"Holly Trostle Brigham: Dis/Guise" Exhibition at Ursinus College's Berman Museum of Art Highlights Philadelphia Artist

The Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College is organizing the first major museum exhibition for Philadelphia artist Holly Trostle Brigham. It runs from Oct. 20 until
Dec. 22 in the Upper Gallery.

Hours are:
Tuesday - Friday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday: Noon to 4:30 p.m.
The Museum is
closed Mondays and college holidays.

Admission is free. The Museum is
accredited by the American Association of Museums and is accessible to
visitors with disabilities.

Following its Berman showing, the exhibition will travel to the Luther Brady Art Gallery at The George Washington University, where the artist earned her M.F.A. in Painting. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with an introduction written by Brandon Brame Fortune, Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and an essay jointly written by Dr. Ferris Olin, Ph.D., and Judy Brodsky, co-founders of the Institute for Women and Art at Rutgers University.  Olin and Brodsky write, “Brigham’s interaction with art history subverts time and the limitations of being one person.  As an artist she lives the lives of many women through centuries past as well as occupying the present.” 

The exhibition is comprised of 24 works of art, primarily life-sized watercolors and including oil paintings and a multimedia, three-dimensional work. A number of works will be on loan from private collections and include several that have never been seen in public. 

Brigham’s Seven Sisters series, a suite of self-portraits depicting the artist in the guise of women artists throughout time, will appear in its entirety for the first time. The artists represented are Sophonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Maria Sibylla Merian, Judith Leyster, Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun, Tamara de Lempicka, and Frida Kahlo. Three of the seven paintings are now in private collections in New York and Pennsylvania.  

Brigham’s current work, Seven Sisters II, showcases the creative output of nuns, and will be represented by portraits of Plautilla Nelli, Santa Caterina of Bologna, and Henritte DeLille. A separate but related project is an installation piece, Hildegard’s Box. Hildegard of Bingen was a nun and mystic who wrote plays and music and oversaw the production of illuminated manuscripts. The outside of the box is covered with three painted scenes from Hildegard’s life: entering the convent as a young girl and being confined for a time in a small room; one of her plays containing a struggle between the Virtues and the Devil for the Soul; and the 19th-century exhumation of her body in order to authenticate it prior to moving her remains to the new cathedral dedicated to her.  The box is surmounted by a portrait of the artist as Hildegard and a Vanitas depiction of dead Hildegard.  The interior of the box houses fabricated relics and plays music by Hildegard as well as contemporary music.  

Brigham’s commissioned work will be exemplified by a portrait of Heather Rodale of the Rodale Press family.  Called “Heather as Healer,” it has a Native American theme.  Just as Brigham depicts herself in the guise of women artists, nuns, and mythological subjects, the model for the baby in this portrait is the artist’s daughter, Flora. Brigham’s eldest child, Noble, appears as a human-headed pupa in “Zephyr, Angel, Wings and Me,” a portrait of the aviatrix Amelia Earhart.