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MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE ART FROM THE MARY GRIGGS BURKE COLLECTION
Friday, November 19, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
More than 200 works of Japanese art from the renowned collection of Mary Griggs Burke — a selection of ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and lacquers dating from the earliest cultures of around 3000 B.C. to the Edo period (1615-1867) — will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 30 through June 25, 2000. Organized chronologically, the exhibition will provide an overview of the development of Japanese art and will also explore the use of divergent artistic traditions, including those adapted from other cultures and those that reflect native tastes, within Japan.
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THE NEW CYPRIOT GALLERIES
Thursday, November 18, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
THE CESNOLA COLLECTION
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SUBJECTS AND SYMBOLS IN AMERICAN SCULPTURE: SELECTIONS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION
Wednesday, November 17, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
Nineteenth-century American artists regarded "ideal themes" — those inspired by mythology, history, and literature — as the most challenging and venerable in the hierarchy of genres. Such subjects provided an opportunity for sculptors to demonstrate their familiarity with allegorical, historical, and literary topics, their skill at incorporating identifying attributes into their compositions, and frequently also their expertise in rendering the nude.
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ART AND ORACLE: SPIRIT VOICES OF AFRICA
Tuesday, November 16, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
A figure sculpted in central Africa's rainforest to determine guilt or innocence, a maternity image made by an Igbo potter to enable a woman to conceive children, and a set of dice carved to decide the destiny of a Shona chief will be among the works featured in Art and Oracle: Spirit Voices of Africa, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 26 through July 30, 2000. Throughout history and around the world, peoples have sought the intervention of divine powers to understand their fate, and this exhibition will demonstrate the dynamic relationship between ritual practice and creative expression through some 200 artifacts from more than 50 African cultures.
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DAVID SMITH ON THE ROOF
Monday, November 15, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
A selection of works in burnished stainless steel by David Smith (1906-1965) — considered one of the most original and influential American sculptors of his generation — will be on view beginning May 15, on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. David Smith on the Roof will mark the third consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden, a 10,000 square-foot open-air space that offers a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline and Central Park.
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AMERICAN MODERN: 1925-1940 — DESIGN FOR A NEW AGE
Sunday, November 14, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
American Modern: 1925-1940 — Design for a New Age, an exhibition tracing the rise of a distinctively American modern design aesthetic through the efforts of 40 of its creative pioneers, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 16, 2000 through January 9, 2001. More than 100 objects, including furniture, clocks, appliances, lamps, textiles, posters, and more, from the Museum's collection and from the John C. Waddell Collection — a major promised gift to the Metropolitan — will reveal the aesthetic, cultural, and economic forces that ultimately shaped the modern design movement in America.
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ANNENBERG COLLECTION OF IMPRESSIONIST AND POST-IMPRESSIONIST MASTERWORKS
Saturday, November 13, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
Fifty-three paintings, watercolors, and drawings by 18 of the greatest artists who worked in France in the 19th and early 20th century comprise the Annenberg collection, which will return to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for six months beginning in May 2000. This annual event, now in its sixth year, provides an exceptional opportunity for visitors to experience this renowned private collection. The works are shown in the Museum's Nineteenth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture Galleries, hung together in three central rooms, surrounded by the Met's own collection of 19th-century European paintings.
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FIREWORKS
Thursday, November 11, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
No form of entertainment involves so much ingenuity at so great a cost for such a dazzling — but woefully ephemeral — effect as fireworks. Many attempts have been made over the centuries to create for posterity a visual record of fireworks displays, especially those mounted in connection with official occasions, such as a noble marriage, the entry of a ruler into a city, military victories, and coronations. Before photography became prevalent, these records were most often made as prints — woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs — since these could be made in multiple impressions and could thus be distributed to a wide audience as a document or souvenir of the occasion. In celebration of the new millennium, the exhibition Fireworks will feature more than 100 prints and drawings depicting firework displays from the 16th to the early 20th century.
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CHARDIN
Wednesday, November 10, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
Chardin — a major loan exhibition of more than 65 works that will survey the great 18th-century artist's distinguished career as a still-life and genre painter — will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 27 through September 3, 2000.
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ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY: NEW YORK, 1825-1861
Tuesday, November 9, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
In America in the second quarter of the 19th century — between 1825, when the Erie Canal was built, and 1861, when the Civil War began — the visual arts proliferated. On September 19, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a landmark exhibition, Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, which will explore in unprecedented depth the history of American art of this period, as epitomized in New York City.
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CHRISTMAS TREE AND NEAPOLITAN BAROQUE CRÈCHE
Tuesday, November 9, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
Christmas Concerts at the Met
Christmas at The Cloisters
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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES REOPENING OF GALLERIES FOR ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART
Sunday, October 17, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
October 19 marks the culmination of an 18-month-long renovation and reinstallation project at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as nearly 1,500 works from the permanent collection of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art return to public view. The newly reorganized galleries feature the monumental sculpture, distinctive metalwork, delicately carved ivories and seals, exquisite jewelry, and other works of art made in the ancient Near East over nearly nine millennia. A highlight is the dramatic renovation of the Assyrian relief gallery, evocative of an audience hall in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II.
