Saturday, June 20, 2009

Chairman of the World’s Largest Online Museum to Give Speech at the Berkshire Museum

Chairman of the World’s Largest Online Museum to Give Speech at the Berkshire Museum

Fred Ross, chairman of the Art Renewal Center (http://www. artrenewal. org), will be speaking at the Berkshire Museum on April 19th, 2006 at 12 noon as a featured speaker in the Berkshire Museum’s Art for Lunch Series.

(PRWEB) April 17, 2006

Fred Ross, chairman of the Art Renewal Center (http://www. artrenewal. org (http://www. artrenewal. org)), will be speaking at the Berkshire Museum on April 19th, 2006 at 12 noon as a featured speaker in the Berkshire Museum’s Art for Lunch Series.

The speech will focus on 19th Century realist painters with special emphasis on William Bouguereau who was responsible for opening the salons and academies to women artists for the first time in history.

From the Classical Realism Journal

An Interview with Fred Ross

“I am committed to a return to standards of excellence in the visual arts, and to exposing the destructive hoax of modernism which has taken control of our culture’s museums, institutions of higher learning, and journalistic criticism. I want to offer opposing views and make it clear that modern art is a dead end. If everything is art than nothing is art. Their work amounts to art about art, whereas all of the great art from history has been art about life”. 

...Fred Ross

Excerpt from the Classical Realism Journal, Volume VI, Issue 1

“The artists of the 19th century exhibited a deep, abiding respect for humanity and human feelings. Bouguereau, Lord Leighton, Waterhouse, Burne-Jones and the other giants of the 19th century, tried to exemplify all that is good and decent in our species. Their accomplishments are the quintessential high point of hundreds of years of study and development in the art of painting.”

...Fred Ross

From American Arts Quarterly, Spring 1999

The Humanist ideal and the Re-appreciation of Nineteenth-Century Academic Art

“Let me state in the strongest possible terms that the art history textbooks, since the middle of the century, have been filled with nothing but distortions, half-truths and out-and-out lies in their description of this era. (The 19th Century) They have failed in their responsibility as historians to report the truth of what occurred as objectively as possible. These texts amount to no less than propaganda brochures for modern art.”

...Fred Ross

From American Arts Quarterly, Spring 1999

The Humanist ideal and the Re-appreciation of Nineteenth-Century Academic Art

“It was the artist’s goal to paint humanity both realistically and as beautifully as possible, encouraging all to strive for such ideals. Implicit is the moral imperative that all people are worthy of love and respect. So not only was it untrue that William Bouguereau, Burne-Jones, Alma-Tadema…was irrelevant, the exact opposite was the case. Bouguereau and the other academic artists were the avant-garde of the changes that were occurring in Western civilization, asserting that each individual was unique and valuable. Only a society such as ours could generate people who would even be permitted to dribble paint on a canvas and call it a work of art. We must realize that modern art could never have existed save on the back of the humanist art that preceded it.”

...Fred Ross

Excerpt from the Classical Realism Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1

“William Bouguereau ( 1825-1905) was not only loved by the general populace, he was adored and revered by other recognized giants of his own time, including men like Henry James, Charles Dickens, Edgar Degas and Frederic Chopin. But just as Rembrandt was relegated to near oblivion after his death, so too was this to be Bouguereau’s fate. One of the most famous stories about Rembrandt concerns his painting Night Watch. No one wanted it. Finally a gymnasium agreed to hang it on its back wall if the top foot of the painting was cut off so it would fit. To this day this masterpiece is known to us in a mutilated form. Bouguereau, until the mid-1970s was equally denigrated. But the work of great artistic genius cannot be stifled forever. Slowly, newer generations of historians, scholars and collectors have been able to view Bouguereau’s work and the works of other great 19th century artists with an objective eye.”

...Fred Ross

Fred Ross is Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, and has been a featured speaker at Sotheby's, the Dahesh Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, among others. He holds a Master's in Art Education from Columbia University, and along with his wife Sherry owns one of the foremost collections of 19th Century European paintings. He is currently Executive Administrator of the Committee to write the Catalog Raisonné of William

Bouguereau.

Http://www. artrenewal. org/articles/Admin/Announcements/display. asp? eid=4 (http://www. artrenewal. org/articles/Admin/Announcements/display. asp? eid=4)

The not-for-profit 501(c )3 educational foundation known as the Art Renewal Center, ARC, is the most popular art museum on the Internet, with over 60,000 images.

See http://www. artrenewal. org (http://www. artrenewal. org)
ARC promotes a return to high standards of training and discipline in the fine arts of painting and sculpture, and supports qualified fine-art schools and yearly scholarship competitions, as well as juried art contests such as the Third International ARC Salon.

Http://www. artrenewal. org/articles/admin/Salon/prospectus1.asp (http://www. artrenewal. org/articles/admin/Salon/prospectus1.asp)

Contact:

Art Renewal Center

100 Markley Street

Port Reading, NJ 07064

(732)636-2060 Ext. 630

Www. artrenewal. org

###