Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Coming to Los Angeles. 

Los Angeles, Autopia of the West

Hooray for Hollywood.

A View of LACMA

“A city seventy miles square but rarely seventy years deep apart from a small downtown not yet two centuries old and a few other pockets of ancientry, Los Angeles is instant architecture in an instant townscape.” So wrote the architectural historian Reyner Banham in his famous cultural, architectural and cartographical survey of the city of the Angels.[1] One can appreciate Banham’s description, especially with the first glimpse of L.A. since the impression is of a giant construct that has been thrown up in the middle of nowhere. Flying in at night, the sudden appearance of a configuration of lights, buildings, and as you drop altitude, pulsing arteries that carry the millions of the city from one end of its seventy miles span to the other is truly mind-blowing. The effect on the senses and the mind is overwhelming, and coming from a country that does not make a cult of the automobile, you suffer culture shock when entering this “autopia” where Our Lady Queen of the Angels is also the “Internal Combustion City, Surfburbia, Smogville, Aerospace City, Systems Land, the Dream factory of the Western World.”[2] So where in the middle of this urban explosion in Southern California does the story of museums begin? There are many to choose from. California boasts many fine museums: the Getty (which we shall consider next week), the Hammer Museum of Art, San Francisco Museums of Fine Art, the Pacific Asian Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Huntingdon collections, and our subject today, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

The Ascent of LACMA

LACMA in 1965 from Wilshire Boulevard

An Architect's Vision for LACMA.

Japanese Pavilion, LACMA

LACMA has the distinction of being the largest museum in the Western United States, and its gate is nearly a million visitors every year. Rising up from Wilshire Boulevard against the torrid California sky, it resembles a ziggurat (a raised up building) that is imposing and yet fragile in appearance, typical of its architect William Leonard Pereira who beat Miles van der Rohe of the Bauhaus to the contract. One of the later museums in America, LACMA was established in 1961, but moved to Wilshire Bld, a key arterial road that connects east-west Los Angeles, in 1965. Prior to that LACMA formed part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art founded in 1910. LACMA’s holdings are universal, encompassing all cultures of the world, and numbering a staggering 100,000 art works. It was the largest, independent art museum in America to be built after the Washington National Gallery of Art, though it is more disparate and sprawling in nature than that venerable institution. During the boom years of the 1980s, a record $209 m in private donations ensured LACMA’s rise to prominence in the museum world. LACMA especially began to acquire a vast amount of modern and contemporary art, with the help of wealthy collectors like Eli Broad, so a new structure was built to house this which opened in 1986. Also in 1988, one of the most beautiful parts of the museum opened: the Pavilion for Japanese Art as well as the Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. Since 2004, LACMA has been undergoing further reconstruction under the guidance of the architect Renzo Piano (who we met at Fort Worth last week) aimed to unify LACMA’s spread of buildings. Part of this initiative involved the employment of graffiti artists as well as the plan to work with Hollywood and create an Academy Museum of Moving Pictures. LACMA has a vibrant programme of exhibitions of which the most successful was the Treasures of Tutankhamum which drew 1.2 million visitors for four months in 1978.

  

Deaccessioning, Sifting and Sorting. 

Is Michael Govan going to deaccesson that piece of land art?

Deaccessioned Reynolds, St Cecilia, 2009.

One regrettable aspect of LACMA’s 2007 strategic plan was the auctioning off 42 works of art, a process known in the art world as deaccessioning. According to the Los Angeles Times, at a two day auction at Sotheby’s New York in 2005 the museum sold $2.9 million worth of Impressionist and modern art.[3] The museum also racked up $4.9 million for a Modigliani portrait. Despite criticism, LACMA has continued to “prune” their collections selling more art to buy more art. According to current director or CEO Michael Govan, the museum is occupied in the process of “sift and sort” which is designed to improve the holdings of the museum. Deaccessioning directors are conspicuous by their absence in the U.K., but in America they are more common. Although selling art to gain other art does not violate “ethical museum guidelines” in America, It is a questionable practice because these works were left by benefactors and donors to be enjoyed by local populations and visitors to the museum. To give just one example, Sir Joshua Reynolds 1775 St Cecilia was donated to the museum by the Californian magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1949 and went under the hammer in 2009.[4]  Whilst selling art to acquire other art is considered acceptable in America, examples have been increasing of museums deaccessioning for economic reasons which has been with public protest and reprimands from museum oversight organizations. LACMA does not follow this practice, but then there's  the Detroit situation…

Analysis of Old Masters at LACMA.  

