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One hundred and twenty photographs by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), one of the most important American artists of the first half of the 20th century and a pioneer of American modernism, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003. The Photography of Charles Sheeler is the first major exhibition to concentrate on each of Sheeler's major photographic series made between 1915 and 1939, and will consist of rare vintage prints. The exhibition will reveal the full significance of Sheeler's photographic works as the foundation from which his better-known works in other mediums were derived.
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Seventy works—many grandly scaled—by photographer Thomas Struth (German, born 1954), one of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from Europe in the past two decades, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 4 through May 18, 2003. From his early black-and-white streetscapes of European and American cities to his recent mural-sized color views of primeval landscapes in Asia, Australia, and South America, Struth's superb photographs explore the traditions and the actual conditions of our world on the cusp of this newly global millennium.
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This is the first exhibition in 20 years to survey the rich holdings of French 19th-century drawings and watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's renowned Robert Lehman Collection. On view from November 19, 2002, through February 9, 2003, French Nineteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection will feature more than 80 works by most of the leading artists — Ingres, Delacroix, Rousseau, Degas, Renoir, and Seurat, to name just a few — of this pivotal epoch in the history of French art. Organized to coincide with the publication of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Drawings, volume IX in the complete series of Robert Lehman Collection scholarly catalogues, both the exhibition and the book will reveal yet another facet of the taste of one of the great American collectors of the 20th century.
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For a period of two-and-one-half years beginning this fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display seven superb examples of medieval art from the Morgan Library, while that facility undergoes a major expansion project. The long-term loans include some of the favorite works of the noted financier and collector J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), a past President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. After Morgan's death, nearly 7,000 paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from his astonishing collection were given to the Metropolitan, while his private library – and the illuminated, literary, and historical manuscripts, early printed books, and Old Master drawings and prints it contained – became The Pierpont Morgan Library. Most of the works that are being lent to the Metropolitan had been kept in Mr. Morgan's study during his lifetime and, since his death, have been displayed in the room with other personal belongings.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open a new permanent exhibition space this fall, devoted to the full range of work by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), who was one of the most versatile and talented American artists of his time. Part of the recently named Deedee Wigmore Galleries, the installation will highlight the Museum's preeminent Tiffany collection and will feature some 80 stunning examples of his windows, lamps, furniture, mosaics, blown Favrile glass vases, pottery, enamelwork, jewelry, and paintings. Works from the early 1870s to the early 1920s will be on view. A selection of design drawings from the Museum's holdings of more than 400 works on paper by the Tiffany Studios will be shown. Because of their fragile nature and sensitivity to light, the drawings will be displayed on a rotating schedule.
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An elaborately decorated 18th-century menorah – one of the oldest symbols of the Jewish faith – will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning November 26. This is the second consecutive year that the piece will be shown during the Hanukkah season. Dating to about 1771, the candelabrum is large in size (H. 60" W.41" D.19") and rich in ornament, indicating that it was intended for use in a synagogue. An inscription suggests that the synagogue was located in Eastern Europe, probably in Poland.
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The Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a long-established yuletide tradition in New York, will be on view for the holiday season beginning November 26. The brightly lit, 20-foot blue spruce – with a collection of 18th-century Neapolitan angels and cherubs among its boughs and groups of realistic crèche figures flanking the Nativity scene at its base – will once again delight holiday visitors in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall. Set in front of the 18th-century Spanish choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, with recorded Christmas music in the background, the installation reflects the spirit of the holiday season. There will be a spectacular lighting ceremony every Friday and Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m.
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An exhibition of secular and religious arts created in Latin America during the period of Spanish rule will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 11. Featuring nearly 70 works of art, Arts of the Spanish Americas, 1550-1850: Works from the Museum's CollectionI will highlight the creativity of artists working in the regions colonized by Spain, from the Rio Grande to the Andes, from the period of evangelization through Independence. The exhibition will include a selection of Mexican glazed ceramic ware know as Talavera de Puebla, Mexican and Andean textiles and silver, paintings and polychrome sculpture from all over the Spanish-speaking Americas and the Philippines, and a group of wooden kero cups, the traditional ceremonial drinking vessels of the Andes.
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A new installation focusing on the art of Central Asia is on view on the Great Hall Balcony of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrating the vibrancy and diversity found in objects created in the vast realm that stretched between Iran and China in ancient times. The 37 works of art in Glimpses of the Silk Road: Central Asia in the First Millennium are drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's collections of Asian and Ancient Near Eastern art, and include important loans as well as recent Museum acquisitions.
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One hundred eighty portraits by acclaimed photographer Richard Avedon—a vast collective portrait of America in the second half of the 20th century—will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 26. Richard Avedon: Portraits will feature his most classic and penetrating images, documenting as never before this artist's dazzling reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture. The exhibition, which will remain on view through January 5, 2003, will span Avedon's entire career, from his earliest portraits made in the late 1940s through his most recent work.