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New Exhibitions
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Continuing Exhibitions
New & Continuing Installations
Traveling Exhibition
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NEW EXHIBITIONS
Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965)
January 21–April 15, 2012
Perhaps the greatest figure painter and landscapist of China’s modern period, Fu Baoshi successfully integrated Western and traditional artistic influences to create haunting images that evoke a mood as much as a place or person. This exhibition will treat Fu’s 40-year career with some 70 paintings, including many of the artist’s recognized masterpieces, drawn from the preeminent holdings of China’s Nanjing Museum. The exhibition, augmented by superb works from a New York private collection, will be the most comprehensive treatment of the artist’s oeuvre ever presented. The exhibition will feature a richly illustrated catalogue published by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Rembrandt and Degas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
February 23—May 20, 2012
Although it is well known that Edgar Degas was inspired by Rembrandt, whose etchings he sought out in Rome as a young artist studying the Old Masters, the unique kinship of their early portraits has never been the focus of an exhibition until this one. On view will be a series of self-portraits of the two artists when they were both in their twenties starting out in their illustrious careers. Some two dozen works, including five oil portraits, four drawings, and 16 etchings, will highlight Rembrandt’s guiding influence on works Degas made at the onset of his career (mid to late 1850s), after he quit the École des Beaux-Arts and set off for Italy to find his voice as an artist. This highly focused exhibition will afford a new perspective on the Metropolitan Museum’s Degas Self-Portrait (ca. 1855-56) in oil and on more than a dozen works on paper from the Museum’s holdings, including multiple states of etchings, which are rarely on view.
The exhibition was organized by the Rijksmuseum, in association with
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.
The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde
February 28–June 3, 2012
Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife Sarah were important patrons of modern art in Paris during the first decades of the 20th century. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde unites some 200 works of art to demonstrate the significant impact the Steins’ patronage had on the artists of their day and the way in which the family disseminated a new standard of taste for modern art. The Steins’ Saturday-evening salons introduced a generation of visitors to recent developments in art, particularly the work of their close friends Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, long before it was on view in museums. Beginning with the art that Leo Stein collected when he arrived in Paris in 1903—including paintings and prints by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, and Auguste Renoir—the exhibition traces the evolution of the Steins’ taste and examines the close relationships formed between individual members of the family and their artist friends. While focusing on works by Matisse and Picasso, the exhibition also includes paintings, sculpture, and works on paper by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Manguin, André Masson, Elie Nadelman, Francis Picabia, and others.
The exhibition is made possible by The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation and the Janice H. Levin Fund.
Additional support provided by The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris.
It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition
March 14–July 8, 2012
The Eastern Mediterranean, from Syria across North Africa, comprised the wealthy southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire at the start of the seventh century. By that century’s end, the region was central to the emerging Islamic world. This exhibition will be the first to display the complex character of the region and its exceptional art and culture during the era of transition—from its role as part of the Byzantine state to its evolving position in the developing Islamic world. The dialogue between established Byzantine and evolving Islamic styles and culture will be shown through images of authority, religion, and especially commerce. Iconoclasm as it emerged during that period among the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic communities of the region will be addressed.
Major support has been provided by Mary and Michael Jaharis, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and The Hagop Kevorkian Fund.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Dürer and Beyond: Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400-1700
April 3–September 3, 2012
This exhibition will be the first to offer an extensive overview of the Museum’s holdings of early Central European drawings, many of which were acquired in the last two decades. An emphasis on works by later 16th- and 17th-century artists will be balanced by a selection of German drawings from the 15th and earlier 16th century, of which some of the most exceptional ones—including works by Albrecht Dürer—entered the Museum with The Robert Lehman Collection in 1975.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Monday, April 2, 10:00 a.m.–noon
The Dawn of Egyptian Art
April 10–August 5, 2012
During the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods (ca. 4000-2650 B.C.), people living in the Nile Valley began recording their beliefs through paintings, sculptures, and reliefs made for their shrines and tombs. These works of art capture the evolving world view of these early Egyptians. Images of people, animals, and landscapes, some of which give rise to hieroglyphs, include forms and iconography that remained in use throughout the art of Pharaonic Egypt. This exhibition brings together some 175 objects gathered from the Metropolitan Museum’s important collection of early art and from the collections of 12 other museums in the U.S. and Europe to illustrate the origins and early development of ancient Egyptian art.
