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• Café and Audio Guides Available at The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  An Audio Guide and a café are among the visitor amenities now available at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art located in northern Manhattan and dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Appointment of Christina Alphonso as Associate Manager for Administration at The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art has appointed Christina Alphonso to the position of Associate Manager for Administration at The Cloisters, effective December 19. (A branch of the Metropolitan, The Cloisters is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages.)

• The Cloisters: A History

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages. Picturesquely overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan, the Museum derives its name from the portions of five medieval cloisters incorporated into a modern museum structure. Not replicating any one particular medieval building type or setting, but rather designed to evoke the architecture of the later Middle Ages, The Cloisters creates an integrated and harmonious context in which visitors can experience the rich tradition of medieval artistic production, including metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles. By definition, a cloister consists of a covered walkway surrounding a large open courtyard providing access to other monastic buildings. Similarly, the museum's cloisters act as passageways to galleries; and they provide as inviting a place for rest and contemplation for visitors as they often did in their original monastic settings.

• The Gardens of The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  In formal terms a cloister is a quadrangle enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway. It is the heart of the monastery, usually placed in the sunniest location and providing the connection, physical and psychological, between the church and the more domestic areas such as the refectory and chapter house.

• Metropolitan Museum Publishes New Guidebook to its Holdings of Medieval Art at The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  A new, lavishly illustrated guidebook called The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture – co-authored by the head of the department of medieval art and a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art – provides in-depth information on highlights of the collection of The Cloisters, which is the only museum in North America devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. (The Cloisters is a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum.)

• Metropolitan Museum Announces New Schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays"

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, May 15, 2006) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the new schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays" for the one-year period beginning Memorial Day 2006. This popular program, which opens the Museum to the public on selected Monday holidays throughout the year, began in fall 2003; prior to that, the Museum had been closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years.

• Gallery of Early Gothic Art and Architecture

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Early Gothic Hall at The Cloisters will reopen this summer after a five-year renovation. Completely refurbished 13th-century limestone windows and two dozen panels of newly conserved and reinstalled stained glass, primarily from the 13th and 14th centuries, are among the objects on view. Four recently acquired and exceptional examples of German stained glass from the late-13th-century glazing program for the convent church in Altenberg-an-der-Lahn will be reunited in this new installation. The renovation of the Early Gothic Hall also features construction of two new limestone apertures in an interior wall (for the display of grisaille glass windows) and new lighting.

• AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion

  Tuesday, April 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion, opening on May 3, 2006, will present a wide range of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum's English Period Rooms – The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries. A pendant to the acclaimed 2004 Costume Institute exhibition Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century, AngloMania will examine ideals, stereotypes, and representations of Englishness by juxtaposing historical costume with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions.

• Rehabilitating Historic Cairo to be Theme of April 23 Lecture at Metropolitan Museum

  Sunday, March 26, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The historic development of Cairo and its growing, shifting, and transforming urban fabric will be the focus of a lecture by Swiss architect/urban designer Dr. Stefano Bianca at 2:00 p.m. on April 23 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is free with Museum admission.

• Renowned Chinese-born Artist Cai Guo-Qiang to Create 2006 Installation for Metropolitan Museum's Roof Garden

  Thursday, March 23, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Cai Guo-Qiang, the acclaimed Chinese-born artist known internationally for his elaborate sculpture installations and gunpowder projects, has been invited to create a site-specific exhibition for the 2006 season of The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The four works comprising Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument were inspired by the dramatic setting of the Roof Garden, an open-air space atop the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, and by the artist's reactions to issues of present-day concern.

• Metropolitan Museum Establishes International Office in Geneva

  Tuesday, March 21, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 22, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the establishment of its first full-time representative office overseas, located in Geneva, Switzerland. The Metropolitan further announced that Mahrukh Tarapor, who has served for 11 years as the Museum's Associate Director for Exhibitions, has been named to the additional post of Director for International Affairs, Geneva Office.

