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From the Middle Ages through the late 18th century, the courts of Europe lavished vast resources on tapestries made in precious materials after designs by the leading artists of the day, and works in this spectacular medium were prized by the aristocracy for their artistry and also as tools of propaganda. Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor – on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning October 17 – will offer the first comprehensive survey of high-quality 17th-century European tapestry, and will demonstrate the importance of tapestry as a prestigious figurative medium throughout that century. Organized by the Metropolitan Museum, it is a sequel to the ground-breaking exhibition, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, that received widespread public and scholarly acclaim during its presentation at the Metropolitan in spring 2002.
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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 Metropolitan Museum will inaugurate the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography on September 25, 2007, establishing for the first time a gallery dedicated exclusively to photography created since 1960. With high ceilings, clean detailing, and approximately 2,000 square feet of exhibition space, the Menschel Hall is designed specifically to accommodate the large-scale photographs that are an increasingly important part of contemporary art and the Museum's permanent collection. Photographers represented in the collection include such modern masters as Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Doug Aitken, and Sigmar Polke.
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Opening September 25 at the Metropolitan Museum, Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860, is the first major exhibition to survey British calotypes — works of exceptional beauty and rarity which are made from paper negatives and are among the earliest forays into the medium of photography. During the first two decades of photography, British photographers turned their lenses on family, nature, and the landscape at home, and on historic architecture, ruins of past civilizations, and exotica abroad. Impressed by Light presents works by 40 artists, including such masters as William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Roger Fenton, Benjamin Brecknell Turner, and Linnaeus Tripe, as well as many talented but unrecognized artists. The majority of the works featured have never before been exhibited or published in the U.S. and are unfamiliar to scholars and the public alike.
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One of the preeminent collections of Abstract Expressionism, The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection was given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006, contributing significantly to the Museum's holdings in modern art. To celebrate the gift, Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art — on view from September 18, 2007, to March 2, 2008 —presents 55 works assembled by one of the most prescient and astute collectors of the mid-20th century.
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Through their long history, the ancient Egyptians used copper, bronze, gold, and silver to create lustrous, graceful statuary for their interactions with their gods – from ritual dramas in the temples and chapels that dotted the landscape to festival processions through the towns and countryside that were thronged by believers. Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 16, 2007, Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples is the first exhibition ever devoted to these fascinating yet enigmatic works.
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The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present, for the first time, all of the Metropolitan Museum's 228 Dutch paintings (dating mostly from the 1600s), widely considered the greatest collection of Dutch art outside Europe. Normally, only about 100 Dutch paintings are on view in the Museum. This comprehensive exhibition will provide a unique opportunity for visitors to view the collection of Dutch paintings as a whole. The exhibition also commemorates the 400th anniversary year of Rembrandt's birth and coincides with the publication of the first complete catalogue of Dutch paintings in the Metropolitan Museum.
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The mystic writings of the Persian poet known as Rumi (1207-1273) are generally considered to be the supreme expression of Sufism, the mystical trend in Islamic thought and culture. Among the themes he explored were universal religious tolerance, communion with nature as a perception of God dwelling in and reflected in all things, and the soul's quest for a loving reunion with God. Opening October 23 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition Rumi and the Sufi Tradition coincides with the worldwide celebration of the 800th anniversary of the poet-philosopher's birth. On view will be nearly three dozen works from the Museum's Islamic art collection – including miniature paintings, Islamic calligraphy, ceramics, metalwork, glass, and textiles created between the 13th and the 19th centuries – that evoke the world in which he lived and suggest the scope of his enduring legacy.
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Through the winter holiday season at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Hebrew prayerbook on generous loan from The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City and a page from a Latin choir book from the Metropolitan's own collection will be displayed side by side for the first time, both painted at the end of the 15th century by the same Florentine artist. The two works are attributed to Mariano del Buono (1433/4-1504), head of one of the most renowned and prolific ateliers in the city. His work for both Christian and Jewish patrons reveals their shared taste for embellishing books with beautiful lettering and evocative imagery and testifies to a dialogue among members of different faiths that was integral to Italian Renaissance culture.
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An exhibition featuring a remarkable assemblage of porcelain, metalwork, jade, lacquer, and textiles created during the Qing dynasty of China will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on August 25. Drawn from the permanent collection and complemented by select loans, Excellence and Elegance: Decorative Arts of the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court will explore the unprecedented level of technical virtuosity achieved during this period. The exhibition also illustrates the imperial taste for ancient themes, interest in Western motifs, and exacting patronage that contributed to the flourishing of the decorative arts. Among the 60 works on view will be a dazzling selection of rare porcelain wares, decorated with monochrome glaze or enamel colors.
