AN EARLY EYE IN THE SKY

Pictorial photographs from 1895 to 1908 are featured in “F. Holland Day and His Circle,” at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego’s Balboa Park, Tuesday through Nov. 30.

More than 100 platinum prints by the American photographer are shown alongside those by artists who enjoyed his encouragement and support, including Clarence White, Gertrude Kasebier, Frederick Evans and Edward Steichen.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, Day’s younger cousin, is also represented in the exhibition whose curator, Joseph Bellows, defines Day as “the only photographer to successfully challenge Alfred Stieglitz for his title.”

Day, one of the first to regard photography as a serious form of art, joined with his fellow pictorialists to expand the limits of the medium by experimenting with printing techniques and studying the formal elements of art used by the Old Masters in their paintings.

He organized an exhibition of all the major American pictorialist photographers which opened in London in 1900, establishing their reputations worldwide. Edward Steichen, who helped Day hang the show, defined it as “a bombshell exploding in the photographic world of London.”

The exhibition undoubtedly also served as a vehicle for Day to challenge Stieglitz for the leadership of the American pictorial movement, one episode in a lifelong rivalry.

Although he was a talented portraitist and a fine printer who maintained high standards in the presentation and reproduction processes of photography, Day enjoyed a relatively short period of achievement, essentially during the years covered by the exhibition.

This is the first American exhibition of his work in more than 10 years and the first on the West Coast. Day’s works are on loan from the Library of Congress; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the George Eastman House, Rochester; the Norwood Historical Society and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Egyptian Antiquities Organization and the Getty Conservation Institute have undertaken a joint scientific study and conservation treatment of the wall paintings in the 3,200-year-old tomb of Nefertari, favorite queen of Ramses II.

Although Nefertari was but one of Ramses II’s many wives, he dedicated to her the temple next to his own, built into the rock at Abu Simbel.

Her tomb in the Valley of the Queens in West Thebes contains decorations of the highest quality, including wall paintings which portray Nefertari as an elegantly dressed woman of great style, adorned with many unique jewels.

The tomb, discovered in 1902 by an Italian mission led by Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli, had been closed to the public since it was found, due to the precarious state of its wall decorations. In many areas, the richly painted plaster has come loose from the rock-wall.

The fragile state of the tomb requires a preliminary conservation treatment to prevent further losses of painted surfaces. At the end of the yearlong study, decisions will be made concerning materials and treatment methods to be used for the final conservation project.

A multi-disciplinary team of Egyptian and foreign specialists including scientists, conservators, archeologists, historians, engineers and cultural property authorities, will study the causes of decay in the tomb to determine the necessary conservation treatments and assist in their implementation.

REMINDER: A two-day symposium on “The Visual Arts and the Myth of Southern California, 1900-1950,” organized by Stella Paul of the Archives of American Art, takes place in Friends Hall, at the Huntington Library in San Marino, on Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and next Sunday, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Speakers are Kevin Starr, University of San Francisco; Neil Harris, University of Chicago; Merle Schipper, historian/critic; Constance Glenn, Cal State University Long Beach; Bram Dijstra, UC San Diego; Susan C. Larsen, USC; William Moritz, film historian; David Gebhard UC Santa Barbara; and David De Long, University of Pennsylvania.

Information: (818) 405-7847.

The meeting of the Los Angeles Task Force on the Arts previously scheduled for Monday has been changed to Oct. 20 at 4 p.m., at the Los Angeles Design Center, 433 S. Spring St. Information: (213) 626-2787.