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The Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, a long-standing yuletide tradition in New York, will be on view for the
holiday season, November 23, 2010, through January 6, 2011. The brightly lit,
20-foot blue spruce—with a collection of 18th-century Neapolitan angels and
cherubs hovering 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 and daily lighting ceremonies, the installation reflects the spirit of the
holiday season.
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Rugs and Ritual in Tibetan Buddhism, an installation dedicated to ritual practice in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, explores the role of the ritual objects that were employed by its practitioners in pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. Comprising 30 tantric ritual rugs and utensils—including knives, vessel, fire-offering ladles, ritual staff, daggers, offering table—the installation illustrates an esoteric Buddhism that flourished in Tibet from its beginnings in the eighth century through to the 20th century. While many of the objects on view—depicting gruesome images such as exposed brains in skull cups and flayed human skins—may be shocking to those unfamiliar with the meaning and purpose of Tibetan religious art, the deployment of these objects celebrates the power of detachment from the corporeal body that advanced Buddhist practitioners strive to attain. The installation features Tibetan rugs and ritual utensils from the collection of Anthony d'Offay, London, together with New York-based loans and works from the Museum's own collection.
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One of the most fascinating pharaohs of ancient Egypt, Haremhab (reigned ca. 1316–1302 B. C.) was a strong leader in a time of political and religious transition. As commander-in-chief of Tutankhamun's army, he oversaw important military campaigns at the border with Nubia and in the Levant; later, as the last king of Dynasty 18, Haremhab instituted laws that secured the rights of civilians and curbed abuses perpetrated by powerful groups, including the army. A statue that was created before he became king shows the general as a scribe and thus an administrator and wise man. This statue—the most famous three-dimensional image of Haremhab—is the focus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Haremhab, The General Who Became King, opening November 16. The display will feature some 70 additional objects in various media—wall reliefs, works on papyrus, statuettes, and garment fragments—from the holdings of the Metropolitan, with the addition of a pivotal loan from the Louvre and another from a New York private collection. Haremhab, The General Who Became King is
the inaugural presentation in a series of exhibitions that will spotlight masterpieces from the Museum's collection of Egyptian art.
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Three giants of 20th-century American photography—Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand—will be featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from November 10, 2010, through April 10, 2011, in the exhibition Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand. The diverse and groundbreaking work of these artists will be revealed through a presentation of 115 photographs, drawn entirely from the Museum's collection. On view will be many of the Metropolitan's greatest photographic treasures from the 1900s to 1920s, including Stieglitz's famous portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe, Steichen's large colored photographs of the Flatiron building, and Strand's pioneering abstractions.
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In the 18th century, privileged Europeans embarked on the Grand Tour, traveling principally to sites in Italy, where they visited cherished ruins of the ancient world and the splendid architecture of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. The influx of these travelers to destinations north and south – Venice, Rome, and Naples in particular – led to a flowering of topographical paintings, drawings, and prints by native Italians serving a foreign market eager to return home with pictures and souvenirs. Italy Observed: Views and Souvenirs, 1706-1899, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum through January 2, 2011, showcases a selection of the rich holdings of Italian vedute (views) collected by Robert Lehman. From paintings of Venetian life by Luca Carlevaris to a Neapolitan album of gouache drawings documenting the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794 to sketches and watercolors of Italian antiquities, the installation captures the artist's romantic attraction to Italy and its irresistible Roman heritage. It also includes various marketed souvenirs—exquisite fans, spoons, teapots, and pocket watches—on loan from the Museum's Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.
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Widely renowned as a pioneer of conceptual art, American artist John Baldessari (b. 1931, National City, California) is one of the most influential contemporary artists of the last 50 years. John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, the first major U.S. exhibition in 20 years to survey Baldessari's career, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 20, 2010, through January 9, 2011. This retrospective will feature approximately 120 works spanning the period from 1962 to 2010.
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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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