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• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Nomadic Art from the Eastern Eurasian Steppes: The Eugene V. Thaw and Other New York Collections

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

  An exhibition focusing on the extraordinary art of the Eastern Eurasian steppes from the first millennium BC will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 1. Featuring more than 200 objects, Nomadic Art from the Eastern Eurasian Steppes: The Eugene V. Thaw and Other New York Collections will explore the dynamic art of the nomads who left an indelible impression on the arts of all nomadic societies in Eurasia through subsequent periods and inspired the art of the sedentary cultures that came in contact with them.

• Portraits

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

  Forty masterworks of photographic portraiture will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 10, 2002, through January 12, 2003. Drawn from the collections of the Metropolitan and the Gilman Paper Company, the installation will accompany the landmark exhibition Richard Avedon: Portraits and will highlight classic images of artists and writers, actors and composers by Nadar, Edward Steichen, and Berenice Abbott, among others.

• Significant Objects: Selections from the Modern Design and Architecture Collection

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

  A rotating selection of important designs in all media, dating from the late 19th to the early 21st century will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from fall 2002 through April 2004. Significant Objects: Selections from the Modern Design and Architecture Collection will feature furniture, metalwork, ceramics, glass, textiles and jewelry, all drawn from the Metropolitan's holdings. The exhibition will highlight the diversity and depth of the Metropolitan's modern design collection, demonstrating the aesthetic value of the works on view within the Museum's collection and within the larger context of art history.

• Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set

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

  The rapturous elegance of café society in the years immediately preceding World War II will be captured in a new exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum on November 1, Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set. Dating from 1935 to 1940, this extraordinary collection of French couture—featuring works by Chanel, Lanvin, Vionnet, and Schiaparelli—was donated to the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute in 1946. The gowns were originally part of the exhibition Paris Openings: 1932-1940, which was organized by Lady Mendl and chaired by the Duchess of Windsor to benefit French War Charities in 1940. Drawn mainly from the collection of The Costume Institute, with loans from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the exhibition celebrates a period in fashion history that is unsurpassed in terms of beauty, elegance, and craftsmanship.

• The New Violin Family: Augmenting the String Section

  Tuesday, May 14, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  The mysteries behind making a violin sound like a violin is explored in The New Violin Family: Augmenting the String Section, now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 30, 2003. Featuring 13 instruments, including a famous Hutchins Violin Octet, the exhibition chronicles the work of Dr. Carleen Maley Hutchins (b. Springfield, Massachusetts, 1911), a luthier and acoustical scientist who pioneered modern techniques of violin making. In order to demonstrate the scientific approach she employed to create ideal acoustics, a model depicting her process of plate tuning is on display.

• Arts of South and Southeast Asia Will Be Focus of May 22 Evening Event at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, May 13, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  A viewing of the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for the Arts of South and Southeast Asia at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed by a reception in the Museum's celebrated Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing, will take place on Wednesday, May 22, 2002, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. A highlight of the evening's festivities will be a program of traditional dances and costume of India beginning at 7:30 p.m.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS MAY—AUGUST, 2002

  Thursday, April 25, 2002, 4:00 a.m.

  EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change. To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951. CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.

• As It Happened: Photographs from the Gilman Paper Company Collection

  Saturday, April 6, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The photographer's ability to transform a critical moment in time into a work of art — whether an event of historical importance or a moment of ephemeral beauty — is the subject of As It Happened: Photographs from the Gilman Paper Company Collection, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 7 through August 25, 2002. Fifty superb works, ranging from a parade on the Pont Royal in Paris in 1844 to an atomic bomb test in the Pacific in 1946, bear witness to a century of events large and small.

• COSTUME INSTITUTE SPOTLIGHTS HOLLYWOOD DESIGNER GILBERT ADRIAN

  Tuesday, February 5, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The Costume Institute will celebrate one of America's most distinguished stylemakers from cinema's golden years with an unprecedented exhibition of works by Hollywood designer Gilbert Adrian. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 14 to August 18, 2002, Adrian: American Glamour will feature a selection of more than 100 designs. The sensational and sometimes provocative costumes worn by such legendary Hollywood actresses as Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, and Katharine Hepburn will complement the equally glamorous ensembles of his high fashion career. Drawn from the Museum's Costume Institute, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others, the exhibition will present a comprehensive look at Adrian's lifetime of work as an artist, a costume designer, and an American couturier.

• Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence

  Tuesday, November 27, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

  The first major tapestry survey in the United States in 25 years comes to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in spring 2002. This landmark international loan exhibition will feature 45 tapestries woven between 1420 and 1560 in the Netherlands, Italy, and France, from designs by the leading artists of the day – Raphael, Giulio Romano, and Bronzino, among others. The exhibition will also include about 20 preparatory drawings, designs, and cartoon fragments. On view from March 12 through June 19, 2002, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence will highlight the great tapestry cycles of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as among the unsung glories of Renaissance art.

