Join us for a virtual tour of Luce Visible Storage, one of the gems of the Luce Center for Amer

Join us for a virtual tour of Luce Visible Storage, one of the gems of the Luce Center for American Art! While only a fraction of the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings are on view in the galleries, Luce Visible Storage gives open access to some 2,000 works in storage for visitors, scholars, and students to view and research. Let’s take a look at some of the collections.Created by Jane Dini, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator, American Art, Catherine Futter, Senior Curator, Decorative Arts, Margarita Karasoulas, Assistant Curator, American Art, Nancy Rosoff, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator, Arts of the Americas, and Elizabeth St. George, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts.Gaston Lachaise’s monumental Standing Woman is among one of the larger-than-life-size sculptures visitors encounter in Luce Visible Storage. The pronounced contrapposto of the figure’s pose evokes classical traditions, while the robust proportions and sensuous treatment of the female form recall Paleolithic fertility figures. This sculpture is a pictorial homage to the artist’s model and muse (and later wife) Isabel Nagel, who inspired numerous other works. The Brooklyn Museum’s collection is particularly strong in direct carving, where sculptors carved directly on the chosen material, whether wood or stone, and advocated “truth to materials.” Many of these modernist artists were recent immigrants to the United States. The French-born sculptor Robert Laurent studied under the painter Hamilton Easter Field in Brooklyn Heights. Carved out of alabaster and weighing nearly two hundred pounds, Robert Laurent’s The Bather depicts an idealized, nude female figure in a dynamic pose, her finely carved hair cascading over her body. Laurent preferred working with this material, noting that “…the beauty of alabaster is its transparency. This is what gives it life and vibration.” Upon moving to New York City in 1914, Polish-born sculptor Elie Nadelman earned acclaim for his early idealized and classical heads such as La Mysterieuse. Here, rhythmic, curvilinear shapes imbue the sculpture with a sense of dynamism. As Nadelman once acknowledged, “I employ no other line than the curve.” A protégé of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, Malvina Hoffmann was one of the foremost women artists of the twentieth century. Inspired by her travels in North Africa in the late 1920s, Martinique Woman (1928) anticipates Hoffmann’s later work on The Races of Mankind for the Field Museum. Although the work represents a racial type, its modernized realism signals a deliberate break with earlier treatments of African subjects ranging from caricature to romanticism.This screen features the museum’s important collection of early twentieth century modernism, including, in the bottom-right corner, Marsden Hartley’s Handsome Drinks from 1915.Responding to the 1915 downing of the RMS Lusitania (or LUS) by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland, Hartley implores the countries united in response—the United States represented as a Manhattan cocktail flanked by France as a glass of absinthe and the United Kingdom as a cup of tea, to “Forgive (or LOGH in Irish) the blockhead,” or boche an offensive term for a German soldier. The flaming chalice underscores this plea for unity and peace a year before the United States officially entered into the First World War.In addition to sculpture and painting, decorative arts also abound in Luce Visible Storage.The museum has a large collection of objects made by Tiffany Studios (formerly in Corona, Queens) including this lamp with delicately cut shades of glass in green, pink, and purple. Each Tiffany lamp has an original composition, many designed by women.  If it seems like the museum has a lot of chairs, it does. The Museum has an exceptional collection of American chairs from the 1700s to today. The form is an excellent way for designers to express themselves with different styles, materials, and forms.Folding chairs are not a new invention. During the 1860s and 1870s, George Hunzinger, of Brooklyn and Manhattan, manufactured this folding chair that seems to combine function with upholstered comfort. This charming pair of singing Zacatecas ceramic figures from Jalisco, West Mexico may represent a married couple or founders of an ancestral lineage. Placed in tombs to accompany the dead, these animated sculptures reveal aspects of ancient Mexican life over 1,800 years ago. The man’s fashionable antennae-like hairstyle was probably achieved by wrapping hair around an interior support, and the painted designs on their bodies may represent tattooing. Amid the display of Native American pottery, storage boxes, and eating utensils, this elk-horn spoon dating from the late 19th century was carved and used by Yurok men to eat an acorn-mush cereal. Today, the Yurok are the largest tribe in California with over 5,000 enrolled members.This polychrome, wooden statue of Saint Joseph dates from the 19th century and reportedly comes from the church in Zia Pueblo in New Mexico, where it was likely displayed on a sanctuary table. The unidentified artist was likely Native American or of Mexican-Hispanic heritage. Present-day New Mexico was the northernmost frontier of the Spanish Colonial Empire, until Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. Its remoteness encouraged the development of religious folk images that differed greatly from their European-inspired counterparts such as the Virgin displayed nearby.This exquisitely inlaid box from present-day Peru or Bolivia, was likely used to store coca leaves. During the 18th century, such luxury items were prominently displayed in affluent Spanish American homes to underscore the owner’s wealth and social status. Coca-leaf teas were, and continue to be popular as a mild stimulant. Thank you for joining us on a tour of Luce Visible Storage! Missed one of our other virtual tours? Check them all out here.  Installation Views of Luce Visible Storage (Photo: Jonathan Dorado)  -- source link
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