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• Kenneth Jay Lane Named Honorary Trustee at Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, September 25, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Kenneth Jay Lane has been elected an Honorary Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the September 11 meeting of the Board of Trustees.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Appointment of Deirdre Larkin as Associate Horticultural Manager at The Cloisters

  Monday, September 10, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art has appointed Deirdre Larkin to the position of Associate Horticulture Manager at The Cloisters. A branch of the Metropolitan, The Cloisters is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages.

• Virtuosity and Artistic Richness of 18th-Century Chinese Court's Decorative Arts on Display at Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, August 15, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition featuring a remarkable assemblage of porcelain, metalwork, jade, lacquer, and textiles created during the Qing dynasty of China will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 25. Drawn from the permanent collection and complemented by select loans, Excellence and Elegance: Decorative Arts of the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court will explore the unprecedented level of technical virtuosity achieved during this period. The exhibition also illustrates the imperial taste for ancient themes, interest in Western motifs, and exacting patronage that contributed to the flourishing of the decorative arts. Among the 60 works on view will be a dazzling selection of rare porcelain wares, decorated with monochrome glaze or enamel colors.

• New Gallery for Art of Native North American Art to Open at Metropolitan Museum in November

  Thursday, August 2, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.

• New Galleries for Oceanic Art to Open at Metropolitan Museum November 14

  Tuesday, July 31, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Following an extensive three-year renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on November 14 its New Galleries for Oceanic Art, a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world's premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 17,000-square-foot exhibition space will present a substantially larger portion of the Metropolitan's Oceanic collection than was previously on view.

• Two Preeminent 19th-Century American Silversmiths Featured in Fall Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, July 31, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Established in Boston in 1808 and relocated to Philadelphia three years later, the silversmithing firm of Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner produced American silver of unprecedented quality and grandeur. Opening November 20 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, 1808-1842 is the first exhibition devoted entirely to their work, which, in its grand scale and patriotic imagery, reflected America's coming of age as a commercial, industrial, political, and artistic center. More than 100 examples in silver – from monumental vessels that celebrate military and civic heroes to domestic, ecclesiastical, and personal items resplendent with neoclassical ornament and displaying sophisticated design and craftsmanship – are arranged chronologically and thematically. A rare group of some 35 related drawings, purchased by the Metropolitan in 1953 and never before exhibited together, will offer important insights into the evolution of Fletcher and Gardiner's designs. Of particular interest will be the display of seven works in silver alongside their corresponding design drawings.

• Metropolitan Museum Offers Rare Viewing of Gates of Paradise, Lorenzo Ghiberti's Magnificent Renaissance Masterpiece

  Tuesday, July 31, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Adored by generations of artists – including Michelangelo, who is reputed to have given them the name "Gates of Paradise" – the magnificent gilded bronze doors of the east portal of the Baptistery in Florence are among the seminal monuments of the Italian Renaissance. The massive 17-feet-high doors were created by the eminent Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and designer Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), who decorated them with ten evocative, highly charged, and magically atmospheric scenes from the Old Testament, each superbly carried out in relief ranging from high to low. After more than 25 years of conservation, seven elements of this masterpiece – including three of the narrative reliefs for which they are famous – are in the United States for the first and only time since their creation more than 500 years ago. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view them at The Metropolitan Museum of Art begins October 30. After the conclusion of their four-city United States tour, the works return to Florence, to be reassembled in their original bronze framework and placed in a specially designed, hermetically sealed case in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, never to travel again.

• New Galleries for Oceanic Art to Open at Metropolitan Museum November 14

  Tuesday, July 31, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Following an extensive three-year renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on November 14 its New Galleries for Oceanic Art, a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world's premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 17,000-square-foot exhibition space will present a substantially larger portion of the Metropolitan's Oceanic collection than was previously on view.

• New Gallery for Art of Native North American Art to Open at Metropolitan Museum in November

  Tuesday, July 31, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.

• New Gallery for Modern and Contemporary Photography to be Inaugurated at Metropolitan Museum in September

  Tuesday, July 24, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum will inaugurate the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography on September 25, 2007, establishing for the first time a gallery dedicated exclusively to photography created since 1960. With high ceilings, clean detailing, and approximately 2,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Menschel Hall is designed specifically to accommodate the large-scale photographs that are an increasingly important part of contemporary art and the Museum's permanent collection. Photographers represented in the collection include such modern masters as Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Doug Aitken, and Sigmar Polke.

