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New Exhibitions
Upcoming Exhibitions
Continuing Exhibitions
New Galleries
New & Continuing Installations
Traveling Exhibition
OF SPECIAL NOTE:
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s galleries for its world-renowned collection of European Old Master paintings from the 13th through the early 19th century reopened as the New European Paintings Galleries, 1250-1800, on May 23 after expansion, renovation, and reinstallation.
• The May 15 opening of the exhibition Search for the Unicorn marked the beginning of the 75th-anniversary year of The Cloisters museum and gardens.
• The new Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide—first published in English in 2012—is now available in six additional languages: Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
NEW EXHIBITIONS
Photography and the American Civil War
April 2–September 2, 2013
Some 750,000 lives were lost between 1861 and 1865, making the conflict between North and South the nation’s most deadly war. If the “War Between the States” was the great test of the young republic’s commitment to its founding precepts, it was also a watershed in photographic history as the camera recorded from beginning to end the heartbreaking narrative of the epic war.
Focusing on the evolving role of the camera during the Civil War, this exhibition will feature a wide variety of images including: haunting battlefield landscapes strewn with human remains; intimate studio portraits of armed Confederate and Union soldiers preparing to meet their destiny; rare multi-panel panoramas of Gettysburg and Richmond; diagnostic medical studies of wounded soldiers who survived the war’s last bloody battles; and portraits of Abraham Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth.
There has been no major exhibition or scholarly survey in New York City featuring Civil War photographs in many decades; this show is timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863). The exhibition will draw extensively on the Museum’s celebrated holdings of Civil War photographs by Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, and George Barnard, among many others, and will also include judicious selections from important American private and public collections.
The exhibition is made possible by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
PUNK: Chaos to Couture
May 9–August 14, 2013
The exhibition, PUNK: Chaos to Couture, organized by The Costume Institute, will examine punk’s legacy, from its birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence on high fashion today. The relationship between the punk concept of 'do-it-yourself' and the couture concept of 'made-to-measure' will be compared and contrasted through materials, techniques, and decorative embellishments. Original punk garments will be juxtaposed with recent, directional fashions to illustrate how designers have borrowed punk’s visual symbols in their search for new ideals of beauty and new definitions of fashionability. Presented as an immersive multimedia experience in themed galleries, the clothes will be animated with period music videos and soundscaping audio techniques. The approximately 50 designers in the exhibition will range from Miguel Adrover and Azzedine Alaïa to Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood.
The exhibition is made possible by Moda Operandi.
Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.
The Roof Garden Commission: Imran Qureshi
May 14 –November 3, 2013 (weather permitting)
Commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi (b. 1972) will create a site-specific work atop the Museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden this summer. Considered one of the leading figures in developing a contemporary aesthetic integrating motifs and techniques of traditional miniature painting with contemporary themes, Qureshi is the first artist to create a work that will be painted directly onto the surfaces of the Roof Garden. The installation will relate to elements from his earlier works while responding to the broad vistas of Central Park as well as the area’s architectural and historical contexts.
Accompanied by the first in a new series of paperback books on the annual Roof Garden Commissions.
The exhibition is made possible by Bloomberg.
Additional support is provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.
Search for the Unicorn: An Exhibition in Honor of The Cloisters’ 75th Anniversary
May 15–August 18, 2013
Given by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in time for the opening of The Cloisters in 1938, the Unicorn Tapestries are its best-known masterpieces; yet, 75 years later, their history and meaning remain elusive. They have been seen both as complicated metaphors for Christ and as emblems of matrimony, and they are beloved as quaint indications of medieval notions about the natural world. Search for the Unicorn, a focused exhibition of some 40 works of art drawn from the collections of the Metropolitan, sister institutions, and private collections, will invite audiences to see the Unicorn Tapestries anew, as the finest expression of a subject widely treated across cultures, and in both European art and science, from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance.
