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Surface Tension at Metropolitan Museum Features Contemporary Photographs from the Collection
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
Photographs are often perceived as transparent windows onto a three-dimensional world. Yet photographs also have their own material presence as physical objects. Contemporary artists who exploit this apparent contradiction between photograph as window and photograph as object are featured in Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 15, 2009, through May 16, 2010. The exhibition presents 30 works that play with the inherent tension between the flatness of the photograph and the often lifelike illusion of depth.
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Mythical Architectural Drawings by Contemporary Artist Pablo Bronstein Featured in Fall Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
Pablo Bronstein at the Met is a presentation of new work by the London-based artist, addressing the history and future of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and will be shown at the Museum from October 6, 2009, through February 21, 2010. Several large ink drawings by the artist will suggest a mythical history of the Metropolitan Museum, imagining the building under construction. A series of computer drawings will focus on hypothetical futures of the Museum. This will be the artist's first solo exhibition in New York.
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Marble Sculpture Attributed to Michelangelo on Loan to Metropolitan Museum from French Republic
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
The marble sculpture Young Archer, attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (Caprese 1475- Rome 1564), is now on view in the Vélez Blanco Patio in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The fragmentary marble figure of a nude youth, which is missing arms and lower legs, was retained previously in the Fifth Avenue mansion that has housed the Cultural Services office of the French Embassy for decades. The sculpture is on special loan to the Metropolitan Museum for ten years from the French Republic, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.
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Metropolitan Museum Exhibition Features 100 Iconic American Paintings That Tell Stories of Everyday Life
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
From the decade before the Revolution to the eve of World War I, many of America's most acclaimed painters captured in their finest works the temperament of their respective eras. They recorded and defined the emerging character of Americans as individuals, citizens, and members of ever-widening communities. Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall, American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915 will bring together for the first time more than 100 of these iconic pictures that tell compelling stories of life's tasks and pleasures. The first overview of the subject in more than 35 years, the exhibition includes loans from leading museums and private lenders—and many paintings from the Metropolitan's own distinguished collection. American Stories features masterpieces by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, and George Bellows, and notable works by some of their key colleagues.
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Landmark Exhibition Devoted to Art of Samurai Opens at Metropolitan Museum October 21
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
"What Japan was, she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of the nation but its root as well." From Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe (1907)
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Exhibition of Rare Du Paquier Porcelain at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
The Du Paquier ceramic manufactory, founded by Claudius Innocentius du Paquier in Vienna in 1718, was only the second factory in Europe able to make true porcelain in the manner of the Chinese. This small porcelain enterprise developed a highly distinctive style that remained Baroque in inspiration throughout the history of the factory, which was taken over by the State in 1744. Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718–44, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 21, 2010, charts the history of the development of the Du Paquier factory, setting its production within the historic and cultural context of Vienna in the first half of the 18th century. The exhibition features more than 100 works, half drawn from the Metropolitan Museum's superb collection, and half from the premier private collection of this material.
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First Comprehensive Exhibition Featuring China's 18th-Century Master Painter Luo Ping Goes on View at Metropolitan Museum October 6
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
The first comprehensive exhibition of Luo Ping's paintings ever presented in America, Eccentric Visions: The Worlds of Luo Ping (1733-1799) will bring together nearly 60 works, including many Chinese "National Treasures," by one of the most celebrated painters in 18th-century China. Complemented by 27 pieces from American collections, this momentous international-loan exhibition will reveal the range and brilliance of the artist's vision as well as his place among his peers. Highlights of the exhibition will include the sensational handscroll Ghost Amusements (ca. 1766)—one of the best known paintings in the late imperial China—depicting the world of ghosts that, he claimed, he had seen with his own eyes. The youngest of the so-called "Eight Eccentrics," a group of highly individualistic artists active in the prosperous metropolis of Yanzhou, Luo Ping was an extraordinary artist, whose works influenced the course of later Chinese painting.
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Recently Rediscovered Velázquez Painting Featured in New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
Velázquez Rediscovered, a special exhibition on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until February 7, 2010, features a newly identified painting by Velázquez, Portrait of a Man, formerly ascribed by the Museum to the workshop of Velázquez and recently reattributed to the master himself following its cleaning and restoration. It will be shown alongside other works from the Museum's superior collection of works by the great Spanish painter.
