Your art museum commissioned El Anatsui to create an extraordinary wall hanging for the new West Building. It is front and center, and you enjoy it every time you enter the building. It is one of his best.

The success and popularity of our work by this master inspired us to present the exhibition El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa. It is a fantastic review of the great work from his 40-year career. There are, of course, the breathtaking wall hangings woven from found metallic elements. But you might be surprised by the power of his sculptures, drawings, and paintings incised in wood.

You should not miss this exhibition. It is one of the most alluring and captivating shows the Museum has ever presented. And it is yours until July 29. The art world is envious of you.

Larry Wheeler is director of the North Carolina Museum of Art.

I look at them and think, “I want to wear them.”

The sartorial quality of his work struck me from my first gallery visit, and I continue to see the rich textures, colors, and languages of Africa embodied by his work (and not just the wall sculptures) all around me. Click through the image below to see the “Anatsui Style” Pinterest board, a visual sampling of my mind since the exhibition’s opening.

The result has emboldened my own fashion sense, boosted my creativity, and changed (erased?) my concept of what constitutes a coordinated outfit.

Can I pull off bright red with bright yellow? Mixed metals? Pattern on pattern?

Why, sure. That’s very Anatsui of you, Natalie.

Are you on Pinterest? Follow ncartmuseum. Join us for a Pinterest-themed meetup on Thursday, May 10.

How do YOU say…El Anatsui from the North Carolina Museum of Art on Vimeo.

NCMA staff members show off the many variations of “El Anatsui.”

ncartmuseum.org/elanatsui

As part of his study of Anatsui’s work, Perry created a small model of a metal wall sculpture using similar materials (metal wine bottle caps and 24-gauge wire). He cut and flattened the caps into strips about 2 inches long by ¾ inch wide, then poked holes in the strips and joined them with the copper wire.

This not only gave him insight into the artist’s processes but also provides a useful educational tool that can be handled by the public (unlike Anatsui’s work or any other art in the Museum). Examining Perry’s creation, one can experience firsthand the skill and ingenuity behind the construction—as well as its fragility.

The piece has sharp edges that can’t be removed or filed down, as the metal bottle caps are too thin. Perry has found that sharp edges are part of the handling experience of a real El Anatsui work, too; gloves can be shredded, clothing gets snagged, and the wall sculpture can snag on itself when being moved.

Each section of the finished model fits into a 1-gallon plastic zipper bag to protect the “viewer” from the sharp edges and to permit handling of the work in educational settings.

The exhibition El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa is on view in East Building through July 29; the Museum’s own El Anatsui work, Lines That Link Humanity, is part of the permanent collection in West Building. For more on Perry’s work with El Anatsui, check out the interview on nc artblog (Part I and Part II).

Installing Stressed World from The North Carolina Museum of Art on Vimeo.

The installation of the largest wall sculpture in the exhibition is a delicate affair. The process was captured over three days.

ncartmuseum.org/elanatsui

Man in Jiffy-Pop Hat? Dude with ‘Tude?

If Dude is an image, rather, of a Russian “boyar,” or nobleman, as put forth by the Rembrandt Research Project, then surely this is a send-up of an aristocrat and not a serious picture. I see more Chef Boyardee than boyar in this poor fool whose cheap ensemble, including the pompous van dyke, looks fresh off the rack at Party City. It’s a work of “laughable absurdity,” as one of the co-curators of Rembrandt in America, Tom Rassieur, described it.

Thank goodness Dude has been absorbed into the hand-rolled q-tips of deft restorers. It survives today as merely a photo, a thumbnail illustration on the wall label for Rembrandt’s beautiful Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes.

It’s incredible to think that for almost 400 years, however, Dude successfully masked Shaded Eyes, which Rembrandt painted in 1634, at the height of his Amsterdam fame, when there was a market for his likeness. Once all the offending overpaint was removed—the last vestiges were lifted in 2002—and a stunning, original self-portrait of a 28-year-old Rembrandt emerged, the long-hibernating masterpiece fetched over $7M at auction, bought at the time by Las Vegas casino mogul (and English lit. major) Steve Wynn.