The Civil War and American Art
May 27–September 2, 2013
This major loan exhibition will explore how American artists responded to the Civil War and its aftermath. The exhibition follows the trajectory of the conflict: from the palpable unease on the eve of war to the heady optimism that it would be over with a single battle, to the growing realization that this conflict would not end quickly, to grappling with the issues surrounding emancipation, the need for reconciliation as the war ended, and the uncertainty about how to put the country back together in its wake. It will feature some of the finest works made by leading figure painters such as Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, landscape painters such as Sanford R. Gifford and Frederic E. Church, and photographers such as Timothy H. O’Sullivan and George Barnard. The exhibition at the Metropolitan coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863)and the New York City Draft Riots (July 1863), violent disturbances that made New Yorkers more painfully aware than ever before of the war and its implications.
The exhibition is made possible by an anonymous foundation.
Additional support is provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Enterprise Holdings Endowment.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The exhibition was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with generous support from the Anschutz Foundation; Ludmila and Conrad Cafritz; Christie’s; Sheila Duignan and Mike Wilkins; Tania and Tom Evans; Norma Lee and Morton Funger; Dorothy Tapper Goldman; Raymond J. and Margaret Horowitz Endowment; Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts; Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation; Joffa and Bill Kerr; Thelma and Melvin Lenkin; Henry Luce Foundation; Paula and Peter Lunder; Margery and Edgar Masinter; Barbro and Bernard Osher; Walter and Lucille Rubin Foundation; Patricia Rubin and Ted Slavin; Holly and Nick Ruffin. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum’s traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective
June 18–September 22, 2013
This long-overdue exhibition—the first major museum retrospective devoted to the artist’s work in New York—showcases the artist’s unique and groundbreaking approach to sculpture. Including the full range of Price’s innovative work, with nearly 75 sculptures dating from 1959 to 2011, and 11 late works on paper, the exhibition aims to situate his art beyond the realm of craft and into the larger narrative of modern sculpture. The artist’s close friend, the architect Frank O. Gehry, collaborated on the exhibition design.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was made possible through major grants from the LLWW Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: Charting a New Empire
June 20–August 4, 2013
This exhibition will consist of 17 works on loan from the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum. It will focus on the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay cylinder from Babylon that contains an account of the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 B.C.; of his restoration to various temples of statues removed by Nabonidus, the previous king of Babylon; and of his own work at Babylon. The cylinder has sometimes been described as the “first charter of human rights,” but it in fact reflects a long tradition in Mesopotamia where, from as early as the third millennium B.C., kings began their reigns with declarations of reform. The Cylinder has resonances far beyond Iranian cultural heritage, having been found in Iraq and also being of interest to the Jewish community. Many have understood the text of the Cylinder to discuss the return of deported peoples to their homeland, and compared it with Biblical accounts that mention the role of Cyrus in the return. Indeed, it is thought to be at this time that the Jews exiled by Nebuchadnezzar were able to return to Israel and build the Second Temple. The exhibition will include other iconic works of the Achaemenid period, such as the Darius cylinder seal and the bracelet and votive plaque from the Oxus Treasure, which illustrate other innovations of the Persian Empire, such as new writing practices, religious beliefs, and currency, and which put the Cylinder itself into Judeo-Christian context by introducing Biblical texts mentioning Cyrus.
The exhibition was organized by the British Museum in partnership with the Iran Heritage Foundation and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The exhibition’s presentation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is made possible with the support of the Ansary Foundation, Akbar A. Lari, Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York, Nowruz Commission and Omid and Kimya Kamshad. Additional support provided by the NoRuz at the Met Fund.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Julia Margaret Cameron
August 19, 2013–January 5, 2014
One of the greatest portraitists in the history of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) blended an unorthodox technique, a deeply spiritual sensibility, and a Pre-Raphaelite–inflected aesthetic to create a gallery of vivid portraits and a mirror of the Victorian soul. Julia Margaret Cameron is the first New York City museum show devoted to Cameron’s work in nearly a generation and the first ever at the Met. The exhibition of 35 works is drawn entirely from the Metropolitan’s rich collection, including major works from the Rubel Collection, acquired in 1997, and the Gilman Collection, acquired in 2005.
