Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Bruce Museum Greenwich CT: Seven Deadly Sins Exhibition Part of Collaboration among Area Museums



The galleries of the Bruce Museum will be bursting with pride this summer, and into falwith the exhibition The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride  June 27 through October 18, part of a groundbreaking series of area exhibitions exploring the Seven Deadly Sins. Presented by seven members of the Fairfield/Westchester Museum Alliance (FWMA), the Seven Deadly Sins exhibitions represent the group’s first ever collaborative effort.

Other area exhibitions in the Seven Deadly SinsFWMA collaboration include: •Lust, open now through July 26, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art•Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath –Force of Nature, open now through September 7, Wave Hill•Envy, An Installation by Adrien Broom, open now through September 26, Hudson River Museum•Emilie Clark: The Delicacy of Decomposition, exploring Gluttony, opening July 12 (through September 6), Katonah Museum of Art•Greed, GOLD, opening July 12 (through October 11), Neuberger Museum of Art•Sloth, opening July 19 (through October 18), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

“The Seven Deadly Sins have played a significant role in theology, literature and art since the Middle Ages,” says Susan Ball, Deputy Director of the Bruce Museum and a curator of the Bruce’se xhibition. 

“Pride, or superbia, represents the mother of all sins and the one from which all others arise –the root of a many-branched tree .It’s a fascinating,intriguing subject, and we’re delighted to be presenting it at the Bruce.” 

The Bruce Museum exhibition places the sin of Pride within a historical context, presenting nearly 50 works ranging from Dürer works on paper from as far back as 1498 to Fay Ku’s 2014 graphite and oil on mylar. Susan Ball and Co-Curator Amanda Skehan have selected paintings, engravings, etchings, lithographs, illustrated books, magazines, three-dimensional objects and more from private collections, galleries, and institutions that include Yale University Art Gallery, Minneapolis Institute of Art, National Gallery of Art, Princeton Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Clark Art Institute. 

The exhibition’s curators point out that the show is intended not only to put the sin of pride within a historical context, but also to encourage discussion, raisingquestions about the history of morality and moralizing.

“The debate about the definition of sinfulness in general and each specific transgression in particular has raged for centuries,” Ball says. “One might ask, at what point is the line between healthy self-esteem, or pride, and the sin of arrogant self-aggrandizement, or pridefulness, crossed?”






Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558-1617) after Cornelis van Haarlem (Dutch, 1562-1638) Phaeton from The Disgracers, 1588 Engraving Collection of The Hearn Family Trust Photograph by Paul Mutino 







Fay Ku (American, 1974-) Juno's Creatures, 2014Graphite and oil on mylar, 42 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery, New York


  
Jan Pietersz Saenredam (Dutch, 1565-1607) after Abraham Bloemaert (Dutch, 1564-1651)Temptation of Man, from The History of Adam and Eve, 1604EngravingCollection of The Hearn Family Trust Photograph by Paul Mutino




Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879)Mlle. Etienne-Joconde-Cunégonde-Bécassin de Constitutionnel..., 1834 Lithograph, 17 7/8 x 14 in. David Tunick, Inc. New York Photograph courtesy of David Tunick, Inc. New York



Gabriel Schachinger (1850-1912 )Sweet Reflections, 1886 Oil on canvas, 51 x 31 in. Woodmere Art Museum: Bequest of Charles Knox Smith Photograph by Rick Echelmeyer