Jessica D. Brier

September 21, 2022.

Jessica D. Brier, Deknatel Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, talks about her exhibition and takes us on a tour through the galleries of On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print, on view at the Center from August 20 through December 22, 2022.

The grid often hides in plain sight, from notepads and spreadsheets to halftone photographic reproductions. It dominates the organization, perception, and representation of the modern world, especially in print. Deeply embedded in a Western worldview, the grid visualizes control, mastery, and order. As an invisible framing device, it has become so pervasive that we habitually ignore it. Yet when artists call our attention to the grid, its layered meanings come fully into view. On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print surveys photographs, prints, artist’s books, and printed sculptures from the dynamic permanent collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. From 19th-century scientific and portrait photography to avant-garde and conceptual photography; from mid- 20th-century Minimalist, Pop Art, and Op Art printmaking to experimental bookmaking and photography in the 21st century, this richly illustrated volume explores how artists have embraced, rejected, and reclaimed the grid. By altering and challenging perception, they offer new ways of seeing the world. 

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Elizabeth Nogrady and Jill Schneiderman

 Joseph Tairraz. Traversing a Crevice on Mt. Blanc 1870 Albumen print from glass plate negative.

April 6, 2022.

Elizabeth Nogrady (VC'99), Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and Jill Schneiderman, Professor of Earth Science at Vassar College, discuss their exhibition, Cryosphere: Humans and Climate in Art from The Loeb, on view January 18 - May 22 in the Focus Gallery of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar.

In 1914, literary naturalist and Hudson Valley resident John Burroughs wrote, “In the snow-storm: we are admitted into Nature’s oldest laboratory.” This laboratory is part of the cryosphere, the term given to places on Earth where water is in solid, rather than liquid, form. Describing the fleeting and varied forms of the cryosphere—ice and snow in particular—is a challenge shared by artists and scientists alike. This Focus Gallery exhibition applies the approach and knowledge of an earth scientist to art that focuses on the cryosphere, with the aim of enhancing viewers’ understanding of not only the works themselves, but also the planet we inhabit. It features paintings, prints, photographs and sculpture from the nineteenth century to the present day, including works by Sanford Robinson Gifford, Taguchi Beisaku, Doris Lee, and Oshutsiak Pudlat. This exhibition is co-organized by the Loeb and Jill Schniederman, professor of Earth Science.

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Changing Forms

Willem van Meiris, Portrait of Dina Margareta de Bye, 1705 o/c, The Leiden Collection, New York

November 17, 2021.

Elizabeth Nogrady (VC'99), Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar, Lara Yeager-Crasselt (VC'06) Curator of The Leiden Collection, and Ronald Patkus,  Associate Director of the Libraries for Special Collections and Associate Professor of History at Vassar on the Frederic Weyerhauser Chair, discuss the exhibition on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center entitled Changing Forms: Metamorphosis in Myth, Art, and Nature 1650-1700, on view September 28 - December 19, 2021 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

This Focus Gallery exhibition explores the rich concept of metamorphosis—with links to art, myth, science, and the exchange of knowledge—in the late seventeenth-century Netherlands. The paintings, drawings, prints, and illustrated books on view include artists’ renderings of Ovid’s Metamorphoses from around 1600 by Virgil Solis, Abraham Bloemaert, and Hendrick Goudt. This tradition contributed to a dynamic moment later in the 1600s, when painters such as Godefridus Schalcken, Willem van Mieris, and Samuel van Hoogstraten created their own mythological imagery. Meanwhile, the book market for Ovid kept pace and contemporaries explored biological metamorphosis in lavishly illustrated insect studies like those by Johannes Goedaert, Jan Swammerdam, and Maria Sibylla Merian. Works in the exhibition come from Vassar collections and include significant loans from Cornell University, Bard College, Lehigh University, and The Leiden Collection—the preeminent private collection of Dutch art in the United States.

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Celebrating Dante at Vassar

October 27, 2021.

Nancy Bisaha, Simona Bondavalli, Alberto Gelmi, Emma Iadanza, Elizabeth Nogrady and Ronald D. Patkus discuss the teaching of Dante at Vassar through the College's history, and the opening of a series of three simultaneous exhibitions  on view through December 4, 2021 in the Thompson Memorial Library and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center under the collective title Celebrating Dante at Vassar, commemorating the 700th anniversary of Dante Aligheri's death on September 14, 1321. 