The exhibition is made possible by The Hite Foundation, in memory of Sybil Hite.
Feathered Walls: Hangings from Ancient Peru
September 16, 2013–March 3, 2014
Ten spectacular feather panels—probably hangings— made by the Wari peoples of southern Peru between about 700 and 1000 comprise this installation. Made of finely woven cotton cloth and measuring about seven by two feet on average, the panels are completely covered with the small iridescent body feathers of the blue and yellow macaw in an arresting design of large rectangles. They rank among the most luxurious and unusual works created by textile artists in Peru prior to the Spanish conquest in 1532.
Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet
September 10–December 8, 2013
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Cloisters museum and gardens, The Forty Part Motet (2001)—a sound installation by Janet Cardiff (Canadian, born 1957)—will be presented at The Cloisters. Consisting of 40 high-fidelity speakers positioned on stands throughout the Fuentidueña Chapel, the 14-minute work, with a three-minute spoken prologue, will continuously play an 11-minute reworking of the 40-voice motet Spem in alium numquam habui (ca. 1556?/1573?) by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-1585). Visitors are encouraged to walk among the loudspeakers and hear the individual unaccompanied male voices – bass, baritone, alto, tenor, and child soprano—one voice per speaker—as well as engage in the polyphonic choral effect of 40 combined singers in an immersive experience. Dominated by a 12th-century Spanish apse, the Fuentidueña Chapel is used regularly for live concerts of early music and is known for outstanding acoustics. The installation represents the first presentation of contemporary art at The Cloisters.
The installation is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Support for the project is provided in part by Sarah Peter and Rosamond Ivey.
Press Preview: Monday, September 9, 12:30-2:30 p.m.
Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800
September 16, 2013–January 5, 2014
Beginning in the 16th century, the golden age of European maritime navigation in search of spice routes to the East brought about the flowering of an abundant textile trade. Textiles often acted as direct currency for spices, as well as other luxury goods. Textiles and textile designs made their way throughout the globe, from India and Asia to Europe, between India and Asia and Southeast Asia, from Europe to the east, and eventually west to the American colonies. Blending the traditional designs, skills, and tastes of the cultures that produced as well as purchased them, these beautiful and historically fascinating fabrics also served as conduits of information, sparking ideas of imagined exotic lands and peoples both East and West. The exhibition will include works from across the Museum’s collection—augmented by a few key domestic and international loans—in order to make worldwide visual connections, and to highlight an important design story that has never been told from a truly global perspective.
The exhibition is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, The Coby Foundation, Ltd., The Favrot Fund, the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, and the Quinque Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, September 9, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim
September 17, 2013–January 5, 2014
Hildesheim Cathedral has one of the most complete surviving ensembles of church furnishings and treasures in Europe, with many masterpieces made between 1000 and 1250. As a result, it was designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site in 1985. A major renovation of the cathedral provides an opportunity for this extraordinary exhibition of medieval church treasures to take place at the Metropolitan Museum. The exhibition, consisting of about 50 works, will focus primarily on Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (960-1022), one of the greatest patrons of the arts in the Middle Ages. In addition to the famous monumental bronze doors and the column in Hildesheim Cathedral that cannot travel, Bernward commissioned many smaller precious works of art, mostly for his monastic foundation St. Michael’s. A silver crucifix and candlesticks and numerous illuminated manuscripts (that he is known to have commissioned), and the Golden Madonna (that he is believed to have commissioned), will be part of the exhibition.
The exhibition will also examine the artistic production of Hildesheim in the high Middle Ages, including the monumental bronze baptismal font that is a masterpiece of 13th-century metalwork.
