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New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
New Galleries
Continuing Exhibitions
New & Continuing Installations
Traveling Exhibitions
OF SPECIAL NOTE:
- A landmark display on the Great Hall Balcony—the first complete reinstallation there in more than two decades—features more than 300 pieces from the Met’s extensive collection of Chinese ceramics, focusing on the technological and historical development of Chinese ceramics from the sixth through the 18th century. The works, including new acquisitions and many pieces being shown for the first time, are interspersed with 100 comparative works from Korea and Japan, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, Europe, and the Americas, illustrating the seminal role played by Chinese pottery in global ceramic history.
NEW EXHIBITIONS
Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years
September 18—December 31, 2012
For decades critics have observed that Andy Warhol exerted an enormous impact on contemporary art, but no exhibition has yet explored the full nature or extent of that influence. Through approximately 45 works by Warhol alongside 100 works by some 60 other artists, this innovative presentation juxtaposes prime examples of Warhol’s paintings, sculpture, and films with those by other artists who in key ways reinterpret, respond, or react to his groundbreaking work. What emerges is a fascinating dialogue between works of art and artists across generations.
The exhibition is made possible by Morgan Stanley.
Additional support is provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Bashford Dean and the Creation of the Arms and Armor Department
October 2, 2012—September 29, 2013
To mark the centennial of the Arms and Armor Department, this exhibition will survey the career of Dr. Bashford Dean (1867-1928), the department's founding curator. A zoologist by training, Dean was for a time simultaneously a full professor at Columbia University, first Curator of Fishes at the American Museum of Natural History, and Curator of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum. At the Met, he worked initially as a guest curator in 1904, when he was invited to install and catalogue the Museum's first significant acquisitions of arms and armor. He continued on as honorary curator until joining the staff full-time in 1912 as head of the newly created Arms and Armor Department, rapidly building the collection into one of international importance. In the process he fostered an influential group of private collectors, established American scholarship on the subject, and laid the foundations for the growth of the collection as it exists today.
Accompanied by a Bulletin.
Bernini: Sculpting in Clay
October 3, 2012—January 6, 2013
To visualize life-size and colossal marbles, the great Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) began by rapidly modeling small clay sketches. Fired as terracotta, these studies are bold, expressive works in their own right. Together with related drawings, they preserve the first traces of Bernini’s fervid imagination and unique creative process that produced some of the most spectacular statuary in Rome, including the fountains in Piazza Navona and the angels on Ponte Sant’Angelo. This exhibition will feature approximately 40 of these terracotta sketch models, shown together with 30 drawings. Due to unprecedented loans especially granted for this occasion, the exhibition will be the first to retrace Bernini’s unparalleled approach to sculptural design and his use of vigorous clay studies and drawings in directing the largest workshop of his time. The exhibition will offer viewers a more profound insight into the artist’s dazzling creative mind, and his impact on the fabric of Baroque Rome.
The exhibition and catalogue are made possible by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Turkmen Jewelry from the Collection of Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf
October 9, 2012—February 24, 2013
This exhibition of 19th- and 20th-century Turkmen jewelry and decorative objects will feature some 50 works from the collection of Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf, and celebrates their recent gift and promised gift of more than 250 works. On view will be fire-gilded silver crowns, earrings, and pectoral ornaments that are part of the traditional attire of Turkmen women. Decoration often includes inset carnelians and turquoise, granulation, and small bells suspended from chains. The repertoire of motifs varies according to the tribe of the maker and owner, and the exhibition will highlight distinctive designs from Teke, Yomut, and Kazakh jewelry-makers. To complement the jewelry, Turkmen costume and carpets will also be shown.
The exhibition is made possible by The Hagop Kevorkian Fund.
Accompanied by a publication.
Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop
October 11, 2012—January 27, 2013
While digital photography and image-editing programs such as Adobe ® Photoshop ® software have brought about an increased awareness of the degree to which photographs can be “doctored,” photographers – including such major artists as Gustave Le Gray, Henry Peach Robinson, Edward Steichen, and John Baldessari – have been fabricating, modifying, and otherwise manipulating camera images since the medium was invented. This is the first major exhibition devoted to the history of photographic manipulation before the digital age. Featuring some 200 visually captivating pictures created between the 1840s and 1990s in the service of art, politics, news, entertainment, and commerce, this international loan exhibition offers a provocative new perspective on the history of photography as it traces the medium’s complex and changing relationship to visual truth.