• Ancestral Origins of African Masterpieces Explored in Major Metropolitan Museum Exhibition This Fall

  Monday, July 16, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special exhibition of acclaimed sculptural masterpieces from the heart of Africa's equatorial rainforest, beginning October 2, 2007. The exhibition explores not only the significance of the works presented in their countries of origin but also how their reception in the West led them to enter the mainstream of universal art. Organized thematically, Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary explains the sources of cultural and spiritual inspiration that led to their creation in equatorial Africa. Drawn from the most important collections of African art in Europe and the United States, the more than 130 works featured in the exhibition relate to 12 distinct traditions in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were created to celebrate the lives of an extended family's most notable ancestors and to give expression to their ongoing role as advocates with the divine.

• One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movement

  Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  The studio craft movement developed in the U.S. during the years after World War II and has flourished internationally over the past 40 years. During this period, craft artists have experimented with non-traditional materials and new techniques, producing bold, abstract, and sculptural art, as well as continuing to make utilitarian objects. One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movementon view from December 22, 2006, through December 2, 2007, features approximately 50 works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and will include furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, jewelry, and fiber. Many of these works have never been on view at the Metropolitan before, and several are recent acquisitions by the Museum.

• Bridging East and West: The Chinese Diaspora and Lin Yutang

  Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition featuring 43 modern Chinese paintings and calligraphies assembled by the noted author Lin Yutang (1895-1976) and his family will go on view to the public for the first time at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 15. The collection was recently donated to the Museum by members of the family.

• Monumental Statues of the Female Pharaoh Hatshepsut on View at Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Two magnificent statues of Hatshepsut – a woman who ruled ancient Egypt as a pharaoh – are on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this summer, in advance of the re-opening of the Museum's Hatshepsut Gallery later this year. It was announced recently in Cairo that Hatshepsut's mummy – long thought to be lost – has been identified.

• New Gallery for Art of Native North America to Open at Metropolitan Museum in November

  Tuesday, July 10, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces the 2007-08 Season of Concerts

  Wednesday, June 27, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  The 54th Season Features Itzhak Perlman's First New York Chamber Series; Eleven Pianists Including Nelson Freire, Hélène Grimaud, Stephen Kovacevich, and Ingrid Fliter; a Violin Series Featuring Janine Jansen and Hilary Hahn; Patti Smith and Dianne Reeves; and The Beaux Arts Trio's New York Farewell Concert

• The Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education

  Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Following a three-year renovation and complete reconfiguration, the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on October 23, 2007. The new Center will transform Museum experiences for students and teachers, teenagers and families, scholars and all visitors. It will provide an extraordinary range of new, high-tech features to train, inform, and inspire, and beautiful spaces in which to learn, beginning with the majestic and welcoming Diane W. Burke Hall.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Schedule for Summer and Fall 2007 Met Holiday Mondays

  Monday, June 11, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  The main building of The Metropolitan Museum of Art – located at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street in Manhattan – will be open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the following Met Holiday Mondays in summer and fall of 2007:

• A Tribute to Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996)

  Sunday, June 10, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Although the name of Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) today appears most often in the context of dance – specifically ballet – in America, he was also actively involved in theater, writing, and collecting art. Over a span of some 40 years, he donated more than a thousand works from his personal collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – found in rare book and print shops around the world – all display some spark of ingenuity, esthetic grandeur, or legerdemain that attracted his eye.

• 世界屈指の竹工芸コレクション、METに寄贈決定！　祝の特別展、人間国宝ら、明治～現代の名工の傑作多数。　６・１３よりMETにて開催

  Friday, June 8, 2007, 3:44 p.m.

• New Galleries for Oceanic Art

  Wednesday, June 6, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Following an extensive three-year renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on November 14 its New Galleries for Oceanic Art, a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world's premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 17,000-square-foot exhibition space will present a substantially larger portion of the Metropolitan's Oceanic collection than was previously on view.

