Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Research: Worcester Art Museum "Then and Now" by Travis Simpkins. Update #3

     - In the first photo from 1910, the grandly ornate plaster casts of Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" and Michelangelo's "Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici" are in stark contrast to the minimalist decor of the Contemporary Gallery today. While this room now serves a single purpose, up until the late 1990's it was a multi-functional auditorium... hosting everything from academic lectures to Alfred Hitchcock Film Festivals. If you enter the gallery and face right, the outlines of the door and window to the projection room are still visible on the wall.
     - Beyond the color and positioning of the partition walls (and the presence of potted plants), the second photo doesn't show any drastic changes in the PDP Gallery over a 30 year gap. The 1984 photo depicts the gallery shortly after the Hiatt Wing was opened, the corner stone of which was set the previous year. The star of that 1984 exhibition was clearly the 1735 pastel "Portrait of Charlotte Philippine de Chatre de Cange, Marquise de Lamure" by Charles Coypel, shown in the gilded frame on the center oblique wall.
     - The third contrast, compares the two most recent incarnations of the Jeppson Gallery... first as the American Impressionism space, with Winslow Homer's "The Gale" at center, and now as the multi-media Jeppson Idea Lab with Michael Benson's "Carina Nebula" as the focus.


     -The sketch depicts the wonderful 3rd - 4th Century marble figure of the flayed satyr "Marsyas" in the Roman Gallery.

2nd Floor (West Gallery). Worcester Art Museum. by Travis Simpkins

1st Floor (Hiatt Wing). Worcester Art Museum. by Travis Simpkins

3rd Floor (Idea Lab). Worcester Art Museum. by Travis Simpkins

Marsyas, 400 A.D. Worcester Art Museum. by Travis Simpkins