Robert Rauschenberg
American (1925–2008)
Swim/ROCI USA
(Wax Fire Works), 1990

Acrylic, fire wax, variegated brass leaf on stainless steel
72 3/4" x 96 3/4"
Gift of Donald and Ruth Saff
2002.026

Eye & Mind: A Legacy of Art Collecting at Vanderbilt University
(October 1- December 17, 2009)

Presented on the occasion of the opening of the newly renovated and expanded historic Cohen Memorial Hall, Eye & Mind: A Legacy of Art Collecting at Vanderbilt University illustrates the breadth and depth of the collection, now in its fifty-third year. Our use of the title for this exhibition, drawn from an essay on Cezanne by the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, seeks to capture two important aspects of the aesthetic experience, apprehending the work of art and understanding it in its historical and artistic context.

Vanderbilt University’s fine art collection began with Anna C. Hoyt’s generous donation of 105 Old Master and modern prints and now numbers close to 6,000 objects. With a newly invigorated focus on the collection as broad-based resource to the university community, Eye & Mind has been crafted to strengthen the educational role of the gallery and its collections within the context of the curriculum. This initiative will be complemented by greater overall access to collection resources through class and seminar study, greater online presence through the gallery’s Web page, and an expansion of the gallery’s operating hours to include Thursday evenings.

Highlights from the current exhibition include the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance paintings, on view in in its entirety. This remarkable collection, the only one of its kind in our region, is notable for its strength in devotional art (especially Madonna subjects), images of saintly martyrdoms, and New Testament narrative selections (such as the Crucifixion). These paintings are complemented by a selection of devotional objects in ivory and polychromed wood.

Other significant works of art include a large Dutch landscape by Jan Both, one of the foremost painters among the second generation of Dutch Italianates of the seventeenth century; an eighteenth-century Italian harbor scene from the school of Francesco Guardi, and a small landscape by the principal founding member of the French Barbizon landscape school, Theodore Rousseau.

Milton Avery, Isabel Bishop, Childe Hassam, George Inness, Edward Steichen, and Carrie Mae Weems, and other American artists are represented by outstanding examples of their paintings, photographs, and prints. Two surprises for many who are familiar with the collection include an early work by the American sculptor John Chamberlain and a small painting by Milton Resnick—artists who were closely associated with Abstract Expressionism, a movement in American painting in the 1940s and 1950s.

Vintage etchings, engravings, lithographs, and serigraphs are strongly represented in Eye & Mind. Highlights include an amusing engraving of a drunken peasant being pushed into a pigsty after Pieter Bruegel the Elder; a religious subject by Rembrandt van Rijn; a pair of etchings with engraving touting the virtues of beer over gin by the eighteenth-century English artist William Hogarth; two urban street scenes, the first by the American regionalist Reginald Marsh and the second by master etcher of the urban landscape at night Martin Lewis; and an imposing, large-scale serigraph on polished stainless steel by the iconic American artist Robert Rauschenberg.

This exhibition is curated by Joseph S. Mella.