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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 first exhibition to explore Henri Matisse's (1869–1954) lifelong fascination with textiles and its profound impact on his art will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 23, 2005. Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams – His Art and His Textiles features 45 painted works and 31 drawings and prints displayed alongside examples from Matisse's personal collection of fabrics, costumes, and carpets. The exhibition marks the first public showing of Matisse's textile collection – referred to by the artist as his "working library" – which has been packed away in family trunks since Matisse's death in 1954. The exhibition remains on view at the Metropolitan through September 25, 2005.
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Tony Oursler at the Met: "Studio" and "Climaxed," at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 17 to September 18, 2005, presents two installations by the internationally renowned artist Tony Oursler (American, b. 1954) that have never before been on view in the United States.
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CHANEL —The Costume Institute's major spring exhibition—will be presented in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Special Exhibition Galleries from May 5 to August 7, 2005. Nearly 34 years after the passing of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, the spirit of the house of Chanel will be manifested this spring in an extraordinary presentation of iconic fashions from Coco Chanel to Karl Lagerfeld.
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Chanel —The Costume Institute's major spring exhibition—will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 5 through August 7, 2005. The spirit of the House of Chanel will be re-created in a landmark presentation of iconic fashions from Coco Chanel to Karl Lagerfeld.
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Five sculptures and one wall-drawing by the celebrated American artist Sol LeWitt (born 1928) will go on view in The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 26, 2005. A prolific artist since his emergence in the mid-1960s, LeWitt will show recent painted fiberglass sculptures, Splotches, as well as a unique wall-drawing created for the Roof Garden's eastern wall. The works will be exhibited in the 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the New York City skyline. The installation will mark the eighth single-artist installation on the Cantor Roof Garden.
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Featuring some 50 extraordinary works of art, Defining Yongle: Imperial Art in Early Fifteenth-Century China will explore a crucial moment in the development of imperial Chinese art, and its relationship to later traditions. On view will be sculptures, paintings, lacquers, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, and ivories created in the imperial workshops during the reign of the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424). Important recent acquisitions – such as a gilt-bronze sculpture, Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and a rare lacquer sutra box with incised gold decoration (qiangjin) – will be presented along with 12 works (embroidered silks and works in cloisonné, ivory, and lacquer) acquired since 1990. Fifteen loans, many from New York collections, will supplement 33 objects drawn from the Metropolitan Museum's permanent collection.
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(New York, March 16, 2005)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Howard Gilman Foundation announced jointly today that the Museum has acquired the Gilman Paper Company Collection, widely regarded as the world's finest collection of photographs in private hands. With exceptional examples of 19th-century French, British, and American photographs, as well as masterpieces from the turn-of-the-century and modernist periods, the Gilman Collection has played a central role in establishing photography's historical canon and has long set the standard for connoisseurship in the field. In addition to many unique and beautiful icons of photography by such masters as Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, Nadar, Gustave Le Gray, Mathew Brady, Carleton Watkins, Edward Steichen, and Man Ray, the Gilman Collection includes extensive bodies of work by numerous pioneers of the camera. The collection was acquired through purchase, complemented by a generous gift from the Foundation. It contains more than 8,500 photographs, dating primarily from the first century of the medium, 1839-1939.
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The much-anticipated exhibition Max Ernst: A Retrospective, the first major U.S. survey of the artist's work in 30 years, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning April 7, 2005. Ernst (1891-1976) was a founding member of the Dada and Surrealist movements in Europe and was one of the most ingenious artists of the 20th century. The exhibition will remain on view through July 10, 2005.
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For the first time in more than 30 years, a major museum retrospective of the work of legendary photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) will go on view in New York City, her lifelong home and the primary source of her subjects and inspiration. Diane Arbus Revelations, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 8, features approximately 180 of the artist's most significant photographs. Not since 1972, when The Museum of Modern Art honored the artist following her death, has there been as rich an opportunity to experience the scope of Arbus's achievements. The exhibition remains on view until May 30.
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During the second half of the 18th century, the New England seaport of Newport, Rhode Island, became a leading center of American furniture-making, with members of the Townsend and Goddard families dominating the trade. Preeminent among these stellar cabinetmakers was John Townsend (1733-1809), whose meticulous craftsmanship and elegant designs set a standard that was seldom matched. The Metropolitan Museum of Art will celebrate his pivotal role in the history of American furniture this spring with John Townsend: Newport Cabinetmaker.
