Fall 2012

atthe MEADOWS

a s e m i - a n n u a l g u i d e t o e x h i b i t i o n s a n d p r o g r a m s , e x c l u s i v e ly f o r m e a d o w s m u s e u m m e m b e r s a n d s u p p o r t e r s

FALL 2012

in this issue

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits Góngora/Picasso: Graphic Poetry

FALL 2012

from the director

Meadows Museum Advisory Council

Dear Members and Friends,

Marilyn H. Augur Dolores G. Barzune Stuart M. Bumpas Alan B. Coleman Linda Pitts Custard, Chair Linda P. Evans John A. Hammack Beverly C. Heil Gwen S. Irwin Janet P. Kafka George C. Lancaster George T. Lee, Jr. Karen Levy Linda E. Ludden Linda B. McFarland Mildred M. Oppenheimer

MI S S IO N The Meadows Museum is committed to the advancement of knowledge and understanding of art through the collection and interpretation of works of the greatest aesthetic and historical importance, as exemplified by the founding collection of Spanish art. The Museum is a resource of Southern Methodist University that serves a broad and international audience as well as the university community through meaningful exhibitions, publications, research, workshops and other educational programs, and encourages public participation through a broad-based membership.

Carol J. Riddle Catherine B. Taylor Jo Ann G. Thetford Michael L. Thomas George E. Tobolowsky Rebecca S. Todd Gail O. Turner Kevin E. Vogel P. Gregory Warden Susan P. Wittman Karina H. Woolley

Ex officio

HI S TOR Y The Meadows Museum, a division of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works dating from the tenth to the twentyfirst century. It includes masterpieces by some of the world’s greatest painters: El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Miró and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include Renaissance altarpieces, monumental Baroque canvases, exquisite rococo oil sketches, polychrome wood sculptures, Impressionist landscapes, modernist abstractions, a comprehensive collection of the graphic works of Goya, and a select group of sculptures by major twentieth-century masters – Rodin, Maillol, Giacometti, Moore, Smith and Oldenburg.

Occupying a neo-Palladian structure with impressive naturally lit painting galleries and extensive exhibition space, underwritten by a generous grant from The Meadows Foundation, the Meadows Museum is located off North Central Expressway at 5900 Bishop Boulevard, three blocks west of Mockingbird Station.

R. Gerald Turner, President, SMU Brad E. Cheves, Vice President of Development

CO N TE N T S 2

and External Affairs, SMU José A. Bowen, Dean, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Mark A. Roglán,

4

prado partnership Prado and Meadows Museum Announce

Impressions of Europe:

Expansion of Unprecedented Partnership

Nineteenth-Century Vistas by Martín Rico

CURRENT exhibitions Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits

Director, Meadows Museum, SMU

10

14 UPCOMING EXHIBITION

Góngora/Picasso: Graphic Poetry

16 public programs

I hope you had a nice summer and are ready for an exciting fall season at the Meadows Museum where our galleries will be devoted to one of the greatest artists in history: the glorious Velázquez. This is the third focused exhibition done in collaboration with the Prado Museum, and focuses on the portraits he executed during his first decade as painter to King Philip IV. This is arguably the most important exhibition on Velázquez featured in the U.S. in more than two decades and is the first time that his role as portrait painter in the court upon his arrival to Madrid is studied in-depth. The exhibition features portraits he did during the decade of the 1620s including the king, artistocrats, clergy members, jesters, and intellectuals, and is a once-in-alifetime opportunity for any art lover. Furthermore, seeing this exhibition in the context of the Meadows Museum, one of the greatest Spanish art collections in the World (including three paintings by Velázquez), is indeed something one should not miss. More details on this exhibition and unprecedented alliance with the Prado Museum can be seen in the following pages of the magazine (pages 4-9).

I am also pleased to inform you that a small Meadows Museum delegation including President and CEO of The Meadows Foundation, Linda P. Evans; Meadows Museum Advisory Council member, Jo Ann G. Thetford; and Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, José Antonio Bowen, traveled to Saint Petersburg (Russia) this past June to attend the opening of Santiago Calatrava’s retrospective at the Hermitage Museum.

This was the first time this distinguished institution invited a living architect to exhibit in their galleries. We felt at home during the opening, where our monumental Calatrava sculpture, Wave, was featured on the cover of the invitation. We also attended a lecture the Spanish architect gave in Catherine’s Theater at the Hermitage, which he began by sharing an image of the Meadows Museum building and Wave, recounting how they were the inspiration for a winery he designed and built in the wine region of La Rioja (Spain). A large scale moving model of our sculpture was featured prominently in the exhibition.

The programming, lectures, activities, and workshops planned by our education department feature scholars from around the world and a unique series to learn about the art and history of Spain and its world (pages 16-20). A very appealing cultural trip to Cataluña and Mallorca has also been carefully designed by our membership department and I hope many of you join me for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Finally, I am also very pleased to announce that our first Meadows/Kress/ Prado fellow, Iraida Rodríquez-Negrón, will continue in the position for another year.

There is much to experience this fall at your museum and I look forward to seeing you in the galleries or at any of the many events that are being prepared for you. As we welcome Velázquez at the Meadows these next few months only one thought comes to mind: Enjoy it as it lasts and bring as many people as you know to experience the mastery of this genius!

Lectures, Gallery Talks and Workshops

21 museum membership Mark A. Roglán, Ph.D. Director, Meadows Museum Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History, SMU

ON THE COVER: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Philip IV (detail), 1623-27. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Image © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. OPPOSITE: Santiago Calatrava retrospective at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Photo courtesy of RIA Novosti.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

1— M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

FALL 2012

from the director

Meadows Museum Advisory Council

Dear Members and Friends,

Marilyn H. Augur Dolores G. Barzune Stuart M. Bumpas Alan B. Coleman Linda Pitts Custard, Chair Linda P. Evans John A. Hammack Beverly C. Heil Gwen S. Irwin Janet P. Kafka George C. Lancaster George T. Lee, Jr. Karen Levy Linda E. Ludden Linda B. McFarland Mildred M. Oppenheimer

MI S S IO N The Meadows Museum is committed to the advancement of knowledge and understanding of art through the collection and interpretation of works of the greatest aesthetic and historical importance, as exemplified by the founding collection of Spanish art. The Museum is a resource of Southern Methodist University that serves a broad and international audience as well as the university community through meaningful exhibitions, publications, research, workshops and other educational programs, and encourages public participation through a broad-based membership.

Carol J. Riddle Catherine B. Taylor Jo Ann G. Thetford Michael L. Thomas George E. Tobolowsky Rebecca S. Todd Gail O. Turner Kevin E. Vogel P. Gregory Warden Susan P. Wittman Karina H. Woolley

Ex officio

HI S TOR Y The Meadows Museum, a division of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts, houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works dating from the tenth to the twentyfirst century. It includes masterpieces by some of the world’s greatest painters: El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Miró and Picasso. Highlights of the collection include Renaissance altarpieces, monumental Baroque canvases, exquisite rococo oil sketches, polychrome wood sculptures, Impressionist landscapes, modernist abstractions, a comprehensive collection of the graphic works of Goya, and a select group of sculptures by major twentieth-century masters – Rodin, Maillol, Giacometti, Moore, Smith and Oldenburg.

Occupying a neo-Palladian structure with impressive naturally lit painting galleries and extensive exhibition space, underwritten by a generous grant from The Meadows Foundation, the Meadows Museum is located off North Central Expressway at 5900 Bishop Boulevard, three blocks west of Mockingbird Station.

R. Gerald Turner, President, SMU Brad E. Cheves, Vice President of Development

CO N TE N T S 2

and External Affairs, SMU José A. Bowen, Dean, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU Mark A. Roglán,

4

prado partnership Prado and Meadows Museum Announce

Impressions of Europe:

Expansion of Unprecedented Partnership

Nineteenth-Century Vistas by Martín Rico

CURRENT exhibitions Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits

Director, Meadows Museum, SMU

10

14 UPCOMING EXHIBITION

Góngora/Picasso: Graphic Poetry

16 public programs

I hope you had a nice summer and are ready for an exciting fall season at the Meadows Museum where our galleries will be devoted to one of the greatest artists in history: the glorious Velázquez. This is the third focused exhibition done in collaboration with the Prado Museum, and focuses on the portraits he executed during his first decade as painter to King Philip IV. This is arguably the most important exhibition on Velázquez featured in the U.S. in more than two decades and is the first time that his role as portrait painter in the court upon his arrival to Madrid is studied in-depth. The exhibition features portraits he did during the decade of the 1620s including the king, artistocrats, clergy members, jesters, and intellectuals, and is a once-in-alifetime opportunity for any art lover. Furthermore, seeing this exhibition in the context of the Meadows Museum, one of the greatest Spanish art collections in the World (including three paintings by Velázquez), is indeed something one should not miss. More details on this exhibition and unprecedented alliance with the Prado Museum can be seen in the following pages of the magazine (pages 4-9).

I am also pleased to inform you that a small Meadows Museum delegation including President and CEO of The Meadows Foundation, Linda P. Evans; Meadows Museum Advisory Council member, Jo Ann G. Thetford; and Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, José Antonio Bowen, traveled to Saint Petersburg (Russia) this past June to attend the opening of Santiago Calatrava’s retrospective at the Hermitage Museum.

This was the first time this distinguished institution invited a living architect to exhibit in their galleries. We felt at home during the opening, where our monumental Calatrava sculpture, Wave, was featured on the cover of the invitation. We also attended a lecture the Spanish architect gave in Catherine’s Theater at the Hermitage, which he began by sharing an image of the Meadows Museum building and Wave, recounting how they were the inspiration for a winery he designed and built in the wine region of La Rioja (Spain). A large scale moving model of our sculpture was featured prominently in the exhibition.

The programming, lectures, activities, and workshops planned by our education department feature scholars from around the world and a unique series to learn about the art and history of Spain and its world (pages 16-20). A very appealing cultural trip to Cataluña and Mallorca has also been carefully designed by our membership department and I hope many of you join me for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Finally, I am also very pleased to announce that our first Meadows/Kress/ Prado fellow, Iraida Rodríquez-Negrón, will continue in the position for another year.

There is much to experience this fall at your museum and I look forward to seeing you in the galleries or at any of the many events that are being prepared for you. As we welcome Velázquez at the Meadows these next few months only one thought comes to mind: Enjoy it as it lasts and bring as many people as you know to experience the mastery of this genius!

Lectures, Gallery Talks and Workshops

21 museum membership Mark A. Roglán, Ph.D. Director, Meadows Museum Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History, SMU

ON THE COVER: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Philip IV (detail), 1623-27. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Image © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. OPPOSITE: Santiago Calatrava retrospective at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Photo courtesy of RIA Novosti.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

1— M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

prado partnership

prado partnership

prado and meadows museum announce EXPANSION OF UNPRECEDENTED PARTNERSHIP New exhibitions and programs build on the success of first two years of collaboration among leading Spanish art institutions

Building upon the success of the first two years of its partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, and in anticipation of this fall’s third and final exhibition under the initial agreement, Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits, both institutions have recently announced that they will expand the agreement for two additional years, continuing the institutions’ many initiatives and adding two collaboratively developed exhibitions. The Meadows and the Prado originally announced in 2009 the

launch of a three-year partnership that included the loan of three major paintings from the Prado, interdisciplinary research at Southern Methodist University (SMU), an unprecedented fellowship exchange between the two museums, and a range of public programs, all of which will continue for the next two years under the expanded partnership.