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A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.
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Following an extensive three-year renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on November 14 its New Galleries for Oceanic Art, a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world's premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 17,000-square-foot exhibition space will present a substantially larger portion of the Metropolitan's Oceanic collection than was previously on view.
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Established in Boston in 1808 and relocated to Philadelphia three years later, the silversmithing firm of Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner produced American silver of unprecedented quality and grandeur. Opening November 20 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, 1808-1842 is the first exhibition devoted entirely to their work, which, in its grand scale and patriotic imagery, reflected America's coming of age as a commercial, industrial, political, and artistic center. More than 100 examples in silver – from monumental vessels that celebrate military and civic heroes to domestic, ecclesiastical, and personal items resplendent with neoclassical ornament and displaying sophisticated design and craftsmanship – are arranged chronologically and thematically. A rare group of some 35 related drawings, purchased by the Metropolitan in 1953 and never before exhibited together, will offer important insights into the evolution of Fletcher and Gardiner's designs. Of particular interest will be the display of seven works in silver alongside their corresponding design drawings.
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Adored by generations of artists – including Michelangelo, who is reputed to have given them the name "Gates of Paradise" – the magnificent gilded bronze doors of the east portal of the Baptistery in Florence are among the seminal monuments of the Italian Renaissance. The massive 17-feet-high doors were created by the eminent Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and designer Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), who decorated them with ten evocative, highly charged, and magically atmospheric scenes from the Old Testament, each superbly carried out in relief ranging from high to low. After more than 25 years of conservation, seven elements of this masterpiece – including three of the narrative reliefs for which they are famous – are in the United States for the first and only time since their creation more than 500 years ago. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view them at The Metropolitan Museum of Art begins October 30. After the conclusion of their four-city United States tour, the works return to Florence, to be reassembled in their original bronze framework and placed in a specially designed, hermetically sealed case in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, never to travel again.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special exhibition of acclaimed sculptural masterpieces from the heart of Africa's equatorial rainforest, beginning October 2, 2007. The exhibition explores not only the significance of the works presented in their countries of origin but also how their reception in the West led them to enter the mainstream of universal art. Organized thematically, Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary explains the sources of cultural and spiritual inspiration that led to their creation in equatorial Africa. Drawn from the most important collections of African art in Europe and the United States, the more than 130 works featured in the exhibition relate to 12 distinct traditions in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were created to celebrate the lives of an extended family's most notable ancestors and to give expression to their ongoing role as advocates with the divine.
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The studio craft movement developed in the U.S. during the years after World War II and has flourished internationally over the past 40 years. During this period, craft artists have experimented with non-traditional materials and new techniques, producing bold, abstract, and sculptural art, as well as continuing to make utilitarian objects. One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movementon view from December 22, 2006, through December 2, 2007, features approximately 50 works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and will include furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, jewelry, and fiber. Many of these works have never been on view at the Metropolitan before, and several are recent acquisitions by the Museum.
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An exhibition featuring 43 modern Chinese paintings and calligraphies assembled by the noted author Lin Yutang (1895-1976) and his family will go on view to the public for the first time at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 15. The collection was recently donated to the Museum by members of the family.
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A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.
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Although the name of Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) today appears most often in the context of dance – specifically ballet – in America, he was also actively involved in theater, writing, and collecting art. Over a span of some 40 years, he donated more than a thousand works from his personal collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – found in rare book and print shops around the world – all display some spark of ingenuity, esthetic grandeur, or legerdemain that attracted his eye.
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Neo Rauch at the Met: para presents 14 new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through October 14, 2007 — is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.
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Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect will bring together for the first time celebrated masterpieces once owned by rival brother collectors Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), founder of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Stephen Carlton Clark (1882-1960), a former trustee and illustrious donor to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring more than 65 paintings, the exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to appreciate the remarkable legacies of two brothers – heirs to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and native New Yorkers – who played notable but ultimately divergent roles as patrons of the arts in the United States.
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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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Two concurrent exhibitions featuring recent work by the renowned American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2007.
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A spectacular "museum-within-the-museum" for the display of its extraordinary collection of Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian, and Roman art – much of it unseen in New York for generations – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this April in its New Greek and Roman Galleries. After more than five years of construction, the long-awaited opening concludes a 15-year project for the complete redesign and reinstallation of the Museum's superb collection of classical art. Returning to public view in the new space are thousands of long-stored works from the Metropolitan's collection, which is considered one of the finest in the world. The centerpiece of the New Greek and Roman Galleries is the majestic Leon Levy and Shelby White Court – a monumental, peristyle court for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art, with a soaring two-story atrium.
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An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.
