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The Yuan Revolution: Art and Dynastic Change
Sunday, September 12, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
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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Modern Works by Artist Joan Miró Displayed at Metropolitan Museum with Dutch Old Master Paintings That Inspired Them
Sunday, September 12, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
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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Extraordinary Chinese Works from Dramatic Era of Khubilai Khan to Open in Landmark Fall Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum
Monday, September 6, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
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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Kongo : Pouvoir et Majesté
Saturday, August 28, 2010, 8:15 p.m.
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Hebrew Manuscripts on View during High Holy Days at Metropolitan Museum's Main Building and The Cloisters
Sunday, August 22, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
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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Ancient Roman Mosaic from Israel on View at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, August 15, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
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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Ramayana Manuscripts on View at Metropolitan Museum
Thursday, July 1, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
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.
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Italian Old Master Drawings from the Tobey Collection on View at Metropolitan Museum
Thursday, July 1, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo presents 72 extraordinary works of the 16th through 18th centuries, from one of the preeminent collections of Italian Old Master drawings in private hands. It features masterpieces by gifted and historically important draftsmen—principally Italian masters but also artists whose careers brought them south of the Alps—among them Correggio, Parmigianino, Bernini, Poussin, Guercino, Canaletto, and Tiepolo. The drawings represent the principal centers of Italian art: Florence, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Parma, Venice, Genoa, and Milan. Their strikingly broad range of subject matter includes figure studies, historical and mythological narratives, landscapes, vedute, botanical drawings, motifs copied from or inspired by classical antiquity, and designs for painted compositions.
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Ringo Starr's Gold Drum on View at Met Museum in
Celebration of the Musician's 70th Birthday
Monday, June 28, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
July 'Artists Den' National Television Broadcast Features Ringo Starr at the Met
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Contemporary Photography and Video Featured in Between Here and There at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, June 13, 2010, 4:00 a.m.
Themes of dislocation and displacement in contemporary photography will be explored in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's forthcoming exhibition in the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography. Drawn almost entirely from the Museum's collection, Between Here and There: Passages in Contemporary Photography on view
July 2, 2010 through February 21, 2011, will feature 22 artists whose photographic works convey a sense of a rootless or unfixed existence.