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AsAs superheroes enjoy a surge in mass popularity, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art explores the symbolic and metaphorical associations between these fictional characters and fashion in Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, an exhibition at the Museum from May 7 through September 1, 2008. The exhibition features approximately 60 ensembles including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture, and high-performance sportswear to reveal how the superhero serves as the ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human body.
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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds one of the world's finest collections of European decorative arts. Thirty-five of its masterpieces will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning May 20, 2008, in the exhibition Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the V&A prepares a new suite of galleries for its collection. Dating from 300 to 1600, the exhibition will include superb examples of sculpture, metalwork, ceramics, and glass that are rarely lent. Most have never been on view in New York.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940 tells the story of photography's first 100 years through the work of 13 key figures who helped shape the aesthetic and expressive course of the medium: Gustave Le Gray, Roger Fenton, Carleton Watkins, William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nadar, Edouard Baldus, Charles Marville, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Brassaï. Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 3, 2008, the exhibition will present 10 to 12 iconic works by each of these influential artists, to convey a broad sense of their contributions to photography. Many of the works displayed in Framing a Century are drawn from the acclaimed Gilman Paper Company Collection, which was acquired by the Museum in 2005.
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Opening May 6, 2008, this installation showcases many of the most significant works in the Metropolitan Museum's modern design collection. The major design movements are represented through works created by some of the most renowned designers of the 20th century.
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Sculptures by Jeff Koons (b. 1955) – an American artist known internationally for his controversial and intriguing contributions to contemporary art – comprise The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2008 installation on The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening April 22. The installation will feature three large-scale and brilliantly colored works: Balloon Dog (Yellow) of 1994-2000, Coloring Book of 1997-2005, and Sacred Heart (Red/Gold) of 1994-2007 – all made of high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating. These sculptures have never before been on public display. They will be situated in the 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the New York City skyline. Jeff Koons on the Roof will be the 11th consecutive single-artist installation on the Cantor Roof Garden.
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An unprecedented exhibition of luxury items from ancient Peru, embellished with brilliantly colored feathers of Amazonian rainforest birds, went on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 26. Bringing together more than 70 works from public and private collections in the United States and the Metropolitan's own holdings – many of which have never been displayed before – Radiance from the Rain Forest: Featherwork in Ancient Peru explores the more than 2,000-year-old tradition of sophisticated feather-working that prospered in ancient Peru.
The exhibition was made possible by the Friends of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
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Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium since 1960, on view from April 8 through October 19, 2008, is the second exhibition in the Museum's new gallery for contemporary photographs. Photography on Photography presents four decades of photographs by artists in the permanent collection who have made photography itself their subject and taken aim at its claims of objectivity and its ubiquity in modern life. Featured in the exhibition are works by Vito Acconci, William Anastasi, Lutz Bacher, Liz Deschenes, Roe Ethridge, Robert Heinecken, Sherrie Levine, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Thomas Ruff, Allen Ruppersberg, Karin Sander, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Andy Warhol, as well as recently acquired photographs by Moyra Davey, Kota Ezawa, Janice Guy, Josephine Pryde, James Welling, Christopher Williams, and Mark Wyse.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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Order and disorder, reason and emotion, restraint and excess — opposing impulses such as these have influenced design since the beginning of civilization. Classic/Fantastic: Selections from the Modern Design Collection, opening December 21 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, juxtaposes these divergent approaches, presenting an Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy of design philosophies in the modern era. Of the approximately 75 works in a wide range of media — including furniture, metalwork, ceramics, glass, textiles, and drawings — half will be devoted to designs rooted in the centuries-old vocabulary of classicism, updated yet still linked to the rules and traditions of the past, and the other half to romantic and surreal subjects of fantasy, drawn from the realm of pure imagination. A number of works from the Metropolitan Museum's collection will be exhibited for the first time, including tables by Costa Achillopoulo and John Dickinson, a Dutch Rozenburg ceramic covered vase (ca. 1900-14), a Danish lamp by Sigfrid Wagner (1905), a Dale Chihuly Venetian series glass vase (1989), and flatware designed by the American Marion Weeber (1965-70).
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中國人有句話說:“一圖勝千言”。有鑒于此,將於2008年三月一日在大都會博物館開幕的特展 “書畫名品的奧妙:如何解讀中國畫” 對中國書畫進行圖像分析,將原作與放大的細部照片並列,以顯示每件作品的奧妙之處。展出的大都會博物館收藏的書畫共有三十六件,有時一個展廳只針對兩三件作品,透過精彩的細部放大,使觀衆了解其風格、構圖、或内容。作品的年代跨越八世紀到十七世紀的一千年,題材包括人物、山水、花鳥、和宗教畫,是大都會館藏中的精華。
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A Chinese saying summarizes the dichotomy between image and text this way:
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Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 5, Jasper Johns: Gray will be the first exhibition to examine the use of the color gray in the work of American artist Jasper Johns. From the mid-1950s to the present, gray has been a consistent thread in Johns's practice and an important means for the artist to evoke different moods and to explore a range of formal ideas. This major exhibition offers a new lens through which to see the work of this pivotal American artist, bringing together 119 paintings, reliefs, drawings, prints, and sculptures. Jasper Johns: Gray features masterworks of Johns's career — such as Canvas, Gray Target, Jubilee, 0 through 9, No, Diver, and The Dutch Wives — as well as works from the artist's recent Catenary series and new works never before exhibited.