The first painting, El Greco’s Pentecost (1596-1600), was exhibited at the Meadows in fall 2010. Jusepe de Ribera’s Mary Magdalene (1640-41), the second painting, was paired with three additional loans of Ribera works from other collections, in a larger exhibition that took place this past fall.

According to Mark A. Roglán, Director of the Meadows Museum, “By the time we began planning for the third painting, Diego Velázquez’s Philip IV (1623-27), it was clear to both parties that we were going bigger, going beyond the scope of the original agreement; at the same time, we were in talks about renewing and expanding it. The resulting Velázquez exhibition can therefore be considered not only the denouement to the original partnership, but also the start of a new and more ambitious one.”

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits, on view

Dr. Mark Roglán, director of the Meadows Museum, and Dr. Gabriele Finaldi, the Prado’s associate director of conservation and research, in the Galería Central of the Museo Nacional del Prado. Photo by Andrés Valentín-Gamazo.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

at the Meadows Museum from September 16, 2012 through January 13, 2013, has as its centerpiece the above-mentioned portrait of Philip IV from the Prado. The exhibition will be guest curated by Dr. Javier Portús, Head of the Department of Spanish Painting (pre-1700) at the Prado, and will include paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Kimbell Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as the Meadows’ own portrait of Philip IV. Together with the Meadows’ other two Velázquez works, this exhibition will be the largest gathering of Velázquez paintings in one U.S. institution in more than twenty years. Several books and manuscripts

2— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

illustrating the evolution of Spanish court portraiture, from libraries and collections all over the world, will be featured, as well as scientific material such as radiographs of the Prado’s portrait. The Meadows will produce a bilingual publication for the exhibition which will present new research related to the works on view and will host a variety of educational programming, including a symposium with national and international scholars.

Under the expanded partnership, the Meadows and the Prado will work together to mount two additional exhibitions that will be held in both Madrid and Dallas. Impressions of Europe: Nineteenth-Century Vistas by Martín Rico, (March 10-July 7, 2013) will be the first ever monographic exhibition on the work of Martín Rico y Ortega, one of the most important artists in the artistic panorama of late nineteenth-century Spain and a pioneer in the introduction and further appreciation of landscape painting. The work of Rico enjoyed wide international recognition and exposure during his lifetime, particularly in the United States;

Meadows Museum installation of El Greco’s (1541-1614), Pentecost, 1596-1600.

Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo by Clayton Smith.

With its more than 100,000 works on paper and high quality of its prints, the Hamburg Kunsthalle

“The resulting Velázquez exhibition can therefore be considered not only the denouement to the original partnership, but also the start of a new and more ambitious one.” - mark a. roglÁn

is among the most important collections of its kind

some of the greatest American collectors of that period, such as Henry Clay Frick, Henry Walters, and William H. Stewart were his patrons. The exhibition will examine each period of the artist’s career, from its earliest stages in the mountainous countryside outside of Madrid to the glorious Venetian canals and Parisian street scenes of his later years. In summer 2014 an exhibition featuring the most relevant Spanish drawings from the Kunsthalle of Hamburg, Germany, will be first presented in the Meadows Museum and then travel to the Prado to be exhibited there.

“After frequent visits to Madrid in the 1950s, museum founder Algur H. Meadows had a vision to establish a ‘small Prado in Texas’, and built an incredible collection of Spanish art that forms the foundation of the museum today,” said Roglán. “Over the last two years, our ongoing partnership with the Prado has been another major step in realizing his aspiration.

The exchange of ideas, people and works of art that it has produced has been mutually beneficial to our institution and the Prado, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to extend our partnership.”

in Europe, containing one of the finest and most significant collections of Spanish drawings in the world.

These additional partnership exhibitions will again be accompanied by bilingual exhibition catalogues and academic symposiums.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

3— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

prado partnership

prado partnership

prado and meadows museum announce EXPANSION OF UNPRECEDENTED PARTNERSHIP New exhibitions and programs build on the success of first two years of collaboration among leading Spanish art institutions

Building upon the success of the first two years of its partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, and in anticipation of this fall’s third and final exhibition under the initial agreement, Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits, both institutions have recently announced that they will expand the agreement for two additional years, continuing the institutions’ many initiatives and adding two collaboratively developed exhibitions. The Meadows and the Prado originally announced in 2009 the

launch of a three-year partnership that included the loan of three major paintings from the Prado, interdisciplinary research at Southern Methodist University (SMU), an unprecedented fellowship exchange between the two museums, and a range of public programs, all of which will continue for the next two years under the expanded partnership.

The first painting, El Greco’s Pentecost (1596-1600), was exhibited at the Meadows in fall 2010. Jusepe de Ribera’s Mary Magdalene (1640-41), the second painting, was paired with three additional loans of Ribera works from other collections, in a larger exhibition that took place this past fall.

According to Mark A. Roglán, Director of the Meadows Museum, “By the time we began planning for the third painting, Diego Velázquez’s Philip IV (1623-27), it was clear to both parties that we were going bigger, going beyond the scope of the original agreement; at the same time, we were in talks about renewing and expanding it. The resulting Velázquez exhibition can therefore be considered not only the denouement to the original partnership, but also the start of a new and more ambitious one.”

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits, on view

Dr. Mark Roglán, director of the Meadows Museum, and Dr. Gabriele Finaldi, the Prado’s associate director of conservation and research, in the Galería Central of the Museo Nacional del Prado. Photo by Andrés Valentín-Gamazo.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

at the Meadows Museum from September 16, 2012 through January 13, 2013, has as its centerpiece the above-mentioned portrait of Philip IV from the Prado. The exhibition will be guest curated by Dr. Javier Portús, Head of the Department of Spanish Painting (pre-1700) at the Prado, and will include paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Kimbell Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as the Meadows’ own portrait of Philip IV. Together with the Meadows’ other two Velázquez works, this exhibition will be the largest gathering of Velázquez paintings in one U.S. institution in more than twenty years. Several books and manuscripts

2— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

illustrating the evolution of Spanish court portraiture, from libraries and collections all over the world, will be featured, as well as scientific material such as radiographs of the Prado’s portrait. The Meadows will produce a bilingual publication for the exhibition which will present new research related to the works on view and will host a variety of educational programming, including a symposium with national and international scholars.

Under the expanded partnership, the Meadows and the Prado will work together to mount two additional exhibitions that will be held in both Madrid and Dallas. Impressions of Europe: Nineteenth-Century Vistas by Martín Rico, (March 10-July 7, 2013) will be the first ever monographic exhibition on the work of Martín Rico y Ortega, one of the most important artists in the artistic panorama of late nineteenth-century Spain and a pioneer in the introduction and further appreciation of landscape painting. The work of Rico enjoyed wide international recognition and exposure during his lifetime, particularly in the United States;

Meadows Museum installation of El Greco’s (1541-1614), Pentecost, 1596-1600.

Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo by Clayton Smith.

With its more than 100,000 works on paper and high quality of its prints, the Hamburg Kunsthalle

“The resulting Velázquez exhibition can therefore be considered not only the denouement to the original partnership, but also the start of a new and more ambitious one.” - mark a. roglÁn

is among the most important collections of its kind

some of the greatest American collectors of that period, such as Henry Clay Frick, Henry Walters, and William H. Stewart were his patrons. The exhibition will examine each period of the artist’s career, from its earliest stages in the mountainous countryside outside of Madrid to the glorious Venetian canals and Parisian street scenes of his later years. In summer 2014 an exhibition featuring the most relevant Spanish drawings from the Kunsthalle of Hamburg, Germany, will be first presented in the Meadows Museum and then travel to the Prado to be exhibited there.

“After frequent visits to Madrid in the 1950s, museum founder Algur H. Meadows had a vision to establish a ‘small Prado in Texas’, and built an incredible collection of Spanish art that forms the foundation of the museum today,” said Roglán. “Over the last two years, our ongoing partnership with the Prado has been another major step in realizing his aspiration.

The exchange of ideas, people and works of art that it has produced has been mutually beneficial to our institution and the Prado, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to extend our partnership.”

in Europe, containing one of the finest and most significant collections of Spanish drawings in the world.

These additional partnership exhibitions will again be accompanied by bilingual exhibition catalogues and academic symposiums.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

3— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

september 16, 2012-january 13, 2013

diego Velázquez: the early court portraits

In 1623, all the planets aligned for Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) when he was welcomed at the court of King Philip IV of Spain (1605-65). He entered the service of the “Planet King” at the young age of twenty-four, with no previous experience working for the monarch, and without having put in the time and effort that was usually expected of most artists in order to be appointed royal painters. Undoubtedly, his

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Portrait of King Philip IV, 1623-24. Oil on canvas. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.67.23. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

innovative talent played a large role in his fortune.

His first portrait of the king was so positively received at court that it garnered him, according to his father-in-law and master, Francisco Pacheco (15641644), the exclusive right to paint the portraits of the monarch. But his rapid rise at and ease of access

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

to the court were the result of other factors too, among these a sudden vacancy in the ranks of the royal painters, and most importantly, his association with the cultural elite of Seville and its connections in Madrid. Philip IV’s ascent to the throne in 1621 also signaled the rise to power of Gaspar de Guzmán, the count-duke of Olivares (1587-1645), who became his prime minister, derisively known by his opponents as the valido, or favorite. A native of Andalucía, Olivares still kept close ties with the academic circles of Seville in which Velázquez was educated, and welcomed many of its members to the royal court, undoubtedly to create a friendly environment where he could freely exercise his control of the monarchy. This circumstance opened the doors for the artist, who always received the support of the prime minister until the latter was banished from court in 1643. The exhibition Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits will showcase some of the most outstanding portraits created by Velázquez during his first ten years at the court of Philip IV. These works set the stage for the artist’s brilliant career, which was fostered by the patronage of one of history’s most discerning art patrons and connoisseurs.

The portraits that will be on display also represent a cross-section of the environment in which Velázquez flourished; these are masterpieces that capture the likeness of the king and of other key members of court society.

Curated by Dr. Javier Portús, Head of the Department of Spanish Painting until 1700 at the Museo Nacional del Prado, this will be the first exhibition ever devoted to the portraits of this period in Velázquez’s career, when almost all of the works he created were examples of this pictorial genre. It centers on the magnificent portrait of Philip IV from the Prado’s collection, painted by the artist around 1623-28. This masterpiece has not been seen in the United States since it was displayed for the first time in 1989 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the landmark monographic exhibition Velázquez.

4— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

LEFT: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Philip IV, 1623-27. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. RIGHT: X-radiograph of Diego Velázquez’s Philip IV, 1623-27, showing evidence of the underlying c. 1623-24 image.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Both © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

This official portrait of Philip IV will be accompanied

that these works, four of only nineteen by Velázquez

by four other portraits by the Spanish master that be-

in American museums, will be featured together.

long to American collections: Portrait of King Philip

The collection of the Meadows Museum contains

IV (1623-24) from the Meadows Museum; Portrait of Luis de Góngora y Argote (1622) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Portrait of the Jester Calabazas

three paintings from different phases in the Spanish master’s career: the aforementioned Portrait of King

(c. 1631-32) from The Cleveland Museum of Art;

Philip IV, Female Figure (Sibyl with Tabula Rasa) (c. 1648), and Portrait of Queen Mariana (c. 1656);

and Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana (c. 1631-

a remarkable fact considering that Velázquez’s total

33) from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

artistic production amounts to just over one hun-

This Prado-Meadows initiative will be the first time

dred works, the majority of which are in the Prado.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

5— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

september 16, 2012-january 13, 2013

diego Velázquez: the early court portraits

In 1623, all the planets aligned for Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) when he was welcomed at the court of King Philip IV of Spain (1605-65). He entered the service of the “Planet King” at the young age of twenty-four, with no previous experience working for the monarch, and without having put in the time and effort that was usually expected of most artists in order to be appointed royal painters. Undoubtedly, his

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Portrait of King Philip IV, 1623-24. Oil on canvas. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.67.23. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

innovative talent played a large role in his fortune.

His first portrait of the king was so positively received at court that it garnered him, according to his father-in-law and master, Francisco Pacheco (15641644), the exclusive right to paint the portraits of the monarch. But his rapid rise at and ease of access

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

to the court were the result of other factors too, among these a sudden vacancy in the ranks of the royal painters, and most importantly, his association with the cultural elite of Seville and its connections in Madrid. Philip IV’s ascent to the throne in 1621 also signaled the rise to power of Gaspar de Guzmán, the count-duke of Olivares (1587-1645), who became his prime minister, derisively known by his opponents as the valido, or favorite. A native of Andalucía, Olivares still kept close ties with the academic circles of Seville in which Velázquez was educated, and welcomed many of its members to the royal court, undoubtedly to create a friendly environment where he could freely exercise his control of the monarchy. This circumstance opened the doors for the artist, who always received the support of the prime minister until the latter was banished from court in 1643. The exhibition Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits will showcase some of the most outstanding portraits created by Velázquez during his first ten years at the court of Philip IV. These works set the stage for the artist’s brilliant career, which was fostered by the patronage of one of history’s most discerning art patrons and connoisseurs.

The portraits that will be on display also represent a cross-section of the environment in which Velázquez flourished; these are masterpieces that capture the likeness of the king and of other key members of court society.

Curated by Dr. Javier Portús, Head of the Department of Spanish Painting until 1700 at the Museo Nacional del Prado, this will be the first exhibition ever devoted to the portraits of this period in Velázquez’s career, when almost all of the works he created were examples of this pictorial genre. It centers on the magnificent portrait of Philip IV from the Prado’s collection, painted by the artist around 1623-28. This masterpiece has not been seen in the United States since it was displayed for the first time in 1989 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the landmark monographic exhibition Velázquez.

4— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

LEFT: Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Philip IV, 1623-27. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. RIGHT: X-radiograph of Diego Velázquez’s Philip IV, 1623-27, showing evidence of the underlying c. 1623-24 image.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Both © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

This official portrait of Philip IV will be accompanied

that these works, four of only nineteen by Velázquez

by four other portraits by the Spanish master that be-

in American museums, will be featured together.

long to American collections: Portrait of King Philip

The collection of the Meadows Museum contains

IV (1623-24) from the Meadows Museum; Portrait of Luis de Góngora y Argote (1622) from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Portrait of the Jester Calabazas

three paintings from different phases in the Spanish master’s career: the aforementioned Portrait of King

(c. 1631-32) from The Cleveland Museum of Art;

Philip IV, Female Figure (Sibyl with Tabula Rasa) (c. 1648), and Portrait of Queen Mariana (c. 1656);

and Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana (c. 1631-

a remarkable fact considering that Velázquez’s total

33) from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

artistic production amounts to just over one hun-

This Prado-Meadows initiative will be the first time

dred works, the majority of which are in the Prado.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

5— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

An exhibition devoted exclusively to the art of Velázquez was long overdue in the United States, and this will be the first one ever presented at a Texas museum. The last exhibition of its kind took place in 1999, when The Frick Collection showcased six of the ten paintings by Velázquez in New York museums. In addition, this will also be the first time that the Meadows portrait will be shown next to the Prado’s, a significant event considering the close relationship between these two likenesses of the king,

The exhibit will provide visitors to the Museum a unique opportunity not only to see all of Velázquez’s works in Texas collections under one roof ... but also to appreciate the caliber of his artistic genius, already evident in the portraits he created during his first years at the court of Philip IV. particularly because of the possibility that the bustlength portrait in Dallas was the prototype after which the underlying image of the Prado work was created. Visitors to this exhibition will be able to further explore this relationship by comparing digitally enhanced full-length X-rays of these two portraits, in addition to a workshop copy of the underlying image of the Prado portrait from a private collection in Madrid, which will be exhibited to the public for the first time. A selection of engravings that reveal the pronounced influence of Velázquez’s works on engraved portraits of the period will complete this exhibition. These works on paper were very popular due to their accessibility and ease of fabrication, and successfully propagated the ideologies of the monarchy beyond palace walls.

Dr. Portús describes this exhibition as an opportunity to “reflect on the origins of Velázquez as a royal portraitist.” This is an important topic, considering

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

that portraits comprise two-thirds of Velázquez’s total output. The artist excelled in this pictorial genre throughout his career, culminating in the portrait of The Family of Philip IV, or Las Meninas (1656), one of the most recognized and important paintings in the history of art, and the crown-jewel of the Prado’s collection. Velázquez’s early court portraits can be situated within the context of the well-established Spanish Habsburg tradition codified during the sixteenth century by court artists like Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1488/90-1576), Anthonis Mor (1517-77) and Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531/2-88), characterized by understated, simple composition and virtual absence of the elaborate allegorical apparatus that was commonly found in royal portraits of other European courts. But Velázquez built upon this tradition, creating simple and austere images that reflect the pragmatic sanction of austerity recently imposed by Philip IV and Olivares, which prohibited ostentatious display of costume and jewelry. These early portraits also reveal a desire to emulate the conservative iconography that prevailed during the last years of the reign of King Philip II, grandfather to Philip IV, manifested in the adoption of solemn black costumes, which has been interpreted as a concerted effort to link his reign to that of his glorious predecessor. Velázquez easily overcame the restrictions of this limited color palette and showcased his technical virtuosity by masterfully manipulating grays and blacks, skillfully capturing the nuances of fabric textures. The portraits in this exhibition are prime examples that showcase this mastery of execution. These works also reveal the artist’s ability to successfully penetrate the sitter’s personality. He approached his court subjects with the same sympathetic perception with which he captured the likeness of the anonymous models who appear in his earlier Sevillian works. The paintings that will be showcased in this exhibition represent the habitual sitters who posed for the artist at the court in Madrid. In addition to his magnificent portraits of the king and the royal family, he depicted noblemen, intellectuals and court entertainers.

6— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

The centerpiece of this exhibition, the portrait of Philip IV, will be leaving the Prado for only the fifth time since it entered the museum in 1827. In this portrait, Velázquez, conscious of the rules of etiquette governing the Spanish court, represented the king with the detachment and decorum suitable to his station. This full-length likeness of the king was created around 1628, when the artist reworked an earlier portrait of the monarch thought to have been painted c. 1623-24, and that, as already mentioned, is closely related to the portrait of the king that has been part of the Meadows Museum collection since 1967. The existence of another version of the portrait under the image from c. 1628 is evident at plain sight through the multiple pentimenti (changes to the composition) on the painted surface. These changes were confirmed when the portrait was first X-rayed in 1960. The underlying full-length likeness of the king is preserved in other autograph and workshop copies of the composition, as in the portrait from the private collection which is being exhibited in public for the first time.

The portrait in the Meadows Museum could very well be the first image of the king painted by Velázquez, a work that played a key role in the successful reception of the artist at the court of Philip IV. According to Pacheco, after a first unsuccessful attempt to gain a position at court in 1622, Velázquez was summoned to Madrid in 1623 by Olivares. The portrait completed by the artist on August 30 of that year was to the “taste of His Majesty, of the Infantes (Philip IV’s brothers) and of the Count-Duke, who declared that no one had ever portrayed the king up to that moment.” Already in this early work, the characteristics that exemplify the court portraits Velázquez created during his first years at court can be appreciated: figures represented in bare and undetermined settings, austerely dressed and painted in a sober palette with precise brushwork and contours. It could be argued that Velázquez’s early portraits followed the style he developed in the works he created before entering the court in 1623, as seen in the portrait of

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Portrait of the Jester Calabazas, c. 1631-32. Oil on canvas. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, 1965.15.

Luis de Góngora y Argote from Boston, which was executed during Velázquez’s first trip to Madrid at the request of Pacheco. But what clearly differentiates this work from the king’s portraits is how Velázquez captured with great psychological insight the stern and conflicted personality of one of Spain’s greatest poets,

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

7— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

An exhibition devoted exclusively to the art of Velázquez was long overdue in the United States, and this will be the first one ever presented at a Texas museum. The last exhibition of its kind took place in 1999, when The Frick Collection showcased six of the ten paintings by Velázquez in New York museums. In addition, this will also be the first time that the Meadows portrait will be shown next to the Prado’s, a significant event considering the close relationship between these two likenesses of the king,

The exhibit will provide visitors to the Museum a unique opportunity not only to see all of Velázquez’s works in Texas collections under one roof ... but also to appreciate the caliber of his artistic genius, already evident in the portraits he created during his first years at the court of Philip IV. particularly because of the possibility that the bustlength portrait in Dallas was the prototype after which the underlying image of the Prado work was created. Visitors to this exhibition will be able to further explore this relationship by comparing digitally enhanced full-length X-rays of these two portraits, in addition to a workshop copy of the underlying image of the Prado portrait from a private collection in Madrid, which will be exhibited to the public for the first time. A selection of engravings that reveal the pronounced influence of Velázquez’s works on engraved portraits of the period will complete this exhibition. These works on paper were very popular due to their accessibility and ease of fabrication, and successfully propagated the ideologies of the monarchy beyond palace walls.

