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Media Relations

IU Art Museum exhibit takes "Live at IU" on "Grand Tour"

Paintings such as "Flirtation on Shipboard" and a map of Rome are just two of the travel-related pieces currently on display at the Indiana University Art Museum as part of "The Grand Tour: Art and Travel, 1740-1914." The exhibition explores the phenomenon of travel and tourism among the upper and middle classes from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century.

Jenny McComas, the museum's Class of 1958 Curator of Western Art after 1800, spent three years researching and putting together the exhibition.

McComas visited Boston about three years ago to catalogue works left by a recently deceased, long-time donor to the IU Art Museum. She noticed that many of his pieces were by artists who had traveled and studied abroad.

"Going through his collection, the idea just kind of dawned on me," McComas said of her "Grand Tour" inspiration. After researching the IU Art Museum's permanent collection, she proposed the idea for the travel-themed exhibition that opened Sept. 20 and continues through Dec. 21.

McComas organized the exhibition into six themes in an effort to reflect the history of travel from both an academic viewpoint and a fun perspective.

"I personally like to travel, and I know a lot of other people like to as well. I think the theme of the project strikes a chord with a lot of people," she said.

McComas took Live at IU on her own grand tour of the exhibition, beginning with the "Heyday of the Grand Tour: Rome and Naples in the Eighteenth Century." During that time period, she said, wealthy people -- particularly the English -- began making frequent trips to Italy. They called their journey a "Grand Tour."

"It really was pretty grand," McComas said. "Since travel took so much time, it was fairly common to be gone for months, or even years."

The show's first theme, "Rome and Naples in the 18th Century," expresses travelers' interest in ancient ruins of classical Rome. Science and curiosity in the natural world was also becoming more of an interest, McComas said. A demand for views of famous panoramas influenced Italian artists to produce topographical views of their native cities for mostly British tourists.

The "Tourism and the Picturesque" section showcases how two emerging aesthetic theories of the time -- "sublime" and "picturesque" -- influenced how and where people traveled. McComas said the theory of sublime describes a landscape that is dangerous and overwhelming, while the picturesque theory depicts a rural, bucolic landscape with a variety of forms and an asymmetrical composition. "People wanted to travel to landscapes, and they were being taught to appreciate 'natural wonders,' which before seemed threatening. Because artists were painting these scenes, people wanted to travel there," she said.

At our third stop, "Art on the Road," we saw sketches and paintings reflecting the great improvements of transportation. Tourists in the later part of the nineteenth century could now travel quickly and comfortably by train or steamship, which facilitated the advent of American mass travel to Europe. Travelers still spent a significant amount of time en route to their destination -- which McComas said explains the profusion of paintings and drawings that depicted the activity of traveling itself. During her research, McComas also came across many sketchbooks that suggested the importance of recording places artists saw and people they encountered.

An undying interest in the classical world led to archaeological excavations, which prompted more travel and McComas' fourth theme, "Time Travel: Archaeological Explorations." For classically educated 18th-century travelers, the sites of antiquity became the principal reason to visit Italy, McComas said.

European and American tourists as well as archaeologists began to explore ancient ruins in Greece, Egypt and the Near East; McComas explained that the fifth theme, "The Colonial East," depicts the general public's fascination with these unfamiliar cultures. The 19th century gave rise to a new genre of painting called Orientalism that provided glimpses into "exotic" lands and lifestyles, such as harems. People were intrigued by the images and didn't know if the scenes depicted were real or imaginary.

Finally, Live at IU reached the exhibition's last theme, "American Artists and Expatriates in Italy." During this time period, an increasing number of Americans were traveling to Italy to view classical art at its source. A large group settled in Rome while others settled in Florence, attracted to the artistic heritage and access to marble quarries nearby.

"It's interesting that most of these artists' work was purchased by other American tourists or sent back to the U.S. to be exhibited and sold (in the 19th century)," McComas said.

Most of the paintings, drawings and sketches in "The Grand Tour: Art and Travel, 1740-1914," are from the IU Art Museum's permanent collection. Ten pieces from the IU Lilly Library were borrowed to complement the show, which remains on display until Dec. 21.

About the IU Art Museum

With collections ranging from ancient gold jewelry, Asian scrolls and African masks, to paintings by Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, the Indiana University Art Museum is located on 7th Street in the heart of the Bloomington campus.

The IU Art Museum's galleries are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Angles Café & Gift Shop is open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5:00 p.m. The Art Museum's galleries are closed on Mondays and major holidays. The museum and all exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public. For more information, see http://www.artmuseum.iu.edu.

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