Tag Archives: memories

Art and Wellness: Creative Aging Exhibition 2014

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With our Art and Wellness: Creative Aging exhibition the Phillips celebrates our ongoing collaboration with Iona Senior Services. The program encourages older adults (many of whom suffer from chronic illness, including Alzheimer’s or related dementia), along with their families and caregivers, to make connections and access personal experiences and long-term memories through gallery conversations and hands-on art therapy. In October, the Phillips opened Art and Wellness featuring over 60 artworks created as a part of the program.

Our colleagues at Iona created this video to celebrate the opening reception for the exhibition, which brought over 150 participants to the museum, including many artists and their families. One visitor shared, “Everyone has a gift and a story to tell. What an inspiring exhibit with so much more to come.” A family member stated, “In a society that often sets seniors aside, you tell them they make a contribution to us all. Through art, seniors can be seen anew and valued.” An artist featured in the exhibition said, “It is always a thrill to visit the Phillips and to have my work on display is an inordinate pleasure!”

Memories and Peto’s Old Time Card Rack

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The Phillips is currently hosting the exhibition Art and Wellness: Creative Aging. The display features work from our program which encourages older adults (many of whom suffer from Alzheimer’s or related dementia), along with their families and caregivers, to make connections and access personal experiences and long-term memories through gallery conversations and hands-on art therapy. It is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Phillips Collection and Iona Senior Services.

Through the program, we looked at John Frederick Peto’s Old Time Card Rack. Memories and personal mementos played an important role during a conversation about the painting. Members of the group first noticed the “well worn” and “very old” objects in the picture. One individual said he thought the artwork seemed to be about “memories of one time or another.”

The exploration continued in the art therapy studio at Iona. Members of the group created their own containers of memories, or memory boxes. Pictures and important objects were shared and discussed. One individual, Susan, used this process to reconnect with her mother. She made the work pictured below. She said, “I wanted to honor my mom because I miss her and love her dearly…. This is my tribute to her.”

(Left) John Frederick Peto, Old Time Card Rack, 1900. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. Acquired 1939. The Phillips Collection. (Right) Susan Meyers, Momma—Earlier Days, 2013. Mixed Media.

(Left) John Frederick Peto, Old Time Card Rack, 1900. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. Acquired 1939. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. (Right) Susan Meyers, Momma—Earlier Days, 2013. Mixed Media.

Museum and Memory: Part four

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Titian (1488-1576), Sacred and Profane Love, c. 1513-1514. Oil on canvas, 46 x 110 in. Galleria Borghese, Rome

This is the fourth installment of our Museum and Memory series for International Museum Day. Read parts one, two, and three.

It was a sultry day in the fall of 2001 when I went traipsing through Rome’s Borghese gardens on a quest. My mission was to see a famous painting housed in the Villa Borghese’s painting gallery, the Pinacoteca, for a Venetian Renaissance art class I was taking. I was a recent transfer to a university in Rome and had committed to move abroad for two years to complete my undergraduate degree as an art history major. Although I had been an art aficionado since childhood, I hadn’t yet truly fallen in love—until then.

As I said, it was hot. I had a delicious gelato on my walk over (raspberry and vanilla, I distinctly remember). I was still licking my lips while waiting in line to enter the Pinacoteca. As my ticket was timed, I only had about an hour to find the painting and gather my thoughts for the essay before heading out. I climbed the narrow stone spiral stairs that led to the upstairs galleries and began my search.

I wandered amongst stately Raphael tondi and statues of slumbering putti before rounding the corner to the very last gallery when I saw it. It stopped me in my tracks. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love was lush, ripe, and sensuous.  The dense, glazed layers of paint didn’t just sit on the canvas, they glowed. The citrusy red and creamy white drapery that caressed the pale flesh of Titian’s female protagonists made me swoon. I wanted to lick those colors right off the canvas, convinced that they would taste like the raspberry and vanilla gelato I had just eaten. It was, without a doubt, the first moment that I realized art could physically grab you by the lapels, or, in this case, seduce you at first glance.

That moment is what has directed my course ever since and is arguably why I find myself working in a museum years later. I live for these moments with an artwork that leave me so smitten, moved, or jarred that everything else melts away.

Amanda Jirón-Murphy, In-Gallery Interpretation and Public Programs Coordinator