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CARLETON WATKINS: THE ART OF PERCEPTION EXPLORES WORK OF VISIONARY 19th-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHER
Sunday, September 26, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
An exhibition of 98 images by Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), America's greatest landscape photographer, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception. The first large-scale examination of an often under-recognized artist, the exhibition includes more than 85 mammoth prints, including work from his famous series of the pristine and then virtually unknown Yosemite Valley, as well as many other lyrical views of the American West.
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WILLIAM RUDIN AND ANDREW SAUL ELECTED TRUSTEES, DIANE BURKE ELECTED HONORARY TRUSTEE OF
Thursday, September 23, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
(September 24, 1999) – William C. Rudin and Andrew M. Saul have been elected Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Diane W. Burke an Honorary Trustee of the Museum, it was announced recently by James R. Houghton, Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan. The elections took place at the September 14 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
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PORTRAITS BY INGRES: IMAGE OF AN EPOCH OPENS AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OCTOBER 5
Wednesday, September 15, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
Widely regarded as the greatest portrait painter of the 19th century and one of the most brilliant draftsmen of all time, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) dominated French painting for more than half a century and left an enduring legacy, inspiring artists such as Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, and Picasso. On view October 5, 1999, through January 2, 2000, Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch brings together 40 paintings and 92 drawings from every period of the artist's prodigious career, providing visitors with a unique opportunity to appreciate the refinement, originality, and beauty of Ingres's portraiture. Spanning six decades, from the last years of the Revolution to the Second Empire, the portraits in the exhibition constitute a "Who's Who" of the ruling elite in France — the aristocracy of birth, beauty, politics, wealth, and intellect.
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ROCK 'N' ROLL TO BE THEME OF METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S DECEMBER COSTUME INSTITUTE EXHIBITION
Monday, September 13, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
The exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum will be organized in five sections that will address the synergy between rock music and fashion: Poets and Dreamers; Icons; Brilliant Disguise; Rebels; High Style.
The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland will spotlight classic rock-'n'-roll performers and their pervasive influence on style in the exhibition titled Rock Style, to be launched at the Metropolitan Museum from December 9, 1999, through March 19, 2000. A selection of more than 40 major rock artists who have influenced style from the 1950s to the present will be represented by fashions from the collections of The Costume Institute and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, as well as by loans from the private collections of several of the rock stars themselves. Artists represented will include Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Elton John, Mama Cass, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, David Byrne, Grace Jones, Madonna, and Björk.
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COSTUME AND CHARACTER IN THE AGE OF INGRES
Thursday, August 5, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
For the first time in its history, The Costume Institute will present an exhibition ancillary to one of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's major loan exhibitions of paintings. Costume and Character in the Age of Ingres will be on view in The Costume Institute from September 9 through November 21, 1999 — coinciding with the exhibition Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch in the second-floor Special Exhibitions Galleries.
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THE ARTIST AS COLLECTOR: MASTERPIECES FROM THE C. C. WANG FAMILY COLLECTION
Thursday, August 5, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
Nearly 100 works of Chinese painting collected by the renowned artist/collector C. C. Wang — who has amassed one of the two most important private collections of Chinese old master paintings of the 20th century — will be on view in The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C. C. Wang Family Collection. The exhibition features the recent promised gift by the Oscar Tang family of 12 major works acquired from the C. C. Wang Family in 1997, along with some 50 additional paintings and calligraphies acquired from Mr. Wang by the Museum over the last 26 years. These works are augmented by important loans from The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Art Museum, Princeton University, The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the British Museum, and The C. C. Wang Family.
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PUBLICATION MARKS METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S COMMITMENT TO TEACHERS IN NEW YORK CITY AND THROUGHOUT AMERICA
Monday, July 26, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
In a significant effort to enrich teachers' skills and to develop classroom resources, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has published 20th-Century Art: A Resource for Educators. The large boxed set of comprehensive written, visual, and high-tech materials provides essential tools for educators, featuring a 173-page publication — fully illustrated in color — with essays, strategies for classroom lessons, and background information that includes artists' writings and extensive bibliographic material. Also included in the packet are a set of forty slides, a full-sized, three-part poster set, a video, and a CD-ROM version of the book.
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LANDMARK EXHIBITION OF EGYPTIAN ART OPENS AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ON SEPTEMBER 16
Sunday, July 18, 1999, 4:00 a.m.
"Egyptians were probably the first to be aware of the nobility inherent in the human form and to express it in art." — Heinrich Schafer, Principles of Egyptian Art (1919)