Art Institute President and Director James Cuno picks top acquisitions of 2005

Major works of art added to museum's collection

September 29, 2005

MEDIA CONTACT:                 
Chai Lee
(312) 443-3625

On the occasion of his one-year anniversary at the museum James Cuno, president and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, reflects on a group of recent acquisitions as representative of his vision for the Art Institute as one of the world's great, universal art museums. Cuno was appointed to the position of president and director of the Art Institute in September 2004, succeeding James N. Wood, who in September of 2003 announced his retirement after 24 years of service.

Cuno said, "The Art Institute of Chicago takes seriously its obligation to build for Chicago a collection fully representative of the highest quality of the world's artistic production. This is critical to our mission. Museums like the Art Institute play a very important role in our society as a force for understanding, tolerance, and the dissipation of ignorance, superstition, and prejudice. Our recent acquisitions make this point very clearly."

The new acquisitions include a Plains Indians war shirt from an upper Missouri tribe, possibly Blackfoot or Assiniboin; a bronze Chinese Shang dynasty food vessel dating from more than 3,000 years ago; an elegant painting by the late 20th-century American painter Roy Lichtenstein; a 15th/16th-century wooden sculpture by a Flemish master titled St. Michael and the Devil; a sublime High Renaissance Italian painting in perfect condition by the Florentine painter Fra Bartolommeo; an important, early modernist abstract sculpture by the Georges Vantongerloo, Interrelation of Volumes from the Ellipsoid; a deeply moving photograph by the esteemed American photographer Gordon Parks; and a rich group of lithographs by the American expatriate painter and printmaker James McNeill Whistler.

Since September 2004, the Art Institute has acquired 1,095 works of art for the museum's permanent collection. These include gifts that in size and quality rank as among the most important in the Art Institute's history.

African and Amerindian Art

War Shirt
An upper Missouri tribe
c. 1830s
Buckskin, pony beads, hair, ermine tails, porcupine quills and trade cloth
Frederick W. Renshaw, Ada Turnbull Hertle, Arnold Crane, AAA Small Gifts, Curator's Discretionary and Primitive Art Purchase funds; David Skolter and Irving Dobkin endowments; restricted gifts of Mrs. Leonard W. Florsheim, Jr., the Donnelley Foundation, and Cynthia and Terry E. Perucca

The Plains Indians War Shirt from an upper Missouri tribe, possibly Blackfoot or Assiniboin, is a rare example from as early as the 1830s with circular quill work medallions on the front and back as well as bead strips down the sleeves. The attention to ornamental detail both enobled and made more powerful the wearer of the shirt, and is testament to the importance of beauty in the culture of the Plains Indians. The Art Institute's collection of Amerindian arts is choice but until now did not include a war shirt, which are among the most prized objects of Plains Indian culture.

Asian Art

Food Vessel (Fangding)
China, Shang dynasty, 12–11th century B.C.
Avery Brundage, Russell Tyson, and Alyce and Edwin DeCosta and Walter E. Heller endowments

The purchase of two ancient vessels has added major strength to the Art Institute's important but relatively small collection of Chinese bronzes. Ancient Chinese bronzes are, with archaic jade implements and vessels, the foundation of any significant collection of Chinese art. Thanks to the receipt in 1950 of the Sonnenschein Collection of Chinese Jades, the Art Institute can represent well the beauty and rarity of Chinese jades. With this acquisition of two Shang dynasty bronze vessels, the Art Institute has added important works to its collection of early Chinese bronzes.

Bronzes as beautifully preserved and manufactured as these vessels have become increasingly rare. They date from the second half of the second millennium B.C. to the Shang dynasty, when bronze vessels such as these were highly esteemed ritual artifacts and represented statehood and social status.

The square cauldron is typical of bronzes from the metropolitan area of the Shang kingdom in north-central China. Used as a container for serving cooked food at ritual banquets, it is remarkable for its stately dignity, architectonic elegance, and austere yet graceful decoration in high relief. The vessel's robust proportions and bold casting mark the fullest development of the late Shang style.