• Survey Shows Van Gogh Drawings Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Generated $251 Million Economic Impact for New York

  Monday, March 20, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 21, 2006)—The acclaimed and widely attended fall/winter special exhibition Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings generated $251 million in spending by regional, national, and foreign tourists to New York, according to a Metropolitan Museum of Art visitor survey released today. Using the standard ratio for calculating tax revenue impact, the study found that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from visitors who declared that seeing the exhibition was a deciding factor in their decision to visit New York totaled some $25 million.

• Kara Walker Exhibition at Metropolitan – Inspired by Hurricane Katrina - Explores Theme of "After the Deluge" through Works by Artists through the Ages

  Sunday, March 19, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, contemporary American artist Kara Walker (b. 1969) – widely recognized for her explorations of issues of race, gender, and sexuality through the 18th-century medium of cut-paper silhouettes – has selected a variety of objects from the Museum's collection and from her own work in order to explore, in her words, "the banality of everyday life, water, and its impact." The exhibition, entitled Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge, will be on view from March 21 through July 30.

• Sight Unseen: Photographs from the Gilman Collection

  Tuesday, March 7, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now presenting Sight Unseen: Photographs from the Gilman Collection as part of its continuing series of installations of works from its recent landmark acquisition of 8,500 photographs spanning the first hundred years of the medium. The photographs in the exhibition have never been shown publicly at the Metropolitan and will remain on view through May 21, 2006.

• Metropolitan Museum Formally Unveils Glittering, Restored Fifth Avenue Façade

  Sunday, March 5, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (NEW YORK, March 6, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today officially unveiled and dedicated its newly renovated and freshly cleaned landmark Indiana limestone façade – the historic, century-old "face of the Museum" that fronts Fifth Avenue from 80th to 84th streets. Its restoration – marking the first comprehensive cleaning in its history – comes more 100 years after the iconic central façade was completed in 1902.

• 大都会艺术博物馆接受唐骝千先生捐赠
  十世纪中国绘画钜迹《溪岸图》

  Thursday, March 2, 2006, 5:30 p.m.

• STATEMENT BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ON ITS AGREEMENT WITH ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE

  Monday, February 20, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 21, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today signed an agreement in Rome that formalizes the transfer of title to six antiquities—including a group of 16 Hellenistic silver pieces—to Italy.

• A Taste for Opulence: Sèvres Porcelain from the Collection

  Thursday, February 16, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  A Taste for Opulence: Sèvres Porcelain from the Collection presents a selection of objects such as vases, dinner and tea services, furniture decorated with porcelain plaques, and other luxurious wares produced in the 18th century by the Sèvres porcelain factory. Established in the Château of Vincennes just outside Paris in 1740, the factory quickly became the preeminent producer of porcelain in Europe. Supported in its early years by the patronage of Louis XV, the factory was named the manufacture du roi in 1753 and was purchased by the king in 1759. Catering in large part to the tastes of the court, the factory strove for constant innovation and originality throughout the 18th century, frequently employing the leading artists and designers of the day to provide models and inspiration for the factory's artisans. A Taste for Opulence, which focuses on the diversity of the factory's production, will include approximately 90 objects drawn entirely from the Museum's superb holdings of Sèvres porcelain and from its unparalleled collection of 18th-century French furniture decorated with Sèvres plaques. The exhibition will be on view from February 21 through August 13, 2006.

• Works by French Romantic Painter Displayed in Girodet: Romantic Rebel at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, February 16, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Girodet: Romantic Rebel is the first retrospective in the United States devoted to this celebrated French artist, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, a favored but rebellious student of Jacques-Louis David. Girodet's idiosyncratic style fuses David's Neoclassical ideal with his own prescient Romantic vision. The exhibition brings together approximately 110 paintings and works on paper that reflect the artist's originality and the diversity of his works, from mythological subjects to portraits and representations of Napoleon's military triumphs.Girodet will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 24 through August 27, 2006.

• Los jardines en el Met Cloisters

  Friday, February 3, 2006, 8:38 p.m.

• El Met Cloisters: Reseña

  Friday, February 3, 2006, 8:25 p.m.