Rembrandt, Portrait of Marten Looten, 1632, Oil on wood, 92.71 x 76.2 cm, Gift of J. Paul Getty

Michael Sweerts, Plague in an Ancient City, 1652-1664, Oil on canvas, 118.75 x 170.82 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

 Carlo Saraceni, The Martyrdom of St Cecilia, 1610, Oil on canvas, 135.89 x 98.425 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

LACMA is organized into 22 divisions including European Painting, which amounts to about 386 paintings. It is the 17^th century section that contains the most artworks (135), followed by art from 1751-1800 (rococo and neo-classical) numbering 58. If we drill down into the 17^th century further, we discover that the museum has a lot of Dutch and Flemish painting or for convenience “Netherlandish” with the Italian baroque and French art evenly matched, though there is hardly any Spanish painting. Very important northern painters like Rubens, Rembrandt and Hals have 2 or more works each; and with the Italians there are 1 or more pieces by baroque artists like Guido Reni (2) Salvator Rosa (3), Carlo Saraceni (1) and Pietro da Cortona (1). Mining the “Netherlandish” seams even further, we see that it is quite a comprehensive survey of Dutch art though the absence of Vermeer undoubtedly weakens that claim. Of the 3 Rembrandts[5], all are of good quality, the Honthorst ChristMocked is a fine specimen of Utrecht painting; whilist there are lots of “minor” Netherlandish painters represented like Avercamp, Salomon de Bray and Sweerts. With the French school, there is a Claude, but no Poussin, though there is a strong echo of the master’s Plague at Ashdod (Louvre) in Sweert’s Plaguein an Ancient City. The “international baroque” is in evidence with 2 SimonVouet modellos, not the best advertisements of his talents, though Valentin’s Concert Party is good, Philippe de Champaigne’s St Augustine is very good, and La Tour’s Magdalene with the Smoking Flame most excellent.  Out of the cluster of Spanish and Italian baroque pictures the highlight for me would be the Venetian, Carlo Saraceni’s Martyrdom of St Cecilia followed by Guido’s Portrait of Cardinal Roberto Ubaldino, Papal Legate to Bologna.  The Saraceni along with the La Tour, Honthorst and Valentin were lent to an important exhibition staged in New South Wales on the influence of Caravaggio several years ago.[6]

 

Very brief note on LACMA Renaissance Art.

Jacopo Bellini, Madonna and Child, 1465, Oil on panel, 69.22 x 46.99 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

 Fra Bartolomeo, Holy Family, 1497, Oil on canvas, 151.13 x 90.81 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

Titian, Portrait of Giacomo Dolfin, Oil on canvas, 104.9 x 91 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation

The museum has about 31 paintings from the 13^th to 15^th centuries, predominantly Italian “primitives” and altarpieces. The most well-known painters here are the Florentine artist Fra Bartolommeo (a handsome Raphaelesque Holy Family), the Venetian painters Cima da Conegliano and Jacopo Bellini (both Holy Families), and Titian, Portrait of Portrait of Giacomo Dolfin. The rest consist of works by unknown masters, or samples by lesser known artists from Italy. 

Notes on American Art at LACMA. 

Benjamin West, Thetis Bringing the Armour to Achilles, 1804, Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 50.8 cm, Gift from the family of Bernice West Beyers

William Merrit Chase, Pablo de Sarasate: Portrait of a Violinist, c. 1875, Oil on canvas, 57.15 x 47.78 cm, Mary D. Keeler Bequest

Daniel Huntingdon, Philosophy and Christian Art, 1868, Oil on canvas, 102.55 x 127.95 cm, Gift of Will Richeson