Contemporary Art

Roy Lichtenstein
American, 1923–1997
Mirror in Six Panels, 1971
Oil and magna on canvas
305 x 335 cm
Purchased with funds from the Anstiss and Ronald Krueck Fund for Contemporary Art, through the generosity of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation

Mirror in Six Panels by the highly influential American artist Roy Lichtenstein ranks among the most significant post-war paintings to enter the Art Institute's collection. The Art Institute holds one of the great collections of 20th- and 21st-century art anywhere in the world, which will be highlighted in our new Renzo Piano–designed building. A gift of Anstiss and Ronald Krueck, the painting joins Ellsworth Kelly's 1953 painting Red, Yellow Blue White and Black, given to the Art Institute by the Kruecks in 2001.

The Lichtenstein painting depicts a mirrored surface comprising six painted panels. Continuity in pattern and color across the six painted units unites the different sections but forms no coherent sense of what is reflected. The cubistic facets of Lichtenstein's mirrors suggest, with remarkable clarity, the subtle variations in planes (and their reflections) of an actual multi-paneled mirror. The Mirror Paintings offer the signs of reflection, elaborated into a puzzling, fragmented abstraction that becomes, in the end, the real subject of this painting.

European Decorative Arts

Unknown Hispano-Flemish Sculptor
St. Michael and the Devil
c. 1475–1500
Poplar wood
52 cm
Chester Trip Endowment

This piece represents one of the most important acquisitions of Late Gothic and Renaissance sculpture ever by the Art Institute. Representing the Northern European tradition of exquisite woodcarving, associated with the age of Durer and his immediate predecessors, St. Michael and the Devil adds both depth and quality to the Art Institute's holdings in European art.

One of the seven archangels of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, St. Michael is also identified as the leader of the heavenly hosts against the dragon or God's enemies in the Book of Revelations. In this role, he was immensely popular from medieval times, often depicted as a knight in armor and subduing the devil in the guise of a monster. Carved from a single piece of wood, the St. Michael is a virtuoso sculpture, and its size would indicate that it was intended for an intimate setting, probably a private chapel. St. Michael and the Devil may have been inspired by German prints of this period by Martin Schongauer or the Master E. S., of which works by both artists are in the Art Institute's collection. The sculpture also reflects the confluence of Northern and Spanish elements so prevalent in 15th-century art of the Iberian peninsula, documenting the extent to which examples of artistic developments moved both north and south across the European continent during the fifteenth century. Adding Renaissance-era sculptures of this quality is very difficult, making this acquisition all the more important.

European Painting

Baccio della Porta, called Fra Bartolommeo
Italian, 1472–1517
The Nativity, 1504/1507
Oil on panel
34 x 24.5 cm
Ethel T. Scarborough Fund; L. L. and A. S. Coburn, Dr. and Mrs. William Gilligan, Mr. and Mrs. Lester King, John and Josephine Louis, Samuel A. Marx, Alexander McKay, Chester D. Tripp, and Murray Vale endowment funds; restricted gift of Marilynn Alsdorf, Anne Searle Bent, David and Celia Hilliard, Alexandra and John Nichols, Mrs. Harold T. Martin, Mrs. George B. Young in memory of her husband, and the Rhoades Foundation; gift of John Bross and members of the Old Masters Society in memory of Louise Smith Bross; through prior gift of the George F. Harding, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson, and Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester collections

The Nativity by the great Florentine painter Fra Bartolommeo is a recently discovered work by this major High Renaissance artist that fills an important gap in the Art Institute's collection. The Art Institute long sought to add to the collection an example of the calm, balanced style of the High Renaissance. This gap has been especially glaring since the High Renaissance style became the basis for later paintings in the classical manner. Major works created at this moment in early 16th-century Florence that have survived in excellent condition are extremely hard to find. This makes Fra Bartolommeo's recently discovered The Nativity all the more remarkable. 

