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Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality at the Morgan

A recent exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum entitled "Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality" has closed, but a video on the Morgan's website shows some of the highlights. The exhibition included some of the artifacts and artwork that accompanied an economic revolution that took place in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Monetary growth at that time transformed every aspect of European society, raising questions that still resonate about the repercussions of avarice, the attitudes of the wealthy toward the poor, lending practices and money management. Many of the objects, books, portraits, panel paintings and sculptures in the exhibition were not only didactic in intention but of breathtaking beauty. For the videotape about the exhibition, click here.

In the museums....

Holbein: Capturing Character

at the

Morgan Library & Museum

Shopping at the National Museum of the American Indian

Sir Thomas More, as painted by Hans Holbein the Younger c. 1527 shortly before King Henry VIII promoted More to Lord High Chancellor, the highest-ranking office in Tudor England. The painting is a centerpiece of the exhibition "Hans Holbein: Capturing Character" at the Morgan Library & Museum. (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

(Left) "Indian Madonna Enthroned" by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was part of a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

(Right) This painting by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is called "Trade Canoe: Forty Days and Forty Nights." Coyote stands in the center of the canoe, which is full of animals and Native Americans escaping from death and destruction.

(Photos: © Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

Through Jan. 2023: An exhibition entitled "At the Dawn of a New Age: Early 20th Century American Modernism" recently opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan's meatpacking district. One of the paintings that viewers can see as they get off the elevator is by Georgia O'Keeffe and dates from 1930. She called it "Black and White." This is not the Georgia O'Keeffe that most of us are likely to know — the one who painted erotic flowers, cattle skulls and fleshy landscapes of mountains and sandstone. This one shows something fierce and sharp piercing something soft, serpentine and mysterious, rendered in shades of black and gray. Like most of the work in this exhibition, it's suggestive rather than explicit, emotional rather than realistic. If the viewer is willing to give it enough time, each object — painting, sculpture, woodcut or drawing — creates a dialogue with the artist.

Featuring over 60 works by 50 artists drawn primarily from the Whitney’s permanent collection, this exhibition consists of American art that was produced between 1900 and 1930.  Some of the work was bought years ago but has never previously been exhibited or was exhibited only once and then placed in storage. Because there were significant gaps in the Whitney's collection, some of the work was recently acquired. The Whitney largely ignored America’s early modernists when it was founded in 1930, instead favoring the urban realists. While the Museum acquired a few nonrepresentational works in its earliest years, it was not until the mid-1970s that the Whitney began aggressively acquiring avant-garde art made between 1900 and 1930. Even then, these acquisitions largely excluded work by women and artists of color.

Although some of the artists in the show are well known, others have been largely forgotten because they didn't get the support and recognition that they needed to continue. So they gave up. "At the Dawn of a New Age" rectifies some of these oversights and omissions. For more information, click here.  — Terese Loeb Kreuzer

"Black and White" by Georgia O'Keeffe 1930

On Jan. 28, 2024 — Holocaust Remembrance Day — Elie Wiesel's book, "Night," about his incarceration in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, was read aloud in its entirety at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City. Wiesel survived Auschwitz but his parents and his little sister, Tzipora, did not. He dedicated the book to their memory.

Although this exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum closed on May 15, 2022, an interactive version of it is still available online.

Glimpsed through the open doors of two facing galleries in the Morgan Library & Museum were two paintings by Hans Holbein the Younger that stopped visitors in their tracks. On one side, Sir Thomas More looked sternly at whoever dared stand in front of him. Holbein depicted him as resplendently dressed in an opulent coat trimmed with fur through which peeked red velvet sleeves. A golden chain hung around his neck centered by a Tudor rose, the emblem of his employer, King Henry VIII.

On the wall in the opposite gallery was Holbein's painting of a sensitive, young man wearing a gold- and feather-trimmed hat delicately holding a single carnation in his slender hands. His name was Simon George of Cornwall, about whom nothing is known except what Holbein suggested through this great painting. It ensures that this young man will be remembered.

Hans Holbein the Younger, born in Augsburg, Germany in 1497/1498, died in London in 1543. He was by any standard one of the preeminent and most versatile European artists of the 16th century. With a ringside seat for some of the century's most cataclysmic events, he began his career in Switzerland during the early years of the Protestant Reformation. When Holbein left for England, he found patronage and subject matter in the tumultuous court of King Henry VIII.

The exhibition at the Morgan brought together around 60 objects from some of the world's most important art collections. The multi-disciplinary show, created in partnership with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, was the first of its kind in the United States. In addition to paintings, it included drawings, prints, books and jewelry.

For the interactive, online version of the exhibition, click here.

