Not too many Greenville institutions make it to 70 years of serving the public, which is why Museum & Gallery at Bob Jones University‘s Director, Erin Jones, is so grateful to celebrate this recent milestone. Almost 300 gathered for the anniversary event on March 3 at the Downtown Embassy Suites at Riverplace with a featured lecture by art scholar and museum veteran, Richard Townsend.
A beautiful, coffee table-type publication, “Drama & Beauty: Great European Paintings from the Bob Jones Collection,” authored by Townsend, was unveiled as part of the evening’s festivities.
During his remarks, Townsend touched on aspects of the catalog’s featured essay, “The Collector Behind the Pictures: Bob Jones Jr. and Old Master Paintings in America” and discussed paintings with particularly compelling stories that illustrate the importance of this collection in the history of American art collecting.
Examples of rare works include the 14th-century crucifix by the Sienese painter Francesco di Vannuccio. Finding an intact, large (about 6 feet tall) crucifix of this caliber and condition is not only unheard of in American museums, but hard to find even in Italy.
Townsend also related how international scholars continue to make discoveries about quality paintings that have been unattributed within the collection.
A 15th-century Italian polyptych altarpiece bought by Dr. Jones in the 1950s ascribed to “The Master of Benabbio” has in recent years been revealed to be painted by Baldessare di Biagio di Firenze and Matteo Civitali through the finding of the original contract in an Italian archive.
More recognizable names like Sandro Botticelli, Charles Le Brun and Peter Paul Rubens are also within Museum & Gallery’s (M&G) holdings and could again be on display should the museum, which in 2017 was forced to close its main gallery on the BJU campus, finds a new home in a proposed downtown conference center that would include 80,000 square feet of museum space, 60,000 of which would be occupied by the M&G collection.
Keep up with the downtown conference center project at: www.greenvillesc.gov/1828/Downtown-Conference-Center-Mixed-Use-Dev.