"Celebrating Dante at Vassar represents one way that the college is taking part in Dante activities this year. It is not meant to be a comprehensive study of interactions with Dante at the college; instead it aims to present essays that investigate key moments and aspects, written from several perspectives. Simona Bondavalli discusses the Dante Pilgrimage of 1921 and the early history of teaching Italian. Nancy Bisaha reflects on the interest in Dante among historians at Vassar and beyond. Ron Patkus presents highlights of the rare book collection in the Archives & Special Collections Library that relate to Dante, and Elizabeth Nogrady shares some resources in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center." -- Andrew Ashton, Director of Libraries, Vassar College

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Patricia Phagan

Hilda Belcher (American, 1881–1963). The Checkered Dress (Portrait of O’Keeffe), 1907, watercolor and gouache. Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. Bequest of Mary S. Bedell, class of 1873, 1932.1.5

April 7, 2021.

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, will discuss her exhibition Women Picturing Women: From Personal Spaces to Public Ventures, on view through June 13, 2021.

"Women Picturing Women: From Personal Spaces to Public Ventures studies the key themes that emerged when selecting works by women depicting women. In different media, female artists from the seventeenth century to the 1960s—the eras studied—frequently communicated the idea of an intimate or sheltered enclosure such as a room, studio, or garden, even though these women participated in a more public arena to show or even make their work. In this exhibition from a collection of 22,000 objects, portraits and domestic scenes appeared often, with family, friends, colleagues, models, and oneself playing major roles. Home-centered settings and situations, including views of mothers and children, proliferated from the nineteenth century onwards. Idyllic, invented landscapes, mostly of the here and now, appeared, too, from the late 1700s where female artists placed their women (and sometimes men) in a harmonious or even fantastic natural world. On the other hand, some female artists relayed the idea of venturing into an outright public place such as a street or an office, or into the more public, intellectual world of a narrative found in religion, history, or social critique. These images appeared less often, while documentary photography spurred a veritable movement among women artists in the twentieth century."

Link to a virtual 3-d tour of the exhibition  here.

David Tavárez

October 7, 2020

David Tavarez, Professor of Anthropology and Director of Latin American and Latino/a Studies, talks about the exhibition Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States, on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center September 5 - December 13, 2020.

Usually commissioned from local artists working anonymously, retablos feature a narrative that is both written and pictorial. First-person vignettes, dated and inscribed with the supplicants’ names, draw on a traditional vocabulary such as “doy infinitas gracias” (I give infinite thanks). In the luminous illustrations above the inscriptions, earthly figures share space with holy images and a dreamlike representation of the miracle. As they accumulate on church walls, both in Mexico and the United States, these votives become public records of private faith, fears, and familial attachments.
 

Patricia Phagan

February 12, 2020.
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center curator Patricia Phagan talks about the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Ode to Forgetting, From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, on view January 24 - April 5, 2020.

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) is one of the most renowned artists of the twentieth and twenty- first centuries. She is perhaps best known for powerful sculptures, including monumental spiders, human figures, and anthropomorphic shapes. An enigmatic chronicler of her emotions, she confided in her diaries, made drawings daily, and returned regularly to printmaking. The exhibition focuses on prints she made in her eighties and nineties, with a few earlier examples and a massive spiral sculpture to give additional context. She made art because she had to, and described her practice as a means of survival, a lifelong managing of emotional vulnerabilities, traumas, and nightmares. As she put it, “Art is a guarantee of sanity.”

Mary-Kay Lombino

Richard Barnes, Murmur #23, Dec. 6, 2006, 2006

October 23, 2019. 

Mary-Kay Lombino, Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar, discusses her exhibition Shape of Light: Defining Photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, on view through December 15, 2019.

Shape of Light: Defining Photographs from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center presents a survey of Vassar’s renowned collection of close to 4,500 photographs. Spanning the history of the medium, the exhibition features numerous innovations in the history of photography including various types of photographic practices from daguerreotypes and gelatin silver prints to large-scale Polaroids and digital color prints as well as a wide range of styles and geographic focuses. This extensive exhibition, the first of its kind at the Art Center, aims to highlight the Art Center’s long interest and dedication to the photographic medium and present the unique character, depth, and diversity of the collection. Shape of Light also celebrates twenty years of commitment from the Advisory Council for Photography for supporting photography acquisitions.