• Metropolitan Museum's Exhibitions Cézanne to Picasso and Americans in Paris Create $377 Million Economic Impact for New York

  Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, May 31, 2007) – The Metropolitan Museum's concurrent presentation of two acclaimed and widely attended exhibitions in the fall 2006/winter 2007 season – Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde and Americans in Paris, 1860-1900 – generated $377 million in spending by regional, national, and foreign tourists to New York, according to a visitor survey the Museum released today. Using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact, the study found that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from out-of-town visitors to the Museum totaled some $37.7 million. (Study findings attached.)

• Neo Rauch at the Met: para

  Thursday, May 17, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Neo Rauch at the Met: para presents 14 new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through October 14, 2007 — is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.

• Impressionist and Modern Masterpieces Once Owned by Rival Brother Collectors on View at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, May 17, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect will bring together for the first time celebrated masterpieces once owned by rival brother collectors Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), founder of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Stephen Carlton Clark (1882-1960), a former trustee and illustrious donor to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring more than 65 paintings, the exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to appreciate the remarkable legacies of two brothers – heirs to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and native New Yorkers – who played notable but ultimately divergent roles as patrons of the arts in the United States.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS MAY – AUGUST 2007

  Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 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.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Promotions for Suzanne E. Brenner and Lauren A. Meserve

  Wednesday, May 16, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, May 17, 2007)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced that two members of its Investment Office will assume new and expanded responsibilities this month. The announcements were made by Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Museum, and Emily K. Rafferty, the Museum's President.

• Renowned Contemporary American Artist Frank Stella Explores Architecture and the Leap from Canvas to Space in His First Solo Exhibitions at Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, May 1, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  Two concurrent exhibitions featuring recent work by the renowned American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2007.

• Metropolitan Museum to Unveil Spectacular New Greek and Roman Galleries

  Sunday, April 15, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  A spectacular "museum-within-the-museum" for the display of its extraordinary collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman art – much of it unseen in New York for generations – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this April in its New Greek and Roman Galleries. After more than five years of construction, the long-awaited opening concludes a 15-year project for the complete redesign and reinstallation of the Museum's superb collection of classical art. Returning to public view in the new space are thousands of long-stored works from the Metropolitan's collection, which is considered one of the finest in the world. The centerpiece of the New Greek and Roman Galleries is the majestic Leon Levy and Shelby White Court – a monumental, peristyle court for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art, with a soaring two-story atrium.

• Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf

  Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

• Metropolitan Museum and ARTstor Announce Pioneering Initiative to Provide Digital Images to Scholars at No Charge

  Sunday, March 11, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  In a new initiative designed to assist scholars with teaching, study, and the publication of academic works, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will distribute, free of charge, high-resolution digital images from an expanding array of works in its renowned collection for use in academic publications. This new service, which is effective immediately, is available through ARTstor, a non-profit organization that makes art images available for educational use.

• "An Inside Look" with the Metropolitan Museum's Curators in New Lecture Series Beginning March 14

  Wednesday, March 7, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, February 27, 2007) Beginning March 14, the work of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's stellar curatorial staff will be highlighted in a special, two-year series of lectures that will be offered to the public in the Museum's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. The first four programs – devoted to Egyptian art, European sculpture and decorative arts, arms and armor, and Asian art – will take place this spring.

• Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí (Catalan)

  Sunday, March 4, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí, la primera exposició d'aquest tipus mai muntada a Amèrica, explora el treball innovador i divers d'artistes, arquitectes i dissenyadors en els anys entre l'Exposició Internacional de 1888 i la imposició del règim feixista de Franco el 1939. Barcelona and Modernity ofereix noves visions dels moviments artístics que varen desenvolupar la cerca de la modernitat per part d'una ciutat que es confirmà aleshores com el centre neuràlgic de les activitats intel•lectuals, polítiques i culturals a Espanya.

• Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí (en Español)

  Saturday, February 24, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí — la primera exposición de este tipo jamás montada en América — explora el trabajo diverso e innovador de artistas, arquitectos, y diseñadores de Barcelona en los años entre la exposición universal de Barcelona de 1888 y la imposición del régimen fascista de Francisco Franco en 1939. Barcelona and Modernity ofrece nuevas aproximaciones a los movimientos artísticos que desarrollaron la búsqueda de la modernidad por parte de una ciudad que se confirmó entonces como el centro neurálgico de las actividades intelectuales, políticas, y culturales en España.

