So let’s get creative! Email or stop by and tell us what you think people might do with these paper items that we don’t keep. Bookends with pockets? Unusual coffee tables? Papier-mâché sculpture? For a dime or a quarter, what could you create to keep us green? Ooooooh, I know – THINKING CAPS!

Camille Dollard, "Self Portrait" 1997.56

The galleries beckon the viewer with portraits of celebrated French artists. The first image is a large daguerreotype, a self-portrait of artist Camille Dollard. He is, not surprisingly, posed with easel and brush but right next to him is a giant hookah! Oh, Orientalist man of romance and pleasure – what’s not to love? Pierre Petit’s Gustave Doré , looking sexy and cosmopolitan, leans toward the viewer with a bold stare. We see captured images of Paris before the “Haussmannization” of the city’s medieval streets in Charles Marville’s untitled cloud study. Here the distant dome of Les Invalides towers over the city, under a race of clouds that pattern light and gray. A rare snow scene in the forest by Eugène Cuvelier is a study of entwined winter branches creating an almost web-like image. And Behind the Troglodyte Barn – a title so intriguing that this viewer had to read the label before looking deep into the image (“troglodyte” is a medieval term used to describe political activists who found their way around property taxes by living in caves) is a stone arch and structure built into a rock formation. Tools litter the ground but no figures are present. Caves? I need more to this story.

Lastly, this viewer’s favorite photograph and the one that graces November’s Member’s Magazine cover: Courtyard with Painters, by an unidentified photographer. Tom Hinson describes it as, “a captured wealth of detail in an intimate slice of 19th century village life in northern France.”

And is it ever! Amid Normandy barns and coops, laundresses deal with overflowing baskets of laundry. Two artists are painting – one hugging a little girl with woman reading her letters at his side, and another working under bright umbrellas, his clay pipe clamped in his teeth. His canvas reveals a woman bent over her sewing. And to the right of our scene is the innkeeper with his fancy vest and bushy muttonchops. He looks like a character right out of Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart novels. He faces the photographer, seeming to say: “Soyez le bienvenue! Qu’est-ce que vous voulez a boire?”

]]> http://library.clevelandart.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=463 0 http://library.clevelandart.org/blog/?p=451 http://library.clevelandart.org/blog/?p=451#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:00:46 +0000 Christine Edmonson http://library.clevelandart.org/blog/?p=451 Yellow paper, yellow-back books, yellow prints. We are experiencing a tsunami of yellow for the opening of our exhibition, Gauguin: Paris 1889. The catalogue that curator Heather Lemonedes and Conservator Moyna Stanton labored over for years is finally here in the library! Their hard work has paid off handsomely, with groundbreaking scholarship and amazing loans from illustrious collections. The exhibition is beautiful – our museum staff is so talented.

The recreation of the exhibition installed in Monsieur Volpini’s Café des Arts, held on the grounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris is brilliant. Dr. Lemonedes tells us that the Volpini prints on canary yellow paper were available for sale, to be viewed upon request (none sold), but here, we have them all framed on view together. One may ask, why is this so important? For the museum visitor, it is an opportunity of a lifetime to see works of art on paper — our complete Volpini Suite (never before on public view) and compare them to other Volpini Suite prints and paintings from museum collections that live most of the time in temperature and light controlled security. Look at the hand colored version of “Dramas of the Sea” (Van Gogh Museum) — what exquisite detail! Below a calm blue sea, dangerous waves churn around a fisherman and his red boat, all constrained in its finite fan-shaped print. One has to see it in person to understand the effect Gauguin sought to convey. There is so much to discover here, so many works of art that the visitor might not see again. As our Chief Curator, Griff Mann says: “Don’t miss it — this is the only U.S. venue.”

The Ingalls Library had an opportunity to assist in procuring various works on paper in the exhibition: maps, books, and the rare poster announcing the Volpini exhibition. We found a 1901 treatise examining yellow dyes in paper pulp that was so helpful to our paper conservator. A gift book from the Butkin estate provides illustrated highlights of the 1889 Expo. And we used our antique postcards from France to add introductory images to the gallery walls. It was an opportunity to feel like an active, integral part of The Cleveland Museum of Art team.

Finally, mention should be made of the accompanying photography show in the East Building, “France at the Dawn of Photography.” Drawn mostly from The Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection of photographs, one has an opportunity to view three packed galleries with images taken during the lifetime of Paul Gauguin. And the admission is free! A follow-up post about the photography show will be forthcoming.

Opening the clamshell case you find a hand-bound book chronicling the history of the mill. Next you see a reproduction of an 1856 map of the mills that operated in the Loose Valley in Kent. Unfolding the map you see that 12 mills operated in the two mile area between Tovil and Loose Village. Underneath the map is a folded paper portfolio containing 12 original paper samples with names such as Renaissance, Egyptian Vellum and Bodleian Light Toned. These are the papers used by some of the greatest English artists known, including John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. At the bottom one finds the paper portfolio containing a diagram of the mill and 19 reproduction photographs. Most interestingly, the author puts names to the faces in the pictures. In photo 4, the Rag House in 1921, where Mrs. Brislee and Miss Harrison sort rags. Photo 8 shows us that Arthur Whatmore, with his big bushy moustache, worked as vatman in 1933.

Hayle Mill closed in July 1987, a victim of economic recession. Ironically the last paper made by the mill was called Finale. And it is on this paper that the author chose to print the book. The Mill worked for 179 years to produce papers of the highest quality and Papermaking at Hayle Mill 1808 – 1987 is a fitting accolade to this achievement in word, photographs, paper samples, and construction.  TS1096.H38 G44 2008.

While Cleveland Studies in the History of Art picks up in 1995, it is not a typical successor to the Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Rather, this annual publication produced more academic scholarship on the Museum’s collection.  Because the journal spans nine years, through 2000, accession number searches are useful in both two digit and four digit year number searches.  Though a scan of the table of contents would be equally useful.  Caption searching produces color images, suitable for presentation, as in this search for the Museums 14th Century table fountain.

Original copies of both publications will continue to be held in the Ingalls Library reference room.

Over the years the museum has grown and changed its physical footprint with three additions (1958, 1983, 1971) and the current expansion project. To illustrate these changes the Museum Archives has created three interactive maps that include both current and historic gallery information. The maps can be found here, or on the library website, under Search Collections.

Additional maps will be added as new sections of the complex open. Images of galleries over time, both the permanent collection and special exhibitions, are available in the Museum Archives.