• The Fabric of Life: Ikat Textiles of Indonesia

  Thursday, February 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The first exhibition to examine ikat textile traditions across the breadth of Indonesia will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 28, 2006. Featuring more than 25 outstanding ikat textiles, most never before exhibited, The Fabric of Life: Ikat Textiles of Indonesia explores the imagery, forms, and roles of what is perhaps the single most important, widespread, and technically sophisticated of all Indonesian textile traditions. They are drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's extensive collection of Indonesian textiles.

• The Art of Betty Woodman

  Thursday, February 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first U.S. retrospective of the work of noted artist Betty Woodman (American, b. 1930) from April 25 through July 30, 2006. The Art of Betty Woodman will span the artist's career, from her early works of the 1950s and 1960s through her most recent mixed-media pieces of 2005-2006, and will assess her contributions to contemporary ceramic art and her importance among post-World War II artists.

• Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet

  Thursday, February 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet is the first comprehensive study of armor, weapons, and equestrian equipment from Tibet, a subject that has remained virtually unexplored until now. Many rare or previously unknown objects will be exhibited and published for the first time. Presenting more than 130 works, the exhibition will examine various types of unique arms and armor used in Tibet, the world's highest plateau, between the 13th and the 20th century. The objects are drawn mostly from the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and include many key loans from the Royal Armouries Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Museum of Scotland, the National Museums Liverpool, Pitt Rivers Museum, British Museum, University of Aberdeen, Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, and Newark Museum. The accompanying catalogue will include the first Tibetan-English arms and armor glossary of terms and a selection of excerpts from some of the few surviving Tibetan texts relating to the subject.

• Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí

  Wednesday, February 1, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí — the first comprehensive exhibition of its type ever mounted in America — explores the diverse and innovative work of Barcelona's artists, architects, and designers in the years between the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1888 and the imposition of the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco in 1939. Barcelona and Modernity offers new insights into the art movements that advanced the city's quest for modernity and confirmed it as the primary center of radical intellectual, political, and cultural activities in Spain. Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and Antoni Gaudí are among the internationally renowned artists who contributed to the creative vitality of Barcelona and the flourishing of Catalan culture. On view at the Metropolitan Museum from March 7 through June 3, 2007, the exhibition will feature some 300 remarkable works in a range of media: painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, posters, decorative objects, furniture, architectural models, and design. La Vie and Blindman's Meal, two of the greatest paintings from Picasso's Blue Period; portraits by Ramon Casas; Isidre Nonell's depictions of gypsies; Miró's The Farm; Dalí's surrealist paintings, as well as furniture designed by Gaudí and an original BKF ("butterfly") chair are among the masterworks gathered from museums and private collections around the world for this major exhibition.

• Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar's Illustrated "Khamsa," 1597-98

  Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 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.

• Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh

  Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Hatshepsut, often considered the first important female head of state known to history, ruled Egypt for two decades (ca. 1479-1458 B.C.) during Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Although less familiar to modern audiences than her much later successor, the notorious Cleopatra (51-30 B.C.), Hatshepsut's achievements were comparable to those of England's Elizabeth I. Ruling first as regent for, then as co-ruler with her nephew Thutmose III (who ruled for another 33 years after her death), Hatshepsut enjoyed a relatively peaceful reign, at the beginning of the New Kingdom. She stabilized the country and restored monuments destroyed during the disruptive Second Intermediate Period, when northern Egypt was controlled by a dynasty of Asian princes and southern Egypt by a dynasty of Egyptians based in Thebes. She renewed trade with western Asia to the east, the far-off land of Punt to the south, and the Aegean Islands in the north. The resulting economic prosperity was reflected in the art of the time, which is characterized by remarkable innovations in sculpture and decorative arts and produced such architectural marvels as Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS JANUARY - APRIL 2006

  Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 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.

• The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt

  Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 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 fundamen-tal, 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 bor-rowed 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.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES SPRING 2006 SEASON OF PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

  Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, December 29, 2005) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced its schedule of weekday and weekend activities for children up to age 12 and their adult companions, including a weekly program for Spanish-speaking families, for the period February 1-May 30, 2006 – along with a calendar of special family programs during the mid-winter school recess and on selected weekends and "Holiday Mondays." These drop-in programs are free with Museum admission, and all materials are provided.

• James J. Ross Elected Trustee at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, January 12, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  James J. Ross has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. Mr. Ross's election took place at the January 10 meeting of the Board.

