July 26, 1927
The Brooklyn Museum makes preliminary announcement of an exhibition of painting and sculpture and of the arts and crafts of Denmark which will be presented on November 14th next. The Danish Minister of Trade has appointed a special committee of which the Chairman is Mr. Benny Dessau, President of the Permanent committee for Exhibitions in Foreign countries. The committee consists of leading men representing the various ministries interested in the exhibition and also representatives of the museums of the arts and crafts. The Danish government has made an appropriation of 40,000 crowns to provide for the organization expenses. His Royal Highness Crown Prince Frederick has graciously agreed to be the protector of the Danish Exhibition, while the Danish Minister in Washington, Mr. Constantin Brun, has been asked to assume the Honorary Presidency and the Danish Consul-General, Mr. G. Bech, the Vice-Presidency. Capt. Paul U. Michelsen has been appointed as Commissary General for the forthcoming exhibition and will arrive in this country on October 16th, accompanied by Mr. Tyge Hvass, who was one of the architects of the Danish Pavillion at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and who also designed the Danish Pavillion at the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1925. These gentlemen will assist in the installation at the Brooklyn Museum. For the first time Danish art will be adequately presented in this country. The best-known living painters and sculptors and the finest designers of the minor arts will be represented. In addition there will be a retrospective exhibition of the works of the most eminent Danish painters of the last twenty-five years. The exhibition will remain at the Brooklyn Museum for six weeks, after which it will go on a tour of the various cities of the country as far west as Los Angeles.
On the 28th of November the Museum will present an exhibition of fifty-one paintings by living Bavarian artists. This collection has been organized by Prof. Carl van Marr of the Royal Academy of National Arts at Munich and embraces the work of the best-known contemporary artists of the Bavarian School.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 1927, 058-9. View Original
October 28, 1928
The season will open at the Brooklyn Museum on November 19th when the Exhibition of the New Society of Artists and a Group of Paintings by Living Bavarian Artists will be opened with a private view. The exhibition will be open to the public on November 20th and will continue until January 1, 1928.
This occasion will be noteworthy as it is the first time the New Society has exhibited in two years and as it is its first showing in the Brooklyn Museum. The Group of Bavarian Paintings is the first travelling exhibition of its kind that has come to this country since the war. It was organized in Munich by Dr. Carl von Marr, the Director of the Royal Academy in Munich and a Committee headed by Oberburgermeister Scharnagl of Munich, and is under the patronage of H.R.H. Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. Since last fall it has been travelling through the west where it has met with a cordial reception. It was shown in museums in Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 10-12/1928, 080. View Original
November 7, 1928
The exhibition which will open the Brooklyn Museum's season on November 20th is expected to be a particularly interesting one as the large gallery will be filled with paintings and sculpture by the 45 members of the New Society of Artists and the two end galleries with 52 pictures, the work of 32 living Bavarian artists. This combined exhibition will be very appropriate as the German artists worked throughout the same period and are of the same school as a large portion of the New Society members.
This exhibition will give New Yorkers their first opportunity in two years to see the work of the New Society men. It is an event for the Brooklyn Museum as it is the first time it has shown in this institution. The New Society is bound to have an interesting exhibition as it elects its members very carefully and its method of growth is such the work shown has great variety. Members are chosen from Academy and non-Academy members. The most recent election resulted in the addition of six new names to the list. They were the painters Edward Bruce, Abram Poole, Adolphe Borie and Jules Pascin and the sculptors William Zorach and John Gregory. Mrs. H.P. Whitney is the only woman member of the Society. A list of the members is the best indication of the wide-spread interests of the artists who make up the New Society and includes many of America's best known painters and sculptors. They are Chester Beach, Gifford Beal, Reynolds Beal, Adolphe Borie, Edward Bruce, A. Stirling Calder, Robert Chanler, Glenn O. Coleman, Andrew Dasburg, RandalI Davey, Paul Dougherty, Guy Pene Du Bois, John Flanagan, James E. Fraser, Frederick Frieseke, William J. Glackens, John Gregory, Samuel Halpert, Robert Henri, Leon Kroll, Albert Laessle, Hayley Lever, Ernest Lawson, Jonas Lie, George Luks, Henry Lee McFee, Dodge MacKnight, Gari Melchers, Jerome Myers, Elie Nadelman, Jules Pascin, Van Deering Perrine, Abram Poole, Charles Prendergast, Edmond Quinn, F.G.R. Roth, John Sloan, Eugene Speicher, Maurice Sterne, Albert Sterner, Edmund Tarbell, Mrs. H.P. Whitney, Mahonri You, and William Zorach.
The paintings by the Bavarian group is the first organized and independent exhibition of German artists since the Metropolitan Museum exhibition of January 1909. It's inception is due to Prof. Carl von Marr of Munich, and to the Munich Committee headed by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and Oberburgermeister Scharnagl of Munich, who most earnestly desire to resume with the United States those cultural relations which were suspended during the war. Such a gesture of friendship and esteem for the people of the United States could not come more graciously than from this source.
