Awards
2012 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
Maryan Ainsworth, ed., Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, the Complete Works
Maryan Ainsworth, ed., Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, the Complete Works (2010)
A “summa” of Maryan Ainsworth’s decades-long exploration of the artistic legacy of this place and time, Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance, the Complete Works (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2010) takes an approach that is as versatile and polished as the painter it examines. The importance and originality of this catalogue, which accompanied an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 6, 2010, to January 17, 2011, lies in the beauty and intellectual depth of Gossart’s works, reproduced here with care and in detail; in the analysis of the artist’s engagement with the aesthetic, political, and cultural affairs of his time; and in the faith of its primary author and an international team of contributors (Stijn Alsteens, Nadine M. Orenstein, Lorne Campbell, Ethan Matt Kavaler, Peter Klein, and Stephanie Schrader) that Gossart’s art merited such attention. Using a variety of methods—technical analysis, connoisseurship, archival research, biography, iconography, and sustained attention to each object—the authors place Gossart at the center of a rich world of intertwined relationships. Together they reveal Gossart’s groundbreaking engagement with Rome and antiquity, his intent study of architecture and sculpture, his carefully crafted experimentation in a variety of media, and his amazing versatility as a painter of religious scenes, mythological subjects, and innovative portraits over a long career. The book is also significant for the insightful way in which it situates Gossart among his contemporaries, including the painters Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach, the sculptor Conrad Meit, and the patron and connoisseur Philip of Burgundy. In today’s economy, this kind of thorough, scholarly, and beautifully illustrated monograph and catalogue raisonné has become increasingly difficult to produce; the high standards this book offers should be celebrated and treasured.
Jury: Erica Hirshler, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, chair; Andrea Bayer, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Phillip Earenfight, Dickinson College; Lisa Saltzman, Bryn Mawr College; and Anne Woollett, J. Paul Getty Museum.
2012 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions
Read about Roy Flukinger’s The Gernsheim Collection, the winner of the 2012 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums, Libraries, Collections, and Exhibitions.
