The Life of a Painting as Traced by Technical Analysis: Original Materials and Posthumous Alterations in Édouard Manet’s Woman in Striped Dress

Among the holdings of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, is a large-scale portrait by Édouard Manet that remained apparently unfinished upon the artist’s death, in April 1883. This work, now known as Woman in Striped Dress, belongs to Manet’s late artistic production and dates from around 1877 to 1880. A collaborative endeavor entailing archival research and scientific analysis revealed that the composition had suffered dramatic alterations prior to its arrival at the museum in 1965 as an extended loan, likely carried out to “finish” the picture in order that it would be marketable and to increase its sale value. Among the main changes explored in this technical study are the reductions in the canvas size and subsequent varnishing campaigns. Furthermore, along with a detailed characterization of the original materials present in the ground and paint layers, this research contributed to the identification of posthumous retouchings, possibly executed concurrently with trimming the canvas along both sides and at the top edge. The investigation was instrumental in devising an appropriate treatment to remove the discolored varnish and select areas of retouching, which obscured significant details of the composition and Manet’s delicate brushwork.

The Guggenheim Museum Helsinki Plan as a Media Debate

In connection with today’s competition between cities to portray an alluring image of economic and cultural success, the City of Helsinki and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation put forward a plan to establish a Guggenheim museum in Helsinki, Finland. Following the plan’s release, a heated public debate emerged in the media. The present article analyzes this debate as a mediatized conflict and aims to show in what ways the debate on the Guggenheim report affected the decision-making process concerning the Helsinki Guggenheim museum. This debate is analyzed within the framework of current discussions on the culture-led development of cities, by applying a methodological tool inspired by Luc Boltanski’s and Laurent Thévenot’s theory of critical judgement to analyze the various justifications that the different actors used during the debate. Further, the article interprets why the museum plan was rejected in the first deliberation. It was found that the distance between different actors grew so wide that it could not be reconciled, especially with the effect of social media. Because the City did not encourage a discussion and communication with the art world was neglected at first, during the debate it proved impossible to convince the art world of the benefits a Guggenheim might bring to other art institutions or artists. Guggenheim Helsinki was planned for a small capital in northern Europe, and yet it is linked to current European politics affected by nationalistic ideology and the question of preserving local cultures in the face of a globally shared culture. The article ends with a discussion on what can be learned from the failure of the Guggenheim Helsinki.

The antarctica photography of Adriana Lestido

During early 2012, the Argentine photographer Adriana Lestido spent two months undertaking photography on the Argentine Peninsula of Antartica. Hers is the first systematic photography of the region, and it demonstrates the attempt to capture visually the fully range of that landscape. Our customary imaginary of the Antarctic landscape is very impoverished, one of ice and white snow, with some scattered fauna. Lestido’s systematic project reveals, by contrast, complex patterns of shifting climatic process and how shadow and light are far more complex than the conventional imaginary holds. A Guggenheim Foundation fellow, Lestido, who is known for her uncompromising photography of urban feminist social subjectivity, has, in a new phase of her work, turned to landscape photography and her Antarctica photographs constitute an highly original artistic undertaking to visualize how we might expand our understanding of the natural environment.