• Neo Rauch at the Met

  Thursday, February 15, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  Neo Rauch at the Met presents six new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through September 23, 2007 —is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.

• Hidden in Plain Sight: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection

  Thursday, February 15, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  Hidden in Plain Sight: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, on view from May 15 through September 3, 2007, features the work of artists who use the camera to call our attention to the poetic richness latent in ordinary things. Often deliberately understated, these photographs are filled with everyday epiphanies, inviting us to look more closely at the world around us. The exhibition will feature approximately 35 works by American and international artists, including Walker Evans, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Patrick Faigenbaum, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Daniel Faust, Mitch Epstein, Lewis Koch, Bertien van Manen, Carrie Mae Weems, Rachel Harrison, and Shomei Tomatsu.

• "Poiret: King of Fashion" at Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute to Celebrate Paul Poiret, Visionary Artist-Couturier of Early 20th Century

  Tuesday, February 13, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  Paul Poiret – who at the height of his career in pre-World War I France was the undisputed "King of Fashion" and whose sweeping vision led to a new silhouette that liberated women from the corset and introduced the shocking colors and exotic references of the Ballets Russes to the haute couture – will be celebrated with a landmark exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 9 through August 5, 2007. He has not been the focus of a major museum exhibition in more than 30 years.

• From Ancient Monumental Landscapes to Contemporary Color Photographs, New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Invites Viewers on a Thousand-year Journey through Chinese Art

  Thursday, February 8, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  The theme of journeys, both real and imagined, will be presented in Journeys: Mapping the Earth and Mind in Chinese Art, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 10. Featuring more than 60 works of art in various pictorial formats – hanging scroll, handscroll, album, fan, book, and photograph – the exhibition will explore the rich symbolic meanings and cultural significance of journeys as embodied in works of art dating from the 11th century to the present. The exhibition will be organized thematically: emotional partings and returns, roaming the wilderness, escapist visions and garden retreats, dream journeys, travelers, scenic sites and landmarks, and topographic paintings and maps. Highlights of the exhibition will include a brilliantly colored 42-foot-long map entitled Ten Thousand Miles Along the Yellow River (late 17th-early 18th century), a rare deerskin map of Forts Zeelandia and Provintia and the City of Tainan (18th century), as well as a striking series of eight photographs, The North: Bicycle Rider, by contemporary artist Hai Bo (born 1962). Approximately one-third of the works are to be shown for the first time at the Museum, including 16 loans and three new acquisitions.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces 2007 Schedule for Met Holiday Mondays

  Tuesday, February 6, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  The main building of The Metropolitan Museum of Art – located at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street in Manhattan – will be open to the public from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the following Met Holiday Mondays in 2007:

• Closed Circuit: Video and New Media at the Metropolitan

  Thursday, January 25, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  The first multi-artist exhibition of video art and new media at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be presented from February 23 to April 29, 2007. Drawn entirely from the collection of the Museum's Department of Photographs, Closed Circuit: Video and New Media at the Metropolitan features video and new media works made between 1994 and 2004 by eight American and international artists: Darren Almond, Lutz Bacher, Jim Campbell, Omer Fast, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Maria Marshall, and Wolfgang Staehle. These highly respected figures in contemporary art will be represented in Closed Circuit by some of their best-known and most celebrated works, only one of which has been on exhibit before at the Met.

• Opening of New Classical Galleries in Metropolitan Museum's American Wing Represents First Phase in Multi-Year Construction Project

  Monday, January 22, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, January 23, 2007)—A suite of galleries devoted to American art created between 1810 and 1840 was formally opened on the first floor of the American Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art today. The opening of the new galleries marks the completion of the first phase of a project to reconfigure, renovate, or upgrade nearly every section of the American Wing by 2010. A major goal of the plan is to improve public access to, and visitor flow within, the American Wing galleries.

• Architectural Elements from Medieval Monastery Installed at The Cloisters

  Monday, January 22, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  A dozen architectural elements from the medieval monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, which is located in the northeast Pyrenees, have gone on public display at The Cloisters – the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. Part of the collection of The Cloisters since 1925, the pieces of carved stone have been in storage for nearly 70 years. The carvings, which include decorative elements from three nearly complete arches, and blocks carved with images of a musician, the Lamb of God, and other figures, have recently been embedded in the east wall of the Cuxa Cloister. Although the walls surrounding the Cloister are modern, the series of marble columns, boldly carved capitals, and arches forming the Cuxa Cloister date from the 12th century and also originated from Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. All are carved from the beautiful pinkish stone of the Pyrenees known as "Languedoc marble." The installation also will incorporate new lighting and a new sound system.

• Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents' Day – January 15 and February 19 – Head List of Metropolitan Museum's 2007 Schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays"

  Thursday, January 11, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, January 10, 2007) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public on two upcoming holiday Mondays – January 15 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) and February 19 (Presidents' Day) – as the latest in its popular "Holiday Monday" programs. The Museum will also open the doors of its main building on May 28 (Memorial Day), July 2 (Independence Day Holiday), September 3 (Labor Day), and October 8 (Columbus Day).

• Photographs of the Discovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb on Display at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, December 14, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  An exhibition of vintage photographs celebrating one of the most memorable episodes in the history of archaeology – the discovery and exploration of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (Dynasty 18; ruled ca. 1336-1327 B.C.) – will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning December 19. The photographs, documenting every stage in the process of the excavation, were taken by the renowned archaeological photographer Harry Burton, who was a staff member of the Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition when he was "lent" to Howard Carter, the famed excavator of Tutankhamun's tomb. Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton features his spectacular black-and-white images of the entrance passage to the tomb, the opening of the sealed chambers inside, the first view of the contents and removal of the objects, and the beautifully made and decorated treasures that were found. The four chambers of the tomb were crammed with objects such as gold-covered chariots; elaborately inlaid furniture and chests; a vast array of the king's personal belongings, including jewelry; a series of shrines and coffins that protected the king; and the famous solid-gold mask that adorned his mummy – the last, among the most iconic examples of ancient Egyptian art ever to have come to light.

• Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797

  Thursday, December 14, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  With nearly 200 works of art from more than 60 public and private collections around the world, Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797 is the first major exhibition to explore one of the most important and distinctive facets of Venetian art history: the exchange of art objects and interchange of artistic ideas between the great Italian maritime city and her Islamic neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean. Glass, textiles, carpets, arms and armor, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, furniture, paintings, drawings, prints, printed books, book bindings, and manuscripts tell the fascinating story of the Islamic contribution to the arts of Venice during her heyday, from the medieval to the Baroque eras. 828, the year two Venetian merchants stole Saint Mark's hallowed body from Muslim-controlled Alexandria and brought it to their native city, and 1797, when the Venetian Republic fell to the French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte, form the chronological parameters of the exhibition that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 27, 2007.

• Сады музея The Met Cloisters

  Saturday, December 2, 2006, 6:45 p.m.

• Музей The Met Cloisters. Краткий обзор

  Saturday, December 2, 2006, 4:49 p.m.

• Metropolitan Museum Participates in 18th Annual "Day Without Art" Observance of World AIDS Day

  Thursday, November 30, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will participate in World AIDS Day for the 18th consecutive year by observing Day Without Art on Friday, December 1, 2006. In recognition of the devastating losses suffered by the cultural community as a result of AIDS, the Metropolitan will remove from view or shroud 16 objects around the Museum. Black ribbons will be tied around the flowers in the Great Hall. In addition, the Museum will lower the flags on its plaza to half-mast to symbolize the losses due to AIDS-related deaths in the art community.

• WELLINGTON Z. CHEN ELECTED A TRUSTEE AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  Sunday, November 26, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, November 14, 2006)--Wellington Z. Chen has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art representing the borough of Queens, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the November 14 meeting of the Board.

• Mother-of-Pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer

  Sunday, November 19, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  An exhibition of exquisite Asian lacquer decorated with mother-of-pearl will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 2. Featuring some 50 works dating from the eighth to the 19th century, Mother-of-Pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer will illustrate the remarkable variety of effects found in the use of minute pieces of mother-of-pearl to create mosaic-like patterns and dazzling scenes. It will also explore the importance of lacquer decorated with mother-of-pearl in interregional trade from the 12th to the 19th century and in the development of maritime global trade – particularly works made in India and Japan – in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Drawn largely from the Museum's permanent collection, the exhibition will include recent acquisitions as well as several important loans from public and private collections in the United States.

