The thing about art in a gallery is that it is just that: art, in a gallery. A typical gallery wall is a blank, sterile abyss and erases any telling context for the images it supports. For the painting on this backdrop, there is no definite history or inevitable future, only the relevance we manufacture between the object and our world today. While there are many logical reasons for organizing art this way, the viewer is always left to her own devices in reconstructing the life of a work of art, for better or for worse.

The curators of “A New 19th Century: The Mondavi Family Gallery Reinstalled,” however, have taken a different approach to gallery construction that nudges the viewer into a Victorian paradigm. Instead of meticulously wiping out any contextual traces, the curators have carefully orchestrated the gallery to present the objects as they would have existed in their infancy: in the home of a prominent, upper class 19th century family. A family who may just have had “Beat Cal” emblazoned on their front door and a young Leland Jr. running around out back.

The room itself is a cornflower blue- an unusual color choice which, I’m told, really makes the paintings “pop.” Accents of white in the pillars, moldings, and wooden paneling contrast with the blue to compose an interior Victorian ambience. Two columns mark the front “doorway” and support Jean Coulon’s Celestial Hebe and Pierre Eugéne Emile Hébert’s Mephistopheles. Straight through the columns is the dining room, where the culinary arts are seductively idealized in Henri Fantin-Latour’s Still Life with Fruit, and where stylistic renditions of trompe l’oleil paintings, which oftentimes feature freshly hunted game, enhance the masculine undertones of a Victorian feast (while also providing a rather poignant case for vegetarianism).

Continuing towards the right, past a variation on Harnett’s The Old Violin, (at this point, in the fashion of a concerned tour guide, I should warn you to watch your step over the large red carpet), you will enter the parlor. Here, in what is officially titled “The Collector’s Corner,” is an amalgamation of works by both American and European artists, which are vertically stacked and horizontally cramped in the typical display formation of a 19th century parlor. Through the parlor we enter the ballroom, where William Keith’s Upper Kern River demands the back wall - a position it actually occupied in the Stanford’s mansion - along with various other harmonizing landscapes.

Beginning to circle back around, we pass by Degas’ bronze mold entitled Grand Arabesque, and nearly overlook the early experimental, post-impressionist Picasso (yes, Picasso!) in oil. The back left corner is a tribute to the western frontier, featuring Bierstadt’s The Last of the Buffalo in dramatic dialogue with a glass case of Native American beaded works. William Keith’s electric Sunset on Mount Diablo (Marin Sunset) guides us to the next alcove that explores the development of photography into film before we arrive in the paper and prints section. It is here that a study of watercolor techniques and travel motifs culminate in a small countryside rendering by Monet. Finally we conclude in the portraiture room, where, looking up at an adorable, yet seemingly bossy young man by the name of Gordon Fairchild (by John Singer Sargeant) I began to ponder why it is that students should visit this gallery...aside from the very pretty pictures.

Art in a gallery is art in a gallery. Most of the time, no matter how much I study the subject and no matter how much I enjoy looking, I just don’t get it. But the reinstalled Mondavi Gallery is more of a collection of sentimental mementos, like walking through a house of a family dead and gone and piecing together who they were by the objects that hung on their walls. Simply by setting a context through image arrangement and plaster columns, the art in this gallery becomes a series of clues that beg the question, what compilation of objects would accurately remember you? It may sound like a materialistic quest for self-realization, but it is something to consider during this infamous time of “finding yourself.” So visit for some ideas of what great individuals have left behind, for the beautiful ride to cantor, and, if nothing else, visit for the pretty pictures.

Or, if that didn’t work, here is some serious name-dropping in the spirit of promotional clips for the arts: Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Sargeant, Corot.