The Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report the Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report Year in Review
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the walters art museum 2005 annual report The Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report Year in Review A Message From the Director Exhibitions Acquisitions Donors Staff Volunteers Board of Trustees Financial Information Index of Artwork 2 The Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report Year in Review A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR Walters in enumerable ways for more National Gallery, London. It was as if D EAR F RIENDS: than thirty years. the artist and the building’s architect, This has been an exciting year for Our fall exhibition, The Road to William Adams Delano, had conspired bringing art and people together at the Impressionism: Landscapes from Corot to to find the most perfect union of wall Walters Art Museum. FY2005 began Monet, was not only a visual delight and and canvas. Stubbs and the Horse was not with the opening of a new gallery that critical success, it was a demonstration only critically acclaimed, it was a hit substantially enhanced the museum’s to us all of the extraordinary strength of with many in our region who love international standing in the arts of the Walters’ own Barbizon holdings— horses, from breeders and adult riders to Asia: The John and Berthe Ford Gallery perhaps the finest of any American scores of children who were then of the Art of India, Nepal, and Tibet. museum. And as an added bonus, we learning to ride and drew whimsical The former restaurant space in the discovered in our own storage, as part of pictures of their own horses in the Hackerman House became, in July 2004, research for the show, a Corot and what visitor comment book. A special thanks the permanent home for this stunning may be a Courbet! For this we thank the goes to our lead sponsors, Brown collection that opened as a temporary Women’s Committee of the Walters, a Advisory, Fancy Hill Foundation, and exhibition, Desire and Devotion, in late tireless group of museum supporters Howard and Martha Head Foundation 2001 and subsequently toured who sponsored the show. for helping us bring Whistlejacket and the internationally. Generations to come many amazing paintings by George But what could possibly top the star will owe a profound debt of gratitude to Stubbs to Baltimore. the Fords, who personify the highest of our spring show, Stubbs and the Horse? Two unusual opportunities for discernment in collecting and the most There, on the end wall of our second collections sharing fell in FY2005. generous and enlightened philanthropy; gallery, the grandest and stateliest in the Masterworks of medieval art—including indeed, John and Berthe have museum, rose the magnificent America’s finest Byzantine icon (St. demonstrated their devotion to the Whistlejacket, the greatest Stubbs of all, and the most beloved painting in the Peter)—began an extended visit to our 3 The Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report Year in Review medieval galleries from the galleries of one of the most sumptuous work of our Strategic Expansion Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., manuscripts ever produced by the Committee, chaired by Andrea Laporte. as that facility was undergoing a major Mughal court of India—21 from the The committee was formed as an renovation. This was an example of Walters and eight from the extension of our FY2004 Strategic Plan, “strength to strength,” for the benefit of Metropolitan Museum of Art in New in recognition of the fact that the our visitors. Also to their benefit, but York, where the show went after it closed Walters is facing critical space challenges indirectly, was the extended loan of 55 in Baltimore. All three museums—the in its existing buildings for collections works of medieval art from the Walters Walters, the BMA, and the Met—were display, both permanent and temporary to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in able, through these creative (thus, the Ford Collection supplanting Nashville, Tennessee, which came to a collaborations, to bring quality art the restaurant), for art storage, our close in August 2004. In response to this experiences to their visitors which none conservation lab and library, for staff three-year loan, the Frist supported could have so fully achieved alone. offices, and for educational and family curatorial and conservation programs This has been an exciting and programs. The first major outcome of here at the Walters which we otherwise successful year for the Walters, and as it the committee’s work was realized in could not afford ourselves. drew to a close, we found ourselves on December 2005; namely, the purchase of Finally, I want to draw attention to a the threshold of reopening our 100 West Centre Street from the compelling juxtaposition of exhibitions renovated and reinstalled Palazzo with Maryland Historical Society. Now, that