Andy Warhol photographs gifted to Myhren Gallery
Semyon Fridlyand Archive at DU
Restoring the John Thompson mural in Marjory Reed
Buchan and Rönnebeck artworks at the Newman Center
Myhren Gallery to receive gift of Andy Warhol photographs
Gift from Andy Warhol Foundation’s Photographic Legacy Program boosts DU Art Collection and provides opportunities for teaching and viewing
The University of Denver is pleased to announce that it is among the colleges and universities to receive an unprecedented gift of Andy Warhol photographs from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. DU’s Victoria H. Myhren Gallery will receive approximately 150 original Polaroid and gelatin silver prints selected by Jenny Moore, curator of the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program. The gift program will benefit college and university art museums across the U.S. “A wealth of information about Warhol’s process and his interactions with his sitters is revealed in these images,” notes Moore. “Through his rigorous – though almost unconscious – consistency in shooting, the true idiosyncrasies of his subjects were revealed.”
Dan Jacobs, director of the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery and curator of University Art Collections at DU, comments that “in-depth holdings by 20th century masters provide the foundations for our collections of works on paper. This gift of photographs by Andy Warhol will be highly valued both within our program and beyond.” Already in the DU art collection is a remarkable example of the 1967 Warhol poster for the New York Film Festival.
Jacobs will use the Warhol Foundation gift in exhibition as well as teaching settings. In connection with this gift, an exhibition entitled “Andy Warhol comes to Colorado” has been scheduled for the 2008-2009 Myhren Gallery exhibition schedule. Beginning January 9, 2009, the exhibition will feature photographs, films, and other artworks by Warhol as well as by Denver-based artists with direct connections to Warhol’s fabled Factory studio in New York City. Christoph Heinrich, noted Warhol scholar and Polly and Mark Addison Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Denver Art Museum, will contribute the essay for an accompanying publication.
University of Denver preserves Soviet-era photography archive
Archive collage by Sean Gyshen Fennell
Digital archiving and preservation of items sets standards for speed and technical process
DENVER—Faculty, staff and students at the University of Denver are now engaged in a complex digital archiving effort to digitize and catalog the Semyon Fridlyand Archive. This mssive archive includes B&W and color film negatives, glass plates, and vintage and period prints of many images taken by the Soviet-era photographer during his lifetime (1906-1964). The archive is being made available to the public in three stages: i) inventorying, scanning, and storing all items; ii) an exhibition and catalog at the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery; and iii) an on-line repository containing the images and metadata.
As an institution interested in and committed to the preservation of significant photographic collections, the University of Denver is developing capabilities for presenting works and disseminating information efficiently and comprehensively. The Fridlyand Archive project is conducted by the University of Denver with support from Russ and Cathy Dalbey and the Dalbey Education Institute.
Fridlyand, an idealistic young Jewish photographer who later became photo editor of Ogonyok (the Soviet Union’s version of Life magazine), built his career documenting the emergence of Soviet society. His archive remained with his family in Moscow for four decades until it came to the United States in 2005. It is now housed at the University of Denver.
“On the Road: Photography of the Soviet Empire,” the first major exhibition dedicated to Fridlyand’s work, opened at the Myhren Gallery in March 2008. The project was curated by Dan Jacobs, director of the Myhren Gallery, and Professor David Shneer, director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. The exhibition is accompanied by a 72-page catalog with essays by Shneer and Jacobs, and more than 60 B&W and color images. Exhibition dates are March 6, 2008 - May 4, 2008. “On the Road” is a joint project of the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery and the Center for Judaic Studies, University of Denver.
Archiving is expected to be completed by the fall of 2008. Over 12,000 images have already been scanned. Digital files are delivered to the Alliance Digital Repository (ADR) on an external hard drive and uploaded to secure servers. The images and associated data are then transferred to a database where they are made available to catalogers working online for the Archive. These professional catalogers are in the process of creating and standardizing information about each image; for example, assigning titles and key words. The full catalog entries will allow users to search for and locate images on the ADR public website when it is released later in 2008.
For more information about the Fridlyand Archive on-line click here.