Dr. Portús describes this exhibition as an opportunity to “reflect on the origins of Velázquez as a royal portraitist.” This is an important topic, considering

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

that portraits comprise two-thirds of Velázquez’s total output. The artist excelled in this pictorial genre throughout his career, culminating in the portrait of The Family of Philip IV, or Las Meninas (1656), one of the most recognized and important paintings in the history of art, and the crown-jewel of the Prado’s collection. Velázquez’s early court portraits can be situated within the context of the well-established Spanish Habsburg tradition codified during the sixteenth century by court artists like Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian (c. 1488/90-1576), Anthonis Mor (1517-77) and Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531/2-88), characterized by understated, simple composition and virtual absence of the elaborate allegorical apparatus that was commonly found in royal portraits of other European courts. But Velázquez built upon this tradition, creating simple and austere images that reflect the pragmatic sanction of austerity recently imposed by Philip IV and Olivares, which prohibited ostentatious display of costume and jewelry. These early portraits also reveal a desire to emulate the conservative iconography that prevailed during the last years of the reign of King Philip II, grandfather to Philip IV, manifested in the adoption of solemn black costumes, which has been interpreted as a concerted effort to link his reign to that of his glorious predecessor. Velázquez easily overcame the restrictions of this limited color palette and showcased his technical virtuosity by masterfully manipulating grays and blacks, skillfully capturing the nuances of fabric textures. The portraits in this exhibition are prime examples that showcase this mastery of execution. These works also reveal the artist’s ability to successfully penetrate the sitter’s personality. He approached his court subjects with the same sympathetic perception with which he captured the likeness of the anonymous models who appear in his earlier Sevillian works. The paintings that will be showcased in this exhibition represent the habitual sitters who posed for the artist at the court in Madrid. In addition to his magnificent portraits of the king and the royal family, he depicted noblemen, intellectuals and court entertainers.

6— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

The centerpiece of this exhibition, the portrait of Philip IV, will be leaving the Prado for only the fifth time since it entered the museum in 1827. In this portrait, Velázquez, conscious of the rules of etiquette governing the Spanish court, represented the king with the detachment and decorum suitable to his station. This full-length likeness of the king was created around 1628, when the artist reworked an earlier portrait of the monarch thought to have been painted c. 1623-24, and that, as already mentioned, is closely related to the portrait of the king that has been part of the Meadows Museum collection since 1967. The existence of another version of the portrait under the image from c. 1628 is evident at plain sight through the multiple pentimenti (changes to the composition) on the painted surface. These changes were confirmed when the portrait was first X-rayed in 1960. The underlying full-length likeness of the king is preserved in other autograph and workshop copies of the composition, as in the portrait from the private collection which is being exhibited in public for the first time.

The portrait in the Meadows Museum could very well be the first image of the king painted by Velázquez, a work that played a key role in the successful reception of the artist at the court of Philip IV. According to Pacheco, after a first unsuccessful attempt to gain a position at court in 1622, Velázquez was summoned to Madrid in 1623 by Olivares. The portrait completed by the artist on August 30 of that year was to the “taste of His Majesty, of the Infantes (Philip IV’s brothers) and of the Count-Duke, who declared that no one had ever portrayed the king up to that moment.” Already in this early work, the characteristics that exemplify the court portraits Velázquez created during his first years at court can be appreciated: figures represented in bare and undetermined settings, austerely dressed and painted in a sober palette with precise brushwork and contours. It could be argued that Velázquez’s early portraits followed the style he developed in the works he created before entering the court in 1623, as seen in the portrait of

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599-1660), Portrait of the Jester Calabazas, c. 1631-32. Oil on canvas. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund, 1965.15.

Luis de Góngora y Argote from Boston, which was executed during Velázquez’s first trip to Madrid at the request of Pacheco. But what clearly differentiates this work from the king’s portraits is how Velázquez captured with great psychological insight the stern and conflicted personality of one of Spain’s greatest poets,

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

7— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

who at the age of sixty, when this work was painted, was living in precarious circumstances, frustrated by mounting debt and conflicts with some of his literary colleagues. This would be the first of a number of works Velázquez created capturing the likeness of members of the intellectual circles in Madrid.

Paulus Pontius (Flemish, 1603-58), Allegorical Portrait of the CountDuke of Olivares, c. 1625. Engraving. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Encouraged by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, who visited the Spanish court in 1628-29, Velázquez travelled to Italy for the first time in 1629.

This trip was instrumental in Velázquez’s artistic development, exposing him to models that influenced his art for the rest of his career. Shortly after his return, he created a number of portraits of members of the court, whose likenesses reveal an originality of execution not evident in his images of the king,

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

probably because these were free from the restrictive decorum warranted by royal portraiture. Among them is the Portrait of the Jester Calabazas, the earliest known portrait of a court jester painted by the artist. As an entertainer, Calabazas fulfilled the role of an hombre de placer, and was a member of the “lowly” group of personages that were integral components of the Spanish royal household since the sixteenth century. Just as in the portrait of Philip IV at the Prado, Velázquez presents the court jester in fulllength and dressed in the elegant, if austere, black costume characteristic of Philip IV’s court. But the freedom from the constraints of court etiquette that guided his portraits of the king allowed the artist to create an insightful and compassionate depiction of the physically and mentally incapacitated jester who entered the king’s service in 1632.

of this period follow the likeness of Olivares fashioned by Velázquez, and show him liberally appropriating royal imagery for his own advantage in order to justify his position at court. One of the prints included in the exhibition is an image engraved by Paulus Pontius (1603-58) after a design by Rubens modeled after an image of Olivares by Velázquez (Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil), which is an excellent example of this type of propagandistic imagery. In this print, the valido is surrounded by laudatory allegorical symbols, including imagery alluding to the quintessential emblem of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, the demigod Hercules. These works are on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado; the Biblioteca National in Madrid; the University of Kansas, Summerfield Collection in Special Collections; the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; and the University of California at Berkeley.

Another portrait that consciously emulates the fulllength images of the king, but in a more naturalistic manner, is the Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana, possibly commissioned to commemorate the induction of the nobleman and member of Philip IV’s Privy Council into the military Order of Calatrava on October 14, 1630. Velázquez presents a powerful figure with such a lifelike quality and three-dimensionality as if he could exit the canvas and join the viewer’s space at any moment. This realism is accentuated by his purposeful stare, lifted eyebrow, and by the naturalistic coloration and modeling of his facial features.

vide visitors to the Museum a unique opportunity not only to see all of Velázquez’s works in Texas collections under one roof – the Meadows Museum, its exclusive venue – but also to appreciate the caliber of his artistic genius, already evident in the portraits he created during his first years at the court of Philip IV. Additional works of Spanish Habsburg portraiture owned by the museum will complement the exhibition by providing examples of precursors to and followers of the royal imagery of Velázquez.

Sixteen prints containing engraved portraits will be displayed as part of this exhibition of Velázquez court portraits to further illustrate the success and enormous influence of the artist’s royal imagery.

Philip IV and Olivares were well aware of the usefulness of engravings and patronized a number of Spanish and foreign engravers to actively create propagandistic imagery. These engraved portraits were usually included in books as frontispieces and illustrations, but they were distributed in loose leafs as well. Some of the most interesting engraved portraits

This exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual and amply illustrated interdisciplinary catalogue with contributions from leading scholars in the fields of Spanish art, history and literature, published by the Meadows Museum in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado. In addition, the Meadows Museum will present a symposium with lectures by Dr. Portús, Dr. Laura Bass (Brown University) and Dr. Tanya Tiffany (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) (see page 16 for details). This program will be completed by two master lectures offered by preeminent

8— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

scholars of Golden Age Spanish Art: internationally renowned Velázquez scholar, Professor Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and Dr. Ignacio Cano Rivero, former Director and current Head of the Department of Exhibitions at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville, which houses the most important collection of Sevillian Baroque art in the world (see page 17 for details).

This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum and the Museo Nacional del Prado, and is funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.

L E A R N MORE A B O U T v e l Á z q u e z

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits will pro-

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits Various authors Hardcover 208 pages 79 images $50.00

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits offers a renewed look at Velázquez’s initial years as a royal portraitist, from stunning regal likenesses such as Philip IV (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) to the numerous derivative engravings that emerged thereafter. Through an array of interdisciplinary scholarship in the areas of art history, history, and sociology, this publication profiles the role of the artist and his craft by freshly examining the socio-cultural environment of the age.

—

9— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

who at the age of sixty, when this work was painted, was living in precarious circumstances, frustrated by mounting debt and conflicts with some of his literary colleagues. This would be the first of a number of works Velázquez created capturing the likeness of members of the intellectual circles in Madrid.

Paulus Pontius (Flemish, 1603-58), Allegorical Portrait of the CountDuke of Olivares, c. 1625. Engraving. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Encouraged by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, who visited the Spanish court in 1628-29, Velázquez travelled to Italy for the first time in 1629.

This trip was instrumental in Velázquez’s artistic development, exposing him to models that influenced his art for the rest of his career. Shortly after his return, he created a number of portraits of members of the court, whose likenesses reveal an originality of execution not evident in his images of the king,

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

probably because these were free from the restrictive decorum warranted by royal portraiture. Among them is the Portrait of the Jester Calabazas, the earliest known portrait of a court jester painted by the artist. As an entertainer, Calabazas fulfilled the role of an hombre de placer, and was a member of the “lowly” group of personages that were integral components of the Spanish royal household since the sixteenth century. Just as in the portrait of Philip IV at the Prado, Velázquez presents the court jester in fulllength and dressed in the elegant, if austere, black costume characteristic of Philip IV’s court. But the freedom from the constraints of court etiquette that guided his portraits of the king allowed the artist to create an insightful and compassionate depiction of the physically and mentally incapacitated jester who entered the king’s service in 1632.

of this period follow the likeness of Olivares fashioned by Velázquez, and show him liberally appropriating royal imagery for his own advantage in order to justify his position at court. One of the prints included in the exhibition is an image engraved by Paulus Pontius (1603-58) after a design by Rubens modeled after an image of Olivares by Velázquez (Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil), which is an excellent example of this type of propagandistic imagery. In this print, the valido is surrounded by laudatory allegorical symbols, including imagery alluding to the quintessential emblem of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, the demigod Hercules. These works are on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado; the Biblioteca National in Madrid; the University of Kansas, Summerfield Collection in Special Collections; the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; and the University of California at Berkeley.

Another portrait that consciously emulates the fulllength images of the king, but in a more naturalistic manner, is the Portrait of Don Pedro de Barberana, possibly commissioned to commemorate the induction of the nobleman and member of Philip IV’s Privy Council into the military Order of Calatrava on October 14, 1630. Velázquez presents a powerful figure with such a lifelike quality and three-dimensionality as if he could exit the canvas and join the viewer’s space at any moment. This realism is accentuated by his purposeful stare, lifted eyebrow, and by the naturalistic coloration and modeling of his facial features.

vide visitors to the Museum a unique opportunity not only to see all of Velázquez’s works in Texas collections under one roof – the Meadows Museum, its exclusive venue – but also to appreciate the caliber of his artistic genius, already evident in the portraits he created during his first years at the court of Philip IV. Additional works of Spanish Habsburg portraiture owned by the museum will complement the exhibition by providing examples of precursors to and followers of the royal imagery of Velázquez.

Sixteen prints containing engraved portraits will be displayed as part of this exhibition of Velázquez court portraits to further illustrate the success and enormous influence of the artist’s royal imagery.

