Sometimes when you’re visiting a collection and there is an impulse to take a photo and share everything you see, and then there is one object that conveys it all. Henry Varnum Poor’s portrait of Ben Hecht, has a face that looks like someone I know, maybe even someone I was with. Donald Clark, one of our archivists and project manager for The Marks Project, joined me at Yale. This portrait platter from 1926 appears quite contemporary and old at the same time. One of Clark’s many collections is a grouping of objects in all media that feature portraits of other people who look like him, many of them are gifts. Yale’s collection is all online 24/7.
Henry Varnum Poor,Plate with Portrait of Ben Hecht, 1926
Maker: Henry Varnum Poor, American, 1887 – 1970
Gift of Mrs. William R. Scott, John G. McCullough, Class of 1936, and Mrs. William G. Heaphy, by exchange 2004.84.1POST FROM SCENE + SEEN – Great day at Yale with Patricia Kane and John Stewart Gordon discussing old and new, contemporary and historic decorative arts, new building and integration of the sculpture, paintings and decorative arts at Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, CT, USA. On view this summer is the Waterbury Collection of Art and through July 14, Society Anonyme, Inc.
Rooftop Sculpture Garden – Aristede Maillol – old + new architecture, view from the roof.