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Frederic Edwin Church, “Twilight in the Wilderness,” 1860, oil on canvas, 40 by 641/16  inches, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr and Mrs William H. Marlatt Fund.

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MUST FOR 7/25

‘TRANSFORMING POWER OF THE FRAME’ CONFERENCE IN NYC SEPT. 18–20 w/1 cut

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 NEW YORK CITY — Initiatives in Art and Culture will present a conference, “The Transforming Power of the Frame: Makers, Marriages and Materials — Exploring American Frames and Frames in America,” Thursday, September 18–Saturday, September 20, at the City University Graduate Center. This fifth conference focusing on the picture frame is supported by a grant from Eli Wilner & Company.

This conference will focus on the frame in America where European models and practice initially predominated until local preferences emerged and prevailed. By the mid Nineteenth Century, frames appropriate to the ambitions of a self-defined American school of painting were devised. Some works with patriotic or virtuosic ambitions were displayed to the public in theatrical settings that included frames carved with elaborate allegorical motifs. Frame styles evolved along with fashions in furniture and decoration, influenced as well by European or exotic sources.

American artists such as Church, Whistler and Eakins designed frames unique to individual artworks, viewing the pairing as a unified whole. By the Twentieth Century, the challenge of framing Modernist artworks provoked a variety of responses. Today, if some contemporary artists dispense with frames altogether, others intently reconsider the interplay of field and boarder.

The conference will consider tools, materials, techniques and stylistic sources and explore the range of artists’ frame choices and designs: those made by Eighteenth Century artists, by their successors — among them Chambers, Cole, Eakins, Dwing, Tryon, Hassam — by the Modernists and by contemporary artists.

The challenge of framing specific iconic works, such as Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” or Church’s “Twilight in the Wilderness” are a central concern, as is the practice of reframing and presenting major collections. In addition to the frame maker and the artist as frame designer, others who played an important role in selecting what was to surround the artwork, as well as the relationship of the frame to the environment in which it is situated and to the culture within which it is made, will also be considered.

Speakers include Carrie Barratt (“Washington Crossing the Delaware),” David Barquist (the New York Chamber of Commerce portraits), Adrienne Baxter Bell (Charles Caryl Coleman’s frame designs), Mark Bockrath (framing the works of Cecilia Beaux), Mark Cole (the Cleveland Museum of Art’s reframing initiative) and Kathleen Foster (the frames of Thomas Chambers).

Also, Susan Larkin (framing among the Cos Cob group from Hassam to Weir), Sarah Parkerson (Whistler’s frames), Lynn Roberts (Eighteenth Century trans-Atlantic influence and exchange between Britain and America) and Jonathan Thornton (tools that create Flemish or Flemish-style moldings and detail, so popular in America and on surfaces layers, including leafs and decorative finishes).

Contemporary artist Hunt Slonem will speak on the importance of frames to his works, Suzanne Smeaton on approaches to early to mid Twentieth Century frame-making materials and techniques, Carol Troyen on framing American modernists, Mark Tucker on Eakins’ frames and framing Eakins’ paintings, and Karen Zukowski on American Aesthetic movement frames.

To register, www.acteva.com/go/frames or send registration form to lisa.koenigsberg@artinitiatives.com or fax 212-935-6911.

For more information, Initiatives in Art and Culture, 333 East 57th Street, Suite 13B, New York NY 10022 or 646-485-1952.

The conference fee is $295 prior to August 5, $350 after. A discounted rate of $100 is available for full-time students with ID.