• Surrealism: Desire Unbound, First Major Exhibition of International Surrealism in More Than Twenty Years, Documents Revolutionary Movement That Openly Addressed Sexuality in Art

  Sunday, November 25, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

  One of the most extraordinary artistic and intellectual movements of the 20th century will be explored in Surrealism: Desire Unbound, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art February 6 through May 12, 2002. More than 300 works including paintings, sculpture, photographs, films, poems, manuscripts, and books will explore the first major artistic movement to address openly the topics of love, desire, and various aspects of sexuality.

• Metropolitan Museum Presents First Major Exhibition of Irving Penn Nudes

  Wednesday, November 14, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

  One of the world's preeminent photographers, Irving Penn is famous for portraiture, still life, and fashion work – but is less well known as a superb photographer of the female nude. Earthly Bodies: Irving Penn's Nudes, 1949-50, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 15 through April 21, 2002, features 60 exquisitely wrought silver and platinum prints in the first exhibition of this work organized by a major museum.

• Photographs by Benjamin Brecknell Turner Present Rural England Through a Victorian Lens at Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, November 14, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

  Approximately 40 exquisite photographs of a bygone era, taken by one of photography's great early artists, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 15 through April 21, 2002. Benjamin Brecknell Turner: Rural England Through a Victorian Lens presents an impressive series of large-format scenes depicting quintessentially English subjects: ruined castles and abbeys; thatched barns, crumbling cottages and half-timbered houses; woodland paths and ancient oaks. Turner's picturesque and poetic images reveal a rough-hewn beauty in rustic subjects and express a moral value found in tradition, nature, and rural life and labor.

• Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy

  Wednesday, November 14, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

  Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy will be the first full-scale exhibition devoted to Caravaggio's most gifted follower, Orazio Gentileschi, and to Orazio's celebrated daughter, Artemisia. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 14 through May 12, 2002, the exhibition will feature approximately 50 works by Orazio and 35 by Artemisia, and will be the first exhibition to treat these two remarkable artists in depth.

• Treasures from a Lost Civilization: Ancient Chinese Art from Sichuan

  Wednesday, September 5, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  A major traveling exhibition of ancient Chinese art from Sichuan will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 6, 2002. Featuring a spectacular selection of works of art, Treasures from a Lost Civilization: Ancient Chinese Art from Sichuan explores the fascinating world of the art, material culture, and spiritual life of ancient Sichuan, and illustrates the fundamental changes that archaeology has brought to our understanding of the history of Chinese art.

• Along the Nile Features Earliest Photographs of Egypt

  Tuesday, September 4, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  Sphinx and crocodile, magnificent colossi, and delicate hieroglyphs are but a few of the treasures to be found in Along the Nile: Early Photographs of Egypt, an exhibition of 43 exquisitely preserved 19th-century photographs of one of the world's oldest and most mysterious civilizations. On view from September 11 through December 30 in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Howard Gilman Gallery, these early camera images of Egypt's landscapes, inhabitants, and dramatically imposing monuments—from Cairo to sand-swept Nubia—are drawn from the renowned Gilman Paper Company Collection as well as from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

• Jeweled Arts Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Reveals Splendor of the Mughal Courts

  Monday, June 4, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  The grand imperial vision, refinement, and opulence for which the Mughal rulers of India (1526-1858) were renowned found ultimate expression in their jeweled arts. In a dazzling display opening to the public on October 18, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present "Treasury of the World": Jeweled Arts of India in the Age of the Mughals, a landmark exhibition of more than 300 spectacular examples of Mughal and other related jeweled objects from The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait National Museum. The presentation at the Metropolitan is a pioneering effort to show Mughal-period jeweled arts, for which The al-Sabah Collection is unrivaled in scope and scale.

• EXTREME BEAUTY: THE BODY TRANSFORMED

  Sunday, June 3, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  Over time and across cultures, extraordinary manipulations of the body have occurred as concepts of beauty have continued to evolve. Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed – an exhibition opening December 6 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art – will offer a unique opportunity to see fashion as the practice of some of the most extreme methods to conform to shifting concepts of the physical ideal. Various zones of the body – neck, shoulders, bust, waist, hips, and feet – have been constricted, padded, truncated, or extended through a variety of techniques. The more than 100 costumes and accessories in the exhibition – ranging from a 16th-century iron corset to Thierry Mugler's notorious "Motorcycle" bustier – will be augmented by anthropological and ethnographic examples and by paintings, prints, and drawings, including caricatures by Gilray, Cruikshank, Daumier and Vernet.

• Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac

  Sunday, June 3, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  To complement the major exhibition Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present paintings, drawings, and watercolors – selected entirely from the Museum's own collections – by Charles Angrand, Henri-Edmond Cross, Maximilien Luce, Hippolyte Petitjean and other artists who, like Paul Signac, exuberantly followed the groundbreaking techniques of optical painting introduced in the 1880s by Georges Seurat. On view at the Metropolitan from October 2 through December 30, 2001, Neo-Impressionism: The Circle of Paul Signac will feature some 60 works by these artists as well as by the better-known Signac and Seurat.