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James Mundy

Edvard Munch, “Moonlight” (1896). Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Gift of Philip and Lynn Strauss, Class or 1946, 1995.20

May 8, 2019.

James Mundy (VC '74) Anne Hendricks Bass director of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, will talk about his education and life at Vassar in connection with the exhibition highlighting additions to the Loeb Center collections over his 28 year tenure: An Era of Opportunity: Three Decades of Acquisitions, on view April 26 - September 8, 2019.

This exhibition is a tribute to James Mundy (Vassar class of 1974) upon his retirement as the Anne Hendricks Bass Director of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, a post he has held for twenty-eight years. Organized by the curators of the Art Center, the exhibition spotlights a range of drawings, paintings, photographs, and other works acquired over three decades, and encompasses art from across the geographic scope of the collection. The exhibition emphasizes the dynamic role that opportunity has played in shaping the dramatic growth of the permanent collection of the museum during Mundy’s tenure. The exhibition is supported by the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Fund.

Mary-Kay Lombino

March 6, 2019.

Mary-Kay Lombino, Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, talks about her exhibition Freehand: Drawings by Inez Nathaniel-Walker, on view February 1 - April 14 at the Center.

Inez Nathaniel-Walker (1907–1990) made her first works of art while she was serving a sentence at a maximum-security prison for killing a man by whom she had been abused. While in prison she began to draw, creating remarkable portraits of her fellow inmates whom she called “bad girls.” Her richly patterned works combine meticulous detail and playful simplicity, forming expressive depictions of her subjects’ personalities and physical attributes. Freehand is Walker’s first one-person museum exhibition. The exhibition is supported by the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Fund and organized with the cooperation of the American Folk Art Museum, New York.

Raquel Rabinovich

December 12, 2018

The  artist Raquel Rabinovich (b. Argentina 1929) will discuss her exhibition Raquel Rabinovich: The Reading Room, on view in the Frederick Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar College October 25 - December 20, 2018.  The exhibition is being held concurrently with the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center exhibition Past Time: Geology in European and American Art and another related exhibition in the Vassar College Art Library: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Geological Illustration from Catastrophism to the Anthropocene.

"The exhibition title The Reading Room refers to the location where the works are installed (an intervention of sorts in the south transept of Vassar's main library) but also serves as a metaphor for a possible approach to the work.  The selections on view each represent an attempt to transcend the routine of every day, inviting viewers to enter into a place of contemplation in which many layers of meaning can be read in, or into, the individual artworks.  Rabinovich describes this approach as a language of metaphors.  In a recent interview she said, 'Beyond the language of the novel or the poem or the story, there is always an element that is beyond the words, in between the lines, which is not literal.  And that world is, for me, a wonderful world.  I love that world.  I resonate with that world.'"

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Patricia Phagan

Albert Bierstadt, 1830–1902. Geyser, Yellowstone Park. About 1881, 35.24 x 49.53 cm, Boston Museum of Fine Art.

November 7, 2018.

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, talks about her exhibition Past Time: Geology in European and American Art on view at the Art Center September 21 - December 9, 2018.

"Past Time: Geology in European and American Art looks at sketches and studies made by European and American artists from the 1770s to the 1890s who were engaged with a new, scientific emphasis on the Earth. In this arguably golden age of art and science, artists traveled and investigated the land internationally, noting Earth’s craggy features keenly in their watercolors, drawings, and oil sketches made on the spot or back in the studio. From a topographical, often strata-focused means to a later mode that evoked nature’s great transformational powers over time, this major loan exhibition explores European and American artists pursuing geological wonders."

Mary-Kay Lombino

February 7, 2017.

Mary-Kay Lombino, Emily Hargroves Fisher 1957 and Richard B. Fisher Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, discusses the exhibition on view January 29 - April 15, 2018: "People Are Beautiful, Photographs, Prints, and Films by Andy Warhol."

People are Beautiful explores shifting notions of beauty in Warhol’s portraits, with a focus on such themes as Celebrity and Stardom; The Artist–Patron Relationship; Fashion, Models, and the Party Scene; and The “Most Beautiful” Screen Tests. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is part of a consortium of five academic museums in the Hudson Valley each hosting thematic exhibitions of Warhol’s art in 2018. The group of exhibitions, collectively titled Warhol x 5, will feature works lent from the collections of the participating institutions.

Patricia Phagan

November 15, 2017

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, talks about the exhibition "Fluid Expressions: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler from the Collections of Gordon D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundations," on view at the Center through December 10, 2017.

