In the Herstory Gallery, Patricia Cronin’s luminous watercolors series has captivated many visitors since the exhibition opened last June.

This is the last weekend to catch the wonderful Patricia Cronin: Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found in the Herstory Gallery before it comes down to make way for Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864. Much like Judy Chicago’s research and development of The Dinner Party, the historical erasure of significant women throughout history inspired contemporary artist Patricia Cronin to create her unique watercolor series illustrating the works of the nineteenth century American expatriate sculptor Harriet Hosmer, an artist who achieved major success during her time for her neoclassical depictions of historical, mythological, and literary figures, such as Zenobia and Medusa though little scholarship remains on her work today.

Patricia Cronin’s depiction in watercolor of a portrait of artist Harriet Hosmer. Patricia Cronin (American, b. 1963) Frontispiece, 2007. Watercolor on paper, 12 x 15 in. (30.5 x 38.1 cm). Courtesy of the artist

As she writes in the forward from her catalogue Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found. A Catalogue Raisonée, Patricia Cronin began researching the history of sculpture in order maker her own, and “fell in love” not just with Hosmer’s work, but with the inspiring story of the free spirited, expatriate lifestyle she lead in Rome while sustaining a financial independence and prominent career that was unprecedented for a woman of the mid-nineteenth century.  Working with a muted palette of watercolors as her medium, Cronin beautifully captures the light and detail of Hosmer’s marble carvings. In places where little historical record remains of a Hosmer sculpture, Cronin conjures a ghostly halo across the paper to make the point that no work left un, or under-documented by this important artist be left out or forgotten by history.

Artist Patricia Cronin worked with Museum designers and curators to achieve a plan for hanging the watercolors in such a way that aimed to  mimic the act of paging through a book or catalogue, similar to the frame of her project itself as a conceptual catalogue raisonée (the publication that comprehensively lists an artist’s complete works).

The exhibition Patricia Cronin: Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found closes this Sunday!  Themes from Cronin’s project will be taken out of the realm of the galleries and into the instruments of the Brooklyn Philharmonic this weekend, when members of the ensemble perform “Distant Partners, Distant Portraits,”a presentation of original compositions highlighting Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found as part of Music off the Walls.  A gallery talk on Cronin’s work and other works from the permanent collection that explore notions of artistic inspiration follows the program.

An installation view of The Fertile Goddess intro panel and title taken for archival purposes by our ECAMEA Curatorial Assistant, Kathy Zurek-Doule.

All this time, I had been researching each figurine type intensively in order to understand their original appearance, method of manufacture, and to find out what scholars thought their functions might be. This involved locating information about the provenance and archaeological context of scientifically excavated examples of each figurine type. All this is necessary to write didactic panels and labels that will answer viewers’ questions when they are confronted with the object in the gallery. Piles of books and articles, pages of notes, and countless hours are required to achieve a level of knowledge about the object that can then be reduced to less than a hundred words in the case of an individual label. What a visitor reads there is the product of months of collaboration and review by curators, editors, and our Interpretive Materials Manager, intended to make sure that the content is comprehensible, informative and useful.

What the polished and installed “chat” label for one of our figurines looks like up close.

By this time, we had also agreed upon our vision for the show: we wanted just a few stunning objects displayed in a jewel-box setting and, most importantly, in the round, so that the viewer could see them from every angle. This was crucial because museums so frequently display such ancient female figurines in groups, often literally with their backs against the case wall, and in conjunction with other objects from the cultures that made them. We wanted to make them the focus for a change; we also hoped to highlight the similarities and differences between types over time and geography by displaying them together, something that is seldom done.

The beautiful casework mock up for The Fertile Goddess with our Halaf figure superimposed inside. Designed by Matthew Yokobosky, the Museum’s Chief Exhibitions Designer.

A major step in any exhibition is a so-called “mock-up;” a meeting between curators and designers in storage with the actual objects, when the layout of the cases and the placement of each object is determined. Based on decisions made there, special exhibition mounts are then made for each object and designs from which cases will be made are drawn up. Our Chief Exhibition Designer, Matthew Yokobosky, realized and even improved upon our vision beautifully. We were blown away by the cases he designed for the figurines; he surmounted the challenges of showcasing such small works at approximately eye level and including our label information, without letting either casework or text overwhelm them, with incomparable ingenuity. Matthew and Tomoko Nakano, Assistant Graphics Designer, also did an incredible job designing the graphics for the gallery, particularly the map, which posed its own set of challenges.

During the exhibition mock up, Matthew, photographed here with Barbara Duke, Art Handler, holding the Halaf figure, arrived at the “jewel-box” setting that we envisioned for what would become the sketch above.

Finally, during installation, our expert and very patient Art Handlers brought the objects to the gallery and placed them in their mounts within the cases, making endless adjustments at the request of curators, designer, and conservators to ensure their safety and make sure they looked their best. All around them, the final products of the hard work of so many on the Museum staff, wall panel didactics, labels and graphics like our map, were going up; until, at the very end, Matthew supervised the lighting for each object within each case in order to bring them all fully to life.

The finished product in the gallery. Check out more photographs of the installation here.

Maura and I originally wanted to have thirteen objects in the exhibition, but ended up with only twelve perfect pieces. I soon realized happily, however, that we would in fact have thirteen present in the gallery, as the thirteenth would be you, the visitor, who is, after all, the reason for every exhibition we present.

Interested in seeing more “goddesses” in the Collection? Browse the Museum’s ever growing Collection databank or just click here.

Want to learn more about the Ancient Egyptian “goddesses” in the Collection?  Check out this group.