July, August, September 2013 MFA Transformed: A Landmark Renewed Director’s Welcome Dear Friends, This summer you can visit our national parks – at the MFA. Curatorial Assistant Sabrina Hughes has organized the stunning Pleasure Grounds and Restoring Spaces: Photographs of our National Parks. This exhibition features some of the best images in our collection by the likes of Ansel Adams and Florida’s own Clyde Butcher and Jerry Uelsmann. Color Acting: Abstraction since 1950 is just as impressive. As the title suggests, this exhibition is bursting with color. Katherine Pill, our new Assistant Curator of Art after 1950, has taken a fresh look at our collection and has borrowed Stuart Society President Charlotte Kendall (left) presents the historic check several cutting-edge, contemporary works. This to President of the Board Howard Mills and Curator of Public Programs Anna show will change the way you perceive and Glenn at the final general meeting of the season on May 16. This impressive experience color. contribution will support exhibitions and educational programs. We also have a wealth of summer programs – our Marly Music concerts, our Dinner and Jazz Series, Coffee Talks with the ever popular Nan Colton, New Summer Admission Fees and UNCHartED: Random Acts of Culture on Thursday night, including “The Great Outdoors” The Museum of Fine Arts is opening its doors – wide – on July 18. Bring the entire family for the fly-fishing this summer. Admission is now $10 for everyone through demonstrations, campfire stories, music, and more. September 30, 2013. Groups of 10 or more adults pay only $8 each and groups of 10 or more students, $4 per person. As you probably know, we are in the midst of renovating and transforming our galleries, The On Thursday nights, when the Museum presents Great Hall, and the Marly Room in the original “UNCHartED: Random Acts of Culture,” college students building. At the end, we will reinstall our with current I.D. pay $5 or can buy one admission, get one extraordinary collection. The art – and our interior free. – will shine. We could not present so many exciting exhibitions and educational programs without the support of you, our members. You have already received a letter asking you to contribute to Annual Giving, and many of you have already responded – generously. Thank you so much. If you have not yet donated, please consider sending your gift today. We need your help. I look forward to seeing you at the Museum. Sincerely, Kent Lydecker Director On the cover: Magical light will illuminate The Great Hall by the end of the renovation project. Entire families enjoyed Painting in the Park on April 28 on the north lawn. Singers Museum Photographs: Thomas U. Gessler and Bridget Bryson from Opera Tampa performed. Amley and Amley Orthodontics was the sponsor. All Museum educational programs are supported in part by The Stuart Society. 2 3 • The Marly Room, added in 1974, has a window at the back of the stage that will be restored, giving this elegant lecture and concert hall a new personality, but one that harks back to the original architecture. • The ancient Antioch mosaic will be installed on a wall, receiving the attention it deserves. The goal is to open up the Museum to its spectacular setting and to spotlight the collection like never before. The MFA’s treasures The MFA is renovating the galleries housing our distinguished will be reinstalled in fresh, imaginative ways. More African and collection. We are replacing tired and worn carpeting and ceramic art, to name just two areas, will come out of storage. The wall-coverings. In select galleries, solid-wood floors will shine. spaces and lighting will enliven the art. Get Involved Make a Difference Please join us as we transform the original building. There are many giving levels for individuals, corporations, and foundations. As the gifted American artist Robert Henri wrote: “Art when really understood is the province of every human being.” Please contact Associate Director for Advancement Don Howe for more information: [email protected] or 727.896.2667, ext. 231. All queries will be held in the strictest confidence. Design Advisor The ancient Antioch mosaic, weighting approximately 1,000 pounds, had to be moved The Museum has reached out to one of the most respected to renovate the galleries. It is now safely resting below the Marly Room stage. designers in the field to guide this project. Jeffrey Daly, now leading his own firm, was the former Chief Exhibition Designer and Senior Design Advisor to the Director at the Metropolitan Lighting will be enhanced and made more energy-efficient. Museum of Art in New York for more than 28 years. The interior of the original building, designed by John Volk and Associates, will be revitalized. Museum Founder Margaret Mr. Daly worked closely with the Acheson Stuart (1896-1980) played a major role in designing “a legendary Philippe de Montebello museum for St. Petersburg.” The galleries in The Frick Collection and led the famed renovation and in New York were her inspiration. Striking details, hidden for installation