Impressionist Show Opens at Muscarelle Today

By Amber Lester Kennedy Saturday, October 22, 2011

Little favors go a long way in the art world. Years ago, Muscarelle Museum of Art Director Aaron De Groft recommended an employee to High Museum of Art Director Michael Shapiro. Remembering that kindness, Shapiro made an offer De Groft couldn’t refuse. The result: the Muscarelle’s first Impressionist show in its 28-year history.

“Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists” opens to the public today, and will display landmark pieces until Jan. 22. The show originated at Atlanta’s High Museum, and Williamsburg will be its only mid-Atlantic stop. Visitors will have the chance to get close to paintings by famous Impressionists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-August Renoir, Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, along with the artists who came directly before and after the movement.

Typically, museums plan their exhibition schedules years in advance. But when De Groft received the offer last spring after another venue dropped out, he was looking at a window of about six months to plan and prepare for the show. Larger museums couldn’t do that, he said in an interview Wednesday. “[Shapiro] knew of our accomplishments, and he knew that we are nimble,” he said.

The museum was able to shift its planned exhibit of Kiowa American Indian art to its downstairs galleries, and remove its permanent collection, clearing its entire upstairs floor for the Impressionist show. Shapiro had been apologetic that the Muscarelle would be getting the show over the holidays, but De Groft said it’s actually the best time. With college students away on break, the museum has more parking spaces available. Plus, tourists will be in town to check out the holiday events at Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens, and family members will be visiting on vacation.

Its comparatively small size will also lend an intimacy to the experience, De Groft said. The show did not come with a set interpretation, so the museum staff, working with art history professors and students, came up with the theme, “Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists.” Visitors will learn just how revolutionary the Impressionists were for their time. “They were the first to paint outside, the first to study color theory,” De Groft said.

In the 1870s, technological advancements allowed paints to be sold pre-mixed in tubes, enabling artists to paint outdoors for prolonged periods. A John Singer Sargent painting in the exhibit has grains of sand that blew into the wet paint while he worked seaside.

At the same time, artists began to learn about color theory and started to experiment. Prior to the 1870s, artists didn’t study the color wheel and couldn’t rattle off the complementary colors; the Impressionists were pioneers in that regard.

Visitors to the exhibit will see the progression of the movement, starting with the first departures from the Paris Salon academic paintings to the loose, airy landscapes that followed. Paintings by Monet, Renoir, Pissaro and Frederic Bazille will be shown to illustrate the new movement.

In the next room, visitors will see how the style inspired artists on the other side of the Atlantic, including Sargent and Cassatt. In a downstairs gallery, works on paper will show the further abstraction explored by post-Impressionists, including Paul Cezanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. By showing the progression of the movement, which set the stage for the shifts into complete abstraction in the 20th century, De Groft hopes visitors come away with a better contextual understanding of the Impressionists as revolutionaries.

De Groft doesn’t have any specific attendance estimates, but expects the show to be a major one for the museum, likely bringing thousands of visitors to the campus. In preparation, the museum has expanded its promotion to include advertisements in movie theaters between Hampton Roads and Washington, D.C. “It’s an amazing blessing of an opportunity,” he said.

Attention-getting exhibits like “Seeing Colors” also help make the case that the next big investment on campus should be the long-planned arts complex. The complex, which would bring together students studying all of the arts in a more centralized campus location, is included in the college’s Capital Outlay plan and a feasibility study has been completed. Now, the college is beginning the private fundraising process.

“It could be our chance to attract world-class faculty and world-class students, and greatly contribute to town-gown relations,” De Groft said. “The museum and the arts are so worthwhile, so important in our community and of national significance. We simply need appropriate facilities.”

“Seeing Colors” will be on display from Oct. 22 to Jan. 22. The museum, located on Jamestown Road, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The museum is closed on Mondays. Docent tours are available at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sundays and other times, as announced. Admission for the exhibit is $15; free for museum members and College of William and Mary faculty, staff and students and children under 12. For more information, click here.