The exhibition is made possible by the Michel-David Weill Fund.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Accompanied by a publication.
Press Preview: Monday, September 16, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations
September 25, 2013–January 12, 2014
Balthus is best known for his series of pensive adolescents who dream or read in rooms that are closed to the outside world. Focusing on his finest works, the exhibition will be limited to approximately 35 paintings dating from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. Between 1936 and 1939, Balthus painted his celebrated series of portraits of Thérèse Blanchard, his young neighbor in Paris. Thérèse posed alone, with her cat, or with her two brothers. When Balthus lived in Switzerland during WWII, he replaced the forbidding austerity of his Paris studio with more colorful interiors in which different nymphets daydream, read, or nap. The exhibition concludes with images that he created of Frédérique Tison, his favorite model, at the Château de Chassy in the Morvan during the 1950s. Never before shown in public will be the series of 40 small ink drawings for Mitsou, in which the 11-year-old Balthus evoked his adventures with a stray tomcat and which were published by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in 1921.This is the first exhibition in 30 years of the artist’s works in this country. Four works belong to the Museum’s collection and—with the exception of several loans from France, England, Switzerland, and Australia—the rest will be from museums and private collections in the United States.
The exhibition is made possible by the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust and the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation.
Accompanied by a publication.
Press Preview: Monday, September 23, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France
October 1, 2013–January 5, 2014
Over the course of the 18th century, a large number of artists—painters, sculptors, draftsmen, and amateurs—experimented with etching, a highly accessible printmaking technique akin to drawing. Some, like Antoine Watteau and François Boucher, encountered the process within the thriving commerce of the Paris print market. Others, like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Hubert Robert, were introduced to the technique during their student years in Rome. Over the course of the century, the free and improvisational aesthetic of the etching process increasingly was embraced, and French artists looked to 17th-century masters, such as Rembrandt in the north, and Salvator Rosa and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione to the south, for inspiration. The expressive potential of the technique was also explored in a more experimental manner by artists like Gabriel de Saint-Aubin and Louis Jean Desprez, who harnessed the inky tonalities of the medium to their personal and idiosyncratic vision. The exhibition will include loans from North American museums and private collections.
The exhibition is made possible by The Schiff Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, September 30, 10:00 a.m.–noon
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Vision: In Pursuit of “The Best” in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
October 8, 2013–October 5, 2014
The Museum’s Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (AAOA) celebrates the genesis of its permanent collection with this exhibition. It is organized to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of The Museum of Primitive Art, the direct precursor to AAOA. The Museum of Primitive Art was a pioneering cultural institution that featured Nelson Rockefeller’s non-Western art collection. The announcement by Rockefeller of an agreement to transfer his collection to the Metropolitan was made in 1969 and in January 1982 the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing opened to the public. The exhibition highlights some 50 masterpieces and many unpublished documents selected from the more than 3,000 Rockefeller gifts encompassing three areas—Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; it will reveal Mr. Rockefeller’s vision for The Museum of Primitive Art, the first institution dedicated entirely to the artistic excellence of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Press Preview: Monday, October 7, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom
November 4, 2013– February 23, 2014
Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom will be dedicated to the magnificent art created between 400 and 800 A.D., the seminal era of the Silla Kingdom. Co-organized with the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, and Gyeongju National Museum, and drawn primarily from the holdings of these institutions, this exhibition will introduce audiences to the remarkable artistic achievements of a small kingdom that rose to prominence, embraced cosmopolitanism, and gained control of the entire Korean peninsula. Many of the works on display are designated “National Treasures” or “Treasures” with few parallel examples in Western museums. Highlights include spectacular gold crowns and regalia, rare objects from Central and West Asia, and Buddhist sculptures and reliquaries.
The exhibition is made possible by Samsung.
Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Korea, and Gyeongju National Museum, Korea.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, October 28, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Venetian Glass by Carlo Scarpa: The Venini Company, 1932-1947
November 5, 2013–March 2, 2014
The exhibition is devoted to the work in glass of the influential Italian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906–1978). Known primarily for his unique architectural designs, Scarpa’s abilities can be traced to an earlier stage in his career. In 1932 Scarpa was hired by Paolo Venini, founder of Venini Glassworks, to be an artistic consultant to the company. Until 1947, he worked closely with Venini master glass blowers and Mr. Venini himself to create over two dozen styles, in the process pioneering techniques, silhouettes, and colors that thoroughly modernized the ancient tradition of glass blowing. The exhibition will present the results of this unique collaboration, featuring nearly 300 carefully selected works that highlight the significant contribution that Scarpa made to the art of Venetian glass.
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund.
Press Preview: November 4, 2013 10 a.m.–noon
Jewels by JAR
November 20, 2013–March 9, 2014
This exhibition will feature several hundred pieces by the most acclaimed jewelry designer of the last thirty years, Joel A. Rosenthal. Rosenthal was born in New York, educated at Harvard University, and moved to Paris immediately after his graduation in 1966. It was there that he began to experiment with jewelry making and quickly became well-known for his designs of vibrant colors and organic shapes. Very early, Rosenthal revealed his special sensitivity to color, whether in the hue of an exotic violet sapphire, the shimmer of topaz and ruby, or the simple clarity of a perfect diamond. He has focused on the pavé technique and most often uses a dark metal alloy for the settings to highlight the gem’s color. The exhibition will be the first retrospective of his work in America.
The exhibition is made possible by Phaidon Press Limited, Nancy and Howard Marks, and The Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, November 18, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Cleopatra’s Needle
December 3, 2013–June 6, 2014
The exhibition will celebrate the completion of an extensive program by the Central Park Conservancy to conserve the obelisk of Thutmose III, popularly known as “Cleopatra’s Needle.” Relying primarily on the Metropolitan’s own collection enhanced with several important loans from local museums and private lenders, the exhibition will explore the meaning of obelisks in ancient Egyptian divine and funerary cults and will consider how these massive monuments were created and erected. An equally important part of the presentation will be to show the importance of this ancient architectural form in western culture and how a long-standing fascination with obelisks ultimately led to the erection of the one in Central Park. This portion of the exhibition will be illustrated through a selection of paintings, prints, textiles, and other objects from the departments of European Paintings, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Drawings and Prints, and the American Wing.
Press Preview: Monday, December 2, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China
December 11, 2013–April 6, 2014
The exhibition will present 50-60 works by more than 30 contemporary artists active in China and abroad during the past three decades. Organized into three thematic groupings—the written word, new landscapes, and abstraction—the exhibition seeks to demonstrate that China’s ancient cultural pattern of seeking renewal through the reinterpretation of past models remains a viable creative path. Much more than a continuation of earlier art forms, this process embraces radical abstractions, subversions, or reinterpretations of traditional idioms as viable ways to define artistic identity that are quintessentially Chinese. Although the artists considered have all transformed their sources through new modes of expression, one may recognize thematic, aesthetic, or technical attributes in their creations that have meaningful links to China’s artistic past.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, December 9, 10:00 a.m.–noon
The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925
December 18, 2013–April 13, 2014
At the turn of the 20th century, artistic representations of American Indians, cowboys and cavalry, pioneers and prospectors, and animals of the plains and the mountains served as visual metaphors for the Old West and, as such, were collected eagerly by an urban-based clientele. Through some 65 bronze sculptures by 28 artists,
The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925, will explore the aesthetic and cultural impulses behind the creation of statuettes with American western themes so popular with audiences then and now. In addition to representative sculptures by such archetypal artists as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, the exhibition will explore the work of sculptors who infrequently pursued western subjects—such as James Earle Fraser and Paul Manship—yet profoundly informed widespread appreciation of the American bronze statuette.
