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Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar's Illustrated "Khamsa," 1597-98
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
In India in the late 16th century, the Mughal emperor Akbar – a great patron of the arts – amassed an extensive library of some 20,000 beautifully illustrated and illuminated manuscripts. One of them, a lavishly ornamented copy of the Khamsa (Quintet of Tales) by Amir Khusrau Dihlavi (1253-1325), will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum beginning October 14, 2005, in the exhibition Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar's Illustrated "Khamsa," 1597-98.
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Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
Hatshepsut, often considered the first important female head of state known to history, ruled Egypt for two decades (ca. 1479-1458 B.C.) during Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Although less familiar to modern audiences than her much later successor, the notorious Cleopatra (51-30 B.C.), Hatshepsut's achievements were comparable to those of England's Elizabeth I. Ruling first as regent for, then as co-ruler with her nephew Thutmose III (who ruled for another 33 years after her death), Hatshepsut enjoyed a relatively peaceful reign, at the beginning of the New Kingdom. She stabilized the country and restored monuments destroyed during the disruptive Second Intermediate Period, when northern Egypt was controlled by a dynasty of Asian princes and southern Egypt by a dynasty of Egyptians based in Thebes. She renewed trade with western Asia to the east, the far-off land of Punt to the south, and the Aegean Islands in the north. The resulting economic prosperity was reflected in the art of the time, which is characterized by remarkable innovations in sculpture and decorative arts and produced such architectural marvels as Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.
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SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS JANUARY - APRIL 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 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.
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The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
A long-neglected area of Egyptian art – works associated with protection and healing – will be explored in the exhibition The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in fall 2005. By focusing on this fundamen-tal, yet little-known aspect of Egyptian art, the exhibition will provide a new perspective on some 65 of the most beautiful and intriguing works from the Museum's renowned collection. The centerpiece will be the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus – the sole bor-rowed work in the exhibition – which is on loan from the New York Academy of Medicine. This manuscript, dating from the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.), is one of only two complete medical texts from ancient Egypt. Rarely seen even by Egyptologists, the manuscript's presentation at the Metropolitan represents its first public display in more than half a century.
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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES SPRING 2006 SEASON OF PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
(New York, December 29, 2005) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced its schedule of weekday and weekend activities for children up to age 12 and their adult companions, including a weekly program for Spanish-speaking families, for the period February 1-May 30, 2006 – along with a calendar of special family programs during the mid-winter school recess and on selected weekends and "Holiday Mondays." These drop-in programs are free with Museum admission, and all materials are provided.
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James J. Ross Elected Trustee at Metropolitan Museum
Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.
James J. Ross 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. Mr. Ross's election took place at the January 10 meeting of the Board.
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Metropolitan Museum to Unveil Spectacular New Greek and Roman Galleries
Sunday, January 8, 2006, 5:00 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 will conclude 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.
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Robert Rauschenberg's Combines Focus of New Exhibition at Metropolitan
Tuesday, December 20, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
Some of the most daring and influential works by one of America's great modern artists – Robert Rauschenberg – will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 20. Robert Rauschenberg: Combines, takes a rare and comprehensive look at the objects that Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) terms Combines. The exhibition, which will include 67 works created between 1954 and 1964, is the first to focus exclusively on this significant material. Robert Rauschenberg: Combines remains on view through April 2, 2006, before continuing on an international tour through 2007.
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AngloMania
Sunday, December 11, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
AngloMania, opening on May 4, 2006, will present an unprecedented selection of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum of Art'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 focus on British fashion from 1976 to 2006, a period of astounding creativity and experimentation.
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Special Family Activities at Metropolitan Museum in December and January
Sunday, December 4, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
In addition to its regularly scheduled weekend and weekday programs for children and families in December and January, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a variety of special activities beginning December 3 and extending throughout the holiday season and beyond, including the Christmas/New Year's school break and "Holiday Mondays" on December 26, 2005, and January 16, 2006. Among the highlights are drawing and gallery workshops, a screening of holiday films, the world-famous Christmas tree and Nativity scene that are on display each year in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall, and programs at The Cloisters, the Museum's branch for medieval art located in upper Manhattan.