design of the Greek many years, will once again emerge. Just a few follow: and Roman galleries. Architectural Record wrote that “the Met’s new • The Great Hall Greek and Roman Galleries by has a skylight. Jeffrey Daly, sun-flooded and Magical light majestic, merit a high place among will enter this recent museum successes.” He did space, providing similar honors for the galleries of a link to The Egyptian art, twentieth-century Mary Alice works, and Southeast Asian and McClendon Chinese objects, and collaborated Conservatory. with curators on more than 1,000 • Scrims will be exhibitions. His designs for Diana removed on Vreeland’s major costume shows received rave reviews, and the windows he produced the installation design for Jacqueline Kennedy: The facing Beach White House Years. Drive, revealing artistic In addition, Mr. Daly has led consultations and projects for grillwork. Gracie Mansion, the New York mayor’s residence, and the Filtered light Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, also in will enter that city; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Gibbes Museum the galleries of Art in Charleston, South Carolina; and the Miho Museum in and strategic Kyoto, Japan, where he consulted with the great architect I.M. lighting at Pei. He was involved in the premiere installation of The Andy night will The windows facing Beach Drive will once again let in filtered Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and is the annual designer for encourage light and reveal beautiful grillwork. Generous supporter Arlene Fillinger Rothman, who has underwritten the restoration of New York’s Winter Antiques Show. pedestrians to the windows, is pictured with Facilities Manager J.P. Fatseas. look inside. 3 CURRENT | UPCOMING | EXHIBITIONS Pleasure Grounds and Restoring Spaces: Photographs of our National Parks Through Sunday, October 6 At once seemingly untouched and ripe for development, the American landscape has always fueled the imagination of artists. In the face of rapid industrialization, President Theodore Roosevelt Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) (1858–1919) and naturalist John Muir (1838–1914) led Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, the urgent call to protect America’s bounty. California (about 1940, printed about 1970) Gelatin silver print Museum Purchase with funds provided by National Endowment for the Arts and Fine Arts Council of Florida grants I want to show people that there is a unity between all Photo used with permission of The Trustees of The Ansel undisturbed natural places, whether the peak of a renowned Adams Publishing Rights Trust. All Rights Reserved. mountain range or a steam-bed in an urban watershed. Pleasure Grounds and Restoring Spaces, organized by Curatorial — Clyde Butcher Assistant Sabrina Hughes, primarily features images depicting national and state parks and landmarks. The earliest date from Photography not only inspired conservation, but also the 1860s, including albumen prints by Carleton Watkins, popularized new tourist sites, aligning nature with American Timothy H. O’Sullivan, and William H. Jackson and an values. Many photographers like Ansel Adams, who is ambrotype of Niagara Falls by Platt D. Babbitt. These images represented by four of his most stunning and famous were created to elicit and satisfy the curiosity of the public and photographs, have been very influential in defending our for government and commercial topographical surveys. For environment. the first time, spectacular Western sites were seen by a wide audience largely unable to travel to these destinations. Iconic vistas by Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter urged viewers to heed the call of conservation. Aaron Siskind and Brett Weston abstracted elements of the landscape, narrowing the focus and offering a modernist perspective. Jerry Uelsmann, who established the photography program at the University of Florida, and John Pfahl impose their own style rather than recreate popular views. Florida meets the West in Uelsmann’s richly imaginative Flamingos Visit Yosemite (1985). Floridian Clyde Butcher’s two large-scale photographs in the exhibition spotlight the state’s wild beauty – a beauty always under pressure from developers. His magnificent Ochopee #2 (1985) is of the greater Everglades, which has inspired some of his best and best-known work. The exhibition spans a century and also reveals how key donors have built the Museum’s important photography collection. They include Carol A. Upham, Dr. Robert L. and Chitranee Drapkin, and more recently, Ludmila Platt D. Babbitt (American, 1822-1872) and Bruce Dandrew. Their passion for the art form has Niagara Falls (about 1860) transformed the Museum’s entire collection. Ambrotype Gift of Bonita L. Cobb in honor of Dr. Jennifer Hardin 4 5 Like Davis and Albers, Israeli artist Yaacov Agam (born in 1928) Color Acting: was represented in the famous Op Art exhibition The Responsive Eye (1965) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which Abstraction Since 1950 examined modes of visual perception.