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Magnificent Selection of Chinese Red Lacquerware On View at Metropolitan Museum This Summer
Sunday, January 3, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
Although lacquer is used in many Asian cultures, the art of carving lacquer is unique to China. Showcasing some 50 wondrously wrought examples, Cinnabar: The Chinese Art of Carved Lacquer, opening on August 6, will explore the development of this important artistic tradition from the 13th to the 18th century. Drawn from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's holdings as well as the collection of Florence and Herbert Irving, the installation will feature a number of masterworks, including newly acquired, rare 13th-century lacquer boxes for holding incense or cosmetics, and a recently restored eight-panel screen depicting a birthday celebration in an elaborate private compound. Dated 1773, this screen has never before been exhibited in public.
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Nan Rosenthal Retires and Marla Prather Joins Modern Art Department at Metropolitan Museum
Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
New York, July 10, 2008)—After 15 years as Senior Consultant for modern and contemporary art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nan Rosenthal will retire on July 1, it was announced today by Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator in Charge of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan.
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Metropolitan Museum Observes World AIDS Day on December 1
Sunday, November 29, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will observe World AIDS Day for the 21st consecutive year on Tuesday, December 1, 2009. In recognition of the devastating losses suffered by the cultural community as a result of AIDS, the Metropolitan will shroud or remove from view 15 works of art around the Museum. Stanchions in the Great Hall will acquaint visitors with the Museum's observance, and black ribbons will be tied around the flowers in the Great Hall. In addition, the Museum will lower the flags on its plaza to half-staff to symbolize the losses due to AIDS-related deaths in the art community.
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Spring 2010 Asian Art Installations
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
Arts of Korea Gallery
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Judaica from Byzantium and Medieval Europe On View at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
Nearly a dozen examples of early Jewish art—dating from the first through the seventh century C.E.—are on view in the south gallery of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine art and the Medieval Europe Gallery. Works on loan from the Jewish Theological Seminary, The American Numismatic Society, and the Judy and Michael Steinhardt Collection, New York, are shown alongside objects from the holdings of the Metropolitan.
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Gallery of Late Gothic Art Reopens at The Cloisters
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
Monumental Tapestry is Highlight of Multi-Year Project at Met's Northern Manhattan Branch
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Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche on Display for Holiday Season at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
The Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche at The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, a long-established yuletide tradition in New York, will be on view for the
holiday season from November 24, 2009, through January 6, 2010. The brightly lit,
20-foot blue spruce – with a collection of 18th-century Neapolitan angels and
cherubs among its boughs and groups of realistic crèche figures flanking the
Nativity scene at its base – will once again delight holiday visitors in the Museum’s
Medieval Sculpture Hall. Set in front of the 18th-century Spanish choir screen
from the Cathedral of Valladolid, with recorded Christmas music in the
background and daily lighting ceremonies, the installation reflects the spirit of the
holiday season.
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Metropolitan Museum Exhibitions Create $593 Million Economic Impact for New York
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
(New York, November 23, 2009)—The Metropolitan Museum's summer 2009 opening of its New American Wing, along with the concurrent presentation of three highly acclaimed and widely attended special exhibitions—Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom; Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective; and The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion—generated $593 million in spending by regional, national, and foreign tourists to New York, according to a visitor survey the Museum released today. Using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact, the study found that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from out-of-town visitors to the Museum totaled some $59.3 million. (Study findings are attached.)
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Gallery of Late Gothic Art Reopens at The Cloisters
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
Monumental Tapestry is Highlight of Multi-Year Project at Met's Northern Manhattan Branch
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Metropolitan Museum Celebrates the Holidays by Opening on "Holiday Monday" December 28
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be open to the public on Monday, December 28 (the Monday between Christmas and New Year's Day), as part of the Museum's popular "Holiday Mondays" program. The Museum will open the doors of its main building this winter and spring on three additional major Monday holidays: January 18 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), February 15 (Presidents' Day), and May 31 (Memorial Day).
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Last Chance!
Vermeer's Masterpiece "The Milkmaid"
Watteau, Music, and Theater
Roxy Paine on the Roof: "Maelstrom"
Close at Metropolitan Museum on Sunday, November 29
Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
Vermeer's Masterpiece "The Milkmaid"
On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's historic voyage from the Netherlands to New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has sent The Milkmaid, perhaps the most admired painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), to the Metropolitan Museum. The exhibition marks the first time that The Milkmaid has traveled to the U.S. since 1939, and also features all five paintings by Vermeer from the Metropolitan's collection and works by other Dutch masters.
