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Approximately 150 images by the pioneering German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning May 25, 2004. The photographs are drawn from the artist's most famous project, People of the Twentieth Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts), which was envisioned as a comprehensive visual record of the German populace.
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British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956), known for working in, and with, the natural landscape, has been invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to create the sculpture installation for The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening to the public on May 4, 2004. Andy Goldsworthy on the Roof will consist of two monumental, organic domes of wood and stone, inspired by the immediate surroundings of Central Park and its architectural setting. This special project will be exhibited in the 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers spectacular views across Central Park to the Manhattan skyline. This is one in a series of solo-artist installations presented on the Cantor Roof Garden, and the first to be constructed on site by the artist.
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More than 50 works on paper by some of the best-known and most highly regarded late 19th-century American artists will be displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning on June 8, in American Impressions, 1865-1925: Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Collection. Among the artists featured will be such luminaries as Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and Maurice Prendergast. The exhibition was organized to complement and coincide with the Museum's retrospective Childe Hassam, American Impressionist, opening to the public on June 10, and will situate Hassam within a broader context of artists of the same period who treated the same images and used the same media.
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The evolution of the widely anticipated outdoor work of art for New York City initiated in 1979 by the husband-and-wife collaborators Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be the subject of the exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates, Central Park, New York, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 6 through July 25, 2004. Fifty-one preparatory drawings and collages by Christo, 64 photographs, and 11 maps and technical diagrams will document the soon-to-be-realized work of art, which when completed will consist of 7,500 saffron-colored gates placed at 12-foot intervals throughout 23 miles of pedestrian walkways lacing Central Park from 59th Street to 110th Street and from Central Park West to Fifth Avenue.
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As the triumphant Byzantine general Michael VIII Palaiologos entered Constantinople on August 15, 1261, carrying aloft the famed icon of the Virgin Hodegetria, the city's eternal protector, he initiated an artistic and intellectual flowering in Byzantium, and among its East Christian rivals, that would endure for nearly 300 years. The restoration of the "Empire of the Romans" – the basileia ton Rhomaion – just 57 years after the fall of Constantinople to the knights of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, encouraged faith-inspired art of astonishing beauty and widespread influence.
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A key milestone in the final phase of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1993 master plan for construction in the southern part of its main building will be initiated this month, with the temporary closing of the galleries for Islamic art for enlargement, renovation, and restoration beginning June 2. Over the next several years, the 30-year-old galleries will be expanded to include additional display space and updated to reflect the most recent scholarship and museological practices.
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Printmaking revolutionized artistic production in the 15th century by allowing artists to create numerous impressions from a single matrix and distribute their work to a wider audience then ever before. Italian artists from Mantegna to Canova embraced the medium, focusing their efforts largely on depictions of scenes from Greek and Roman mythology. A new exhibition exploring the Italian passion for mythological prints that started in the Renaissance and lasted into the early decades of the 19th century opens on February 3, 2004, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Drawn from the Metropolitan Museum's collections, Poets, Lovers, and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints showcases more than 100 woodcuts, engravings, and etchings, as well as illustrated books, by such artists as Jacopo de' Barbari, Marcantonio Raimondi, Ugo da Carpi, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Salvator Rosa, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, and Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo among others.
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Playing with Fire: European Terracotta Models, 1740-1840, the first major museum exhibition devoted to Neoclassical terracotta sculptures, will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 28, 2004. Unprecedented in scale and range, the exhibition unites approximately 135 works from collections throughout Europe and the U.S. Ranging from quick preliminary sketches to completely finished models, the sculptures demonstrate the dash and erudition of modelers across Europe during the Neoclassical age. The international character of the exhibition reflects the broad scope of this rich tradition and includes works by such great modelers as Antonio Canova, Augustin Pajou, Johann Heinrich Dannecker, Philippe-Laurent Roland, and Johan Tobias Sergel. The exhibition also examines the work of sculptors little known outside their home countries, such as the Russian Mikhail Ivanovich Kozlovsky and the Swiss Valentin Sonnenschein, as well as several anonymous modelers.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the eagerly awaited reopening of the Old Kingdom tombs of Perneb and Raemkai – which will go on temporary view without the glass panels that will be installed later this spring – for a rare six-week viewing by the public.
