Williams College Museum of Art receives Luce Foundation Grant
For immediate release: January 12, 2006

Williamstown, MA – the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) announced today that it has received a special grant from the American Art Program of the Henry Luce Foundation to partially support a sabbatical for senior curator, Nancy Mowll Mathews.  Dr. Mathews is an internationally recognized authority in the field of American art, having published nine books on such artists as Mary Cassatt and the artist-brothers, Maurice and Charles Prendergast.  She spearheaded the museum’s catalogue, American Dreams:  American Art to 1950 in the Williams College Museum of Art and has taught courses on American art at Williams.  She recently mounted the groundbreaking exhibition, Moving Pictures:  American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910, which will travel to three other museums through the spring of 2007. Mathews has held the position of Eugénie Prendergast Senior Curator of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Art and Lecturer in Art at Williams since 1988.

During her sabbatical, Mathews will be studying the relationship between new technologies, the art market, and the French/American debates about modern art circa 1900.  Her special focus will be on the transmission of the ideas and styles of post-impressionists like Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin (about whom Mathews published the acclaimed study, Paul Gauguin:  An Erotic Life) to American artists via publications and art dealers at this time.  The grant from the Luce Foundation will support Mathews’s research and travel from January 2006 to January 2007.

“WCMA is fortunate to have a scholar curator of Dr. Mathews’s caliber,” says Director Lisa Corrin, “She has contributed substantially to her field and we are proud that her work has been appropriately recognized through the award of this special grant.  All curators need professional development opportunities periodically to refocus their energies and interests and to move their scholarship in new directions.”

The work of the Luce Foundation reflects the interests of four generations of the Luce family, which include the interdisciplinary exploration of higher education; increased understanding between Asia and the United States; the study of religion and theology; scholarship in American art; opportunities for women in science and engineering; and environmental and public policy programs.

Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible. Contact: Suzanne Augugliaro, Public Relations Coordinator, 413.597.3178.