• Schedule of Exhibitions Through July 2017

  Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 9:00 p.m.

• Frank Stella: Painting into Architecture & Frank Stella on the Roof

  Monday, November 13, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present two concurrent exhibitions featuring recent work by the renowned American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) in spring 2007.

• Medieval Treasury Reopens at The Cloisters

  Monday, November 13, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Treasury – an intimate gallery displaying some of the most precious small-scale works at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages – has reopened to the public after two years of renovation. Originally constructed in 1988 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Cloisters, the Treasury houses small luxury objects acquired in the years subsequent to the branch museum's 1938 founding.

• 圖示和言傳：說故事的中國畫

  Thursday, November 2, 2006, 3:45 p.m.

• 图示和言传：说故事的中国画

  Thursday, November 2, 2006, 3:43 p.m.

• The Met Cloistersの庭園

  Wednesday, November 1, 2006, 8:20 p.m.

• "Holidays at the Met" to Include First-Ever Extended Hours in December and Special Seasonal Programming

  Wednesday, October 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will offer an unprecedented roster of Holidays at the Metprograms and activities this season, including extended evening hours during the final weekend of 2006, family programs, and additional holiday offerings in the galleries, restaurants, and shops, from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. At the centerpiece of this holiday celebration, the Museum will continue its traditional Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche display, this year adding to its schedule of spectacular tree lightings, with additional lightings daily and during the Museum's popular Friday and Saturday evening hours. Special holiday decorations and programming will also be offered at The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum's branch for medieval art in upper Manhattan.

• 메트로폴리탄 박물관에서 선보이는 국립중앙박물관 소장 대작들

  Tuesday, October 17, 2006, 5:12 p.m.

• Nan Kempner's Chic, Iconic Styles to be Focus of Winter Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute

  Tuesday, October 17, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Nan Kempner – the late New York style icon, connoisseur of the couture, and member of The Best Dressed List's Hall of Fame – will be the subject of the winter exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, from December 12, 2006, through March 4, 2007. Known for a seemingly effortless style that nonetheless displayed a meticulous attention to detail, she was a passionate client and collector of such designers as Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Oscar de la Renta from the 1960s onward.

• Jardins do The Met Cloisters

  Saturday, October 14, 2006, 7:08 p.m.

• Die Gärten der Met Cloisters

  Saturday, October 14, 2006, 7:01 p.m.

• Splendor of Islamic Art to be Theme of October 8 Sunday at the Met Program

  Sunday, October 1, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and His Highness Prince Aga Khan Shia Imami Ismaili Council for the United States of America will present a special program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, October 8, 2006. The theme of this Sunday at the Met program will be Islamic art and culture, and it will include a film, a lecture, and a musical performance, as follows:

• Présentation du musée The Met Cloisters
  (Cloîtres du Met)

  Friday, September 29, 2006, 3:37 p.m.

• Chinese 'Art of Writing' Is Explored in New Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Thursday, September 28, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Bringing together masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection with important loans from private collections, Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing explores the 1,600-year history of calligraphy from its genesis as a fine art in the fourth century A.D. The exhibition presents some 70 works of calligraphy executed by renowned traditional masters – Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Ni Zan (1306-1374), and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) – as well as by five contemporary artists. Early inscribed ritual bronzes, dynamic scholars' rocks, and objects made for the artist's study complement the calligraphy.

• Sean Scully: Wall of Light – Celebrated Artist's First Major Solo Museum Exhibition in New York – Features His Most Important Series to Date

  Thursday, September 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 15, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are 60 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Fall 2006 Schedule of Programs for Children and Families

  Thursday, September 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 12, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced its schedule of weekday and weekend programs for children, including special family activities, for the period September 30, 2006, through February 2, 2007. These drop-in programs are free with Museum admission. Reservations are not required unless otherwise noted, and all materials are provided.

• Robert Joffe Elected a Trustee at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, September 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 12, 2006)—Robert D. Joffe has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the September 12 meeting of the Board.

• Mrs. Russell B. Aitken Elected Honorary Trustee at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, September 11, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Irene Roosevelt Aitken has been elected an Honorary Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the September 12 meeting of the Board of Trustees.

• Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces the 2006-07 Season of Concerts

  Thursday, September 7, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The 53rd Season Features the Piano Forte Series with András Schiff, Ivo Pogorelich, and Ivan Moravec; Jordi Savall in Two Concerts; Bach's Mass in B Minor and Handel's Acis and Galatea; Anoushka Shankar, Richie Havens, and Patti Smith; and a Season Opening Concert by Orpheus in the Great Hall

• Olena Paslawsky Named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer At Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, September 6, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 12, 2006)—Olena Paslawsky has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced by Emily K. Rafferty, President of the Museum. She joined the Museum in August, and will oversee initiatives in finance, technology, purchasing, office services, and internal audit. Prior to coming to the Metropolitan, she was Controller of the Worldwide Securities Division of JP Morgan Chase & Company.

• New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori

  Monday, September 4, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  To mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods that devastated New Orleans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori. On view from September 19 through December 10 in The Howard Gilman Gallery, the exhibition will feature approximately 20 large-scale color photographs made by Robert Polidori on four extended visits to New Orleans between September 2005 and April 2006. The quietly expressive photographs present a candid and intimate look at widespread urban ruin — an incomprehensible, topsy-turvy landscape of felled oak trees, houses washed off their foundations, and tumbled furniture that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS SEPTEMBER — DECEMBER 2006

  Tuesday, August 22, 2006, 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.

• Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s

  Monday, August 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Political, economic, and social turmoil shaped Germany's short-lived Weimar Republic (1919–1933). These pivotal years also became a most creative period of 20th-century German culture, generating innovation in literature, music, film, theater, and architecture. In painting, a trend of matter-of-fact realism took hold in Germany like nowhere else in Europe. Disillusioned by the cataclysm of World War I, the most vital German artists moved towards a Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), in particular its branch known as Verism. These artists looked soberly, cynically, and even ferociously at their fellow citizens and found their true métier in portraiture, as seen in the 40 paintings and 60 works on paper featured in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. The presentation, which opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 14, 2006, features gripping portraits by ten renowned artists: Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Ludwig Meidner, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz, and Gert H. Wollheim.

• Metropolitan Museum's Fall 2006 Lecture Series Features Director Philippe de Montebello Speaking on the Collecting of Antiquities

  Sunday, August 13, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Seventy lectures comprise the Fall 2006 schedule of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's stellar series, now in its 53rd season. Metropolitan Museum curators and educators, as well as guest speakers, will present talks on a broad range of exhibition- and arts-related topics.

• Art Traditions of Papuan Gulf Explored through Rare Objects and Photographs in Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Monday, July 31, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

• Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde

  Wednesday, July 26, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) – 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 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 six paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896-97 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, Bonnard, Renoir, and Picasso.

• Sean Scully: Wall of Light – Celebrated Artist's First Major Solo Museum Exhibition in New York – Features His Most Important Series to Date

  Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 14, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are more than 50 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.

• Impact of Paris on 19th-Century American Art Shown in Landmark Fall Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds – including such luminaries as James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer – were drawn irresistibly to Paris, the world's new art capital, to learn to paint and to establish their reputations. By studying with leading masters and showing their work in Paris, these artists aimed to attract patronage from American collectors who had begun to buy contemporary French art in earnest soon after the end of the Civil War. Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters' styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of more sophisticated art schools and higher professional standards back in the United States.

• Exhibition on the Face in Medieval Sculpture Opens at Metropolitan Museum in September

  Wednesday, July 12, 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 on September 26. 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 violence, 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 marble, limestone, polychromed wood, and silver gilt, the works represent mostly French, but also German, Italian, Spanish, Byzantine, English, and other 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, related to the sculpture from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The exhibition is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS MAY - AUGUST 2006

  Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 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.

• RICHARD L. CHILTON, JR. ELECTED TRUSTEE AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  Saturday, June 3, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The election of Richard L. Chilton, Jr. to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. Mr. Chilton's election took place at the May 9 meeting of the Board.

• Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece will highlight the Colonna Altarpiece, the only one by Raphael in America and, since 1916, a treasure of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. This exhibition will reunite the altarpiece's two main panels with the scenes from its predella, which were separated from the altarpiece in 1663. A select group of drawings and paintings by Raphael produced close in time to the Colonna Altarpiece, including a preparatory study for the Metropolitan's predella panel, will also be included. The exhibition will be on view at the Metropolitan from June 20 through September 3, 2006.