The Museum of Non-Objective Painting - Art of This Century

Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Konkurrenzverhalten der beiden Guggenheim-Lager ist das zentrale Forschungsvorhaben der vorliegenden Arbeit. Besondere Gewichtung kommt in diesem Kontext dem Gründungsmuseum der Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, dem Museum of Non-Objective Painting und der Museumsgalerie Art of This Century zu. Nie zuvor wurde eine Gegenüberstellung dieser beiden Institutionen in diesem Umfang in einer Arbeit vorgenommen. Die Studie schließt diese Forschungslücke, um ein differenziertes Bild des Konkurrenzkampfs innerhalb des New Yorker Kunstbetriebs zu gewinnen und somit eine erweiterte Diskussionsgrundlage zu schaffen. Es wird die Frage beantwortet, wie diese Konkurrenz zwischen den beiden Guggenheim-Lagern zustande kam und sich vor dem Hintergrund der amerikanischen zeitgenössischen Kunstszene entwickelte. Als Hauptakteure dieser Auseinandersetzung stehen sich zwei Persönlichkeiten gegenüber: Hilla Rebay und Peggy Guggenheim. Das Wirken dieser beiden Frauen vor dem Hintergrund ihrer zunehmenden Gegnerschaft wird in einer umfassenden sozial- und kulturhistorischen Studie untersucht. Es soll einerseits verdeutlicht werden, wo Berührungspunkte zwischen den Sammlerinnen bestanden haben, andererseits soll die wachsende Rivalität der beiden Frauen näher beleuchtet werden. Das Anliegen dieser Arbeit ist, bereits bekannte Erkenntnisse unter Zugrundelegung eben dieses Konkurrenzkampfs kritisch zu prüfen und um neue Aspekte zu erweitern.

Prudencio, Cergio (1955--)

Cergio Prudencio was a composer, director, researcher, and teacher. He studied Latin American Contemporary Music Courses at the Bolivian Catholic University and participated in the Venezuelan National Youth Orchestra. Prudencio studied under Carlos Rosso, Alberto Villalpando, Rubén Vartañán, Coriún Aharonian, and José Antonio Abreu. He also served as a resident composer in Australia (1996), Germany (2001), and Italy (2007), was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2008/9), and has received assignments from the Perth Festival (Australia, 1996), the Pro Helvetia Foundation (Switzerland, 1997), the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival (Germany, 1999), the TaG Ensemble (Switzerland, 2001), the Buenos Aires Contemporary Music Festival (2003), and the Klangspuren Festival (Austria, 2009). Prudencio’s music establishes a dialogue between Andean and European avant-garde traditions. In 1980, Prudencio cofounded and directed the Experimental Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments (OEIN): an ideological, musical, and pedagogical project that asserts the Aimara music tradition from the Bolivian Altiplano by means of a contemporary expression. OEIN’s program links local materials and forms to procedural techniques from avant-garde contemporary music. The OEIN has achieved wide international renown, performing in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, as well as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, Italy, and Korea.

Orrego-Salas, Juan (1919--)

Juan Orrego-Salas was a Chilean composer and musicologist. Born in Santiago, Chile on January 1919, he began his music education in Santiago, while also pursuing a career in architecture, obtaining a diploma in architecture in 1943. He studied composition with Humberto Allende and Domingo Santa Cruz, while also teaching music courses at the Universidad de Chile and Universidad Católica de Chile. By 1949 he dedicated himself fully to music composition, abandoning his career as an architect. Under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, he studied music composition with Aaron Copland in Tanglewood and with Randall Thompson at the University of Virginia and University of Princeton. Orrego-Salas also studied musicology with Paul Henry Lang and Georg Herzog at Columbia University. He returned to Chile in 1947 joining the faculty of the Universidad de Chile as full professor, and as choral conductor at the Universidad Católica de Chile. During 1949 he traveled through Europe, conducting the world premiere of his Canciones castellanas, Op. 20, selected for the XXIII Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Palermo and Taormina, Sicily. Upon returning to Chile he assumed the editorship of the Revista Musical Chilena. These years were followed by a prolific compositional career, completing commissions for new works for a variety of ensembles including orchestras and chamber groups.

Status Quo

This chapter focuses on Beyer's plan for an opera called Status Quo, for which she decided to apply for a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in the summer of 1937. In her Guggenheim proposal, Beyer explained that she wished for the opera to be significant to the “modern age” and to the “ideas and interests that are vital in our present world.” Not only the ideas but the music would be relevant to Beyer's time. Beyer submitted her Guggenheim application in late 1938; her proposal was rejected in early 1939. At present, a completed, even “short-hand score” of Status Quo has not been found. However, there are detailed descriptions of the two sections of music that were intended to be part of it. Both pieces were apparently completed in or around 1938: Music of the Spheres, a “movement for three electrical instruments”; and Dance, for full orchestra.