Recasting Antiquity
Whistler, Tanagra, and the Female Form
February 3 - May 19, 2024
Recasting Antiquity: Whistler, Tanagra, and the Female Form focuses on a series of works on paper by the American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), created in the early 1890s under the inspiration of the recently excavated Hellenistic Greek terracotta figurines known collectively as Tanagras. The first exhibition to explore this theme in Whistler’s art, Recasting Antiquity brings some thirty Whistler prints and pastels into conversation with ancient Tanagra figurines on loan from the Louvre
Museum and considers what the taste for Tanagras at the turn of the twentieth century reveals about changing attitudes to classical antiquity and conventional Western notions of femininity. This exhibition has been co-curated by Ruth Allen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Carlos Museum, and Linda Merrill, teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Art History Department.
Create your own Tanagra Paper Doll
Download the printable Tanagra paper doll coloring activity, designed by Katherine Taylor, an instructor in the Visual Arts Program at Emory University. This activity was created to accompany the exhibition.
Press Release
Click HERE to read the press release announcing the exhibition's opening. For high-resolution images of featured artworks, please contact Emily Knight at emily.knight@emory.edu.
Images
(Detail) James McNeill Whistler, Draped Figure, Reclining (C.56), second state of two. 1892 CE. Transfer lithograph, drawn on thin, transparent transfer paper. Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art; Bequest of Margaret Watson Parker. (1954/1.468). Courtesy of the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Figurine of Nike, 150-100 BCE. Ceramic, paint. Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines. Myr 163.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Blue Girl, c. 1894, Pastel and graphite on paper 10 7/8 x 7 1/4 in. (27.6 x 18.4 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection. 1999.146a © Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago.
