Collection Spotlight: Rosa Bonheur papers 

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The Collection of Rosa Bonheur correspondence, 1808-1961 held in Bywaters Special Collections is a significant record of the artist’s correspondence and writings. 

French painter Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), acclaimed for her detailed paintings of animals, is considered one of the most well-known female artists of the 19th century. She was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1865 by French Empress Eugénie. Bonheur had female life companions and was gender non-conforming, often dressing in men’s clothing. This collection consists of primarily of letters by Rosa Bonheur written from 1861 until her death in 1899 to her artist and friend Paul Chardin. Included are letters to Paul Chardin written by Rosa’s brother, Isidore Bonheur and by Jeanne Micas (Nathalie), Rosa’s life companion.

Rosa Bonheur letter

Materials are handwritten in French. 

Please take a look at the detailed finding aid available through Texas Archival Resources Online. 

https://txarchives.org/smu/finding_aids/00094.xml  

Many of the letters have been digitized and are available here: 

https://www.smu.edu/libraries/digitalcollections/rbc  

Fall ’21 and spring ’22 screenings for Ghosts of Lost Futures

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Curator and artist, Mike Morris, and his collaborators on the experimental videos, Ghosts of Lost Futures, have been busy with additional screenings of this program of works. Ghosts premiered at the Dallas Museum of Art in the Horchow Auditorium on May 22 with ten works by ten experimental video artists commissioned to re-interpret film footage from the WFAA Newsfilm archive. The footage from the Hamon’s G. William Jones Video and Film Archive was selected from 1970 to recognize the year of the archive’s establishment. Due to COVID, the first screening was postponed over one year later.

Since this screening at the DMA, Ghosts was in the line-up of screenings for the Experimental Response Cinema, sponsored by the Austin Film Society, on November 8. Organized by the artist and program participant, Liz Rhodda, Mike Morris attended virtually to answer questions from a large audience.

Flyers for Archive Fever
Promotional collage assembled by Craig Baldwin for Archive Fever program, San Francisco’s Other Cinema

On November 20, selected works from Ghosts screened with other video works at San Francisco’s Other Cinema’s annual Archive Fever program. Selected films were:

Curt Heiner – The Stars of Texas Shine Tonight

Lisa McCarty – Undelivered Remarks

Zak Loyd – Deep River / Ocean of Storms 

Angelo Madsen Minax – Stay with me, the world is a devastating place

Marwa Benhalim – The Void Remembers

This spring, the video works will be featured at another experimental film festival, Experiments in Cinema, in Albuquerque. The dates for this screening have yet to be slated. Please check the EIC website for screening updates. The selections of videos will include:

Curt Heiner – The Stars of Texas Shine Tonight

Lisa MCarty – Undelivered Remarks 

Tramaine Townsend – FRAMES.-DALLUS 

Zak Loyd – Deep River / Ocean of Storms 

Angelo Madsen Minax – Stay with me, the world is a devastating place

Liz Rodda – Amid Flowers, Crowns, and Tears 

Marwa Benhalim – The Void Remembers 

Blog post: Mike Morris, curator and artist; and Beverly Mitchell, Assistant Director, Hamon Arts Library

In Honor of Veterans’ Day: John ‘Carr’ Pritchett (1921 – 2016)

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Untitled (Ranch Scene at Night)

While serving as curator of Bywaters Special Collections there were many times I would find interesting items housed in the archival files that were of importance to Jerry Bywaters and his colleagues. One such discovery was a folder of drawings made by John ‘Carr’ Pritchett who graduated from SMU in May 1942. Pritchett studied art with Bywaters and assisted him with the Trinity, Texas Post Office mural in 1941.  As with many young Americans at this time, Pritchett joined the armed forces in October 1942.  While serving, he made sketches of everyday military life, including illustrated letters, that he would send back to Bywaters.

In one letter to Bywaters, Pritchett noted that there were many soldiers from Texas in the military and they would break out with some of the cowboy songs such as “I Wanna Go Back to Texas” and “When It’s Round-up Time in Texas.”  Pritchett continued to serve as a Marine in World War II and the Korean Conflict.

