Arrington Gallery // February 7 - June 10, 2012 // Free
This stunning exhibition explores the little-known subject of “lover’s eyes,” hand-painted miniatures of single human eyes set in jewelry and given as tokens of affection or remembrance. In 1785, when the Prince of Wales secretly proposed to Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert with a miniature of his own eye, he inspired an aristocratic fad for exchanging eye portraits mounted in a wide variety of settings including brooches, rings, lockets, and toothpick cases.
With over 100 examples, the collection of Dr. and Mrs. David A. Skier of Birmingham is the largest in the world. This exhibition offers an unprecedented look at these unusual and intriguing works of art.
The exhibition is accompanied by a full color, hardbound catalogue of the same name, edited by Dr. Graham C. Boettcher, The William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art, and published by D Giles Ltd., London. An essay by Elle Shushan sets the historical scene and examines the role of lover’s eyes in the broader context of Georgian and early Victorian portrait miniatures. Boettcher looks at the language and symbolism of these tokens and their jeweled settings. Additionally, novelist and biographer Jo Manning offers five fictional vignettes imagining the circumstances surrounding the creation of these extraordinary objects.
Visitors can also interact with the exhibition in a new way: the Museum's very first iPad app! The Look of Love app allows visitors to see these tiny, intricate objects at up to twenty times their actual size. They can also see images of the backs of objects or short videos of how the objects open. Twenty iPad devices are available for check-out* and use in the Arrington Gallery, and volunteers are on hand to show how the devices and the app work.
*Please note: you must submit a government-issued ID to check out the iPad device.
Ongoing // Third Floor Hallway
// FREE
This exhibition features approximately fifty-five works of African ceramics and iron art, including vessels, musical instruments, currency objects, sculpted figures, staffs, tools and ritual objects. The objects come primarily from the countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Iron and clay are extremely important materials and media in West African culture. They are valued not only for their practical use in the fabrication of essential tools, weapons, currency, and vessels, but also for their spiritual potency. Objects made of iron and clay play important roles in rites of passage, healing rituals, divination, governance, religious practice, and conflict mediation. Many myths and legends recount the importance of the blacksmith and the potter in African society.
Throughout Africa, blacksmiths are generally born into their occupational specialty, and may only marry women from other blacksmith families. While the men smelt and forge iron, the women in their families specialize in ceramics, creating vessels for daily use and ritual objects. It is fire that transforms raw clay and iron ore into the secular and sacred objects that are essential to the well-being of African communities. This specialized occupational knowledge is jealously guarded by these men and women, who acknowledge that it was originally imparted by a divine source, usually as part of a sacred covenant.
The ceramics in this exhibition are on loan to the Museum from The Dick Jemison Collection. Jemison, an artist who divides his time between Birmingham and the American Southwest, is interested in tribal arts from across the globe. The iron objects in the exhibition were given to the Museum in 2004 by Mort and Sue Fuller, of New York.
