March 2023
The Invention of the Museum as Public Institution in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Join us for the first lecture in our spring Selected Topics in Architecture series, which will focus on museum design through the ages. David Brashear, Director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art, will present "The Invention of the Museum as Public Institution in the 18th and 19th Centuries." The concept of the modern museum was born in the Enlightenment that swept across Europe in the 18th century. The idea of a public museum gained traction in France in the 1770s, and designs by Étienne-Louis Boullée and Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand paved the way for the remaking of the Louvre as a public…
Find out more »April 2023
Museum Trip: Chrysler Museum
This spring, visit some of the most exciting exhibitions coming to the region’s best museums, and leave the planning to us. On Saturday, April 1, we’ll travel to the Chrysler Museum with a group of William & Mary students to see Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight, an immersive exhibition that merges visual art and theatrical storytelling. Featuring the work of internationally acclaimed glass artist Preston Singletary, the show tells the Native American story of Raven and his transformation of the world — bringing light to people by means of the stars, moon and sun. We’ll first gather…
Find out more »Abstract Watercolor Monotype Workshop | with Steve Prince
Join artist Steve Prince in this exciting hands-on workshop that explores the expressive power of abstract art through the medium of watercolor monotypes! Participants will create dynamic watercolor templates on Yupo paper, cut and arrange the dried color materials on an acrylic sheet, and utilize water-saturated archival paper to reconstitute the watercolors to create unique, multicolored prints. All materials will be provided, and all skill and experience levels are welcome; just bring your imagination! Youth aged 6-12 welcome with an accompanying adult. Location: Matoaka Art Studio, William & Mary Workshop fee: Muscarelle Members, W&M Staff, Faculty, and Students $10; Non-Members…
Find out more »Introducing Abstract Expressionism: The American Movement
David Brashear, Director of the Muscarelle Museum of Art, will set the stage for our spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins. As the United States worked its way through the Great Depression, an artistic energy was developed in New York, in part driven by the WPA's public art program. A group of artists, working both uptown and downtown, began to move away from representational art and focus their efforts on new approaches to abstraction. Some were more established, and some were relative newcomers. Some were older, and some were younger. Many were men, but some were women…
Find out more »Norman Lewis, Ad Reinhardt, Adolph Gottlieb, Dorothy Dehner: Our Pictographic and Skeuomorphic Era
Andrianna Campbell-LaFleur joins us from Yale University for our second talk in the spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins. Painters such as Norman Lewis, Ad Reinhardt, Adolph Gottlieb and Dorothy Dehner looked to notational stand-ins for meaning. The stick figures and simplified marks were graphic interfaces developed to be capable descriptors of more complex language systems. Following the research of post-structuralist anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Zora Neale Hurston and Margaret Mead in the 1940s, artists paired these ideas with instinctive line-making. For them these rational and id-based notation systems were places of universal sympathetic convergence. As…
Find out more »Museum Trip: Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art
This spring, visit some of the most exciting exhibitions coming to the region’s best museums, and leave the planning to us. On Thursday, April 20, we’ll travel to the VA MOCA in Virginia Beach to see the newly opened exhibition Kara Walker: Cut to the Quick. Featuring more than 80 works from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer, the exhibition offers a broad overview of Walker’s career. “A leading artist of her generation, Kara Walker (b. 1969) works in a range of mediums, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, film, and the large-scale silhouette cutouts for which she is perhaps most…
Find out more »The Art of the Book Workshop
In this two-day intensive workshop, participants will explore and study the exciting world of the history of books in Swem Library’s Special Collections Research Center. Participants will examine rare books in Special Collections, learn about the history of the book, and create a collaborative artwork using one of the oldest forms of book making through relief printmaking. Participants will receive the finished design as both a print on paper and a T-shirt upon completing the class. Lunch will be provided each day. April 24-25 10 AM – 3 PM All materials will be provided, and all skill levels are welcome;…
Find out more »The Life and Work of Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner: A Biographer’s View
Art historian and scholar Gail Levin will join us for the third talk in our spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins. Lee Krasner once said, “I think my painting is so autobiographical, if anyone can take the trouble to read it.” Her friend and biographer, art historian Gail Levin, who first interviewed the artist when she was a twenty-two year-old graduate student, guides us on an illustrated journey from Krasner’s birth in 1908 Brooklyn to her love of nature on the Eastern End of New York’s Long Island. Levin will not only give art historical analysis, but…
Find out more »Abstract Artist Lynne Mapp Drexler’s Journey from Virginia to Maine
Art historian and scholar Gail Levin will join us for the fourth talk in our spring Muscarelle Explorations series, Modern Masters at the Margins. Imagine a story of an artist who escaped from an art world rife with competition and her struggle to find herself, landing on an enchanted island, where she lived happily ever after, painting, though forgotten, for the rest of her life. She went so far as to write to a friend what her dealer could tell collectors who inquired about her: “advise them I’d become a hermit — an eccentric one and that I come to…
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