The exhibition is made possible by Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Monday, April 2, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City
May 15–November 4, 2012 (Note New Opening Date)
Argentinean artist Tomás Saraceno (born in 1973) will create a monumental constellation of interconnected, room-sized modules, specifically for the Museum’s Roof Garden. Habitat-like, the work will be accessible for visitors to experience its interior realms. The interdisciplinary project is rooted in the artist’s inventive exploration of new ways of inhabiting our environment, drawing on principles of architecture and engineering, physics and chemistry, aeronautics, and the natural world, and is inspired by eco-utopian visions for future sustainable communities. Merging art and architecture, Saraceno (originally trained as an architect) uses his art to envision floating or flying cities. Set against Central Park, its urban backdrop, and the airspace above and beyond, the installation suggests a model for futuristic urban planning.
The exhibition is made possible by Bloomberg.
Additional support is provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.
The exhibition is also made possible in part by The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation.
Press preview: Monday, May 14, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations
May 10–August 19, 2012
The exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute, will explore the striking affinities between Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, Italian designers from different eras. Inspired by Miguel Covarrubias’s “Impossible Interviews” for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton will originate fictive conversations between these iconic women to suggest new readings of their most innovative work. Approximately 80 signature objects by Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, and Prada from the late 1980s to the present, will be compared and contrasted to explore the extraordinary impact of their aesthetics and sensibilities on contemporary notions of fashionability. Experimental video technologies in the galleries will juxtapose masterworks from the designers in an unexpected series of conversations on the relationship between fashion and culture.
The exhibition is made possible by Amazon.
Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.
Press preview: Monday, May 7, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
The Printed Image in China, 8th-21st Century
May 5–July 29, 2012
China invented both paper and printing and this exhibition presents an outstanding survey of the art of Chinese printing from the time of its inception in the ninth century through its burgeoning as an artistic medium during the 17th century and its continued vitality as a medium for both popular culture and political commentary during the twentieth century. The exhibition will consist of approximately 136 prints drawn from the encyclopedic holdings of the British Museum.
The exhibition was organized by the British Museum with the support of the American Friends of the British Museum.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Bellini, Titian, and Lotto: North Italian Paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
May 15–September 3, 2012
The Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (east of Milan) is a jewel among Italian museums and a haven for art lovers. Founded at the end of the 18th century by Count Giacomo Carrara and housed in a beautiful neo-classical building, it contains a range of masterpieces dating from the 14th to the 19th century. At its core is a group of outstanding pictures from the Renaissance. Because of closure for restoration, it has been possible for the museum to lend to The Metropolitan Museum
of Art 14 masterpieces by Venetian and north Italian painters of the 15th and 16th centuries, including works by Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.
Press preview: Monday, May 14, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Designing Nature in Japanese Art: Rinpa Aesthetics, 1600s to Modern Times
May 26, 2012– January 12, 2013
Rinpa—literally meaning “school of Ogata Korin”—is a modern term referring to a distinctive style of Japanese pictorial and applied arts that arose in the early 17th century and has continued into modern times. It embraces art marked by a bold, graphic abbreviation of natural motifs, frequent reference to traditional court literature and poetry, lavish use of expensive mineral and metallic pigments, incorporation of calligraphy into painting compositions, and innovative experimentation with new brush techniques. Featuring some 75 brilliantly executed works created in Japan by the Rinpa-school artists, the exhibition traces the development of the Rinpa aesthetic and demonstrates how its style continued to influence artists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Comprising some 50 works from the Museum’s own holdings, supplemented by some 25 loans from public and private collections on the East Coast, it includes many masters’ renowned works in a variety of media—painting, textiles, lacquerware, and ceramics. It will be held in two rotations.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings
June 5–September 3, 2012
One of the foremost artists of our day, Ellsworth Kelly (American, b. 1923) may be best known for his rigorous abstract painting, but he has made figurative drawings throughout his career, creating an extraordinary body of work that now spans six decades. There has never been a major museum exhibition dedicated exclusively to the plant drawings. The selection of approximately 80 drawings begins in 1948 during Kelly’s early sojourn in Paris and continues throughout his travels to his most recent work made in upstate New York.
