Displaying items by tag: universities

The architecture school run by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation will try to raise $2 million before the end of 2015 to ensure its future as an independent organization, the foundation announced on Monday, having approved a possible path toward the school’s incorporation.

The school is at risk of losing accreditation in 2017 since the Higher Learning Commission, a Chicago-based nonprofit that accredits universities and colleges, made a recent policy change requiring that “accredited institutions must be separately incorporated from sponsoring organizations.”

Public and private institutions are joining forces to restore the 13th-century Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in the earthquake-damaged town of L’Aquila, Italy.

According to the plan presented to the mayor Tuesday, the regional heritage authority will oversee the design, construction work and security of the site, while three universities (Milan, Rome and L’Aquila) and the Italian energy group Eni will advise on technical matters, such as improving the long-term earthquake resistance of the building. Eni is financing the €12m project. A call for tenders has been released to appoint a contractor by December, with a projected completion date in 2016.

In November 2013, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) will unveil its new Paintings Conservation Studio as part of the institution’s initiative to establish a more comprehensive on-site conservation program. Three long-term research projects that will utilize new analytical techniques and technologies will inaugurate the space.

The DMA’s new conservation studio features cutting edge technology including a digital x-ray system and will serve as a center for study and research as well as conservation treatments. The studio, which is enclosed by a glass wall, will be open to visitors so that guests of the museum can observe daily conservation activities.

As part of its efforts to improve its conservation capabilities, the Dallas Museum of Art has embarked on a number of projects with museums and universities in north Texas. The DMA is currently working with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas in Denton on various initiatives including the study of ultramarine pigment discoloration, the pigment and medium analysis of a work by Paul Gauguin, and the development of atomic sampling techniques for silverplated objects.

Maxwell L. Anderson, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Eugene McDermott Director, said, “The launch of these new conservation initiatives supports the DMA’s commitment to responsible stewardship of our collection, and the advancement of conservation research and practices in the region and across the museum field. We look forward to strengthening the DMA’s culture of conservation with the opening of this new facility and integrating conservation into the fabric of the Museum experience for the benefit and enjoyment of our community.”

The two leading decorative arts institutions in the South are embarking on a new level of collaboration between their organizations. The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg (the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum) and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Old Salem Museums & Gardens have entered a five-year agreement for reciprocal extended loans. The museums have already collaborated on the recently opened exhibition, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (on view through September 7, 2014) at the Arts Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. With nine major paintings MESDA is the largest single lender to the exhibition, while select objects from the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg are already on display at MESDA.

Many of MESDA’s forty objects on loan to Colonial Williamsburg will be featured in a new, long-term exhibition opening at Colonial Williamsburg’s DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in January 2014. A Rich and Varied Culture: The Material World of the Early South will feature materials made in or imported to the South before 1840. The two museums have already begun discussions on several ways in which they can broaden the collaboration. Ideas include research exchanges, conservation, joint exhibitions and, potentially, joint publications. Further evidence of the collaboration will be seen in Colonial Williamsburg’s 66th annual Antiques Forum, February 14–18, 2014. Tentatively titled “New Findings in the Arts of the Coastal South,” the program will feature multiple speakers from both institutions as well as a number of experts from museums and universities across the nation.

IN ADDITION
This May MESDA honored Richard Hampton Jenrette with the first ever Frank L. Horton Lifetime Achievement Award for Southern Decorative Arts. A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, during the past forty years Jenrette has owned and restored a dozen historic properties. He has retained six of them and furnished each with period antiques, many original to the houses. Threads of Feeling, on view at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, through May 2014, displays the Foundling Hospital of London’s eighteenth century record books that retain textile tokens used to identify babies left in its care. The exhibit and catalogue provide insight into social and textile history and is the only American venue. October 20–22, 2013, Williamsburg will host a symposium to explore the objects in context. For information on the institutions, exhibitions, and symposium, visit colonialwilliamsburg.com and mesda.org.