— Terese Loeb Kreuzer

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at the Whitney Museum

A retrospective exhibition of the compelling work of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at the Whitney Museum of American Art closed on Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023 but a video of the artist along with audio interviews with her are still available on the Whitney Museum website. This exhibition was the first New York retrospective of Smith's groundbreaking, "Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map" which brought together nearly five decades of Smith’s drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures in the largest and most comprehensive showing of her career to date. Smith’s work utilizes contemporary modes of painting, from her idiosyncratic adoption of abstraction to her reflections on American Pop art and neo-expressionism. These artistic traditions are incorporated and reimagined with concepts rooted in Smith’s own cultural background, reflecting her belief that her “life’s work involves examining contemporary life in America and interpreting it through Native ideology.” Employing satire and humor, Smith’s art tells stories that flip commonly held conceptions of historical narratives and illuminate absurdities in the formation of dominant culture. Smith’s approach importantly blurs categories and questions why certain visual languages attain recognition, historical privilege and value.  Across decades and mediums, Smith has deployed and reappropriated ideas of mapping, history, and environmentalism while incorporating personal and collective memories. The retrospective offered new frameworks in which to consider contemporary Native American art, showing how Smith has led and initiated some of the most pressing dialogues around land, racism, and cultural preservation. For a video of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith discussing her work, click here.

A Concert Dedicated to

Courage and Compassion

On March 21, in conjunction with “Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark,” an exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage about the rescue of Danish Jews during the Holocaust, the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra presented “A Concert Dedicated to Courage and Compassion." As the exhibition recounts, night after night during the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1943, Henny Sinding, then 22 years old, sailed her boat, Gerda III from Denmark to Sweden, saving an estimated 300 Jews. The concert featured the premiere of a work by Gary S. Fagin honoring Henny and Gerda III.

Fagin, the founder and conductor of the Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra, said that his mother had been a Holocaust survivor from a little town in Poland, and that he had wanted to create a Holocaust-themed work but one that had no direct reference to his mother. The "Courage to Act" exhibition provided what seemed to him to be the perfect context for what he had in mind.

"The exhibition showed what whole communities can do" when they act together and make a moral choice to not be bystanders, said Jack Kliger, president of the museum. 

Some prominent members of the Catholic Church believed "charity to be the mother of all virtues." A painting by Andrea di Bartolo in the exhibition entitled “Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality” at the Morgan Library depicts Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin Mary, donating food to the poor and making offerings to the Temple where Anna is giving sacks of wine and grain. The painting, which dates from 1400-1405,  is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and was on loan to the Morgan Library for the exhibition. Nov. 9, 2023

Beaded bags and purses by Darryl MacDonald of the Siksika Nation (Crow/Blackfoot) range in price from $2,000 to $3,000. MacDonald is the third generation of his family to work as an artist.

The Morgan Library's "Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality" exhibition included an ornate, 800-pound box with an elaborate locking mechanism consisting of nine bolts and various leaf-shaped shields operated by a system of levers and springs. The box would have held money and other valuables. Handles suggest portability but the sheer bulk of the object would have discouraged thieves from carrying it away. This steel strong box was made in Germany, possibly in Nuremberg, in the late 16th or early 17th century. (Photos: © Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

The black ash basket on the left is by Ronni-leigh Goeman, a member of the Onondaga nation in upstate New York. Her husband, Stonehorse Goeman, carved the image of Sky Woman on top of the basket. This basket costs $5,000. On the right is an award-winning basket costing $6,800 by Eric Bacon, a member of the Passamaquoddy nation in Maine.

In the museums....

Dawn of a New Age: Early 20th-Century

American Modernism

at the

Whitney Museum of American Art

'Copenhagen Bench' at the

Museum of Jewish Heritage

in Battery Park City

The National Museum of the American Indian at 1 Bowling Green has a large shop with a variety of merchandise made by Native Americans. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

The monetary economy depicted in "Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality"produced new types of illuminated financial records including notable examples from Bologna in northern Italy. This is a page from a register that would have been used in Bologna to record money that Bolognese lent to the city.  The surviving registers are dated 1394 or 1395 and signed by an artist named Nicolo. Each volume began with a richly illuminated folio.

Money and other forms of wealth were considered to be temptations best resisted. A painting by Fra Angelico in the “Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality” exhibition depicts St. Anthony Abbot Shunning the Mass of Gold that “the devil threw in his path to seduce him into committing the sin of avarice." The painting, executed with tempera on a panel, dates from 1435-1440. (Photo: © Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

'Memory Map,' a Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith at the Whitney Museum

In the Morgan Library's exhibition of "Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality," “The Hours of Catherine of Cleves,” illuminated by the unidentified Master of Catherine of Cleves, depicts a deathbed scene with, in the border of the page, the son of the dying man, pawing through a box containing his father's money. On the facing page are Souls Tormented in Purgatory. The book, considered to be among the masterpieces of illuminated work, is in the Morgan Library's permanent collection and was made in The Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440.

Woolen "Folk Art" sheep handmade by Navajo craftsmen sell for $80 to $600, depending on size.