• DRESS REHEARSAL: ORIGINS OF THE COSTUME INSTITUTE

  Sunday, June 3, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  Dress Rehearsal: Origins of The Costume Institute – opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 1 – is the second of the two-part installation (the pendent to Curios and Treasures) surveying one of the world's largest and most renowned costume collections. Costume collecting at the Metropolitan began in 1946 with the transfer of the collection of the former Museum of Costume Art, which had been founded in 1937 by a theater-oriented group of civic leaders under the direction of the New York philanthropist and savant Irene Lewisohn. That collection formed the core of The Costume Institute's now-comprehensive current holdings of more than 80,000 costumes and accessories.

• Exhibition Catalogue Wins Prestigious Award

  Thursday, May 31, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  The exhibition catalogue for Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 has been chosen as one of the prestigious Books to Remember for 2000—the first time the catalogue for an art exhibition has been so honored. Each year, 25 books receive the award by the New York Public Library.

• Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist

  Wednesday, May 30, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 9 through December 30, 2001,Signac 1863-1935: Master Neo-Impressionist, will be the first major retrospective of the artist's work in nearly 40 years. Best known for his luminous Mediterranean seascapes rendered in a myriad of "dots" – and later mosaic-like squares – of color, Signac adapted the "pointillist" technique of Georges Seurat with stunning visual impact. The exhibition will feature 121 works, including some 70 oils and a rich selection of Signac's watercolors, drawings, and prints, providing an unprecedented overview of the artist's 50-year career.

• Photographs: A Decade of Collecting

  Monday, May 28, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  Masterpieces of early French photography and groundbreaking modern photographs created since 1960 – both the earliest and most recent chapters in the history of the 160-year-old medium – will be on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition celebrating the first decade of collecting by the Museum's Department of Photographs. Photographs: A Decade of Collecting will open on June 5, 2001.

• First New York Exhibition to Focus on Photography and the Bauhaus Experience Opens June 5

  Monday, May 28, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  The first New York exhibition to focus on photography and the Bauhaus experience will be on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Howard Gilman Gallery from June 5 through August 26, 2001. Dancing on the Roof: Photography and the Bauhaus (1923-1929) will explore the period of freewheeling innovation –- which began when master instructor László Moholy-Nagy arrived at the progressive German art school and ended when photography became an official part of the school's curriculum – through some 60 photographs by a dozen artists. Many of the prints are unique and have never been exhibited; most are from New York area collections.

• Major Retrospective Will Survey Career of Candace Wheeler, America's First Important Female Textile and Interior Designer

  Monday, May 28, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  Candace Wheeler (1827-1923)—the national expert in her time on decorative textiles and interiors, one of the first women to work in the male-dominated design world of the 19th century, and a woman who devoted her life to educating young women and encouraging their careers in the field of applied arts—will be the focus of an exhibition opening October 10 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Candace Wheeler: The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875-1900, the first major retrospective to address the accomplishments of this remarkable woman, will feature some 105 works including textiles, wallpapers, drawings, paintings, photographs of interiors, and furniture. Much of the exhibition will demonstrate the uniquely American style of design created by Wheeler and her associates. Candace Wheeler will be on view through January 6, 2002.

• Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, and Roussel, 1890–1930

  Tuesday, May 22, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  A unique exhibition Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel, 1890-1930, will provide American audiences a rare opportunity to experience the decorative projects carried out in France between 1890 and 1930 by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Ker Xavier Roussel. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 26 through September 9, 2001, the exhibition consists of approximately 80 paintings and folding screens on loan from international public and private collections.

• Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche

  Wednesday, May 16, 2001, 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 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.

• Recent Acquisitions of Art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas on View this Summer

  Tuesday, May 15, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  The geographic expanse and cultural diversity covered by the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas will be highlighted this summer when a selection of works acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art over the past five years goes on view at the Museum, beginning May 22. The exhibition African, Oceanic, and Ancient American Art: Recent Acquisitions will include some 70 works from such widely diverse places as the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, the country of Ethiopia in northeastern Africa, and the central highlands of Mexico and will demonstrate the breadth of department's collecting interests. Equally varied are the functions to which the works were put, the materials from which they are made, and the eras in which they were produced. They range in date from the end of the second millennium B.C. to 1998.