The exhibition is made possible by Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens
October 30, 2012—January 27, 2013
The meteoric rise of the workshop of Abraham Roentgen (1711-1793) and his son David (1743-1807) is the most spectacular chapter in the history of innovative 18th–century Continental furniture-making. This landmark exhibition will be the first comprehensive survey of the cabinetmaking firm from around 1742 to its closing in the early 1800s. Their original designs, combined with their use of intriguing mechanical devices, revolutionized traditional French and English furniture types. From its base in Germany, the workshop employed novel marketing and production techniques to cater to an international clientele. Some 60 pieces of furniture and several clocks will be complemented by paintings and prints that depict these unrivaled masterpieces in contemporary interiors. The most complicated mechanical devices will be illustrated through virtual animations. Working drawings, portraits of the cabinetmakers, their family, and important patrons, as well as a series of documents owned by the Metropolitan Museum and originating from the Roentgen estate, will underline the long-overlooked significance and legacy of the Roentgens as Europe’s principal cabinetmakers of the ancien régime.
The exhibition and catalogue are made possible by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
George Bellows
November 15, 2012—February 18, 2013
At the time of his death from appendicitis at the age of 42, George Bellows (1882–1925), was regarded as one of America’s greatest artists. His early fame rested on his powerful depictions of boxing matches and gritty scenes of New York City’s tenement life, but he also painted cityscapes, seascapes, war scenes, and portraits, and made illustrations and lithographs that addressed many of the social, political, and cultural issues of the day. Comprising some 140 works from his extensive oeuvre, this landmark exhibition is the first retrospective of Bellows’s career since 1992 and it invites the viewer to experience the dynamic and challenging decades of the early 20th century through the eyes of a brilliant observer. Bellows had close ties to the Met. He was inspired by paintings in its collection, to which one of his own was added in 1911—when he was only 29 years old—and his first retrospective was the Met's 1925 memorial exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche
November 20, 2012–January 6, 2013
The Museum will continue a long-standing holiday tradition with the presentation of its Christmas tree, a favorite of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world. A vivid 18th-century Neapolitan Nativity scene—embellished with a profuse array of diminutive, lifelike attendant figures and silk-robed angels hovering above—will adorn the candlelit spruce. Recorded music and lighting ceremonies will add to the enjoyment of the holiday display.
The exhibit of the crèche is made possible by gifts to The Christmas Tree Fund and
the Loretta Hines Howard Fund.
African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde
November 27, 2012–September 2, 2013 (extended)
This exhibition will highlight specific African artifacts acquired by the New York avant-garde and its most influential patrons during the 1910s and 1920s. Reflecting on the dynamism of New York's art scene during the years that followed the 1913 Armory Show, the exhibition will bring together African works from the collections of many key individuals of the period, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Marius de Zayas, John Quinn, Louise and Walter Arensberg, Alain LeRoy Locke, and Eugene and Agnes Meyer. Featuring the Metropolitan’s own holdings as well as loans from public and private collections, the exhibition will include some 40 wood sculptures from West and Central Africa presented alongside photographs, sculptures, and paintings by Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Diego Rivera, and Constantin Brancusi. Together, they will demonstrate the synergy that bound African art with works by members of the avant-garde as they were simultaneously experienced in New York for the first time almost a century ago.
Matisse: In Search of True Painting
December 4, 2012—March 17, 2013
At the end of 1905, French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was proclaimed the leader of a new school of painting. From that point through the First World War, Matisse pushed the boundaries of his art by painting in pairs. Colorful duos such as Young Sailor I and II (1906; private collection and The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Le Luxe I and II (1907-08; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and The Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen) feature identical motifs painted on identically sized canvases in markedly different styles and palettes. Over the ensuing decades, Matisse continued his aesthetic explorations, sometimes painting strictly in pairs, and other times in trios or series: light-filled hotel rooms in Nice, pebble-strewn beaches in Normandy, still lifes composed of fruit and patterned fabrics. “My idea,” he explained, “is to push further and deeper into true painting.” In 1940 Matisse hired a photographer to document the way in which his compositions often evolved dramatically from one day to the next. Five years later, Aimé Maeght inaugurated his Paris gallery with an exhibition conceived by Matisse, in which six vibrant canvases—among them, La France (1939; Hiroshima Museum of Art), The Dream (1940; private collection) and Still Life with Magnolia (1941; Centre Pompidou,Paris)—were juxtaposed with black-and-white photographs of earlier states of their creation. The ultimate goal of Matisse, In Search of True Painting is to encourage thinking about Matisse's method of painting using pairs, trios, and series. It is clear that, for Matisse, the process of creation was not simply a means to an end but a dimension of his art as important as the finished painting.