The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925 will offer a fresh and balanced look at the multifaceted roles played by these sculptors in creating three-dimensional interpretations of western life, whether those interpretations are based on historical fact, mythologized fiction, or, most often, something in-between.
The exhibition is made possible by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Enterprise Holdings Endowment.
It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press Preview: Monday, December 16, 10:00 a.m.–noon
CONTINUING EXHIBITIONS
African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde
Through September 2, 2013
This exhibition highlights specific African artifacts acquired by the New York avant-garde and its most influential patrons during the 1910s and 1920s. Reflecting on the dynamism of New York's art scene during the years that followed the 1913 Armory Show, the exhibition brings together African works from the collections of many key individuals of the period, such as Alfred Stieglitz, Marius de Zayas, John Quinn, Louise and Walter Arensberg, Alain LeRoy Locke, and Eugene and Agnes Meyer. Featuring the Metropolitan’s own holdings as well as loans from public and private collections, the exhibition includes some 40 wood sculptures from West and Central Africa presented alongside photographs, sculptures, and paintings by Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Diego Rivera, and Constantin Brancusi. Together, they demonstrate the synergy that bound African art with works by members of the avant-garde as they were simultaneously experienced in New York for the first time almost a century ago.
The exhibition is made possible by the Friends of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Bashford Dean and the Creation of the Arms and Armor Department
Through September 29, 2013
To mark the centennial of the Arms and Armor Department, this exhibition surveys the career of Dr. Bashford Dean (1867-1928), the department's founding curator. A zoologist by training, Dean was for a time simultaneously a full professor at Columbia University, first Curator of Fishes at the American Museum of Natural History, and Curator of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum. At the Met, he worked initially as a guest curator in 1904, when he was invited to install and catalogue the Museum's first significant acquisitions of arms and armor. He continued on as honorary curator until joining the staff full-time in 1912 as head of the newly created Arms and Armor Department, rapidly building the collection into one of international importance. In the process he fostered an influential group of private collectors, established American scholarship on the subject, and laid the foundations for the growth of the collection as it exists today.
Accompanied by a Bulletin.
NEW GALLERIES
New European Paintings Galleries, 1250-1800
Opened May 23, 2013
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s galleries for its world-renowned collection of European Old Master paintings from the 13th through the early 19th century reopened on May 23 after an extensive renovation and reinstallation. This is the first major renovation of the galleries since 1951 and the first major reinstallation of the collection since 1972. Gallery space has increased by almost one third, making it possible to display more than 700 paintings from the collection and giving the entire floor of galleries a grandeur not seen in half a century. The reinstallation also captures historical crosscurrents between countries and contacts between artists by placing them in adjoining rooms. The Metropolitan Museum’s collection of early Netherlandish, Italian, and French paintings is wide–ranging and includes landmark pictures, while its collection of Dutch school paintings must be counted among the finest in the world. As for individual artists, the representation of Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, Poussin, Velázquez, Goya, and David is the strongest in the western hemisphere, and there are individual masterpieces known to every student of art history, such as Bruegel’s The Harvesters and David’s The Death of Socrates. Key works have been cleaned, conserved, or reframed, and important new loans complement the collection.
New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts
Opened January 16, 2012
This third and final phase of the American Wing renovation project comprises 26 renovated and enlarged galleries for the Museum’s collection of American art, one of the finest and most comprehensive in the world. The suite of elegant new galleries provides visitors with a rich and captivating experience of the history of American art from the 18th to the early 20th century. The centerpiece of the new installation is Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s monumental and iconic painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Twenty-one galleries feature the extraordinary collection of American paintings—including such masters as Gilbert Stuart, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent. Interspersed among the pictures are American sculptures, notably the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Three other galleries, together with a grand pre-revolutionary New York interior, display 18th-century American decorative arts, principally treasures of colonial furniture and silver. In The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, a concurrent renovation includes additional casework, touch-screen case labels, and upgraded computer access.
