-
An exhibition examining the successive waves of artistic influence that flowed from China eastward to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago over the past 1,000 years will take place at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning in March 2003. Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan, drawn from the Museum's unparalleled collection of East Asian painting, will explore how Chinese pictorial themes – Buddhist iconography, landscape imagery, flower and bird subjects, and figural narratives – were adopted selectively and reinterpreted by native artists in Korea and Japan. Organized thematically, the exhibition will focus on landscapes and images from nature in the Douglas Dillon Galleries for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy (opening March 1), and on the figural arts, including religious and narrative themes, in The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan (opening March 15). Works from China, Japan, and Korea will be shown in both gallery areas.
-
The first major retrospective devoted to the virtuoso Netherlandish mannerist Hendrick Goltzius will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 26, 2003. Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch Master (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings—a selection of some 80 prints, 69 drawings, and 13 paintings, including loans from collections throughout Europe and the United States—spans the artist's entire career and demonstrates his legendary mastery of a remarkably wide range of media, subject matter and styles.
-
In June of 1864, an important episode in the American Civil War took place in international waters off the coast of Cherbourg, France. The duel between the U.S.S. Kearsarge and the C.S.S. Alabama created a sensation in Europe and America alike, and caught the imagination of the French artist Édouard Manet (1832-83), who made a painting of the battle before rushing to Boulogne to see the victorious Kearsarge. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired Manet's portrait of the Kearsarge and to celebrate the acquisition will present a small exhibition devoted to the battle, Manet's response, and the effect of Manet's paintings on his immediate friends. Manet and the American Civil War: The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama" is a dossier exhibition that opens on June 3.
-
The remarkable flowering of the world's earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago will be the focus of a landmark exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 8. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus will survey the evolution of Mesopotamian art and culture and its impact on the cities of the ancient world – stretching from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia to the Indus Valley – during one of the most seminal and creative periods in history.
-
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 beginning November 26. 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, the installation reflects the spirit of the holiday season. There will be a spectacular lighting ceremony every Friday and Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m.
-
An exhibition of secular and religious arts created in Latin America during the period of Spanish rule will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 11. Featuring nearly 70 works of art, Arts of the Spanish Americas, 1550-1850: Works from the Museum's CollectionI will highlight the creativity of artists working in the regions colonized by Spain, from the Rio Grande to the Andes, from the period of evangelization through Independence. The exhibition will include a selection of Mexican glazed ceramic ware know as Talavera de Puebla, Mexican and Andean textiles and silver, paintings and polychrome sculpture from all over the Spanish-speaking Americas and the Philippines, and a group of wooden kero cups, the traditional ceremonial drinking vessels of the Andes.
-
A new installation focusing on the art of Central Asia is on view on the Great Hall Balcony of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrating the vibrancy and diversity found in objects created in the vast realm that stretched between Iran and China in ancient times. The 37 works of art in Glimpses of the Silk Road: Central Asia in the First Millennium are drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's collections of Asian and Ancient Near Eastern art, and include important loans as well as recent Museum acquisitions.
-
One hundred eighty portraits by acclaimed photographer Richard Avedon—a vast collective portrait of America in the second half of the 20th century—will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 26. Richard Avedon: Portraits will feature his most classic and penetrating images, documenting as never before this artist's dazzling reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture. The exhibition, which will remain on view through January 5, 2003, will span Avedon's entire career, from his earliest portraits made in the late 1940s through his most recent work.
-
A major exhibition tracing the evolution of Chinese landscape painting over the last 1,000 years will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 10. Featuring more than 75 works drawn largely from the Museum's permanent collection, Cultivated Landscapes: Reflections of Nature in Chinese Painting with Selections from the Collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill will explore the manifold uses of natural imagery in Chinese painting as reflections of human beliefs and emotions. Encompassing landscapes and garden scenes dating from the Five Dynasties period (907-960) to the late 20th century, the exhibition will present examples in all pictorial formats: hanging scrolls, handscrolls, album leaves, and fans. A dozen important works by leading masters of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties from the Weill Collection – given or promised to the Museum – will be highlighted in the Frances Young Tang Gallery.
-
The first retrospective exhibition in the United States of works by the lyrical 19th-century French painter Théodore Chassériau will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 22, 2002, through January 5, 2003. Théodore Chassériau (1819--1856): The Unknown Romantic will feature 54 paintings and 82 works on paper – many never before exhibited in the United States – culled from international collections. Although he ranks among the most important and influential artists of the first half of the 19th century, Chassériau has remained one of the least known to modern audiences.