Within the compass of this small, intense painting, Fra Bartolommeo creates a serene and intimate world. The grave, still figures of the Virgin and Joseph dominate the scene. The jewel-like colors and clear forms of their draperies set up a harmonious resonance, as in Raphael's work of the same date, but the interaction of these figures against the landscape, at once ethereal and vast, is Fra Bartolommeo's own. In this painting and in other works of this period, Fra Bartolommeo uses the intervals between figures to create the effect of emotional dialogue. Thus he leaves the space between Joseph and Mary open to the landscape and places the exquisite profile of the Virgin at the opening to heighten the effect of her devout contemplation of the child.

Georges Vantongerloo
Belgian, 1886–1965
Interrelation of Volumes from the Ellipsoid, 1926
Plaster; 12 1/2 x 18 1/2 x 15 1/4 in.
Through prior gift of Lucille E. and Joseph L. Block; partial gift in memory of Lillian Florsheim

Georges Vantongerloo's 1926 Interrelation of Volumes from the Ellipsoid--an architectural assemblage of white plaster, rectilinear forms--relates to the artist's interest in combining art with science, math and design, in an effort to promote a new utopian aesthetic after World War I. This modernist sculptural icon, augmented by the gift of five related drawings, was once owned by the Chicago artist and collector, Lillian Florsheim, who established a deep friendship with Vantongerloo in the 1950s. The De Stijl masterpiece will join the museum's presentation of modern abstraction alongside paintings and drawings by Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and Paul Klee, and the legacy of modernist architecture evident throughout the Art Institute's collections of architecture and design.

Photography

Gordon Parks
American, born 1912
Harlem, 1952
Gelatin silver print
26.3 x 26.8 cm
Laura T. Magnuson Acquisition Fund

In 1948, Gordon Parks became the first-ever African American photographer on staff at Life Magazine. On March 13, 1953, the Art Institute of Chicago opened the first solo exhibition of photographs by Parks. In the years between, Parks rapidly became known for his poignant photography of life in New York City. Known for never shying away from the city's gritty realities of poverty and struggle, Parks managed still to appreciate its potential for a more beautiful impact. Harlem perfectly reflects this outlook and captures late afternoon sun raking, just barely, over rooftops to warm the brownstones below and compose a striking silhouette. This is but one of several prints by Parks added to the Art Institute's photography collection this year.

Prints and Drawings

James McNeill Whistler
American, 1834–1903
Nocturne, 1878 (published 1887)
Lithotint, on a prepared half-tint ground, in black and scraping, on blue laid chine, laid down on ivory plate paper
171 x 259 mm
Gift of the Crown family in honor of James Wood

Chicago's well-known Crown family has a long and generous history with the Art Institute reaching across three generations. This past year, the family made a gift to the Art Institute of a large and important collection of lithographs by American painter-printmaker James McNeill Whistler in honor of former Art Institute president and director James Wood.

The collection was formed by one of Whistler's most important American patrons, Howard Mansfield, and purchased in 1919 by Harris G. Whittemore who made significant additions to it over his lifetime. More than sixty years later the collection was acquired by the Crown family. In 1998, the Art Institute published a two-volume catalogue raisonne of the collection and mounted an exhibition in its galleries.

The Mansfield Whittemore Crown Collection of Whistler lithographs is internationally recognized as the definitive collection of the artist's subtle work in this medium, comprising 157 works on paper, including rare trial proofs, superb early states, working drawings, and a wide variety of the choice papers Whistler personally selected for his prints.

"Acquisitions like these are made by the Art Institute on behalf of the public for whom the museum holds its collections in trust," James Cuno said. "By far, the majority of the Art Institute's collections were either given by or purchased with funds provided by private donors, most of whom live in the greater Chicago area. They are result of the work of curators in a public-private partnership with our generous donors. And they advance the mission of this great museum."