Around the MAG

Around the Galleries: Upstairs

Two South Austrian Baroque angels (ca. 1700) have been installed in the Fountain Court, on either side of the Italian Baroque organ. Long off view, the pair (including the one pictured at left) was recently restored by conservators Barbara Moore and Mimi Leveque with funding from the Greater Hudson Heritage Network. Bertha Buswell Bequest.

The 16th-century armor that used to face the school tour entrance has moved to the second-floor Renaissance Gallery. Acquired by MAG in 2006, the beautifully detailed pieces were once worn by knights of the Dukes of Brunswick.

Around the Galleries: Downstairs

Several fine pieces of Southwestern pottery, on loan from Nancy and Alan Cameros, have been installed in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Among them is a 2005 blackware vase by Autumn Borts-Medlock, great-great-granddaughter of Santa Clara Pueblo matriarch Sara Fina Tafoya. It's pictured at left.

Young and Spirited Fledgling American Bald Eagles by Edward Marshall Boehm is one of four works in “A Case for Kids,” a new installation at the school tour entrance. All were chosen by six-year-old Lydia Culbert, whose mother is a MAG assistant curator.

A new acquisition—a cream pot (ca. 1757–67) by American patriot and silversmith Paul Revere—was recently installed in “Seeing America.” It's pictured at left. Bequest of Virginia Jeffrey Smith.

Just past the Auditorium Corridor, don’t miss three striking works by Batiste Madalena (1902–1988)—a monumental painting that once hung in Midtown Plaza and two of the more than 1,400 movie posters this artist designed in the 1920s for the brand-new Eastman Theatre.

Off the Wall

Trellised Garden with Animals, the most important Renaissance tapestry in the Gallery’s collection, has been off view awaiting conservation treatment since 1993. Now, thanks to a major federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, it’s off to the Textile Conservation Laboratory at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine for cleaning, conservation, relining and remounting. The painstaking process should be completed — and the tapestry back on the wall — in late 2010.

Finely woven of wool and silk in the Flemish workshop of Wilhelm de Pannemaker, the colorful, 12 x 15' work shows a colonnaded garden with lush foliage and wildlife including lions, birds and fish. It was a 1931 gift of Mrs. Granger A. (Elizabeth Watson) Hollister, an original member of the Gallery’s Board of Managers and sister-in-law of MAG founder Emily Sibley Watson.