Philip IV and Olivares were well aware of the usefulness of engravings and patronized a number of Spanish and foreign engravers to actively create propagandistic imagery. These engraved portraits were usually included in books as frontispieces and illustrations, but they were distributed in loose leafs as well. Some of the most interesting engraved portraits

This exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual and amply illustrated interdisciplinary catalogue with contributions from leading scholars in the fields of Spanish art, history and literature, published by the Meadows Museum in collaboration with the Museo Nacional del Prado. In addition, the Meadows Museum will present a symposium with lectures by Dr. Portús, Dr. Laura Bass (Brown University) and Dr. Tanya Tiffany (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) (see page 16 for details). This program will be completed by two master lectures offered by preeminent

8— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

scholars of Golden Age Spanish Art: internationally renowned Velázquez scholar, Professor Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and Dr. Ignacio Cano Rivero, former Director and current Head of the Department of Exhibitions at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville, which houses the most important collection of Sevillian Baroque art in the world (see page 17 for details).

This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum and the Museo Nacional del Prado, and is funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.

L E A R N MORE A B O U T v e l Á z q u e z

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits will pro-

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits Various authors Hardcover 208 pages 79 images $50.00

Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits offers a renewed look at Velázquez’s initial years as a royal portraitist, from stunning regal likenesses such as Philip IV (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid) to the numerous derivative engravings that emerged thereafter. Through an array of interdisciplinary scholarship in the areas of art history, history, and sociology, this publication profiles the role of the artist and his craft by freshly examining the socio-cultural environment of the age.

—

9— MeadowsMuseumdallas.org

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

september 16, 2012-january 13, 2013

Góngora/Picasso: Graphic poetry

Arguably one of Spain’s greatest poets, Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627) was recognized already in 1585 as a “rare, living genius” by no less than poet and playwright Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) in his first book entitled La Galatea (1585). After studying law at the University of Salamanca, Góngora was appointed racionero (prebendary) of the cathedral of Córdoba. In hopes of gaining royal patronage, Góngora finally attained a seat at court in Madrid in 1617 as royal chaplain for King Philip III. Along the course of his career, Góngora found admirers, and sparked controversy not only for his poetry, but also for his incongruous penchant for gambling and other frivolous pursuits while a deacon of the Catholic church. Góngora became the archenemy of fellow poet Francisco de Quevedo,

each defending their diametrically opposed writing styles. As the foremost proponent of the Castilian movement known as conceptismo, Quevedo’s writing was straightforward and satirical; simple, spare words nevertheless provoked an abundance of possible meanings. By contrast, Góngora’s style, known as culteranismo or Gongorismo, employed difficult vocabulary and syntactical complexities, frequently to the point of esoteric impermeability.

When Góngora died in 1627, the Baroque poet’s singular, convoluted, practically inimitable writing style was ostensibly relegated to an eternity of neglect. Three hundred years after Góngora’s death, however, the poet’s name and innovations were resurrected by literary circles of the modern world. The inherent complexities of Gongorismo resonated with Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and other poets of Spain’s ‘Generation of 1927’, an avant-garde literary circle who drew inspiration from writers of the Baroque era. Góngora in many respects was the raison d’être for this literary circle, whose name derived from the tercentenary of Góngora’s death; the group was officially cemented after meeting at the Ateneo in Seville in 1927 to commemorate the seventeenth-century poet. Before that group’s homage to their hero, French Symbolist writers of the late nineteenth century developed an affinity for Góngora because of his predilection for metaphor and his hermetic approach. Stylistic similarities between Góngora and French poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé were recorded in a 1922 article published in L’Esprit Nouveau by Hispanist Zdislas Milner.

On the heels of honoring Góngora in 1927, Milner further contributed to propagating the poet’s work by translating into French twenty of Góngora’s sonnets in 1928, with illustrations by painter Ismael González de la Serna.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas.

Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

10 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

11 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

september 16, 2012-january 13, 2013

Góngora/Picasso: Graphic poetry

Arguably one of Spain’s greatest poets, Luis de Góngora y Argote (1561-1627) was recognized already in 1585 as a “rare, living genius” by no less than poet and playwright Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) in his first book entitled La Galatea (1585). After studying law at the University of Salamanca, Góngora was appointed racionero (prebendary) of the cathedral of Córdoba. In hopes of gaining royal patronage, Góngora finally attained a seat at court in Madrid in 1617 as royal chaplain for King Philip III. Along the course of his career, Góngora found admirers, and sparked controversy not only for his poetry, but also for his incongruous penchant for gambling and other frivolous pursuits while a deacon of the Catholic church. Góngora became the archenemy of fellow poet Francisco de Quevedo,

each defending their diametrically opposed writing styles. As the foremost proponent of the Castilian movement known as conceptismo, Quevedo’s writing was straightforward and satirical; simple, spare words nevertheless provoked an abundance of possible meanings. By contrast, Góngora’s style, known as culteranismo or Gongorismo, employed difficult vocabulary and syntactical complexities, frequently to the point of esoteric impermeability.

When Góngora died in 1627, the Baroque poet’s singular, convoluted, practically inimitable writing style was ostensibly relegated to an eternity of neglect. Three hundred years after Góngora’s death, however, the poet’s name and innovations were resurrected by literary circles of the modern world. The inherent complexities of Gongorismo resonated with Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and other poets of Spain’s ‘Generation of 1927’, an avant-garde literary circle who drew inspiration from writers of the Baroque era. Góngora in many respects was the raison d’être for this literary circle, whose name derived from the tercentenary of Góngora’s death; the group was officially cemented after meeting at the Ateneo in Seville in 1927 to commemorate the seventeenth-century poet. Before that group’s homage to their hero, French Symbolist writers of the late nineteenth century developed an affinity for Góngora because of his predilection for metaphor and his hermetic approach. Stylistic similarities between Góngora and French poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé were recorded in a 1922 article published in L’Esprit Nouveau by Hispanist Zdislas Milner.

On the heels of honoring Góngora in 1927, Milner further contributed to propagating the poet’s work by translating into French twenty of Góngora’s sonnets in 1928, with illustrations by painter Ismael González de la Serna.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas.

Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

10 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

11 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

More than an illustrated book, Vingt Poëmes is a livre d’artiste – an artist’s book. A total work of art, a livre d’artiste typically features original prints by famous artists, with the text usually printed in an exquisite typeface on hand-made paper. Vingt Poëmes is no exception: the edition included 275 copies, fifteen of which were de luxe. These fifteen copies comprised not only the book itself, but also included a proof set of all the plates on China paper in order to be displayed without compromising the bound version.

Livres d’artiste are also characterized by the artist’s visual interpretation of the text, and as such, the China paper impressions of Vingt Poëmes are the ideal vehicle to convey the richness of Picasso’s illustrations.

Of the fifteen copies, the first five were printed on Japon imperial paper, while vélin du Marais was used for the subsequent ten. The rare copy of Vingt Poëmes on display at the Meadows this fall is the sixth of the fifteen de luxe copies, meaning it is the first to be numbered of those printed on vélin du Marais.

Jointly acquired by SMU’s Bridwell Library and the Meadows Museum in 1975, the work’s dual existence in both library and museum confirms the intersection of language and art inherent in Vingt Poëmes.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

Góngora was again reprised in print twenty years after Milner’s publication, this time by Pablo Picasso.

While generally reticent to work on commissions, Picasso selectively worked on a number of book projects in which text and illustration were interrelated, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1931) and Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (1942). After World War II, the artist was asked by Colonna, an editor and friend, to collaborate on the first of a new book series, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre. Published in 1948, Vingt Poëmes (Twenty Poems) is the result of this collaboration.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

Nineteen full-page etched female heads complement the sonnets; with the remaining full-page image, Picasso pays homage to both Góngora and Velázquez by recreating the latter’s famous 1622 portrait of Góngora. From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, this painting forms part of the exhibition Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits on view this fall. A third Spanish master, sixteenthcentury painter El Greco, was also incorporated into Vingt Poëmes with the inclusion of the sonnet Al sepulcro de Dominico Greco excelente Pintor (At the Sepulchre of Dominico Greco). El Greco’s resurgence in the modern era after centuries of obscurity was very similar to that of Góngora’s, and for many artists – Picasso in particular – El Greco was a formative influence. Góngora’s tribute to his contemporary is the only sonnet included in the work for which

12 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Picasso did not add any illustrations, as if doing so would have been an act of iconoclasm.

In linking himself to Spain’s literary and artistic masters of the past, Picasso must have considered the trajectory of a common language that developed over the centuries. The moment of Vingt Poëmes was a period of reflection for the artist; the cerebral rigor of his early Cubist years were by then far behind him.

This distance in time afforded Picasso the opportunity to consider that the great twentieth-century Cubist language – his own idiom – owes a debt to the attenuations and distortions of El Greco as well as to Góngora’s own idiosyncrasies. In a pictorial-verbal matrix, Cubism was an apt overlay for Góngora’s own complicated language. The poet’s jarring sentence structures or expansion of the Spanish vocabulary could be likened to the deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction central to Picasso’s pictorial language.

A modern merging of image and word, Vingt Poëmes demonstrates the interconnectedness in spite of centuries between Góngora and Picasso, or, in other words, how all things old become new again.

This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum and the Bridwell Library, and is funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.

LEFT AND ABOVE: Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photos by Michael Bodycomb.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

13 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

current exhibitions

current exhibitions

More than an illustrated book, Vingt Poëmes is a livre d’artiste – an artist’s book. A total work of art, a livre d’artiste typically features original prints by famous artists, with the text usually printed in an exquisite typeface on hand-made paper. Vingt Poëmes is no exception: the edition included 275 copies, fifteen of which were de luxe. These fifteen copies comprised not only the book itself, but also included a proof set of all the plates on China paper in order to be displayed without compromising the bound version.

Livres d’artiste are also characterized by the artist’s visual interpretation of the text, and as such, the China paper impressions of Vingt Poëmes are the ideal vehicle to convey the richness of Picasso’s illustrations.

Of the fifteen copies, the first five were printed on Japon imperial paper, while vélin du Marais was used for the subsequent ten. The rare copy of Vingt Poëmes on display at the Meadows this fall is the sixth of the fifteen de luxe copies, meaning it is the first to be numbered of those printed on vélin du Marais.

Jointly acquired by SMU’s Bridwell Library and the Meadows Museum in 1975, the work’s dual existence in both library and museum confirms the intersection of language and art inherent in Vingt Poëmes.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photo by Michael Bodycomb.

Góngora was again reprised in print twenty years after Milner’s publication, this time by Pablo Picasso.

While generally reticent to work on commissions, Picasso selectively worked on a number of book projects in which text and illustration were interrelated, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1931) and Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (1942). After World War II, the artist was asked by Colonna, an editor and friend, to collaborate on the first of a new book series, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre. Published in 1948, Vingt Poëmes (Twenty Poems) is the result of this collaboration.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

Nineteen full-page etched female heads complement the sonnets; with the remaining full-page image, Picasso pays homage to both Góngora and Velázquez by recreating the latter’s famous 1622 portrait of Góngora. From the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, this painting forms part of the exhibition Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits on view this fall. A third Spanish master, sixteenthcentury painter El Greco, was also incorporated into Vingt Poëmes with the inclusion of the sonnet Al sepulcro de Dominico Greco excelente Pintor (At the Sepulchre of Dominico Greco). El Greco’s resurgence in the modern era after centuries of obscurity was very similar to that of Góngora’s, and for many artists – Picasso in particular – El Greco was a formative influence. Góngora’s tribute to his contemporary is the only sonnet included in the work for which

12 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Picasso did not add any illustrations, as if doing so would have been an act of iconoclasm.