We sometimes hear about Old Master works of art being sloppily painted over to escape the eye of Nazi “collectors” in WWII, but this painting was intentionally disfigured only a few years after Rembrandt finished it, according to the Rembrandt Research Project, the venerable organization brought in to conduct tests on the outer paint layers and assess the possibility of there being something superb underneath. According to the world’s authority on Rembrandt and the head of the RRP, Ernst van de Wetering, “the overpaintings were so old one had to entertain the possibility that they had been done in Rembrandt’s own workshop.”

Seriously?

Rembrandt may have overseen this?

Perhaps—suggests Van de Wetering, in his Rembrandt: A Life in 180 Paintings—once the original self-portrait didn’t sell. The RRP speculates Rembrandt may have overestimated the market for his self-portraits, and when Shaded Eyes wasn’t purchased, it went back into his studio (where Rembrandt trained many apprentices) to be converted first into a more up-to-date image of the master and then into a tronie, a character study considered “very popular wall decoration in Rembrandt’s time.”

What’s equally fantastic is how the RRP’s expert restorers went about taking off the overpainting. “This is the most challenging type of restoration to pull off,” said NCMA conservator Noelle Ocon, “old oil paint over old oil paint.”

Refined removal takes place at the molecular level. Initially aided by x-radiographs and ultraviolet luminescence that help delineate layers, restorers work on a painting under a microscope “the way surgeons use ultrasound” and other advanced imaging technology. “Thousands of scientific and stylistic decisions go into what to leave on and what to take away.” It also helps that the chemicals restorers use aren’t what you’d apply to strip furniture. “My strongest solvent,” said Ocon, “won’t touch a coffee stain. Water is stronger.”

Death by subtle swabbing. Gone, after hundreds of years, are the trapped eyes and ridiculous whiskers. Revived is Rembrandt’s confident gaze, under brilliant shadow. And there’s a silver lining: such hubris kept the hidden masterpiece in fairly decent condition.

I went back through the exhibition the other day and paused before this self-portrait, one of three in Rembrandt in America, feeling lucky to see something so fresh and new to the world. Thank you, modern conservators, for the years you put into your training; your willingness, given your considerable talents, to live out of the limelight; and your scientific devotion to art.

We owe you.

Now, can you lift those devil horns I drew coming out of my math teacher’s head in my junior-high annual? He was a very smart man and certainly more patient than I was good at understanding coefficients. I’m no art historian; but I may be something of a sheepish expert in early disgruntled pupil, and I say it’s no mystery how Rembrandt lost his dignity. For a time.

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes, 1634, oil on panel. 27 7/8 x 21 3/4 in., Private collection, New York

In all honesty I must begin my comments on Rembrandt in America with the admission that I am really not a Rembrandt person. Clearly Rembrandt stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries during the Dutch “Golden Age,” and it goes without saying I would be thrilled to have an autograph Rembrandt painting come to the Museum (unfortunately, the three we thought we had have all been de-Rembrandted!). My interests have centered elsewhere in the field, however—specifically Frans Hals and painters in his circle, among them Jan Miense Molenaer. Readers might recall the Molenaer exhibition I did at the NCMA in 2002. So, naturally, one might wonder why a “non-Rembrandt” person would agree to devote most of the last three years of his life to a large and complex Rembrandt exhibition.

The answer lies in the fact you can’t really function as a 17th-century Dutch painting curator without dealing with Rembrandt. The long shadow he casts over Dutch art touches nearly everyone, and one can argue that his popularity has never been stronger than it is today. Certainly much of this interest centers on the lingering controversies over whether a particular painting was painted by Rembrandt or by one of his assistants. So, as one deals with the myth, reality, and especially the marketability of Rembrandt, I asked myself, what is the glue that could hold these concepts together? More important, how do these concerns relate to the North Carolina Museum of Art? The answer was simple—William Valentiner, the NCMA’s first director.