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It is impossible to tell you all the insults my painting of this year has won me, but I don't care, for when I am no longer controversial I will no longer be important.
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A special installation of magnificent Korean screens dating from the late 19th to the early 20th century will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 11. Featuring four screens drawn from American collections, Beauty and Learning: Korean Painted Screens will highlight a unique genre of Korean painting known as ch'aekkŏri (books and things), which flourished in Korea from the late 18th to the early 20th century. These screens, portraying books and objects, can be seen as representations of a scholar's study or studio. Approximately 20 objects, including ceramics and bronzes similar to those illustrated in the screens, will complement the installation. This is the first exhibition to focus on the subject in the United States.
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"I would like… to join the curves of the women to the shoulders of the hills…Like Poussin, I would like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky."
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
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On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the design for Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted's 843-acre New York City masterpiece, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Lee Friedlander: A Ramble in Olmsted Parks. On view from January 22 to May 11, 2008, the exhibition will feature 36 photographs, most never before on public display. Friedlander describes these striking photographs, culled from a 20-year exploration of public parks and private estates designed by North America's premier landscape architect, as "one photographer's pleasurable and wandering glances at places that bear the great vision of Mr. Olmsted."
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As a living art, fashion is open to multiple readings, and blog.mode: addressing fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 18, 2007, through April 13, 2008, presents approximately 65 costumes and accessories dating from the 18th century to the present — all recent Metropolitan Museum acquisitions — and invites the public to share their reactions via a blog on the Museum's website. Over the duration of the exhibition, which will take place in The Costume Institute galleries, individual costumes and accessories will be posted on the blog periodically with commentary from curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, and, where relevant, from contemporary designers.
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An installation of rare and exquisitely decorated armor, weapons, and equestrian equipment from Tibet and culturally related areas of Mongolia and China will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 14. Featuring approximately 35 objects dating from the 15th to the 20th century, Tibetan Arms and Armor from the Permanent Collection will explore this little known aspect of Tibet's rich artistic and historic culture. Drawn from the Museum's own collection – one of the most important in the world – the installation includes several recent acquisitions that have never before been exhibited or published.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art's renovated and expanded Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture will reopen on December 4, 2007. The newly refurbished galleries – which occupy nearly 35,000 square feet, including 8,000 square feet of new exhibition space named the Henry J. Heinz II Galleries in recognition of a major gift made by his widow, the long-time Metropolitan Museum Trustee Drue Heinz – will showcase European paintings from the Museum's world-renowned collection, dating from 1800 through the early 20th century. This new presentation will feature a more thorough display of the Museum's 19th-century collection, augmented with seminal works from the early modern era.
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The Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a long-established yuletide tradition in New York, will be on view for the holiday season from November 20, 2007, through January 6, 2008. The brightly lit, 20-foot blue spruce – with a collection of 18th-century Neapolitan angels and cherubs among its boughs and groups of realistic crèche figures flanking the Nativity scene at its base – will once again delight holiday visitors in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall. Set in front of the 18th-century Spanish choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, with recorded Christmas music in the background and daily lighting ceremonies, the installation reflects the spirit of the holiday season.
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A new, large-scale work conceived specifically for display in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's galleries by New York-based artist Tara Donovan (American, born 1969) comprises the exhibition Tara Donovan at the Met, on view from November 20, 2007, through April 27, 2008.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Wrightsman Galleries, currently undergoing
extensive renovations and reinstallation, will reopen on October 30. The
spectacular 18th-century rooms, which include the De Tessé Room, the Cabris
Room, the Paar Room, the Varengeville Room, the Bordeaux Room, and the
Crillon Room, house the Museum's renowned collection of French furniture and
related decorative arts. Named for Jayne and Charles Wrightsman, who amassed
one of the finest private collections in America of the decorative arts of the ancien
régime, the galleries opened to the public between 1969 and 1977. The
Wrightsmans' splendid gifts strengthened the Museum's already important
collection of French 18th-century interiors and furnishings. Mrs. Wrightsman, a
Trustee Emerita, continues her generosity to the Metropolitan Museum to this day,
and has made these renovations possible.