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The first exhibition to explore Henri Matisse's (1869–1954) lifelong fascination with textiles and its profound impact on his art will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 23, 2005. Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams – His Art and His Textiles features approximately 30 paintings and 35 works on paper displayed alongside examples from Matisse's personal collection of fabrics, costumes, and carpets. The exhibition marks the first public showing of Matisse's textile collection – referred to by the artist as his "working library" – which has been packed away in family trunks since Matisse's death in 1954. The exhibition remains on view at the Metropolitan through September 25, 2005.
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Cameo Appearances will put on display, beginning March 8, more than 160 superb examples of the art of hardstone carving from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's wide-ranging collections. Inspired by the recent acquisition of a magnificent jasper carving of the head of Medusa by Benedetto Pistrucci, the exhibition traces cameo carving from Greco-Roman antiquity to the 19th century, highlighting the Metropolitan's rich holdings of neoclassical Italian cameos by the great gem-carvers Pistrucci, Girometti, and Saulini. Cameo Appearances also considers related subjects such as cameo glass, illuminates the differences between cameos and intaglios, and touches on fakery.
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(Monday, February 28, 2005)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art's special 'window' onto The Gates – its opening of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden – will be extended through this week, it was announced today. Offering visitors exceptional views of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's spectacular work of art in Central Park – The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979-2005, the rooftopwill be kept open to the public, weather permitting, until the monumental work of art is dismantled. The Gates' 16-day installation in Central Park officially ended on Sunday, February 27, but the extended viewing opportunity provides additional opportunities for the public to view the gates positioned near the Museum until they are disassembled by volunteers sometime during the week of March 1.
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The first exhibition to explore Henri Matisse's (1869-1954) lifelong fascination with textiles and its profound impact on his art will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 23, 2005. Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams – His Art and His Textiles features approximately 30 paintings and 35 works on paper displayed alongside examples from Matisse's personal collection of fabrics, costumes, and carpets. The exhibition marks the first public showing of Matisse's textile collection – referred to by the artist as his "working library" – which has been packed away in family trunks since Matisse's death in 1954. The exhibition remains on view at the Metropolitan through September 25, 2005.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will offer visitors an array of viewing opportunities – highlighted by the special off-season opening of its Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden (weather permitting) – as well as other events to provide exceptional access to Christo and Jeanne-Claude's widely anticipated public work of art The Gates, Central Park, New York City, 1979–2005, which will be installed in Central Park February 12-27, 2005 (weather permitting).
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"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."
--William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
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The first major retrospective ever to be devoted to the drawings of Peter Paul Rubens in the United States will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 15, 2005. Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640): The Drawings will bring together 115 of the versatile Baroque master's finest and most representative drawings, including dozens that have never before been on view in the United States. Court painter, diplomat, and international celebrity, Rubens was one of the most influential artists of northern Europe in the 17th century. Best known for his paintings, this universal genius is among the most imaginative of draftsmen. His topics vary from engaging biblical scenes to alluring nudes, from animated and stately portraits to poignant animal studies, and from landscapes sketched from nature to complex allegories.
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New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
Continuing Exhibitions
New and Recently Opened Installations
Closing Soon
Traveling Exhibitions
Visitor Information
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Visitors to the Electoral-princely collections in Renaissance Dresden encountered room after room of treasures proclaiming the refined splendor of the court—exquisite gold and silver objects embellished with precious and semi-precious stones and exotic materials, ivory turnings, ebony furniture, clocks, automatons, and decorated tools. In the first exhibition on Dresden to be held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 25 years, Princely Splendor: The Dresden Court, 1580-1620, nearly 250 of these major works of art and precious objects—on loan from the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), and in particular the fabled Green Vault—will be on view. This exhibition will illustrate the richness of one of the most spectacular princely collections of Europe—the Dresden Kunstkammer—as it existed around 1600. Reflecting the broad range of the collections amassed by the Electors of Saxony during this period of unusual prosperity, the exhibition will also include rare arms and armor, paintings, and sculptures, including several bronzes by Giambologna.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a landmark exhibition of ancient Chinese art – the largest ever to be organized with loans from across Mainland China – beginning October 12, 2004. Bringing together more than 300 works of extreme rarity and art historical importance, many of which have never before been exhibited outside China, China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD will tell the story of Chinese art and culture from the Han to the Tang dynasty, a period of major transformation for Chinese civilization due to massive immigrations from northern Asia into China and extensive trade contacts with all parts of Asia. The exhibition will feature objects in an astounding variety of media – including objects in jade, bronze, gold, silver, metal, stone, and wood, as well as textiles, works on paper, and wall paintings – ranging in size from an enormous sculpture of a fantastic animal to a small gold coin.
