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• Goddess to be Theme of Costume Institute's Spring 2003 Exhibition and Gala at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, May 5, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  From the clothing of ancient Greece to such modern evocations as Madame Grès's emblematic creations and Versace's Neoclassical loincloths, classical dress has profoundly inspired and influenced art and fashion through the millennia. Goddess – a major exhibition opening in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute on May 1, 2003 – will present clothing, prints, photographs, and decorative works of art from the 18th century onward, to reveal the many ways in which classical dress has become a truly timeless style.

• Civilizations of Ancient Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Pakistan Featured in Landmark Metropolitan Museum Show

  Sunday, May 4, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The remarkable flowering of the world's earliest civilizations some 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia—present-day Iraq—will be the focus of a landmark exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 8. The culmination of years of planning and research, Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus will survey the evolution of art and culture in the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and their impact on the emerging cities of the ancient world—from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia and along the Gulf to the Indus Valley—during one of the most seminal and creative periods in history. Some 50 museums from more than a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East will participate in this ambitious exhibition, lending national treasures that have rarely, if ever, been sent outside the walls of their art institutions.

• Statement by Philippe de Montebello, Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, On the Looting of the Baghdad Museum

  Sunday, April 20, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Even as the Metropolitan Museum continues working to open on May 8 its long-scheduled, and now providential international loan exhibition "Art of the First Cities," featuring so many masterpieces of art from ancient Iraq, we join the greater museum community in mourning the horrifying plunder of the Baghdad Museum. And we stand prepared to join our fellow institutions to begin restoring the Baghdad Museum at the earliest possible opportunity.

• The Photography of Charles Sheeler

  Saturday, April 12, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Nearly 100 works, including 90 photographs, by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), one of the most important American artists of the first half of the 20th century and a pioneer of American modernism, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003. The Photography of Charles Sheeler, is the first major exhibition to concentrate on each of Sheeler's landmark photographic series made between 1915 and 1939, and will consist of rare vintage prints. The exhibition will reveal the full significance of Sheeler's photographs as the foundation from which his better-known works in other mediums were derived.

• Metropolitan Museum to Expand Hours for Final Weekend of Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman Exhibition

  Monday, March 24, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 25, 2003)—In response to the record-breaking attendance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's special exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, the Museum announced today that it will extend its visiting hours on the exhibition's final weekend until 10:00 p.m. on both Saturday, March 29, and Sunday, March 30.

• Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection of Modern Art Donated to Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, February 26, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  More than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and original prints by some of the most prominent artists of the 20th century have been donated by the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – by such modern art icons as Henri Matisse, Balthus, Chagall, Derain, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miró, and Tanguy, as well as several pivotal but lesser-known artists – were collected by the New York art dealer Pierre Matisse (1900-1989).

• Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan

  Monday, February 10, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  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.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS JANUARY-APRIL 2003

  Wednesday, January 8, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  New Exhibitions
  Upcoming Exhibitions
  Continuing Exhibitions
  New and Recently Opened Installations

• Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617): Prints, Drawings, and Paintings

  Tuesday, December 31, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  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.

• Rare Porcelain Made in China for Export to Go on View at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, December 16, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.

• New Installation of Indian Paintings Now on View in Metropolitan Museum's Irving Galleries

  Monday, December 16, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Purists at the Hindu Courts – a new installation of paintings from the Hindu courts of India, dating from the 17th to the 19th century – will be on view in Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for South and Southeast Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 6, 2003. Drawn from the Museum's collection, and including many recent acquisitions, the installation features 18 works depicting hunting scenes, garden parties, and historical events. This exquisite grouping explores the interconnections between the Muslim and Hindu court traditions.

• Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Forty vintage photographs from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gilman Paper Company will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003, complementing The Photography of Charles Sheeler. Ranging from Frederick H. Evans's rich platinum prints of the interior of William Morris's home (1896), to Ralph Steiner's Power Lines and Insulators (1929), Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries will feature works by early 20th-century photographers who drew inspiration from the American city, the machine, and the radical innovations of European modernists.

• Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.

• Manet and the American Civil War: The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama"

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  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.

• Celebrating Saint Petersburg

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The 300th anniversary of the founding of Saint Petersburg will be celebrated with a display of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's important holdings of sculpture and decorative works of art, either made in the imperial Russian capital or formerly included in Saint Petersburg collections. Reflecting the splendor and cosmopolitan culture of the czarist court, the selection of approximately 65 objects, dating from about 1700 to the early 20th century, includes exquisitely crafted furniture, silver, porcelain, jewelry, and other luxury items of Russian, as well as French and German manufacture. On view from late spring 2003 through fall 2004, Celebrating Saint Petersburg inaugurates the Metropolitan's new European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department's Special Exhibitions Gallery.

