BITS AND PIECES Winter 2021
1. NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Pierre Cardin, the visionary designer who clothed the elite but also transformed the business of fashion, reaching the masses by affixing his name to an outpouring of merchandise ranging from off-the-rack apparel to bath towels, died on Tuesday in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris. He was 98.
His death, at the American Hospital there, was confirmed Tuesday by the French Academy of Fine Arts. No cause was given.
“Fashion is not enough,” Cardin once told Eugenia Sheppard, the American newspaper columnist and fashion critic. “I don’t want to be just a designer.”
He dressed the famous — artists, political luminaries, tastemakers and members of the haute bourgeoisie — but he was also a licensing pioneer, a merchant to the general public with his name on a cornucopia of products.
There were bubble dresses and aviator jumpsuits, fragrances and automobiles, ashtrays and even pickle jars. He turned France’s fashion establishment on its head, reproducing fashions for mass, ready-to-wear consumption and dealing a blow to the elitism that had governed the Parisian couture.
In a career of more than three-quarters of a century, Cardin remained a futurist.
As the space age dawned, Cardin dressed men, and women, in spacesuits. In 1969, NASA commissioned him to create an interpretation of a spacesuit, a signal inspiration in his later work.
“The dresses I prefer,” he said at the time, “are those I invent for a life that does not yet exist.”
His designs were influenced by geometric shapes, often rendered in fabrics like silver foil, paper and brightly colored vinyl.
His men’s ready-to-wear designs, introduced in 1960, were decidedly more faithful to the body’s outlines. Built on narrow shoulders, high armholes and a fitted waist, they were streamlined and somewhat severe, dispensing in some cases with traditional collars in favor of the simple banded Nehru, a namesake adaptation of the style worn by the Indian prime minister.
https://artdaily.cc/news/131542/Pierre-Cardin--designer-to-the-famous-and-merchant-to-the-masses--dies-at-98#.YGH0ba9KhGM
2. DALLAS, TX.- Today the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art Dr. Agustín Arteaga announced that Anne R. Bromberg, PhD, The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art, has been named Curator Emerita in great appreciation of her nearly 60 years of Museum work, and her renowned curatorial expertise in the field.
Dr. Bromberg has been with the DMA since she began in 1962 as a lecturer. In 1975 she was appointed head of the education department. Since 1989 she has been a curator at the DMA and has played a key role in developing the Museum’s significant Asian holdings. In 2004 Dr. Bromberg was named The Cecil and Ida Green Curator of Ancient and Asian Art, reflecting the dedication of the Greens, whose generosity added many objects to the DMA’s collection, especially in the area of Western antiquities.
Said Arteaga, “In a remarkable career, Anne Bromberg has worked at the Dallas Museum of Art longer than any current staff member, for seven Museum directors, in two locations, and for nearly 60 years. She is much beloved, widely admired, and wickedly smart, and it is my immense pleasure and a distinct honor to celebrate and commemorate Anne’s many accomplishments and her undeniably committed service by conferring this title on her. The DMA has been fortunate for six decades to have Anne call us ‘home,’ and we applaud this rare achievement.”
As the curator of approximately 40 DMA special exhibitions, she most notably served as the Dallas curator for four of the 10 highest attended paid special exhibitions in Museum history, two of which rank at #1 and #2: Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (2008) and Splendors of China's Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong (2004). The other two are Searching for Ancient Egypt: Art, Architecture, and Artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1997) and Pompeii A.D. 79 (1979).
Other presentations organized during Dr. Bromberg’s tenure include Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt (2016), The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum (2013), Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting (2007), and The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India (2003). She has also curated numerous exhibitions based on the Museum’s collection, such as Face to Face: International Art at the DMA (2011) and All the World’s a Stage: Celebrating Performance in the Visual Arts (2009).
Most recently, Dr. Bromberg was the curator for the 2019 exhibition The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige’s suite of 55 prints from 1834. The complete series—once owned by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and gifted to the Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Marcus in 1984—was on view at the DMA for the first time in more than 30 years.
