Page 8 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – November 2018

Through Dec. 9
‘Titian’s Lady in White:
A Renaissance Mystery’ Columbus Museum of Art
(616) 221-6801 • columbusmuseum.org
This year the Columbus Museum of Art marks 140 years since receiving the first museum charter in Ohio in 1878.
“We are thrilled to celebrate our 140th anniversary by bringing to Columbus a masterwork created by Titian,” said CMA Executive Director Nannette V. Maciejunes. “Our partnership with Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, from
our sister city Dresden in Germany, is another example of how, over the years, the museum has transformed the city of Columbus through creative experiences, engaged learning and connectivity.”
Titian was an Italian painter considered by many to be the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. One of the first artists to abandon wood panels in favor of canvas, he is also known as a father of modern painting. His use of color and loose brushwork profoundly influenced not only Italian Renaissance painters, but also future generations of Western European painters.
Mystery has always surrounded the identity of Titian’s Lady in White. Is she a secret lover? Is she the artist’s daughter, Lavinia? Is she an unrecorded noble?
Is she an ideal vision of female beauty? Theories abound but the true identity of the Lady in White remains an enigma.
In addition to the Lady in White, the exhibition includes baroque portraits from CMA’s collection that provide context for the Titian masterpiece.
Through Jan. 6
‘Frans Hals Portraits: A Family Reunion’ Toledo Museum of Art
(800) 644-6862 • toledomuseum.org
One of the greatest portraitists in the history of Western European painting, Frans Hals (1582/83-1666) is renowned for his revolutionary candid style of capturing sitters in seemingly spontaneous poses and lively gestures. A contemporary of Hals’ wrote that his “paintings are imbued with such force and vitality that ... they seem to breathe and live.”
Setting the scene and providing context for the exhibition will
be a gallery of other works of Netherlandish art from the Toledo Museum of Art’s collection that represent families. Leading into the exhibition of portraits by Hals will be an entry space devoted to encouraging visitors to reflect on multiple definitions of family by engaging with a selection of museum objects across cultures and eras, as well as a monumental collage and video of Toledo community members, which resonate with the theme of family.
Frans Hals (Dutch, 1582/83–1666), The Van Campen Family in a Landscape (fragment), ca. 1623–25, oil on canvas.
Upon exiting the focused Hals section, visitors will be invited to respond to the portraits on view by sharing their own perspectives of family in the 21st century through a series of interactive tools and approaches. In addition, a library and reading area and performance space will be provided to further enhance the gallery experience.
“As one of the leading luminaries of the Dutch Golden Age, Hals is also one of the most ingenious and accessible artists of any period or place,” said co-curator Lawrence Nichols. “His charismatic and sympathetic
6 | AAA MAGAZINE
Frans Hals (Dutch, 1582/83–1666), Children of the Van Campen Family with a Goat-Cart (fragment), ca. 1623–25, oil on canvas.
portraiture not only reflects 17th-century everyday life, it also provides us with a rich platform from which to explore and approach the meaning of family in our own time.”
Family portraiture first emerged in the Netherlands as a genre in the early 16th century, when prosperous middle-class Dutch families began to commission artists for their likenesses. These family portraits would have been displayed
in private homes, not public exhibition spaces, though in spaces in the house where guests would see them. Most of these group portraits featured families in a domestic interior or a parkland setting. The major challenge for artists working in the genre was how to represent individuality as well as the collective dynamic.