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THE WORLD OF SCHOLARS' ROCKS: GARDENS, STUDIOS, AND PAINTINGS
Wednesday, November 24, 1999, 5:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present for more than six months beginning in February an exhibition of some 90 Chinese paintings, featuring images of ornamental rocks or landscapes inspired by the fantastic forms of such stones, complemented by more than 30 actual scholars' rocks. Drawn primarily from the Museum's holdings, and supplemented by a select number of loans from private collections, The World of Scholars' Rocks: Gardens, Studios, and Paintings – opening at the Metropolitan Museum on February 1, 2000 – will examine the Chinese taste for strangely shaped rocks during the last 1000 years, tracing through pictorial images as well as actual examples the evolution and transformation of the genre from the 11th to the 20th century.
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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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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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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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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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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.