Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

Nasher Travel

The Duke Alumni Association and the Nasher Museum of Art have collaborated to create a unique arts travel experience in Hawaii. Find out more.

For information about a future trip to New York City call 919-684-5114 or go to: http://www.dukealumni.com/olc/pub/DUKE/education_travel/education_travel_4.html

"It is a unique travel experience to visit museums and foundations with a curator. You have a chance to hear the insider perspective regarding the relationship of the pieces to other contemporary works. We were allowed extraordinary access to collections."

      - Jane Glucksman, participant, Nasher Travel: Los Angeles

"The Duke Alumni/Nasher Museum trip to Spain was the most intellectually rewarding and pleasant tours of my recent foreign travels. The small group structure, lack of mundane worries, expertise generously given by Dr. Sarah Schroth, and the natural and manmade beauties of Spain made the experience exceptional."

      - Ruth Cox, participant, Nasher Travel: Spain

We invite you to explore the contemporary art world with exclusive, intimate tours not available anywhere else. The Nasher Museum of Art and Duke Alumni Association have teamed up to design a series of trips for museum members, Duke alumni and friends to experience great art in the most influential cities in the world.

Your expert guides are (depending on the trip) museum director Kimerly Rorschach and museum curators Trevor Schoonmaker and Sarah Schroth, who open doors to private collections, introduce you to artists and curators and lead behind-the scenes tours of exhibitions at museums and galleries. Your trip includes meals, luxurious accommodations and all ground arrangements. For more information about future trips to Hawaii and Toronto, go to www.dukealumni.com and click on Education & Travel or call 919-684-5114.

October 30 - Nov 3, 2008

One of several beautiful entry halls at the Getty Villa.

Nasher Museum Travel: Los Angeles
By Teka Selman
Museum director Kimerly Rorschach and curator of contemporary art Trevor Schoonmaker led a group of art lovers through L.A. for four days in late October 2008. We started with a whirlwind tour of the Broad Art Foundation in Santa Monica, where associate curator Ed Schad led us through the remarkable collection. By far, the best thing for me at the foundation was Pierre Huyghe's breathtaking 2004 video A Journey that Wasn't. All of us were sad that we didn't have 22 minutes to sit and watch the whole thing; maybe the Nasher will show it one day (hint, hint!). I also loved the way that one of my fellow travellers used the word "geeky" to describe pretty much any art work that was a conceptual maze. Mark Tansey certainly earned the epithet and there were some beautiful works of his on view, too.

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May 2008

Nasher Museum Travel: Spain
By Wendy Hower Livingston
Everyone at the Nasher Museum loves the story of how Sarah Schroth, the Nancy Hanks Senior Curator, rewrote a chapter of art history, leading to the Nasher Museum's creation of the popular exhibition "El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III." She spent a year poring over 17th-century Spanish archives all around the country before she discovered 13 household inventories proving that the Duke of Lerma was the first "mega collector of art" in Europe. In May 2008, she took a group of us to Spain for 10 days to visit some of the places she got to know during her research 20 years ago. My favorite stop was Lerma, a charming Medieval village on a steep hill some 190 kilometers north of Madrid.

(read more)

WUNC-TV videographer Will Mikes captures a winding street of Lerma for a documentary about "El Greco to Velázquez."

Lerma is the ancestral home of the Duke of Lerma, who was King Philip III's "favorite," and whose generous art patronage inspired "El Greco to Velázquez." Lerma's beloved duke built a palace, seven convents and monasteries and the Plaza Mayor, where the locals watched religious festivals and bullfights. Now Plaza Mayor is a big parking lot. But back then, thanks to the duke, Lerma was "the first urban complex in all of Spain," according to Schroth.

Sarah obtained special permission for the group to tour San Pedro, a church that the duke had re-built during his time in power. The visiting Philip III and his queen would attend mass here with the duke, sitting in hidden balcony seats far above the altar. After the service, the royals would exit in little human-powered carriages through "passidizos," narrow passageways that connected the main buildings. This helped strengthen the reputation of the royals and the duke as mysterious, inaccessible and powerful rulers.

Chef Diego, a former mayor of Lerma, Spain, shows off his oven with Sarah Schroth, senior curator at the Nasher Museum.

Then Sarah took us to eat some horse meat. It was sliced so thin it melted in our mouths and we cried "Muy rico!" even after we found out it was horse and not pork. This rare delicacy was prepared by chef Diego (pictured to the right), a former mayor of Lerma, who also roasts a mean lamb. We topped off this sumptuous feast with "quadrata," which Sarah describes as sheep's milk made into yogurt, "but not," topped with sugar, and various kinds of flan. Oh, and four frosty shots of some very strong liqueur. "Incatada!"

Read more about the trip to Spain on the Nasher Museum Blog.