Accompanied by a publication.
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund.
Press Preview: Monday, June 4, 10:00 a.m.–noon
NEW GALLERIES
New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts
Opened January 16, 2012
This third and final phase of the American Wing renovation project comprises 25 renovated and enlarged galleries for the Museum's collection of American art, one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. The suite of elegant new galleries will provide visitors with a rich and captivating experience of the history of American art from the 18th to the early 20th century. The centerpiece of the new installation is Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's monumental and iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Twenty-one galleries will feature the extraordinary collection of American paintings—including such masters as Gilbert Stuart, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent. Interspersed among the pictures will be American sculptures, notably the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Three other galleries, together with a grand pre-revolutionary New York interior, will display 18th-century American decorative arts, principally treasures of colonial furniture and silver. In the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, a concurrent renovation includes additional casework, touch-screen case labels, and upgraded computer access.
Part 1 of the American Wing renovation project opened in January 2007 with galleries dedicated to the classical arts of America, 1810-1845. Part 2, inaugurated in May 2009, included the renovated Charles Engelhard Court and the Period Rooms. After Part 3 is completed, nearly all of the American Wing's 17,000 works will be on view, constituting an encyclopedic survey of fine art in the United States.
Press Preview: Thursday, January 12, 10:00 a.m.–noon
The André Mertens Galleries for Musical Instruments
Opened March 2, 2010
The gallery devoted to Western musical instruments reopened in March 2010, showcasing more than 230 works drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's extensive holdings of musical instruments, among the most important in the world. The new installation focuses attention on individual masterworks by exploring each within its musical and cultural context, by offering exciting comparisons of how individual makers realized the same concept, and by introducing examples of the various instruments' developments. Among the wide range of objects on view— keyboard, string, percussion, woodwind, and brass instruments—a highlight is the famed "Batta" cello made in Cremona, Italy, by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), on loan from a private collection. The reinstallation also includes new acquisitions and objects from the permanent collection that have rarely been seen by the public.
Renovation of the Late Gothic Hall, The Cloisters
Opened December 8, 2009
The Late Gothic Hall at The Cloisters museum and gardens reopened following an extensive renovation. The four large, 15th- century, French limestone windows from the Dominican monastery in Sens, Burgundy, were conserved, and new leaded glass was installed on the interior with protective glazing on the exterior. The new installation features a monumental tapestry from Burgos Cathedral representing the Salvation of Man, which returned to public view for the first time in a generation following a thorough campaign of conservation. The Late Gothic Hall, distinguished by its high timber ceiling, also exhibits many of the finest 15th-century works in The Cloisters' collection, including sculptures by Tilman Riemenschneider and richly painted and gilded altarpieces from Spain.
The renovation was funded by The Alice Tully Foundation.
CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS
The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis
November 15, 2011–April 22, 2012
More than 30 of the world’s most famous chess pieces—all part of a hoard unearthed in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis, off the west coast of Scotland—will be shown at The Cloisters, the branch of the Metropolitan Museum dedicated to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. Created in the mid-12th century, probably in Scandinavia, each piece is a precious miniature sculpture in walrus ivory. The game of chess as we know it today is one of the great legacies of the Middle Ages, and the Lewis chess pieces are among the earliest that include the full cast of characters found on modern boards. Reflecting medieval society in Europe, there are bishops (replacing the elephants of Indian and Persian chess traditions) and queens (supplanting the viziers who stand at the king’s side in Islamic tradition). The Lewis Chessmen are on loan from the British Museum.