In linking himself to Spain’s literary and artistic masters of the past, Picasso must have considered the trajectory of a common language that developed over the centuries. The moment of Vingt Poëmes was a period of reflection for the artist; the cerebral rigor of his early Cubist years were by then far behind him.

This distance in time afforded Picasso the opportunity to consider that the great twentieth-century Cubist language – his own idiom – owes a debt to the attenuations and distortions of El Greco as well as to Góngora’s own idiosyncrasies. In a pictorial-verbal matrix, Cubism was an apt overlay for Góngora’s own complicated language. The poet’s jarring sentence structures or expansion of the Spanish vocabulary could be likened to the deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction central to Picasso’s pictorial language.

A modern merging of image and word, Vingt Poëmes demonstrates the interconnectedness in spite of centuries between Góngora and Picasso, or, in other words, how all things old become new again.

This exhibition has been organized by the Meadows Museum and the Bridwell Library, and is funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.

LEFT AND ABOVE: Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Luis de Góngora y Argote, Vingt poëmes, Les Grands Peintres Modernes et le Livre, Paris, 1948. Etching and sugar-lift aquatint on vélin du Marais watermarked ‘Gongora,’ 6/275. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection, MM.75.04. Photos by Michael Bodycomb.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

13 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

upcoming exhibition

upcoming exhibition

march 10-july 7, 2013

impressions of europe: Nineteenth-Century Vistas by Martín Rico The Spanish painter Martín Rico y Ortega (18331908) was one of the most important artists of the second half of the nineteenth century in his native country, and enjoyed wide international recognition as well, especially in France and the United States.

From his earliest works painted in the mountainous countryside outside of Madrid to the later works he painted in Paris and Venice, throughout his life Rico stayed true to his love of painting en plein air, despite his evolving artistic style.

Martín Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908), Rio San Trovaso, Venice, c. 1900. Oil on canvas.

Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Museum purchase with funds from The Meadows Foundation, MM.07.01. Photo by Dimitris Skliris.

Rico was born in Madrid and received his earliest formal training at the city’s Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he studied under Jenaro Pérez Villaamil (1807-54), the Academy’s first professor of landscape painting. Under the tutelage of Pérez Villaamil, Rico’s earliest works show him influenced by Romanticism, the style for which his teacher was known. In 1860, having been awarded a government-sponsored scholarship, Rico moved to Paris to continue his studies. Once in France, Rico looked to the artists of the Barbizon School for inspiration, and Charles-François Daubigny (181778) in particular. His landscapes from this decade

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

Martín Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908), A Canal in Venice, c. 1873-1908. Oil on canvas. Mr. and Mrs. Barron U. Kidd, Dallas, Texas, USA. Photo by Dimitris Skliris.

thus depict the French and Swiss countryside in a fully-accomplished Realist style. Toward the end of 1870, due to political and social unrest caused by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Rico decided to leave France and return to his native Spain.

At the invitation of his good friend and colleague Mariano Fortuny i Marsal (1838-74), Rico moved to the southern city of Granada, joining Fortuny and his wife Cecilia, as well as the painter Ricardo de Madrazo (1851-1917). The three artists worked closely during this period, with the styles of Rico and Fortuny overlapping so much that their watercolors – a specialty for both artists – were often confused for one another. It was during this time that, through Fortuny’s influence, Rico’s paintings began to reveal a newfound sense of luminosity and color. His time in Andalucía was, according to his memoirs, one of his happiest, and also one of his most artistically productive periods.

It was Rico’s discovery of Venice in 1872, however, that led to the perfection of his artistic style and the creation of many of his most emblematic works.

This year, Rico and Fortuny traveled together to Italy, stopping in Rome, Naples, Florence and Venice: it was Venice, more than any other city he had previously visited, that captured Rico’s artistic imagination. From this first trip until his death thirty-six years later, Rico spent every summer with the exception of one working in the Italian “City of Light.”

Venice’s unique setting, with its plazas, churches and canals, as well as its magnificent light, attracted many artists, including Édouard Manet (1832-83), Claude Monet (1840-1926), John Singer Sargent (18561925) and Pierre Renoir (1885-1952). Joining this group of artists while following in the tradition of the Italian vedute of the eighteenth century, Rico frequently painted his Venetian scenes en plein air, often from a gondola anchored to a canal or from the window of his room located in the Dorsoduro neighborhood.

14 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

The project, under the direction of Dr. Javier Barón Thaidigsmann, Head of the Department of Nineteenth Century Painting at the Prado Museum, will travel exclusively to the Meadows Museum and will examine the artist’s chronological development. Included in the Dallas venue will be numerous works loaned from U.S. collections, reflecting the original interest that Rico’s work held for many American collectors, including Henry Clay Frick, Henry Walters, and William H. Stewart. An accompanying catalogue will provide a major contribution to the relatively minimal scholarship currently published on the artist. The publication will include an essay

by Dr. Barón Thaidigsmann and catalogue entries by curators at the Prado and Meadows Museums, as well as an extensive biography organized by the artist’s granddaughter, Madame Claude Rico Robert.

Next spring, as part of the continuing collaboration between the Meadows Museum and the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Meadows will host a monographic showing of Rico’s work, marking the first retrospective ever to be presented on the artist.

This exhibition and project have been organized by the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Meadows Museum, and are funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.

Martín Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908), View of Paris from the Trocadero, 1883. Oil on canvas. Gift of Marquesa de Manzanedo, 1987. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, P07163.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

15 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

upcoming exhibition

upcoming exhibition

march 10-july 7, 2013

impressions of europe: Nineteenth-Century Vistas by Martín Rico The Spanish painter Martín Rico y Ortega (18331908) was one of the most important artists of the second half of the nineteenth century in his native country, and enjoyed wide international recognition as well, especially in France and the United States.

From his earliest works painted in the mountainous countryside outside of Madrid to the later works he painted in Paris and Venice, throughout his life Rico stayed true to his love of painting en plein air, despite his evolving artistic style.

Martín Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908), Rio San Trovaso, Venice, c. 1900. Oil on canvas.

Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Museum purchase with funds from The Meadows Foundation, MM.07.01. Photo by Dimitris Skliris.

Rico was born in Madrid and received his earliest formal training at the city’s Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he studied under Jenaro Pérez Villaamil (1807-54), the Academy’s first professor of landscape painting. Under the tutelage of Pérez Villaamil, Rico’s earliest works show him influenced by Romanticism, the style for which his teacher was known. In 1860, having been awarded a government-sponsored scholarship, Rico moved to Paris to continue his studies. Once in France, Rico looked to the artists of the Barbizon School for inspiration, and Charles-François Daubigny (181778) in particular. His landscapes from this decade

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

Martín Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908), A Canal in Venice, c. 1873-1908. Oil on canvas. Mr. and Mrs. Barron U. Kidd, Dallas, Texas, USA. Photo by Dimitris Skliris.

thus depict the French and Swiss countryside in a fully-accomplished Realist style. Toward the end of 1870, due to political and social unrest caused by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Rico decided to leave France and return to his native Spain.

At the invitation of his good friend and colleague Mariano Fortuny i Marsal (1838-74), Rico moved to the southern city of Granada, joining Fortuny and his wife Cecilia, as well as the painter Ricardo de Madrazo (1851-1917). The three artists worked closely during this period, with the styles of Rico and Fortuny overlapping so much that their watercolors – a specialty for both artists – were often confused for one another. It was during this time that, through Fortuny’s influence, Rico’s paintings began to reveal a newfound sense of luminosity and color. His time in Andalucía was, according to his memoirs, one of his happiest, and also one of his most artistically productive periods.

It was Rico’s discovery of Venice in 1872, however, that led to the perfection of his artistic style and the creation of many of his most emblematic works.

This year, Rico and Fortuny traveled together to Italy, stopping in Rome, Naples, Florence and Venice: it was Venice, more than any other city he had previously visited, that captured Rico’s artistic imagination. From this first trip until his death thirty-six years later, Rico spent every summer with the exception of one working in the Italian “City of Light.”

Venice’s unique setting, with its plazas, churches and canals, as well as its magnificent light, attracted many artists, including Édouard Manet (1832-83), Claude Monet (1840-1926), John Singer Sargent (18561925) and Pierre Renoir (1885-1952). Joining this group of artists while following in the tradition of the Italian vedute of the eighteenth century, Rico frequently painted his Venetian scenes en plein air, often from a gondola anchored to a canal or from the window of his room located in the Dorsoduro neighborhood.

14 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

The project, under the direction of Dr. Javier Barón Thaidigsmann, Head of the Department of Nineteenth Century Painting at the Prado Museum, will travel exclusively to the Meadows Museum and will examine the artist’s chronological development. Included in the Dallas venue will be numerous works loaned from U.S. collections, reflecting the original interest that Rico’s work held for many American collectors, including Henry Clay Frick, Henry Walters, and William H. Stewart. An accompanying catalogue will provide a major contribution to the relatively minimal scholarship currently published on the artist. The publication will include an essay

by Dr. Barón Thaidigsmann and catalogue entries by curators at the Prado and Meadows Museums, as well as an extensive biography organized by the artist’s granddaughter, Madame Claude Rico Robert.

Next spring, as part of the continuing collaboration between the Meadows Museum and the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Meadows will host a monographic showing of Rico’s work, marking the first retrospective ever to be presented on the artist.

This exhibition and project have been organized by the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Meadows Museum, and are funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.

Martín Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908), View of Paris from the Trocadero, 1883. Oil on canvas. Gift of Marquesa de Manzanedo, 1987. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, P07163.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

15 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Public Programs

FA L L 2 0 12

Public Programs

SYMPOSIUM: DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ THE EARLY COURT PORTRAITS

evening lectures

september 13, 3-6 p.m.

Evening lectures are free and open to the public, no reservations required. Priority seating for Museum members until 5:40 p.m.

6 p.m.

Held in conjunction with Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits, this symposium will feature presentations from three guest speakers. Priority seating for Museum members until 2:40 p.m. For more information, please contact Carmen Smith at 214.768.4677.

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium november 8

Sacred Spaces and Human Sacrifice: The Nasca Lines in their Cultural and Religious Context

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium

Christina Conlee, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Texas State University, San Marcos

Before Velázquez Came to Court: The Waterseller of Seville and the Artist’s Early Career Tanya Tiffany, Associate Professor of Renaissance and

Baroque Art, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Before Velázquez became Philip IV’s court painter, he achieved renown in his native Seville for representing lowly subjects with powerful realism. This talk focuses on one such early masterpiece, the Waterseller of Seville (c. 1622-23). The painting is particularly significant because its deceptively simple imagery and strikingly novel style were tailor made for its first owner: a Sevillian aristocrat who helped the young painter to establish his career in Madrid.

Madrid, 1623: Velázquez’s Arrival at Court Javier Portús, Head of the Department of Spanish

Painting (up to 1700), Museo Nacional del Prado Velázquez’s arrival in Madrid in 1623 forever changed both his personal and artistic trajectory. His employment at the service of Philip IV resulted in his dedication to the genre of portraiture, as well as important explorations in the field of mythological painting.

