Harris Gift Of Art Benefits Palmer Museum

8-26-97
University Park, Pa.-Penn State alumna Mary Jane Harris, of New York City, recently donated two Old Master paintings to the Palmer Museum of Art in memory of her late husband, Morton B. Harris.

One of the paintings is "Christ in Glory with Apostles and Saints," an oil on panel executed shortly before 1586 by the Florentine artist Giovanni Balducci as a preparatory sketch for the main altarpiece in the church of Gesù Pellegrino. It was later known as the Oratorio dei Pretoni. The second work, "David with the Head of Goliath," is an oil on canvas painted in Venice by Girolamo Forabosco between 1650 and 1660, which blends an understanding of Titian with the more cosmopolitan Venetian vision of the mid-seventeenth century.

Both paintings are currently on view in the museum at the University Park campus. The Forabosco painting joins an earlier gift of the Harrises now hanging in the Baroque Art Gallery, Pietro Vecchia's "Sacrifice of Jephthah's Daughter," another Venetian oil on canvas from the mid-seventeenth century, which was donated in celebration of the museum's reopening in 1993. Additional Harris gifts include a vase by American potter Warren MacKenzie in 1992 and an acrylic painting by American artist Beryl Barr-Sharrar in 1994.

Mary Jane Harris earned a bachelor's degree in arts and letters in 1946 and a master's degree in sociology in 1947. An art consultant who for a number of years was associated with the Piero Corsini Gallery in New York, she currently serves as a volunteer member of the Palmer Museum Advisory Board. Her husband of 41 years, Morton B. Harris, died in 1995 at age 80. Formerly of Pittsburgh, he was vice president and production manager of Ace Advertiser's Service, a commercial lithography firm in New York City, until his retirement in 1987.

The Harris collection, which was begun in 1967, focuses almost exclusively on Italian Baroque paintings. It has been the subject of articles in Art and Auction and Architectural Digest, and next year will be featured in a book on collectors and collecting in America.

In addition to the two paintings from Harris, the Palmer Museum of Art received 196 gifts in 1995 and 1996, which include fine examples of works on paper, sculpture, photography and ceramics. "Gifts to the collection not only increase the museum's ability to organize exhibitions to share with other institutions nationally," said Jan Muhlert, director of the museum, "they provide works of great artistic and educational value for installation in the permanent galleries where they can be enjoyed by Penn State students, faculty and staff, by visiting alumni, and by members of our regional community."

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Contact: Gary W. Cramer (814) 863-4512 (office) gwc104@psu.edu