• ELTON JOHN AND TIM RICE'S TONY AWARD WINNING MUSICAL 'AIDA' TO BE FEATURED IN BEHIND-THE-SCENES DISCUSSION AND CONCERT ON ANCIENT EGYPT AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM MAY 7

  Wednesday, May 9, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  On Monday, May 7, at 8:00 p.m., the Concerts & Lectures program of The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Aida: The Making of a Musical – a behind-the-scenes discussion about the Museum's Egyptian art collection and the inspiration for Elton John and Tim Rice's Tony® Award winning musical Aida. The discussion will be followed by a concert of songs led by the show's stars, Tony® Award winner Heather Headley, Adam Pascal, and Taylor Dayne.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM INAUGURATES VIRTUAL REALITY ON WEB SITE

  Monday, April 16, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  The Web site of The Metropolitan Museum of Art — www.metmuseum.org — now offers unprecedented access to six of the Museum's historic American period rooms, through state-of-the-art Virtual Reality technology that allows online visitors to "tour" the rooms through all-inclusive, three dimensional views. The six rooms — which are on permanent view in the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing, installed with some of the finest American decorative art objects in the collection — date from the 17th to the 20th century, from the living hall of a pre-1674 home from Ipswich, Massachusetts, to a Frank Lloyd Wright living room from Wayzata, Minnesota (1912–14). The online presentation of the rooms offers views of the rooms as well as extensive historical and contextual information about the architecture, furniture and decorative objects, and interior decoration of each, provided by The American Wing's curatorial staff.

• CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY ROUNDTABLE AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM APRIL 30

  Monday, April 16, 2001, 4:00 a.m.

  Four of the world's foremost educational and cultural leaders will discuss the impact and implications of the technological advances of our time in a roundtable discussion — Culture and Technology: Present and Future — to take place in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium on Monday, April 30, at 6:00 p.m.

• Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island

  Sunday, April 1, 2001, 5:00 a.m.

  The first-ever American exhibition devoted to the art of Easter Island – the most remote inhabited place on the earth – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 12, 2001. Featuring some 50 works, including a celebrated stone head of a moai, Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island will explore the island's distinctive art forms as expressions of supernatural and secular power.

• Picturing Media: Modern Photographs from the Permanent Collection

  Monday, November 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Picturing Media: Modern Photographs from the Permanent Collection, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 31, 2000, is the second of an ongoing series of installations highlighting the Museum's rapidly expanding collection of contemporary photographs. This selection of 14 works, all acquired by the Metropolitan in the last decade, includes a number of very large photographs that are handsomely accommodated by the scale of the exhibition space on the first floor adjoining the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing for modern art. The exhibition remains on view through April 29, 2001.

• Summer Selections: American Drawings and Watercolors

  Monday, November 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Summer 2001 will mark the inaugural season of Summer Selections: American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a series of annual exhibitions drawn from the Museum's collection of works on paper created by American artists between the 1780s and 1900. This summer's presentation will include some three dozen drawings, watercolors, and pastels, and will open to the public on May 29, 2001.

• Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draftsmen of the Renaissance Opens at Metropolitan Museum February 6

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Correggio and Parmigianino were two of the greatest masters of the Emilian school of early 16th-century Italy, renowned for their painterly effects and exquisite draftsmanship. A major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draftsmen of the Renaissance, will mark the first time that a major selection of drawings by these two artists has been shown together. On view from February 6 through May 6, 2001, the exhibition will feature more than 130 drawings – many exhibited for the first time – from British and North American public and private collections.

• Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  A unique 2001 exhibition Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel, 1890-1930, will provide American audiences a rare opportunity to experience the decorative projects carried out in France between 1890 and 1930 by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Ker Xavier Roussel. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 26 through September 9, 2001, the exhibition will consist of approximately 80 paintings and folding screens on loan from international public and private collections.

• Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 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 Saturday, November 25. 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., beginning Friday, December 1.

• Photographs: A Decade of Collecting

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Masterpieces of early French photography and American photographs since 1960 – two high points in the history of the 160-year-old medium – will be on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition saluting the first decade of collecting by the Museum's Department of Photographs. Photographs: A Decade of Collecting will open on June 5, 2001.

• Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  An exploration of the technical history of photographic processes and of related conservation, preservation, and connoisseurship issues will be presented in an exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 30, 2001. Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation, on view through May 6 in the Museum's Howard Gilman Gallery, will include approximately 35 works by some of the most revered names in photography, ranging from the superbly preserved to the unfortunately time-worn, with before-and-after treatment documentation, microscopic views, and examples of current methods for examination, analysis, preservation, and treatment. The exhibition celebrates the January 2001 opening of the Museum's new, state-of-the-art Sherman Fairchild Center for Works on Paper and Photograph Conservation.

• A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975, the third in a series of four exhibitions surveying design in the 20th century, opens November 28 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition will explore the ideas, influences, and technologies that transformed design – particularly modernism – after World War II. The mid-century period of unprecedented exchange among artists, architects, and designers yielded profound changes in the domestic landscape. More than 50 examples from the Metropolitan's modern design collection, including furniture, glassware, ceramics, textiles, and more, will be organized thematically and geographically in the exhibition, which will remain on view in the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing through April 1, 2001. The fourth and final exhibition in the series, surveying design from 1975 to 2000, will be on view May 1 through October 1, 2001.

