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Light! The Industrial Age 1750-1900, Art &
Science, Technology & Society
April 7 – July 29, 2001
How did the advent of easily available artificial light influence daily life? How much of the science of light did artists know about, or care about? The rapid changes in the development of light–from candlelight, to gaslight, to Argand lamp, to the incandescent bulb we know today–took place during a period of intense focus on making sense of the natural world and understanding the human place in it. If we could control the degree of light in a room, then clearly light itself could no longer be seen as divine. What was it? And how could the artist depict both its appearance and its emotional impact? This exhibition, a joint project of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum and Carnegie Museum of Art, drew record crowds from around Europe during its Amsterdam run. *To accommodate the expected high attendance, the Museum of Art has extended its normal hours of operation on Thursdays until 9:00 pm during the run of the exhibition, with reduced admission after 5:00 pm. The Museum Store will be open during those hours as well. In addition, weekend family walk-in activities, as well as more formal lectures and seminars, will help visitors of all ages understand and enjoy the exhibition. Call 622-3288 for more information. Still Rooms and Excavations: Photographs by Richard BarnesJune 9 – September 2In 1992, when the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco began extensive renovations on the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the workers found hundreds of human remains and evidence that the original building, which opened in 1924, was built on a potter’s field. Photographer Richard Barnes has documented the excavation and, in doing so, raises difficult questions about the museum’s role as a neutral space and an authority to select what is preserved and what is discarded. “Mid-excavation photographs of the museum reveal, above, a symmetrical façade, and below, a cavernous underworld, conjuring up images of the human psyche–the ordered, conscious ideal looming over the hidden, dark, unconscious realm below,” Barnes writes in a monograph accompanying the exhibition. The Palace of the Legion of Honor, a World War I memorial, is “a site steeped in memory, and the excavation of the ground beneath is rich in its implications. Here the preserved heritage is an imported European art history that displaces an ambiguous, disregarded social history. . . . To my mind, these fragments of individual lives, whether included in a sanctioned museum collection or not, are one more layer of thought and memory quietly insisting its way into our time present.” Folds, Blobs, and Boxes: Architecture in the Digital Era closes May 27 The Light FantasticLight! programming
continues to dazzle in the months of May and June. Special activities include
the Curators’ Lecture, presented by Louise Lippincott and Andreas Blühm (Saturday, May 5, 1:00 p.m.), Robert
Rosenblum on The Art of Electricity (Saturday,
May 19, 1:00 p.m.), and Larry Schaaf on the work of scientist, artist,
and inventor of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot (Saturday, June 16, 1:00 p.m.). Cynthia L. Persinger will lead Painters of Light, a five week series of slide lectures and
gallery discussions on Vincent Van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, J.M.W.
Turner, and Claude Monet. (Thursdays,
May 10-June 14, 6:00-7:30 p.m. call
(412) 622-3288 to register) Families will love the American Magic Lantern Theater’s production of The Victorian Patriotic Show (Saturday, June 23, 2:00 p.m.). Live piano music, costumes, and a historic projector and slides bring a taste of the fun that people had before there were movies and television. Tickets are required for the performance, call (412)622-3288 to order. On Saturday, June 30, Seth Riskin will give performances throughout the day of Light Dance using light-based technology in combination with movement. Riskin will also give a gallery talk and performance the following day at 2:00 p.m. |
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Copyright (c) 2001 CARNEGIE magazine |
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