Author: Francesca Bisi

The David Reconsidered: Art, Censorship, and Outrage

The David Reconsidered: Art, Censorship, and Outrage

If you have been anywhere near social media this week, it’s likely you’ve heard about the recent controversy that has pushed a small Florida school into a global spotlight. At the Tallahassee Classical school, sixth graders were learning about Michelangelo’s David, a standard part of 

Museums in Wartime: The Place of Art and History in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Museums in Wartime: The Place of Art and History in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

We are rapidly approaching the one-year mark of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the latest and most extreme in a series of Russo-Ukrainian conflicts. The past year has seen widespread destruction throughout the country, with over eight million refugees leaving their homes to flee the 

What’s Coming Up in the Art World in 2023

What’s Coming Up in the Art World in 2023

Happy New Year from the Museum Studies Blog!

As we look forward to 2023, here are a few of the amazing upcoming exhibitions that you should mark on your calendar. What shows are you most looking forward to?

Ningiukulu Teevee (2007) Shaman Revealed. Purchased with the assistance of the Joan Chalmers Inuit Art Purchase Fund, 2008. © Ningiukulu Teevee, courtesy Dorset Fine Arts. 2008/17.

Ningiukulu Teevee: Chronicles for the Curious
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada)
Opens January 14th, 2023
Curated by Wanda Nanibush (AGO)

Vitality and Continuity: Art in the Experiences of Anishinaabe, Inuit, and Pueblo Women
Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, USA)
January 21st, 2023 to January 6th, 2024

Ming Smith (1992) Womb. Courtesy of the artist. © Ming Smith.

Egon Schiele from the Collection of the Leopold Museum–Young Genius in Vienna 1900
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan)
January 26th to April 9th, 2023

Projects: Ming Smith
Studio Museum in Harlem (New York City, USA)
Curated by Thelma Golden (Studio Museum in Harlem) and Oluremi C. Onabanjo (MoMA)
February 4th to May 29th, 2023

Wook-kyung Choi, (1960s) Untitled (detail). © Wook-kyung Choi Estate and courtesy to Arte Collectum

Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70
Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK)
February 9th to May 7th, 2023
Curated by Laura Smith (Whitechapel)

Sofonisba Anguissola: Portraitist of the Renaissance
Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
February 11th to June 11th, 2023

Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-1982
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, USA)
Curated by Leslie Jones (LACMA)
February 12th to July 2nd, 2023

Wangechi Mutu (2022) In Two Canoe. Courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery. © Wangechi Mutu

Painting Love in the Louvre Collections
National Art Center (Tokyo, Japan)
March 1st to June 12th, 2023

Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined
The New Museum (New York City, USA)
Curated by Margot Norton (The New Museum) Vivian Crockett
March 2nd to June 4th, 2023

Teresa del Pó (c. 1684) St. Sebastian. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katzeresa

Muse or Maestra? Women in the Italian Art World, 1400-1800
Kupferstichkabinett (Berlin, Germany)
May 8th to June 4th, 2023

The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance
The National Gallery (London, UK)
March 16th to June 11th, 2023

Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Sky (Gaifū kaisei), also known as Red Fuji, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei) © The Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence
The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA)
March 26th to July 16th, 2023
Curated by: Sarah E. Thompson

Manet/Degas
Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France)
March 28th to July 23rd, 2023
Curated by Laurence des Cars (Louvre Museum), Isolde Pludermacher (Musée d’Orsay), and Stéphane Guégan (Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie)

Juan de Pareja (1661) The Calling of Saint Matthew, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado

Juan de Pareja: Afro-Hispanic Painter
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, USA)
April 3rd to July 16th, 2023
Curated by David Pullins (The Met) and Vanessa K. Valdés (CUNY)

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (2000) Untitled (Memory Map). © Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City, USA)
April 19th to August 2023
Curated by Laura Phipps (Whitney) and Caitlin Chaisson

Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker
National Gallery of Ireland (Dublin, Ireland)
May 6th to August 27th 2023
Curated by Aoife Brady (National Gallery of Ireland)