The exhibition is made possible by the Michel David-Weill Fund.
Storytelling in Japanese Art
November 19, 2011–May 6, 2012
Japan has enjoyed a long tradition of narrative painting, one that continues even today with the popular contemporary Japanese cartoon (manga) and animation. Historically, the subjects of narrative painting have varied: romances of court ladies, aristocrats, and monks; heroic warriors’ tales of courage in the face of overwhelming odds; stories of miracles, celebratory events, and personal accomplishments; and tales of animals and ghosts. Illustrated tales appear in various formats: handscrolls (emaki), albums, books, hanging scrolls, and screens. This exhibition will show a wide variety of illustrated Japanese tales from the 13th to the 19th century that reflect the cultural and social landscape of the time. The exhibition will feature approximately 70 works, including a group of 30 illustrated handscrolls, the ideal format for continuous sequential illustration, and 20 scrolls, books, and screens from New York Public Library and other local collections as well as from the Museum’s own collection.
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
Additional support is provided by the Japan Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
The Coe Collection of American Indian Art
December 6, 2011–October 14, 2012
Drawn from works given and bequeathed to the Metropolitan during the past decade by Ralph T. Coe of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the exhibition is comprised of some 30 objects made in natural materials from stone to animal hide. It features a wide range of Native American works that come from different times, from far-flung places, and from numerous distinct peoples. The oldest pieces in the Coe Collection date to some thousands of years BCE. The major part of the collection dates from the 19th to early 20th century, a period of great contact between Native Americans and outsiders of all sorts, from traders to missionaries to the U.S. army. The peoples of the Great Plains are prominent during this time, and objects such as the impressive, personalized hide shirts of important Indian men have come to identify American Indians in the public mind; there is such a shirt in the exhibition. Representing contemporary work, which is also found in the Coe Collection, is a mask dated to the year 2001—an imposing wood sculpture of a Noble Woman by the Northwest Coast Haida artist Robert Davidson is a product of a long, deeply felt tradition for the carving of wood.
The exhibition will be funded by Friends of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York
December 20, 2011–May 6, 2012
Referred to during his lifetime as the "United States Rage," Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854) remains to this day America's best-known cabinetmaker. This will be the first major retrospective on Phyfe since 1922, when the Metropolitan mounted a monographic show on the cabinetmaker and his work. The exhibition will cover the full chronological sweep of Phyfe's distinguished career. It will include his earliest and best known furniture based on the published designs of Thomas Sheraton, as well as work from the middle and later stages of his career, when he adopted the richer "archaeological" antique style of the 1820s, and a refined, plain Grecian style based on French Restauration prototypes.
The exhibition is made possible by Karen H. Bechtel.
Additional support is provided by The Henry Luce Foundation, Dr. and Mrs. Paul Cushman, the Americana Foundation, Mr. Robert L. Froelich, and Mr. Philip Holzer.
It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini
December 21, 2011–March 18, 2012
It has been said that the Renaissance witnessed the rediscovery of the individual. The 15th century was certainly the first great age of portraiture in Italy, where for the first time artists produced likenesses and explored means of suggesting personality. Featuring many rare international loans, The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini will present an unprecedented survey of portraiture in all media: paintings and sculpture as well as medals and drawings. Taken together, these works document the birth of portraiture in early modern Europe. The exhibition, which will be divided into three sections and span a period of eight decades, will begin in Florence, where independent portraits first appeared in abundance, then move to the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Bologna, Milan, Urbino, Naples, and papal Rome, and end in Venice. Approximately 130 works will be on view by artists including Donatello, Botticelli, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Mantegna, and Giovanni Bellini, testifying to the new vogue for and uses of portraiture in 15th-century Italy.