• JACQUELINE KENNEDY: THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years--Selections from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these five releases, to which you can link directly by clicking on their titles:
  Statement from L'Oréal
  Statement from Condé Nast
  Hamish Bowles
  Book Accompanying the Exhibition
  Related Programs

• Exhibition of Evaristo Baschenis Still Lifes Opens at Metropolitan Museum November 17

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Evaristo Baschenis (1617-1677), the preeminent still life painter of 17th-century Italy, is best known for his hauntingly poetic paintings of musical instruments. Although largely unfamiliar to American audiences, these lyrical masterpieces of composition and color harmony combine baroque splendor with a masterful, restrained geometry. Their quality of time arrested has led to comparisons with the paintings of Chardin and Vermeer. Now, 18 paintings from public and private collections in the artist's native Bergamo and throughout northern Italy are featured in The Still Lifes of Evaristo Baschenis: The Music of Silence, on view at the Metropolitan Museum from November 17, 2000 through March 4, 2001. The exhibition also includes books on perspective and important examples of period musical instruments from the Metropolitan's own collections.

• Dramatic Readings by Metropolitan Museum's Philippe de Montebello and Actor Fritz Weaver Scheduled for October 15

  Sunday, October 1, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be joined by the distinguished actor Fritz Weaver in a program of dramatic readings, presented in conjunction with the special exhibition The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West. The program, The Year One: A Reading, will feature selections from works by Virgil and Horace and poems in the fu form from the Han Dynasty. It will take place on Sunday, October 15, at 7:00 p.m. in the recently opened Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery, a particularly appropriate setting with its long, dramatic vista and display of monumental ancient Roman statues.

• ROMANTICISM AND THE SCHOOL OF NATURE:

  Thursday, August 24, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  One hundred fifteen exceptional 19th-century paintings, drawings, and oil sketches – many never before publicly exhibited – will be featured in this exhibition of selected works from the holdings of noted New York collector Karen B. Cohen. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 17, 2000 through January 21, 2001, Romanticism and the School of Nature: 19th-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection will include landscapes, portraits, figure compositions, and still lifes by the great artists of the Romantic period, the School of Barbizon, the Realist movement, and their followers, from Prud'hon to Seurat. At the center of the exhibition will be a selection of 20 images by Eugène Delacroix, ranging from pencil sketches to oil paintings and fully worked watercolors.

• ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY: NEW YORK, 1825-1861

  Friday, May 19, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these four releases, to which you can link directly by clicking on their titles:
  Statement from Fleet
  Curatorial Biographies
  Student Pass Program
  Exhibition Catalogue

• FREE ADMISSION FOR 1.5 MILLION NEW YORK CITY STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

  Friday, May 19, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York City, April 14, 2000)-The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fleet today announced an innovative "student pass" program that will provide free admission to the Metropolitan for schoolchildren and their families from all five boroughs of New York City this fall. Expected to reach the 1.5 million kindergarten through high-school students in public, private, and parochial schools, this is the broadest school pass program yet undertaken by the Metropolitan Museum. This outreach program will coincide with the Museum's presentation of Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 - a landmark exhibition of the visual arts in America between the opening of the Erie Canal and the start of the Civil War - that will be on view from September 19, 2000, through January 7, 2001. The announcement was made at a news conference today at which the Museum unveiled plans for the exhibition.

• THE GOLDEN DEER OF EURASIA

  Thursday, May 18, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Between 1986 and 1990, hundreds of astonishing objects — ornately carved and decorated in a unique style and covered in gold — were excavated from an archaeological site outside the village of Filippovka, located in Bashkortostan on southern Russia's open steppes. Representing one of the most important caches of early nomadic Eurasian art, these treasures date from the first millennium B.C. and are characterized by the extensive use of animal imagery — most notably that of a deer. This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present nearly 100 of these dazzling works — none of which has ever been shown anywhere — in a dramatic display, The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes, opening on October 12.

• A CENTURY OF DESIGN, PART III: 1950-1975

  Tuesday, May 16, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975 November 28, 2000 – May 27, 2001 Lila Acheson Wallace Wing A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975, the third in a series of four exhibitions surveying design in the 20th century, opens November 28 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition will explore the ideas, influences, and technologies that transformed design – particularly modernism – after World War II. The mid-century period of unprecedented exchange among artists, architects, and designers yielded profound changes in the domestic landscape. More than 50 examples from the Metropolitan's modern design collection, including furniture, glassware, ceramics, textiles, and more, will be organized thematically and geographically in the exhibition, which will remain on view in the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing through May 27, 2001. The fourth and final exhibition in the series, surveying design from 1975 to 2000, will be on view June 26, 2001 through January 6, 2002.

