* * ART, ART HISTORY & VISUAL STUDIES * *

DANS LA NUIT, DES IMAGES
New Media Exhibition in Paris

December 18, 2008 – January 1, 2009
Grand Palais, Paris

On December 17, 2008 there will be a private opening of the exhibition, Dans La Nuit, Des Images, organized by Le Fresnoy at the Grand Palais in Paris, attended by France’s President, Speaker of the House, and Minister of Culture. Among the 120 art installations are two by Duke artists/professors, Bill Noland and Bill Seaman, the latter recently hired from the Rhode Island School of Design. Duke will be represented at the opening by George McLendon, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and Trinity College; Gregson Davis, Dean of Humanities; and Hans van Migroet, Chair of the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and Chair of the Duke Visual Studies Initiative Executive Committee. A follow-up opening with Duke alumni in Paris will be held on December 18 to provide an update on Duke’s Visual Studies Initiative and New Campus plans.

Dans la nuit

Duke University and Le Fresnoy (http://www.lefresnoy.net/) have started an international student and faculty exchange program. The overarching goal is to bring visual artists to Duke and let them explore the potential of connecting theory to practice at the interface of humanities, the sciences, and the social sciences, a unique signature feature of the Visual Studies Initiative at Duke.

Le Fresnoy is the most advanced institute in France devoted to teaching, research, and experimenting with all aspects of the visual and media. It is the brainchild of Alain Fleischer, a prodigious author, visual artist, producer, photographer, and cineast.

For further information on the Duke-Le Fresnoy Collaboration, please see: http://visualstudies.duke.edu/for-students/fresnoy-collaboration/

A ROOM OF THEIR OWN:
THE BLOOMSBURY ARTISTS IN AMERICAN COLLECTIONS

December 18, 2008 – April 5, 2009
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

Duncan Grant, Helen Anrep at Charleston, 1942. Oil on canvas, 16 x 32 inches. Image courtesy of private collection.

A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections, organized to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of Bloomsbury's beginnings, will examine the American reception of the art produced between 1910 and the 1970s by the Bloomsbury artists and their associates and collaborators. The exhibition will include paintings, works on paper, decorative arts and book arts borrowed from public and private collections throughout the United States, and will focus on how this small group of artists made its imprint on the cultural thinking of their day.
The exhibition is organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in conjunction with the Nasher Museum. The exhibition premieres at the Nasher Museum, then travels to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell. It will also travel to the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill; the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; and the Palmer Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

Fry

Roger Fry, Paper Flowers on a Mantelpiece, 1919. Frame made by Roger Fry. Oil on canvas on board, 16 1/2 x 20 inches. Image courtesy of the Bannon and Barnabas McHenry Collection.

A Room of Their Own is made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. A full-color exhibition catalogue has been produced in conjunction with the show. At the Nasher Museum, the exhibition and related programs are sponsored in part by the Duke University Provost's Common Fund, Duke's Graduate Liberal Studies Program, the Wachovia Foundation and the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation, Inc.

Faculty Publication

Gabara

Esther Gabara’s book, Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil, has just been published by Duke University Press. Duke Press describes the book as follows: “Making a vital contribution to the understanding of Latin American modernism, Esther Gabara rethinks the role of photography in the Brazilian and Mexican avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s…Gabara argues that Brazilian and Mexican modernists deliberately made photography err: they made this privileged medium of modern representation simultaneously wander and work against its apparent perfection. They flouted the conventions of mainstream modernism so that their aesthetics registered an ethical dimension.”

Gabara is Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Art, Art History, & Visual Studies.

Visual Resources Association Grant

vra

Julie Doring, Associate Curator, Visual Resources Center, received an $850 Luraine Tansey Travel Grant from the Visual Resources Association to support attendance at the VRA annual conference in Toronto in March 2009 as a first-time attendee and session moderator. Luraine Tansey, a pioneer in the field of visual resources, established the VRA travel and educational fund in the 1990s before retiring.

This will be the last NewsByte for Fall ’08 semester. NewsByte will resume in January 2009. Happy Holidays.

Bellows

George Bellows, Blue Snow, The Battery, 1910, oil on canvas, Columbus Museum of Art

Please refer all relevant departmental information for inclusion in our weekly announcement to John Taormina, Director, Visual Resources Center, at taormina@duke.edu.