The American school of painting is impressively covered with about 346 works in this area of the collection. The standard is very high with artists ranging from the neo-classical Benjamin West to modern American artists working in the styles of Cubism, surrealism and abstraction. The bulk of American paintings fall into the time range of 1850-1930.  Surveying this group shows pictures from lots of different genres, thus creating a perspective on the world of nineteenth-century America, as well as betraying the influence of European old masters on American art. Recommended here are Genre Scene by the Californian artist Jules Pages; William Merritt Chase frank and moving portrait of the violinist Pablo da Sarasate; Daniel Huntington’s beautiful updating of Titian in his Philosophy and Christian Art; Robert Phillip’s brooding In a PensiveMood which also shows his skill as a still life painter; John Singer Sargeant’s Portrait of Mme. FrançoisBuloz (Christine Blaze) which has an immediacy about it; a table-top still life by Henry Lee Mcfee and an elegantly poised Japanese array of objects from Elihu Vedder.

Slides. 

1)      Los Angeles from the air.

2)      LACMA on Wiltshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

3)      LACMA and Wiltshire Bld in 1965.

4)      LA with view of Hollywood sign.

5)      Downtown LA.

6)      View of Japanese Pavilion, LACMA.

7)      Peter Paul Rubens, The Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert, c. 1626-27,  Oil on wood, 64.77 x 53.34 cm, Frances and Armand Hammer Purchase Fund (M.69.20)

8)      Rembrandt, The Raising of Lazarus, 1630-32, Oil on wood, 96.36 x 81.28 cm, Gift of H. F. Ahmanson and Company, in memory of Howard F. Ahmanson (M.72.67.2)

9)      Rembrandt, Portrait of Marten Looten, 1632, Oil on wood, 92.71 x 76.2 cm, Gift of J. Paul Getty (53.50.3)

10)   Gerrit van Honthorst, The Mocking of Christ, 1617-20, Oil on canvas, 146.05 x 207.01 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (AC1999.92.1)

11)   Michael Sweerts, Plague in an Ancient City, 1652-1664, Oil on canvas, 118.75 x 170.82 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (AC1997.10.1)

12)   Salomon de Bray, Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, 1652, Oil on canvas, 152.72 x 124.78 cm, Purchased with funds provided by the Jones Foundation, the Joseph B. Gould Foundation, Fred Maxwell, and an anonymous gift in memory of Dr. Charles Henry Strub by exchange (M.2003.4).

13)   Laurent de la Hyre, Assumption of the Virgin, 1653-55, Oil on canvas, 74.93 x 52.71 cm, The Ciechanowiecki Collection, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.2000.179.3)

14)   Georges de La Tour, The Magdalene with the Smoking Flame, c. 1638-40, Oil on canvas, 117 x 91.76 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.77.73)

15)   Phillipe de Champaigne, St Augustine, 1645-50, Oil on canvas, 78.7 x 62.2 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.88.177).

16)   Carlo Saraceni, The Martyrdom of St Cecilia, 1610, Oil on canvas, 135.89 x 98.425 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (AC1996.37.1)

17)   Guido Reni, Portrait of Cardinal Roberto Ubaldino, Papal Legate to Bologna, 1627, Oil on canvas, 196.85 x 149.23 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.83.109)

18)   Salvator Rosa (and Studio), Odysseus and Nausicca, oil on canvas, 190.5 x 158.75 x 8.89 cm, William Randolph Hearst Collection (49.17.4)

19)   Jacopo Bellini, Madonna and Child, 1465, Oil on panel, 69.22 x 46.99 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.85.223).

20)   Cima da Conegliano, Madonna and Child in a Landscape, c. 1496-99, Oil on panel, 73.03 x 59.37 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation in memory of Robert H. Ahmanson (M.2008.9)

21)   Fra Bartolomeo, Holy Family, 1497, Oil on canvas, 151.13 x 90.81 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.73.83)

22)   Titian, Portrait of Giacomo Dolfin, Oil on canvas, 104.9 x 91 cm, Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.81.24).

23)   Benjamin West, Thetis Bringing the Armour to Achilles, 1804, Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 50.8 cm, Gift from the family of Bernice West Beyers (M.88.182)

24)   Jules Pages, Genre Scene, French Woman in Kitchen Scene, Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 72.39 cm, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Christian Title (M.91.309.3)

25)   William Merritt Chase, Pablo de Sarasate: Portrait of a Violinist, c. 1875, Oil on canvas, 57.15 x 47.78 cm, Mary D. Keeler Bequest (40.12.9).

