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13 results for met publications

Publication

"James J. Rorimer"

This Bulletin honors the life of James J. Rorimer, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1955 until his passing in 1966. Rorimer helped plan the building of the Cloisters before his 1955 directorial appointment, and he oversaw many acquisitions that are now staples in The Met's medieval collections including the Merode Altarpiece and the Unicorn Tapestries. This publication includes quotes by Rorimer as well as remembrances by staff at The Met and other important cultural institutions.

Publication

Kerry James Marshall: A Creative Convening

This volume documents a groundbreaking convening on January 28, 2017 in The Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, inspired by the exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Mastry on view at The Met Breuer October 25, 2016–January 29, 2017. During the daylong event twenty noted thought leaders and creative practitioners considered the role of creativity, hard work, social justice, and imagination in art history, performance, science, and other disciplines inspired by visual artist Kerry James Marshall’s practice and work. The event was a mix of rich extended conversations and exciting nine-minute performances and presentations. The program and this publication were made possible by the generous support of the Ford Foundation.

Publication

"Marcel Breuer: Bauhaus Tradition, Brutalist Invention"

Following the opening of The Met Breuer, this fascinating Bulletin contextualizes the architectural masterpiece now dedicated to displaying The Met’s collection of modern and contemporary art. Designed by one of the twentieth century’s most visionary architects, the Breuer building is a Brutalist icon and a work of art in its own right, known for its monumentality and stark purity of materials. Providing not just a history of the building commission, but also charting the artistic journey of Marcel Breuer from Bauhaus-educated furniture designer to world-renowned architect, this informative publication both records and contributes to the rich history surrounding Breuer and his landmark museum.

Publication

Gifts of Art: The Met's 150th Anniversary

In honor of the institution’s 150th year, this publication celebrates the 203 collectors who committed more than 2,500 works of art to The Met for the sesquicentennial. These meaningful additions change the ways in which we think about the Museum’s holdings and deepen the stories The Met can tell about all the works in the collection. Highlights featured in this volume include an imposing stone head from an Egyptian sarcophagus; an opulent horse armor commissioned by King Philip IV of Spain; a Tibetan war mask; an early American daguerreotype; Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s enigmatic watercolor; an early twentieth-century Japanese bamboo shrine cabinet; poignant photographs made by Robert Frank for his iconic series The Americans; the Cuban American artist Carmen Herrera’s 1949 tondo Iberic; Steve Miller’s 1961 Gibson guitar; important works by Georg Baselitz; art from the Iranian Saqqakhana school; the vibrant bark painting of Aboriginal Australian artist Nonggirrnga Marawili; and recent creations by artists such as Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Robert Gober, and Wangechi Mutu.

Publication

Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 2020–2022

Every two years the fall issue of The Met's quarterly Bulletin celebrates notable recent acquisitions and gifts to the collection. Highlights of Recent Acquisitions 2020–2022 include the Mantuan Roundel by Gian Marco Cavalli, a recently rediscovered tour de force from the early Renaissance; the archive of photographer James Van Der Zee, one of the most celebrated chroniclers of Black life in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance; a pair of sculptures by the renowned contemporary American artist Robert Gober; Thomas Sully’s magisterial portrait of Queen Victoria; and Poussin’s Agony in the Garden, one of only two accepted works by the artist in oil on copper. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of The Met collection.

Publication

A Gift of Sound: The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments

Published to celebrate the reopening of The Met's André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments after a two-year renovation, this Bulletin tells the story of Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown, whose unparalleled collection formed the foundation of the Department of Musical Instruments at The Met. Sally B. Brown, Mary Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter, explores how a mother of six without any musical training acquired over 3,600 musical instruments from around the world in the late nineteenth century. Mary Elizabeth also became an esteemed authority in the field, authoring the first catalogue of a musical instruments collection in the United States. This publication features works of art from her collection, roughly two-thirds of which are from non-European cultures, that attest to her groundbreaking deviation from the Western canon and exceptional ambition as a collector.

