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The first major exhibition in 45 years devoted to Jan Gossart (ca. 1478-1532)— one of the most innovative artists of the Burgundian-Habsburg Netherlands— is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 6, 2010, through January 17, 2011. Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart's Renaissance brings together the majority of Gossart's paintings, drawings, and prints, and places them in the context of the influences on his transformation from Late Gothic Mannerism to the new Renaissance mode. Gossart was among the first northern artists to travel to Rome to make copies after antique sculpture and monuments and to introduce biblical and mythological subjects with erotic nude figures into the mainstream of northern painting. Most often credited with successfully assimilating Italian Renaissance style into northern European art of the early 16th century, he is the pivotal Old Master who redirected the course of early Flemish painting from the legacy of its founder, Jan van Eyck, and charted new territory that eventually led to the great age of Rubens.
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Praised by the international press and exhibited throughout the United States and Europe at the turn of the 20th century, the American furniture designer Charles Rohlfs (1853–1936) created innovative works that combined elements of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and proto-modernism in surprising and original ways. In a meteoric career that barely spanned one decade, he designed only a few hundred works—many of them for his own home. While Rohlfs's forms were too eccentric for the commercial market of his time, he achieved recognition as a unique voice and seminal force in the history of American art furniture.
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The Yuan Revolution: Art and Dynastic Change, a complement to the exhibition The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty, traces the momentous stylistic transformation in painting and calligraphy that began under Mongol rule and culminated in the literati traditions of the early Ming. Featuring more than 70 works in all pictorial formats—hanging scrolls, handscrolls, album leaves, and fans—the installation focuses on the rise of a new scholarly aesthetic in the graphic arts that occurred in response to the wrenching social and political changes brought about by the Mongol conquest. Drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's own holdings, the installation also includes 17 important loans from local private and university collections.
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During a trip to the Netherlands in spring 1928, the Catalan painter Joan Miró (1893–1983) purchased postcards from the museums he visited. Two 17th-century Dutch genre scenes particularly caught his attention and served as the inspiration for a series of paintings he created that summer. The traveling exhibition Miró: The Dutch Interiors, which opens at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning October 5, features Miró's three "Dutch Interiors" and the two Old Master paintings on which they are based. The New York venue will also show preparatory drawings and additional paintings by Miró in the Metropolitan's collection. This exhibition is the first in which Miró's paintings have been hung alongside the Dutch Golden Age pictures that inspired them.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major international loan exhibition devoted to the art of the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)—one of the most dynamic and culturally rich periods in Chinese history—beginning September 28. Bringing together over 200 works drawn principally from China, with additional loans from Taiwan, Japan, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty will explore the art and material culture that flourished during the pivotal and vibrant period in Chinese culture and history dating from 1215, the year of Khubilai Khan's birth, to 1368, the fall of the Yuan dynasty. The assemblage of extraordinary works will include paintings and sculpture, as well as decorative arts in gold and silver, textile, ceramics, and lacquer, and the exhibition will highlight new art forms and styles that were generated in China as a result of the unification of the country under the Yuan dynasty, founded by Khubilai in 1271. The loans from China will include key pieces from recent archaeological finds that add immeasurably to our knowledge and understanding of Chinese art of this period.
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Two important medieval Hebrew manuscripts—a Mishneh Torah made between 1300 and 1400 in Germany and an illuminated leaf from a prayer book made in Austria around 1360—are on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters, respectively, in conjunction with the Jewish High Holy Days this fall. The Cloisters is the Metropolitan's branch museum dedicated to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The High Holy Days are ten days of penitence and prayer that commence with Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and end with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the most solemn day of the Jewish year. This year, the High Holy Days begin the evening of September 8.
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In 1996, workmen widening the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv road in Lod (formerly Lydda), Israel, made a startling discovery: signs of a Roman mosaic pavement were found about three feet below the modern ground surface. A rescue excavation was conducted immediately by the Israel Antiquities Authority, revealing a mosaic floor that measures approximately 50 feet long by 27 feet wide. It is of exceptional quality and in an excellent state of preservation. The mosaic, comprising seven panels, is symmetrically divided into two large "carpets" by a long rectangular horizontal panel, and the entire work is surrounded by a ground of plain white. To preserve the mosaic, it was reburied until funding was secured for its full scientific excavation and conservation. Recently removed from the ground, the three most complete and impressive panels will be exhibited to the general public for the first time when they go on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 28. The pavement is believed to come from the home of a wealthy Roman living in the Eastern Roman Empire in around A.D. 300. Because the mosaic's imagery has no overt religious content, it cannot be determined whether the owner was a pagan, a Jew, or a Christian.
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The Ramayana –The Story of Rama, one of the great epic narratives of South Asia literature, is the focus of an installation on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through September 26. Showcasing 30 brilliantly polychromed paintings and pictorial textiles that depict episodes from the narrative, Epic India: Scenes from the Ramayana explores the magical power embodied in this ancient prose-narrative text that has so captured the imagination of Indian artists from early in the history of Indian art. The exhibition is drawn largely from the Metropolitan Museum's own collection, with some major loans from a New York private collection. The paintings on view were produced mostly during the 17th and 18th centuries in the Hindu court ateliers of Rajasthan, western India, and the Punjab Hills; others are of northern Indian provenance in a Sub-Imperial Mughal style.