Part 1 of the American Wing renovation project opened in January 2007 with galleries dedicated to the classical arts of America, 1810-1845. Part 2, inaugurated in May 2009, included the renovated Charles Engelhard Court and the Period Rooms. With the completion of Part 3, nearly all of the American Wing’s 17,000 works are now on view, constituting an encyclopedic survey of fine art in the United States.
New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia
Opened November 1, 2011
More than 1,000 works from the preeminent collection of the Museum’s Department of Islamic Art—one of the most comprehensive gatherings of this material in the world—are on view in a completely renovated, expanded, and reinstalled suite of 15 galleries. The organization of the galleries by geographical area emphasizes the rich diversity of the Islamic world, over a span of 1300 years, by underscoring the many distinct cultures within its fold.
NEW & CONTINUING INSTALLATIONS
Living in Style: Five Centuries of Interior Design from the Collections of Drawings & Prints
June 18–September 8, 2013
Interior design is often thought of as a modern, post-industrial concept, but in reality sculpting our domestic environment became an art form in its own right from a much earlier era. Renowned and highly–paid artists from a wide array of disciplines were often involved in the creation and manipulation of living spaces that would meet or even exceed the wishes of their patrons. Made singlehandedly or by an interpreter in various stages of the manufacturing process, many features of their designs have been captured on paper. This exhibition will combine drawings, prints, and objects from Europe and the United States as they were collected by the Metropolitan Museum over a period of more than 100 years. It will highlight the ingenuity, beauty, and wit often found in designs for the decorative arts, and will also follow the dynamic development of shapes, ornaments, and materials.
Everyday Epiphanies: Photography and Daily Life Since 1969
June 25, 2013–January 26, 2014
This exhibition examines the ways in which artists have used the camera to explore subjects close to home—the quotidian, intimate, and overlooked aspects of everyday existence—during the last four decades. As the counterculture swelled in the late 1960s, daily life as it had been lived in Western Europe and America at least since the cookie-cutter 1950s came into question. Conceptual artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s often turned to an “A-B-C” approach in which the conventions of both art and life were systematically questioned and whimsically deranged. In the 1980s, artists’ renewed interest in narrative and genre—particularly of the cinematic variety—yielded often highly staged or produced images that treated issues of autobiography and memory with a cool distancing. In the following decade, artists created photographs and videos that confused the real and the imaginary in ways that almost eerily predicted the epistemological quandaries posed by the digital revolution. The exhibition will conclude with a suite of works by young and emerging artists who use minimal means with familiar subjects to make open-ended images combining process and product in novel ways.
The exhibition will include photographs by John Baldessari, Erica Baum, Sophie Calle, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Fischli & Weiss, Jan Groover, Robert Gober, Elizabeth McAlpine, David Salle, and Stephen Shore, among others, as well as video by artists such as Lutz Bacher and Martha Rosler.
Eighteenth-Century Pastels from the Permanent Collection
August 2–December 29, 2013
In the last 10 years the Museum has added to a very small group of highly finished 18-century English pastels a number of important examples of the French, Italian, and German schools. The materials are luminous and the pastel portraits are life-like and expressive.
Masterpieces of Tibetan and Nepalese Art Recent Acquisitions
September 17, 2013–February 2, 2014
Dating from the 11th to the 17th century, this exhibition features 13 newly acquired masterworks of Tibetan and Nepalese art, including five sculptures that are amongst the rarest and most important such objects to enter a Western collection. Some examples of the finest Tibetan and Nepalese paintings known are also be included. All come from the pioneering collection of Jack and Muriel Zimmerman.