In addition, first-hand knowledge of the Royal Collections influenced the development of his style through contact and dialogue with great international painting. This presentation will explore the artistic scene encountered by the painter upon his arrival in the city; the changes in court politics and culture prompted by Philip IV’s ascent to the throne in 1621; and the manner in which Velázquez’s new artistic production reflected this environment.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

‘Illustrious and Memorable Men’: The Ennobling Art of Portraiture in Golden Age Spain Laura R. Bass, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Tulane University

While most famous for his paintings of Philip IV and the royal family, Diego Velázquez also produced extraordinary portraits of non-aristocratic individuals. This presentation will focus on his likenesses of intellectuals and artists, including the poet Luis de Góngora, the slave Juan de Pareja, the sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés, and the artist himself. The lecture will look at these portraits in their own right and in relation to effigies of learned men created

by El Greco, Juan Van der Hamen and Velázquez’s father-in-law Francisco Pacheco, whose Libro de retratos furnishes the first part of the lecture’s title.

By the early seventeenth century there was a wellestablished practice in Spain of using the medium of portraiture to lay claim to elite status based less on inherited distinction than inherent talent. How that practice was theorized in art treatises and reinforced in literary texts will be an important component of the analysis.

16 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

The Nasca Lines of southern Peru have long been an enigma for archaeologists and lay people alike. Many theories have been proposed about what they were used for and why they were constructed. In the last twenty years archaeologists have learned more about the Nasca people, and now understand the lines as an important part of their religion as sacred places where ceremonies were performed and offerings were made to ensure fertility and the continuation of society.

historians in the United States and abroad. His numerous publications and exhibitions have revolutionized Hispanic studies by focusing on a contextual approach to art history that, as he explained, “seeks to place a work of art in the historical-ideological frame of reference in which it was created.” Professor Brown has received numerous honors in and outside the U.S., and he was appointed the 2012 director of the prestigious Cátedra at the Museo Nacional del Prado, where he organized a series of seminars devoted to the history and historiography of Golden Age Spanish painting. Co-sponsored with the Department

of Art History, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU. december 6

Velázquez and His Contemporary Painters in Seville Ignacio Cano Rivero, Head of the Department

of Exhibitions, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla

november 15

Velázquez: Master and Masterpieces Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie

Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Internationally renowned Spanish art scholar Jonathan Brown has paved the way for generations of art

Velázquez was born and raised in the artistic and cultural environment of Seville until he left for Madrid in 1623. The influence of these formative years, above all those involving his teacher Pacheco, along with his continuing relationships with Sevillian artists and characters, such as the count-duke of Olivares, would determine his method of understanding and practicing painting. In the same way, Velázquez’s time at court affected Sevillian painting through a process of influences and changes – evidenced in works by Zurbarán, Murillo and Herrera el Mozo – that occurred as the result of relationships maintained between the painter and his countrymen from the south.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

17 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Public Programs

FA L L 2 0 12

Public Programs

SYMPOSIUM: DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ THE EARLY COURT PORTRAITS

evening lectures

september 13, 3-6 p.m.

Evening lectures are free and open to the public, no reservations required. Priority seating for Museum members until 5:40 p.m.

6 p.m.

Held in conjunction with Diego Velázquez: The Early Court Portraits, this symposium will feature presentations from three guest speakers. Priority seating for Museum members until 2:40 p.m. For more information, please contact Carmen Smith at 214.768.4677.

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium november 8

Sacred Spaces and Human Sacrifice: The Nasca Lines in their Cultural and Religious Context

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium

Christina Conlee, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Texas State University, San Marcos

Before Velázquez Came to Court: The Waterseller of Seville and the Artist’s Early Career Tanya Tiffany, Associate Professor of Renaissance and

Baroque Art, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Before Velázquez became Philip IV’s court painter, he achieved renown in his native Seville for representing lowly subjects with powerful realism. This talk focuses on one such early masterpiece, the Waterseller of Seville (c. 1622-23). The painting is particularly significant because its deceptively simple imagery and strikingly novel style were tailor made for its first owner: a Sevillian aristocrat who helped the young painter to establish his career in Madrid.

Madrid, 1623: Velázquez’s Arrival at Court Javier Portús, Head of the Department of Spanish

Painting (up to 1700), Museo Nacional del Prado Velázquez’s arrival in Madrid in 1623 forever changed both his personal and artistic trajectory. His employment at the service of Philip IV resulted in his dedication to the genre of portraiture, as well as important explorations in the field of mythological painting.

In addition, first-hand knowledge of the Royal Collections influenced the development of his style through contact and dialogue with great international painting. This presentation will explore the artistic scene encountered by the painter upon his arrival in the city; the changes in court politics and culture prompted by Philip IV’s ascent to the throne in 1621; and the manner in which Velázquez’s new artistic production reflected this environment.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

‘Illustrious and Memorable Men’: The Ennobling Art of Portraiture in Golden Age Spain Laura R. Bass, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Tulane University

While most famous for his paintings of Philip IV and the royal family, Diego Velázquez also produced extraordinary portraits of non-aristocratic individuals. This presentation will focus on his likenesses of intellectuals and artists, including the poet Luis de Góngora, the slave Juan de Pareja, the sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés, and the artist himself. The lecture will look at these portraits in their own right and in relation to effigies of learned men created

by El Greco, Juan Van der Hamen and Velázquez’s father-in-law Francisco Pacheco, whose Libro de retratos furnishes the first part of the lecture’s title.

By the early seventeenth century there was a wellestablished practice in Spain of using the medium of portraiture to lay claim to elite status based less on inherited distinction than inherent talent. How that practice was theorized in art treatises and reinforced in literary texts will be an important component of the analysis.

16 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

The Nasca Lines of southern Peru have long been an enigma for archaeologists and lay people alike. Many theories have been proposed about what they were used for and why they were constructed. In the last twenty years archaeologists have learned more about the Nasca people, and now understand the lines as an important part of their religion as sacred places where ceremonies were performed and offerings were made to ensure fertility and the continuation of society.

historians in the United States and abroad. His numerous publications and exhibitions have revolutionized Hispanic studies by focusing on a contextual approach to art history that, as he explained, “seeks to place a work of art in the historical-ideological frame of reference in which it was created.” Professor Brown has received numerous honors in and outside the U.S., and he was appointed the 2012 director of the prestigious Cátedra at the Museo Nacional del Prado, where he organized a series of seminars devoted to the history and historiography of Golden Age Spanish painting. Co-sponsored with the Department

of Art History, Meadows School of the Arts, SMU. december 6

Velázquez and His Contemporary Painters in Seville Ignacio Cano Rivero, Head of the Department

of Exhibitions, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla

november 15

Velázquez: Master and Masterpieces Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie

Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Internationally renowned Spanish art scholar Jonathan Brown has paved the way for generations of art

Velázquez was born and raised in the artistic and cultural environment of Seville until he left for Madrid in 1623. The influence of these formative years, above all those involving his teacher Pacheco, along with his continuing relationships with Sevillian artists and characters, such as the count-duke of Olivares, would determine his method of understanding and practicing painting. In the same way, Velázquez’s time at court affected Sevillian painting through a process of influences and changes – evidenced in works by Zurbarán, Murillo and Herrera el Mozo – that occurred as the result of relationships maintained between the painter and his countrymen from the south.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

17 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Public Programs

Public Programs

music at the meadows october 18 6 p.m.

Ruben Parejo, Spanish Master Guitarist

From Valencia, Spain, Ruben Parejo is an outstanding exponent of the Spanish guitar in Ibero-America.

His specialties include the music of Manuel de Falla of Granada, and the composers of the fragant land of Valencia, including Joaquín Rodrigo. While he is well known in Europe and Mexico, this concert marks Sr. Parejo’s debut in the United States. Free, no reservations required. Sponsored by UT Dallas.

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium

friday morning lecture series september 7-november 16

select second thursdays:

10:30 a.m.

SEPTEMBER 13, OCTOBER 11 & NOVEMBER 8

Two Worlds Collide and a New World is Born: The Kingdom of the Sun

5:30-6 p.m.

Larry Palmer, Professor of Harpsichord and Organ,

afternoon Gallery talks 12:15 p.m.

Join us for our gallery talks featuring art research and perspectives from local guest speakers. Free with regular museum admission; no reservations required. october 12

Court Portraits by Velázquez in the 1620s: Some Thoughts About his Painting Techniques

SMU, and music students from Meadows School of the Arts will present monthly demonstrations on the Museum’s Oldovini organ. Built in 1762 by Pascoal Caetano Oldovini for the Cathedral of Evora in Portugal, this single-manual organ is the only instrument by Oldovini to be found outside the Iberian Peninsula. Enjoy these special opportunities to experience centuries-old music on an eighteenth century organ surrounded by masterworks in the Museum’s permanent collection. Free, no reservations required.

Second Floor Galleries

Mark Leonard, Chief Conservator,

Dallas Museum of Art

This lecture series will cover the history of Peru from the Inca Empire to the establishment of an independent nation by the efforts of Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, focusing on the cultural transformation and beginnings of a global economic system. $40 for the 11-part series; free for museum members, SMU faculty, staff and students. Advance registration is required. For more information and to register, call 214.768.2765.

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium

Constantin Foundation Seminar Room

drawing from the masters sundays every other week: SEPTEMBER 9 & 23, OCTOBER 7 & 21, NOVEMBER 4 & 18, DECEMBER 2 1:30-3 p.m.

Enjoy afternoons of informal drawing instruction as guest artist Ian O’Brien leads you through the museum’s galleries. Each session will provide an opportunity to explore a variety of techniques and improve drawing skills. Designed for adults and students ages 15 and older, and open to all levels of experience.

Drawing materials will be available, but participants are encouraged to bring their own sketchpads and pencils. Free with regular admission; no reservations required. For more information, call 214.768.4677.

thursday evening lecture series october 11-november 8 6 p.m.

october 19

The Noblest Man: The Art of Diego Velázquez

Picasso’s “The Dream and Lie of Franco”

Nancy Cohen Israel, Art Historian, Owner of

Shelley DeMaria, Curatorial Assistant,

Art à la Carte Diego Velázquez has been called the “noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country.” In a kingdom that valued the work of foreign artists above the work of native sons, Velázquez breathed new life into Spanish painting. Serving as

Meadows Museum november 2

Picasso’s Graphic Poetry of Góngora Nicole Atzbach, Assistant Curator, Meadows Museum

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

Luis Martín, Professor Emeritus of History, SMU

a painter to Philip IV, as well as a valued member of court, Velázquez’s realism helped make Spain an important artistic center. Capitalizing on the exhibition of Velázquez’s early court portraits, and using the Meadows collection extensively, this five-week lecture series will examine Velázquez’s beginnings in Seville, his ascent as a court artist in Madrid and ultimately his recognition as one of Europe’s most important painters. $40 for the five-part series; free for museum members, SMU faculty, staff and students. Space is limited and advance registration is required. For more information and to register, call 214.768.2765.

—

18 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

19 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Public Programs

Public Programs

music at the meadows october 18 6 p.m.