26)   Daniel Huntington, Philosophy and Christian Art, 1868, Oil on canvas, 102.55 x 127.95 cm, Gift of Will Richeson (M.69.48)

27)   Engraving of Philosophy and Christian Art.

28)   Robert Phillipp, In a Pensive Mood, before 1935, Oil on canvas, 86.84 x 101.92 cm, Gift of Terry De Lapp in Memory of Yrma Marcus (M.81.197)

29)   John Singer Sargeant, Mme. François Buloz (Christine Blaze), 1879, Oil on canvas, 54.77 x 46.67 cm, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harry F. Sinclair and Mary D. Keeler Bequest (M.71.70).

30)   Henry Le McFee, Still Life with Carafe, 1931, Oil on canvas, 81.92 x 76.68 cm, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David N. Allison in memory of Mr. and Mrs. David C. Allison (M.84.196)

31)   Elihu Vedder, Japanese Still Life, 1879, Oil on canvas, 54.5 x 88.4 cm, Gift of the American Art Council (M.74.11).

---

[1] Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (University of California Press, 1971), 3. Click here to view a film about Banham and L.A.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Los Angeles Times, LACMA art brings in $13 million, 4/11/2005. link

[4] AS reported by the LA Times. link

[5] Gary Schwartz in Rembrandt, His Life, His Paintings, (Penguin, 1985) lists a fourth, “Portrait of a Young Woman” which was on loan, 379.

[6] John Spike and others, Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and his Followers, New South Wales, 2003-4, nos 29, 32, 45, 51.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

A Little Museum in Texas.

Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of a Woman, possibly Elizabeth Warren, 1759, Oil on canvas, 238.1 x 147.8 cm, acq1961, formerly in Kay Kimbell's collection

Exterior View of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

Before we jet over to the West Coast and the Californian sunshine, we are required to make a short detour to Texas, to the city of Fort Worth, in North Central Texas.  Fort Worth is home to several museums and collections: the Amon Carter Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Kimbell Art Museum, and smaller holdings like the National Cowgirl Museum![1] The most well-known is the Kimbell whose origins can be traced back to the years before the Second World War, when a wealthy businessman Kay Kimbell started to acquire art, with the help of the Newhouse Galleries in New York.  Kimbell’s taste was for elegant English portraiture of the 18^th century. For example, he owned a full-length Joshua Reynolds, formerly in the collection of William Randolph Hearst, shown here. Kimbell’s art collecting led to the creation of an Art Foundation named after him. When Kimbell died in 1964, he left instructions for the building of an art museum in Fort Worth. With the financial support of Kimbell’s widow, the architect Louis I. Kahn constructed what has been called “an unpretentious building on a comfortable scale, well in line with post-war architectural thinking and in marked contrast to such museums in the European ‘grand manner’ as the National Gallery in Washington.”[2]

 

Discernment and Quality at the Kimbell: The Permanent Collection.

 Il Guercino, Christ and the Woman of Samaria, . 1619-20, Oil on canvas, 97.2 x 124.8 cm, acq in 2010 in honour of Ted Pillsbury

 Gustave Caillebotte, On the Pont de l'Europe, 1876-77, Oil on canvas, 106 x 131 cm, AP 1982.01

Compared to museum behemoths like the Washington National Gallery and the Met in New York, the Kimbell is quite small. Its permanent collection numbers about 350 works of art, but as the museum’s website states, the gallery “is distinguished by an extraordinary level of artistic quality and importance.”[3] Instead of completion, the Kimbell stresses quality to be judged from an aesthetic standpoint, an outmoded view these days.  The goal of the Kimbell is “definitive excellence, not the size of the collection.” Those who make the decisions about what to acquire practice discernment; in other words they demonstrate keen insight and judgement in their choice of acquisitions like the Guercino and Caillebotte shown above. The Kimbell has been content to leave the task of broadening collections, schools and stylistic surveys to the major museums that have the ambitions, and the financial resources to deepen their holdings.  What the Kimbell does have in common with other American traditional museums, however, is a collection of modern art, though the whole gallery does omit American art which it leaves to its neighbour, the Amon Carter Museum.  The Kimbell is organized into five divisions: Antiquities; European Art; Asian Art; Pre-Columbian Art; and African and Oceanic Art.  As befits the old master theme we shall consider European painting with the particular focus on the seventeenth-century, a solid area of the museum.

