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Sculptures by Anthony Caro (b. 1924)—who is considered the most influential and prolific British sculptor of his generation, and a key figure in the development of modernist sculpture over the last 60 years—will be featured in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2011 installation on The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening April 26. The installation will include a selection of sculpture in steel, painted and unpainted, spanning the artist's career to date and highlighting principal aspects of his long career: engagement with form in space, dialogue between sculpture and architecture, and creation of new, abstract analogies for the human figure and landscape.
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A special loan exhibition focusing on the dynamic art of buncheong ceramics will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 7. Featuring more than 60 masterpieces from the renowned collection of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea—the majority of which have never before been seen in the U.S.—Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art will explore the bold and startlingly modern ceramic tradition that flourished in Korea during the 15th and 16th centuries of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), as well as its eloquent reinterpretations by today's leading ceramists.
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During the Romantic era, the open window appeared either as the sole subject or the main feature in many pictures of interiors that were filled with a poetic play of light and perceptible silence. Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 5 through July 4, 2011, is the first exhibition to focus on this motif as captured by German, Danish, French, and Russian artists around 1810–20. Works in the exhibition range from the initial appearance of the motif in two sepia drawings of about 1805–06 by Caspar David Friedrich to paintings of luminous empty rooms from the late 1840s by Adolph Menzel. The show features 31 oil paintings and 26 works on paper, and consists mostly of generous loans from museums in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Austria, Sweden, and the United States.
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Night Vision: Photography After Dark, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 26 through September 18, 2011, will feature photography of the 20th century inspired by the pleasure, danger, and allure of the night. For more than 100 years photographers have been drawn to the challenge of making images after dark, capturing the aesthetic effects of nighttime rain, early-morning fog, shining street lamps, and dimly lit rooms. Modern camera artists have been captivated by glowing skyscrapers, dazzling neon signs, glittering nightlife, and the shadowy realm of the nocturnal underworld. Highlights of the Metropolitan's exhibition include classic night photography of the 1930s-1950s by Berenice Abbott, Bill Brandt, Brassaï, Robert Frank, André Kertész, William Klein, Weegee, and Garry Winogrand, as well as three early photographs by Diane Arbus that have never been shown or published before, and recently acquired photographs by Peter Hujar and Kohei Yoshiyuki.
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The Washington Haggadah—one of the most important illustrated Hebrew manuscripts preserved in an American public collection and an unprecedented loan from the Library of Congress—will be shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning April 5, to coincide with the observance of Passover later that month. A Haggadah is the book used at the Passover seder, the ritual meal that commemorates the exodus of the ancient Israelites from Egypt. Although the essential components of the text were established in the second century, the Haggadah was first made into an independent, illustrated book in the Middle Ages. The manuscript will remain on view through June 26.
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The first retrospective of the drawings of American contemporary artist Richard Serra will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 13, 2011, through August 28, 2011. Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective traces the crucial role that drawing has played in Richard Serra's work for more than 40 years. Although Serra is well known
for his large-scale and site-specific sculptures, his work has also changed the practice of drawing. This major exhibition will show how Serra's work has expanded the definition of drawing through innovative techniques, unusual media, monumental scale, and carefully conceived relationships to surrounding spaces. The exhibition, which includes many loans from important European and American collections, features 43 drawings and 28 sketchbooks from the 1970s to the present, as well as four films by the artist and a new, large-scale work completed specifically for this presentation.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special exhibition focusing on the Andean tunic, beginning March 8. Featuring some 30 tunics drawn from the Museum's collection with loans from The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., The Cleveland Museum of Art, and two private collections, The Andean Tunic, 400 BCE – 1800 CE, will examine the form of the tunic, essentially a type of shirt, which had an important cultural place in Andean South America for centuries. Textiles, a much developed art form there in ancient times, were themselves valued as wealth, and tunics were among the most treasured of them.
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Three New York master luthiers, renowned for their hand-carved stringed instruments—particularly their archtop guitars, which have been sought after by many of the most important guitarists of the last century—will be the subject of Guitar Heroes: Legendary Craftsmen from Italy to New York, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 9 through July 4, 2011. Featuring the extraordinary guitars of John D'Angelico, James D'Aquisto, and John Monteleone, this unprecedented exhibition of approximately 80 musical instruments will focus on the work of these modern-day master craftsmen and their roots in a long tradition of stringed instrument-making that has thrived for more than 400 years and that was first brought to New York from Italy around the turn of the 20th century.