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July 2014

Vol. 156 | No. 1336

Editorial

In store at the National Gallery

It is commonly assumed that major museums and galleries have stores stuffed with works of art that are rarely shown and are deeply inaccessible to the public. The media in particular seems to relish this situation, complaining that works acquired with taxpayers’ money or through gift or bequest are not publicly on view. Of course there is some truth to the first part of this assumption, especially in the case of large national or city collections. But that they are difficult of access is by no means always the case. Appointments to see specific objects in store are relatively easy to make. Identifying what one wants to see has been made easier through online catalogues and, with paintings, the publications of the Public Catalogue Foundation (and the invaluable online resource ‘Your Paintings’). The per­vasive culture of ‘accessibility’ has only been of benefit in this regard. But complaints about overstuffed storerooms ignore the obvious practicalities of space and display to which museums that actively acquire are subject. Storage does indeed present problems. 

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Free review

Brancusi, Rosso, Man Ray

The exhibition Brancusi, Rosso, Man Ray: Framing Sculpture, at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (closed 25th May), featured three artists who are not the most obvious bedfellows. Brancusi is the modernist sculptor par excellence, all stream­lining and polish; Rosso is essentially a nineteenth-century Impressionist sculptor, all bumps and shadows; and Man Ray is best-known as a photographer and Dadaist. They all lived in Paris, but one was Romanian, one Italian and the third American. Man Ray and Brancusi were good friends, but it is unlikely that either of them ever met Rosso. What the three have in common, as the exhibition’s subtitle implies, is that they sought to exercise control over the presentation of their sculpture, and did this through photography. All three photographed their own work, taking infinite care with lighting, plinths and pre­sentation, and insisting that particular shots were used in publications. More than that, all three wrestled with the inherent contradiction between three-dimensional sculpture and the two-dimensional format through which it is promulgated.

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  • MA.JUL.Tavella.Fig (1)

    Two coral cabinets made for Claude Lamoral I, Prince de Ligne and Viceroy of Sicily

    By Mario Tavella

    Two highly decorated coral cabinets (1670–73) commissioned by the Prince de Ligne in Sicily, now on permanent loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

  • MA.JUL.Lucey.Fig (1)

    Bas-reliefs after Angelica Kauffman

    By Conor Lucey

    Plaster reliefs for interiors in Ireland based on designs of the 1770s by Angelica Kaufmann.

  • MA.JUL.Hetherington.Fig (1)

    The architect and the philhellene: newly discovered designs by John Nash for Frederick North’s London house

    By Paul Hetherington,Jane Bradney

    John Nash’s designs (c.1813) for Frederick North’s unrealised house on what is now Waterloo Place, London, are published here for the first time.

  • Thorvaldsen’s portrait of Giovanna Riario Sforza rediscovered

    By Matteo Gardonio

    A re-examination of a marble bust of Giovanna Riario Sforza (1821–22) by Bertel Thorvaldsen in the Maritime and Historical Museum, Rijeka, Croatia.

  • MA.JUL.Llewellyn.Fig (1)

    Point counter-point: John Frederick Lewis and the Khan al-Khalili, Cairo

    By Briony Llewellyn

    Watercolour drawings of Cairo bazaars (c.1843–44) by John Frederick Lewis.

  • MA.JUL.Grieve.Fig (1)

    William Holman Hunt’s first idea for ‘The hireling shepherd’?

    By Alastair Grieve

    A small ink sketch of Young pipe players (c.1851) in a Canadian private collection is attributed to William Holman Hunt, as a possible early study for The hireling shepherd.

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