[gallery columns="2" ids="1260,1380"] Californians have the good fortune of being able to enjoy Rodin's iconic sculpture in some beautiful out-of-door settings. Recently Modern Family, one of television's most popular and honored shows, filmed at LACMA and we caught four of its stars enjoying the Museum's B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden....
[gallery columns="2" ids="1376,1375"] Iris Cantor, President and Chairman of the Cantor Foundation, was honored on April 9 by the Bard Graduate Center for her support for the arts. She received the Center's Iris Foundation Award for outstanding patronage. Other awardees were Dame Rosalind Savill for outstanding achievement in scholarship, and Dr. Finbarr Barry Flood, outstanding mid-career scholar. The awards were presented by Susan Weber, Founder and Director of Bard Graduate Center. In introducing Mrs. Cantor, Ms. Weber recognized her exemplary support for the arts and the cultural institutions that present them, as well as her inspiring work in improving health care for women. She expressed "gratitude for your passionate commitment to enriching museums and other educational institutions across the country. Your achievements as a patron and an advocate for the arts and scholarship inspire us all. This is the true spirit of the Iris Award, and we are delighted to salute and celebrate...
[gallery ids="1343,1334,1336,1337,1339,1341"] The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux opened to critical acclaim on March 10 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sponsored by the Cantor Foundation, with additional support provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, the show is another in a series of important exhibitions about sculpture that have been presented to the public through significant support from the Cantor Foundation. This exhibition of 160 works (including sculptures, paintings, and drawings) is organized around major projects that Carpeaux (1827–1875) undertook during his brief career. Groupings of drawings and models trace the evolution of such masterpieces as the Musée d’Orsay’s marble Prince Impérial with his Dog Nero and the Metropolitan’s own Ugolino and His Sons, also in marble. The artist’s genius for portraiture and modeling in clay shines particularly in this major retrospective. (Carpeaux's work was to be an important influence on Rodin, who was a child of 13 when Carpeaux died. The...
Stanford University surgeon Dr. James Chang is fascinated by Rodin's hands. He has developed and is teaching a course titled "Surgical Anatomy of the Hand: From Rodin to Reconstruction" in which he combines 3D scans of the sculpture with medical imaging of human bones, nerves, and blood vessels. Currently Stanford's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Arts is featuring a collaboration between Dr. Chang and its Curator of European Art, Bernard Barryte. Inside Rodin’s Hands: Art, Technology, and Surgery, on view at the museum until August 3, explores Rodin's hands as art and as science. In the exhibition Chang and his students describe the medical conditions that inform each of the hands. Rodin was fascinated by the expressive capacity of hands and he often exhibited them apart from the rest of the body. Although art scholars have long been interested in the medical issues of some of Rodin's hands,...
Claude Gellée, known as Claude Lorrain, was perhaps the most important seventeenth century French-born painter. He wanted to be a landscape painter when painting landscapes was not considered of great importance, so he disguised his scenes by including figures and by giving the finished paintings historical or narrative titles. In this way he gave his work the "moral weight" required at the time. Two hundred years after Claude's death, when Rodin was invited to participate in a competition organized by Claude's native city of Nancy, the sculptor went straight to what he perceived to be Claude's greatest interest, landscape as revealed by light. Meant to be seen high atop a pedestal enlivened at its base by the figure of Apollo driving his chariot pulled by two horses, the figure of Claude is caught in mid-step, twisting his body around to glimpse the rising sun, the source of his delight in nature. ...
[gallery columns="2" ids="1271,1269"] On March 1st, Concordia College's OSilas Gallery presented its first annual STAR Award to the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. Judith Sobol, Executive Director of the Foundation, accepted the Award at the Gallery's annual Gala. The Star Award recognizes organizations that have shown a strong commitment to the arts and have supported the OSilas Gallery in achieving its mission: to integrate the visual arts into the cultural and educational life of the campus and community by providing quality exhibitions and programs that are diverse in style, content, and media; memorable, thought-provoking, and spiritually enriching; and of artistic originality, integrity, and excellence. The Cantor Foundation loaned an important group of Rodin portraits to OSilas in the fall of 2013 and the Gallery created a lively exhibition around it. Its show, The Bronze Age, included demonstrations of artists modeling portraits and of bronze casting, as well as a trip to Philadelphia...
In the September-October 2013 issue of Fine Art Connoisseur magazine, essayist and poet David Masello asked art collectors about the details in paintings and sculpture they find intriguing. Iris Cantor, President and Chairman of the Cantor Foundation, replied with an explanation of what she loves in Rodin's Danaid: Some of Rodin’s greatest gifts that set him apart from his contemporaries were his storytelling ability, and his break from his conservative colleagues’ traditional poses. These established Rodin’s reputation in France and then the world. One of my favorite examples is Danaïd. I was first attracted to the sculpture by the woman’s beautifully expressive and sensual back. Then I researched and uncovered the story behind the piece. I was surprised and shocked by the terribly tragic Greek myth. The daughters of King Danaus murdered their husbands on their wedding night and were damned to collect water in broken urns that could never be filled,...
In March the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center and its Women's Health Education and Resource Center hosted a delegation of international women's health care professionals; 19 nations were represented. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the delegation discussed international cooperation on the common challenges facing the global community in preventing, treating, and managing health problems affecting women. Members of the delegation met with Dr. Janet Pregler, Director of the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center, and with Julie Friedman, Director of the Health Education and Resource Center. [caption id="attachment_1240" align="aligncenter" width="477"] At the January 27th conference on reproductive health and the environment: (back row, left to right) Janette Robinson-Flint, Executive Director, Black Women for Wellness; Kristin Palmsten, Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Pediatrics, University of California San Diego; Ellen Eidem, Director, Office of Women's Health, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health; Martha Dina Arguello, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles;...
Since 2001 the Cantor Foundation has provided substantial support for Exploring the Arts, a New York City-based organization founded by Tony Bennett and his wife, Susan Benedetto, who is president of the organization's Board. Recently the first exciting expansion of ETA's geographic realm of activity has occurred and now three East Los Angeles high schools have been added to those New York schools that ETA supports. This support takes the form of both funding and expertise, and it enables the public schools to include the arts in their curricula in a big way. On a recent broadcast NBC Nightly News joined Susan and Tony on their recent visit to ETA's three new Partner Schools in East L.A. Take a look (past the opening commercial): Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy...
Whereas his contemporary Degas was interested in dancers as subject-matter, Rodin was interested in dancers for what they taught him about how the body worked and moved. In 1906, in Marseilles to study the Royal Cambodian dancers, he met the Japanese dancer and actress Ohta Hisa (1868-1945), who had been nicknamed "Hanako" ("Little Flower") by another dancer, the American Loïe Fuller. Hanako was renowned for her astounding coordination and her ability to hold a difficult position. She posed for Rodin beginning in February 1907 and he made at least 53 heads plus several drawings of her. According to Professor Albert Elsen, Mask of Hanako, Type D was first titled by Rodin Mask of the Anguish of Death. It possibly was inspired by a death scene the sculptor saw her perform. Rodin's friend and biographer Judith Cladel described one of Hanako's sittings: "Hanako did not pose like other people. Her features were contracted in...