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An exhibition of more than 40 ceramic sculptures made in the western region of Mexico two thousand years ago will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 19, 2004. The volcanic highland areas of the contemporary Mexican states of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit are the source of the three-dimensional sculptures that portray ancestors, warriors, ballplayers, dancers, and musicians, among other depictions of life and ritual. Ranging in size from a few inches to about two-and-a-half feet in height, the sculptures in Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico – The Andrall E. Pearson Family Collection are drawn from holdings that emphasize the human figure, and its activities and concerns.
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SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS
SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2004
New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
Continuing Exhibitions
New and Recently Opened Installations
Traveling Exhibitions
Visitor Information
Closing Soon
SPECIAL NOTE
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Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), the most successful and resourceful portraitist of America's early national period, is best remembered today for his many incisive likenesses of George Washington. This fall, in the artist's first retrospective in nearly four decades, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will show nearly 100 exceptional works that reveal his talent for capturing both the appearance and the character of his many prominent clients. Representing all periods of Stuart's long career and featuring works drawn from private collections and museums in America and Britain, Gilbert Stuart opens on October 21.
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Visitors to the Electoral-princely collections in Renaissance Dresden encountered room after room of treasures proclaiming the refined splendor of the court—exquisite gold and silver objects embellished with precious and semi-precious stones and exotic materials, ivory turnings, ebony furniture, clocks, automatons, and decorated tools. In the first exhibition on Dresden to be held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 25 years, Princely Splendor: The Dresden Court, 1580-1620, nearly 250 of these major works of art and precious objects—on loan from the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden), and in particular the fabled Green Vault—will be on view. This exhibition will illustrate the richness of one of the most spectacular princely collections of Europe—the Dresden Kunstkammer—as it existed around 1600. Reflecting the broad range of the collections amassed by the Electors of Saxony during this period of unusual prosperity, the exhibition will also include rare arms and armor, paintings, and sculptures, including several bronzes by Giambologna.
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The arrival of the Spanish in South America in 1532 dramatically transformed the Andean cultural landscape, changing societies that had evolved over thousands of years within less than one generation. The arts, however, continued to thrive amid the upheavals, and an unspoken dialogue evolved between Andean and European artistic traditions. A major exhibition of more than 175 works of art focusing on two uniquely rich and inherently Andean art forms that flourished during the Colonial period – tapestry and silverwork – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 29, 2004. The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830 will present the finest examples of Inca and colonial garments and tapestries, as well as ritual and domestic silverwork, drawn from museums, churches, and private collections in South America, Europe, and the United States.
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On the occasion of the citywide celebration of the artist's life and work, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special installation, Romare Bearden at the Met, from October 19, 2004, through March 6, 2005.
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Forty rare examples of European horse armor – varying in style, construction, and decoration – will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 14, 2004. The exhibition, The Armored Horse in Europe, ca. 1475 to 1625 – drawn exclusively from the Museum's own collection – will cover the peak period of the use of horse armor from around 1500 through its eventual obsolescence in the early 17th century. Established in 1912, the Metropolitan's Department of Arms and Armor houses the most extensive collection of European horse armor in the United States and one of the most comprehensive in the world.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a landmark exhibition of ancient Chinese art – one of the largest ever to be organized with loans from across Mainland China – beginning October 12, 2004. Bringing together more than 300 works of extreme rarity and art historical importance, many of which have never before been exhibited outside China, China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD will tell the story of Chinese art and culture from the Han to the Tang dynasty, a period of major transformation for Chinese civilization due to massive immigrations from northern Asia into China and extensive trade contacts with all parts of Asia. The exhibition will feature objects in an astounding variety of media – including objects in jade, bronze, gold, silver, metal, stone, and wood, as well as textiles, works on paper, and wall paintings – ranging in size from an enormous sculpture of a fantastic animal to a small gold coin.
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In honor of the modern Olympics that will take place in Athens this summer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display a special selection of ancient Greek vases, bronzes, and additional works showcasing aspects of the games that were held in Athens in antiquity. Opening on June 29, The Games in Ancient Athens: A Special Presentation to Celebrate the 2004 Olympics will feature some 50 works of art created between the sixth and the fourth century B.C. depicting chariot races, foot races, wrestling, and discus throwing, among other athletic activities. This presentation, which is drawn entirely from the Museum's extensive collection of Greek art, will be located within the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery, as well as in adjacent areas of the New Greek Galleries, where examples of athletic art already on view will be highlighted.
