Webinar: Old Masters, New Spaces: Historical Art in Modernist Buildings by TEFAF

WEBINAR ENDED

About This Webinar

This event will go live at 1 PM EDT / 7PM CET (19:00)

Does historical art look incongruous in modernist buildings? Many of the 20th century’s leading architects certainly didn’t think so – and nor do the museum visitors who prize such eminent buildings and collections as the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon), the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth), São Paulo Museum of Art and the Museo di Castelvecchio (Verona).

As the Frick Collection prepares for its temporary move into the Breuer building on Madison Avenue in New York – originally designed by Marcel Breuer to house the Whitney Museum of American Art – this discussion will place the Frick’s venture in the context of other modernist spaces in which historical collections have been displayed, many of them designed for the purpose. What aesthetic and interpretative possibilities are opened up by displaying pre 20th-century art in such buildings? What theoretical and practical demands do such projects make, in terms of materials, light or more broadly how modernist buildings envisage the relationship between people and interior space? What do we learn about historical works in these buildings? And does the architecture encourage us to see art differently?

Presenters

Thomas Marks

Moderator of TEFAF Talks and Editor, Apollo magazine

Thomas Marks has been the Editor of Apollo magazine since 2013, having previously worked as the magazine’s Deputy Editor. He was responsible for relaunching Apollo’s website as a daily forum for art news and opinion in 2013, and last year launched the Apollo 40 Under 40. He has contributed to a wide range of publications as a writer and critic, and is a co-founder of the online quarterly, 'The Junket'.

Penelope Curtis

Director of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, 2015–2020

As Director of the Gulbenkian Musuem from 2015–2020, Penelope Curtis conceived the exhibition Art on Display for its 50th annversary. The exhibition drew on her research on Aldo van Eyck and the Smithsons (published in Patio & Pavilion, Ridinghouse/Getty, 2008), and more recently on Franco Albini, as published in the catalogue. The show has just opened in Rotterdam in a new version conceived by Dirk van den Heuvel and Jo Tailleu.

Charles Saumarez Smith

Former CEO and Secretary, Royal Academy, London

Charles Saumarez Smith has been a museum director and is now a writer, chairman of the Royal Drawing School and trustee of the Garden Museum. His book, 'The Art Museum in Modern Times' will be published by Thames & Hudson in March 2021. It covers the design of new museums from the Museum of Modern Art to the new West Bund Museum in Shanghai, and includes Marcel Breuer’s design for the Whitney Museum and Annabelle Selldorf’s design of the Neue Galerie in New York. As Director of the National Portrait Gallery, he was responsible for Dixon.Jones’s Ondaatje Wing and new first floor galleries by Piers Gough. As Director of the National Gallery, he oversaw the opening up of the new ground floor and Getty Entrance. As Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, he was deeply involved in David Chipperfield’s redesign of its new building in Burlington Gardens. He is an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA and was Apollo Personality of the Year in 2018.

Aimee Ng

Curator at The Frick Collection in New York

Aimee Ng is a specialist in Italian Renaissance art and British art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, she has co-curated exhibitions on the sculpture of Bertoldo di Giovanni; Giovanni Battista Moroni’s portraits; European portrait medals from the fifteenth to nineteenth century; drawings by Andrea del Sarto; and the portraiture of Parmigianino. She has held curatorial and academic positions at The Morgan Library & Museum, where she was postdoctoral fellow at the Morgan’s Drawing Institute in 2014, and at Columbia University, where she earned her Ph.D. Her most recent publication on Constable’s White Horse, part of the Frick’s “Diptych” series, is co-authored with William Kentridge.