• Metropolitan Museum to Unveil Spectacular New Greek and Roman Galleries

  Sunday, January 8, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  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 will conclude 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.

• Robert Rauschenberg's Combines Focus of New Exhibition at Metropolitan

  Tuesday, December 20, 2005, 5:00 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 objects that Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925) terms Combines. The exhibition, which will include 67 works created between 1954 and 1964, is the first to focus exclusively on this significant material. Robert Rauschenberg: Combines remains on view through April 2, 2006, before continuing on an international tour through 2007.

• AngloMania

  Sunday, December 11, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  AngloMania, opening on May 4, 2006, will present an unprecedented selection of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's English Period Rooms – The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries. A pendant to the acclaimed 2004 Costume Institute exhibition Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century, AngloMania will focus on British fashion from 1976 to 2006, a period of astounding creativity and experimentation.

• Special Family Activities at Metropolitan Museum in December and January

  Sunday, December 4, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  In addition to its regularly scheduled weekend and weekday programs for children and families in December and January, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a variety of special activities beginning December 3 and extending throughout the holiday season and beyond, including the Christmas/New Year's school break and "Holiday Mondays" on December 26, 2005, and January 16, 2006. Among the highlights are drawing and gallery workshops, a screening of holiday films, the world-famous Christmas tree and Nativity scene that are on display each year in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall, and programs at The Cloisters, the Museum's branch for medieval art located in upper Manhattan.

• Schedule of Exhibitions Through July 2016

  Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 2:00 p.m.

• Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings

  Tuesday, November 15, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings – opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 13, 2006 – will explore the growth of the concept of divine kingship among ancient Maya peoples. Featuring some 150 objects – from large-scale relief sculpture in stone to small precious pieces of worked jade – the exhibition will display the grandiose ambitions of earthly rulers when they transformed themselves into gods. Dating from 900 B.C. to 550 A.D., the works in the exhibition are lent primarily from public collections in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as from collections in Europe and the United States. Emphasis will be placed on recently excavated objects that will be on view for the first time in the United States. Notable among them are pieces from the renowned Maya sites of Calakmul in Mexico and Copan in Honduras. Maya jade objects discovered in tombs in the famous Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan – the contemporary but distant central Mexican city – will also be included.

• Girodet: Romantic Rebel

  Tuesday, November 15, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Girodet: Romantic Rebel is the first retrospective in the United States devoted to this celebrated French artist, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, a favored but rebellious student of Jacques-Louis David. Girodet's idiosyncratic style fuses David's Neoclassical ideal with his own prescient Romantic vision. The exhibition brings together approximately 110 paintings and works on paper that reflect the artist's originality and the diversity of his works, from mythological subjects to portraits and representations of Napoleon's military triumphs. Girodet will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 24 through August 27, 2006.

• Samuel Palmer (1805–1881): Vision and Landscape

  Monday, November 14, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Samuel Palmer ranks among the most important British landscape painters of the Romantic era. Marking the 200th anniversary of the artist's birth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881): Vision and Landscape is the first major retrospective of his work in nearly 80 years, uniting some 100 of his finest watercolors, drawings, etchings, and oils from public and private collections in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. The exhibition highlights the artist's celebrated early work, executed in a visionary style inspired by William Blake, and re-examines Palmer's vibrant middle-period Italian studies and masterful late watercolors and etchings. It also includes a selection of works by artists in Palmer's circle. Samuel Palmer will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 7 through May 29.

• Metropolitan Museum Celebrates the Holidays by Opening on "Holiday Monday" December 26

  Monday, November 14, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, November 14, 2005) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public on Monday, December 26 (the Monday between Christmas and New Year's Day), as part of the Museum's popular "Holiday Mondays" program. The Museum, which has been closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years, will open the doors of its main building this winter and spring on three additional major Monday holidays: January 16 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), February 20 (Presidents' Day), and May 29 (Memorial Day).

• Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master

  Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Three masterpieces by Sicily's greatest Renaissance painter, Antonello da Messina, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 13, 2005, through March 5, 2006, in the exhibition Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master. This will be the first time any of these works will be on public view in the United States.