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An exhibition of 36 Korean paintings, ceramics, and sculpture from the collection of Mary Griggs Burke will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning July 3. Many of these pieces – which date primarily to the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) – will make their public debut in this exhibition. Mrs. Burke, renowned for her collection of Japanese art, has since the late 1970s also assembled a small but splendid selection of Korean art. This exhibition, Hidden Jewels: Korean Art from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection, provides a rare opportunity to glimpse a lesser-known side of her collection and to learn more about the diversity and beauty of Korean art.
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New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
Continuing Exhibitions
New and Recently Opened Installations
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The first major retrospective ever to be devoted to the drawings of Peter Paul Rubens in the United States will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 15, 2005. Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640): The Drawings will bring together 115 of the versatile Baroque master's finest and most representative drawings, including 12 recently discovered works that have never before been exhibited. Court painter, diplomat, and international celebrity, Rubens was one of the most influential artists of northern Europe in the 17th century. Best known for his paintings, this universal genius is among the most imaginative of draftsmen. His topics vary from engaging biblical scenes to alluring nudes, from animated and stately portraits to poignant animal studies, and from landscapes sketched from nature to complex allegories.
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An exhibition of some 100 precious Chinese and Mughal jade carvings from the Heber R. Bishop collection will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this spring. Featuring the objects from practical vessels and pendants to ornaments intended for the emperor's desk, The Bishop Jades will illustrate the full range of the lapidary's repertoire. An industrialist and entrepreneur, Mr. Bishop was an active patron of the arts and a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum. In the late 19th century, he assembled a collection of more than one thousand pieces of jade and other hardstones from China and elsewhere, and in 1902, he bequeathed the collection to the Museum.
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Beginning October 19, more than four dozen works in all media depicting George Washington, the Revolutionary War hero who became the first president of the United States, will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in George Washington: Man, Myth, Monument—Images from the Metropolitan. The exhibition is drawn entirely from the extensive holdings of the Museum's American Wing and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints, as well as works in glass, ceramics, silver, textiles, and wood that were created in the late 18th and the 19th century.
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Many of the gold objects adorning sumptuous French interiors—from the Palace of Versailles to grand residences in Paris—are generally not made of gold at all but of gilt bronze. Both functional and highly decorative, gilt-bronze mounts and bronzes d'ameublement, such as light fixtures, fireplace fittings, and clocks, played a very important role in the French interior from the late 17th to the early 19th century. Always in keeping with the latest stylistic changes, gilt-bronze pieces were often designed by well-known artists and sculptors, such as Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier and Augustin Pajou, and manufactured by highly specialized craftsmen. A rigid guild system maintained the high standards of craftsmanship and regulated the process of gilt bronze manufacture. The exhibition All That Glitters Is Not Gold: The Art, Form, and Function of Gilt Bronze in the French Interior focuses on the use of gilt bronze in the interior décor, as well as on the designs and techniques involved in the casting, chasing, and gilding of gilt bronze objects. Drawn from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition will include some 80 objects.
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The recent gift of more than 100 works from the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation 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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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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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 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.
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A major loan exhibition exploring the rich tradition of naturalism in painting of the North Italian region of Lombardy — most famously expressed in the works of Caravaggio — will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 27, 2004. Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy, will feature some 80 paintings and 40 drawings that document the region's distinctive emphasis on observation of the natural world, beginning in the 15th century, with Leonardo da Vinci's stay in Milan, through the 18th century. A central figure in the exhibition is Caravaggio, through whom this naturalist approach came to Rome and became of key importance to Baroque art there and throughout Europe. On view through August 15, 2004, the exhibition will also feature works by such notable exemplars of the Lombard school as Lorenzo Lotto, Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Giacomo Ceruti, and the important women artists Sofonisba Anguissola and Fede Galizia. This will be the first time that this great school of Italian painting will be presented in the U.S.A in such depth.
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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, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, among others.