• Roy Lichtenstein on the Roof

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Six sculptures by the celebrated American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) will go on view in The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1. Selected from the collections of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and the estate of the artist, Roy Lichtenstein on the Roof will highlight brightly painted or patinated bronze and fabricated aluminum sculptures. Created in the 1990s, each work makes witty reference to Lichtenstein's own painting or to the work of such modernist artists as Picasso and Brancusi. The works will be exhibited in the 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the New York City skyline. The installation will mark the sixth single-artist installation on the Cantor Roof Garden.

• Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  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 Photography of Charles Sheeler

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  One hundred and twenty photographs by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), one of the most important American artists of the first half of the 20th century and a pioneer of American modernism, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003. The Photography of Charles Sheeler is the first major exhibition to concentrate on each of Sheeler's major photographic series made between 1915 and 1939, and will consist of rare vintage prints. The exhibition will reveal the full significance of Sheeler's photographic works as the foundation from which his better-known works in other mediums were derived.

• Thomas Struth

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Seventy works—many grandly scaled—by photographer Thomas Struth (German, born 1954), one of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from Europe in the past two decades, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 4 through May 18, 2003. From his early black-and-white streetscapes of European and American cities to his recent mural-sized color views of primeval landscapes in Asia, Australia, and South America, Struth's superb photographs explore the traditions and the actual conditions of our world on the cusp of this newly global millennium.

• Three Stellar Acquisitions Join Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Three works of art of exceptional importance have been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by the Museum's Director, Philippe de Montebello. In making the announcement, Mr. de Montebello stressed the high quality of the works, which come from different centuries and cultures, and reinforce the Museum's ongoing commitment to continually refining and augmenting its encyclopedic collections with what he termed "the best of kind." The new acquisitions are: a 14th-century Crucifixion scene in tempera and gold leaf on wood by the Italian master Pietro Lorenzetti; a bust of the mythological figure Marsyas by the late-Baroque sculptor Balthazar Permoser; and a set of three late-14th-century handscrolls from Japan illustrating the Tale of Aki-no-yonaga (Tale for the Long Autumn Night).

• Metropolitan Museum Participates in 14th Annual "Day Without Art" Observance of International AIDS Awareness Day

  Thursday, November 14, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will participate in International AIDS Awareness Day for the 14th consecutive year by observing Day Without Art on Tuesday, December 3. In recognition of the devastating losses suffered by the cultural community as a result of AIDS, the Metropolitan will remove from view or shroud at least one object in each of its 18 curatorial departments. In addition, the Museum will lower the flags on its plaza to half-mast to symbolize the losses due to AIDS-related deaths in the art community.

• Barrie A. Wigmore Elected a Trustee at the Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, November 12, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Barrie A. Wigmore has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the November 12 meeting of the Board.

• French Nineteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection

  Thursday, November 7, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  This is the first exhibition in 20 years to survey the rich holdings of French 19th-century drawings and watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's renowned Robert Lehman Collection. On view from November 19, 2002, through February 9, 2003, French Nineteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection will feature more than 80 works by most of the leading artists — Ingres, Delacroix, Rousseau, Degas, Renoir, and Seurat, to name just a few — of this pivotal epoch in the history of French art. Organized to coincide with the publication of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Drawings, volume IX in the complete series of Robert Lehman Collection scholarly catalogues, both the exhibition and the book will reveal yet another facet of the taste of one of the great American collectors of the 20th century.

• Metropolitan Museum to Show Medieval Masterworks from New York City's Morgan Library

  Wednesday, October 30, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  For a period of two-and-one-half years beginning this fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display seven superb examples of medieval art from the Morgan Library, while that facility undergoes a major expansion project. The long-term loans include some of the favorite works of the noted financier and collector J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), a past President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. After Morgan's death, nearly 7,000 paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from his astonishing collection were given to the Metropolitan, while his private library – and the illuminated, literary, and historical manuscripts, early printed books, and Old Master drawings and prints it contained – became The Pierpont Morgan Library. Most of the works that are being lent to the Metropolitan had been kept in Mr. Morgan's study during his lifetime and, since his death, have been displayed in the room with other personal belongings.

• Metropolitan Museum Opens Gallery Devoted to Works of Louis Comfort Tiffany

  Monday, October 14, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open a new permanent exhibition space this fall, devoted to the full range of work by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), who was one of the most versatile and talented American artists of his time. Part of the recently named Deedee Wigmore Galleries, the installation will highlight the Museum's preeminent Tiffany collection and will feature some 80 stunning examples of his windows, lamps, furniture, mosaics, blown Favrile glass vases, pottery, enamelwork, jewelry, and paintings. Works from the early 1870s to the early 1920s will be on view. A selection of design drawings from the Museum's holdings of more than 400 works on paper by the Tiffany Studios will be shown. Because of their fragile nature and sensitivity to light, the drawings will be displayed on a rotating schedule.