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著名作家林語堂(1895-1976)和其家人收藏的四十三件中國近代書畫將從九月十五日起,在大都會博物館首次公開展出。林氏後人最近將這批藏品捐贈給大都會博物館。
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From the Middle Ages through the late 18th century, the courts of Europe lavished vast resources on tapestries made in precious materials after designs by the leading artists of the day, and works in this spectacular medium were prized by the aristocracy for their artistry and also as tools of propaganda. Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor – on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning October 17 – will offer the first comprehensive survey of high-quality 17th-century European tapestry, and will demonstrate the importance of tapestry as a prestigious figurative medium throughout that century. Organized by the Metropolitan Museum, it is a sequel to the ground-breaking exhibition, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, that received widespread public and scholarly acclaim during its presentation at the Metropolitan in spring 2002.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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The Metropolitan Museum will inaugurate the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography on September 25, 2007, establishing for the first time a gallery dedicated exclusively to photography created since 1960. With high ceilings, clean detailing, and approximately 2,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Menschel Hall is designed specifically to accommodate the large-scale photographs that are an increasingly important part of contemporary art and the Museum's permanent collection. Photographers represented in the collection include such modern masters as Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Doug Aitken, and Sigmar Polke.
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Opening September 25 at the Metropolitan Museum, Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860, is the first major exhibition to survey British calotypes — works of exceptional beauty and rarity which are made from paper negatives and are among the earliest forays into the medium of photography. During the first two decades of photography, British photographers turned their lenses on family, nature, and the landscape at home, and on historic architecture, ruins of past civilizations, and exotica abroad. Impressed by Light presents works by 40 artists, including such masters as William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Roger Fenton, Benjamin Brecknell Turner, and Linnaeus Tripe, as well as many talented but unrecognized artists. The majority of the works featured have never before been exhibited or published in the U.S. and are unfamiliar to scholars and the public alike.
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One of the preeminent collections of Abstract Expressionism, The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection was given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006, contributing significantly to the Museum's holdings in modern art. To celebrate the gift, Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art — on view from September 18, 2007, to March 2, 2008 —presents 55 works assembled by one of the most prescient and astute collectors of the mid-20th century.
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Through their long history, the ancient Egyptians used copper, bronze, gold, and silver to create lustrous, graceful statuary for their interactions with their gods – from ritual dramas in the temples and chapels that dotted the landscape to festival processions through the towns and countryside that were thronged by believers. Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 16, 2007, Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples is the first exhibition ever devoted to these fascinating yet enigmatic works.
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The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present, for the first time, all of the Metropolitan Museum's 228 Dutch paintings (dating mostly from the 1600s), widely considered the greatest collection of Dutch art outside Europe. Normally, only about 100 Dutch paintings are on view in the Museum. This comprehensive exhibition will provide a unique opportunity for visitors to view the collection of Dutch paintings as a whole. The exhibition also commemorates the 400th anniversary year of Rembrandt's birth and coincides with the publication of the first complete catalogue of Dutch paintings in the Metropolitan Museum.
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The mystic writings of the Persian poet known as Rumi (1207-1273) are generally considered to be the supreme expression of Sufism, the mystical trend in Islamic thought and culture. Among the themes he explored were universal religious tolerance, communion with nature as a perception of God dwelling in and reflected in all things, and the soul's quest for a loving reunion with God. Opening October 23 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition Rumi and the Sufi Tradition coincides with the worldwide celebration of the 800th anniversary of the poet-philosopher's birth. On view will be nearly three dozen works from the Museum's Islamic art collection – including miniature paintings, Islamic calligraphy, ceramics, metalwork, glass, and textiles created between the 13th and the 19th centuries – that evoke the world in which he lived and suggest the scope of his enduring legacy.
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Through the winter holiday season at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Hebrew prayerbook on generous loan from The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City and a page from a Latin choir book from the Metropolitan's own collection will be displayed side by side for the first time, both painted at the end of the 15th century by the same Florentine artist. The two works are attributed to Mariano del Buono (1433/4-1504), head of one of the most renowned and prolific ateliers in the city. His work for both Christian and Jewish patrons reveals their shared taste for embellishing books with beautiful lettering and evocative imagery and testifies to a dialogue among members of different faiths that was integral to Italian Renaissance culture.
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An exhibition featuring a remarkable assemblage of porcelain, metalwork, jade, lacquer, and textiles created during the Qing dynasty of China will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 25. Drawn from the permanent collection and complemented by select loans, Excellence and Elegance: Decorative Arts of the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court will explore the unprecedented level of technical virtuosity achieved during this period. The exhibition also illustrates the imperial taste for ancient themes, interest in Western motifs, and exacting patronage that contributed to the flourishing of the decorative arts. Among the 60 works on view will be a dazzling selection of rare porcelain wares, decorated with monochrome glaze or enamel colors.
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A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.
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Following an extensive three-year renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on November 14 its New Galleries for Oceanic Art, a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world's premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 17,000-square-foot exhibition space will present a substantially larger portion of the Metropolitan's Oceanic collection than was previously on view.
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Established in Boston in 1808 and relocated to Philadelphia three years later, the silversmithing firm of Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner produced American silver of unprecedented quality and grandeur. Opening November 20 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, 1808-1842 is the first exhibition devoted entirely to their work, which, in its grand scale and patriotic imagery, reflected America's coming of age as a commercial, industrial, political, and artistic center. More than 100 examples in silver – from monumental vessels that celebrate military and civic heroes to domestic, ecclesiastical, and personal items resplendent with neoclassical ornament and displaying sophisticated design and craftsmanship – are arranged chronologically and thematically. A rare group of some 35 related drawings, purchased by the Metropolitan in 1953 and never before exhibited together, will offer important insights into the evolution of Fletcher and Gardiner's designs. Of particular interest will be the display of seven works in silver alongside their corresponding design drawings.