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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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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 preparatory drawings and collages by Christo, 40 photographs, and 10 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 basilea 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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Throughout the history of Western dress, women have borrowed elements of men's clothing. And yet the reverse has rarely been the case. Nowhere is this asymmetry more apparent than in the taboo surrounding men in skirts. Bravehearts: Men in Skirts, an exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 4, looks at designers and individuals who have appropriated the skirt as a means of injecting novelty into male fashion, as a means of transgressing moral and social codes, and as a means of redefining ideal masculinities. In an unprecedented survey of "men in skirts" in historical and cross-cultural contexts, the exhibition will feature more than 100 items drawn from The Costume Institute's permanent collection, augmented by loans from cultural institutions and fashion houses in Europe and America.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present five drawings by American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) in connection with its landmark exhibition of works by the great 16th-century painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) -known to posterity as El Greco. The drawings will be on view in the Museum's Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery for the duration of the El Greco exhibition, from October 7, 2003 through January 11, 2004.
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The noted American painter Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) – a master of the atmospheric landscape, who was the subject of the very first monographic exhibition in the Metropolitan's history 123 years ago – will be the subject of a major new retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall. This showing of Gifford's work will be the first in more than 30 years and only the second since his Memorial Exhibition at the Museum in 1880. Opening on October 7, Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford will feature some 70 paintings reflecting the artist's travels in America, Europe, and the Middle East.
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Two hundred nineteen works by leading 19th-century American, British, and French artists from the legendary collection formed by Grenville L. Winthop (1864-1943) will go on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 23, 2003. The exhibition, which marks the first time the collection has traveled since its bequest to Harvard in 1943, features paintings, drawings, and sculptures by more than 50 artists, including William Blake, Edward Burne-Jones, Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Winslow Homer, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Gustave Moreau, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Singer Sargent, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University will remain on view at the Metropolitan through January 25, 2004.
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New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
Continuing Exhibitions
New and Recently Opened Installations
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This summer, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the legislation (July 21, 1853) that designated as "a public place" the lands that were to become New York's Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition about the design and construction of the park. The Metropolitan Museum has been located in Central Park since 1880.
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The first major retrospective in more than 20 years devoted to the great 16th-century painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) – known to posterity as El Greco – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 7, 2003. One of the most original artists of his age, El Greco was celebrated for his highly expressive and visionary religious paintings. The international loan exhibition's approximately 80 works include an unsurpassed selection of his psychologically compelling portraits, as well as his rare incursions into landscape, genre, mythology, and sculpture. Particular emphasis will be placed on his late works, in which mystical content, expressive distortions, and monumental scale are taken to ever greater extremes, culminating in the Adoration of Shepherds, the spectacular nine-foot-tall painting created to decorate his own tomb.
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Some 175 of the best surviving examples of a medium that changed the history of art and visual representation forever will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 23, 2003, through January 4, 2004. The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 is the first survey of key monuments from photography's first moments, when its pioneers used the invention for artistic, scientific, ethnographic, documentary, and other purposes. The exhibition will employ state-of-the-art display and lighting techniques to reveal the incomparable detail and sculptural quality that distinguishes this process and which led one of its earliest champions, Jules Janin, to describe the daguerreotype as "divine magic."
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Some 200 American Indian objects assembled over almost half a century by the renowned Santa Fe authority and collector Ralph T. Coe will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning September 9. Featuring objects dating from 3000 B.C. to the present, The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art will display a wide-ranging selection of works representative of most of the diverse Native American regions and periods. Objects on view will range from authoritative masks and headdress frontlets of painted wood made by peoples of the Pacific Northwest, to splendidly ornamented deerskin shirts and smoking pipes of the high Plains, to delicate and carefully wrought works of the Northeast region made with a clear understanding of European taste and acquisitiveness.
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An exhibition focusing on the 17th-century landscape painting of China's Nanjing School will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning September 13. Comprising nearly 60 works, Dreams of Yellow Mountain: Landscapes of Survival in Seventeenth-Century China will highlight works created by "leftover subjects" of the Ming dynasty, who lived in and around Nanjing during the early years of the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1911). For these loyalist artists, images of landscape – often inspired by Yellow Mountain – symbolized survival, resistance, and reclusion in response to alien rule. Including works from the Museum's permanent holdings as well as loans from East Coast collections, the exhibition will be the most comprehensive presentation of such landscapes ever mounted in the United States.
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The first-ever public presentation of 101 works from the impressive group of Italian illuminated manuscripts assembled by Robert Lehman (1891-1969), one of the foremost American collectors of his day, opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 30, 2003. Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, on view through February 1, 2004, features some of the finest examples of the illuminator's art—many of them previously unknown even to scholars—produced in Italy from the 13th through the 16th century. Among the many important new discoveries presented in the exhibition is the only known illumination by the great Sienese master Duccio di Buoninsegna.