• STATEMENT BY METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ON DAMAGE TO TULLIO LOMBARDO'S ADAM

  Monday, October 7, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, Tuesday, October 8, 2002)-Sometime between closing time (5:30 p.m.) and 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 6, a 15th-century Venetian marble Adam by Tullio Lombardo fell with its pedestal in the Vélez Blanco Patio at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• Hanukkah Menorah Display at Metropolitan Museum to Celebrate Holiday Season

  Thursday, October 3, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  An elaborately decorated 18th-century menorah – one of the oldest symbols of the Jewish faith – will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning November 26. This is the second consecutive year that the piece will be shown during the Hanukkah season. Dating to about 1771, the candelabrum is large in size (H. 60" W.41" D.19") and rich in ornament, indicating that it was intended for use in a synagogue. An inscription suggests that the synagogue was located in Eastern Europe, probably in Poland.

• Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Creche

  Wednesday, October 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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.

• Arts of the Spanish Americas to be Highlighted in Metropolitan Museum Fall Exhibition

  Wednesday, October 2, 2002, 4:00 a.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.

• New Installation of Central Asian Art at Metropolitan Highlights Remarkable Treasure Traveling for First Time Outside Russia

  Wednesday, October 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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.

• EUGENE V. THAW NAMED HONORARY TRUSTEE AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  Sunday, September 29, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  Eugene Victor Thaw has been elected an Honorary Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the September 10 meeting of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Thaw, a dealer of Old Master drawings and prints, has presided over the New York firm that bears his name since 1950. Known also as a collector and a scholar, he has written numerous articles, essays, reviews, and catalogues. He is a contributing editor to The New Republic.

• Richard Avedon: Portraits, Opening at Metropolitan Museum on September 26, Captures Creative Genius of a Generation

  Wednesday, September 18, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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.

• Cultivated Landscapes: Reflections of Nature in Chinese Painting with Selections from the Collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill

  Monday, September 9, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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.

• Metropolitan Museum of Art to Donate 9/11 Admissions to Neighborhood Firehouse Family Fund

  Thursday, September 5, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 6, 2002)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it will donate all of the admissions revenues it receives at the main building and The Cloisters on Wednesday, September 11, to the Engine 22 and Ladder 13 Family Fund—a charity established by the neighborhood firehouse that lost nine men at the World Trade Center one year ago.

• Metropolitan Museum to Commemorate 9/11 Anniversary by Exhibiting Fire Department Sign-Out Boards, Preserved by the Met's Conservation Department

  Thursday, September 5, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  (NEW YORK, September 6, 2002)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced plans to observe the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center with the exhibition of a recently restored 9/11 relic, a series of musical performances, poetry readings, and publication of a specially prepared list of curators' choices of works of art that express the myriad of emotions evoked by both the tragedy and the city's recovery.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS SEPTEMBER—DECEMBER 2002

  Wednesday, August 21, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  New Exhibitions
  Upcoming Exhibitions
  Continuing Exhibitions
  New and Recently Opened Installations
  Traveling Exhibitions
  Visitor Information

• Recent Acquisitions of Arms and Armor Displayed at Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, July 30, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  Some 60 of the most important examples of armor, weapons, firearms, and martial accoutrements acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the last decade will be shown this fall. Opening to the public on September 4, Arms and Armor: Notable Acquisitions 1991-2002 will be the inaugural exhibition in the newly named Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Gallery.

• Théodore Chassériau (1819--1856): The Unknown Romantic

  Sunday, July 28, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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.

• A Very Private Collection: Janice H. Levin's Impressionist Pictures

  Sunday, July 28, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  The collection of some 35 Impressionist pictures that graced the walls of Janice H. Levin's Fifth Avenue apartment will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from November 19, 2002, through February 9, 2003. The intimately scaled exhibition, A Very Private Collection: Janice H. Levin's Impressionist Pictures will include exceptional works by many of the great masters of 19th-century French painting – Bonnard, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Vuillard, among others.

• The Written Image: Japanese Calligraphy and Painting from the Sylvan Barnet and William Burto Collection

  Thursday, July 18, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  A remarkable collection of Japanese calligraphy and painting assembled by two American collectors over the past 40 years is the subject of the special exhibition The Written Image: Japanese Calligraphy and Painting from the Sylvan Barnet and William Burto Collection, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 1. Featuring 60 works, the exhibition traces the evolution of Japanese calligraphy from the Nara (710-784) through the Edo (1615-1868) period, including examples of both Chinese script (kanji) and Japanese kana script. These expressive calligraphic masterworks, including Buddhist holy texts, Zen aphorisms, secular poems, and intimate personal letters, embody diverse expressive goals as well as convey something of the writers' cultivation and character. The works from the Barnet and Burto Collection—among which are notable gifts and promised gifts to the Metropolitan Museum—will be complemented by a selection of Japanese paintings and calligraphy from the museum's holdings.

