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Recent Acquisitions Releases Press Release Archive |
Jewels of Time: Watches from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute September 27, 2002–January 12, 2003 Jewels of Time: Watches from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute opens September 27, 2002 and continues through January 12, 2003 at the Tyler Museum of Art. The Tyler Museum of Art is the first stop of an international tour of this exciting exhibit. The counting of the hours has been of interest since people first found the need for regulating their daily activities. The advent of the first mechanical means of achieving this started an almost continuous exercise in the development of an improved mechanical timekeeper and the process continues to this day. The manufacture of watches is a rich tradition which began in the late fifteenth century and reached a pinnacle of aesthetic and technical achievement in the late nineteenth century. Initially made for the amusement of the rich and powerful, watches evolved into objects of desire—and, later, necessity—for a growing segment of the population throughout Europe and eventually in the East and the Americas. Watchmaking became a sizeable, competitive business that attracted the best talent in scientific and artistic fields, and scores of innovations resulted from the application of such minds to the device. Even as the watch's timekeeping purpose became increasingly important, the industry consistently promoted aesthetic elegance to spur sales of its products. Technological innovations in watchmaking changed the form of the device, which in turn opened new decorative possibilities. The Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute's Proctor collection illustrates important aspects of watch adornment and how watch ornamentation relates to broader stylistic trends in the decorative arts. This exhibition includes 80 European watches from a larger collection assembled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by Thomas R. Proctor (1844-1920) and Frederick T. Proctor (1856-1929), two of the founders of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. Guest Curator Janet Zapata and MWP Curator of Decorative Arts Anna D'Ambrosio have chosen the most visually appealing watches in the collection for the exhibition. The Proctor watch collection is one of the largest and most important in the United States. Comprising 289 European and American timepieces dating from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, it has the added distinction that it is intact. Few watch collections assembled in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century have fared as well as the Proctor collection. As a group, the watches provide an overview of 300 years of timekeeping as watches evolved from jewelry and novelty items to precision timepieces. The exhibition is divided into categories that reveal the opulence of each piece. The intricate scenes depicted on the repoussé cases of many of the silver and gold watches, for example, illustrate the height of metalsmithing techniques. Some of the exquisite enamel work found on watches in the collection features highly detailed miniature portraits and still lifes framed in pearls. Semi-precious stones were also a favored ornamental element, ranging from diamond highlights on the wings of a green enamel and gold bug-form watch, to a jewel-encrusted watchcase and chatelaine. The collection also includes Renaissance-style watches of rock crystal, watches made for the Turkish market, clever automatons, and novelty watches in forms that vary from a skull to a blossoming flower. The exhibition's accompanying catalog contains an in-depth, scholarly essay by internationally recognized jewelry expert Janet Zapata, color illustrations and descriptions of the most important watches (based on research by watch historian Jonathan Snellenburg), and an illustrated checklist of the entire Proctor collection. Dr. Zapata will be in Tyler on December 12 to present a lecture in conjunction with the exhibition. Jewels of Time: Watches from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and MWP Arts Institute's Sayre-Bryant Fund. Exclusive sponsor for the exhibition at the Tyler Museum of Art is the Robert M. Rogers Foundation. Tyler Museum of Art members receive unlimited free admission to the exhibition. The Tyler Museum of Art is located on the east side of the Tyler Junior College campus at 1300 South Mahon. Museum hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sunday. The Museum is closed Mondays and major holidays. |