American Wing Research Articles

Teaching health law: A comparison of two new works

American Health Law, by Annas, G., Law, S., Rosenblatt, R., & Wing, K. (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, Massachusetts, 1990), 1,000 pages, $41.00. Health Care Law, Forensic Science, and Public Policy, by Curran, W., Hall, M., & Kaye, D. (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, Massachusetts, 1990), 1,291 pages, $44.00.

The Museum World of Henry James (review)

Adeline R. Tintner. The Museum World of Henry James. Foreword by Leon Edel. Editor's Preface by Daniel Mark Fogel. Ann Arbor: UMI Research P, 1986. 390 pp. 101 illus. $49.95. This book on the integral use Henry James made of diverse art and artifacts in forming and informing his fiction is one of the most important studies ever published concerning America's most critically challenging literary artist. Adeline R. Tintner brings four decades of patient Jamesian and related research, marked along the way by scores of articles on James, to fruition with this bold and sumptuous book, and in so doing steps into the lonely circle of truly first-rate scholars in a busy field. Ms. Tintner had not merely to memorize James—his fiction (including revisions ), criticism, travel writing, art notices, plays, autobiography, letters, and notebooks—but also to bring to bear on his creative processes the results of related reading in Classical, Renaissance, Impressionistic, Symbolistic, Decadent, Art Nouveau, and Early Modern art (including sculpture, architecture, painting, and even cinema) and a variety of literatures (mostly English and French), plus no little incidental awareness of music and mythology and history, where applicable . The result is insightful eclecticism at its most exciting and helpful. Tintner's book is itself a museum complex, though not quite under one roof. Adeline has gerrybuilt her unique complex with a plan in mind, if not slavishly followed. "Addie's Museum" (if I may) has an oneiric shape, with adjacent garden and semi-detached warehouse. At the outset, we are beckoned to approach the place by watching James respond to the Louvre (ch. 1). Then we sidestep into a gallery and a pair of wings (housing some European paintings and one carved casket [ch. 2]; antique sculpture [ch. 3]; and Romantic and portrait paintings [ch. 4]). Then back to the Louvre and elsewhere (ch. 5), and so on to another portrait gallery (mostly displaying John Singer Sargent's work [ch. 6]). By this time we are so under the spell of la nostra guida that we do not mind her rapid forward motion: to garden, Impressionism and more, then Titian and J. M. W. Turner (ch. 7); followed by "the Gallery of Dreamers" (what else might one call the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolists, and Decadents?—ch. 8). Now the tour becomes less well organized, and we proceed from an academic and genre wing (ch. 9) to a decorous garage sale (with good, ugly, ornamental, and functional items, and even cars and boats [ch. 10]) and then to an American wing (ch. 11). Finally, Ms. Tintner beckons us back to the warehouse, where she lectures on a variety of things, from art spectators to art-tuming-human to manor-as-museum to photographs (both still and motion) and the theory that art belongs where it was created (ch. 12). As we leave, dazzled by die display both of the art and of our guide's savvy, we are handed two catalogues of what we have seen—or missed. The first is a conclusion (ch. 13), while the second is an incredibly full index (of 46 columns). If I have given the impression that Adeline Tintner's book cannot quite be legitimately imaged as a museum, it is because I am a little upset by the fact that the author is responsible for the flawed image herself when she writes, "I ask the reader to follow with me the course art takes in the fiction of James, just as if we were really walking through a museum." In truth, though, Tintner 146 The Henry James Review has ingeniously assembled a lifetime of insights into James and art, which she published in unnumbered essays revised here (and only sometimes footnoted) from originals in ten journals, but which are so rich and varied that they cannot be forced conveniently into any set of chapters, even with titles such as "The Museum outside the Museum" (which has a subsection called "Back to the Museum ") or "The Cabinet of Curiosities" (with a subsection called "The Desk as Hero"). As we "walk" through Addie's Museum, we also move along a generally chronological line from James's earliest fiction to his...

The Conservation of the van Rensselaer Wallpaper

Abstract The historical background, analysis of materials, and conservation of the 18th century hand-painted van Rensselaer wallpaper is discussed. The paper, which was hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1931, had to be dismantled, conserved, and re-hung, coinciding with the re-building of the new American Wing. Protection of the damaged surface governed the course of treatment, the major aspects of which are described: detachment of the paper from the walls, facing with soluble nylon, removal of adhesives and backing materials with enzymes, and multi-layered lining and mounting on portable panels which can be set into the walls.

Public Art Museum Notes

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, New York: “19th Century America,” the third major Centennial Exhibition opened on April 16 and continues to September 7. It is a comprehensive exhibition including all or nearly all of the visual arts—architecture, sculpture, painting, furniture and decorative objects with a strong emphasis upon the last two (200 paintings, 35 sculptures, 300 pieces of furniture and decorative objects). The exhibition was arranged by Berry B. Tracy, curator of the American Wing, John K. Howat, associate curator in charge, American painting and sculpture, and John Wilmerding, chairman of the department of art, Dartmouth College. There is a two-volume catalogue, vol. 1, Decorative Arts, ($6.98 paperbound, $14.95 clothbound), vol. 2, Paintings and Sculpture ($5.95 paper-bound, $14.98 clothbound).

Those American Things

SINCE THE FORMAL opening of the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing in 1924 (Figure I), its displays, grown larger and more varied over the years, have represented an unquestionable standard and have exerted a widening influence in many directions. Indeed, the Wing has served its essential purposes so long and so well that the concepts upon which it was founded are taken quite for granted. Actually, these concepts were an outgrowth of varied interests and attitudes that were developing and working, sometimes at cross-purposes, over a half century or more preceding the opening. review of that interplay brings to mind various aspects of this country's social and cultural development during those years that should be more closely related than they generally are in the separate studies of American art and history. That period-extending, very roughly, from the prelude to the Civil War through the immediate aftermath of World War I-was a time of rapid and very often violent changes in American life. It was during those years that America felt the full, unsettling impact of the Industrial Revolution; that the modern city evolved in all its growing complexity and diversity and with all its grave and nettlesome human problems; and that the nation absorbed some twenty-five million immigrants, many of them from distant places whose very names strained the imagination of native Americans -that is, of the people who had come here earlier, largely from the British Isles and the western perimeter of northern Europe. Among other changes, in the mid years of the last century the self-employed craftsman was rapidly disappearing from the American scene, to be replaced by manufacturing companies that relied increasingly upon skilled mechanic and power-driven aids to production. As early as X 848, for example, the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce boasted that description of fur iture, almo t from the common bedstead to the most costly articles, was made in the numerous steam-powered factories of that city.' To lend prestige to their mecha i ally contrived products, many early manufacturers went to great pains and expense to make the recall in design and ornament traditional handmad articles. And to further that end, they appropriated the styles of the more or less distant past and of different l n s, interpreting them without restraint and often without discrimination. The relative ease and speed with which the new machinery could perform certain operations invited excessive elaboration. We are no longer content d with the plainness that was once satisfac ory, observed Benjamin Silliman, the distinguishe Yal professor, i I854. A demand for decoration has arisen in every branch of manufactures; and although ornament has been used to excess, and inappropriately, it is still a movement in the right direction.2 Here Silliman spoke not as an eminent scientist, which he was, but as man of typical Victorian tastes.

The Associates of the American Wing

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Associates of the American WingPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts Volume 46, Number 21967 A journal of the Detroit Institute of Arts Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/DIA41504425 Views: 1Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

American Wing

American Wing

The American Wing in 1957

The American Wing in 1957

The American Wing

The American Wing

The American Wing

The American Wing

The American Wing

The American Wing