• Cultivated Landscapes: Reflections of Nature in Chinese Painting with Selections from the Collection of Marie-Hél ène and Guy Weill

  Wednesday, July 10, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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.

• American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Highlights from the Collection, 1710-1890

  Wednesday, June 5, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  More than 100 works in pencil, pen and ink, chalk, pastel, and watercolor by some of this country's most renowned early artists will be featured in American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Highlights from the Collection, 1710-1890, opening to the public on September 3, 2002. On view will be examples of portraiture by academic and folk artists, figure drawing, historical and literary narrative, landscape – including several early views of New York City – and scientific illustration. Drawn entirely from the Museum's exceptional holdings of this material, the exhibition celebrates the publication of Volume I of American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes works by artists born before 1835.

• Works by Archaeologist Ernst Emile Herzfeld on View at Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, June 5, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  Some three dozen works from the archives of Ernst Emile Herzfeld (1879-1948), one of the most prominent archaeologists and scholars of ancient Near Eastern and Islamic art of the first half of the 20th century, will go on view this summer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Herzfeld in Samarra. The notebooks, sketchbooks, travel journals, artistically accomplished watercolors and ink drawings, site maps, architectural plans, and photographs were all acquired by the Metropolitan in 1943.

• Gauguin in New York Collections: The Lure of the Exotic to Open at Metropolitan Museum of Art June 18

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  For the first time in more than 40 years, 19th–century French artist Paul Gauguin is the subject of a major monographic show in New York City. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 18 through October 20, 2002, Gauguin in New York Collections: The Lure of the Exotic features approximately 120 works drawn from museums and private collections in New York City and State, many of which are rarely exhibited publicly. The exhibition also marks the first time that the Metropolitan will display its own extensive holdings of the artist's work, numbering some 60 objects.

• Genghis Khan's Cultural Legacy Highlighted in Landmark Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  In a lifetime characterized by war and conquest, Genghis Khan (1167?–1227) forged the largest contiguous land empire in human history. His legacy was a unified Mongol confederacy that his sons and grandsons ruled for more than a century. During this peaceful era, people, objects, and ideas moved with unprecedented freedom over a vast territory that reached from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea. The confluence of previously distant cultures yielded a bold new visual aesthetic that would resonate in Islamic art for centuries to come.

• African-American Artists, 1929-1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  More than 80 works—drawn extensively from 200 prints donated to the Museum in 1999 by Reba and Dave Williams—will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 14 through May 4, 2003. African-American Artists, 1929-1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art will feature a variety of print media including intaglio, lithography, woodcut and wood engraving, and serigraph (screen printing), as well as a selection of paintings and watercolors. The exhibition focuses on aspects of daily life for African Americans during the latter period of the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression, and World War II.

• Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  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 in late November. 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.

• Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  The first comprehensive exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings ever presented in America, Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, a landmark international loan exhibition, will bring together nearly 120 works by one of the most renowned masters of all time. Even in an era celebrated for its limitless scientific discovery, technological invention, and sublime artistic achievement, Leonardo stands as an icon in Western consciousness — the very embodiment of the universal Renaissance genius.

• Summer Selections: Scenes and Citizens of the Early Republic in Watercolor

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  Early 19th–century America will be the focus of this year's Summer Selections, the second annual installation drawn from the Metropolitan Museum's collection of works on paper created by American artists between 1710 and 1920. This summer's exhibition — which coincides with the Metropolitan's presentation of the landmark traveling exhibition Thomas Eakins — will feature the work of two artists active in Philadelphia, Eakins's hometown, in the decades preceding his birth. Some 50 watercolors — including genre scenes, landscapes, and portraits — primarily by the Russian diplomat Pavel Petrovich Svinin (1787/88–1839), along with several works recently attributed to the German émigré John Lewis Krimmel (1786–1821), will be shown. Many of the works document street life in Philadelphia, where Krimmel lived and where Svinin was headquartered for two–and–a–half years.

• The Age of Impressionism: European Painting from the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen

  Sunday, June 2, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  Eighty–four paintings — including landmark works of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as well as masterpieces from the Golden Age of Danish painting — all from the Ordrupgaard Collection in Copenhagen, Denmark, are featured in this exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. On view June 18 through September 8, 2002, The Age of Impressionism: European Painting from the Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen offers a dazzling survey of this remarkable collection, including works by Cézanne, Corot, Courbet, Degas, Delacroix, Eckersberg, Gauguin, Købke, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley, among others. Assembled by the Danish insurance magnate Wilhelm Hansen (1868-1936), both the collection and the country house from which it derives its name were bequeathed to the Danish State upon the death of Hansen's wife, Henny, in 1951.