• ROMANTICISM AND THE SCHOOL OF NATURE: 19TH-CENTURY DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS FROM THE COLLECTION OF KAREN B. COHEN

  Saturday, May 13, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  One hundred fifteen exceptional 19th-century paintings, drawings, and oil sketches — many never before publicly exhibited — will be featured in this exhibition of selected works from the holdings of noted New York collector Karen B. Cohen. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 17, 2000, through January 21, 2001, Romanticism and the School of Nature: 19th-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Collection of Karen B. Cohen will include landscapes, portraits, figure compositions, and still lifes by the great artists of the Romantic period, the School of Barbizon, the Realist movement, and their followers, from Prud'hon to Seurat. At the center of the exhibition will be a selection of 20 images by Eugène Delacroix, ranging from pencil sketches to oil paintings and fully worked watercolors.

• THE YEAR ONE: ART OF THE ANCIENT WORLD EAST AND WEST

  Friday, May 12, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  In celebration of the new millennium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an unprecedented exhibition — drawn almost entirely from its own collections — of nearly 150 works of art that were produced some 2,000 years ago in the period just before and after the Year One. On view October 3, 2000 through January 14, 2001, The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West will feature magnificent and distinctive works of art from Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.

• THE EMBODIED IMAGE: CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY FROM THE JOHN B. ELLIOTT COLLECTION

  Tuesday, May 9, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  The most important and comprehensive exhibition of its kind ever assembled in the West, The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection — opening September 15 — will bring together some 120 works of art from the two principal collections of Chinese calligraphy that were formed in the United States. More than 55 masterworks from the John B. Elliott Collection of The Art Museum, Princeton University — perhaps the finest such collection outside Asia — will be integrated with a similar number of masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, most notably from the John M. Crawford Jr. Collection, and loans from six private collections. Spanning the period from the fourth century to the modern era, the exhibition will explore the stylistic range and individuality of many of the leading artists of the last 1,000 years.

• PARKS AND PROMENADES: MAURICE PRENDERGAST IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Monday, May 8, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Parks and Promenades: Maurice Prendergast in The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924) as painter, watercolorist, draftsman, and book illustrator. Gathered from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Robert Lehman Collection, the exhibition will be the first to present the Museum's entire collection of Prendergast's work. Cursory pencil drawings of incidental Parisian life; luminous, large-scale watercolors from the Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook (1895-97); and oil paintings of recreational activities on the Massachusetts shore and in New York's Central Park will chronicle a lifetime of plein-air observation. On view July 25 through October 22, 2000, the exhibition will feature some 70 works, including many of Prendergast's most acclaimed watercolors, which, because of their sensitivity to light, have not been shown together for more than a decade.

• OTHER PICTURES: VERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION

  Saturday, May 6, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Photographs by anonymous amateurs whose "happy accidents" and "successful failures" resulted in surprising and tantalizing works of art are the subject of Other Pictures: Vernacular Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 6, 2000. Dating from the 1910s through the 1960s — a period that saw the camera's emergence as a nearly ubiquitous and easy-to-use accessory of modern life — these photographs reflect the spirit of their time in refreshingly honest and often unexpected ways. Although never intended for public display — most of the approximately 90 photographs on view were discovered at flea markets, in shoeboxes, or in family albums — these found images often bring to mind the work of such master photographers as Walker Evans, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus.

• AFTER NICOLAS POUSSIN: NEW ETCHINGS BY LEON KOSSOFF

  Wednesday, April 26, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A series of 14 recent etchings by London painter Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning March 28. Based on paintings by the 17th-century French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the etchings are the result of a period of intense, first-hand study of the Baroque master's canvases during the 1995 Poussin exhibition at London's Royal Academy. After Nicolas Poussin: New Etchings by Leon Kossoff, which will be installed in the North Mezzanine Gallery of the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, runs through August 13.

• VÉLEZ BLANCO PATIO REOPENS MAY 12 AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM AFTER THREE-YEAR RENOVATION

  Wednesday, April 12, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Two special exhibitions celebrate the reopening:
  The Forgotten Friezes from the Castle of Vélez Blanco
  Sculpture and Decorative Arts of the Spanish Renaissance

• A CENTURY OF DESIGN, PART II: 1925-1950

  Monday, April 10, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part II: 1925-1950 — the second in a four-part series of exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art surveying design in the 20th century — will display more than 50 objects from the Museum's collection to demonstrate the dynamic rise of Modernism and its influence on public perception of everyday objects, such as furniture, housewares, and decorative objects. On view in the Museum's Gallery for Modern Design and Architecture from May 9 through October 29, 2000, the exhibition will follow the advancement of design in Europe during the second quarter of the 20th century — from Art Deco through the influences of the Bauhaus school, Functionalism, Russian Constructivism, and organic Scandinavian design.