Matisse: In Search of True Painting will include 48 paintings, as well as a recreation of three walls of the Matisse exhibition held at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in December 1945.
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund and the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund.
The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, and the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Birds in the Art of Japan
February 2—July 28, 2013
This exhibition presents approximately 150 works in various media from medieval times to the present. Highlights of the exhibition include a unique, early 17th-century pair of ink-painted screens showing a flock of 120 mynah birds in flight or strutting on the shore; and a set of four enormous paintings of birds of prey by the 19th-century master Kawanabe Ky?sai, each over nine feet high. Displays of paintings will be juxtaposed with examples of modern and contemporary textiles, ceramics, lacquerware, and bamboo art. Drawn mostly from the Museum’s own collection, it will also feature some 15 works on loan from private collections.
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
Press viewing: Monday, February 4, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich
February 23—June 16, 2013
This exhibition presents ten works by the contemporary Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich (b. 1971), who lives and works in Phnom Penh. It is part of the Museum’s contribution to the New York-wide Season of Cambodia, to be held in spring 2013. Pich works principally in rattan and bamboo. Inspired by elements of the human anatomy or plant life, his work embodies his memories of culture and place, informing those memory images in complex ways that imply deeper levels of meaning. Dispersed among three gallery spaces, it will include Morning Glory (2011), a spectacular construction with embedded messages, which both evoke the contemporary landscape of Cambodia and embody memories of times when much of the population was reduced to cooking the plant as a source of nourishment.
The exhibition and related programs are made possible by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.
Press viewing: Monday, February 25, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
February 26 – May 27, 2013
Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity will present a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. Some 80 major figure paintings, seen in concert with period costumes, accessories, fashion plates, photographs, and popular prints, will highlight the vital relationship between fashion and art during the pivotal years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, when Paris emerged as the style capital of the world. With the rise of the department store, the advent of ready-made wear, and the proliferation of fashion magazines, those at the forefront of the avant-garde—from Manet, Monet, and Renoir to Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Zola—turned a fresh eye to contemporary dress, embracing la mode as the harbinger of la modernité. The novelty, vibrancy, and fleeting allure of the latest trends in fashion proved seductive for a generation of artists and writers who sought to give expression to the pulse of modern life in all its nuanced richness. Without rivaling the meticulous detail of society portraitists such as Tissot or Stevens, or the graphic flair of fashion plates, the Impressionists nonetheless engaged similar strategies in the making (and in the marketing) of their pictures of stylish men and women that sought to reflect the spirit of their age.
The exhibition is made possible in part by The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation and the Janice H. Levin Fund. Additional support is provided by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Tuesday, February 19, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Photography and the American Civil War
April 2 – September 2, 2013
Six hundred thousand lives were lost between 1861 and 1865, making the conflict between North and South the nation’s most deadly war. If the “War Between the States” was the great test of the young republic’s commitment to its founding precepts, it was also a watershed in photographic history as the camera recorded from beginning to end the heartbreaking narrative of the epic war.
Focusing on the evolving role of the camera during the four-year war, this exhibition will feature a wide variety of images including: haunting battlefield landscapes strewn with human remains; intimate studio portraits in small leather cases of armed Confederate and Union soldiers preparing to meet their destiny; rare multi-panel panoramas of Gettysburg and Richmond; languorous camp scenes showing exhausted troops in repose; diagnostic medical studies of wounded soldiers who survived the war’s last bloody battles; and portraits of Abraham Lincoln as well as his assassin John Wilkes Booth.
There has been no major exhibition or scholarly survey in New York City featuring Civil War photographs in many decades; this show is timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg (July 1863). The exhibition will draw extensively on the Museum’s celebrated holdings of Civil War photographs by Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy O’Sullivan, and George Barnard, among many others, and will also include judicious selections from important American private and public collections.
