Fogg Art Museum hosts art show by talented museum employees

By Ken Gewertz

Harvard News Office

In her Fogg Art Museum blazer with her walkie-talkie at her hip, Sholeh Regna looks like an alert and conscientious guardian of Harvard’s priceless works of art — which is what she is. But in addition to guarding art, Regna also makes art, and the two occupations are more interconnected than you might expect.

“I’ve been a self-employed artist for years, and working here has been very important to me. It informs me and nourishes my creativity. It’s such a luxury to be able to visit these masterpieces on a daily basis.”

Regna is not the only one. Many of the people who work at the Fogg are artists who have gravitated toward this work setting because it offers an opportunity to spend time around great art. Now museumgoers have a chance to see what the Fogg’s artist-employees have been up to when they put aside their nine-to-five identities and take up their pencils, paint brushes, cameras, or sculptor’s tools.

On Dec. 6, the Fogg’s staff art show, which Regna helped to organize, opened on the museum’s third floor and will be on display until Feb. 18. More than 40 artists are represented in the show, but as Regna points out, this is only a small portion of the artists working at the museum. The show has occurred annually for the past three years, but because the museum is scheduled to close for renovations in June 2008, this is the last time it will be held at this location, at least for a while.

In the meantime, however, there is plenty to see. One of the first works to strike your eye as you emerge onto the L-shaped corridor in which the artworks are displayed is a large oil painting by David Ording titled “Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet,” based on an 1854 painting of the same name by Gustave Courbet. Ording’s painting is no slavish copy, however, but rather a witty and skillful work that comments on Courbet’s life and career.

In the original painting, Courbet, the rebellious leader of the realist school of painting, greets his patron Alfred Bruyas on the open road. Courbet wears a hiker’s garb with a large pack on his back and a walking staff in his hand, the quintessential free spirit, independent and self-sufficient.

In Ording’s version, the figures have undergone a transformation, becoming exaggerated and cartoonish. Courbet’s long straight beard has doubled in length, jutting out like the bowsprit of a sailing ship, and Bruyas and his servant, rather than merely doffing their hats, kneel before the artist as if before a conqueror. The exaggerations in Ording’s painting are based on caricatures of Courbet from the period, emphasizing the artist’s arrogance, vanity, and provincial gaucherie.

“What I’m doing is merging these caricatures with Courbet’s painting style,” said Ording, who works in the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. “Most of my painting is involved with museums and with the way art history is taught,” he said.

David Sturtevant is another painter whose work shows familiarity with the art of the past in addition to considerable talent and skill. Two small paintings reveal Sturtevant’s favorite subject matter: abandoned industrial buildings. One shows a former body shop in Jamaica Plain, while the other, a more abstract treatment, is based on some buildings near Lynn.

Among the painters who have influenced his use of form, light, and color Sturtevant names Edward Hopper, Fairfield Porter, Elmer Bischoff, and Giorgio Morandi. Equally important, however, are the thousands of images Sturtevant gets to see in his job as manager of the Fogg’s digital imaging and digital resources department.

“It’s great to see the full range of artwork from the collection,” he said. “I don’t know if I could point to some particular work and say that influenced me, but working here you’re constantly feeding off the visual world.”

Photographer Anna Kovacs has two works in the show, both produced in a class at the Massachusetts College of Art. The assignment was to take an everyday object and photograph it in an unusual setting. One of her photographs, titled “Sacrifice,” shows a bite-size piece of something, presumably edible, impaled on the tines of a fork. The fork stands upright, shoved between two terra-cotta pavers. The other photo, titled “Indulgence,” is a close-up of Cheerios stacked on a ledge.

Kovacs, a collections assistant helping with the massive effort to inventory, photograph, and barcode every item in the museum’s collection prior to relocating them when renovations begin, said that her work has contributed greatly to her artistic efforts.

“I get to see such a tremendous variety of styles. It’s a visual treat, really.”

Jess Dugan is another photographer who is working on the Fogg’s inventory project. She also has two works in the show, both large-format black-and-white studies. The first shows a figure lying face down on a rock trailing her hand in what looks like a body of water. The other shows a forest scene, in the middle of which one eventually makes out the face of a bearded man.

In fact, the man is Dugan’s grandfather on his property in South Carolina. Dugan explains that her interest as a photographer is telling people’s stories, and her favorite way of doing that is to capture their environment in a way that shows who they are. As she explores the expressive possibilities of photography, she finds that her work at the museum contributes a great deal to her growth as an artist.

“My job is looking at art all day,” she said. “This is a pretty exciting place to be.”