• In Line with Van Gogh

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents the exhibition In Line with Van Gogh in conjunction with the landmark exhibition Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings. The ancillary exhibition, also curated by Colta Ives and Susan Stein, demonstrates that Van Gogh's achievement, neither solely intuitive nor accidental, was remarkably well informed. The 59 drawings and prints selected from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum will include works by Rembrandt, Daumier, Millet, Degas, Hokusai, Hiroshige, and other artists whose work influenced Van Gogh, as well as works by his contemporaries and followers such as Gauguin, Signac, Seurat, Matisse, and Munch. In Line with Van Gogh will be on view from October 4, 2005 to January 8, 2006.

• Santiago Calatrava's Art and Architecture in New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Santiago Calatrava, the world-renowned architect who has designed some of the most beautiful structures of our epoch, is the subject of a new exhibition, Santiago Calatrava: Sculpture into Architecture, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 18, 2005. This exhibition, on view through March 5, 2006, will demonstrate that many of the forms of his celebrated buildings originated in his independent works of art.

• Fra Angelico, Leading Artist of Italian Renaissance, at Metropolitan Museum in First American Retrospective

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 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 75 paintings, drawings, 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.

• Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  The Costume Institute will celebrate one of America's quintessential stylemakers this fall with an exhibition of accessories and fashion from Iris Apfel. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 13, 2005, to January 22, 2006, Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Barrel Apfel Collection will spotlight 60 objects, exploring the affinity between fashion and accessory designs and examining the power of dress and accessories to assert style above fashion, the individual above the collective.

• David Milne Watercolors "Painting Toward the Light"

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  David Milne Watercolors: "Painting Toward the Light," on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from November 8, 2005 to January 29, 2006, will reintroduce the work of one of Canada's finest painters to American audiences. Milne (1882-1953), whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century, lived and worked in the United States (1903-29) during the heyday of American modernism before returning to Ontario (1929-53), where he had a quiet career out of the spotlight. This exhibition of 45 works from Canadian and American collections follows Milne's experimentation with modernism in New York City, his years as a Canadian War Memorials artist in Europe after World War I, his subsequent retreat into the landscape of upstate New York, and his final years in Canada, which inspired a dramatic departure from his depictions of the natural world to the realm of the spiritual.

• Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 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.

• Clouet to Seurat: French Drawings from The British Museum

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Four centuries of French draftsmanship will be on view in Clouet to Seurat: French Drawings from The British Museum, opening November 8, 2005, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition features nearly 100 masterpieces, ranging from rare Renaissance portraits by Jean and François Clouet to selections from The British Museum's incomparable holdings of Claude Lorrain and Antoine Watteau, through stellar works of the 19th century, from Ingres and Delacroix to Degas, Cézanne, and Seurat. A majority of these works have never before been exhibited in the United States. Clouet to Seurat will remain on view at the Metropolitan through January 29, 2006.

• Prague, The Crown of Bohemia, 1347-1437

  Thursday, November 3, 2005, 5:00 a.m.

  Crowned King of Bohemia in 1347, Charles IV (1316-1378) sought to make his capital city – Prague – the cultural rival of Paris and Rome. The remarkable flowering of art that transformed the city into Bohemia's Gothic jewel will be celebrated at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning September 20, in the exhibition Prague, The Crown of Bohemia, 1347-1437 – a landmark presentation of some 160 stunning examples of panel paintings, goldsmiths' work, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, silk embroideries, stained glass, and more. These little-known masterpieces attest to the wide-ranging achievements of the hundreds of artists affiliated with Prague and the Bohemian crown during the reign of Charles IV and his two sons, Wenceslas IV (1361-1419) and Sigismund (1368-1437). The exhibition draws on numerous collections in the Czech Republic as well as other European and American collections, and will include many works that have never been publicly shown.

• Metropolitan Museum's Restaurants to Offer Van Gogh-Inspired Dining and Afternoon Tea

  Wednesday, October 19, 2005, 4:00 a.m.

  Inspired by the exhibition Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings– which will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 18 through December 31, 2005 – the Museum's restaurants will offer visitors a variety of special dining experiences, including afternoon tea, guest chefs from around New York City, and prix-fixe dinner options.