Brief Overview of the European Paintings. 

1

Richard Parkes Bonington, The Grand Canal, Venice looking towards the Rialto Bridge, 1826, Oil on millboard, 35.2 x 45.4 cm, acq  2009.Feigens, New York

Ribera, St Matthew, 1632, Oil on canvas, 128.2 x 97.8 cm, acq 1966.

The European collection at Kimbell is organized as follows: schools of British, French, Italian, Northern European (Flemish, Dutch, German) and Spanish. The timeline runs from the early renaissance with artists like Duccio, and ends in the middle of the twentieth century. The British School (14 works) reflects the founding taste of Kimbell with eighteenth-century portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney from the age of elegance. The other main genre is landscape with romantic views by Wilson, Turner and Bonington. Counting sculptures, reliquaries with the paintings, the French holdings number about 60 works. These are of whole periods and encompass the classical age of Poussin through the rococo to the early modernism of Leger. The Italian School is about half the number of the French with (including sculpture and objects again just under 40 works) including Mantegna and Caravaggio. The “Northern European” section is quite small but very diverse including a mythology from Cranach and two grid like abstract paintings from the modern Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. The Spanish School is the smallest section, but does boast good examples of Ribera, Murillio and Picasso, - quite a compact but engrossing collection. 

The Seventeenth- Century paintings.

Caravaggio, The Cardsharps, c. 1596, Oil on canvas, 92 x 129 cm, acq. 1987.

Georges de La Tour, The Cheat, c. 1630-34, Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 156.2 cm, acq 1981..

Murillio, Four Figures, c. 1655–60, Oil on canvas, 109.9 x 143.5 cm, acq 1984.

The Kimbell Art museum is famous for its collection of seventeenth- century art, as well as the exhibitions which sometimes act as adjuncts to this part of the permanent collection. In 1988, an exhibition of Poussin’s early works was organized by the late Konrad Oberhuber with the cooperation of the museum’s then director Edward (Ted) Pillsbury. One of the Poussins that the museum had bought in 1984 (Venus and Adonis) was made the centrepiece of the exhibition and corresponding symposium.[4] As remarked by one Poussin scholar, the Poussin exhibition was linked to the Kimbell’s policy of “adventurous buying” in the 17th century.[5] More recently during 2010-11, the Kimbell hosted an exhibition of Salvator Rosa’s paintings in conjunction with the Dulwich Picture Gallery in the U.K. that included the Kimbell’s Pythagoras Emerging from the Underworld.[6] Most of the seventeenth-century art in the Kimbell is French and Italian, with the former easily in the ascendant. There probably wouldn’t be much dispute amongst scholars that Caravaggio’s The Card Sharps is the best Italian early modern masterpiece here, although there are fine canvases by Guercino, Annibale Carracci, Pietro da Cortona and Cavillino from Naples. The strongest French presence here is Poussin, especially with the Kimbell’s purchase of his canonical Ordination from the first set of Seven Sacraments.  Next after Poussin is his friend and Roman neighbour Claude whose Europa and the Bull and Pastoral Landscape are owned by the museum.  Complimenting Caravaggio’s Cardsharps is Georges de La Tour’s own version of the subject; both paintings were shown in an exhibition of La Tour’s art at Washington and Fort Worth in 1998.[7]  In a similar realist vein, the Kimbell owns a painting of peasants by the Le Nain Brothers from Northern France. Amongst the northern European contingent are a Flightinto Egypt by Adam Elsheimer, an equestrian portrait of the Duke of Buckingham by Rubens, a Dentist byCandlelight by Dou, one of Rembrandt’s pupils, and by Rembrandt himself, the Bust of a Young Jew.  The Kimbell seventeenth-century collection is rounded out by Spanish painters like El Greco, Ribera, and Murillio.

A Note on Kimbell’s Renaissance Paintings.  

Fra Angelico, The Apostle St James the Greater Freeing  the Magician Hermogenes, c. 1426-29, Tempera and gold on panel, 26.8 x 23.8 cm, acq 1986.