Prof. von Marr, the organizer of the artists, is an American by birth who has lived for many years in Munich and was a professor of painting in the Royal Bavarian Academy of Art. For a number of years precious [sic] to his retirement in 1926 he was the Director of the Academy. A personal friend of Dr. William H. Fox, Director of the Brooklyn Museum, he arranged with the latter to send to the United States for a tour among the American museums a collection of 52 paintings [by] living Bavarian painters, including among them such well known names in the world of international art as Franz von Stuck, Habermann, von Herterich, von Zugel, Leo Putz, and other younger men who are exhibiting in the United States for the first time. Conrad Hommel, Dill, Knirr and BIos are among the newcomers. Von Stuck died as recently as September 3, 1928, but he is represented in the exhibition by three characteristic works. Thirty-two painters altogether form the group of exhibitors, most of whom are displaying more than one painting. Most of them were exhibitors in the Munich Glaspalast during the past summer. The ultra-modernists who form such an active element in Germany and especially in Munich, are, however, not represented in the present exhibition; but, on the other hand, the ultra academicians have also been omitted. The exhibit is not in any sense reactionary but represents the middle of the road in this period of clashing and transitional artistic theories.
The paintings began their tour in this country last December at the Art Institute of Chicago and have since been shown at the art museums of Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Des Moines, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Cincinnati and were received with much appreciation from the press and the public.
An American Committee, acting in coöperation with the Munich Committee, saw to the practical accomplishment of this international enterprise. George Semler of George Borgfeldt & Co, Importers of New York, who resides in Munich during the summers and who is a member also of the Munich Committee; Max W. Stoehr, President of the New York German Club; Henry Goldman, banker[;] Eugene Hennigson of the International Forwarding Company, the firm of E. Hennigson Company, Inc. of New York; Hon. Charles Nagel of St. Louis, Secretary of Commerce in the Cleveland administration; Victor F. Ridder of the Staats-Herold Corporation of New York and of the St. Paul Pioneer Press[;] Alvin Kletsch of Milwaukee; J. S. Carpenter, President of the Fine Arts Association of Des Moines; Carl H. Lieber of H. Lieber & Co. of Indianapolis and Vice-President of the Indianapolis Art Association, are prominent members of the American Committee.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 10-12/1928, 111-4. View Original
November 8, 1928
To the Art Editor:
This is to let you know that we should be pleased to open the exhibition galleries for a pre-view of the collection of 52 paintings by Bavarian artists and the New Society exhibition, the private view for which will be on Monday, November 19th and the public view on Tuesday, November 20th. There are several photographs available and proofs of the catalogues are expected to be ready by Tuesday, November 13th.
We should be glad to have you see this exhibition in advance for release on Saturday the 17th for Saturday papers and Sunday the 18th for the Sunday papers.
Yours truly,
ARTHUR H. TORREY
for the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 10-12/1928, 116. View Original
November 16, 1928
Dates - Private view, November 19th, Open to public November 20th, Closing January 1, 1929.
Aims and purpose of exhibition - See forewords of the catalogues.
Nos. of artists and nos. of paintings - Also see catalogue.
Uniqueness of Exhibitions - This is the first exhibition of the New Society of Artists in two years and the first at the Brooklyn Museum.
The collection of Bavarian paintings is the first exhibition of German pictures to come to this country since the war and the first one since the Metropolitan Museum exhibition of January 1909. Information as to organizers and patronage is found in the catalogue. Extract from publicity release of November 7th:
"Its inception is due to prof. Carl von Marr of Munich, and to the Munich Committee headed by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and Oberburgermeister Scharnagle of Munich, who most earnestly desire to resume with the United States those cultural relations which were suspended during the war. Such a gesture of friendship and esteem for the people of the United States could not come more graciously than from this source.
"Prof. von Marr, the organizer of the artists, is an American by birth who has lived for many years in Munich and was a professor of painting in the Royal Bavarian Academy of Art. For a number of years previous to this retirement in 1926 he was the Director of the Academy. A personal friend of Dr. William H. Fox, Director of the Brooklyn Museum, he arranged with the latter to send to the United States for a tour among the American museums a collection of 52 paintings by living Bavarian painters. Von Stuck died as recently as September 3, 1928, but he is represented in the exhibition by three characteristic works. Thirty-two painters altogether form the group of exhibitors, most of whom are displaying more than one painting. Most of them were exhibitors in the Munich Glaspalast during the past summer. The ultra-modernists who form such an active element in Germ[an]y and especially in Munich, are, however, not represented in the present exhibition; but, on the other hand, the ultra-academicians have also been omitted. The exhibit is not in any sense reactionary but represents the middle of the road in this period of clashing and transitional artistic theories.
"The paintings began their tour in this country last December."
Names of cities where paintings have been shown and the list of the American Committee will be found in the foreword of the catalogue.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 10-12/1928, 119. View Original
