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Blooming with Art

As "El Greco" departs, Nasher makes way for Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury artist Roger Fry painted Paper Flowers on a Mantelpiece in 1919.

Paintings and sculpture by Spanish old masters have departed the Nasher Museum of Art, making way for an exhibition featuring artists who rebelled against the establishment in England a century ago.

"A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections" features work created by the Bloomsbury group, a set of British artists, writers and intellectuals that included Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes. Named for the section of London where they gathered for trysts and to debate art, gender and public policy, the Bloomsbury Group was known for its radical views and influence on literature, economics and sexuality.

The Nasher exhibition, organized to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of Bloomsbury's beginnings, examines the American reception of art produced between 1910 and the 1970s by the Bloomsbury artists and by their associates and collaborators. The exhibition includes paintings, works on paper, decorative arts and book arts borrowed from public and private collections throughout the United States. The works focus on how this small group of artists made such a large imprint on the cultural thinking of their day.

"Ideas that are known from [Bloomsbury] literature appear in visual form," says Anne Schroder, curator for academic programs at the Nasher. "Some of these social ideas about changing society you'll see in the artists' approach to the arts and crafts and the function and shifting ideas of beauty."

The exhibition is organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., in conjunction with the Nasher Museum. It includes 50 pieces of art from the personal collection of Bloomsbury enthusiast Craufurd Goodwin, James B. Duke Professor of Economics.

Goodwin is the driving force behind "Vision and Design: A Year of Bloomsbury," a year-long, campus-wide series of events at Duke celebrating the contributions of the Bloomsbury group. More information on the Bloomsbury-related programming is online at www.bloomsburyatduke.com.

After opening at the Nasher Museum, the exhibition will travel to four additional venues: the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Mass., and the Palmer Museum of Art at the Pennsylvania State University.

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A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collections Dec. 18 - April 15 Nasher Museum of Art Tickets: $5 for general admission, $4 for seniors, $4 for members of the Duke Alumni Association with membership card, $3 for non-Duke students with I.D. and free for children 16 and younger. General admission is free for Duke students, faculty and staff with I.D. and to Durham city residents who present a valid I.D. with address or proof of residency. Information: 684-5135; nasher.duke.edu