This solo show by the influential American artist explores a concept underpinning navigation: rhumb lines provide the most practical route to travel on a fixed compass direction. On 25 October 2007, an exhibition by Esther Shalev-Gerz opens, titled Echoes in Memory: The Queen's House, Greenwich. Exploring the rumours surrounding the Great Hall, the perfect cube in the centre of the Queen's House, this new commission explores the subjectivities of history.
The National Maritime Museum’s Learning Department will be hosting a broad range of events to accompany the New Visions programme.
-- Since 1960, the American artist Lawrence Weiner has been extending the boundaries and definitions of artistic practice, and is a key figure in the development of conceptual art. Weiner focuses on the interaction between artwork and the audience who encounter it. Much of his practice takes the form of language. His statements have been inscribed as written text on gallery walls, spoken as dialogue in films and videos, printed in books or posters, sung and tattooed on the skin.
On 7 November, at 14.00
-- A screening, over two consecutive Sundays, of Hollis Frampton’s monumental film sequence, which uses Magellan’s voyage as a metaphor for a meditation on the history and language of cinema, and the phenomena of perception. Originally intended as a 36-hour sequence in which individual titles would be shown on specific days in a calendar of one year and four days, it was left unfinished when Frampton died in 1984. The surviving eight hours of material, comprising almost 30 films, will be screened for the first time in the UK, as it was presented by the artist at the Whitney Museum, New York in 1980. Hollis Frampton, one of the key film makers of his generation, was also a noted photographer and theorist, whose remarkable writing, is published frequently in Artforum and October.
On 11, 18 November, at 12.00–14.00 | 15.00–17.00
-- The Queen’s House, Greenwich is reputedly haunted, so what better way to spend Halloween than exploring our fascination with the supernatural in the Great Hall itself and investigating whether the rumours are fact or fiction. The talk includes a history of Greenwich from Roman to present times, explanation of the Ley lines of Greenwich, demonstration of dowsing rods, investigation into photographs taken on site of ghostly apparitions and exploration of sighting.
On 31 October, 18.30–20.00
-- The 17th century Queen’s House, England’s first classical building is a rare surviving example of the work of Inigo Jones, the man who revolutionized English architecture of the period. The building reflects Renaissance ideas of mathematical, classical proportion and harmony, with the 40-foot cube of the Great Hall rising through both floors of the house. It was commissioned by Anne of Denmark, wife of James I and completed in 1638 by Charles I, for his French queen, Henrietta Maria, as a private ‘house of delights’.
On its completion the Italian Baroque painter Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) was commissioned to provide decorative ceiling panels for the Great Hall, Allegory of Peace and the Arts under the English Crown. Depicting Peace surrounded by the Muses and the Liberal Arts, the painting shows 24 muses holding objects alluding to disciplines such as astronomy, music and fortune. Little of this splendour survives today, however: Gentileschi’s ceiling was removed in the early 18th century and installed in the hall of Marlborough House on Pall Mall. The Museum gains special access to Marlborough House to view Gentileschi’s original ceiling panels with art historian Leslie Primo who’ll bring Italian renaissance art, Gentileschi and his muses to life.
On 12 December, 14.30–16.30
-- Travel through time with Leslie Primo of this art historical tour of the Queen’s House. Be transported back in time and discover the history of this visually breathtaking ‘house of delights’ and explore how it has evolved through the ages. Exploring both art and architecture Leslie uses Esther Shalev-Gerz’s exhibition about memory as a springboard.
On 30 January 2008, at 14.00–15.00 -- www.nmm.ac.uk