The exhibition is made possible by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
The exhibition was organized by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie and
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son
Through June 17, 2012
This exhibition features a selection of early 20th-century reproductions of now-famous works of art from Sir Arthur Evans’s historic excavations of Minoan Crete and Heinrich Schliemann’s Mycenaean Greece. Emile Gilliéron and later his son were the senior draftsmen for Evans, responsible for reconstructing the fresco paintings in the palace at Knossos. The Gilliérons formed a thriving business selling original watercolors after the frescoes and other reproductions of three-dimensional artworks, which they made directly from the originals. Their work influenced the study of Aegean art and was integral to its widespread introduction throughout Europe and America. The installation draws from the Metropolitan Museum’s own collection of Gilliéron reproductions, which is the largest in existence.
The exhibition is made possible by The Vlachos Family Fund.
NEW & CONTINUING INSTALLATIONS
Spies in the House of Art: Photography, Film, and Video
February 7–August 26, 2012
Since the 1980s, a number of contemporary artists working in photography, film, and video have taken as their subject the art museum and how specific works from the canon of art history are viewed. This installation in the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, drawn largely from the Metropolitan’s collection, will look at artists from the last three decades who explore the secret lives of museums and their collections. Highlights include Francesca Woodman’s Blueprint for a Temple, a 14-by-10-foot blueprint photocollage—not exhibited since 1980—and the 16mm film Flash in the Metropolitan (2006) by Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer, which was shot after hours in the Metropolitan Museum's darkened galleries. Also featured are photographs and videos by contemporary artists Lutz Bacher, Lothar Baumgarten, Sophie Calle, Tim Davis, Andrea Fraser, Candida Höfer, Laura Larson, Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Thomas Struth, as well as earlier works from mid-century by Diane Arbus and Joseph Cornell.
Victorian Electrotypes: Old Treasures, New Technology
November 22, 2011—April 22, 2012
For the first time in nearly a century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display a selection from its large collection of electrotypes, the metalwork reproductions that were among the first European decorative arts purchased by the Museum in the 1870s and 1880s. These highly sculptural pieces were intended to represent to the American public the most ambitious examples of Mannerist and Baroque goldsmiths’ work. They were made by electroforming, a technology that produced an extremely precise copy of an original by running an electrical charge through a solution to deposit metal into a mold. The largest group of electrotypes in the exhibition will be comprised of the “Russian Treasures,” the rich holdings of silver and gold housed in the Kremlin, the Hermitage, and Russian monasteries. Also on view will be Tiffany and Company’s magnificent Bryant Vase and an electroformed copy of it.
Red & Black: Chinese Lacquer 13th-16th Century
Through April 15, 2012
Organized in celebration of three spectacular gifts to the collection, this installation explores the innovations in technology, style, and imagery that define Chinese lacquer from the 13th to the 16th century, a seminal period in the development of this artistic tradition. Some of the lacquer is colored black using carbon: some red using cinnabar. Black lacquer is often inlaid with mother-of-pearl; red (or cinnabar) lacquer is carved. Both show themes based in China’s rich visual culture including figures in landscape often illustrating literary themes, flowers and birds rife with symbolic meanings, and mythical creatures such as dragons and phoenixes.
Highlights from the Modern Design Collection, 1900 to the Present, Part II
Through March 11, 2012
This installation of modern and contemporary design objects features new acquisitions and other important works from the past century to the present. Highlights include René Lalique’s Art Nouveau masterpiece—a necklace of gold, enamel, opals, and amethysts–as well as a newly acquired jugendstil side chair by Henry Van de Velde, a playfully brilliant room divider by Ettore Sottsass, and a chandelier by the Dutch designer Joris Laarman. Also presented are ceramics, glass, textiles, and drawings.
Tibetan Arms and Armor from the Permanent Collection
Through Spring 2012
This installation presents approximately 35 highlights from the Museum's extensive collection of rare and exquisitely decorated armor, weapons, and equestrian equipment from Tibet and related areas of Mongolia and China, dating from the eighth to the 20th century. Included are several recent acquisitions that have never before been exhibited or published.
TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS
The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry
Musée du Louvre, Paris March 28-June 25, 2012
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March 2012
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