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Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí, la primera exposició d'aquest tipus mai muntada a Amèrica, explora el treball innovador i divers d'artistes, arquitectes i dissenyadors en els anys entre l'Exposició Internacional de 1888 i la imposició del règim feixista de Franco el 1939. Barcelona and Modernity ofereix noves visions dels moviments artístics que varen desenvolupar la cerca de la modernitat per part d'una ciutat que es confirmà aleshores com el centre neuràlgic de les activitats intel•lectuals, polítiques i culturals a Espanya.
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Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí — la primera exposición de este tipo jamás montada en América — explora el trabajo diverso e innovador de artistas, arquitectos, y diseñadores de Barcelona en los años entre la exposición universal de Barcelona de 1888 y la imposición del régimen fascista de Francisco Franco en 1939. Barcelona and Modernity ofrece nuevas aproximaciones a los movimientos artísticos que desarrollaron la búsqueda de la modernidad por parte de una ciudad que se confirmó entonces como el centro neurálgico de las actividades intelectuales, políticas, y culturales en España.
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Neo Rauch at the Met presents six new paintings made specifically for this exhibition by the artist Neo Rauch (b. 1960, Leipzig, Germany), one of the most widely acclaimed painters of his generation. The exhibition — on view from May 22 through September 23, 2007 —is the third in the Museum's series dedicated to artists at mid-career, following exhibitions featuring Tony Oursler in 2005 and Kara Walker in 2006.
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Hidden in Plain Sight: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, on view from May 15 through September 3, 2007, features the work of artists who use the camera to call our attention to the poetic richness latent in ordinary things. Often deliberately understated, these photographs are filled with everyday epiphanies, inviting us to look more closely at the world around us. The exhibition will feature approximately 35 works by American and international artists, including Walker Evans, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Patrick Faigenbaum, Gabriel Orozco, Damián Ortega, Daniel Faust, Mitch Epstein, Lewis Koch, Bertien van Manen, Carrie Mae Weems, Rachel Harrison, and Shomei Tomatsu.
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Paul Poiret – who at the height of his career in pre-World War I France was the undisputed "King of Fashion" and whose sweeping vision led to a new silhouette that liberated women from the corset and introduced the shocking colors and exotic references of the Ballets Russes to the haute couture – will be celebrated with a landmark exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 9 through August 5, 2007. He has not been the focus of a major museum exhibition in more than 30 years.
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The theme of journeys, both real and imagined, will be presented in Journeys: Mapping the Earth and Mind in Chinese Art, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 10. Featuring more than 60 works of art in various pictorial formats – hanging scroll, handscroll, album, fan, book, and photograph – the exhibition will explore the rich symbolic meanings and cultural significance of journeys as embodied in works of art dating from the 11th century to the present. The exhibition will be organized thematically: emotional partings and returns, roaming the wilderness, escapist visions and garden retreats, dream journeys, travelers, scenic sites and landmarks, and topographic paintings and maps. Highlights of the exhibition will include a brilliantly colored 42-foot-long map entitled Ten Thousand Miles Along the Yellow River (late 17th-early 18th century), a rare deerskin map of Forts Zeelandia and Provintia and the City of Tainan (18th century), as well as a striking series of eight photographs, The North: Bicycle Rider, by contemporary artist Hai Bo (born 1962). Approximately one-third of the works are to be shown for the first time at the Museum, including 16 loans and three new acquisitions.
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The first multi-artist exhibition of video art and new media at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be presented from February 23 to April 29, 2007. Drawn entirely from the collection of the Museum's Department of Photographs, Closed Circuit: Video and New Media at the Metropolitan features video and new media works made between 1994 and 2004 by eight American and international artists: Darren Almond, Lutz Bacher, Jim Campbell, Omer Fast, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Maria Marshall, and Wolfgang Staehle. These highly respected figures in contemporary art will be represented in Closed Circuit by some of their best-known and most celebrated works, only one of which has been on exhibit before at the Met.
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An exhibition of vintage photographs celebrating one of the most memorable
episodes in the history of archaeology – the discovery and exploration of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (Dynasty 18; ruled ca. 1336-1327 B.C.) – will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning December 19. The photographs, documenting every stage in the process of the excavation, were taken by the renowned archaeological photographer Harry Burton, who was a staff member of the Metropolitan Museum Egyptian Expedition when he was "lent" to Howard Carter, the famed excavator of Tutankhamun's tomb. Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton features his spectacular black-and-white images of the entrance passage to the tomb, the opening of the sealed chambers inside, the first view of the contents and removal of the objects, and the beautifully made and decorated treasures that were found. The four chambers of the tomb were crammed with objects such as gold-covered chariots; elaborately inlaid furniture and chests; a vast array of the king's personal belongings, including jewelry; a series of shrines and coffins that protected the king; and the famous solid-gold mask that adorned his mummy – the last, among the most iconic examples of ancient Egyptian art ever to have come to light.
