New Taubman exhibition features Marsh composition

It’s not every day that Roanoke and Salem residents can lay eyes on a Titian, a Rembrandt, a Renoir and two Monets in a single visit to their local museum, but that’s one of the treats that awaits visitors to the Taubman Museum of Art’s newest exhibition, “Titian to Monet: European Paintings from Joslyn Art Museum.”

The exhibition, which features 52 European works spanning nearly 500 years, is complemented by a multi-sensory, immersive experience that brings to life six of the paintings, all to the sound of music composed by Gordon Marsh, professor of fine arts at Roanoke College.

“The art of painting has been a passion of mine since childhood when I took painting lessons and saw my first major exhibition in Los Angeles,” Marsh said. “To work with experts in the world of AI-generated art on a floor-to-ceiling experience — within such a wonderful show as this one — has been both a challenge and a thrill. I’m really grateful to Taubman’s executive director, Cindy Petersen, for inviting me to collaborate!”

All members of the Roanoke College community were invited to a free, exclusive preview of the exhibition on Saturday, Oct. 8, from noon to 4 p.m. At 2 p.m., a panel discussion about the making of the immersive experience took place in the museum’s Black Box Theatre. The discussion featured Marsh and the animation team for the interactive display: David Franusich, a multimedia designer with Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT); and Nayha Pochiraju, a 3D artist and 2022 graduate of Virginia Tech. Visitors are invited to tour the exhibition before or after the panel discussion, which will last about an hour.

Under normal circumstances, most of the works in “Titian to Monet” would remain on permanent display at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. But the Joslyn is currently undergoing an ambitious renovation and expansion, so it has generously loaned these works for a traveling exhibition. The Taubman Museum of Art is one of only two museums in the country – and the only one on the East Coast – that will display the works.

“This exhibition presents a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many to experience artwork by European masters whose work has influenced and impacted generations across the centuries and around the world,” said Cindy Petersen, executive director of the Taubman. “It is like making a trip to Europe.”

The exhibition is organized in six sections, from Devotional Art of the Early Renaissance to Realism and Impressionism in Modern Europe. Among the works on display are Rembrandt’s “Portrait of Dirck van Os” (1658), William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Return of Spring” (1886), Renoir’s “Young Girls at the Piano” (1889) and Monet’s “Small Country Farm at Bordighera” (1884).

Inspired by the popular “Immersive Van Gogh” traveling exhibition, the Taubman decided to enrich the “Titian to Monet” experience by including an immersive element. For this project, Franusich and Pochiraju animated six of the paintings so they come alive through nine projectors in a companion gallery at the Taubman. Marsh, an award-winning composer who teaches courses in theory, history and composition of music, created a composition that follows the storyline of the animations.

Marsh talks with Cindy Petersen, executive director of the Taubman Museum, in one of the "Titian to Monet" galleries. 

Petersen said the goal of the immersive experience is to draw patrons more deeply into the works and inspire them to revisit the exhibition and study the paintings multiple times, noticing something new on each pass.

Marsh used a range of virtual instruments, plus music from a variety of places and time periods, to represent aspects in the paintings, then wove those elements together to create an original work of sound art that is nearly 14 minutes in length. “My original music is intended to represent the immersive experience while also elaborating on the animator’s vision for ‘narrating’ the paintings’ subject matter,” he said.

For example, Marsh’s arrangement of a popular Turkish folk song, “Tasa Verdim Yanimi,” accompanies the animation of flowers in Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “The Grief of the Pasha” (1885), which shows a Turkish ruler mourning the death of a Bengal tiger. As the flowers come to life in the animation and the scene turns fantastical, it transitions into the flowers of Maria van Oosterwyck’s exquisite “Still Life of Flowers in a Glass Vase” (1685).

Marsh took great care to consider the settings and time periods in which the paintings were created when selecting music for the immersive display. For Titian’s “Portrait of a Man of the Cornaro Family with a Falcon,” he chose a composition for three instruments by Adrian Willaert, who was master of music at St. Mark’s in Venice during Titian’s time. And although some might select Debussy as accompaniment for Monet’s “The Meadow,” Marsh noted that Debussy was still a student in 1879 when the work was painted. At that time, he said, the average Parisian would have been hearing Beethoven at concerts and operas, so Beethoven seemed a more fitting choice.

“My work is not really a ‘film score’ or an accompaniment to the experience,” he said. “The folks at the Taubman and the artists at Tech encouraged me to create something original in response to the project concept. I hope it adds an important dimension to the narrative outlined by the animators and honors the ideas of everyone at the Taubman who contributed to the quarter-hour story told.”

Marsh also created a Spotify playlist inspired by the exhibition, and viewers will be invited to visit the playlist via a QR code when they arrive at the museum.

“Titian to Monet” opens to the public on Oct. 14 and remains on display at the Taubman through Jan. 8, 2023. Because Roanoke College is an institutional member of the Taubman, College students, staff or faculty members may view the exhibition during normal museum hours at no cost. For more information about these events and more, visit the Taubman website at TaubmanMuseum.org.

“We are honored to be the catalyst for bringing people and art together for discovery, learning and enjoyment,” Petersen said.

Co-creators of the "Titian to Monet" immersive experience, along with museum officials, check out progress on the display inside the Taubman Museum.