Museum Minute

A solitary figure emerges from an urgent flurry of charcoal lines. Vernon Ah Kee’s “Unwritten” is a potent metaphor for the struggle of indigenous artists to control their identities amid the continuing pressures of racism and colonial oppression. In 2004, Ah Kee began a series of large scale photorealistic charcoal portraits of his family members. These works were based upon ethnographic photos taken by the anthropologist Norman Tyndale on Palm Island during the 1930s. In enlarging these images to an imposing scale, Ah Kee returns power to their gaze, reclaiming the ethnographic photography for those who are once its subjects.

Matthew McLendon is looking at one of his favorite prints in The Fralin Museum of Art’s collection. It’s a woodcut by the German Expressionist artist, Erich Heckel. The title of the print is Reading Aloud (Beim Vorlesen) and it was made in 1914. We know who the figures are. The woman, right hand resting under her chin, elbow on the table, is Erich Heckel’s companion and later wife, the dancer Sidi Riha. She sits shoulder to shoulder with art historian Walter Kasebach, a great advocate for the Die Brücke Artists.

Erich Heckel German, 1883-1970 Reading Aloud (Beim Vorlesen), 1914 Woodcut on heavy, gray toned Japanese paper, 11 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (29.8 x 20 cm) Museum purchase with the Curriculum Support Fund, 2001.14.2 © 2015 Erich Heckel / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst

The Fralin Museum of Art has a strong collection of Indian Painting due to the efforts and long dedication to the museum of Prof. Dan Ehnbom, who is one of the leading specialists in South Asian Painting. Matthew McLendon discusses one of his favorite works from this part of the collection, a leaf from a Rukmini-haran (Abduction of Rukmini) series: Rukmini Adorning Herself Preparing to go to the Temple, ca. 1700-1710 CE.

Leaf from a Rukmini-haran (Abduction of Rukmini) series: Rukmini Adorning Herself Preparing to go to the Temple India, Rajasthan, Kota, ca. 1700 – 1710 CE Ink, opaque color, and gold on paper 15 x 11 3/8 in. (38.1 x 28.89 cm) Museum purchase with Curriculum Support Fund, 2008.2

Freshwater Saltwater Weave is a series of glass works by contemporary urban-based Arrernte artist Jenni Kemarre Martiniello. Her works in hot blown glass, coldworked glass and canes are inspired by the aesthetics of Aboriginal woven forms. The works in this exhibition span the last five years and are inspired by dilly bags, eel traps, fish traps, fish baskets, and bicornual baskets.

Yellow Rushes Fish Basket 

Do you need a little tranquility and peace in your life? Join Matthew McLendon as he looks at a beautiful bronze in The Fralin Museum of Art’s collection depicting Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. Though only 11 inches tall, this work from Ming Dynasty China is exquisitely detailed with a psychological force well beyond its size.

Chinese Artist Shakyamuni Xuande Period 1426 - 1435 Gilt bronze 11 x 7 1/4 x 5 in. (27.9 x 18.4 x 12.7 cm) Bequest of Frank Haden Vines 1976.31.6

Perhaps the most famous and well-traveled painting in the museum’s collection, The Natural Bridge by Frederic Edwin Church, is for any Virginian an immediately recognizable scene. Church painted this picture in 1852 based on sketches he made on a trip to Natural Bridge the previous summer with friends Cyrus and Mary Field. Church took precise notes on his sketches of the geological formations as well as the surrounding flora and there is an oft repeated anecdote that Cyrus Field kept a rock fragment from the trip and compared it to the painting for accuracy.

Frederic Edwin Church American, 1826-1900 The Natural Bridge, 1852 Oil on canvas 38 x 33 in Gift of Thomas Fortune Ryan, 1912.1

Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss, 1741-1807) was famed throughout England and Europe as a portraitist and painter of Neoclassical scenes. She came to notice in her teens, having traveled and trained with her father, the painter Johann Joseph Kauffman. After moving from Rome to London, she was one of only two women who were founding members of the Royal Academy. In Venus and Adonis, 1786, Kauffmann portrays a moment of quiet intimacy between the goddess and the youth. The tragedy of the story has yet to unfold and seems unimaginable in such an idyllic setting.

Angelica Kauffmann Swiss, 1741-1807 Venus and Adonis, 1786 Oil on canvas, 50 ¼ x 36 7/8 inches Museum Purchase with Membership Acquisition Fund, 1976.25

Jack Kelly's Rockhole

Marcel Vertès (1895-1961) moved to Paris during World War I. While living in the Latin Quarter, he distinguished himself as a printmaker, illustrator, and painter, depicting the café culture that surrounded him. Following World War II, he immigrated to the United States where he worked on the 1952 Hollywood film Moulin Rouge, winning two Oscars for best art direction and best costume design. His murals, which he finished before returning to Paris, can still be viewed in the famed Café Carlyle in New York City.

Marcel Vertès

b. Hungary, 1895-1961, active in France

Untitled 4 from the portfolio Dancing, ca. 1920s

Color lithograph on wove paper

15 x 22-1/8 in. (38.1 x 56.2 cm)

Bequest of Buzz Miller. The Alan Groh-Buzz Miller Collection 1999.12.107.e

The German photographer, August Sander (1876-1964), was best known for creating what the Museum of Modern Art, New York has called, “the most ambitious and influential portrait of the people of the 20th century.” His sweeping photographic project, People of the 20th Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts), is comprised of over 600 photographs divided into seven volumes and nearly 50 portfolios intending to be a comprehensive visual record of the German people. He devoted 40 years of his life to it.

August Sander

German, 1876-1964

The Secretary, West German Radio, Cologne, 1931 Gelatin silver print, 10 5/16 x 6 1/2 in.

Museum purchase with the Curriculum Support Fund, 1985.18.8 © Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur - August Sander Archiv Köln / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York