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Asian Art
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The Asian collection at the Metropolitan Museum is the largest and most comprehensive in the West. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works that provide – in both quality and breadth – an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world. The collection, which ranges in date from the second millennium B.C. to the early 20th century, includes paintings, woodblock prints, sculptures, metalwork, ceramics, lacquers, decorative arts, and textiles from China, Korea, and Japan, as well as the countries of South and Southeast Asia. Since the Museum's centennial in 1970, the department has been engaged in expanding its staff, collections, and display space. This process culminated in 1998 with the completion of an entire wing, occupying 64,500 square feet, devoted to Asian art – a "museum within a museum."
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European Paintings
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The Museum's collection of Old Master and 19th-century European paintings – one of the greatest such collections in existence – numbers approximately 2,500 works, dozens of which are instantly recognizable worldwide. The French, Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools are most strongly represented, with fine works also by British and Spanish masters.
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The Robert Lehman Collection
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The Robert Lehman Collection – numbering nearly 3,000 works of art and one of the most extraordinary private art collections ever assembled in the United States – was presented to the Metropolitan Museum by the Robert Lehman Foundation in 1969, following Mr. Lehman's death. The collection was assembled by Mr. Lehman and his parents, and is housed today in The Robert Lehman Wing, which opened to the public in 1975, and which contains galleries that were specially designed to reflect the ambience of the Lehman house in New York City.
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Musical Instruments
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The musical instruments collection at the Metropolitan Museum originated with gifts in 1889 of several hundred European, American, and non-Western instruments from private collectors Joseph W. Drexel and Mrs. John Crosby Brown. Mrs. Brown continued to give musical instruments to the Museum until her death in 1918, by which time some 4,000 items had been catalogued and placed on display, making the assemblage the largest and most comprehensive of its kind outside Europe.
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Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
Nearly 1,600 objects from Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Americas are on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. They span 3,000 years, three continents, and many islands, and represent a rich diversity of cultural traditions.
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European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts has evolved from one that was established as a repository of decorative art in 1907, during the presidency of J. Pierpont Morgan. Today it is responsible for a comprehensive and important historical collection, one of the Metropolitan Museum's largest, reflecting the development of art in the major Western European countries.
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Modern Art
Lila Acheson Wallace Wing
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
Since its founding in 1870 the Metropolitan Museum has been concerned with the art of its own time as well as that of the past. In 1906 and 1911 funds established by George A. Hearn particularly encouraged acquisitions of works by contemporary American painters. During the first decades of the 20th century fewer examples by European artists were acquired, but certain purchases are notable. Among these were Renoir's Mme Georges Charpentier and Her Children (1879) acquired in 1907 and Cézanne's View of the Domain Saint Joseph (1889) acquired from the Armory Show in 1913. Monet died in 1926. In the same year the Museum received its first gift of one of his paintings, and in 1929 the extraordinary bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer included an additional eight.
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A Brief History of the Museum
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens – businessmen and financiers as well as leading arists and thinkers of the day – who wanted to create a museum to bring art and art education to the American people.
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Drawings and Prints
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
In 1880 Cornelius Vanderbilt presented to the Metropolitan Museum 670 drawings by or attributed to European Old Masters. In its early decades, the collection of drawings grew slowly through purchase, gift, and bequest. Among notable acquisitions of this period were major drawings by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt. In 1935, the Museum purchased an album of 50 sheets by Goya, while more than 100 works, mostly by Venetian artists of the 18th century, were acquired from the marquis de Biron in 1937. It was not until 1960 that the Department of Drawings was established as a separate curatorial area of the Museum with Jacob Bean as its first curator. During the next 30 years, the department's holdings nearly doubled in size; the collection is known particularly for its works by Italian and French artists of the 15th through the 19th century.
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I giardini del museo The Met Cloisters
Tuesday, August 23, 2005, 2:18 p.m.
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Robert Rauschenberg: Combines
Thursday, August 4, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
Some of the most daring and influential works by one of America's great modern artists – Robert Rauschenberg – will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 20. Robert Rauschenberg: Combines takes a rare and comprehensive look at the three-dimensional works that Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) terms combines. The exhibition, which will include approximately 65 objects created between 1954 and 1964, is the first to focus exclusively on this significant body of work. Robert Rauschenberg: Combines remains on view through April 2, 2006, before continuing on an international tour through 2007.