Above left: Student Interns Nicole Saint and Stefani Schulte, who are rising seniors in the SAAH pre-art-conservation program, worked on the John Thompson mural restoration project over the summer. At right, an area of the mural previously covered by paint is revealed at the April forum.
Unknown to most people, the 350-sq. ft. proscenium that frames the DU’s Little Theatre at Margery Reed Hall, boasts a unique mural that has long been covered by layer on layer of black paint and construction materials. Created by the Colorado Modernist painter John Edward Thompson in 1929, the vandalized mural features a number of scenes from Shakespeare, and includes the figures of Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and the three crones from Macbeth, as well as a portrait of the great bard himself. The mural was painted over in 1931 and then largely forgotten. Over the years it's foundation has been badly damaged by set construction and various renovations, but through the efforts of DU's Victoria H. Myhren Gallery and the Daniels School of Business, it is now the subject of a two-year project of cleaning, stabilization, and restoration.
On April 6, 2008, pre-conservation students Nicole Saint and Stefani Schulte, DU Art Collections curator Dan Jacobs, and others spoke at a public forum in the theater and displayed the conservators' progress over the past six months. More than 60 per cent of the cleaning phase is now complete, and major damage to the surface has been repaired.
Richard Chapman's report on the April 6 event can be found at: http://du.edu/today/stories/2008/04/2008-04-08-mural.html
Other related articles:
Curator Jacobs is digging, discovering plenty of art gems on campus
Historic mural hidden in Margery Reed Hall
Buchan and Rönnebeck artworks to be installed in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts
Left: Marion Buchan, Harlequin. Aluminum-filled plastic putty over steel armature, c.1957
Right: Arnold Rönnebeck: Trio and Tone Shapes. Bronze cast, no. 1 of 2, 2007, approved by the estate of the artist. University of Denver Art Collection
Six works from the DU Art Collection, including Marion Buchan's Harlequin and Arnold Rönnebeck's bronze relief entitled Trio and Tone Shapes, are to be installed in the Newman Center for the Performing Arts this April, 2008. Harlequin was one of several near life-size treatments of the subject by Buchan, who was Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at DU’s School of Art, c. 1944-1958. This version was commissioned by Campton Bell, Theatre Department chairman, around 1957. In 1993, it was removed from the lobby of the Lamont School of Music, which was then located in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. Harlequin was professionally restored in 2002 and prepared for long-term installation at the Robert and Judi Newman Center for the Performing Arts. Restoration was generously supported by the Save Outdoor Sculpture! Foundation and by Holly Buchan.
Trio and Tone Shapes was an unrealized 1939 commission for a Denver Public Schools auditorium. A 1968 verbal account indicates that the piece was rejected by DPS as being “too modern”. The relief was retrieved from the Hosek Manufacturing Company by Vance Kirkland in 1968 and was incorporated into the University’s art collections. Arnold Rönnebeck was an Instructor in Sculpture at DU’s School of Art from 1929-1935. The 2007 casts were taken from the painted plaster original; the remaining bronze resides in the collection of Denver’s Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art.
The University gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of the family and estate of Arnold Rönnebeck, and the support of the JFM Foundation, which provided funds for the casting of this artwork, made at the Fedde Bronze Works, Denver. Trio and Tone Shapes was exhibited in the Myhren Gallery's 2006 exhibition Eight Painters and Sculptors at the University of Denver 1930-1965.
Other works to be on permanent display at the Newman Center are a painting of the Mandala of Chenrezig created at the Thangde Gatsal Studio, Dharamsala, India; an illuminated manuscript page painted on vellum parchment in northern Italy or France, c. 1380-1420; and Play It Again, Philippe (The hands of Philippe Entremont) a mixed media sculpture from 1988 by Lee Milmon (1940-2005).
Play It Again, Philippe was donated by Lee Milmon's family in memory of the artist, a graduate of the School of Art. The Mandala of Chenrezig is a gift of Professors Roscoe Hill and Sheila Wright in honor of Lobsang and Sarika, and the DU students who participated in Project Dharamsala, 2004. The illuminated manuscript page is a gift of the Carol Margolin Family.
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