"Widely known for her iconic “soak-stain” canvases, acclaimed artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was an equally inventive printmaker who took risks in a medium not frequently explored by abstract expressionists. Fluid Expressions: The Prints of Helen Frankenthaler, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation highlights Frankenthaler’s often-overlooked, yet highly original print production. The exhibition will be making its only northeast stop at Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center October 6-December 10, 2017. This exhibition is free and open to the public."

Helen Frankenthaler Foundation

Patricia Phagan and Peter van Alfen

February 15, 2017.

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and Peter van Alfen, Margaret Thompson Curator of Ancient Greek Coins at the American Numismatic Society in New York, discuss their exhibition: The Art of Devastation: Medals and Posters of the Great War, on view at the Loeb Center January 27 - April 9, 2017.


39:41 minutes.

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Patricia Phagan

Anton Refregier. 1837, Printing the California Star. Color sketch for the Rincon Annex Murals on the History of San Francisco. Gift of Philip and Lynn Strauss,  FLLAC 2015.23.1.1

November 2, 2016.

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, talks about her exhibition: Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s from the Susan and Steven Hirsch Collection on view September 2 - December 18, 2016.

38:43 minutes.

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Barbara Beisinghoff

October 5, 2016.

Internationally acclaimed graphic artist Barbara Beisinghoff will talk about her artist's books and etchings, installations and public commissions, her residency at Vassar College during September and October of this year, and her exhibition, "When Light Touches Paper," on view in the Vassar College Art Library and the  Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center September 19 - October 14, 2016.

46:15 minutes.

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Mary-Kay Lombino

May 4, 2016.

Mary-Kay Lombino, Emily Hargroves Fisher 1957 and Richard B. Fisher Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, discusses the exhibition on view April 29 - August 21, 2016: "Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy."

Astronomy can be traced back to antiquity with its origins in religious and mythological beliefs; its study has been closely linked to artistic endeavors since the Renaissance. Touch the Sky is a multi-media exhibition of images of the moon, sun, planets, and stars made by artists since the nineteenth century. Artistic observation of the skies was advanced by the dawn of photography in 1839, when Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre attempted to capture an image of the moon, and in 1865 when Lewis Rutherfurd, inventor of the first telescope designed for astrophotography, made top-quality spectroscopic images of the moon. Since then, artists’ enthusiasm for recording and interpreting the grandeur and mystery of the cosmos has not waned. The exhibition includes work by nineteen artists, including Vija Celmins, Chris McCaw, Sharon Harper, David Malin, Mungo Thomson, Lisa Oppenheim, and Nancy Graves.

44:12 minutes.

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James Mundy

 Irving Ramsey Wiles, American, 1861-1948, Girl Writing, oil on canvas.. Gift of Ruth Scherm, VC class of 1945 

March 2, 2016. 

James Mundy (VC'74), Anne Hendricks Bass Director of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, talks about the Exhibit "American Stories 1800-1950" on view at the Center January 29 - April 17, 2016.

"The founding strength of the art museum at Vassar College in 1864 was its American paintings. That collection has grown greatly over the years with the result that a number of the works by major American painters are seldom seen. This exhibition will explore some of the American riches found in storage and will feature key works of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries housed in the Art Center's vault. Among the artists featured are John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Sanford Gifford, George Inness, William Merritt Chase, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur B. Davies, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson, Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Ben Shahn." 

39:23 minutes.

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Mary-Kay Lombino

October 21, 2015.

Mary Kay Lombino, Emily Hargroves Fisher 1957 and Richard B. Fisher Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, discusses the exhibition on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center September 25 - December 13, 2015 entitled “Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument."

“Gordon Parks was one of America’s most significant social photographers, filmmakers, and writers of the twentieth century, and the first African-American photographer to work for Life magazine. In 1948, he began a professional relationship with Life that would last twenty-two years when he proposed a series of pictures about the gang wars that were then plaguing Harlem. Parks gained the trust of one group of gang members and their leader Red Jackson, producing photographs of them that are artful, emotive, poignant, and sometimes shocking. From this larger body of work, twenty-one pictures were selected for a photo essay in Life. The exhibition comprises forty-five prints alongside contact sheets, issues of the original publication, and related ephemera that both contextualize the images chosen for the story and suggest the ways in which the editorial process shapes the narrative arc."

37:40 minutes.

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