Pianist Plays Musical Caricatures Inspired by Displayed Portrait Sculptures
The recital pairs Robert Schumann’s musical portraits with music by Liszt, Strauss, and Thalberg, three of the sculptor’s subjects.
Saturday, November 7, 2pm | Williamstown, MA
The Clark Art Institute presents the Tavitian Concert: 19th-Century Caricature, a piano recital by David Kaplan, in its auditorium on Saturday afternoon. The program is inspired by the plaster caricature portraits by the French sculptor Jean-Pierre Dantan, a group given to the Clark in the Aso O. Tavitian Collection. Kaplan sets Robert Schumann’s musical portraits of Frederic Chopin, Clara Wieck, and others beside music by several of Dantan’s subjects: Johann Strauss, Sigismond Thalberg, and Franz Liszt. Music historian Jan Swafford introduces th activation and places the works in the context of 19th-century Romanticism.
Dantan made about 30 caricature sculptures of the who’s who of Paris in the 1830s and 1840s. They were displayed in shop windows as a form of self-promotion for his sitters, and they have stayed together for nearly 200 years because the Duke Maximilian of Bavaria bought them from Dantan’s studio in 1844. They are now at the Clark in "An Exquisite Eye: Introducing the Aso O. Tavitian Collection," which runs through February 21, 2027. Tavitian, a Stockbridge collector who died in 2020, left the museum 331 works in a 2024 gift and endowed a new wing for them that is set to open in 2028.
Clark Art Institute, 225 South Street, Williamstown, MA. Tickets at events.clarkart.edu or 413-458-0570.
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After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
