent masterpieces by Peter Paul Rubens, Simon Vouet, and Domenico Cresti, called Il Passignano.  Our next stop was the Palazzo Bianco and the Palazzo Rosso, two city museums on the Strada Nuova (now the Via Garibaldi) famed for their Renaissance and Baroque masterworks.  But surprises were in store even there.  The museums also contained a marble statue by the neoclassical artist Antonio Canova as well as two violins owned by Niccolò Paganini, who was born in Genoa, along with a collection of medals and awards the famous violinist garnered over his lifetime.  The one violin Paganini was called “the cannon” because of the great burst of music he could bring from it.  After the museums, we explored the small streets (called vico) that lead down towards Genoa’s old port.  Suffice it to say, it was interesting to see the narrow old streets and the microcosm of life there that appears to have changed little in the last several hundred years.  In the old port, we walked by the aquarium and shopping mall created for the 2004 Capital of Culture exposition.  After winding our way back to the centrally located hotel, I rested and later had what would be a very early 7:30 PM dinner with an old graduate school colleague, Timothy Standring, Curator of European art at the Denver Art Museum, who was in Genoa conducting on-going research on the Genoese artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.  The dinner at Vico Palla, a well-known restaurant in the old port district, was fantastic—lots of fish, some raw and some cooked, pasta and pesto (a Genoese speciailty), and great house wine.

My final full day in Genoa began with the uncrating of our two paintings at the Palazzo Duccale.  All went smoothly and there were no problems to be found—a courier’s dream.  After that I had a meeting with Piero Boccardo, the Director of the Palazzo Bianco to discuss bringing a major loan to Columbus as a way of celebrating Genoa and Columbus’s Sister-City relationship and to help celebrate Columbus’s 2012 Bicentennial.  The meeting was fruitful and I am sure to write more about this in time.  After the meeting, Raffaella Besta, the museum’s Curator gave me tour of the Palazzo Rosso along with a stop on the rooftop observation deck, which afforded magnificent panoramic views of the city.  Fortunately it was a beautiful day well-suited for picture taking. Later in the day I trekked up to the principle railway station where a white marble statue of Christopher Columbus sits looking westward towards the port.  And later that evening while out walking with the Joslyn’s Registrar, we happened across two seemingly incongruous sights, the house of Christopher Columbus, now a national shrine, facing a sea of parked Vespas!  In Genoa, as in much of Europe, old and new live side-by-side.  Although I had to leave the next day for a rather grueling twenty-four hour multi-staged flight back to Ohio, I was grateful for having had the opportunity to visit Genoa, a city I look forward to visiting again.

Art Speaks. Join the Conversation.
Dominique H. Vasseur
CMA Curator of European Art

A sea of Vespas

Statue of Christopher Columbus

Palazzo Ducale at night