The exhibition is made possible by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, April 1, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Search for the Unicorn: An Exhibition in Honor of The Cloisters' 75th Anniversary
May 15 – August 18, 2013
Given by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in time for the opening of The Cloisters in 1938, the Unicorn Tapestries are its best-known masterpieces; yet, seventy-five years later, their history and meaning remain elusive. They are seen both as complicated metaphors for Christ and as emblems of matrimony, and they are beloved as quaint indications of medieval ignorance of the natural world. Search for the Unicorn¸ a focus exhibition of some 40 works of art drawn principally from the collections of the Metropolitan and sister institutions in New York City, will invite audiences to see the Unicorn Tapestries as the finest expression of a subject widely treated in both European art and science, from the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance.
Press Preview: Tuesday, May 14, 10:00 a.m.–noon
The Civil War and American Art
May 27 – September 2, 2013
This major loan exhibition will explore how American artists responded to the Civil War and its aftermath. The exhibition follows the trajectory of the conflict: from the palpable unease on the eve of war to the heady optimism that it would be over with a single battle, to the growing realization that this conflict would not end quickly, to grappling with the issues surrounding emancipation, the need for reconciliation as the war ended, and the uncertainty about how to put the country back together in its wake. It will feature some of the finest works made by leading figure painters such as Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, landscape painters such as Sanford R. Gifford and Frederic E. Church, and photographers such as Mathew Brady and George Barnard. The exhibition at the Metropolitan coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863) and the New York City Draft Riots (July 13–16, 1863), violent disturbances that made New Yorkers more painfully aware than ever before of the war and its implications.
The exhibition is made possible by an anonymous foundation.
Additional support is provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Enterprise Holdings Endowment.
It was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, May 20, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective
June 18 – September 22, 2013
This long overdue retrospective, the first major museum exhibition of Ken Price’s work in New York, will trace the development of his small ceramic sculptures with approximately 65 examples from 1959 to the present. The selection will range from the luminously glazed ovoid forms of Price’s early work to the suggestive, molten-like slumps he has made since the 1990s. In addition to the sculpture, there will be a small group of Price’s landscape drawings from the past ten years. The artist’s close friend, the architect Frank Gehry, will collaborate on the design of the exhibition.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, June 17, 10:00 a.m.–noon
CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS
Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art
Through January 13, 2013
Rinpa—literally meaning “school of Ogata Korin”—is a modern term referring to a distinctive style of Japanese pictorial and applied arts that arose in the early 17th century and has continued into modern times. It embraces art marked by a bold, graphic abbreviation of natural motifs, frequent reference to traditional court literature and poetry, lavish use of expensive mineral and metallic pigments, incorporation of calligraphy into painting compositions, and innovative experimentation with new brush techniques. Featuring some 75 brilliantly executed works created in Japan by the Rinpa-school artists, the exhibition traces the development of the Rinpa aesthetic and demonstrates how its style continued to influence artists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Comprising some 50 works from the Museum’s own holdings, supplemented by some 25 loans from public and private collections on the East Coast, it includes many masters’ renowned works in a variety of media—painting, textiles, lacquerware, and ceramics. This is the second of two rotations.
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, September 10, 10:00 a.m.–noon
NEW GALLERIES
New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts
Opened January 16, 2012
This third and final phase of the American Wing renovation project comprises 26 renovated and enlarged galleries for the Museum’s collection of American art, one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. The suite of elegant new galleries provides visitors with a rich and captivating experience of the history of American art from the 18th to the early 20th century. The centerpiece of the new installation is Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s monumental and iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Twenty-one galleries feature the extraordinary collection of American paintings—including such masters as Gilbert Stuart, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent. Interspersed among the pictures are American sculptures, notably the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Three other galleries, together with a grand pre-revolutionary New York interior, display 18th-century American decorative arts, principally treasures of colonial furniture and silver. In The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, a concurrent renovation includes additional casework, touch-screen case labels, and upgraded computer access.
Part 1 of the American Wing renovation project opened in January 2007 with galleries dedicated to the classical arts of America, 1810-1845. Part 2, inaugurated in May 2009, included the renovated Charles Engelhard Court and the Period Rooms. With the completion of Part 3, nearly all of the American Wing’s 17,000 works are now on view, constituting an encyclopedic survey of fine art in the United States.
