Exhibition dates: April 25 – July 30, 2006
Exhibition location: The Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Gallery, Lila Acheson Wallace Wing
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.
Betty Woodman began her career with clay as her chosen medium. The vase was her earliest – and over time, it has become her most salient – subject. For Woodman, the vase can be a vessel, a metaphor, or an art-historical reference. Her work alludes to and infuses numerous sources, including Minoan and Egyptian art, Greek and Etruscan sculpture, Tang Dynasty works, majolica and Sèvres porcelain, Italian Baroque architecture, and the paintings of Picasso and Matisse.
The exhibition is made possible by the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc.
Woodman's conceptual boldness and her ambitious experimentation – in which she combines such unlikely materials as lacquer paint on earthenware and terra sigilatta, a slip glaze often used on ancient ceramics, on paper – have produced a unique and significant series of innovations. This is particularly evident in Deco Lake Shore (2003, Metropolitan Museum), a large, colorful drawing on handmade paper in which Woodman combines graphite and ink with terra sigillata and wax. Although this work relates to her ceramics – in particular, to her 2001 ceramic diptych, Bonnard and his Ladies #1 – in terms of its deco-like design, its imagery, and the unusual use of media, it can be viewed as an independent work of art that explores her painterly sensibilities.
The exhibition will include wall reliefs such as Balustrade Relief Vase 97-15, a promised gift to the Metropolitan Museum. Works in this series especially highlight Woodman's interest in the Baroque architecture of Italy, where she has spent part of each year working since the mid-1960s. There will also be a variety of works from her acclaimed "Pillow Pitcher" series. One of her most successful forms, it is loosely based on Cretan pitchers and is made by joining two cylinders end to end with the remaining ends pinched to closure – the form now connoting the kind of volume in an overstuffed pillow while retaining a sense of the utilitarian. The Ming Sisters (2003, Metropolitan Museum), a monumental triptych, is one of a number of recent works inspired by Woodman's longstanding investigation of the arts and crafts of the East. It is boldly colored, depicting her vision of motifs seen on trips to Japan and Korea.
To complement The Art of Betty Woodman, the artist will create five large flower urns that will be placed in the niches and on the Information Desk of the Museum's Great Hall. For the duration of the exhibition, these urns will hold the large starburst arrangements of fresh flowers that are refreshed each week, thanks to an endowment provided by the late Lila Acheson Wallace.
The exhibition is organized by Jane Adlin, Assistant Curator in the Metropolitan's Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.
It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated book with a foreword by Jane Adlin and scholarly essays by Barry Schwabsky, Janet Koplos, and Arthur Danto. The book will be published by Monacelli Press to coincide with the opening of the exhibition.
The exhibition will be featured on the Museum's website (www.metmuseum.org).
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January 31, 2006
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