Virginia Brilliant
Associate Curator of European Art, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
Ph.D. Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
Virginia.Brilliant@ringling.org
Virginia Brilliant joined the Ringling Museum of Art in 2008. She obtained her PhD from the Courtauld in 2005 in the field of late medieval and early Renaissance Italian art. From 2005-2006 she worked in the paintings department at the J. Paul Getty Museum and from 2006-2008 in the medieval art department at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has published a number of scholarly articles and co-authored the exhibition catalogue Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2007). Her exhibition Gothic Art in the Gilded Age: Medieval and Renaissance Treasures in the Gavet- Vanderbilt-Ringling Collection opens in December of 2009, and she is also currently developing exhibitions or publications on Peter Paul Rubens’ Triumph of the Eucharist tapestry series and Veronese in America.
Courses Offered:
(Spring 2010) Medieval Art in America: Collecting and Display in Private Collections and Museums ca. 1800-1940
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, medieval works of art left their homes in Europe for new ones in America in droves. This course examines the Old World origins of these works and the motivations and machinations of their owners in selling them to American collectors, the burgeoning taste for medieval in the New World, and the development of the display of medieval art in American collections both private and public. Students will discover intriguing figures in American collecting including Isabella Stewart Gardner, J.P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst, William and Henry Walters, Joseph Duveen, and George Gray Barnard, as well as exploring the roles of various and lesser-known dealers, curators, and professors in shaping collecting, display, and response. They will also develop a greater understanding of the medieval holdings and institutional histories of public collections like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as well as of university collections like those belonging to Harvard and Princeton. The course will be taught alongside Gothic Art in the Gilded Age: Medieval and Renaissance Treasures in the Gavet-Vanderbilt-Ringling Collection, an exhibition at the Ringling Museum: students will have the opportunity to attend the exhibition and a related study day comprising talks by nationally and internationally recognized scholars on medieval art in America at the Ringling.