After World War II, Pritchett studied Commercial Art at the Pratt Institute in New York but in 1949 left the art world to start his new career as a cattleman.  He eventually settled in Mesilla, New Mexico where he died in 2016.

Blog post: Ellen Buie Niewyk, former Curator, Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library

Image: Jerry Bywaters, Untitled (Ranch Scene at Night), 4.88 x 4.88 inches; Paper: 11 x 8.5 inches, no date.

Skin Hunger – interactive installation in Hamon Arts Library, October 26-31

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Skin Hunger screen shotSkin Hunger is a telematic installation that plays on the zoom-style video-chat that has recently become ubiquitous. Participants can reach across their screens to virtually ‘touch’ one another.  By touching or moving together, participants create visuals and sounds that emerge and evolve from participant relation and interaction making the intangible connection tangible and also giving it life.
 
 
Participants from physically remote locations will be able to interact with each other, connecting participants across Dallas and the United States, including University of Texas Dallas, University of North Texas, and Florida Western University during the same time period, connecting participants in those places.
 
This work was created in response to the stress incurred by lack of touch as a result of social distancing. Lack of touch can result in skin hunger, and leads to feelings of social exclusion. While the remedy for skin hunger is physical touch, we offer a digital alternative.
 
Skin Hunger is a collaborative interactive web-based and telematic installation project realized by Meadows School of the Arts professors Courtney Brown, Melanie Clemmons, Ira Greenberg,  and Brent Brimhall.

Dr. Jacqueline Stewart receives 2021 MacArthur Fellowship

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Dr Jaqueline StewartSMU Libraries congratulates Dr. Jacqueline Stewart, film curator, archivist and scholar, on her recent 2021 MacArthur Fellowship. Dr. Stewart has published extensively on black film and filmmaking in the United States. In her video post for the MacArthur Foundation, Dr. Stewart describes her interest in the genre of black films from the early 1920s – 1930s.

Dr. Stewart has visited SMU for at least two events. In 2011, she spoke as a guest lecturer for the Comini series, sponsored by the art history department. In her talk, “Discovering’ Black Film History: Tracing the Tyler, Texas Black Film Collection,” she warned of the easy appeal to label these, or any, films as rediscovered along with the danger of neglecting them in an archive.

Dr. Jacqueline Stewart’s MacArthur “Genius grant” is a tribute to her important scholarship on the Black-audience movies of the 1920s-1940s, her archival work, and dedication to teaching a broadening and inclusive history of American cinema. No one else in the history of academic cinema and media studies has achieved the positions of influence she has attained in the past two years: Regular host of TCM’s Silent Sunday Nights, Chief artistic and programming officer for the new Hollywood Academy Museum of Motion Picture History, and MacArthur research grant fellow. In each capacity, she is, and will be, a powerful and influential teacher.

– Professor Rick Worland, Division of Film & Media Arts

More recently, she has written about the Tyler Film Collection in the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection. With Yale scholar, Charles Musser, Dr. Stewart curated the films and wrote accompanying materials for the Pioneers of African American Cinema box DVD set, of which the Tyler Film Collection is included. This collection is available for viewing through the Hamon Arts Library.

Image of Dr. Stewart: © MacArthur Foundation.

Report from the Red Carpet – The Velvet Underground at the Cannes Film Festival

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Grand Theatre Lumiere red carpetAfter a thorough bout of negotiations, the previously lost film footage of the Velvet Underground performing at a Vietnam War protest at Dallas’ White Rock Lake in 1969 has made it into The Velvet Underground, a documentary directed by Todd Haynes. The documentary, mirroring the name of the band itself, contains this special footage that was initially discovered and digitized by the G. William Jones Film and Video Archive Team right here at SMU.

