Label Project Assignment

National Gallery
Rooms 29, 33, 34, 36, or 37

ARTH 344.  National Gallery Label Project assignment.  Due April 24th. 

Here’s the scenario.  The National Gallery in Washington has traditionally been minimalist when it comes to providing information about their permanent collection in the displays.  Following the recommendations of several focus groups, however, the Gallery has decided to hire members of the museum-going public to imagine new labeling for some of their 17th century works.  Your job is to write two short and focused labels (150-200 words each).  One will provide some sort of introduction to an entire room (a wall label); the other (an object label) will enlighten a particular work.   You will also write 2-3 pages in which you discuss why you took the approach you did for the labels and which research sources you found most useful.   

At the gallery.  Visit the five rooms—29, 33, 34, 36, or 37—containing 17th century Italian, French, and Spanish art.  Perhaps you will be drawn to one or more objects or one room?  Spend time in the rooms (all but one has a sofa).  If you happen to be there when a museum educator brings a tour through, notice what s/he focuses on.  Observe how other visitors experience the room.  Do they stay for a long time or do they pass through?  What do they say?  Which work or works seem to catch their eye?  Which do not?  If you feel you can ask visitors why they look or ignore, please do so.  You might want to choose the object that most people seem to ignore or resist and challenge yourself to provide a label that will make it easier for visitors to appreciate the work.  What can you say in a wall label will entice visitors? 

I.  Individual object label.

Choose a focus.   Some possible contexts for individual object labels.  

The object’s history: original location and function.   Do we know where your chosen work was originally?  Did it have a religious, or other known function?  Is your object part of what was once a larger complex?  If so, where are the other components?  Do we know who the patron was?  If we don’t know these specifics, can we make an educated guess?  Is your object a finished artwork or something preliminary?   

The object’s history: prior owners (provenance).  Do we know where your object was before it came to the Gallery?  Do we know anything about earlier collections it was in?  What other objects did a particular collector have?  Where it was displayed and with what?  Do you want to address the patron’s or a prior collector’s taste? 

The individual artist’s context.  Does it resemble other works by the same artist?  Or by his teachers/pupils?  Or did the artist make other works on the same theme earlier and later in his career?  Are there multiple versions of the same work?  Are there preparatory drawings connected with it or prints made after it?  Where are they today?  Has the work’s attribution to a particular artist been in dispute?  Is it still today?  How has it changed over time? 

Art contexts.  What genre is the work?  How does it compare with other objects in the same genre by the same or different artists?  What medium is the work?  Is that important?  What might the viewer want to know about what it takes to work in a particular medium? 

Subject matter contexts.  What is known about the theme depicted?  Narrative: Is it a mythological or a religious narrative?  If so, does it follow a specific textual source?  How are we to interpret it?  Why?  Has the artist illustrated a particular moment in a narrative offering a number of different episodes?  How does this choice compare with other interpretations of the same narrative?  Portrait: Who is the subject of a portrait?  Why was this person portrayed?  Where did the portrait hang?  Why was it made?  Are there other portraits by the same or different artists? 

Imitation context.  Did the patron require or the artist set out to imitate a specific earlier work? Why?  Can you identify which work is being imitated?  If not a specific work, then a specific style or format? 

Influence context. Did later artists make drawings of the work or parts of it?  Did they make prints after it?  Are there later artworks that seem to relate to your choice, consciously or not?  Are there later artworks that seem to relate to your choice, consciously or not? 

Do authoritative research.  You will not obtain a successful result for this assignment if simply by copying something from the National Gallery’s website, microgallery, catalogues, or gallery guides.  Start there, but then go to the experts. 

If you choose an Italian or Spanish painting, you MUST start with the National Gallery Systematic Catalogues (these are on reserve in the Johnson Center Library). 

There is no French volume, but you can find out about those paintings using other sources. 

Compile a bibliography of authoritative [written by scholars who can be presumed to know something about the subject] sources.  Although you may start with the National Gallery’s website (and look at the entire entry for your choice, including Provenance and Bibliography), successful research using authoritative sources does not result from 15 minutes’ looking at random websites.  Research can be exciting detective work: both endeavors involve time, some of which may seem unproductive.  While you may find references to appropriate research materials on line, expect to go to the GMU and other libraries or even use Interlibrary Loan to find some of the materials themselves (not everything is available from your computer).  Most websites and introductory art history textbooks from ARTH 201 (e.g. Gardner, Janson, and Stokstad) are NOT appropriate for this type of research: if you include them as sources, your grade will suffer. 

Another good place to look is the web guide provided by the GMU library:   http://library.gmu.edu/resources/fa/art.html

You need to consult reliable databases available through the GMU libraries, like the BHA; the Grove Dictionary of Art; JSTOR; the Consortium library catalogue; and others in order to find peer-reviewed articles and books by scholars who know something about the subject.  The reference librarians can help you—drop by in Fenwick or the JCL.  Feel free to ask me as well.   

Additionally the Getty Provenance Index Website, Public Collections database (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/provenance_index) is informative about the history of ownership.

The Grove Dictionary of Art (GMU databases) will probably provide a basic biography for your artist with some further bibliography. You should be able to locate books on artists individually or in groups.  There may also be exhibition catalogues on artists and themes (including collectors), or about the art of a certain location and time period.  There will probably be scholarship on the relevant cities and buildings where the works once were.  There may be scholarship on the people depicted in portraits and the various saints, histories, and mythologies.  Look for things published by university presses and museums, because such sources are likely to contain relevant and reliable information.  Avoid glossy commercial publishers (e.g. Time-Life books) and introductory textbooks. 

Peer-reviewed journal articles available on the GMU library databases, like JSTOR, will address specific problems and issues. For this assignment, likely journals will be The Art Bulletin, Art History, Burlington Magazine, Artibus et Historiae, Metropolitan Museum Journal, Master Drawings, Oxford Art Journal, and Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (not all articles are in German).  You may be able to apply some of the assigned readings to your project. 

As you do research, think about what you are learning and how you can present the material to make visitors stop, look, and think about the work instead of simply passing by? 

II. A room label.  The National Gallery does not provide room labels for their permanent collection, but they do for special exhibitions (like The Baroque Woodcut), so you can look at those for models. 

What seems to be the National Gallery’s rationale for arranging objects in the room of your choice?  What, if any, information does the gallery provide?  What kinds of information would make a visit to this gallery more accessible and exciting for the visitor?  What theme or themes make the room cohere?  Use the same caliber of research resources to help you write something authoritative, but rather than focus on an individual object, find research resources that help you with more general themes.  The Harris and Martin books on reserve in the JCL might also help you here, but try to go beyond them as well.  If you want to include an image in your label (e.g. a map, a chart, a photograph of something), do so. 

What to submit:

  1. An object label, 150 - 200 carefully chosen words.
  2. A room/wall label, 150 – 200 carefully chosen words.
  3. A complete bibliography of all works located and consulted.
  4. A 2-3 page discussion of your rationale for including the information that you did in each label.    

Because these proposed labels are so brief, they must be condensed through many drafts until you are satisfied that every word counts (this is what museum professionals do).  The best results will derive from your starting with a much longer draft and eliminating superfluous verbiage.  Be certain to consult the Writing Tips section of the course website for more useful tips on achieving good writing and especially for the definition of plagiarism. 

Assignment checklist:  Before turning your paper in, use the following.