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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM CONCERTS
NOVEMBER 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
Haydn Trio Eisenstadt Performs Haydn and Two U.S. Premieres,
Steve Ross and Lesley Gore Make Return Appearances at the Museum,
Paula Robison Performs Music from the Time of Watteau, and
Chanticleer Begins Its Run of Christmas Concerts
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DENIS P. KELLEHER ELECTED A TRUSTEE AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Monday, November 9, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
(New York, November 10, 2009)—Denis P. Kelleher has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art representing the Borough of Staten Island, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the November 10 meeting of the Board.
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METROPOLITAN MUSEUM CONCERTS
DECEMBER 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
The New York Philharmonic CONTACT Series Begins,
MMArtists in Concert Performs, and
Christmas Concerts Feature Chanticleer, Lionheart,
Burning River Brass, Quartetto Gelato, and
Inspirational Voices of the Abyssinian Baptist Church
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Istanbul-Based Vehbi Koç Foundation Funds New Galleries for Ottoman Art at Metropolitan Museum
Thursday, November 5, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
(New York—November 6, 2009) In recognition of a generous gift of $10 million from the Istanbul-based Vehbi Koç Foundation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the designation of two new galleries for Ottoman Art as the
Koç Family Galleries. To be part of the Museum's galleries for the art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and later South Asia, scheduled to open in 2011, the two galleries will display works created within the borders of the Ottoman Empire between the early 14th and early 20th centuries.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art Returns a Granite Fragment to Egypt
Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Fragment had been on loan and was recently identified as belonging to a larger work in Karnak
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侍芸術の最高峰を集めた大特別展、ニューヨークのメトロポリタン美術
Thursday, October 15, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
メトロポリタン美術館では１０月２１日より>侍の芸術：日本の武器、武具、1156-1868 展を開催します。この展覧会は日本全国６０以上のパブリック、プライベート・コレクションから選りすぐった名品が一堂に会する一大イベントで、日本の刀剣・甲冑を中心に侍の芸術を総括的、且つ詳細に紹介します。展示作品は国宝34点、重要文化財64点、重要美術品6点、名物９点を含む、甲冑、刀剣、日本刀の鍔・拵え（こしらえ）、弓矢、馬具、旗、陣羽織、大名の装飾品、また侍を描いた屏風、絵巻物等合計214点で、この中には日本国外で初公開となる作品も多数含まれており、武家文化の真髄を刀剣・甲冑戦具等芸術を通して見せるユニークな展覧会となります。刀剣・甲冑を中心に侍芸術を総括的にみせる展覧会はこれが世界最初で最大規模のもので、展示作品には日本刀の最高傑作として知られる名刀、大包平（１２世紀）や、三日月の前立て付き兜が圧倒的な存在感を放つ伊達政宗の鎧（１６－１７世紀）他、信長、秀吉、家康等日本を代表する武将ゆかりの品々がメトロポリタンの特別展ギャラリーに並びます。期間中12月の第1週に約60作品の展示替えが行われる予定です。
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"Watteau and Words: A Reading of French Poetry" by Philippe de Montebello at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Monday, October 12, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Philippe de Montebello, Director Emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and currently the Fiske Kimball Professor in the History of Culture and Museums, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, returns to the Museum for his first public appearance there since last fall, to offer "Watteau and Words: A Reading of French Poetry" on Thursday, November 19, 2009, at 6:00 p.m. The event will take place in the Museum's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium in conjunction with Watteau, Music, and Theater, an exhibition presented in honor of Mr. de Montebello, who stepped down from his 31-year directorship of the Museum on December 31, 2008.
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American Stories Exhibition to Open on Columbus Day "Met Holiday Monday"
Monday, October 5, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The public's first opportunity to visit the landmark exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be October 12 (Columbus Day), the next "Met Holiday Monday." Met Holiday Mondays are extra public viewing days that take place on the Mondays of major holiday weekends, when historically the Museum has been closed.
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Robert Frank's Groundbreaking Photographs Featured in Major Exhibition Marking 50th Anniversary of His Book The Americans
Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The 50th anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank's ground-breaking book of black-and-white photographs, will be celebrated with the major exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010. Robert Frank is one of the great living masters of photography, and his seminal book The Americans captured a culture on the brink of social upheaval. The exhibition traces the artist's process of creating this once-controversial suite of photographs, which grew out of several cross-country road trips in 1955 and 1956. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank was an outsider encountering much of America for the first time; he discovered its power, its vastness, and—at times—its troubling emptiness. Although Frank's depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, The Americans soon became recognized as a masterpiece of 20th-century art. Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans features all 83 photographs from his original book. Remarkably, the exhibition at the Metropolitan will be the first time that this body of work is presented in its entirety to a New York audience.