Canne Film Festival logo on chairs

The Velvet Underground premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France this past July at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the festival’s largest and most prestigious theatre. The event was attended by many, including director Todd Haynes, singer/model Jane Birkin, actress Helen Mirren, and me, a recently graduated SMU film student. The documentary was well received by audiences and ended up being the favorite Emily Cook and friendof many out of the entire festival’s lineup of films. The clips from White Rock Lake appear towards the middle of the film and are very “blink and you might miss it.” As I was a student intern at the G. William Jones Archive, I was delighted when I recognized the clips from White Rock Lake. It was amazing to see a special piece of SMU abroad, especially in such a personal way.

CannesFor all of those in the SMU community who want to see our contribution to this incredible documentary, The Velvet Underground will make its American debut October 15, 2021 on Apple TV+.

 

 

 

Blog post: Emily Cook (standing on right), SMU film student graduate (2021) and G. William Jones Film & Video intern

CML talk with curator, Lilia Kudelia on Oct. 6 at 5:30 pm

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Curatorial Minds Lab: Virtual Lecture with Guest Curator Lilia Kudelia

 

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

5:30 p.m.

Zoom lecture

FREE

Sophia Salinas and Lilia Kudelia

Lilia Kudelia is a curator and art historian. Her research focuses on the artistic movements and infrastructures in the post-communist states, cultural heritage and restitution, television and art from the 1960s onwards. As a guest curator at Residency Unlimited in New York, she develops residencies for the laureates of the Young Visual Artists Awards, a network of 12 awards in countries of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. She has previously held curatorial and research positions at Dallas Contemporary in Dallas, Texas, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Art Arsenal in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2017, Kudelia co-curated the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, which featured work by photographer Boris Mikhailov. She holds an M.A. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a B.A. in cultural studies from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto, Canada. The talk, moderated by Sophia Salinas, is presented as part of the Curatorial Minds Lab, a new initiative of the Hamon Arts Library’s Hawn Gallery and the Pollock Gallery at SMU that gives five Fellows – made up of alumni and current students – an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the historical development of curatorial practices and study contemporary art display theory and practice.

To attend the virtual lecture, visit https://smu.zoom.us/j/95072889069. For more information, visit https://pollockgallery.art/Curatorial-Minds-Lab or email Sofia Bastidas-Vivar, director of the Pollock Gallery, at abastidas@smu.edu.

 

 

CML talk with curator, Taylor Renee Aldridge on Sept. 22 at 5:30 pm

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Taylor Aldridge photo

Curatorial Minds Lab: Virtual Lecture with Guest Curator Taylor Renee Aldridge

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

5:30 p.m.

Zoom lecture

FREE

Taylor Renee Aldridge is the visual arts curator and program manager at the California African American Museum (CAAM). Prior, she worked as a writer and independent curator in Detroit, Michigan. She has organized exhibitions with the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Artist Market, Cranbrook Art Museum, and The Luminary (St. Louis). In 2015, along with art critic Jessica Lynne, she co-founded ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism for Black perspectives. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, The Art Newspaper, Art21, ARTNews, Frieze, Harper’s Bazaar, Canadian Art, Detroit Metro Times, and SFMoMA’s Open Space.  The lecture is presented as part of the Curatorial Minds Lab, a new initiative of the Hamon Arts Library’s Hawn Gallery and the Pollock Gallery at SMU that gives five Fellows – made up of alumni and current students – an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the historical development of curatorial practices and study contemporary art display theory and practice.

CML logoTo attend the virtual lecture, visit https://smu.zoom.us/j/91045080064.For more information, visit https://pollockgallery.art/Curatorial-Minds-Lab or email Pollock Gallery Director Sofia Bastidas at abastidas@smu.edu.

Pèl & Ploma, Spanish modernist journal, at the Meadows Museum

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Pel & Ploma cover with womanTwo rare volumes of a Spanish modernist journal, Pèl & Ploma, are on display at the Meadows Museum until August 8. After this date, the works will return to Hamon’s unique collections housed in the library’s Limited Access. Published in Barcelona, the art and literary journal dates from 1899 – 1903. The poems, stories, and essays are written in Catalan with illustrations by the artist Ramón Casas, and much of the prose by Miguel Utrillo. Casas also contributed drawings for the covers and advertisements. Utrillo and Casas developed the concept and execution of this journal along with two other journals, Quatre Gats and Forma, both of which had shorter runs than Pèl & Ploma.