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Adored by generations of artists – including Michelangelo, who is reputed to have given them the name "Gates of Paradise" – the magnificent gilded bronze doors of the east portal of the Baptistery in Florence are among the seminal monuments of the Italian Renaissance. The massive 17-feet-high doors were created by the eminent Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and designer Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), who decorated them with ten evocative, highly charged, and magically atmospheric scenes from the Old Testament, each superbly carried out in relief ranging from high to low. After more than 25 years of conservation, seven elements of this masterpiece – including three of the narrative reliefs for which they are famous – are in the United States for the first and only time since their creation more than 500 years ago. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view them at The Metropolitan Museum of Art begins October 30. After the conclusion of their four-city United States tour, the works return to Florence, to be reassembled in their original bronze framework and placed in a specially designed, hermetically sealed case in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, never to travel again.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special exhibition of acclaimed sculptural masterpieces from the heart of Africa's equatorial rainforest, beginning October 2, 2007. The exhibition explores not only the significance of the works presented in their countries of origin but also how their reception in the West led them to enter the mainstream of universal art. Organized thematically, Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary explains the sources of cultural and spiritual inspiration that led to their creation in equatorial Africa. Drawn from the most important collections of African art in Europe and the United States, the more than 130 works featured in the exhibition relate to 12 distinct traditions in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were created to celebrate the lives of an extended family's most notable ancestors and to give expression to their ongoing role as advocates with the divine.
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The studio craft movement developed in the U.S. during the years after World War II and has flourished internationally over the past 40 years. During this period, craft artists have experimented with non-traditional materials and new techniques, producing bold, abstract, and sculptural art, as well as continuing to make utilitarian objects. One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movementon view from December 22, 2006, through December 2, 2007, features approximately 50 works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and will include furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, jewelry, and fiber. Many of these works have never been on view at the Metropolitan before, and several are recent acquisitions by the Museum.
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An exhibition featuring 43 modern Chinese paintings and calligraphies assembled by the noted author Lin Yutang (1895-1976) and his family will go on view to the public for the first time at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 15. The collection was recently donated to the Museum by members of the family.
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A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.
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Although the name of Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) today appears most often in the context of dance – specifically ballet – in America, he was also actively involved in theater, writing, and collecting art. Over a span of some 40 years, he donated more than a thousand works from his personal collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – found in rare book and print shops around the world – all display some spark of ingenuity, esthetic grandeur, or legerdemain that attracted his eye.
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Neo Rauch at the Met: para presents 14 new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through October 14, 2007 — is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.
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Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect will bring together for the first time celebrated masterpieces once owned by rival brother collectors Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), founder of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Stephen Carlton Clark (1882-1960), a former trustee and illustrious donor to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring more than 65 paintings, the exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to appreciate the remarkable legacies of two brothers – heirs to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and native New Yorkers – who played notable but ultimately divergent roles as patrons of the arts in the United States.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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Two concurrent exhibitions featuring recent work by the renowned American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2007.
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A spectacular "museum-within-the-museum" for the display of its extraordinary collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman art – much of it unseen in New York for generations – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this April in its New Greek and Roman Galleries. After more than five years of construction, the long-awaited opening concludes a 15-year project for the complete redesign and reinstallation of the Museum's superb collection of classical art. Returning to public view in the new space are thousands of long-stored works from the Metropolitan's collection, which is considered one of the finest in the world. The centerpiece of the New Greek and Roman Galleries is the majestic Leon Levy and Shelby White Court – a monumental, peristyle court for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art, with a soaring two-story atrium.
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An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.
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Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí, la primera exposició d'aquest tipus mai muntada a Amèrica, explora el treball innovador i divers d'artistes, arquitectes i dissenyadors en els anys entre l'Exposició Internacional de 1888 i la imposició del règim feixista de Franco el 1939. Barcelona and Modernity ofereix noves visions dels moviments artístics que varen desenvolupar la cerca de la modernitat per part d'una ciutat que es confirmà aleshores com el centre neuràlgic de les activitats intel•lectuals, polítiques i culturals a Espanya.
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Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí — la primera exposición de este tipo jamás montada en América — explora el trabajo diverso e innovador de artistas, arquitectos, y diseñadores de Barcelona en los años entre la exposición universal de Barcelona de 1888 y la imposición del régimen fascista de Francisco Franco en 1939. Barcelona and Modernity ofrece nuevas aproximaciones a los movimientos artísticos que desarrollaron la búsqueda de la modernidad por parte de una ciudad que se confirmó entonces como el centro neurálgico de las actividades intelectuales, políticas, y culturales en España.
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Neo Rauch at the Met presents six new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through September 23, 2007 —is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.