Andrea Mantegna, Holy Family with St Elizabeth and the Infant John the Baptist,  c. 1485–88, Distemper, oil, and gold on canvas, 62.9 x 51.3 cm, acq 1987.

Ercole di Roberti, Portia and Brutus, 1486-90, Tempera, possibly oil, and gold on panel, 48.7 x 34.3 cm, acq 1986.

 Though the Kimbell renaissance collection is small, it does contain some big names such as Duccio, Fra Angelicio, Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna, Memling and Parmigianino.  One can appreciate the Kimbell’s insistence on quality with these paintings. For example, the Mantegna Holy Family, painted in distemper, is impressive and was deemed important enough to be included in the ground-breaking exhibition of the painter in 1992, staged in New York and London. Its provenance can be traced back to a private collection in Marseilles, after which it was bought at auction by the Kimbell in 1986.[8]   In addition to famous renaissance artists like Mantegna, there are minor painters like Ercole Roberti and other curious works which lend a distinctive flavour to the museum’s collection of renaissance art. In 1969 the Kimbell obtained a three-panelled structure, which due to the nature of its inscriptions, have come to be known as “The BarnabasAltarpiece.” 

Towards the Future. 

View of Piano Pavilion, Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Renzo Piano.

Nicolas Poussin, Ordination, 1638-40, formerly owned by Duke of Rutland, acq by the Kimbell for $24.3 m after it had failed to sell at auction.

On the 27^th of this month the Kimbell will open its newly built Piano Pavilion, directly across the lawn from the main museum. Designed by the architect Renzo Piano, the building in addition to providing an architectural counterpoint to the arches of the Kahn main complex, will also provide extra space for the museum’s expanding collection. Amongst its most recent acquisitions are Richard Parkes Bonington’s oil sketch of a View of Venice, offered to the museum by the dealer Richard Feigen of New York in 2009; Guercino’s Christ and the Woman of Samaria (acq privately in 2010 in honour of Ted Pillsbury who was responsible for securing many masterpieces); and their most spectacular purchase, Poussin’s Ordination in 2011 from his first set of Sacraments acquired after it had failed to sell at auction at Christie’s who had an estimate of £24.3 to 31 m.

From the museum’s website: ‘“The Kimbell Art Foundation was represented in the negotiation of the painting's purchase by Robert Holden Ltd. and Sotheby's. The Kimbell secured an export license in August of 2011. In documents made public, the expert advisor for the British Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest wrote, "Poussin's depictions of these sacred ceremonies represent one of the supreme artistic, intellectual and spiritual achievements in Western art and thought."’ As a Poussin scholar, the author applauds the Kimbell, but laments the departure of yet another Poussin from these shores. At the last count, there were about 32 Poussins in America. The Kimbell’s gain is our loss! With these impressive acquisitions which clearly prove the museum’s discernment, the Kimbell occupies a strong position. It will undoubtedly build on these achievements and its inspiring past exhibition programme by creating a modest, but significant series of future exhibitions and acquisitions. Currently the museum is hosting The Age of Picasso and Matisse: ModernMasters from The Art Institute of Chicago, which is appropriate for the unveiling of the finished, modernist annexe.   

Slides. 

1)      View of Fort Worth skyline at night.

2)      Map of Southern United States with Fort Worth’s location.

3)      Exterior Views of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

4)      Interior showing works in situ.

5)      Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of a Woman, possibly Elizabeth Warren, 1759, Oil on canvas, 238.1 x 147.8 cm, ACF 1961.02

6)      Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of a Woman, possibly of the Lloyd Family, c. 1750, Oil on canvas, 69.6 x 53 cm, ACF 1946.04.

7)      Unknown Artist, The Barnabas Altarpiece, South-western French or Northern Spanish (?), 13–14th century, c. 1275–1350, Tempera, oil, and gold on panel, Left: 91 x 36.5 cm; Center: 91 x 57 cm; Right: 91 x 37 cm; Framed: 106.4 x 153 x 5.7 cm, AP 1969.06 a,b,c

8)      Fra Angelico, The Apostle St James the Greater Freeing  the Magician Hermogenes, c. 1426-29, Tempera and gold on panel, 26.8 x 23.8 cm, AP 1986.03

9)      Andrea Mantegna, Holy Family with St Elizabeth and the Infant John the Baptist,  c. 1485–88, Distemper, oil, and gold on canvas, 62.9 x 51.3 cm, AP 1987.04.

