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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.
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EGYPTIAN ART AT ETON COLLEGE: SELECTIONS FROM THE MYERS MUSEUM
Thursday, May 11, 2000, 4:00 a.m.
This fall, some 150 works from the Myers Museum — one of the world's finest collections of ancient Egyptian decorative arts — will travel outside Eton College (England) for the first time to form a landmark exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Named for Major William Joseph Myers (1858-1899), an alumnus who bequeathed his extensive and highly regarded collection of Egyptian antiquities to the college, the Myers Museum represents a rare example of a private 19th-century art collection that has remained substantially intact to our day.
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"LA DIVINE COMTESSE," PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE COUNTESS DE CASTIGLIONE
Wednesday, May 10, 2000, 4:00 a.m.
Some 90 works from a remarkable series of photographic portraits documenting the public life and private fantasies of a legendary 19th-century beauty go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 19, 2000, in the exhibition "La Divine Comtesse," Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione. Commissioned by the countess herself and created under her supervision, the images — more than 400 in all — were the result of a 40-year collaboration, from 1856 to 1895, with French court photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson.
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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.
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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.
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SIR JOSEPH HOTUNG BECOMES TRUSTEE OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
Monday, May 8, 2000, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, May 9, 2000) — Sir Joseph Hotung has been elected a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman, following the May meeting of the Board of Trustees.
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FIREWORKS! FOUR CENTURIES OF PYROTECHNICS IN PRINTS AND DRAWINGS
Sunday, May 7, 2000, 4:00 a.m.
In celebration of the new millennium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Fireworks! Four Centuries of Pyrotechnics in Prints and Drawings, on view June 6 through September 17, 2000. Drawn primarily from the Museum's collection, the exhibition will feature more than 100 prints and drawings depicting fireworks displays from the 16th to the early 20th century. Artists represented will include Antonio Tempesta, Jacques Callot, Claude Lorrain, Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, Jean-Louis Desprez, Francesco Piranesi, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, and the lithographers Currier and Ives, among others.
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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.
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ANNENBERG COLLECTION OF IMPRESSIONIST AND POST-IMPRESSIONIST MASTERWORKS
Thursday, April 27, 2000, 4:00 a.m.
Fifty-three paintings, watercolors, and drawings by 18 of the greatest artists who worked in France in the 19th and early 20th century comprise the Annenberg collection, which will return to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for six months beginning June 6, 2000. This annual event, now in its sixth year, provides an exceptional opportunity for visitors to experience this renowned private collection. The works are shown in the Museum's Nineteenth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture Galleries, hung together in three central rooms, surrounded by the Met's own collection of 19th-century European paintings.
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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.