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Hidden in Plain Sight: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, on view from May 15 through September 3, 2007, features the work of artists who use the camera to call our attention to the poetic richness latent in ordinary things. Often deliberately understated, these photographs are filled with everyday epiphanies, inviting us to look more closely at the world around us. The exhibition will feature approximately 35 works by American and international artists, including Walker Evans, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Patrick Faigenbaum, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Daniel Faust, Mitch Epstein, Lewis Koch, Bertien van Manen, Carrie Mae Weems, Rachel Harrison, and Shomei Tomatsu.
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Paul Poiret – who at the height of his career in pre-World War I France was the undisputed "King of Fashion" and whose sweeping vision led to a new silhouette that liberated women from the corset and introduced the shocking colors and exotic references of the Ballets Russes to the haute couture – will be celebrated with a landmark exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 9 through August 5, 2007. He has not been the focus of a major museum exhibition in more than 30 years.
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The theme of journeys, both real and imagined, will be presented in Journeys: Mapping the Earth and Mind in Chinese Art, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 10. Featuring more than 60 works of art in various pictorial formats – hanging scroll, handscroll, album, fan, book, and photograph – the exhibition will explore the rich symbolic meanings and cultural significance of journeys as embodied in works of art dating from the 11th century to the present. The exhibition will be organized thematically: emotional partings and returns, roaming the wilderness, escapist visions and garden retreats, dream journeys, travelers, scenic sites and landmarks, and topographic paintings and maps. Highlights of the exhibition will include a brilliantly colored 42-foot-long map entitled Ten Thousand Miles Along the Yellow River (late 17th-early 18th century), a rare deerskin map of Forts Zeelandia and Provintia and the City of Tainan (18th century), as well as a striking series of eight photographs, The North: Bicycle Rider, by contemporary artist Hai Bo (born 1962). Approximately one-third of the works are to be shown for the first time at the Museum, including 16 loans and three new acquisitions.
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The first multi-artist exhibition of video art and new media at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be presented from February 23 to April 29, 2007. Drawn entirely from the collection of the Museum's Department of Photographs, Closed Circuit: Video and New Media at the Metropolitan features video and new media works made between 1994 and 2004 by eight American and international artists: Darren Almond, Lutz Bacher, Jim Campbell, Omer Fast, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Maria Marshall, and Wolfgang Staehle. These highly respected figures in contemporary art will be represented in Closed Circuit by some of their best-known and most celebrated works, only one of which has been on exhibit before at the Met.
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An exhibition of vintage photographs celebrating one of the most memorable
episodes in the history of archaeology – the discovery and exploration of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (Dynasty 18; ruled ca. 1336-1327 B.C.) – will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning December 19. The photographs, documenting every stage in the process of the excavation, were taken by the renowned archaeological photographer Harry Burton, who was a staff member of the Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition when he was "lent" to Howard Carter, the famed excavator of Tutankhamun's tomb. Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton features his spectacular black-and-white images of the entrance passage to the tomb, the opening of the sealed chambers inside, the first view of the contents and removal of the objects, and the beautifully made and decorated treasures that were found. The four chambers of the tomb were crammed with objects such as gold-covered chariots; elaborately inlaid furniture and chests; a vast array of the king's personal belongings, including jewelry; a series of shrines and coffins that protected the king; and the famous solid-gold mask that adorned his mummy – the last, among the most iconic examples of ancient Egyptian art ever to have come to light.
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With nearly 200 works of art from more than 60 public and private collections around the world, Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797 is the first major exhibition to explore one of the most important and distinctive facets of Venetian art history: the exchange of art objects and interchange of artistic ideas between the great Italian maritime city and her Islamic neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean. Glass, textiles, carpets, arms and armor, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, furniture, paintings, drawings, prints, printed books, book bindings, and manuscripts tell the fascinating story of the Islamic contribution to the arts of Venice during her heyday, from the medieval to the Baroque eras. 828, the year two Venetian merchants stole Saint Mark's hallowed body from Muslim-controlled Alexandria and brought it to their native city, and 1797, when the Venetian Republic fell to the French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte, form the chronological parameters of the exhibition that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 27, 2007.
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An exhibition of exquisite Asian lacquer decorated with mother-of-pearl will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 2. Featuring some 50 works dating from the eighth to the 19th century, Mother-of-Pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer will illustrate the remarkable variety of effects found in the use of minute pieces of mother-of-pearl to create mosaic-like patterns and dazzling scenes. It will also explore the importance of lacquer decorated with mother-of-pearl in interregional trade from the 12th to the 19th century and in the development of maritime global trade – particularly works made in India and Japan – in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Drawn largely from the Museum's permanent collection, the exhibition will include recent acquisitions as well as several important loans from public and private collections in the United States.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present two concurrent exhibitions featuring recent work by the renowned American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) in spring 2007.
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The Treasury – an intimate gallery displaying some of the most precious small-scale works at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages – has reopened to the public after two years of renovation. Originally constructed in 1988 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Cloisters, the Treasury houses small luxury objects acquired in the years subsequent to the branch museum's 1938 founding.
