2011 Annual Report - National Gallery of Art

contemporaries of Paul Gauguin); and Gabriel
Metsu, 1629–1667 (soprano Anne-Marieke Evers
and the Texas Children’s Choir singing music
by Constantijn Huygens, Jan Sweelinck, Adriaen
Valerius, and Jacob van Eijk). In all, twentythree
of the season’s concerts had a connection
with a Gallery exhibition or the collection.
Each of the Gallery’s resident ensembles made
a significant contribution to the season. The
Gallery Orchestra accompanied music for silent
films, played a Norwegian-American New Year
Concert to culminate the festival “Norway
Comes to Washington,” and performed music by
Mannheim School composers in honor of German
Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection,
1580–1900. The Gallery Chamber Players played
Renaissance music in honor of Arcimboldo, 1526–
1593: Nature and Fantasy. The Gallery Vocal
Ensemble sang music of Johann Sebastian Bach
in the annual Christmas Concert; medieval music
in honor of the 1,000th anniversary of the Badia
di Cava Monastery near Naples, Italy; and Italian
baroque music in honor of Venice: Canaletto and
His Rivals. The Gallery Piano Trio, Wind
Quintet, and String Quartet played music by
Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the
Gottesman Fund concert, and the Gallery New
Music Ensemble presented a concert of music
written and arranged for performance in the
West Building Rotunda on the occasion of the
Gallery’s seventieth anniversary.
The Gallery celebrated Hispanic Heritage
Month with a piano recital by Carlos Rodriguez,
and African American History Month with
concerts by violist Marcus Thompson and
pianist William Chapman Nyaho. Gallery concerts
honored Women’s History Month with a
performance by cellist Tanya Anisimova and
pianist Lydia Frumkin.
Gallery concerts were the subject of nineteen
reviews and three photo previews in Washingtonarea
media.
The Gallery’s film program featured a broad
range of screenings and events exploring the
moving image arts. The series “Figures in a
Landscape: Nature and Narrative in Norway”
included works from the silent period through
contemporary video art. Several interesting
ciné-concerts with live accompaniment to the
silent cinema were presented including the
Danish film Häxan—Witchcraft through the Ages,
Dennis James’ performance on theater organ to
accompany King Vidor’s La Bohème, and Julien
Duvivier’s film Poil de carotte, for which the
ensemble L’Octuor de France performed their
original score.
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 35
Avant-garde programs were devoted to artists
Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, and Harun
Farocki. “Iris Barry and American Modernism,”
an afternoon of short avant-garde works
organized in conjunction with the American
modernism symposium, recreated a landmark
film exhibition held at the Wadsworth
Athenaeum in 1934. Production designer
Patrizia von Brandenstein gave the annual
Vaidya film lecture, “Film Design: Translating
Words into Images.”
Series included “Stories from a Russian
Province, Remembering Risorgimento,” and a
twenty-film retrospective “Neorealismo 1941–
1954: Days of Glory,” organized in association
with Cineteca Nazionale, the Italian national
film archive. “American Originals Now” featured
American video and film artists including
Kevin Jerome Everson, Jem Cohen, and Lynne
Sachs, who came to the Gallery to discuss their
recent works and works-in-progress. For
“Richard Dindo: Artists, Writers, Rebels,” the
noted Swiss documentarian came to the Gallery.
“A Season of Rohmer” presented a retrospective
of the famed French director. “Color, ‘Scope:
Recent Restorations from the 1950s” featured a
series of thirty-five millimeter studio vault prints
from Fox, Paramount, and Universal including
the premiere of a new print of Joahua Logan’s
1956 Picnic.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary
of the death of Gustav Mahler, the Gallery
presented Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice,
overlapping with the exhibition Venice: Canaletto
and His Rivals.
The Gallery continued its tradition of mounting
a seasonal preservation festival devoted to
restored cinematic rarities from international
film archives with three programs: “From Vault
to Screen: New Preservation from France,”
“Recovered Treasure: UCLA’s Festival of
Preservation,” and “This Other Eden: Ireland
and Film,” organized in association with the Irish
Film Institute with support from Culture Ireland.
A fiftieth anniversary tribute to the Filmmakers
Cooperative included works by many artists,
among them Jonas Mekas and Ken Jacobs, both
of whom were present.
RESOURCES FOR SCHOLARLY RESEARCH
The Library added 5,545 books and 1,375 auction
catalogs to its holdings and welcomed
3,126 visitors. Reference librarians answered
23,332 queries and provided 967 orientations to
staff, fellows, and local researchers. More than
5,000 digital scans from rare materials were