Tag Archives: Main Gallery

Experiments in Installation: Part II

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This is the second in a series of posts from University of Virginia graduate student Tom Winters on his class’s experience installing works from our permanent collection in the Main Gallery. See part one here.

Photos: Joshua Navarro

During our first seminar meeting at The Phillips Collection, Friday, September 7, we emerge from the elevator, turn the corner, and encounter the Main Gallery for the first time, fortunate to arrive the moment at which works selected by Professor Turner are being hung. Our good timing affords an opportunity to do some improvisational rearranging. My own suggestion that we hang a group of four works in a diamond arrangement is met by the sort of kind incredulity duly reserved by nice people for only the most idiotic of proposals. Far more useful is the trained vision of Corey and Jennifer (I should note that Meryl was not with us on this occasion), whose former curatorial experiences harmonize with that of Professor Turner to reach a selection of works and an arrangement that we’re all happy with and, I feel, the Main Gallery space can be happy with. Currently on display around our lynchpin Tack are works by Marin, Hartley, Kandinsky, Sloan, Schwitters, Stieglitz, Matisse, Man Ray, Dove, and others. In the upcoming weeks some of these works may change as our thoughts evolve in relation to our themes. Wall texts and labels are in the pipeline.

Main Gallery installation featuring Charles Despiau, Head of Madame Derain, 1922. Cast plaster, 19 x 6 x 6 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Acquired 1928.

Tom Winters, UVa graduate student, Department of Art History

Experiments in Installation: Part I

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This is the first in a series of posts from University of Virginia graduate student Tom Winters on his class’s experience installing works from our permanent collection in the Main Gallery.

Main Gallery with European moderns and a wall of Marin watercolors, Tack, Egyptian Head, 1927. Photo: Phillips Collection Archives

For several years the University of Virginia has enjoyed a fruitful and highly beneficial relationship with The Phillips Collection, and faculty and students from UVa are excited to continue that relationship this fall semester. Under the guidance and following the inspiration of Professor Elizabeth Hutton Turner (former senior curator at the Phillips), I’m part of a team with graduate students Corey Piper and Jennifer Camp and advanced undergraduate Meryl Goldstein–all of us members of UVa’s Art History program–that has been given the opportunity to collaborate on the installation in the Main Gallery of an ensemble of works from the Phillips permanent collection. The project is a component of Professor Turner’s ‘American Modernisms’ seminar, a course focused on the emergence of modern art in America around the turn of the twentieth century, with particular emphasis given to the role of Alfred Stieglitz and his circle of artists. Professor Turner’s initial conception for the installation was provoked by a 1927 photo of the Main Gallery, a scene which prominently features Augustus Vincent Tack’s painting The Voice of Many Waters (c. 1923-4). Unable to procure that particular work at this particular time, we have installed Tack’s Night, Amargosa Desert (1935) in its place and gathered around it a selection of artworks that relate in various ways to the main topics of our seminar: Alfred Stieglitz, Duncan Phillips, and the emergence of modernist art in America. The exact nature of relationships between these artworks and themes remains to be fully determined and will hopefully grow to fruition over the next three months. So keep an eye on this blog. Or, perhaps more importantly, keep visiting the gallery.

Tom Winters, UVa graduate student, Department of Art History

The Boating Party is on the move

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A visit to The Phillips nearly always includes a viewing of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, usually located on the second floor. Starting on Tuesday, that party is moving on up.

Main Gallery with Renoir, 1951. Phillips Collection Archives.

As part of our 90th Anniversary celebration, the Luncheon of the Boating Party is being installed in its original location, our Main Gallery, with other early museum acquisitions. Though that famous group portrait certainly has stories to tell, the gallery itself has an important history, too.

Main Gallery in 1927 with skylight ceiling. Phillips Collection Archives.

Barbara Liotta, Icarus, 2009, in Main Gallery. Photo by Sarah Osborne Bender.

Built in May of 1920 as an addition to the Phillips house by famed architects McKim, Meade and White, the Main Gallery was the entirety of The Phillips Memorial Gallery when it officially opened in 1921. Originally the space was light-filled with a glass ceiling. Today, Sue Frank, Associate Curator of Research, describes the space as “beautifully proportioned” and “one of our most versatile spaces.” The gallery is generally hung with a selection from the permanent collection and occasionally used to extend special exhibitions displayed on the third floor. On rare occasions, the space is turned over to a particular artist, as it was recently for the Howard Hodgkin’s colossal prints. As Sue says, “[They] could not be featured in any other gallery in a complimentary fashion because of their size…” Intersections artist Barbara Liotta also used the space for her installation Icarus which resulted in a sparsely hung, but beautiful Main Gallery.

But who knows the Main Gallery best? Possibly our Museum Assistants who spend more time there, and in all of the galleries, than anyone. Tiffany Walls and Rolf Rykken both agree that the gallery, known as “2U” in M.A. lingo, is a quiet spot, good for contemplation. But Quinton Hugger says all that quiet is going to change once the Luncheon of the Boating Party arrives. Rolf remembers the last time the beloved painting was displayed in that gallery, in 2006 when it returned from a world tour. He said the installation in the Main Gallery made for a dramatic “wow” reaction. I can’t wait!