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Nan Kempner – the late New York style icon, connoisseur of the couture, and member of The Best Dressed List's Hall of Fame – will be the subject of the winter exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, from December 12, 2006, through March 4, 2007. Known for a seemingly effortless style that nonetheless displayed a meticulous attention to detail, she was a
passionate client and collector of such designers as Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Oscar de la Renta from the 1960s onward.
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Bringing together masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection with important loans from private collections, Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing explores the 1,600-year history of calligraphy from its genesis as a fine art in the fourth century A.D. The exhibition presents some 70 works of calligraphy executed by renowned traditional masters – Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Ni Zan (1306-1374), and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) – as well as by five contemporary artists. Early inscribed ritual bronzes, dynamic scholars' rocks, and objects made for the artist's study complement the calligraphy.
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The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 15, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are 60 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.
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To mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods that devastated New Orleans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori. On view from September 19 through December 10 in The Howard Gilman Gallery, the exhibition will feature approximately 20 large-scale color photographs made by Robert Polidori on four extended visits to New Orleans between September 2005 and April 2006. The quietly expressive photographs present a candid and intimate look at widespread urban ruin — an incomprehensible, topsy-turvy landscape of felled oak trees, houses washed off their foundations, and tumbled furniture that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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Political, economic, and social turmoil shaped Germany's short-lived Weimar Republic (1919–1933). These pivotal years also became a most creative period of 20th-century German culture, generating innovation in literature, music, film, theater, and architecture. In painting, a trend of matter-of-fact realism took hold in Germany like nowhere else in Europe. Disillusioned by the cataclysm of World War I, the most vital German artists moved towards a Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), in particular its branch known as Verism. These artists looked soberly, cynically, and even ferociously at their fellow citizens and found their true métier in portraiture, as seen in the 40 paintings and 60 works on paper featured in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. The presentation, which opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 14, 2006, features gripping portraits by ten renowned artists: Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Ludwig Meidner, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz, and Gert H. Wollheim.
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An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.
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The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) – the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14. One hundred paintings as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, from his appearance on the Paris art scene in the mid-1890s to his death in 1939, will comprise the exhibition Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, which will feature works by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, Vuillard, and others. Highlights will include six paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896-97 Van Gogh retrospective; the masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from his 1898 Gauguin exhibition; paintings from Picasso's first French exhibition (1901) and Matisse's first solo exhibition (1904); and three pictures from Derain's London series, painted in 1906-1907 at Vollard's suggestion. Also on view will be numerous portraits of Vollard by leading artists, among them Cézanne, Bonnard, Renoir, and Picasso.
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The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 14, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are more than 50 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.
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In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds – including such luminaries as James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer – were drawn irresistibly to Paris, the world's new art capital, to learn to paint and to establish their reputations. By studying with leading masters and showing their work in Paris, these artists aimed to attract patronage from American collectors who had begun to buy contemporary French art in earnest soon after the end of the Civil War. Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters' styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of more sophisticated art schools and higher professional standards back in the United States.
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More than 80 medieval sculpted heads – half from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and half selected loans from American and European collections – are the focus of the upcoming exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, opening on September 26. The exhibition, which includes heads from the third century A.D. through the early 1500s, will consider such artistic and thematic issues as: iconoclasm and the legacy of violence, sculpting identity and the evolving notions of the "portrait," sculpture without context and the search for provenance, head reliquaries as power objects, and Gothic Italy and the antique. Created from materials as diverse as marble, limestone, polychromed wood, and silver gilt, the works represent mostly French, but also German, Italian, Spanish, Byzantine, English, and other sculptural traditions. By examining the works in different ways, the exhibition will draw together science and connoisseurship, archaeology and history. On view will be a recently acquired 13th-century limestone Head of an Angel, related to the sculpture from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
The exhibition is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece will highlight the Colonna Altarpiece, the only one by Raphael in America and, since 1916, a treasure of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. This exhibition will reunite the altarpiece's two main panels with the scenes from its predella, which were separated from the altarpiece in 1663. A select group of drawings and paintings by Raphael produced close in time to the Colonna Altarpiece, including a preparatory study for the Metropolitan's predella panel, will also be included. The exhibition will be on view at the Metropolitan from June 20 through September 3, 2006.
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A major force in New York intellectual life for more than 40 years, the novelist, essayist, and critic Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was renowned for her brilliant and impassioned writing on photography. From June 6 through September 3, 2006, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition of some 40 photographs that celebrate Sontag's contribution to the history of the medium, featuring works from the Metropolitan's collection by a wide range of artists, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, and Peter Hujar.
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Between 1902 and 1905, on more than 600 acres overlooking Long Island Sound, the noted American artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) built his dream home, an extraordinary country estate called Laurelton Hall. Every aspect of the project was designed by Tiffany himself, from the exotic 84-room, eight-level house surrounded by fountains, pools, and terraced gardens to the stables, tennis courts, greenhouses, chapel, studio, and art gallery also located on the property. Often cited as Tiffany's most important work, Laurelton Hall was destroyed by fire in 1957. Surviving architectural elements and windows salvaged by Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean are now part of the collections of the museum Mrs. McKean founded, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida. The monumental four-column loggia with its colorful glass and pottery floral capitals was saved from Laurelton Hall and has graced the American Wing's Charles Engelhard Court since 1980, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. McKean.