• On Photography: A Tribute to Susan Sontag

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  A major force in New York intellectual life for more than 40 years, the novelist, essayist, and critic Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was renowned for her brilliant and impassioned writing on photography. From June 6 through September 3, 2006, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition of some 40 photographs that celebrate Sontag's contribution to the history of the medium, featuring works from the Metropolitan's collection by a wide range of artists, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, and Peter Hujar.

• Laurelton Hall, Country Estate of Louis Comfort Tiffany, to be Featured in Major Fall 2006 Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Between 1902 and 1905, on more than 600 acres overlooking Long Island Sound, the noted American artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) built his dream home, an extraordinary country estate called Laurelton Hall. Every aspect of the project was designed by Tiffany himself, from the exotic 84-room, eight-level house surrounded by fountains, pools, and terraced gardens to the stables, tennis courts, greenhouses, chapel, studio, and art gallery also located on the property. Often cited as Tiffany's most important work, Laurelton Hall was destroyed by fire in 1957. Surviving architectural elements and windows salvaged by Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean are now part of the collections of the museum Mrs. McKean founded, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida. The monumental four-column loggia with its colorful glass and pottery floral capitals was saved from Laurelton Hall and has graced the American Wing's Charles Engelhard Court since 1980, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. McKean.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.)

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.)

• Metropolitan Museum Announces New Schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays"

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, May 15, 2006) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the new schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays" for the one-year period beginning Memorial Day 2006. This popular program, which opens the Museum to the public on selected Monday holidays throughout the year, began in fall 2003; prior to that, the Museum had been closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years.

• Gallery of Early Gothic Art and Architecture

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Early Gothic Hall at The Cloisters will reopen this summer after a five-year renovation. Completely refurbished 13th-century limestone windows and two dozen panels of newly conserved and reinstalled stained glass, primarily from the 13th and 14th centuries, are among the objects on view. Four recently acquired and exceptional examples of German stained glass from the late-13th-century glazing program for the convent church in Altenberg-an-der-Lahn will be reunited in this new installation. The renovation of the Early Gothic Hall also features construction of two new limestone apertures in an interior wall (for the display of grisaille glass windows) and new lighting.

• AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion

  Tuesday, April 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion, opening on May 3, 2006, will present a wide range of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum's English Period Rooms – The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries. A pendant to the acclaimed 2004 Costume Institute exhibition Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century, AngloMania will examine ideals, stereotypes, and representations of Englishness by juxtaposing historical costume with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions.

• Rehabilitating Historic Cairo to be Theme of April 23 Lecture at Metropolitan Museum

  Sunday, March 26, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The historic development of Cairo and its growing, shifting, and transforming urban fabric will be the focus of a lecture by Swiss architect/urban designer Dr. Stefano Bianca at 2:00 p.m. on April 23 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is free with Museum admission.

• Renowned Chinese-born Artist Cai Guo-Qiang to Create 2006 Installation for Metropolitan Museum's Roof Garden

  Thursday, March 23, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Cai Guo-Qiang, the acclaimed Chinese-born artist known internationally for his elaborate sculpture installations and gunpowder projects, has been invited to create a site-specific exhibition for the 2006 season of The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The four works comprising Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument were inspired by the dramatic setting of the Roof Garden, an open-air space atop the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, and by the artist's reactions to issues of present-day concern.

• Metropolitan Museum Establishes International Office in Geneva

  Tuesday, March 21, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 22, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the establishment of its first full-time representative office overseas, located in Geneva, Switzerland. The Metropolitan further announced that Mahrukh Tarapor, who has served for 11 years as the Museum's Associate Director for Exhibitions, has been named to the additional post of Director for International Affairs, Geneva Office.

• Survey Shows Van Gogh Drawings Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Generated $251 Million Economic Impact for New York

  Monday, March 20, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 21, 2006)—The acclaimed and widely attended fall/winter special exhibition Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings generated $251 million in spending by regional, national, and foreign tourists to New York, according to a Metropolitan Museum of Art visitor survey released today. Using the standard ratio for calculating tax revenue impact, the study found that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from visitors who declared that seeing the exhibition was a deciding factor in their decision to visit New York totaled some $25 million.