June 6 through September 17, 2000
Galleries for Drawings, Prints, & Photographs
No form of entertainment involves so much ingenuity at so great a cost for such a dazzling — but woefully ephemeral — effect as fireworks. Many attempts have been made over the centuries to create for posterity a visual record of fireworks displays, especially those mounted in connection with official occasions, such as a noble marriage, the entry of a ruler into a city, military victories, and coronations. Before photography became prevalent, these records were most often made as prints — woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs — since these could be made in multiple impressions and could thus be distributed to a wide audience as a document or souvenir of the occasion. In celebration of the new millennium, the exhibition Fireworks will feature more than 100 prints and drawings depicting firework displays from the 16th to the early 20th century.
Organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition is drawn primarily from the Museum's collection, augmented with several loans. Artists represented include Antonio Tempesta, Jacques Callot, Claude Lorrain, Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, Jean-Louis Desprez, Francesco Piranesi, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, and the lithographers Currier & Ives, among others.
Among the multitude of occasions celebrated in the works on view are a ducal wedding in Florence in 1579, another in Stuttgart in 1609, and the marriage of Louise Elizabeth of France to Philip of Spain in 1739; the entry of Louis XIII into Lyons in 1622, and the coronation of James II in London in 1685, and Czar Alexander I in Moscow in 1801. Other events include tournaments in the Vatican and on the River Arno in Florence; festivities at Versailles, Vienna, and St. Petersburg; dancing on the fallen Bastille in Paris after the Revolution; and the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the Summer 2000 edition of the Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, written by exhibition curator Suzanne Boorsch, Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, of the Metropolitan Museum.
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November 10, 1999
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