Newsletter - Spring 2000
Future Exhibitions

The Medieval and Early Renaissance Collection Travels

The museum will close officially in June 2000 for a major renovation and expansion of the building, so there will be no special exhibitions at the Art Museum until the galleries reopen in early 2002. The staff, of course, will continue to be extremely busy with a variety of projects. Our first task this June will be to pack the entire collection of 13,000 objects and prepare to move it out of the museum in order to ensure its safety while extensive construction work is undertaken. Thousands of objects will be put in storage, but certain components of the collection will be lent to three college museums in the region, each of which will store and display portions of the collection.

In connection with these loans, plans are underway for a series of exhibitions drawn from our collections. The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College will open the first of these shows this summer, focusing on mount Holyoke's strong medieval and early Renaissance holdings. Featured objects will include the Angel Pinnacle from Duccio's Maestà, a highlight of our holdings in this area. (That painting will also travel to Siena in 2001; see the "From the Director" page).

Related works on panel in the collection, fragments from another altarpiece, are by an artist who worked closely with Duccio. The three saints depicted in these paintings by the Badia a Isola Master--Peter, Paul, and John the Evanveligist--resemble their counterparts in the main scene of the Maestà , leading scholars to speculate that they were created shortly after the completion of Duccio's great work in 1311. Also included in the McMullen Museum's exhibition will be an important late Gothic panel painting by Guariento da Arpo. Christ the Redeemer is one of only three works by this artist in the United States. Furtuitously for Boston audiences, one of the others is just across the river at the harvard University Art Museums. Both the Mount Holyoke College and harvard paintings were recently conserved, revealing new and important information about this Paduan master.

Sculpture in the show at Boston College will range from 12th- and 13th-century capitals—some animated with marvelous animals and mythical beasts—to a very fine Florentine polychrome relief of the Virgin and Child.