Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Presents
Anders
Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America
First Historic Exhibition in New Piano-Designed Hostetter
Gallery
On View: February 28, 2013 through May 13, 2013
Image: Omnibus
Paris, 1892, Oil on canvas, 126 x 88 cm
Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Boston, MA, January 2, 2012 ▪.The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will
present Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America, the first international
loan exhibition and catalogue dedicated to this Swedish artist in the United
States in more than 25 years, slated to open February 28, 2013. The first
historic exhibition in the Hostetter Gallery in the
new Renzo Piano-designed extension of the Museum will present new international
scholarship about an artist who was considered among the most prolific and
talented artists living around 1900. Although highly esteemed by his
contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, Zorn is little known to the
general public in the U.S. today.
“Anders
Zorn is one of the most significant artists of the Belle Époque,” said Anne
Hawley, Norma Jean Calderwood Director
of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
“The Museum boasts the finest collection of Zorn’s works in the United
States, which will set the framework for this significant exhibition.”
The exhibition will
investigate how Zorn became an international artist who set the groundwork for
modern art. It will reveal the artist’s achievement in a variety of areas such
as his rapidly developing style from around 1890 to the early 1900s and his
variety of subjects. It will be organized in five different segment areas
including “Zorn and Gardner,” “Society
Portraits,” “In the City,” “Country Life,” and “Artists’ Studios.” Twenty-four
paintings are featured in the exhibition together with twenty-two drawings,
photographs and letters; and gifts that Anders Zorn gave Gardner in 1894.
Highlights include Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice (1894)
and distinguished loans that have never been shown in America such as Night Effect (1895) on loan from Gothenburg
Museum of Art, Göteborg, Sweden, and The Ice Skater (1898);
on loan from Zornmuseet, Mora, Sweden. In addition,
major paintings will come together for the first time including items from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Art Institute, Chicago. The exhibition
will center on strong holdings in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
highlighting the central role of Isabella Gardner as a patron of Zorn in
America..
“This exhibition is an
opportunity to once again reveal Anders Zorn, this intoxicating artist who
personifies the promises and contradictions of his time,” said Oliver Tostmann,
William and Lia
Poorvu Curator of the Collection at the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum. “It will be a rare look at a span of Zorn’s work in
America and Europe, giving a glimpse at what made Zorn so prolific, and yet
today [he] is often overlooked.”
A fully illustrated 200-page
catalogue will accompany the exhibition including 120 color images of artwork. It
will include essays from international scholars who examine Zorn’s life, work, and
success.
A series of related public
programs will complement the exhibition. The range of talks will investigate
topics such as Zorn in the context of other Nordic Artists in the 1890s, as
well as Zorn’s relationship with Isabella Stewart Gardner. For more information
about the Zorn lecture series, please see the full schedule attached.
The exhibition, the first to
be curated and organized by Oliver Tostmann, who joined the curatorial staff of
the Isabella Gardner Museum in April 2011. Prior to coming to the Gardner
Museum, Tostmann completed an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the departments of
Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C.
“I’m excited on many fronts,”
said Tostmann. “It’s the beginning of my work as a curator at the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum and a new beginning for an artist who deserves a
position in the history of modern art.”
For more information about Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces
America or other exhibitions and programs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum, please visit www.gardnermuseum.org.
Oliver Tostmann, William and Lia Poorvu Curator of the Collection
Anders Zorn: A European Seduces America is organized by Oliver Tostmann, William and Lia Poorvu
Curator of the Collection. Tostmann joined the curatorial staff of the
Isabella Gardner Museum in April 2011. Prior to coming to the Gardner Museum, Tostmann
completed an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the departments of Italian,
Spanish, and French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington,
D.C., where he also was a Joseph F. McCrindle
Foundation Curatorial Fellow. Tostmann has undertaken research and
documentation on several Renaissance and Baroque paintings, conducted research
for various exhibition projects (Arcimboldo, 1526-1593:
Nature and Fantasy; Venice: Canaletto
and his Rivals) and is conceiving an exhibition based on a National
Gallery painting by Giambattista Tiepolo.
He has installed exhibitions at the National Gallery and at
the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig. Prior
to his work at the National Gallery, Tostmann was a lecturer at the Akademie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (National
Museums in Berlin), and assistant editor for the scientific periodical “Gegenworte,” published by the Academy of Science
Berlin-Brandenburg. Tostmann holds a Ph.D in the
History of Art from the Freie Universität
in Berlin.
CATALOGUE
Accompanying the exhibition will be a fully
illustrated catalogue with five essays by leading scholars.
200 pages,
paperback, 280
x 240 mm, 120 color illustrations. ISBN 978 1 907372 44 5,
Price: , $50, £30, €38.
www.paul-holberton.net. Distributed in
Continental Europe by www.vilo-groupe.com and
in the United States and Canada by Casemate Athena www.casemateathena.com.
SUPPORT
Premier Exhibition Sponsor: Bank
of America
Support for the exhibition
catalogue and related research was provided by the Chauncey and Marion D..
McCormick Family Foundation. Additional support provided by The Andrew W..
Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National
Endowment for the Arts, The Richard C. von Hess Foundation, and The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation. The Museum receives operating support
from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Media Sponsor: Boston Globe Media.
Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum ▪ www.gardnermuseum.org ▪
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is itself a work of art, a highly personal
installation of Isabella Gardner’s collection intended to fire the imagination
of all who visit. The collection features 2,500 objects spanning 30 centuries
and many cultures—including works by Botticelli, Titian, Michelangelo,
Rembrandt, Degas, and Sargent, in addition to sculpture, furniture, tapestries,
and manuscripts. The Gardner was the first museum of its kind in America to
display a major art collection in an intimate atmosphere. It is the only museum
in which the collection, building, and installation are entirely the creation
of one woman. ▪ 280 The Fenway,
Boston MA 02115 •617.566.1401 • Box
Office: 617 278 5156.
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Media Contacts
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Montgomery Director of Marketing and Communications 617 278 5184 w mmontgomery@isgm.org
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