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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. Some 45 preparatory drawings and collages by Christo, 40 photographs, and 10 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 10- to 15-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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The American painter Philip Guston (American, b. Canada, 1913-1980) will be the subject of a major retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 27, 2003, through January 4, 2004. The exhibition will include more than 75 paintings and drawings dating from 1930, when he was 17, to 1980, the year of his death. Beginning with his childhood fascination with popular American comic strips, through mural painting laden with political imagery, to easel painting and a burgeoning interest in, advancement of, and ultimate disenchantment with abstraction and Abstract Expressionism, through his invention of a highly controversial figurative mode of painting and drawing that influenced younger artists, Guston courageously changed styles according to his beliefs and in response to social and political issues of the day.
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More than 75 exceptional examples of sculpture from some of the finest public and private collections of African art in the United States will be shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture, opening to the public on November 19. The works relate to traditions that interweave elements of myth, history, religion, and contemporary experience to address universal questions: How did the world begin? What is our ancestry? What is the source of agriculture, kingship, and other societal institutions? The exhibition represents the first time that 17 distinct sculptural traditions that take their inspiration from myths of origin will be considered together. Examined in particular depth will be that of the Bamana (Bambara) people of Mali. Forty stunning ci wara (Chi Wara) antelope headdresses – a classical sculptural form from the Bamana – will constitute the largest assemblage of such works and will allow viewers an appreciation of this tradition in its fullest expression. These works will be introduced by 35 rarely seen masterpieces from 16 distinct cultural traditions from sub-Saharan Africa.
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More than 70 works—drawn extensively from 204 prints donated to the Museum by Reba and Dave Williams in 1999—will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 15 through May 4, 2003.
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The first major exhibition ever to examine the impact of 17th-century Spanish painting
on 19th-century French artists will feature nearly 240 paintings and works on paper spanning several centuries of European art at the most astounding levels of achievement. On view will be some 130 paintings by Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, El Greco, Zurbarán, and other masters of Spain's Golden Age as well as masterpieces by the 19th-century French artists they influenced, among them Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Degas, and, most notably, Manet. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 4 through June 8, 2003, Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting will also include works by American artists such as Sargent, Chase, Eakins, Whistler, and Cassatt, who studied in France but learned to paint like Spaniards.
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The 300th anniversary of the founding of Saint Petersburg will be celebrated at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with a display of the Museum's important holdings of sculpture and decorative works of art, either made in the imperial Russian capital or formerly included in Saint Petersburg collections.
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The first major retrospective devoted to the virtuoso Netherlandish mannerist Hendrick Goltzius – one of the most versatile and accomplished figures in the history of art – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 26, 2003. Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch Master (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings, an international loan exhibition of more than 160 works, spans the artist's entire career and demonstrates his legendary mastery of a remarkably wide range of media, subject matter, and styles – from extravagantly complex mythological scenes in prints, to sensitively observed studies from nature, to sumptuously colored oil paintings on canvas and copper. The exhibition remains on view at the Metropolitan through September 7, 2003.
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Some 40 vintage photographs from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gilman Paper Company will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003, complementing The Photography of Charles Sheeler. Ranging from Frederick H. Evans's rich platinum prints of the interior of William Morris's home (1896), to Ralph Steiner's Power Lines and Insulators (1929), Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries will feature works by early 20th-century photographers who drew inspiration from the American city, the machine, and the radical innovations of European modernists.
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From the clothing of ancient Greece to such modern evocations as Madame Grès's emblematic creations and Versace's Neoclassical loincloths, classical dress has profoundly inspired and influenced art and fashion through the millennia. Goddess – a major exhibition opening in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute on May 1, 2003 – will present clothing, prints, photographs, and decorative works of art from the 18th century onward, to reveal the many ways in which classical dress has become a truly timeless style.
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The remarkable flowering of the world's earliest civilizations some 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia—present-day Iraq—will be the focus of a landmark exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 8. The culmination of years of planning and research, Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus will survey the evolution of art and culture in the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and their impact on the emerging cities of the ancient world—from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia and along the Gulf to the Indus Valley—during one of the most seminal and creative periods in history. Some 50 museums from more than a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East will participate in this ambitious exhibition, lending national treasures that have rarely, if ever, been sent outside the walls of their art institutions.
