360 Speaker Series Panel Discussion

Plaster: Medium and Process

August 27, 2016 2 pm 8/27/2016 12:00 AM 8/27/2016 12:00 AM

Among the most flexible of sculptural media, plaster has been used since antiquity to create both original works and replicas, both as a medium in its own right and as a preliminary stage in the production of works in other media. To coincide with an installation of plaster sculpture from the Nasher Collection, a panel of art historians and artists discuss the history and materiality of plaster.

Panelists: Richard Brettell, Russell Buchanan, C. D. Dickerson, Laure de Margerie, Jed Morse

Presented in collaboration with the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, University of Texas at Dallas.

Richard Brettell Biography

Richard Brettell is among the foremost authorities in the world on Impressionism and French Painting of the period 1830-1930. With three degrees from Yale University, he has taught at The University of Texas, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, Yale University, and Harvard University and is currently Margaret M. McDermott Distinguished Chair of Art and Aesthetic Studies and the Edith O’Donnell Distinguished Chair at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also an international museum consultant with projects in Europe, Asia, and the United States. He established the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Museums at UT Dallas.

In 1980, Dr. Brettell was appointed Searle Curator of European Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1988, he became the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). Since leaving the DMA, Dr. Brettell has been involved with the purchase of the M. H.W. Ritchie Collection for the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, with the building and renovation program of the Portland Museum of Art (Oregon), and with the Millennium Gift of the Sara Lee Collection, for which the company won the National Medal for the Arts in 1999. He is Senior Advisor for International Art for the National Gallery of Australia and is working with Professor Stephen Eisenman of Northwestern University to catalogue the collection of 19th and 20th century French Paintings at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.

Russell Buchanan Biography

Russell is founder and principal at Buchanan Architecture. His work to date represents a wide range of project types including institutional/cultural/municipal, adaptive reuse, multi-family, historic preservation, commercial, mixed-use, and residential. In addition to his architecture practice Russell has designed a collection of furniture and his Spring Table is included in the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2009, Russell began to create works of art using a variety of mediums including found objects, painting, plaster, pencil on paper, and digital prints. Combining his skills in architecture and furniture design, the artworks provide further insight into his thought process and use of materials. Russell’s work in architecture, furniture design and artwork has been widely published in the national and international press. Articles about his work can be found in Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, Architecture, Texas Architect, Metropolitan Home, and the I.D. Review.

In 2014, Russell was elevated to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows. Today, he continues to practice architecture, design furniture, create artworks and teach as an Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington. He is also a founding member of the Dallas Architecture Forum and served on its Board of Directors.

C. D. Dickerson Biography

An expert of European art of the Renaissance and Baroque, C. D. Dickerson serves as curator and head of the department of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. Prior to joining the curatorial staff of the Gallery in 2015, he had spent eight years at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth as curator of European art. Among the exhibition he has curated are From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern (2009-10); Bernini: Sculpting in Clay (2012-13); and The Brothers Le Nain: Painters of Seventeenth-Century France (2016-17). Dickerson received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.

Laure de Margerie Biography

Laure de Margerie is Director of the French Sculpture Census, the first comprehensive catalogue of French sculpture in the United States. She was Senior Archivist and head of the Sculpture Archives at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, from 1978 through 2009. In this position she curated several exhibitions including Facing the Other: Charles Cordier (1827-1905), Ethnographic Sculptor (Paris, Quebec City, New York, 2004/05). She was part of the team who installed the sculpture collection at the opening of the museum in 1986 and co-authored the collection catalogue (1986). De Margerie also worked as archivist in charge of historic buildings in Normandy in Rouen (1983-1985) and oversaw rights and reproductions at the National Archives in Paris (1991-1992). She was awarded a fellowship at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, MA (2000/01), and was the Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, CA (fall 2011).

Jed Morse Biography

Jed Morse is Chief Curator of the Nasher Sculpture Center. A specialist in Spanish modernism and modern and contemporary sculpture, Morse received a Master of Arts degree in art history from the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1999, he has held curatorial positions at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center where he has contributed to such exhibitions and catalogues as Henry Moore: Sculpting the 20^th Century (2001), David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting (2005), and Matisse: Painter as Sculptor (2007). Morse has also organized numerous exhibitions, including Jaume Plensa: Genus and Species (2010); Revelation: The Art of James Magee (2010); Tony Cragg: Seeing Things (2011), and Return to Earth: Ceramic Sculpture of Fontana, Melotti, Miró, Noguchi, and Picasso, 1943–1963 (2013); Phyllida Barlow: tryst (2015); Giuseppe Penone: Being the River, Repeating the Forest (2015); and Joel Shapiro (2016). In addition to his duties at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Morse has contributed to books such as Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí (Cleveland Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2006), and has lectured widely on a variety of topics.