Archive for November, 2016



Friday Photos: Feline Good at the DMA

It’s been almost a month since Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt opened here at the DMA and it’s been purrfectly amazing how much our visitors have enjoyed the exhibition. In addition to over eighty ancient objects, the exhibition also features an educational space which offers interactive learning opportunities.

At the sound wall, you can listen to stories of deities in Ancient Egyptian mythology, courtesy of our favorite storyteller Ann Marie Newman.

bastet

The goddess Bastet, whose head is cat-shaped.

image-of-divine-felines

Images (left to right): Cat’s Head, Egypt, Roman Period, 30 B.C.E.–3rd century C.E., bronze and gold, Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 36.114; Sphinx of King Sheshenq, Egypt, Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 22–Dynasty 23, c. 945–718 B.C.E., bronze, Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 33.586; Standing Lion-Headed Goddess, Egypt, Late Period or later, 664–30 B.C.E., faience, Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 37.943E

You can also smell the perfumes, oils and incense that played an important role in Ancient Egyptian daily life and the afterlife. Experience the scents a Pharaoh might have encountered in an ancient temple, or those the embalmer might have smelled while preparing a mummy for the afterlife.

unnamed-2

Reading Area and Scent Bar

You can also find a selection of objects in this area that are part of the Museum’s own collection, so be sure to hunt down the felines we have present all across the Museum!

A selection of these works can be found in our Cats Across the Collection self-guided tour and our Feline Friendly Family Guide. And don’t forget to check out all the upcoming exhibition programs here. We’re not kitten around when we say a visit to the Museum is the purrfect fall activity for all our cat-lovers out there!

Marta Torres
McDermott Graduate Intern for Visitor Engagement

The Sum of All Parts

The DMA’s conservation team works on a variety of projects throughout the year. DMA Associate Conservator Laura Hartman shared insights on one fascinating project in the Fall issue of the DMA Member magazine, Artifacts.

Flowers in a Vase with Two Doves (detail), François Lepage, 1816–20, oli on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund, 2016.23.M

François Lepage, Flowers in a Vase with Two Doves (detail), 1816–20, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund, 2016.23.M

In 1925, Dallas philanthropist Gertrude (Trudie) Terrell Munger endowed a fund for acquisitions to the Museum’s permanent collection. For over ninety years, the Munger Fund has been instrumental in the purchase of some of the DMA’s greatest treasures across its encyclopedic collection. These include Claude Monet’s The Seine at Lavacourt, Camille Pissarro’s Apple Picking at Eragny-sure-Epte, and the important old-master painting Basket of Flowers by Osias Beert the Elder. This spring, the Munger Fund acquired another world-class work: Flowers in a Vase with Two Doves, a beautifully preserved 19th-century painting by the Lyonnais artist François Lepage. The DMA’s conservation team examined it under the microscope to study the artist’s technique a bit closer.

Exquisite in its highly polished finish and attention to detail, Flowers in a Vase with Two Doves is meticulously painted and beautifully preserved, making its examination both enjoyable and an important opportunity to see a work of art as intended by the artist. Lepage has been described as a methodical and slow painter, and it has been suggested that it took him four years to complete this work. At first glance, the surface appears smooth and highly refined, but when observed under magnification each meticulous brushstroke becomes evident, revealing a surprisingly free and painterly technique.

Droplets of water, for example, are expertly applied to petals and leaves to create a convincing optical effect. These droplets, when observed under magnification, reveal a somewhat abbreviated painting approach.

Lepage also used his brush to quite literally add texture, heightening the illusion of tactile effects. Tiny details reveal the use of linear and directive brushstrokes in dialogue with such small highlights as the textured dots found along the butterfly’s wing and at the center of the chamomile flowers.

Microscopic examination of works of art often reveals important and interesting perspectives not immediately visible to the naked eye. This type of study allows conservators to better care for each work of art, giving a fundamental look into an artist’s working techniques.

—Laura Hartman is the Associate Conservator at the DMA.

 


Archives

Flickr Photo Stream

Categories