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Americans in Paris, 1860–1900
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds – including such luminaries as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer – were drawn irresistibly to Paris to learn to paint and to establish their reputations. The world's artistic epicenter, Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters' styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of newly sophisticated art schools and professional standards back in the United States.
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Rembrandt Drawings and Prints, A Selection in Honor of the Artist's 400th Birthday
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates the 400th birthday of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn with the display of a selection of 58 drawings and prints from its extensive collection of works by the great 17th-century Dutch master and artists of his school. Forty-four of the works on view are by Rembrandt himself. The exhibition has been drawn primarily from the holdings of the Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints and the Robert Lehman Collection. One sheet, a charcoal sketch of a lioness, has been borrowed from a New York private collection.
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Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939) – the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14. One hundred paintings as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, from his appearance on the Paris art scene in the mid-1890s to his accidental death in 1939, will comprise the exhibition Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, which will feature works by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, Vuillard, and others. Highlights will include seven paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896 Van Gogh retrospective; the masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from his 1898 Gauguin exhibition; paintings from Picasso's first French exhibition (1901) and Matisse's first solo exhibition (1904); and three pictures from Derain's London series, painted in 1906-1907 at Vollard's
suggestion. Also on view will be numerous portraits of Vollard by leading artists, among them Cézanne, Renoir, Bonnard, and Picasso.
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Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
More than 80 medieval sculpted heads – half from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and half selected loans from American and European collections – are the focus of the upcoming exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, opening this fall. The exhibition, which includes heads from the third century A.D. through the early 1500s, will consider such artistic and thematic issues as: iconoclasm and the legacy of furor, sculpting identity and the evolving notions of the "portrait," sculpture without context and the search for provenance, head reliquaries as power objects, and Gothic Italy and the antique. Created from materials as diverse as polychromed wood, silver, silver gilt, marble, and limestone, the works represent mostly French, but also German, Italian, Byzantine, and English sculptural traditions. By examining the works in different ways, the exhibition will draw together science and connoisseurship, archaeology and history. On view will be a recently acquired 13th-century limestone Head of an Angel, newly identified as having come from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
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Major Maya Exhibition at Metropolitan in June Explores Fascinating Ancient American Civilization
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings – opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 13, 2006 – will explore the growth of the concept of divine kingship among ancient Maya peoples. Featuring some 150 objects – from large-scale relief sculpture in stone to small precious pieces of worked jade – the exhibition will display the grandiose ambitions of earthly rulers when they transformed themselves into gods. Dating principally from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D., the works in the exhibition are lent primarily from public collections in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as from collections in Europe and the United States. Emphasis will be placed on recently excavated objects that will be on view for the first time in the United States. Notable among them are pieces from the renowned Maya sites of Calakmul in Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala, and Copan in Honduras. Maya jade objects discovered in tombs in the famous Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan – the contemporary but distant central Mexican city – will also be included.
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Café and Audio Guides Available at The Cloisters
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
An Audio Guide and a café are among the visitor amenities now available at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art located in northern Manhattan and dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages.
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Metropolitan Museum Announces Appointment of Christina Alphonso as Associate Manager for Administration at The Cloisters
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has appointed Christina Alphonso to the position of Associate Manager for Administration at The Cloisters, effective December 19. (A branch of the Metropolitan, The Cloisters is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages.)
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The Cloisters: A History
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages. Picturesquely overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan, the Museum derives its name from the portions of five medieval cloisters incorporated into a modern museum structure. Not replicating any one particular medieval building type or setting, but rather designed to evoke the architecture of the later Middle Ages, The Cloisters creates an integrated and harmonious context in which visitors can experience the rich tradition of medieval artistic production, including metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles. By definition, a cloister consists of a covered walkway surrounding a large open courtyard providing access to other monastic buildings. Similarly, the museum's cloisters act as passageways to galleries; and they provide as inviting a place for rest and contemplation for visitors as they often did in their original monastic settings.
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The Gardens of The Cloisters
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
In formal terms a cloister is a quadrangle enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway. It is the heart of the monastery, usually placed in the sunniest location and providing the connection, physical and psychological, between the church and the more domestic areas such as the refectory and chapter house.
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Metropolitan Museum Publishes New Guidebook to its Holdings of Medieval Art at The Cloisters
Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
A new, lavishly illustrated guidebook called The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture – co-authored by the head of the department of medieval art and a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art – provides in-depth information on highlights of the collection of The Cloisters, which is the only museum in North America devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. (The Cloisters is a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum.)