Menstrual products from various decades. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum Europäischer Kulturen / Christian Krug

Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape
The Art Institute (Chicago, USA)
Curated by Jacquelyn N. Coutré (The Art Institute) and Bregje Gerritse (Van Gogh Museum)
May 14th to September 4th, 2023

Flow: The Exhibition about Menstruation
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Berlin, Germany)
June 10th, 2023 to June 10th, 2024

Artist Portrait with a Candle (A), from the series With Eyes Closed I See Happiness (2012) Marina Abramović. © Marina Abramović

Secessions: Klimt, Stuck, Liebermann
Alte Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany)
June 23rd to October 22nd, 2023

Marina Abramović
Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK)
September 23rd to December 10th, 2023

Japanese American-owned grocery store, Oakland, California (March 1942) Dorothea Lange. © National Gallery of Art

Degas and the Laundress: Women, Work, and Impressionism in Late Nineteenth Century Paris
Cleveland Museum of Art
October 8th to January 14th, 2023

Dorothea Lange: Seeing People
National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C., USA)
November 5th, 2023 to March 31st, 2024


Article by Francesca Bisi

MA Candidate in Art History and Museum Studies, Tufts University

Monsters and Museums

Monsters and Museums

Horror fans are probably already aware that Guillermo del Toro has released a new series, an anthology of shorts available on Netflix titled Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. As the acclaimed horror director introduces each episode, he draws an object from the eponymous cabinet, 

The Parthenon Marbles and the Issue of Restitution

The Parthenon Marbles and the Issue of Restitution

Whether you are part of the museum world or not, you have likely heard of the controversy surrounding the Parthenon marbles. This summer, newspapers have been flooded with stories about these ancient sculptures, with a renewed fervor for restitution and apparent headways in the Greek 

Titian’s Women: An Italian Museum Experience at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy

Titian’s Women: An Italian Museum Experience at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy

A photograph of the facade of the cathedral of Milan
View of the façade of the cathedral of Milan. This and all future photographs by author.

We emerged from the depths of the Milan metro, covering our eyes as the sun shone through the opening at the top of the stairwell. Armed with masks and an apocalyptic supply of water, we had come prepared to take on the masses in the winding subway tunnels and sweltering piazza. Even for seasoned visitors to this bustling Italian city, the sight of the cathedral emerging out of nowhere, taking up the entire view from the metro’s exit, is awe-inspiring. We quickly tore away from the sight of bright, white spires piercing into the cloudless blue sky, making a beeline to the Palazzo Reale on the south side of Piazza Duomo.

The purpose of our day trip to Milan was a visit to a blockbuster exhibition at the royal-palace-turned-museum: Tiziano e l’immagine della donna nel cinquecento veneziano (or, Titian and the Image of the Woman in 16th Century Venice). As a self-proclaimed student of art in the Italian Renaissance, focusing specifically on northern Italian city-states such as Venice and Ferrara, I was not about to miss the opportunity to see this exhibition. That morning I dragged my aunt and sister out of bed at 5:00 AM so we could catch a train to Milan. Was it worth it?

Born out the research of art historian Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Director of the Picture Gallery at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, this exhibition purports to explore the representations of Venetian women in secular portraits. While Titian is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated and widely studied artists from sixteenth century Italy, the role of women as subjects and models in his works still inspires varied and sometimes heated debates, relating especially to the abuse or exploitation of women in his mythological poesie. Created in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the exhibition took place from February 23rd to June 5th, 2022. The Kunst put on its own version of the show, titled “Titian’s Vision of Women: Beauty, Love, and Poetry,” which ran from October 5th, 2021, to January 30th, 2022.

