Exhibition

Point of View

Past 2022 Exhibition

2nd Floor Landing, Hallie Ford Museum of Art

point of view \ˈpȯint\ ˈəv \ˈvyü\ noun (pl) points of view
1: a particular attitude or way of considering a matter
2: a position from which someone or something is observed

In this exhibition series, we invite members of the Willamette community to share their experience or interpretation of a work of art from the perspective of their area of expertise, study, or research. Each year we offer a new work, and a new "point of view."

_{Female with Melon-Coiffure, Greek, Hellenistic, late 4th Century BCE,
ca 350-301 BCE terracotta with traces of paint, gift of Fred Neumann, 2020.012.060.}

In this Point of View exhibition, history major Brianna Kurtenbach '22 shares her research into two ancient Greek Tanagra figurines from Boeotia dating from the late 4th Century BCE. Kurtenbach was awarded the Center for Ancient Studies and Archaeology (CASA) internship to assist with research of the Neumann Collection which comprises 249 artifacts that were donated to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art by Fred Neumann in 2019. The collection includes a broad range of items: ancient Mediterranean/Egyptian vessels and glass to modern Islamic and Ottoman items. 

Boeotia is located in east-central Greece, and has been through cycles of being inhabited and abandoned. Tangara was an important town in Boeotia, as it had a road running through the town from Thebes to Athens. The cultural and political influences upon the people of Tanagra were vast during the Classical and Hellenistic periods (6th-3rd centuries BCE). It is now an abandoned city that mostly holds graves and fallen architecture. 

Tanagra is often remembered for its most famous works of art: small statuettes depicting women and young boys, appropriately named the “Tanagra figurines.” To have two authentic figurines in the Neumann Collection at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art is notable.