Press Preview: Monday, September 16, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Metropolitan Vanities: The History of the Dressing Table
December 17, 2013 - April 13, 2014
The exhibition will focus on the history of the dressing table, or vanity, exploring the antecedents presaging the modern vanity—beginning with Egyptian decorative boxes used to hold cosmetic ephemera and ancient Asian cosmetic carriers. The dressing table as we know it today originated in Europe in the late 17th century, specifically in England and France where high society patrons began commissioning luxurious specialized furniture from craftsmen and furniture makers. Few types of furniture have revealed more about changing social customs, leisure pursuits, and popular taste of the past several centuries than the dressing table.
Press Preview: Monday, December 16, 10:00 a.m.–noon
Making the Invisible Visible: Conservation and Islamic Art
Through August 4, 2013
Conservators and conservation scientists made many exciting and interesting discoveries as they and the curators re-examined the Museum’s collection of Islamic art prior to the reopening of the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia in November 2011. This exhibition will trace their investigative journey with a range of works of art providing new perspectives for appreciating this extraordinary collection.
The exhibition is made possible by The Hagop Kevorkian Fund.
Land Marks
Through August 18, 2013
This exhibition of 19 works from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection surveys the ways in which artists have made marks upon the earth, or made images from our marks on it. With the emergence of Land Art in the late 1960s, artists began making works inextricably bound to their sites, which became known as “Earthworks.” Artists worked on location and used the earth itself as canvas or sculptural material, making outdoor gestures—often in far-flung corners of the world—that were both anti-monumental and epic in sweep. Because their art evaded the traditional progression from cloistered studio to rarefied gallery and museum, the artists often were dependent on photography and the mass media to communicate its very existence.
Plain or Fancy? Restraint and Exuberance in the Decorative Arts
Through August 18, 2013
Modernism was not the first movement to cast a shadow on ornament and adornment, though it was the most effective one. This installation will contrast austere works of art with ornate ones, and will encourage visitors to ponder their own responses and to consider them in the light of different stylistic imperatives of the past. Drawn from the Museum’s holdings of European sculpture and decorative arts, this installation of about 50 objects will represent several media, including ceramics, metalwork, and glass.
Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronze Sculpture from the Robert Lehman Collection
Through November 18, 2013
In celebration of the newly published catalogue of Robert Lehman's collection of European sculpture and metalwork, this installation will feature a selection of Italian bronze sculpture of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, exhibited as a group for the first time. Featuring bronze casts after models created by masters of the art such as Severo da Ravenna and Desiderio da Firenze, this installation will include independent figural statuettes as well as functional objects created in key centers of Italian bronze production, in particular Padua and Venice. During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, bronze statuettes were generally displayed in private studies, where they were accompanied by functional aids to scholarship such as inkwells, writing boxes, candleholders, and perfume burners. The scholars who inhabited these studies often had a profound interest in classical antiquity. Thus, it is unsurprising that classicizing motifs and figures from Greco-Roman mythology abound in these small works in bronze.
Fabergé from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection
Through November 27, 2016
When Matilda Geddings Gray acquired her first piece of Fabergé for her niece, in 1933, she was
already a wealthy and sophisticated collector, and the name of the Russian artist-jeweler Peter
Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) was almost unknown in the United States. Since then, Fabergé’s art
has become widely known and his exquisite objects are now internationally sought after.
This long-term loan features a selection from her collection, one of the finest in the world, and
includes objects created for the Russian Imperial family, such as the Lilies-of-the-Valley Basket—
the most important Fabergé creation in the United States—and three Imperial Easter Eggs.
TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS
Salvaging the Past: Georges Hoentschel and French Decorative Arts at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The exhibition will focus on the work of Georges Hoentschel (1855-1915), the collector, decorator, ceramist, and architect, whose collections of French 18th-century and medieval art were acquired by J. P. Morgan and presented to the Metropolitan Museum in 1906 and 1916, forming the core of the Museum’s French collections.
The exhibition was organized by the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gallery at the Bard Graduate Center April 3 – August 11, 2013
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August 29, 2013
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