New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia
Opened November 1, 2011
More than 1,000 works from the preeminent collection of the Museum’s Department of Islamic Art—one of the most comprehensive gatherings of this material in the world—are on view in a completely renovated, expanded, and reinstalled suite of 15 galleries. The organization of the galleries by geographical area emphasizes the rich diversity of the Islamic world, over a span of 1300 years, by underscoring the many distinct cultures within its fold.
NEW & CONTINUING INSTALLATIONS
After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age
September 25, 2012—May 27, 2013
This installation explores various ways in which artists, including Nancy Burson, Filip Dujardin, Joan Fontcuberta, Beate Gütschow, and others, have used digital technology to alter the photographic image from the late 1980s to the present. Featuring approximately 25 works drawn from the Museum’s collection, it will serve as an addendum to Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, continuing the conversation about how photographers have used the tools of their day to manipulate the camera image.
Press Viewing: Tuesday, October 9, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Late Klee
October 18, 2012 – March 2013
This selection of watercolors, drawings and paintings focuses on the last 15 years of Paul Klee’s life, from 1925 to 1940. During these years he moved with the Bauhaus from Weimar to Dessau, taught at the Düsseldorf Academy, and returned to his native Bern in late 1933. His fatal illness was diagnosed in 1936. Aware that he had not much time left to live, Klee worked more rapidly and his style changed: lines became heavy, forms broad and generalized, and colors simpler.
The Sau-Wing Lam Collection of Rare Italian Stringed Instruments
December 17, 2012—June 30, 2013
A spectacular musical instrument collection assembled by Sau-Wing Lam (1923-1988) to be on public display for the first time in the United States. The instruments on view—nine violins and one viola—will include such masterpieces as the Baltic violin by Giuseppe Guarneri “del Gesù” (1698-1744), and the Scotland University and Bavarian violins by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). The opening date of the installation coincides with the 275th anniversary of the death of Antonio Stradivari.
The exhibition is made possible by The Amati, Friends of the Department of Musical Instruments.
The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785-1850
January 22–April 21, 2013
Over the last 40 years, one of the most significant developments in the study of 19th-century European paintings has been the new appreciation of the importance of plein-air (outdoor) oil sketches to the Realist and Impressionist landscape aesthetic. The acquisition of the Wheelock Whitney collection in 2003 brought to the Metropolitan a comprehensive survey of sketches painted between 1785 and 1850 by many of the most notable artists of the French school who worked in this medium. This exhibition of 50 works assembled by Mr. Whitney over a period of 30 years reveals a tradition that begins with the 18th-century painters who established important prototypes—Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Joseph Bidauld, and Simon Denis. An equally important emphasis is on French artists who received from the academy in Paris the Rome Prize to study painting in Italy—François-Édouard Picot, Charles Rémond, and André Giroux, as well as related artists, such as François-Marius Granet, Théodore Caruelle Aligny, and Camille Corot, who traveled to Italy independently.
Accompanied by a Bulletin.
Press viewing: Monday, February 4, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Sleeping Eros
January 29—June 23, 2013
The exhibition focuses on the Museum’s statue of Sleeping Eros, one of the finest of the few surviving ancient bronze statues from antiquity. It will explore a number of topics associated with this work, including the issue of originals and copies in Greek and Roman sculpture, new research that suggests it is a Hellenistic bronze that was restored in antiquity, and its original function and ancient context(s). The exhibition will also present the cult and image of Eros before and after the development of the Sleeping Eros statue type to show its enormous influence as well as to trace the wide dispersal of the type in Roman times and its subsequent rediscovery during the Renaissance. Some 45 works will be displayed, from the Museum’s collections.
Press viewing: Monday, February 4, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Plain or Fancy? Restraint and Exuberance in the Decorative Arts
February 26–August 18, 2013
Modernism was not the first movement to cast a shadow on ornament and adornment, though it was the most effective one. This exhibition will contrast austere works of art with ornate ones, encouraging viewers to examine their own responses and to consider them in the light of different stylistic imperatives of the past. Drawn from the Museum’s European sculpture and decorative art collection, and emphasizing recent acquisitions, the exhibition will represent all media in the department’s holdings.
