Description

In the course of the annual loan exhibition competition conducted by the APP, we regularly consider the option of offering discretionary grant funds to support worthy publications associated with exhibition projects that have been eliminated in one of the rounds. In these cases, for reasons usually tied to the quality of a checklist, the exhibition is assessed to be less valuable to the field than the longer-standing contribution that a publication would make. Most recently, the AAP provided discretionary grants of this type for publications on Augusta Savage (Cummer Art Museum, 2018), Diego Romero (Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 2018), and New Deal Art in the Northwest (Tacoma Art Museum, 2019).
A similar opportunity was presented by the Shelburne Museum’s exhibition project, the monographic Luigi Lucioni: Modern Light, which was declined in 2019. The Shelburne was invited to apply for a grant to underwrite the accompanying catalogue, which will be the first substantial publication on this low profile but highly compelling artist. Given the overall project budget of $350,000 (exhibition and catalogue), this proposed grant will still constitute a welcome level of support.
As explained in the Shelburne’s discretionary grant proposal, the time is right to undertake a this ambitious consideration of Lucioni’s career and production. In recent years, fresh attention has been devoted to a modernism that was embodied in the new realist styles that evolved in the 1920s. No longer seen as isolated eccentrics, artists who practiced this new realism are now being granted fresh critical consideration that is yielding a fuller history of American modernism. The proposed publication will include a range of essays by authors capable of creating an in depth view of Lucioni’s life and work. Of particular interest are treatments of the artist and his New York circle of queer colleagues—notably including Paul Cadmus and Jared French; the first probing consideration of Lucioni’s choice of still life subjects; and a deep dive into the artist’s Vermont patrons, including the all-important Electra Havemeyer Webb– the museum’s founder. Six contributing authors will guarantee a full range of perspectives on the work.
The volume will be published by Rizzoli Electra on a schedule to coordinate with the run of the exhibition at the Shelburne from June to October, 2021. It is an entirely fitting project for the museum, given the artist’s pivotal role in the history of this rare Vermont museum and in the context of artists active in the state. It is a publication eagerly awaited by scholars and enthusiasts of art of the American inter-war period.