CAA News Today

Celebrating its fifteenth anniversary as a born-digital journal this fall, caa.reviews continues its exploration of the scholarly review medium through “Exhibitions Close Up—Bernini: Sculpting in Clay.” This multimedia, open-access project focuses on the recent exhibition that assembles over forty small terra-cotta models made by the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini to visualize large sculptures. The project was made possible through a grant to CAA from the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture.

Conceived by Sheryl Reiss, editor-in-chief of caa.reviews, and broadened through discussion with the journal’s editorial board, the project explores the Bernini exhibition in several ways. It provides a traditional scholarly review of the presentation at both its venues—the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas—and a review by the sculptor Denise Pelletier. Central to the project is a video walk-through at the Kimbell that juxtaposes close views of Bernini’s terra-cotta models with physical movement within the gallery spaces and around the objects on display, giving the viewer a close approximation of visiting the exhibition in person. The project—which also includes a bibliography, previously published essays on and reviews of Bernini’s work and methods from The Art Bulletin and caa.reviews, additional educational videos about the artist’s work, the Kimbell floor plan of the exhibition, comparative illustrations showing completed pieces, and an interview with C. D. Dickerson, curator of European art at the Kimbell—provides a comprehensive resource for Bernini’s oeuvre and influence as well as an in-depth look at an important monographic exhibition.

The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture (ANVC) developed the Scalar digital authoring platform with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Art Bulletin also used this platform for an anniversary project launched in February 2013, called “Publishing The Art Bulletin: Past, Present, and Future,” that was developed by Thelma Thomas, (then) chair of the Art Bulletin Editorial Board and associate professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Additional projects using the Scalar platform can be viewed on the ANVC website.

The minimum browser requirements for “Exhibitions Close Up—Bernini: Sculpting in Clay” are Internet Explorer 9.0, Firefox 4.0, Chrome 7.0, and Safari 5.0.