NEW YORK, NY.- The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University is presenting Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions. The exhibition is open to the public from Wednesday, September 9 through Saturday, December 12, 2015. Robert L. Fucci, a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia’s Department of Art History and Archaeology and a David E. Finley Fellow at the National Gallery’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, is curating the exhibition. Fucci studies with renowned scholar Dr. David Freedberg, Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art at Columbia and director of its Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, as well as the newly appointed director of the Warburg Institute in London.
The exhibition gathers 52 works from 14 collections, all produced in Rembrandt’s lifetime, that highlight the most noteworthy changes the artist made to his prints throughout his career. Rembrandt manipulated his copper plates in unprecedented ways in order to achieve an image that was often in flux. Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions focuses on 18 of the artist’s most dramatically changed images, displaying each in multiple impressions, side by side, to give visitors the opportunity to examine the works’ range, power and nuance.
Many of Rembrandt’s state changes reflect an unconventional working process. The high survival rate of certain states indicates that these were not mere working proofs, but finished products. Due to recent developments in Rembrandt print research (such as the landmark publication of the New Hollstein catalogue), art historians now have a much clearer idea of which changes Rembrandt effected himself, and which were made after his death. This exhibition includes only 17th-century impressions, drawn from significant U.S. collections, in an effort to best show the artist’s intended efforts.
Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions marks the first time in over 40 years that such an exhibition has been undertaken (since the groundbreaking 1969 show, Rembrandt: Experimental Etcher, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), and new scholarship contributes much to a reinvigorated discussion. A publication reproducing each work in the exhibition, co-produced and distributed by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König (Köln), with a foreword by Freedberg, an essay by Fucci and entries for each print, will be available.
There will be a range of public events, including a symposium on November 5, 3-6 pm—timed to the International Fine Print Dealers Association Print Fair in New York, November 4 to 8—and a gallery tour with contemporary printmaker Brad Kahlhamer (date and time to be announced) to offer a contemporary perspective.
Rembrandt is taught in Columbia’s Core Curriculum, and classes will meet in the gallery to have a firsthand interaction with the artworks. Free guided gallery tours will be offered to local K-12 schools. A special Family Day on October 10 (10 am-1 pm) will provide visitors of all ages an exhibition tour as well as a hands-on workshop at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies in Columbia’s School of the Arts.
Loans for the exhibition have been provided by the Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts-Boston, Harvard Art Museums, Hood Museum of Art-Dartmouth College, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morgan Library and Museum, National Gallery of Art, the New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Davison Art Center-Wesleyan University and Yale University Art Gallery, as well as two private lenders facilitated by C.G. Boerner Gallery.
