Sara Morris, the Crocker’s Ruth Rippon Curator of Ceramics, asks Rachel Gotlieb, guest curator of "The Portland Vase: Mania and Muse," to share a little bit more about her relationship with the Portland Vase and her experience organizing the exhibition.
The Portland Vase: Mania and Muse is a new exhibition at the Crocker guest-curated by Rachel Gotlieb, PhD. The exhibition examines the legacy and influence of the ancient Roman glass cameo The Portland Vase in the collection of the British Museum. For over two centuries, the Vase has served as inspiration for artists, including Josiah Wedgwood, Viola Frey, and Clare Twomey, contributing to its fame and significance in the artistic canon. Sara Morris, the Crocker’s Ruth Rippon Curator of Ceramics, asked Gotlieb to share a little bit more about her relationship with the Portland Vase and her experience organizing the exhibition.
SM: The provenance and legacy of the Portland Vase is fascinating. Can you share a little bit about your relationship with the Vase and how you came up with the idea for the exhibition?
RG: I confess, I’ve have been thinking about the Portland Vase in the context of ceramics being a global commodity for quite a few years now. When I was working at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, we accepted a Victorian Parian Jug depicting the Portland Vase relief, stained violet for the study collection. I was fascinated by how an iconic image from antiquity was adapted into a practical and humble jug used in the 19th century. Before the work came to the Gardiner, it travelled the world—Britian, Africa, the Caribbean, and Canada—and survives to this day albeit no longer utilized or appreciated in the same way. When I was a fellow at Winterthur Library in Delaware, I researched Portland Vase replicas and their collectors. I was amazed to discover how popular the image of the vase remained in the 19th century, no doubt because of the infamous breakage and restoration of the original cameo glass antiquity. My research scope expanded to include contemporary makers when I presented a paper at the CAA conference (College of Art Association). Working at the Crocker, I discovered that the Museum holds three 19th-century Wedgwood adaptations in the collection, along with Oakland-based artist Squeak Carnwath’s powerful studio series incorporating the Portland Vase as a symbolic motif. Voila, a show was born!
SM: Which version of vase was more influential, the original glass cameo or Wedgwood’s ceramic replica?
RG: Great question! The original was famous from the moment of its rediscovery in the 16th century. It was thought to hold the ashes of a Roman emperor so there was the celebrity status aspect. The mysterious meaning of the frieze was a topic of hot debate among scholars. And of course, it was admired as an object of beauty exemplifying Classical principles. The Barberini Vase, as it was initially called, was widely published in guidebooks, pattern books, and copied well before Wedgwood made his limited editions. The discoveries of the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii and their antiquities in the mid-eighteenth century fueled the fashion for classical vases, which Wedgwood capitalized on calling himself the “Vase Maker General to the Universe.” His goal to replicate the Portland Vase, the most famous vase of the time, was a culmination of his career. Wedgwood wasn’t the only one doing this, but he was the most successful and because he was such a brilliant marketer as well as inventor, he managed to make the Portland Vase more famous through his limited editions of “perfect” replicas.
SM: A large portion of the exhibition presents California artist Viola Frey’s works about the Portland Vase. Can you tell me more about the significance of her work in the context of the exhibition?
RG: Viola Frey’s fascination with the Portland Vase was another important factor why I chose to curate this exhibition. Here was a major artist active in Oakland and known for her totemic figures sculpted in clay who was also captivated with Josiah Wedgwood, the man and the myth, and his preoccupation with the Portland Vase. For over two decades Frey employed Wedgwood and the Portland Vase as tropes to critique the art world, the objectification of women, and the challenge of making new work burdened by artistic precedent. Seeing her explorations rendered in clay, bronze, and painting is an extraordinary testament showing how the Vase serves as a muse.
SM: Can you tell me about the process of commissioning original artworks from contemporary artists for this show? What are some of the challenges of curating an exhibition without seeing the artworks in advance?
RG: It was important for this show to present work by contemporary artists, including Michael Eden, Nicole Cherubini, and Chris Wight, who are already engaged with disrupting the canon of the Portland Vase. But I also believe that a curator’s role is to commission new work which helps artists expand their practice. I invited ceramists who investigate artistic precedents, ceramic traditions or issues related to museum stewardship and collecting, such as Roberto Lugo, Clare Twomey, Beth Lo. While I wasn’t sure what they were going to make, I was confident that their work would be appropriate and contribute significantly to the exhibition because their creative issues paralleled the themes of this exhibition. One artist, Peter Pincus worked with his students and colleagues at Rochester Institute of Technology fashioning a ceramic zoetrope that viewers activate by spinning the work on a banding wheel. Pincus’s work highlights the agency of Thetis, one of the classical figures in the original design. That Pincus is engaging his students in the project by asking them to work with the artistic canon to make a new, wonderous piece is precisely what I aim to illustrate in the exhibition.
SM: What would you like viewers to walk away from the exhibition having thought about?
RG: I hope visitors realize how the past is not so distant, and that artists work in the long continuum of history.