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In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds – including such luminaries as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer – were drawn irresistibly to Paris to learn to paint and to establish their reputations. The world's artistic epicenter, Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters' styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of newly sophisticated art schools and professional standards back in the United States.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates the 400th birthday of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn with the display of a selection of 58 drawings and prints from its extensive collection of works by the great 17th-century Dutch master and artists of his school. Forty-four of the works on view are by Rembrandt himself. The exhibition has been drawn primarily from the holdings of the Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints and the Robert Lehman Collection. One sheet, a charcoal sketch of a lioness, has been borrowed from a New York private collection.
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The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939) – the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14. One hundred paintings as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, from his appearance on the Paris art scene in the mid-1890s to his accidental death in 1939, will comprise the exhibition Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, which will feature works by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, Vuillard, and others. Highlights will include seven paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896 Van Gogh retrospective; the masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from his 1898 Gauguin exhibition; paintings from Picasso's first French exhibition (1901) and Matisse's first solo exhibition (1904); and three pictures from Derain's London series, painted in 1906-1907 at Vollard's
suggestion. Also on view will be numerous portraits of Vollard by leading artists, among them Cézanne, Renoir, Bonnard, and Picasso.
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More than 80 medieval sculpted heads – half from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and half selected loans from American and European collections – are the focus of the upcoming exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, opening this fall. The exhibition, which includes heads from the third century A.D. through the early 1500s, will consider such artistic and thematic issues as: iconoclasm and the legacy of furor, sculpting identity and the evolving notions of the "portrait," sculpture without context and the search for provenance, head reliquaries as power objects, and Gothic Italy and the antique. Created from materials as diverse as polychromed wood, silver, silver gilt, marble, and limestone, the works represent mostly French, but also German, Italian, Byzantine, and English sculptural traditions. By examining the works in different ways, the exhibition will draw together science and connoisseurship, archaeology and history. On view will be a recently acquired 13th-century limestone Head of an Angel, newly identified as having come from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
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Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings – opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 13, 2006 – will explore the growth of the concept of divine kingship among ancient Maya peoples. Featuring some 150 objects – from large-scale relief sculpture in stone to small precious pieces of worked jade – the exhibition will display the grandiose ambitions of earthly rulers when they transformed themselves into gods. Dating principally from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D., the works in the exhibition are lent primarily from public collections in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as from collections in Europe and the United States. Emphasis will be placed on recently excavated objects that will be on view for the first time in the United States. Notable among them are pieces from the renowned Maya sites of Calakmul in Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala, and Copan in Honduras. Maya jade objects discovered in tombs in the famous Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan – the contemporary but distant central Mexican city – will also be included.
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AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion, opening on May 3, 2006, will present a wide range of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum's English Period Rooms – The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries. A pendant to the acclaimed 2004 Costume Institute exhibition Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century, AngloMania will examine ideals, stereotypes, and representations of Englishness by juxtaposing historical costume with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions.
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Cai Guo-Qiang, the acclaimed Chinese-born artist known internationally for his elaborate sculpture installations and gunpowder projects, has been invited to create a site-specific exhibition for the 2006 season of The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The four works comprising Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument were inspired by the dramatic setting of the Roof Garden, an open-air space atop the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, and by the artist's reactions to issues of present-day concern.
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In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, contemporary American artist Kara Walker (b. 1969) – widely recognized for her explorations of issues of race, gender, and sexuality through the 18th-century medium of cut-paper silhouettes – has selected a variety of objects from the Museum's collection and from her own work in order to explore, in her words, "the banality of everyday life, water, and its impact." The exhibition, entitled Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge, will be on view from March 21 through July 30.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now presenting Sight Unseen: Photographs from the Gilman Collection as part of its continuing series of installations of works from its recent landmark acquisition of 8,500 photographs spanning the first hundred years of the medium. The photographs in the exhibition have never been shown publicly at the Metropolitan and will remain on view through May 21, 2006.
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A Taste for Opulence: Sèvres Porcelain from the Collection presents a selection of objects such as vases, dinner and tea services, furniture decorated with porcelain plaques, and other luxurious wares produced in the 18th century by the Sèvres porcelain factory. Established in the Château of Vincennes just outside Paris in 1740, the factory quickly became the preeminent producer of porcelain in Europe. Supported in its early years by the patronage of Louis XV, the factory was named the manufacture du roi in 1753 and was purchased by the king in 1759. Catering in large part to the tastes of the court, the factory strove for constant innovation and originality throughout the 18th century, frequently employing the leading artists and designers of the day to provide models and inspiration for the factory's artisans. A Taste for Opulence, which focuses on the diversity of the factory's production, will include approximately 90 objects drawn entirely from the Museum's superb holdings of Sèvres porcelain and from its unparalleled collection of 18th-century French furniture decorated with Sèvres plaques. The exhibition will be on view from February 21 through August 13, 2006.
