CGA! Juror
Eliza Rathbone has held the position of chief curator of the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C for more than 20 years. She recently announced her retirement but will remain with the institution as chief curator emerita. She will work on special projects and publications.
Rathbone attended Smith College and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and earned her master’s degree in 1974 from London’s Courtauld Institute of Art. She began her career in 1977 as assistant curator of 20th-century art at the National Gallery of Art before joining the Phillips in 1985 as associate curator. Rathbone also served as the museum’s curator of 20th-century art before her promotion to chief curator and director of curatorial affairs in 1992.
Rathbone’s duties at the Phillips Collection included overseeing the permanent collection, which boasts more than 3,000 works of modern and contemporary art. She organized exhibitions of modernists including Constantin Brancusi, Amedeo Modigliani and Giorgio Morandi as well as later 20th-century and contemporary figures such as Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. She organized a series of exhibitions focused on 19th-century French art, including “Impressionists on the Seine: A Celebration of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party,” in 1996; “Impressionists in Winter: Effets de Neige” in 1998; and “Impressionist Still Life” (2001).
More recently, in a collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art, Rathbone curated “Van Gogh Repetitions” (2013), which examined the artist’s penchant for repeating images and motifs. The exhibition proved to be one of the most popular in the museum’s history, attracting almost 115,000 visitors.
For her next project, Rathbone will organize an exhibition focused on the museum’s Renoir canvas Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-81), planned for fall 2017.
Portions extracted from Art In America, September 9, 2014 by Julia Wolkoff
Photo: Eric Kelly
CGA! Ceramic Juror
Peter Callas is a highly acclaimed wood fire ceramicist specializing in the anagama kiln. He spent his formative years in Japan, working with a host of masters including Peter Voulkos, arguably the most celebrated ceramic artist of the 20th century, with whom he had a 30-year collaboration. He received a BFA from the University of Puget Sound located in Tacoma, Washington in the early 1970’s. Later on he was an artist in residence at the Archie Bray Foundation.
His work comes out of the abstract expressionism movement and this carries through in his sculptures as well as his prints and pots. He has helped to broaden the understanding of firing an anagama for a longer period of time allowing for a different end product of the work. Callas is well known for his work and it can be found in museums and galleries through out the world.