As one of the world’s foremost authorities on Rembrandt during the first half of the 20th century, Valentiner was largely responsible for expanding the accepted number of Rembrandt paintings. His flawed accounting would eventually embrace more than 700 works. This expansion happily coincided with a huge appetite for Rembrandt paintings by American collectors, an interest that began just after the Civil War. These “Gilded Age” collectors—many were often described as “robber barons” (or “the 1 percent,” to use today’s terminology)—snagged some of Rembrandt’s greatest masterpieces. Others, however, bought studio works, imitations, and even outright forgeries. To their credit, though, many eventually gifted their “Rembrandts” to American museums.

Thus, it was my idea to link Valentiner with Rembrandt and the collecting of his paintings in America. Since collecting history has long been of interest to me (note my Sinners and Saints exhibition), I was returning to a comfort zone as I considered the viability of Rembrandt in America. With the help of my co-curators, we created a project that was intellectually sound, visually exciting, and certainly worth pursuing. Long story short, we successfully made our case to the museums and individuals who agreed to lend works to the show. So while I am exhausted, I couldn’t be prouder of the exhibition, its installation, and the accompanying catalogue. And yes, I guess I have become a Rembrandt person!

Dennis P. Weller is the NCMA’s curator of Northern European art and co-curator of Rembrandt in America.

John Knox is the Director of Operations for the NCMA.

Image above: Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1666, oil on canvas, 43 3/8 x 36 3/8 in., Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 34.19

A few steps outside the Rembrandt exhibition in East Building is another exhibition, titled Self, Observed. Conceived and organized by our Education Department, this exhibition is a juried college art competition. Over 160 online submissions of original self-portraits in various media were received from all over the country. The jury, made up of college students from the Curatorial Projects class at UNC–Chapel Hill, selected 41 works for display, plus two video entries. Other entries can be viewed on a video screen.

This project is unique for the NCMA in several ways. It is our first juried college art exhibition. I will admit the suspense was thick over the summer as the entries seemed slow to arrive, but as soon as the fall school semester started, the whole thing went viral. The entries poured in.

Another twist is that the jury was made up of college students. The Curatorial Projects students (under the leadership of professor Elin o’Hara Slavick) selected art for the exhibition and wrote label copy. They provided not only enthusiasm and thoughtful perspectives, but also another layer to the outreach programming for which our Education Department is known. That reaching out and taking the Museum experience into different communities creates connections and partnerships that enhance the art experience for us all.

As the designer for this project, my original challenge was to design a room with only 18 works. By the time final entries were received, the challenge was to design a room with so many. The curatorial students wrote what we call “extended” labels, which take up more than the usual amount of wall space. I felt it was important to allow each work to have enough space to be seen on its own and not simply as part of the whole. I believe a good balance was created between the individual self-portraits and the groupings of works.

Self, Observed is an inviting and contemporary companion exhibition to Rembrandt in America. Congratulations to those students whose work was selected. Between these students and Rembrandt, there really are masters among us!

Image above: Mark Wroblewski, I’m Trying to be Serious, 2011, Charcoal, 13” x 19”. Self, Observed is on view on Level B in East Building at the Museum.

Approaching the painting, the very first in the exhibition, I knew I would gaze at a masterpiece.

I had heard curators speak of the artist’s incomparable skill, but it was not until I had a visceral response to the painting that I understood. Prior to that moment I could only imagine (admittedly rather skeptically) what they all had described as Rembrandt’s uncanny ability to show dignity, nobility, piety, or anguish to get to the soul of his subject.

Through precision in the finest details—the intricate lacework, the soft curls of fine blond hair, the thoughtful (and ofttimes piercing) gazes—we are invited into the moment. Unquestionably, a better understanding of the circumstances of Rembrandt’s work and the backdrop of the city of Amsterdam in that era enriches the appreciation of the works of art. (The audio tour or the UNC–TV documentary in the adjacent gallery does an incredible job of telling the story.) However, the Rembrandt in America experience is at its essence a personal, even evocative, encounter.

Look closely at the paintings; you will find yourself moved (and perhaps struck by the sense that many of the people depicted look as though they could step out of the frame and join you in the gallery). A master? No question. Even if, like me, you have not studied art history, you will leave with the absolute contentment of being in the presence of pure genius.

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1659, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Andrew W. Mellon Collection; 1937.1.72

Melanie Davis-Jones is the Director of Marketing at the North Carolina Museum of Art.