Dr. Regina Palm
Curator of American Painting
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art
Winter Park, FL, (407) 645-5311, www.morsemuseum.org
What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why?
There are actually several exhibitions that had to be postponed this past year that I am really hoping to see in the future—Artemisia at The National Gallery in London, Angelica Kauffman at the Royal Academy of Arts, and Éva Gonzalès : rencontre avec une femme moderne at the Château-musée de Dieppe. While I specialize in American art, my interests extend far beyond that and as a feminist art historian, I am always thrilled to discover shows that are attempting to shine a light on female artists as well as artists more generally who have not been given their due.
What are you reading?
Currently, I’m reading a novel called Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton. The story moves through present day Havana and back to the 1950s by weaving together the lives of a woman who travels to Cuba to spread the ashes of her grandmother, who immigrated to Miami during the revolution and who serves as the other key figure.
Interesting exhibit, gallery opening or work of art you’ve seen recently.
Last fall I had the great privilege of seeing two wonderful shows in London—Laura Knight RA: A Working Life at the Royal Academy of Arts and Portrait of the Artist: Käthe Kollwitz at the British Museum. Neither show is what would be categorized as a “blockbuster” and in fact, both shows were of a smaller scale and free to the public. Yet, while I myself love a blockbuster and theatrical exhibitions, I often find the greatest satisfaction in those shows that choose as their subjects an artist who is lesser-known or perhaps even unknown. Shows that shine not for their theatrics but rather for no other reason than the quality of work on display or the history that they unveil.
What are you researching at the moment?
Being new to the Morse Museum, I have been delving into the collection as a whole. While the Morse is internationally renowned for housing the most comprehensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the world, it also houses a collection of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper that are equal to and complement the museum’s works by the decorative arts master....The Morse is also home to paintings by Rosa Bonheur and Cecilia Beaux, not to mention John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, and the list goes on and on...As such, the focus of my research as of late has been wonderfully vast as I get to know the treasure trove that is the Morse’s fine arts collection.
What is your dream exhibit to curate? Or see someone else curate?
My first and, arguably, greatest love in art is public mural painting. More specifically, the work of female muralists who during the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century succeeded in breaking into a professional field of art that had been historically understood as a masculine endeavor...It would indeed be my dream to create an exhibition in which the work of muralists—from those who exhibited in the Woman’s Building and Pennsylvania Building at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, like Mary Cassatt and Gabrielle de Veaux Clements, to the work of American Renaissance artist Violet Oakley and so many others—could be brought together in some tangible way in an effort to demonstrate that the art produced by female artists at the fin de siècle went far beyond that of still life, portraiture, china painting, and so on. —
Powered by Froala Editor