Press viewing: Monday, February 25, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Making the Invisible Visible: Recent Conservation of Art from the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia
April 2 – August 4, 2013
Conservators and conservation scientists made many exciting and interesting discoveries as they and the curators re-examined the museum’s collection of Islamic art prior to the reopening of the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia in November 2011. This exhibition will trace their investigative journey with a range of works of art providing new perspectives for appreciating this extraordinary collection.
Colors of the Universe: Chinese Hardstone Carvings
Through January 6, 2013
This remarkable selection of carvings, drawn from the Museum’s extensive permanent collection, presents the lapidary art of later China, including not only jade, the most esteemed of East Asian gems, but also agate, malachite, turquoise, quartz, lapis lazuli, coral, amber and a variety of soapstones. The exhibition explores the diverse subjects and styles of Qing dynasty (1644-1911) decorative arts, illustrating those artists’ extraordinary imagination and technical virtuosity.
Buddhism along the Silk Road: 5th–8th Century
Through February 10, 2013
Drawing together objects from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the western reaches of Central Asia?regions connected in the sixth century A.D. through trade, military conquest, and the diffusion of Buddhism? the exhibition illuminates a remarkable moment of artistic exchange. At the roots of this transnational connection is the empire established the end of the fifth century by the Huns (Hunas or Hephthalites) that extended from Afghanistan to the northern plains of India. Although this political system soon disintegrated into chaos, over the next century trade routes connecting India to the western reaches of the Central Asian Silk Road continued to link these distant communities, facilitating ideological exchange and financing the production of Buddhist imagery of great artistic sophistication.
British Silver: The Wealth of a Nation
Through January 20, 2013
Drawn from the Metropolitan Museum’s outstanding collection of silver, this installation explores some of the key ingredients that made the English silver trade such a vigorous success over two centuries. Since sterling silver was the “coinage of the realm,” a dinner service was, most literally, worth its weight. But the display and use of silver meant more than riches. Silver was an expression of a patron’s taste and education, designed to celebrate his achievements and complement the architecture of his house. Parliament recognized the importance of the silversmiths’ trade to the economy, and worked to encourage an environment conducive to vigorous commerce. Innovation—stylistic, technical, and commercial—was highly valued, too, and the silversmiths who succeeded in business had to be responsive to fashion and opportunity.
This installation focuses mainly on silver from London and includes approximately 80 objects, ranging in date from the mid-16th to the mid-18th century, many of which have not been on display for decades.
Fabergé from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection
Opened November 22, 2011
When Matilda Geddings Gray acquired her first piece of Fabergé for her niece, in 1933, she was already a wealthy and sophisticated collector, and the name of the Russian artist-jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) was almost unknown in the United States. Since then, Fabergé’s art
has become widely known and his exquisite objects are now internationally sought after.
This long-term loan features a selection from her collection, one of the finest in the world, and includes objects created for the Russian Imperial family, such as the Lilies-of-the-Valley Basket—the most important Fabergé creation in the United States—and three Imperial Easter Eggs.
TRAVELLING EXHIBITIONS
Salvaging the Past: Georges Hoentschel and French Decorative Arts at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The exhibition focuses on the work of Georges Hoentschel (1855-1915), the collector, decorator, ceramist, and architect, whose collections of French 18th-century and medieval art were acquired by J. P. Morgan and presented to the Metropolitan Museum in 1906/1916, forming the core of the Museum’s French collections.
The exhibition was organized by the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gallery at the Bard Graduate Center April 3 – August 11, 2013
Earth, Sea, and Sky: Nature in Western Art—Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The breadth and quality of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum afford an opportunity to explore the grand theme of nature as it has been depicted by painters, sculptors, and decorative artists in Europe, America, and the Near East, from antiquity to the present day. The exhibition features masterful representations of landscape, flora, and fauna rendered in a wide range of media, including painting, ceramics, tapestry, silver, stone, and bronze, and dating from the third millennium BC to the twentieth century.
Drawn exclusively from the permanent collection of the Metropolitan, the exhibition highlights more than 130 works by major artists, including Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Poussin, Constable, Delacroix, Barye, Monet, Turner, Palissy, Tiffany, Hopper, and Atget, as well as anonymous masters from the ancient and medieval worlds. The installation is organized thematically to bring out engaging and informative juxtapositions.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum, New York, in collaboration with The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum October 6, 2012—January 4, 2013
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December 19, 2012
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