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Nearly 100 works, including 90 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 landmark photographic series made between 1915 and 1939, and will consist of rare vintage prints. The exhibition will reveal the full significance of Sheeler's photographs as the foundation from which his better-known works in other mediums were derived.
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More than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and original prints by some of the most prominent artists of the 20th century have been donated by the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – by such modern art icons as Henri Matisse, Balthus, Chagall, Derain, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miró, and Tanguy, as well as several pivotal but lesser-known artists – were collected by the New York art dealer Pierre Matisse (1900-1989).
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An exhibition examining the successive waves of artistic influence that flowed from China eastward to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago over the past 1,000 years will take place at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning in March 2003. Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan, drawn from the Museum's unparalleled collection of East Asian painting, will explore how Chinese pictorial themes – Buddhist iconography, landscape imagery, flower and bird subjects, and figural narratives – were adopted selectively and reinterpreted by native artists in Korea and Japan. Organized thematically, the exhibition will focus on landscapes and images from nature in the Douglas Dillon Galleries for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy (opening March 1), and on the figural arts, including religious and narrative themes, in The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan (opening March 15). Works from China, Japan, and Korea will be shown in both gallery areas.
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New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
Continuing Exhibitions
New and Recently Opened Installations
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The first major retrospective devoted to the virtuoso Netherlandish mannerist Hendrick Goltzius will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 26, 2003. Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch Master (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings—a selection of some 80 prints, 69 drawings, and 13 paintings, including loans from collections throughout Europe and the United States—spans the artist's entire career and demonstrates his legendary mastery of a remarkably wide range of media, subject matter and styles.
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One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.
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Purists at the Hindu Courts – a new installation of paintings from the Hindu courts of India, dating from the 17th to the 19th century – will be on view in Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for South and Southeast Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 6, 2003. Drawn from the Museum's collection, and including many recent acquisitions, the installation features 18 works depicting hunting scenes, garden parties, and historical events. This exquisite grouping explores the interconnections between the Muslim and Hindu court traditions.
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Forty vintage photographs from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gilman Paper Company will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003, complementing The Photography of Charles Sheeler. Ranging from Frederick H. Evans's rich platinum prints of the interior of William Morris's home (1896), to Ralph Steiner's Power Lines and Insulators (1929), Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries will feature works by early 20th-century photographers who drew inspiration from the American city, the machine, and the radical innovations of European modernists.
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One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.
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In June of 1864, an important episode in the American Civil War took place in international waters off the coast of Cherbourg, France. The duel between the U.S.S. Kearsarge and the C.S.S. Alabama created a sensation in Europe and America alike, and caught the imagination of the French artist Édouard Manet (1832-83), who made a painting of the battle before rushing to Boulogne to see the victorious Kearsarge. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired Manet's portrait of the Kearsarge and to celebrate the acquisition will present a small exhibition devoted to the battle, Manet's response, and the effect of Manet's paintings on his immediate friends. Manet and the American Civil War: The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama" is a dossier exhibition that opens on June 3.
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The 300th anniversary of the founding of Saint Petersburg will be celebrated with a display of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's important holdings of sculpture and decorative works of art, either made in the imperial Russian capital or formerly included in Saint Petersburg collections. Reflecting the splendor and cosmopolitan culture of the czarist court, the selection of approximately 65 objects, dating from about 1700 to the early 20th century, includes exquisitely crafted furniture, silver, porcelain, jewelry, and other luxury items of Russian, as well as French and German manufacture. On view from late spring 2003 through fall 2004, Celebrating Saint Petersburg inaugurates the Metropolitan's new European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department's Special Exhibitions Gallery.
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Six sculptures by the celebrated American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) will go on view in The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1. Selected from the collections of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and the estate of the artist, Roy Lichtenstein on the Roof will highlight brightly painted or patinated bronze and fabricated aluminum sculptures. Created in the 1990s, each work makes witty reference to Lichtenstein's own painting or to the work of such modernist artists as Picasso and Brancusi. The works will be exhibited in the 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the New York City skyline. The installation will mark the sixth single-artist installation on the Cantor Roof Garden.
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The remarkable flowering of the world's earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago will be the focus of a landmark exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 8. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus will survey the evolution of Mesopotamian art and culture and its impact on the cities of the ancient world – stretching from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia to the Indus Valley – during one of the most seminal and creative periods in history.
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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.