Celebrating Vermont: Myths and Realities

History

Saunders, Richard H.

Graff, Nancy Price

Westbrook, Virginia A.

Americas

Middlebury College Museum of Art

Q. D. Leavis was one of the finest critics of the novel. Her published essays appeared as articles and reviews of remarkable trenchancy in Scrutiny (of which she was effectively co-editor with her husband F. R. Leavis), or as lectures or as introductions to editions of classic novels. Now, for the first time, they have been collected and reprinted in three volumes. This volume collects her lecture 'The American Novel'; essays and lectures on Henry James, Hawthorne, Melville and Edith Wharton; and the lectures 'The French Novel', 'The Russian Novel' and 'The Italian Novel'. There is an introduction by the editor, Professor G. Singh. All the essays are informed by that broad 'sociological view of literature that caused Q. D. Leavis to ask how the novel rose and why it flourished.

After Eden: Garden Varieties in Contemporary Art

Arts & Photography

Heartney, Eleanor

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Horatio Greenough is generally regarded as the first American sculptor to achieve international fame. A Boston native educated at Harvard, Greenough spent most of his professional life in Florence, Italy. While there, he nurtured lasting friendships with such Americans on the Grand Tour as James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Cole, and Samuel F. B. Morse. Although he received two key US Government commissions--George Washington, 1832-41, and The Rescue, 1837-51--contemporary aversion to his depiction of Washington as an American Zeus, and this century's discomfort with the subject of The Rescue (a confrontation between a bellicose American Indian and a pioneer family) have worked against public understanding and viewing of his work. This handsome presentation of 48 of his drawings, only two previously seen publicly, and 14 of his sculptures, reveals much about this gifted, yet tormented artist. The accompanying text shows how the process of drawing relates to the making of sculpture and, using the artist's rich correspondence, provides insight into the relationship between patron and artist and the unpredictability of artistic achievement in pre-Civil War America.

Horatio Greenough: An American Sculptor's Drawings

Greenough, Horatio

Sculpture

What Became of Peter’s Dream? focuses on the Boyar Ball of 1903, illustrating with objects the jarring inconsistencies between the westernized society of the Romanovs and the old Russian customs that Nicholas II hoped to recapture. From the traditional Russian costumes to the heirloom jewels that they wore to this festive gathering, the members of the Court of Nicholas II seemed out of touch with the real world that we now know was in historic transition. Bedecked in costumes designed by Sergei Diagilev and jewels by the firm of Faberge, they celebrated a world that Peter had rejected. Detailed descriptions of the accoutrements and possessions of the court make tangible the complex interweave of Russian imperial tradition, spiritual aspiration, and cultural efflorescene on the eve of the Revolution. Three hundred years after the founding of St. Petersburg, we see an intimate view of the culture dramatically swept away in the forces of history. Picture frames, portraits, jewels, desk sets, cigarette boxes, icons, Easter eggs, gifts of state--even a glass vodka bottle--tell a nuanced and complex story. Drawn primarily from the collections of Marjorie Merriweather Post and a family descended from the Romanovs themselves, the objects present a vivid view of life at home as well as life at court. Published on the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg, this book looks at the cultural ambitions and contradictions in Russia on the eve of the Revolution.

What Became of Peter's Dream?: Courtculture in the Reign of Nicholas II

Odom, Anne C.

Russia

At heart a collaborative venture, the creation of early fifteenth-century panel paintings in Italy depended upon a tight network of connections between patrons, painters, woodworkers, and gilders. The product of these interactions was an object that served both as a focus for devotion, and as an emphatic statement about wealth and status. This exhibition catalogue illustrates works in ten different collections and explores how these objects were made and what they reveal to us about those who produced and owned them. Featuring artists such as Giovanni del Biondo, Giovanni dal Ponte, Gentile da Fabriano, and Lippo d'Andrea, the catalogue essays and entries explore the ways in which these works--often described as "conservative," or "late Gothic," offer a more authentic view of the early Renaissance, one that balances our notion of a time and place characterized solely by departures from tradition.

The Art of Devotion: Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy

Watson, Wendy

Rothe, Andrea

Abbott, Katherine Smith

Rothe, Jeanne

History & Criticism

In 1899 Gustav Klimt's painting Nuda Veritas shook up the Austrian public with what many deem to be the painter's most political exploration of the nude female body. Klimt's provocative allegory challenged viewers to consider their own beliefs about the relationship between the nude (female) body and contemporary morality; this "naked truth" was shocking. Transcending accusations of pornography, Klimt's work paved the way for artistic examinations of the nude body as the site through which questions of freedom, desire, beauty, nature, culture, power, and their antonyms could be represented and negotiated. Taking these ideas as one critical point of departure, this volume and the accompanying exhibition feature selected prints, drawings, and watercolors by Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann and Käthe Kollwitz, among others. It explores the conceptions of the human body and the manner of its visualization in the period leading up to and following the First World War, which changed the world's notions of flesh and blood forever. The book will appeal to students and scholars of German and Austrian art and culture.

Naked Truth: Approaches to The Body in Early Twentieth-Century German-Austrian Art

Garrison, Eliza

Matthias, Bettina

Van Dyke, James A.

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