Dr. Bromberg has contributed to many publications related to the Museum’s collection, including Ancient Gold Jewelry at the Dallas Museum of Art (1996), written by Barbara Deppert-Lippitz; Gods, Men, and Heroes: Ancient Art at the Dallas Museum of Art (1996), co-written with Karl Kilinski II; Dallas Museum of Art: Selected Works (1983); and A Guide to the Collections: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1979). She also worked on the first publication dedicated to exploring the Museum’s collection of over 450 works of South and Southeast Asian art, The Arts of India, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas at the Dallas Museum of Art (2013). Currently, she is researching the Museum’s collection for a forthcoming publication on its works of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese art.
Dr. Bromberg earned her BA in Anthropology from Harvard University. She also earned her MA and PhD in Classical Art and Archeology from Harvard University. She has taught several courses on ancient art at Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Arlington. In 2009 she received the Dallas Historical Society Award for Excellence in Community Service in the field of education.
https://artdaily.cc/news/131550/Dr--Anne-Bromberg-named-Curator-Emerita-at-Dallas-Museum-of-Art#.YGH1A69KhGM
3. LOS ANGELES, CA.- Julius von Schlosser’s Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance) is a seminal work in the history of art and collecting.
Originally published in German in 1908, it was the first study to interpret sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of wonder as precursors to the modern museum, situating them within a history of collecting going back to Greco-Roman antiquity. In its comparative approach and broad geographical scope, Schlosser’s book introduced an interdisciplinary and global perspective to the study of art and material culture, laying the foundation for museum studies and the history of collections. Although available in both French and Italian, it has never before been translated into English.
The eloquent and informed translation in Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance: A Contribution to the History of Collecting (Getty Publications, $65.00) is preceded by an astute introduction by editor Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. Tracing Schlosser’s biography and intellectual formation in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, it contextualizes his work among that of his contemporaries, offering a wealth of insights along the way.
THE AUTHOR:
Julius von Schlosser was an Austrian professor, curator, museum director, and leading figure of the Vienna School of art history whose work has not achieved the prominence of his contemporaries until now.
THE EDITOR:
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann is Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Author and editor of numerous books, articles, and reviews, he has received honorary doctorates from universities in Brno and Dresden, among other distinctions. He is a fellow of the Swedish, Flemish, and Polish Academies of Science and of the American Academies in Rome and Berlin.
THE TRANSLATOR:
Jonathan Blower is an architectural historian and a translator of German texts on the visual arts.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ART AND CURIOSITY CABINETS:
“This first English translation of Julius von Schlosser’s classic study of the Kunstkammer (1908) is a cause for celebration by anyone interested in the history of collections. Directly or indirectly, his book inspired a legion of studies on early modern art and curiosity cabinets, a subject that continues to captivate our imagination and has shaped the appearance of some museum displays. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s penetrating introduction examines Schlosser, his intellectual contributions as a curator and teacher, his place within Viennese art history around 1900, and his subsequent reputation.”—Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Kay Forsten Chair in European Art, University of Texas, Austin
“This authoritative and thoughtful English translation by Jonathan Blower with an introduction on Schlosser’s place in the history of art by the polymathic doyen of art history, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, itself forms a milestone in the still-burgeoning scholarly literature on Kunstkammer collections.”—Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History, and Director, Center for Science and Society, Columbia University
“This fascinating publication not only illuminates the history of art history through Schlosser’s pioneering study from the early twentieth century, but also offers new insight into important dimensions of the culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna in which Schlosser participated as an art historian. This book will be of great interest to scholars of art history specializing in art collecting and collections, cabinets of wonders or curiosities, and Habsburg culture."—Larry Wolff, Professor of History, New York University and author of The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon
“It was an excellent idea to make Schlosser’s classic work—which everyone interested in collections and museums should read—available in English. The translation is enriched by an introduction by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann that situates Schlosser in his milieu, Vienna circa 1900, and brings him back to life.”—Peter Burke, Professor Emeritus of Cultural History, University of Cambridge
“Schlosser’s book is a classic of art history: still a standard text for all students of the first great age of collecting, but one which, previously unavailable in English, had remained unfamiliar to a wider audience. This translation, whose virtuosity matches that of Schlosser’s original writing, is here combined with a superb appreciation by Kaufmann of the author’s life and works.” —R.J.W. Evans, Regius Professor of History emeritus, University of Oxford
https://artdaily.cc/news/131705/Now-available-in-English-for-the-first-time--a-seminal-work-in-the-history-of-art-and-collecting#.YGH_169KhGM