closed out the year: The Essence of our magnificent holdings of looking forward, we have many Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas Renaissance and Baroque art. And we attractive options to consider. and Pearls of the Parrot of India. Both were did, in October 2005, on time, on collaborations, and both traveled. The budget, and on beauty! Gary Vikan, former brought together the finest Looking even farther to the future but Director French drawings of the Walters and the firmly anchored in FY2005, was the Baltimore Museum of Art—with an enormous scholarly catalogue and its own website—and traveled on to Birmingham, Alabama and Tacoma, Washington. Both the Walters and the BMA venues of the show were sponsored by the Von Hess Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, while the Walters exhibition received support from our dear friends Jay and Stephanie Wilson, Peter and Millicent Bain, and Eleanor Abell Owen. And the latter, another great project supported by the Carpenter Foundation, brought together 29 surviving full-page illustrations, as well as ornamental pages and the cover, from 4 The Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report Year in Review EXHIBITIONS TEMPORARY EXHIBITIONS Barbizon artists both in terms of their out- doors paintings and their studio works The John and Berthe Ford Gallery inspired by the process of memory. Drawn from the Walters’ collection and comple- of the Art of India, Nepal, and mented by loans from the Baltimore Tibet Museum of Art, the exhibition presented 70 Opened July 3, 2004 works of art, consisting of 40 paintings, 14 Ninety-one works of art were installed in drawings, 12 prints, and four artists’ the new gallery for the art of India, Nepal, palettes. There was also an interactive and Tibet. The gallery is named for John gallery. The Road to Impressionism was gener- and Berthe Ford, and most of the artworks ously supported by the Women’s on view were acquired by them; each year Committee of the Walters Art Museum. objects from their collection become part of the permanent holdings of the Walters. Stubbs and the Horse Nearly all of these works of art were made March 13–June 5, 2005 Baltimore venue were Brown Advisory, for places of worship—from Indian stone George Stubbs (1724–1806) was a versatile Fancy Hill Foundation, and Howard and temples honoring Hindu gods to Tibetan artistic genius whose work includes paint- Martha Head Fund, Inc. Contributing Buddhist monasteries where revered teach- ings, prints, and detailed anatomical stud- sponsors included Audi of Hunt Valley, ers gave lessons in secret techniques of ies. His many images of horses show a clas- Maryland Horse Breeders Association & meditation. sical beauty, expressiveness, and heroism Dark Hollow Farm, Maryland previously reserved for human figures. This Saddlery/Hope Birsh & Stephen Plakotoris, The Road to Impressionism: was the first major exhibition to focus on Miss Dorothy McIlvain Scott, and Mr. and Landscapes from Corot to Monet this central theme in Stubbs’s work, from Mrs. M. David Testa. Additional support refined portraits of race horses to dramat- October 3, 2004–January 17, 2005 was provided by Alex. Brown & Sons ic scenes of horses attacked by lions in the The innovations made by the painters asso- Charitable Foundation, Inc., Frank and wild, and celebrated the artist whom many ciated with the Barbizon school led to the Helen Bonsal, Richard and Rosalee consider to be the greatest painter of hors- development of Impressionism. The exhibi- Davison, Hannah and Thorne Gould, Legg es in the history of art. The exhibition of 61 tion explored the wide range of the Mason Trust, F.S.B., Sotheby’s, and The works included 28 paintings, 18 drawings, Barbizon artists (including Théodore Stiles Ewing Tuttle Charitable Trust; Mr. three books, two enamels, and 10 etchings, Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Camille Stiles T. Colwill and Mr. Jonathan Gargiulo. mezzotints, and engravings. Stubbs and the Corot, and Charles-François Daubigny), Horse was organized by the Kimbell Art from forest scenes to stormy seascapes, Museum, Fort Worth, in association with Byzantine Art from the from scenes of bright sunlight to atmos- the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, and Dumbarton Oaks Collection pheric moonlight, and from moving pic- the National Gallery, London. The exhibi- tures of peasant hardship to humorous April 27, 2005–TDB tion is supported by an indemnity from the depictions of leisurely boat trips. It focused Dumbarton Oaks closed for renovation at Federal Council on the Arts and the on the importance of place for the the end of 2004. Its Byzantine collection Humanities. The lead sponsors for the (4th–15th centuries) ranks among the most 5 The Walters Art Museum 2005 Annual Report Year in Review 06–9-17-06). The exhibition was organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum with funding provided by The Richard C. von Hess Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.