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Couples in African art and how that theme has been expressed in 28 cultures across the continent are explored in an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning February 10, 2004. Featuring some 60 works in wood, bronze, terracotta, and beadwork that were created between the 12th and the 20th centuries, Echoing Images: Couples in African Sculpture will provide for the first time a dynamic range of artistic commentaries on human duality. The works on exhibition draw primarily from important public and private collections in the New York area, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the High Museum in Atlanta.
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More than 50 works on paper by some of the best-known and most highly regarded late 19th-century American artists will be displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning on June 8, in American Impressions, 1865-1935: Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Collection. Among the artists featured will be such luminaries as Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and Maurice Prendergast. The exhibition was organized to complement and coincide with the Museum's retrospective Childe Hassam, American Impressionist, opening to the public on June 10, and will situate Hassam within a broader context of artists of the same period who treated the same images and used the same media.
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Childe Hassam (1859-1935), a pioneer of American Impressionism and perhaps its most devoted, prolific, and successful practitioner, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts (now part of Boston), into a family descended from settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Equally adept at capturing the charms of country retreats and the excitement of modern cities, Hassam became the foremost chronicler of New York City at the turn of the century. In our day, he is best known for his depictions of flag-draped Fifth Avenue during World War I.
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An exhibition of more than 60 Chinese paintings acquired through the generosity of Douglas Dillon (1909-2003) and The Dillon Fund, as well as gifts presented in his honor or memory will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning March 12, 2004. Featuring masterpieces dating from the eighth to the 18th century, The Douglas Dillon Legacy: Chinese Painting for the Metropolitan Museum will highlight his lasting contribution to the field of Chinese art.
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The recent gift of more than 100 works from the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation—one of the largest donations made to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Modern Art—will be celebrated in a major exhibition opening on May 18, 2004. Collected by New York art dealer Pierre Matisse (1900-1989), the younger son of French painter Henri Matisse, the selection includes paintings, sculpture, and drawings by such icons of 20th-century art as Matisse, Balthus, Chagall, Derain, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Magritte, Miró, and Tanguy. The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, on view through June 26, 2005, will feature highlights from the Foundation's gifts together with works previously donated by Mr. and Mrs. Matisse.
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Playing with Fire: European Terracotta Models, 1740-1840, the first major museum exhibition devoted to Neoclassical terracotta sculptures, will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 28, 2004. Unprecedented in scale and range, the exhibition unites approximately 135 works from collections throughout Europe and the U.S. Ranging from quick preliminary sketches to completely finished models, the sculptures demonstrate the dash and erudition of modelers across Europe during the Neoclassical age. The international character of the exhibition reflects the broad scope of this rich tradition and includes works by such great modelers as Antonio Canova, Augustin Pajou, Johann Heinrich Dannecker, Philippe-Laurent Roland, and Johan Tobias Sergel. The exhibition also examines the work of sculptors little-known outside their home countries, such as the Russian Mikhail Ivanovich Kozlovsky and the Swiss Valentin Sonnenschein, as well as several anonymous modelers.
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The highest achievements of French Art Deco, the style that epitomizes the glamour and sophistication of 1920s Paris, will be explored in two related exhibitions, concurrently on view at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 8 through September 5, 2004.
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The introduction of chocolate, coffee, and tea into 17th-century Europe resulted from the sustained contacts of seagoing nations — primarily Portugal, Spain, England, and Holland — and direct trade with formerly inaccessible parts of the world, such as Mexico, Arabia, and China. A large variety of furniture and utensils was developed to serve the new drinks, first for the great households and quickly thereafter for the popular market. A new exhibition, Chocolate, Coffee, Tea, will show the amazing response in Europe by the luxury trades — silver, porcelain, glass, and pottery — in providing a new range of utensils for these new beverages. Drawn from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition will be on view from February 3 through July 11, 2004.
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The first comprehensive survey of American artist Chuck Close's (b. 1940) groundbreaking innovations in the field of printmaking will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 13 through April 18, 2004. Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration will feature approximately 100 prints, working proofs, and objects. Together they will document the creative and often highly experimental ways in which Close has re-interpreted the signature subject of his paintings and photographs – monumentally scaled images of the human head – into the artistic language of various print mediums.
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Couples in African art and how that theme has been expressed in 30 cultures across the continent are explored in an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning February 10, 2004. Featuring some 60 works in wood, bronze, terracotta, and beadwork that were created between the 12th and the 20th centuries, Echoing Images: Couples in African Sculpture will provide for the first time a dynamic range of artistic commentaries on human duality. The works on exhibition draw primarily from important public and private collections in the New York area, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the High Museum in Atlanta.