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Girodet: Romantic Rebel is the first retrospective in the United States devoted to this celebrated French artist, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, a favored but rebellious student of Jacques-Louis David. Girodet's idiosyncratic style fuses David's Neoclassical ideal with his own prescient Romantic vision. The exhibition brings together approximately 110 paintings and works on paper that reflect the artist's originality and the diversity of his works, from mythological subjects to portraits and representations of Napoleon's military triumphs.Girodet will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 24 through August 27, 2006.
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The first exhibition to examine ikat textile traditions across the breadth of Indonesia will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 28, 2006. Featuring more than 25 outstanding ikat textiles, most never before exhibited, The Fabric of Life: Ikat Textiles of Indonesia explores the imagery, forms, and roles of what is perhaps the single most important, widespread, and technically sophisticated of all Indonesian textile traditions. They are drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's extensive collection of Indonesian textiles.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first U.S. retrospective of the work of noted artist Betty Woodman (American, b. 1930) from April 25 through July 30, 2006. The Art of Betty Woodman will span the artist's career, from her early works of the 1950s and 1960s through her most recent mixed-media pieces of 2005-2006, and will assess her contributions to contemporary ceramic art and her importance among post-World War II artists.
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Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet is the first comprehensive study of armor, weapons, and equestrian equipment from Tibet, a subject that has remained virtually unexplored until now. Many rare or previously unknown objects will be exhibited and published for the first time. Presenting more than 130 works, the exhibition will examine various types of unique arms and armor used in Tibet, the world's highest plateau, between the 13th and the 20th century. The objects are drawn mostly from the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and include many key loans from the Royal Armouries Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Museum of Scotland, the National Museums Liverpool, Pitt Rivers Museum, British Museum, University of Aberdeen, Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, and Newark Museum. The accompanying catalogue will include the first Tibetan-English arms and armor glossary of terms and a selection of excerpts from some of the few surviving Tibetan texts relating to the subject.
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Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí — the first comprehensive exhibition of its type ever mounted in America — explores the diverse and innovative work of Barcelona's artists, architects, and designers in the years between the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1888 and the imposition of the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco in 1939. Barcelona and Modernity offers new insights into the art movements that advanced the city's quest for modernity and confirmed it as the primary center of radical intellectual, political, and cultural activities in Spain. Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and Antoni Gaudí are among the internationally renowned artists who contributed to the creative vitality of Barcelona and the flourishing of Catalan culture. On view at the Metropolitan Museum from March 7 through June 3, 2007, the exhibition will feature some 300 remarkable works in a range of media: painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, posters, decorative objects, furniture, architectural models, and design. La Vie and Blindman's Meal, two of the greatest paintings from Picasso's Blue Period; portraits by Ramon Casas; Isidre Nonell's depictions of gypsies; Miró's The Farm; Dalí's surrealist paintings, as well as furniture designed by Gaudí and an original BKF ("butterfly") chair are among the masterworks gathered from museums and private collections around the world for this major exhibition.
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In India in the late 16th century, the Mughal emperor Akbar – a great patron of the arts – amassed an extensive library of some 20,000 beautifully illustrated and illuminated manuscripts. One of them, a lavishly ornamented copy of the Khamsa (Quintet of Tales) by Amir Khusrau Dihlavi (1253-1325), will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum beginning October 14, 2005, in the exhibition Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar's Illustrated "Khamsa," 1597-98.
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Hatshepsut, often considered the first important female head of state known to history, ruled Egypt for two decades (ca. 1479-1458 B.C.) during Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Although less familiar to modern audiences than her much later successor, the notorious Cleopatra (51-30 B.C.), Hatshepsut's achievements were comparable to those of England's Elizabeth I. Ruling first as regent for, then as co-ruler with her nephew Thutmose III (who ruled for another 33 years after her death), Hatshepsut enjoyed a relatively peaceful reign, at the beginning of the New Kingdom. She stabilized the country and restored monuments destroyed during the disruptive Second Intermediate Period, when northern Egypt was controlled by a dynasty of Asian princes and southern Egypt by a dynasty of Egyptians based in Thebes. She renewed trade with western Asia to the east, the far-off land of Punt to the south, and the Aegean Islands in the north. The resulting economic prosperity was reflected in the art of the time, which is characterized by remarkable innovations in sculpture and decorative arts and produced such architectural marvels as Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.
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EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change.
To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951.
CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.
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A long-neglected area of Egyptian art – works associated with protection and healing – will be explored in the exhibition The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in fall 2005. By focusing on this fundamen-tal, yet little-known aspect of Egyptian art, the exhibition will provide a new perspective on some 65 of the most beautiful and intriguing works from the Museum's renowned collection. The centerpiece will be the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus – the sole bor-rowed work in the exhibition – which is on loan from the New York Academy of Medicine. This manuscript, dating from the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.), is one of only two complete medical texts from ancient Egypt. Rarely seen even by Egyptologists, the manuscript's presentation at the Metropolitan represents its first public display in more than half a century.