During my time at Tufts, I have grown increasingly interested in how museums and exhibitions of Italian Renaissance art can break free of the traditionalism that so often dominates them in order to become more accessible, engaging, and inclusive. Being born and raised in Italy to museophile parents, museums have always been a central part of my life. Once moving to the United States, I quickly became aware of the stark difference in how American and Italian institutions approach the display of their collections, especially surrounding the art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy. As such, I was pleasantly surprised when the Italian exhibition I was so excited to see this summer engaged with their works in a refreshingly new manner.

a small, gold and blue Renaissance dress seen from the back, facing Titian's portrait of Isabella d'Este
Front: Roberto Capucci. Homage to Isabella d’Este, 1994. Private collection.
Background: Titian, Portrait of Isabella d’Este, 1534-6. Oil on canvas, 102.4 x 64.7 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Shortly before this visit, I had brought my younger sister to a few other Italian museums, where we had traipsed through a much more traditional museum experience. I had suffered through large, mostly empty rooms with seemingly never-ending wall texts that made it difficult for anyone, including an art history student genuinely interested in the subject, to remain actively engaged. I could see my sister grow ever more restless, and I couldn’t blame her. At the Milan Titian exhibition, however, I watched as she hopped from work to work, taking time to absorb each one and read the wall text, occasionally approaching my aunt or I to ask questions. I, too, found it easier to focus on the exhibition even as we reached the final rooms and my feet began to ache. Beyond the fascinating subject, the curators used multiple strategies to bring together different mediums and draw visitors’ attention to different aspects of the works on display. A dress titled “Homage to Isabella d’Este” was placed facing her famous portrait, emphasizing the richness of the fabric and jewels. The way the painted subject and dress were angled placed them in conversation with each other, asking viewers to consider them in conjunction. A different room instead placed a table in the center, filled with pages from Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi et moderni… The Venetian women depicted here ranged wildly in status and wealth, depicting a wide variety of costumes. The pizzochere (lay, religious women), noblewomen, orfanelle, and fantesche (female domestic servants) reveal the styles of women we might otherwise not see in the portraits of upper-class women represented throughout the exhibition. Yet another room allows visitors to connect he paintings adorning the walls to contemporary literature, including Moderata Fonte’s Il merito delle donne (The Worth of Women). By including Fonte and other female authors, highlighting them by allotting a single, separate wall text to their works, the exhibition corrects an unfortunately common misconception that women did not contribute to the literary culture of the Renaissance. This is all explored further in a beautiful exhibit catalogue that includes stunning details and high-quality reproductions set against important essays that expand the field’s understanding of women in Titian’s oeuvre.

Loose-leaf pages from a book on the dresses of Venetian women
Cesare Vecellio. Twenty-three Engravings of Italian Women from De gli habiti antichi, et moderni…, 1590. Woodcut, 16.7 x 12.5 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

As much as I enjoyed the show and catalogue, there were still several instances where I thought the exhibition could have benefitted from a more accessible and innovative approach. This can be seen especially when comparing the exhibition pages for the Palazzo Reale exhibition and its counterpart at the Kunst. Including only a quick description and basic information on the organizers and museum hours, the Palazzo Reale does not provide much information for prospective visitors or for those wishing to revisit the show after their visit. When clicking on the Kunst’s page, we can immediately see a much more interactive and informative website, beautifully designed. Clickable text is paired with videos and sign-language translations, and various images from the show are reproduced digitally alongside short text descriptions. The page is also divided into several sections, including “The Mirror as an Instrument of Complex Visual Connections and a Means of Self-Awareness,” “United Forever: In Love for Five Centuries and Still Together,” “Sex Object and Goddess: Men Writing about Women,” and “Women Writers, Poets and Poet-Courtesans Ensure that Both They and Women in General Have a Voice.” As can be seen here, the Kunst exhibition appears to deal much more directly with issues of the use of women’s bodies in the male-dominated art industry in Renaissance Venice than the Milan sister show, at least for casual viewers who do not attentively read the exhibition catalogue.

In spite of these issues, I still thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition. I was glad to see my sister engage with this show with so much more excitment than in our previous museum visits. The conversation around the representation of women in Titian’s works is always a fascinating one, and this show proved that there are many fruitful studies to come in this field. I can say with certainty that the 5 AM alarm was worth it.