• AMERICAN MODERN, 1925 — 1940: DESIGN FOR A NEW AGE

  Monday, April 10, 2000, 4:00 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 approximately 50 of its creative pioneers, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 16, 2000 through January 7, 2001. Drawn exclusively from the Museum's collection and from the John C. Waddell Collection, a major promised gift to the Metropolitan, this landmark exhibition features more than 150 objects — including furniture, clocks, appliances, posters, textiles, radios, tableware, and even a bathroom sink — by such leading designers as Norman Bel Geddes, Donald Deskey, Paul Frankl, Raymond Loewy, Isamu Noguchi, Eliel Saarinen, Walter Dorwin Teague, Walter von Nessen, and Russel Wright.

• MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE ART FROM THE MARY GRIGGS BURKE COLLECTION

  Tuesday, March 21, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Masterpieces of Japnaese Art from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these four releases, to which you can link by clicking on their titles:

• ART AND ORACLE: SPIRIT VOICES OF AFRICA

  Monday, March 20, 2000, 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.

• RIDING ACROSS CENTRAL ASIA: IMAGES OF THE MONGOLIAN HORSE IN ISLAMIC ART

  Monday, March 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The Mongolian horse — a small, tireless, and agile animal that was instrumental to the movement of the Mongol armies across Central Asia — has also come to symbolize the introduction of new cultures and traditions to the eastern Islamic world. The depiction of horses in Islamic art — both realistic and symbolic — will be examined in the exhibition Riding across Central Asia: Images of the Mongolian Horse in Islamic Art, which will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 26.

• STATEMENT BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ON THE PROVENANCE OF RUBENS'PORTRAIT OF A MAN

  Monday, March 13, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 14, 2000) — Last Friday, in a news story reported by the Associated Press and subsequently printed in the New York Times (March 12), the executive director of the World Jewish Congress, Elan Steinberg, suggested — apparently relying on a brief provenance listing in an 18-year-old-catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art — that a painting in the Museum's collection "may have been stolen from Jews" during the Nazi-World War II era: Portrait of a Man, a 1597 work by Peter Paul Rubens.

• PAINTERS IN PARIS: 1895-1950

  Sunday, March 5, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Painters in Paris: 1895-1950 includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as a statement from Aetna, the exhibition's sponsor.

• TILMAN RIEMENSCHNEIDER: MASTER SCULPTOR OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

  Monday, February 7, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as a statement from Bayerische Landesbank, the exhibition's sponsor.

• PERFECT DOCUMENTS: WALKER EVANS AND AFRICAN ART, 1935

  Thursday, January 27, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a group of distinctive and relatively unknown works by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), beginning February 1, 2000. Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935 will examine in detail the history of Evans's African art photographs through 50 vintage images from the portfolio that Evans created in conjunction with a landmark exhibition of African art. Complementing Perfect Documents will be a selection of sculptures that Evans photographed in 1935, many of which will be on loan from public and private collections.

• ROCK STYLE IS THEME FOR METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S DECEMBER COSTUME INSTITUTE EXHIBITION

  Thursday, December 2, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Rock Style includes a general press release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as statements from the exhibition's sponsors:
  Tommy Hilfiger USA, Inc.;
  Condé Nast;
  The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

• A CENTURY OF DESIGN, PART I: 1900-1925

  Tuesday, November 30, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part I: 1900-1925 — the first in a four-part series of exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art surveying design in the 20th century — will present some of the Museum's finest examples of furniture, metalwork, glass, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, and drawings from the first quarter of the 1900s. Highlighting the Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco movements, the exhibition will be on view in the Metropolitan Museum's Gallery for Modern Design and Architecture from December 14, 1999, through March 26, 2000.

• EUROPEAN HELMETS, 1450-1650: TREASURES FROM THE RESERVE COLLECTION

  Saturday, November 27, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum will present European Helmets, 1450-1650: Treasures from the Reserve Collection, the third in a series of thematic installations drawn from the Museum's extraordinary collection of European headpieces, beginning January 25, 2000. Featuring some 70 helmets, many of them to go on display for the first time, the exhibition will explore the evolution, technology, form, and fashion of European head defense over two centuries. The majority of the helmets have rarely been exhibited or published in the last 50 years and, therefore, constitute a collection virtually unknown to Museum visitors, scholars, and collectors.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN ART AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Sunday, July 18, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  Sculptures by Adam Henein and paintings by Farouk Hosny — both prominent artists working in contemporary Egypt — are the featured works in Farouk Hosny/Adam Henein: Contemporary Egyptian Artists and Heirs to an Ancient Tradition, an exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14, 1999. The exhibition, which features more than 50 sculptures by Henein (of which 44 constitute a single installation) and approximately 34 paintings by Hosny, will remain on view in the Museum's first-floor galleries of Egyptian Art through January 23, 2000.

• DAIDO MORIYAMA: HUNTER

  Wednesday, July 7, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  Daido Moriyama: Hunter, a series of 40 vintage prints of postwar Japan by one of its foremost photographers, Daido Moriyama (b.1938), is on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's North Mezzanine Gallery, in the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing.

• BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD: THE MONUMENT DRAWINGS

  Monday, June 14, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Monument Drawings, a series of 23 original works by the American artist, novelist, and poet, will be on view in the North Mezzanine Gallery of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing.

• GUSTAVE MOREAU: BETWEEN EPIC AND DREAM

  Wednesday, May 19, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of French artist Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), The Metropolitan Museum of Art is presenting a major exhibition — the largest retrospective of Moreau's work ever shown in the United States — featuring masterpieces from every phase of his distinguished career. Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream includes nearly 175 works — some 40 paintings and 60 watercolors in addition to drawings and preparatory studies, lent primarily from the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris, with other works drawn from public and private collections in Europe and America.

• ART MUSEUMS, INTERNET, AND NEW TECHNOLOGY TO BE SUBJECT OF MAY 10 PANEL DISCUSSION AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  Thursday, April 22, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  A panel of four of the world's most distinguished museum directors will discuss and debate the challenges and opportunities facing museums as computers, the Internet, and other new technologies enter the arts arena. The program will take place on Monday, May 10, at 6:00 p.m. in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OPENS NEWLY RENOVATED GREEK GALLERIES

  Sunday, April 11, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  For more information on the individual galleries, go to: Greek Art of the Sixth through Fourth Centuries B.C.: Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery;
  Greek Art of the Sixth Century B.C.: Judy and Michael H. Steinhardt Gallery;
  Greek Art of the Sixth Century B.C.: The Bothmer Gallery I;
  Greek Art of the Fifth Century B.C.: The Bothmer Gallery II;
  Greek Art of the Fifth Century B.C.: The Wiener Gallery;
  Greek Art of the Fifth and Early Fourth Centuries B.C.: Stavros and Danaë Costopoulos Gallery;
  Greek Art of the Fourth Century B.C.: Spyros and Eurydice Costopoulos Gallery
  
  
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art's extensive collection of ancient Greek art — preeminent in the Western Hemisphere and among the finest in the world — returns to view on April 20, 1999, in a dramatic new presentation in seven large galleries refurbished to their original neoclassical grandeur.

• DEVOTIONS AND DIVERSIONS: PRINTS AND BOOKS FROM THE LATE MIDDLE AGES IN NORTHERN EUROPE

  Sunday, January 10, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Some of the earliest extant northern European prints and books — all from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exceptional collection of this material — will be presented in Devotions and Diversions: Prints and Books from the Late Middle Ages in Northern Europe , from May 11 through August 29, 1999, in the Museum's Karen B. Cohen Gallery and Charles Z. Offin Gallery. Forty-one German, Netherlandish, and French woodcuts and metalcuts (many of them unique impressions), several Netherlandish woodcut blockbook pages, and about twenty illustrated books, including a number of printed French Books of Hours, will be on view.

• PICASSO: PAINTER AND SCULPTOR IN CLAY

  Sunday, January 10, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  More than 170 rarely exhibited unique ceramic works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), created by the artist in the South of France primarily from 1947 to 1962, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Picasso: Painter and Sculptor in Clay, from March 3 through June 6, 1999. Although Picasso is acknowledged as one of the most revolutionary artists of this century, with an unquestioned reputation as a painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker, this exhibition is the first large-scale examination of his ceramic oeuvre, which he commenced at the age of 66. Intimately related in theme and subject matter to Picasso's art in other media, the subjects of these works range from still lifes to bullfights and include a lively cast of characters: a mistress and a wife, lovers and clowns, dancers and musicians, centaurs and fauns, as well as birds and fish. These join many sculpted and painted ceramics that celebrate the female form — nude and clothed, standing and seated.

• THE NATURE OF ISLAMIC ORNAMENT PART III: GEOMETRIC PATTERNS

  Sunday, January 10, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The third in a four-part series on Islamic ornament dating from the 9th to the 18th century, The Nature of Islamic Ornament, Part III: Geometric Patterns will open on March 17, 1999. Some 25 objects that feature predominantly geometric decoration, drawn from the Metropolitan Museum's own collection — including illuminated manuscripts, rugs, carved and inlaid woodwork, and pottery — reflect the variety of production of Islamic art and the wide range of application of geometric patterns.

• GUARDIANS OF THE LONGHOUSE: ART IN BORNEO

  Sunday, January 10, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The first American exhibition devoted exclusively to the Kenyah-Kayan art of central Borneo will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 13, 1999. With loans from museums and private collectors nationwide, Guardians of the Longhouse: Art in Borneo will feature more than 60 works exploring the theme of the supernatural and physical defense of the longhouse community in Kenyah-Kayan art. Dating from the classic period of Borneo art, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, works in the exhibition — many of which have never been displayed before — range from robust wooden figures and architectural sculpture to delicately carved items of personal adornment.