Publication

Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art

Medusa, the monstrous Gorgon of Greek mythology whose gaze turned beholders to stone, became increasingly anthropomorphic and feminine beginning in the fifth century B.C. This Bulletin explores the changing ways in which Medusa and other hybrid creatures were imagined and depicted from antiquity to the present day. Drawn primarily from The Met collection, this publication examines a wide range of works dating from the late sixth century B.C. to the twentieth century, from ancient Greek armor, drinking cups, and funerary urns to Neoclassical cameos and contemporary fashion. Also featured is one of the earliest portrayals in Greek art of Medusa as a beautiful young woman. Among the most powerful and resonant in Western culture, the story of Medusa has inspired poets, artists, psychoanalysts, feminist critics, political theorists, and designers.

Publication

Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 2022–2024

Every two years the fall issue of The Met's quarterly Bulletin celebrates notable recent acquisitions and gifts to the collection. Highlights of Recent Acquisitions 2022–2024 include the monumental handscroll painting Streams and Mountains without End, a masterwork by the Qing-dynasty painter Wang Yuanqi; the nineteenth century painting Bélizaire and the Frey Children which offers a rare depiction of an identified Black teenager with the children of his enslaver; Helene Schjerfbeck’s The Lace Shawl, which is a layered, dramatic portrait of the artist’s friend and landlady. Meanwhile, Leopoldo Méndez’s linocut depiction of the great Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada expands the already distinguished collection of twentieth-century Mexican graphic arts in the Department of Drawings and Prints. This publication also honors the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of The Met collection.

Publication

Chippendale's Director: A Manifesto of Furniture Design

Published to coincide with the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Chippendale, England’s most famous cabinetmaker, this issue of the Bulletin addresses the history of Chippendale works at The Met. Morrison H. Heckscher recounts the designer’s meteoric rise from rural obscurity to the heights of the London luxury trade, crediting that remarkable success to the publication of the Chippendale Director, an instructive book on furniture design and ornament. The text analyzes the Museum’s rare collection of drawings by Chippendale, revealing a gifted and highly imaginative designer who mastered what today would be called branding. Illustrating a wide selection of the Director drawings alongside furniture inspired by the Director or actually made in Chippendale’s shop, this Bulletin features works of art that attest to the museum’s century-long infatuation with drawing, prints, books, and furniture in the Chippendale style.

Publication

Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is delighted to present Piero della Francesca: Personal Encounters. This book—an appropriately small gem—has been published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Met around one of the jewels in the collection of the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice: Piero della Francesca's Saint Jerome and a Supplicant. This is the first time the panel has traveled outside Italy. The exhibition and publication are the result of a rare convergence of events. Giovanna Damiani, Superintendent of Venice, and Matteo Ceriana, director of the Gallerie dell'Accademia, invited the Met to collaborate on a project involving the technical examination and cleaning of the Saint Jerome painting. Concurrently, Daniele Bodini and Alain Elkann proposed that the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture sponsor an event comparable in importance to the 2005 Met exhibition "Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master," for which they were responsible. The Met was pleased to embrace the project, and Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of the Museum's Department of European Paintings, worked in close collaboration with colleagues in Italy and Germany to make it a reality. Taking the Accademia painting as a starting point, he expanded the initial idea to create the first study devoted to Piero della Francesca's devotional paintings. These magical pictures trace Piero's development as a painter of devotional images from his earliest work, made in Florence about 1439–40, to one of his latest, the solemn Madonna and Child with Two Angels painted for Federico da Montefeltro's court at Urbino—a loan made possible, in recognition of the Year of Italian Culture, by the Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo and the work of the Italian Carabinieri Command. Although modest in scale, together the works testify to Piero's consummate power of invention and to his masterful combination of intimacy and gravity that both invited the viewer and inspire a sacral awe.