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SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2005
Wednesday, August 3, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
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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Metropolitan Museum Continues Popular "Holiday Monday" Program
Wednesday, August 3, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, August 2, 2005) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that its Met Holiday Mondays program, which began in fall 2003, will be extended for an additional three years. Met Holiday Mondays are extra public viewing days that take place on the Mondays of major holiday weekends. Continuation of the program is sponsored by Bloomberg LP.
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Metropolitan Museum Names Michael Gallagher the Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge of Paintings Conservation
Wednesday, August 3, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, June 21, 2005)—Michael Gallagher, who has been Keeper of Conservation at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh since 1999, will be the new Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge of the Department of Painting Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced by Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan. The election, which was formally approved by the Museum's Board of Trustees, is effective July 1, 2005. Mr. Gallagher will assume the post in October.
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Major Retrospective of Vincent van Gogh's Drawings to Open at Metropolitan Museum in October 2005
Wednesday, July 20, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The first major exhibition in the United States ever to focus on Vincent van Gogh's extraordinary drawings will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 18. Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings — comprising 113 works selected from public and private collections worldwide, including an exceptional number of loans from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam — will reveal the range and brilliance of the artist's draftsmanship as it evolved over the course of his decade-long career. Generally over-shadowed by the fame and familiarity of his paintings, Van Gogh's more than 1,100 drawings remain comparatively unknown although they are among his most ingenious and striking creations. Van Gogh engaged drawing and painting in a rich dialogue, which enabled him to fully realize the creative potential of both means of expression. A group of paintings will be exhibited alongside the related drawings. The exhibition will remain on view through December 31.
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Fra Angelico
Wednesday, July 20, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The first American retrospective devoted to the work of the great Italian Renaissance artist known as Fra Angelico (1390/5-1455) – and the first comprehensive presentation of his work assembled anywhere in the world in half a century – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 26. More than 50 public institutions and private collections in Europe and America will participate in the landmark exhibition, which commemorates the 550th anniversary of the artist's death. Fra Angelico will feature nearly 80 drawings, paintings, and manuscript illuminations from throughout his career, supplemented by 45 additional works by his assistants and closest followers. Highlights of the exhibition include recently discovered paintings and new attributions, paintings never before displayed publicly, and reconstructed groupings of works, some of them reunited for the first time.
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The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult
Wednesday, July 20, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
Ghosts, spirit séances, levitation, auras, ectoplasm … extraordinary photographs of these and other paranormal phenomena will be on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, an exhibition devoted to the historical intersections between photography and the once wildly popular interest in spiritualism, on view from September 27 to December 31, 2005.
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THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ANNOUNCES 2005-2006 SEASON OF CONCERTS
Thursday, July 7, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the 52nd season of its acclaimed concert series in 2005-2006, 76 events ranging from a three-part piano recital series, Bach cantatas in the Medieval Sculpture Hall, and Flamenco music and dance, to a master class with Jordi Savall, Beethoven by the Beaux Arts Trio, and an evening of doo-wop from the 1940s and 1950s. The season is the 37th programmed by Concerts & Lectures General Manager Hilde Limondjian.
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The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt
Tuesday, July 5, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
A long-neglected area of Egyptian art – works associated with protection and healing – will be explored in the exhibition The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in fall 2005. By focusing on this fundamental, yet little-known aspect of Egyptian art, the exhibition will provide a new perspective on some 65 of the most beautiful and intriguing works from the Museum's renowned collection. The centerpiece will be the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus – the sole borrowed work in the exhibition – which is on loan from the New York Academy of Medicine. This manuscript, dating from the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1650-1550 B.C.), is one of only two complete medical texts from ancient Egypt. Rarely seen even by Egyptologists, the manuscript's presentation at the Metropolitan represents its first public display in more than half a century.
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Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar's Illustrated Khamsa, 1597-98
Monday, June 27, 2005, 4:00 a.m.
In India in the late 16th century, the Mughal emperor Akbar – a great patron of the arts – amassed an extensive library of some 20,000 beautifully illustrated and illuminated manuscripts. One of them, a lavishly ornamented copy of the Khamsa (Quintet of Tales) by Amir Khusrau Dihlavi (1253-1325), will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum beginning October 14, 2005, in the exhibition Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar's Illustrated Khamsa, 1597-98.