According to Eliseu Trenc, essay contributor to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 2006 exhibition catalogue, Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí, in which these volumes from Hamon were on display, Pèl & Ploma and Quatre Gats were inflected by the Parisian style. The journals “represent the French realist and synthetic school of the art of Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen.” 1 A few of the other artists represented in the journal were Santiago Rusiñol, Joaquin Mir, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, and others. 2

1  65.

2  66.

Blog post: Beverly Mitchell, Assistant Director, Hamon Arts Library

Highlights from Fossils to Film: The Best of SMU’s Collections – Barbara Maples’ Taos Fiesta

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Two museums, the Meadows Museum and the Centre Pompidou, are featuring the work of Barbara Maples, a well-known printmaker. On loan from Bywaters Special Collections to the  Meadows Museum’s Fossils to Film: The Best of SMU’s Collections, is Maples’ Taos Fiesta. In addition, she is one of several female artists featured in the Centre Pompidou’s exhibition, Elles font l’abstraction (Women in Abstraction), which opened May 5, 2021. This exhibition also has a second venue at Guggenheim Bilbao.

Elle font l'abstraction_exhibition entranceBorn in Temple, Texas, Barbara Lucile Maples (1912 – 1999) graduated from Mary-Hardin Baylor College in Belton, with a BA degree in 1933. Six years later she received a MA degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York. She began her teaching career in Temple and Fort Worth before joining the Dallas Independent School District in elementary and secondary art from 1937 – 1964. In 1965, Maples became the Assistant Professor of Art Education, and in 1974, Associate Professor of Crafts Design at SMU. She taught at the University until retiring in 1978.

 

Elle font l'abstraction exhibition wall of portraitsIn the mid-1980s, when interest in Texas Regionalism re-emerged, Maples encouraged the exhibition, The Texas Printmakers, at the Meadows Museum at SMU. The 1990 exhibition again highlighted the group. The exhibition catalogue, written by Dr. David Farmer, former director of DeGolyer Library at SMU, and guest curator, Paul Rogers Harris, is available in both the Hamon Arts Library and Bywaters Special Collections.

Maples practiced painting, photography, and metalsmithing, but was known as a printmaker. She joined the Printmakers Guild (renamed Texas Printmakers in 1952) in Dallas and served as its president fromTaos Fiesta_Maples 1945 – 1946. Her color block print, Taos Fiesta, presents an image of the historic carousel, Tío Vivo (Uncle Lively), a main feature at the Taos Fiesta. The carousel is turned by hand-operation of a cog wheel to the accompaniment of Spanish music from fiddle and guitar. It was built in Germany, and originally owned and operated by a traveling circus. In the late 1800s, it was discovered abandoned and broken in the mountainous community of Peñasco in Taos County. In 1938 the Taos Lions Club purchased and restored the carousel with the help of the Taos Society of Artists. Members Oscar Berninghaus and Ernest Blumenschein repainted several of the horses. Other artists and photographers used the carousel as a subject in their work. A mystery writer in Santa Fe, Dorothy Hughes, wrote Ride the Pink Horse, basing the theme on Tío Vivo. In 1947, Robert Montgomery directed and starred in a movie based upon the novel.

Tío Vivo continues to be a highlight of the Taos Fiesta.

Blog post: Ellen Buie Niewyk, Curator, Bywaters Special Collections.

Images credit: Elles font l’abstraction, entrance to Centre Pompidou exhibition with view of portraits of female artists, and wall of portraits. © Centre Pompidou, Audrey Laurans

Image credit: Barbara Maples, Taos Fiesta, ca, 1947, color block print on paper, 14.25 x 13.25 in. (36.20 x 33.66 cm). Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library, Gift of Susan Kennon Carruth in memory of Barbara Maples.