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"The Enchantress of Florence: A Conversation With Salman Rushdie" on Visual Imagary in his Recent Novel at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Tuesday, October 6, 2009, at 6:00 p.m.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, brings together Florentine Italy and Mughal India, and the cultures that lie between them, in a tale that has been described as a "sumptuous mixture of history and fable." On Tuesday, October 6, 2009, at 6:00 p.m., the Metropolitan Museum of Art Concerts & Lectures series will present a conversation with the author and three art historians – Carmen Bambach, Curator of Drawings and Prints, and Navina Haidar Haykel, Associate Curator of Islamic Art, both of the Museum; and David Roxburgh, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History at Harvard University – to explore major themes and visual imagery in his novel.
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New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Explores Influence of Music and Theater on the Work of Watteau and His Contemporaries
Sunday, September 20, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Watteau, Music, and Theater, the first exhibition of paintings by the great early 18th–century French painter and draftsman Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) in the United States in 25 years, is currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through November 29. The exhibition explores the place of music and theater in the work of the artist, comparing the imagery of power associated with the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, with a more optimistic and mildly subversive imagery of pleasure developed in contemporary opera-ballet and theater. Showing that the painter's utopian vision was influenced directly by these sister arts, it sheds light on a number of Watteau's pictures.
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Painting in Metropolitan Museum's Collection Reattributed to Spanish Master Velázquez
Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, September 9, 2009)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that a technical examination and cleaning of one of its paintings, formerly ascribed to the workshop of Velázquez, has revealed an autograph work by the great 17th-century Spanish master himself. Velázquez is among the most admired Old Master painters, and his work rarely enters the market. The rehabilitation of this picture thus represents a major "new" acquisition for the Museum, which possesses the finest collection of works by the master in America.
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Keith Christiansen to Chair European Paintings Department at Metropolitan Museum
Monday, September 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, September 8, 2009)—Keith Christiansen, the Jayne Wrightsman Curator of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1989 and a member of the Museum's curatorial staff since 1977, has been elected John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of European Paintings, it was announced today by the Metropolitan Museum's Director, Thomas P. Campbell. He will replace Everett Fahy, who retired in June, effective immediately. The election took place at the September 8 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
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Director Thomas P. Campbell Announces New Senior Staff Appointments at Metropolitan Museum
Monday, September 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, September 8, 2009)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, today announced four major senior staff appointments:
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Carrie Rebora Barratt Named Associate Director for Collections and Administration at Metropolitan Museum
Monday, September 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, September 1, 2009)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that he has named Carrie Rebora Barratt to the position of Associate Director for Collections and Administration, effective immediately. She was formally elected by the Board of Trustees at their September 8 meeting. Most recently, she has been a Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Manager of The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art.
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Peggy Fogelman Elected to Lead Metropolitan Museum's Educational Programs and Initiatives
Monday, September 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, September 8, 2009)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that Peggy Fogelman will join the Museum as the Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education on October 26, 2009. Ms. Fogelman is currently Director of Education and Interpretation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. She will succeed Kent Lydecker, who retired from the Museum in December. Ms. Fogelman was elected at the September 8 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
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Sheila R. Canby Elected to Head Metropolitan Museum's Department of Islamic Art
Monday, September 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
New York, September 8, 2009)—Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that Sheila R. Canby will become the Patti Cadby Birch Curator in Charge of the Museum's Department of Islamic Art, effective October 26, 2009. Her election took place at the September 8 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
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Alejandro Santo Domingo Elected a Trustee at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Monday, September 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, September 8, 2009)—Alejandro Santo Domingo 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. Santo Domingo's election took place at the September 8 meeting of the Board.
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Musical Heritage of China Celebrated in Metropolitan Museum Exhibition Opening September 5
Thursday, September 3, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition celebrating the musical heritage of China – one of the oldest continuously documented traditions with roots reaching back more than 8,000 years – beginning September 5. Featuring some 60 objects and illustrations – drawn largely from the Museum's collections of Asian art and musical instruments – Silk and Bamboo: Music and Art of China will reveal the dynamic interplay of cultures, the continuity of musical practice, and the diversity of China's musical traditions from the fifth century B.C. to the present.