Ruben Parejo, Spanish Master Guitarist

From Valencia, Spain, Ruben Parejo is an outstanding exponent of the Spanish guitar in Ibero-America.

His specialties include the music of Manuel de Falla of Granada, and the composers of the fragant land of Valencia, including Joaquín Rodrigo. While he is well known in Europe and Mexico, this concert marks Sr. Parejo’s debut in the United States. Free, no reservations required. Sponsored by UT Dallas.

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium

friday morning lecture series september 7-november 16

select second thursdays:

10:30 a.m.

SEPTEMBER 13, OCTOBER 11 & NOVEMBER 8

Two Worlds Collide and a New World is Born: The Kingdom of the Sun

5:30-6 p.m.

Larry Palmer, Professor of Harpsichord and Organ,

afternoon Gallery talks 12:15 p.m.

Join us for our gallery talks featuring art research and perspectives from local guest speakers. Free with regular museum admission; no reservations required. october 12

Court Portraits by Velázquez in the 1620s: Some Thoughts About his Painting Techniques

SMU, and music students from Meadows School of the Arts will present monthly demonstrations on the Museum’s Oldovini organ. Built in 1762 by Pascoal Caetano Oldovini for the Cathedral of Evora in Portugal, this single-manual organ is the only instrument by Oldovini to be found outside the Iberian Peninsula. Enjoy these special opportunities to experience centuries-old music on an eighteenth century organ surrounded by masterworks in the Museum’s permanent collection. Free, no reservations required.

Second Floor Galleries

Mark Leonard, Chief Conservator,

Dallas Museum of Art

This lecture series will cover the history of Peru from the Inca Empire to the establishment of an independent nation by the efforts of Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, focusing on the cultural transformation and beginnings of a global economic system. $40 for the 11-part series; free for museum members, SMU faculty, staff and students. Advance registration is required. For more information and to register, call 214.768.2765.

Bob and Jean Smith Auditorium

Constantin Foundation Seminar Room

drawing from the masters sundays every other week: SEPTEMBER 9 & 23, OCTOBER 7 & 21, NOVEMBER 4 & 18, DECEMBER 2 1:30-3 p.m.

Enjoy afternoons of informal drawing instruction as guest artist Ian O’Brien leads you through the museum’s galleries. Each session will provide an opportunity to explore a variety of techniques and improve drawing skills. Designed for adults and students ages 15 and older, and open to all levels of experience.

Drawing materials will be available, but participants are encouraged to bring their own sketchpads and pencils. Free with regular admission; no reservations required. For more information, call 214.768.4677.

thursday evening lecture series october 11-november 8 6 p.m.

october 19

The Noblest Man: The Art of Diego Velázquez

Picasso’s “The Dream and Lie of Franco”

Nancy Cohen Israel, Art Historian, Owner of

Shelley DeMaria, Curatorial Assistant,

Art à la Carte Diego Velázquez has been called the “noblest and most commanding man among the artists of his country.” In a kingdom that valued the work of foreign artists above the work of native sons, Velázquez breathed new life into Spanish painting. Serving as

Meadows Museum november 2

Picasso’s Graphic Poetry of Góngora Nicole Atzbach, Assistant Curator, Meadows Museum

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

Luis Martín, Professor Emeritus of History, SMU

a painter to Philip IV, as well as a valued member of court, Velázquez’s realism helped make Spain an important artistic center. Capitalizing on the exhibition of Velázquez’s early court portraits, and using the Meadows collection extensively, this five-week lecture series will examine Velázquez’s beginnings in Seville, his ascent as a court artist in Madrid and ultimately his recognition as one of Europe’s most important painters. $40 for the five-part series; free for museum members, SMU faculty, staff and students. Space is limited and advance registration is required. For more information and to register, call 214.768.2765.

—

18 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

19 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Public Programs

Museum Membership TRAVEL WITH THE MEADOWS MUSEUM: April 8-17, 2013 evening GALLERY series with guest artist John Bramblitt INsights & OUTlooks

Barcelona and Mallorca First time ever to the Balearic Islands!

november 29 & January 31 6-8 p.m.

access programs Connections series A: wednesdays, october 3, 10 & 17 series b: fridays, November 2, 9 & 16 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

This three-day program for individuals with early stage dementia and their care partners, will involve a variety of creative activities in a relaxed setting. Participants will explore the galleries through interactive exercises and puzzles, experiment with different materials to create individual and group projects, and discover works of art through music, dance, literature, storytelling and role play. Light refreshments will be served. Space is limited and advance registration is required. The same program is offered twice a semester; participants may choose either Series A, which is offered on three consecutive Wednesdays, or Series B, which is offered on three consecutive Fridays. To register and for information about visiting the Meadows Museum with individuals with special needs, please contact Carmen Smith at 214.768.4677.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

Acknowledging that every museum visitor possesses a unique set of interests and abilities, this program offers participants multiple ways to engage with and discover works of art. Through a variety of activities based on interdisciplinary connections and diverse perspectives, each evening will invite a broad indepth exploration of a single work from the museum’s collection. The program is presented by education staff and guest artist John Bramblitt, who is blind.

Offered on select Thursdays. Free; Space is limited and advance registration is required. For more information and to register, please contact Carmen Smith at 214.768.4677 or mcarmens@smu.edu.

20 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

It is that time of year again to travel with director Dr. Mark Roglán for a luxury cultural excursion to Spain and beyond! We will begin the trip by landing in Barcelona and spending five days in the province of Catalunya.

We’ll explore the urban delights of Barcelona first, then go far beyond the city sights, too, enjoying intimate experiences at places such as Peralada, Figueres, Montserrat, Lérida and Sitges. These once-in-a-lifetime artistic adventures will be presented in between fabulous meals featuring regional wine and cuisine. On day six we will hop on a plane to Palma de Mallorca where, over three days, we will explore all that the exotic island has to offer. Contact the Meadows Membership Department at 214.768.2765 or museummembership@ smu.edu for the full itinerary, pricing and further details. Space is very limited so call now!

j o i n us f o r o u r f i r s t r e g i o nal m e m b e r s h i p t r i p t o t h e MF A H !

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has announced that more than 100 masterworks from one of the world’s most renowned collections of European painting will be presented at the MFAH beginning December 16, 2012, in Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado.

The exhibition tells the story of the evolution of painting in Spain from the 16th through 19th centuries and explores how artists contributed to the development of a modern Spanish identity. The Meadows Museum is delighted to announce its first regional membership excursion to enjoy this magnificent show. On January 17, Meadows members will depart for Houston via luxury coach and upon arrival will check into the elegant Hotel Zaza.

Members will then receive a tour of the Prado exhibition and one of MFAH’s glorious house museums. The trip is $450 single occupancy and $400 per person double occupancy and includes round trip transportation returning on January 18, overnight hotel accommodations, a lovely pre-fixe lunch, all museum tickets and overnight parking at the Meadows Museum. Phone 214.768.2765 for the full itinerary and to make your reservation.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

21— M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Public Programs

Museum Membership TRAVEL WITH THE MEADOWS MUSEUM: April 8-17, 2013 evening GALLERY series with guest artist John Bramblitt INsights & OUTlooks

Barcelona and Mallorca First time ever to the Balearic Islands!

november 29 & January 31 6-8 p.m.

access programs Connections series A: wednesdays, october 3, 10 & 17 series b: fridays, November 2, 9 & 16 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

This three-day program for individuals with early stage dementia and their care partners, will involve a variety of creative activities in a relaxed setting. Participants will explore the galleries through interactive exercises and puzzles, experiment with different materials to create individual and group projects, and discover works of art through music, dance, literature, storytelling and role play. Light refreshments will be served. Space is limited and advance registration is required. The same program is offered twice a semester; participants may choose either Series A, which is offered on three consecutive Wednesdays, or Series B, which is offered on three consecutive Fridays. To register and for information about visiting the Meadows Museum with individuals with special needs, please contact Carmen Smith at 214.768.4677.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

Acknowledging that every museum visitor possesses a unique set of interests and abilities, this program offers participants multiple ways to engage with and discover works of art. Through a variety of activities based on interdisciplinary connections and diverse perspectives, each evening will invite a broad indepth exploration of a single work from the museum’s collection. The program is presented by education staff and guest artist John Bramblitt, who is blind.

Offered on select Thursdays. Free; Space is limited and advance registration is required. For more information and to register, please contact Carmen Smith at 214.768.4677 or mcarmens@smu.edu.

20 — M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

It is that time of year again to travel with director Dr. Mark Roglán for a luxury cultural excursion to Spain and beyond! We will begin the trip by landing in Barcelona and spending five days in the province of Catalunya.

We’ll explore the urban delights of Barcelona first, then go far beyond the city sights, too, enjoying intimate experiences at places such as Peralada, Figueres, Montserrat, Lérida and Sitges. These once-in-a-lifetime artistic adventures will be presented in between fabulous meals featuring regional wine and cuisine. On day six we will hop on a plane to Palma de Mallorca where, over three days, we will explore all that the exotic island has to offer. Contact the Meadows Membership Department at 214.768.2765 or museummembership@ smu.edu for the full itinerary, pricing and further details. Space is very limited so call now!

j o i n us f o r o u r f i r s t r e g i o nal m e m b e r s h i p t r i p t o t h e MF A H !

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has announced that more than 100 masterworks from one of the world’s most renowned collections of European painting will be presented at the MFAH beginning December 16, 2012, in Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado.

The exhibition tells the story of the evolution of painting in Spain from the 16th through 19th centuries and explores how artists contributed to the development of a modern Spanish identity. The Meadows Museum is delighted to announce its first regional membership excursion to enjoy this magnificent show. On January 17, Meadows members will depart for Houston via luxury coach and upon arrival will check into the elegant Hotel Zaza.

Members will then receive a tour of the Prado exhibition and one of MFAH’s glorious house museums. The trip is $450 single occupancy and $400 per person double occupancy and includes round trip transportation returning on January 18, overnight hotel accommodations, a lovely pre-fixe lunch, all museum tickets and overnight parking at the Meadows Museum. Phone 214.768.2765 for the full itinerary and to make your reservation.

M e a d o ws M u s e u m FA L L 2 0 1 2

—

21— M e a d o w s M u s e u m d a l l a s . o r g

Non-Profit Org US Postage PAID Dallas, Texas Permit No. 856

5900 Bishop Boulevard Dallas, TX 75275-0357

meadows museum information

214.768.2516 meadowsmuseumdallas.org

museum services

Membership 214.768.2765 Tours 214.768.2740 Box Office 214.768.8587 Museum Shop 214.768.1695 hours

Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sunday, 1 p.m.-5 p.m.

Thursdays until 9 p.m. admission

$10 general admission; $8 seniors.

Free to members, children under 12, SMU faculty, staff and students.

Free Thursdays after 5 p.m.

Free public parking is available in the garage under the Museum.

Photo by Tamytha Cameron

Visit meadowsmuseumdallas.org Join the Meadows Museum Family!

Opportunities to enjoy the Museum abound this spring and we would love to welcome your friends and family members into our family today! For more information on membership levels and the benefits experienced by our members, contact the SheriAnne MacNeil, Membership Manager at 214.768.2765 or smacneil@smu.edu.