Toledo Museum of Art Lecture Series V.O.
Description
Read MoreVocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
little Museum of Art acquired a painting by dutch painter frans halls. It's a portrait of the van Kampen family painted in the first half of the 17th century almost 400 years ago for the past 200 years, scholars believed the original painting, a large canvas with mr and mrs Van Campen and their 14 Children had been divided into sections. Conservation efforts over the past five years confirmed. This was the case, revealing elements that had been hidden when the painting was cut apart so many years ago and helping reunite those fragments that have been found for the very first time. Here in Toledo. If you go and visit the fun competence and the Levis gallery on the other end of the museum and the halls exhibit, you can see how the pieces have come together. We can only see a portion of a daughter in the middle of the painting hidden for years under paint. There's a section missing altogether in the lower corner where two of the Children would have been pictured the 14th child. A somewhat late addition to the Van Kampen family was added in the lower right hand corner by another painter altogether. At first glance, this painting doesn't seem to have much resemblance to our experience of family today. I haven't seen a good starched white collar in quite some time and there are no kids racing and carts pulled by goats, which is a bummer. We should really bring that back, but there's something special here and how the curator as have pieced this portrait back together. There are places where the painting was cut apart that are lost forever, Pieces that are missing rough edges that don't match up anymore. Or at least not like they used to and a whole new person added long after Hall's finished the painting as the family continued to grow. And rather than gloss over these imperfections or try to force every line into order, the curator is matched it up as best they could, showing where the pieces still come together without hiding the places where they no longer fit. Maybe that sounds familiar. Maybe the story of a painting that is lost and perfect, practically broken and yet can still manage to come together and be celebrated. Sounds familiar to your own story, your own family. And maybe it's not even a metaphor. Maybe you look at the brother in the painting, the one who clearly didn't get the memo about wearing black and wore yellow and pink instead and has occupied himself with terrorizing the family's beloved goat. Maybe you look at him and think, oh my goodness, that is my brother. Whatever it is, the painting, the circumstances in which it has been pieced together, it makes you think the painting makes you think about family