'Looking and Listening in 19th-Century France' at the Smart Museum of Art

Written by Nelson Stead Friday, 11 February 2011 23:26

 

Chicago, IL - 'Looking and Listening in Nineteenth-Century France' will be on view at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, until March 23, 2008. The exhibition is part of the Smart Museum’s Mellon Projects, an ongoing series of exhibitions developed in collaboration with University of Chicago faculty and students.

Audiences in different eras have looked at art and listened to music in dramatically different ways. The experience of looking or listening is not historically constant, but rather varies with social settings, technologies, and trends. In France during the nineteenth century, the habits and fashions associated with looking and listening changed rapidly. The proliferation of mechanically reproduced images (and later, recorded sound); the rise of museums, galleries, and concert halls; and the burgeoning science of psychology—all transformed how people encountered the arts.

Further, they altered how artists sought to capture the attention of their viewers and listeners. Incorporating works from the Smart Museum’s collection and select loans, this exhibition combines prints, paintings, drawings, sculptures, as well as music from nineteenth-century France. Looking and Listening cuts to the heart of debates about art and its function, and examines just what it was that attracted and secured the attention of nineteenth-century audiences in visual and musical works.

The exhibition is the culmination of an interdisciplinary course taught at the University by curators Martha Ward and Anne Leonard in the spring of 2007, and draws on recent scholarship from fields as varied as art history, musicology, history of science, and psychology.

LISTENING STATIONS

Three listening stations accompany select works in the exhibition. Each station consists of an iPod and headphones, and presents related music from nineteenth-century France. For example, Édouard Vuillard’s painting The Lerolle Salon is accompanied by François Chaplin’s piano performance of “Lent (mélancolique et doux),” the first movement to Claude Debussy’s Images (oubliées) . The piece was written for Yvonne Lerolle, the teenage daughter of Henry Lerolle, whose home is believed to be the setting for Vuillard’s painting. Two other listening stations, with selections of pieces by Clara Schuman and Hector Berlioz, accompany works by Henri Fantin-Latour.

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

The exhibition is accompanied by a 104-page, fully illustrated catalogue and CD compilation of related music, including two bonus tracks of early recordings. The catalogue features a preface by Anthony Hirschel, Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art; two principal essays by the curators, Martha Ward, Associate Professor and Chair of the Art History Department at the University of Chicago, and Anne Leonard, Smart Museum Curator and Mellon Program Coordinator; and contributions by Josephine Landback, Julia Langbein, Allison Morehead, Elayne Oliphant, Eleanor Rivera, and Michael Tymkiw, all University of Chicago students who participated in the Looking and Listening course. The book is distributed by the University of Chicago Press and will be available at the Smart Museum Shop. To order, call 773.702.0528 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Visit the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago - 5550 S. Greenwood Ave.- Chicago IL 60637 (773) 702-0200 - www.smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~