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Schedule of Exhibitions Through July 2016
Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 2:00 p.m.
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Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings
Tuesday, November 15, 2005, 5:00 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 from 900 B.C. to 550 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 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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Girodet: Romantic Rebel
Tuesday, November 15, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
Girodet: Romantic Rebel is the first retrospective in the United States devoted to this celebrated French artist, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, a favored but rebellious student of Jacques-Louis David. Girodet's idiosyncratic style fuses David's Neoclassical ideal with his own prescient Romantic vision. The exhibition brings together approximately 110 paintings and works on paper that reflect the artist's originality and the diversity of his works, from mythological subjects to portraits and representations of Napoleon's military triumphs. Girodet will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 24 through August 27, 2006.
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Samuel Palmer (1805–1881): Vision and Landscape
Monday, November 14, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
Samuel Palmer ranks among the most important British landscape painters of the Romantic era. Marking the 200th anniversary of the artist's birth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881): Vision and Landscape is the first major retrospective of his work in nearly 80 years, uniting some 100 of his finest watercolors, drawings, etchings, and oils from public and private collections in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. The exhibition highlights the artist's celebrated early work, executed in a visionary style inspired by William Blake, and re-examines Palmer's vibrant middle-period Italian studies and masterful late watercolors and etchings. It also includes a selection of works by artists in Palmer's circle. Samuel Palmer will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 7 through May 29.
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Metropolitan Museum Celebrates the Holidays by Opening on "Holiday Monday" December 26
Monday, November 14, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
(New York, November 14, 2005) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public on Monday, December 26 (the Monday between Christmas and New Year's Day), as part of the Museum's popular "Holiday Mondays" program. The Museum, which has been closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years, will open the doors of its main building this winter and spring on three additional major Monday holidays: January 16 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), February 20 (Presidents' Day), and May 29 (Memorial Day).
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Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master
Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
Three masterpieces by Sicily's greatest Renaissance painter, Antonello da Messina, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 13, 2005, through March 5, 2006, in the exhibition Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master. This will be the first time any of these works will be on public view in the United States.
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In Line with Van Gogh
Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the exhibition In Line with Van Gogh in conjunction with the landmark exhibition Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings. The ancillary exhibition, also curated by Colta Ives and Susan Stein, demonstrates that Van Gogh's achievement, neither solely intuitive nor accidental, was remarkably well informed. The 59 drawings and prints selected from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum will include works by Rembrandt, Daumier, Millet, Degas, Hokusai, Hiroshige, and other artists whose work influenced Van Gogh, as well as works by his contemporaries and followers such as Gauguin, Signac, Seurat, Matisse, and Munch. In Line with Van Gogh will be on view from October 4, 2005 to January 8, 2006.
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Santiago Calatrava's Art and Architecture in New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum
Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
Santiago Calatrava, the world-renowned architect who has designed some of the most beautiful structures of our epoch, is the subject of a new exhibition, Santiago Calatrava: Sculpture into Architecture, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 18, 2005. This exhibition, on view through March 5, 2006, will demonstrate that many of the forms of his celebrated buildings originated in his independent works of art.
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Fra Angelico, Leading Artist of Italian Renaissance, at Metropolitan Museum in First American Retrospective
Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
The first American retrospective devoted to the work of the great Italian Renaissance artist known as Fra Angelico (1390/5-1455) – and the first comprehensive presentation of his work assembled anywhere in the world in half a century – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 26. More than 50 public institutions and private collections in Europe and America will participate in the landmark exhibition, which commemorates the 550th anniversary of the artist's death. Fra Angelico will feature nearly 75 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations from throughout his career, supplemented by 45 additional works by his assistants and closest followers. Highlights of the exhibition include recently discovered paintings and new attributions, paintings never before displayed publicly, and reconstructed groupings of works, some of them reunited for the first time.
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Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection
Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
The Costume Institute will celebrate one of America's quintessential stylemakers this fall with an exhibition of accessories and fashion from Iris Apfel. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 13, 2005, to January 22, 2006, Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection will spotlight 60 objects, exploring the affinity between fashion and accessory designs and examining the power of dress and accessories to assert style above fashion, the individual above the collective.