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With nearly 200 works of art from more than 60 public and private collections around the world, Venice and the Islamic World, 828 – 1797 is the first major exhibition to explore one of the most important and distinctive facets of Venetian art history: the exchange of art objects and interchange of artistic ideas between the great Italian maritime city and her Islamic neighbors in the eastern Mediterranean. Glass, textiles, carpets, arms and armor, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, furniture, paintings, drawings, prints, printed books, book bindings, and manuscripts tell the fascinating story of the Islamic contribution to the arts of Venice during her heyday, from the medieval to the Baroque eras. 828, the year two Venetian merchants stole Saint Mark's hallowed body from Muslim-controlled Alexandria and brought it to their native city, and 1797, when the Venetian Republic fell to the French conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte, form the chronological parameters of the exhibition that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 27, 2007.
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An exhibition of exquisite Asian lacquer decorated with mother-of-pearl will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 2. Featuring some 50 works dating from the eighth to the 19th century, Mother-of-Pearl: A Tradition in Asian Lacquer will illustrate the remarkable variety of effects found in the use of minute pieces of mother-of-pearl to create mosaic-like patterns and dazzling scenes. It will also explore the importance of lacquer decorated with mother-of-pearl in interregional trade from the 12th to the 19th century and in the development of maritime global trade – particularly works made in India and Japan – in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Drawn largely from the Museum's permanent collection, the exhibition will include recent acquisitions as well as several important loans from public and private collections in the United States.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present two concurrent exhibitions featuring recent work by the renowned American artist Frank Stella (born 1936) in spring 2007.
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The Treasury – an intimate gallery displaying some of the most precious small-scale works at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages – has reopened to the public after two years of renovation. Originally constructed in 1988 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the opening of The Cloisters, the Treasury houses small luxury objects acquired in the years subsequent to the branch museum's 1938 founding.
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Nan Kempner – the late New York style icon, connoisseur of the couture, and member of The Best Dressed List's Hall of Fame – will be the subject of the winter exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, from December 12, 2006, through March 4, 2007. Known for a seemingly effortless style that nonetheless displayed a meticulous attention to detail, she was a
passionate client and collector of such designers as Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and Oscar de la Renta from the 1960s onward.
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Bringing together masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection with important loans from private collections, Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing explores the 1,600-year history of calligraphy from its genesis as a fine art in the fourth century A.D. The exhibition presents some 70 works of calligraphy executed by renowned traditional masters – Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Ni Zan (1306-1374), and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) – as well as by five contemporary artists. Early inscribed ritual bronzes, dynamic scholars' rocks, and objects made for the artist's study complement the calligraphy.
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The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 15, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are 60 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.
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To mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods that devastated New Orleans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori. On view from September 19 through December 10 in The Howard Gilman Gallery, the exhibition will feature approximately 20 large-scale color photographs made by Robert Polidori on four extended visits to New Orleans between September 2005 and April 2006. The quietly expressive photographs present a candid and intimate look at widespread urban ruin — an incomprehensible, topsy-turvy landscape of felled oak trees, houses washed off their foundations, and tumbled furniture that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.
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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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Political, economic, and social turmoil shaped Germany's short-lived Weimar Republic (1919–1933). These pivotal years also became a most creative period of 20th-century German culture, generating innovation in literature, music, film, theater, and architecture. In painting, a trend of matter-of-fact realism took hold in Germany like nowhere else in Europe. Disillusioned by the cataclysm of World War I, the most vital German artists moved towards a Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), in particular its branch known as Verism. These artists looked soberly, cynically, and even ferociously at their fellow citizens and found their true métier in portraiture, as seen in the 40 paintings and 60 works on paper featured in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. The presentation, which opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 14, 2006, features gripping portraits by ten renowned artists: Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Ludwig Meidner, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz, and Gert H. Wollheim.
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An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.
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The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) – the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14. One hundred paintings as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, from his appearance on the Paris art scene in the mid-1890s to his death in 1939, will comprise the exhibition Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, which will feature works by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, Vuillard, and others. Highlights will include six paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896-97 Van Gogh retrospective; the masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from his 1898 Gauguin exhibition; paintings from Picasso's first French exhibition (1901) and Matisse's first solo exhibition (1904); and three pictures from Derain's London series, painted in 1906-1907 at Vollard's suggestion. Also on view will be numerous portraits of Vollard by leading artists, among them Cézanne, Bonnard, Renoir, and Picasso.