Denise Allen Wins AAMC Award
May 14, 2012
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Denise Allen was formerly a curator at The Frick Collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
May 14, 2012
Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) and Claude Michel, called Clodion (1738–1814), were two of the foremost sculptors in France during the late eighteenth century, and the Frick housed an important group of their works. In 1915 founder Henry Clay Frick acquired Clodion’s terracotta Zephyrus and Flora and, the following year, Houdon’s marble bust of the Comtesse du Cayla. Other works that were subsequently added to the collection were shown together for the first time, highlighting the artists’ expressive ranges, as well as their defining contributions to the sculpture of Enlightenment-era France. MORE »
The Frick Collection was the only venue for the first public exhibition of this private collection devoted to the bronze figurative statuette. The nearly forty sculptures included in the show were of exceptional quality and span the fifteenth through the eighteenth century, exemplifying the genre from its beginnings in Renaissance Italy to its dissemination across the artistic centers of Europe. The Hill Collection is distinguished by rare, autograph masterpieces by Italian sculptors such as Andrea Riccio, Giambologna, and Giuseppe Piamontini. MORE »
George Stubbs (1724–1806): A Celebration, an exhibition of approximately twenty paintings by the celebrated artist, came in early 2007 to The Frick Collection, its only North American venue. The exhibition marked the bicentenary of Stubbs’s death by presenting some of his greatest contributions to the tradition of British eighteenth-century painting, all notable for their originality and beauty.
Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525–80): Bronze Sculptures of the Renaissance
The Frick Collection presented the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Andrea Riccio (1470–1532), one of the most creative sculptors of the Renaissance. On view were thirty-one autograph works representing every phase of Riccio’s career, three bronzes believed to be derived from the artist’s lost compositions, and two life-size terracotta sculptures. Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze was shown exclusively at The Frick Collection.
One of the most familiar and beloved paintings at The Frick Collection, Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert (c. 1480), is also deeply enigmatic. The artist has imagined this medieval saint alone in a stony wilderness, stepping forward from his simple shelter into a golden light that seems to transfigure him spiritually. For centuries, viewers of this masterpiece have puzzled over the meaning of Bellini’s composition and have sought explanations in a variety of pictorial and textual sources.
Anne L. Poulet, Director Emerita of The Frick Collection, introduces the current exhibition Enlightenment and Beauty: Sculptures by Houdon and Clodion, on view at the Frick until April 5, 2015. This video will be on view in the Music Room at the Frick during the run of the exhibition.
Frick Director Ian Wardropper interviews Janine and J. Tomilson Hill about the exhibition Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Hill Collection, on view at the Frick until June 15, 2014. This video will be shown in the Music Room during the run of the exhibition.
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