10)   Giovanni Bellini, c. 1500, Tempera, oil, and gold on panel, 59 x 47 cm, AP 1967.07

11)   Ercole Roberti, Portia and Brutus, 1486-90, Tempera, possibly oil, and gold on panel, 48.7 x 34.3 cm, AP. 1986.05

12)   Hans Memling, Portrait of Jacob Obrecht, 1496, Oil on oak panel, 50,8 x 36,1 cm, AP 1993.02.

13)   Rear, unidentified figure.

14)   Jan Gossart, known as Mabuse, Portrait of a Man, 1520-25, Oil on oak panel, 57 x 46 cm, AP 1979.30.

15)   Adam Elsheimer, The Flight into Egypt, c. 1605, Oil on silvered copper, oval 10 x 7,6 cm AP 1994.01.

16)   Nicolas Poussin, Ordination, 1638-40, formerly owned by Duke of Rutland, acq by the Kimbell at auction 2011 for $24.3 m.

17)   Claude, Landscape with Europa and the Bull, 1634, Oil on canvas, 170.8 x 199.7 cm, AP 1981.08

18)   Salvator Rosa, Pythagoras Emerging from the Underworld, 1662, Oil on canvas, 131.2 x 189 cm, AP 1970.22.

19)   Caravaggio, The Cardsharps, c. 1596, Oil on canvas, 92 x 129 cm, AP 1987.06

20)    Infrared reflectogram showing change of position of young man’s hand.

21)   Il Guercino, Christ and the Woman of Samaria, . 1619-20, Oil on canvas, 97.2 x 124.8 cm, AP 2010.01.

22)   Georges de La Tour, The Cheat, c. 1630-34, Oil on canvas, 97.8 x 156.2 cm, AP 1981.06.

23)   Frans Hals, The Rommel Pot Player, c. 1618–22, Oil on canvas, 106 x 80.3 cm, ACF 1951.01

24)   Ribera, St Matthew, 1632, Oil on canvas, 128.2 x 97.8 cm, AP 1966.1

25)   El Greco, Portrait of Dr Francisco Pisa, 1610–14, oil on canvas, 107 x 90 cm, AP 1977.05

26)   Murillio, Four Figures, c. 1655–60, Oil on canvas, 109.9 x 143.5 cm, AP 1984.18

27)   Chardin, Portrait of a Young Artist Sketching, c. 1738, Oil on panel, 21 x 17.1 cm, AP 1982.07

28)   Richard Parkes Bonington, The Grand Canal, Venice looking towards the Rialto Bridge, 1826, Oil on millboard, 35.2 x 45.4 cm, AP 2009.02

29)   Delacroix, Selim and Zuleika, 1857, Oil on canvas, 47.6 x 40 cm, AP 1986.04.

30)   Claude Monet, La Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide, 1865, Oil on canvas, 90 x 150 cm.

31)   Gustave Caillebotte, On the Pont de l'Europe, 1876-77, Oil on canvas, 106 x 131 cm, AP 1982.01

32)   View of Piano Pavilion, Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Renzo Piano.

---

[1] On the Modern Art Museum, see Catherine Craft, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, editorial, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 145, No. 1201, (Apr., 2003), pp. 263-264.

[2] K.R, The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 114, No. 837, (Dec, 1972), pp. 889- 892.

[3] link.

[4] Konrad Oberhuber, Poussin, the Early Years in Rome: The Origins of French Classicism, (Fort Worth, 1988).

[5] Elizabeth Cropper, Early Poussin: Fort Worth, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 130, No. 1029, (Dec, 1988), 958-962.

[6] Helen Langdon, Xavier F. Salomon, Catherina Volpi Salvator Rosa, exhibition catalogue, (Dulwich Picture Gallery, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, (2010-11), no. 31.

[7] Philip Conisbee and others, Georges de La Tour and his World, (National Gallery of Art, Washington, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1997), nos. 18 (La Tour), 41 (Caravaggio).   

[8] Andrea Mantegna, (ed Jane Martineau), Met, New York, Royal Academy, London (1992), no. 51.