Collection Connection
The Collection Connection is published in each issue of the quarterly members' magazine, Portico. The articles offer readers insight into the connection between works in the Taft's permanent collection and art in special exhibitions.
Fall 2008
Putting a Name to the Face: Frans Hals’ Portrait of a Man
Tamera Lenz Muente, Curatorial Assistant/Exhibition Coordinator
A group of Taft Museum of Art docents spotted a familiar face from Cincinnati while visiting the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands. read more...
Summer 2008
Dutch Landscape Painting and the Classical Tradition
Tamera Lenz Muente, Curatorial Assistant/Exhibition Coordinator
You may be surprised by the number of Dutch artistsrepresented in the special exhibition Views from the Uffizi: Painting the Italian Landscape. read more...
Spring 2008
The Brush of a Master: Turner's Watercolor Technique
by Lynne Ambrosini, Ph.D., Chief Curator
While the Taft Museum of Art hosts the exhibition From Winslow Homer to Edward Hopper: American Watercolor Masterpieces from the Brooklyn Museum, visitors can also see some of the Taft’s own watercolor masterpieces by Joseph Mallord William Turner. read more...
Winter 2007
Time Flies: The Taft Watch Collection
by Tamera Lenz Muente, Curatorial Assistant/Exhibition Coordinator
What better way to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Taft Museum of Art than to look closely at objects that measure the passage of time? read more...
Fall 2007
Silent Work: Dutch Girls Sewing by Israëls and Liebermann
Tamera Lenz Muente, Curatorial Assistant/Exhibition Coordinator
In Sewing School at Katwijk , in the Taft Museum of Art’s permanent collection, Jozef Israëls painted an elderly sewing teacher in a black dress and white cap who sits at a table next to a window carefully cutting a piece of white fabric. read more...
Summer 2007
Hiram Powers and the Sintons
Tamera Lenz Muente, Curatorial Assistant/Exhibition Coordinator
In 1870, when Anna Sinton was around 18 years old, she and her father, David, embarked on a grand tour of Europe, as was the fashion for well-bred, educated Americans. read more...
Spring 2007
The Conservation of Three Late Landscapes by Corot
by Helen Mar Parkin, Consulting Conservator of Paintings
In 2005 when another museum asked to borrow one of the Taft Museum of Art’s paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, it was brought to the conservation lab for inspection. read more...
Winter 2006
Duncanson’s Murals in the Light of Luminism
by Lynne Ambrosini, Ph.D., Chief Curator
Luminist Horizons: The Art and Collection of James A. Suydam, an exhibition of serene, glowing 19th-century American landscapes, allows us to take a new perspective on the Taft Museum of Art’s landscape murals by Robert S. Duncanson. read more...
Fall 2006
Telling Tales with Michael Scott
by Abby Schwartz, Curator of Education
For his exhibition on view in the Fifth Third Gallery, Michael Scott appropriated imagery from the Taft Museum of Art’s collection to tell a fanciful story that is also a cautionary tale about the quest for meaning in life. read more...
Summer 2006
Two for Tea
by Jean Graves, Assistant Curator for Docent and School Services
Throughout history, people have displayed their status and taste by their choice of drink. read more...
Spring 2006
The Fontana Maiolica Workshop
by David Johnson, Deputy Director for Collections/Chief Curator, Hillwood Museum and Gardens, Washington, D.C.
The Taft Museum of Art’s small but choice collection of Italian Renaissance maiolica, or tin-glazed earthenware, includes an important ewer from the Fontana workshop, a renowned pottery in Urbino in central Italy. read more...
Winter 2005
Frank Duveneck: An American Painter in Europe
by Lynne Ambrosini, Ph.D., Chief Curator
A collection of splendidly colorful American Impressionist paintings from the Akron Art Museum is on view at the Taft this winter. Many of the artists in this exhibition underwent the influence of European Impressionism, which liberated their use of color and heightened their observation of light and atmospheric effects. read more...
Fall 2005
Husband and Wife Reunited at the Taft
by Mary Burzlaff, curatorial intern
A long separated husband and wife were brought back together when the Taft’s Portrait of a Man Rising from His Chair was reunited with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan. read more...
Summer 2005
From Barbizon to Impressionism at the Taft Museum of Art
by Lynne Ambrosini, Chief Curator
Young Cincinnati artists, the Tafts undoubtedly felt, could learn more by studying examples of the refined techniques that the European academies had been fostering since the Renaissance and might be led astray by imitating the apparently slapdash experiments of recent French painters. read more...
Spring 2005
Modern Painting in 1859: Whistler’s At the Piano
by Lynne Ambrosini, Chief Curator
To get in the mood for Whistler, let’s look afresh at the Taft Museum of Art’s own early Whistler painting, At the Piano, generally considered the artist’s first great canvas. read more...
Fall 2004
Hiram Powers’s Portrait Bust of Alphonso Taft
by Lynne Ambrosini, Chief Curator
The figure appears rigidly frontal, yet in fact the head is turned slightly to one side, tempering the stiffness with some liveliness. read more...
Summer 2004
Robert S. Duncanson: Small Paintings from Ohio Collections
by Abby Schwartz, Curator of Education
The eight landscape murals and two overdoor floral vignettes in the Museum’s foyer were painted by African American artist Robert S. Duncanson, who was commissioned by arts patron Nicholas Longworth to decorate the foyer of his grand home, Belmont, now the Taft Museum of Art. read more...
Winter 2004
De Hooch: Master of the Dutch Golden Age
by Cate O'Hara, Associate Curator of Public Programs and Publications
The Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch is represented in the Taft collections by a single painting: A Woman with a Cittern and a Singing Couple at a Table, painted about 1667, when the artist was about 38 years old. read more...
Fall 2003
Sargent and Stevenson
by Cate O'Hara, Associate Curator of Public Programs and Publications
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) is considered an American artist although he was born in Florence, Italy, to American parents and spent his childhood traveling throughout Europe. read more...
Spring 2003
If These Walls Could Talk
by Abby S. Schwartz, Curator of Education
The current renovation and expansion of the Taft Museum of Art is certainly the largest building project that the old house has ever seen, but it is by no means the first. read more...
Winter 2003
Adoration of the Magi Tapestry
by David T. Johnson, Deputy Director of Collections and Education/Chief Curator
In 1902 Anna Sinton and Charles Phelps Taft began to assemble their private collection of European old master paintings, Chinese ceramics, and European decorative arts that would eventually become the holdings of the Taft Museum of Art. read more...
Fall 2002
Decorative Watches: Elegant Accessories to Fashionable Attire
by Abby S. Schwartz, Curator of Education
In 1905 Taft Museum of Art founders Anna Sinton and Charles Phelps Taft acquired their collection of 49 watches in a single purchase from the prominent Paris dealer Jacques Seligmann. read more...
Summer 2002
First Place in the Examinations
by David T. Johnson, Deputy Director of Collections and Education/Chief Curator
Between 1902 and 1928 Taft Museum of Art founders Anna Sinton and Charles Phelps Taft acquired more than 200 examples of Chinese ceramics produced during the late Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. read more...
Spring 2002
Love Cups: Italian Renaissance Maiolica Coppe Amatorie
by David T. Johnson, Deputy Director of Collections and Education/Chief Curator
The Taft's collection of Italian Renaissance maiolica, dating primarily from 1500 to 1550, was purchased from the collection of Baron Adolphe de Rothschild, Paris, in 1900 by the art dealer Joseph Duveen. read more...