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Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces Recipients of 2009-2010 Fellowships for Research, Travel, and Study
Monday, July 20, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will host a group of 51 fellows, which consists of graduate students and scholars from the United States and around the world. The fellows will undertake study and research projects, either at the Museum or abroad, for periods ranging from three months to one year, most of them beginning in September 2009.
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SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS
MAY 2009–APRIL 2010
Tuesday, July 14, 2009, 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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Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Fund New Gallery for Persian Art at Metropolitan Museum
Sunday, July 12, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
(New York, June 11, 2009)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that a new gallery dedicated to Safavid and Later Persian Art (1500-1924) has been designated the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Gallery. It is one of a suite of exhibition spaces—the Galleries for the Arts of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia—that are overseen by the Museum's Department of Islamic Art and are scheduled to open in 2011. In addition to funding the gallery naming, Mr. and Mrs. Mossavar-Rahmani's significant grant will fund the publication of a catalogue on the entire collection of the Department of Islamic Art and an endowment to support educational programming on Iranian art – all part of the overall project of $50 million including capital and endowment.
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Metropolitan Museum Exhibition Features Work of Renowned 19th-Century American Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) was a French-Irish immigrant who became the greatest American sculptor of his day. From humble roots, through his prodigious talent, he rose in society, eventually counting some of America's most influential people in art and literature, diplomacy and economics, technology, and social policy among his friends and clients. The collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art contains nearly four dozen works by the accomplished artist, representing the entire range of his oeuvre, from early cameos to innovative bas-reliefs to character-penetrating portrait busts and statuettes derived from his public monuments. These unparalleled holdings will be supplemented with loans from private collections and public institutions in the exhibition Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The presentation will address the artist's groundbreaking position in the history of late-19th-century American sculpture, his role in advancing American art on the international stage, and the long history of presenting and collecting his work at the Metropolitan Museum.
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Japanese Mandalas on View at Metropolitan Museum through November 29
Sunday, June 28, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
An impressive group of Japanese mandalas—graphic depictions of the Buddhist universe and its myriad realms and deities—are featured in an exhibition on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through November 29. Showcasing more than 60 magnificent works—painting, sculpture, drawing, metalwork, stoneware, textile, and lacquer—drawn from major museums and collections in the United States, Japanese Mandalas: Emanations and Avatars illustrates the exceptional and complex world of Esoteric Buddhist art in Japan. Highlights of the exhibition include a set of monumental 13th-century mandalas on loan from the Brooklyn Museum—this pair was selected by the Japanese government to be conserved in Japan. Displayed in tandem with iconographic drawings that explain the character and placement of the deities, the mandalas introduce viewers to the supreme Buddha Dainichi Nyorai, the principal buddha of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, and his innumerable emanations and avatars across the Buddhist cosmos.
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New American Wing Galleries
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
When The Charles Engelhard Court—the grand, light-filled pavilion that has long served as the formal entrance to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing—reopens this spring after two years of construction and renovation, the Museum's unparalleled collections of American ceramics, sculpture, stained glass, architectural elements, silver, pewter, glass, and jewelry will finally be seen in all their glory. So, too, will its early American rooms—12 of the Met's historic interiors, mostly from the colonial period, located on three floors of the wing's historic core—that have been reordered, renovated, and reinterpreted. The popular American Wing Café will also reopen in its previous location on the park side of the court. The opening of the galleries marks the completion of the second part (begun in May 2007) of a project to reconfigure, renovate, or upgrade nearly every section of The American Wing by 2011.
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Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Explores Role of Fashion Models as Muses of Recent Eras
Monday, June 22, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion, the spring 2009 exhibition organized by
The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, explores the
reciprocal relationship between high fashion and evolving ideals of beauty,
focusing on iconic fashion models in the latter half of the 20th century and their
roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras.
The exhibition is on view at the Metropolitan from May 6 through August 9,
2009.
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Rarely Seen Medieval Drawings on View in New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
With strokes of genius, artists in the Middle Ages explored the medium of drawing, creating a rich panoply of works ranging from spontaneous sketches to powerful evocations of spirituality and intriguing images of science and the natural world. Opening June 2 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages is the first museum exhibition to examine in depth the achievements of the medieval draftsman. Through some 50 examples created in settings as diverse as a ninth-century monastery and the 14th-century French court, the presentation considers the aesthetics, uses, and techniques of medieval drawings, mastered by artists working centuries before the dawn of the Renaissance. Works from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum are displayed along with important loans from American and European museums, and the great national, university, and monastic libraries of Europe. Many of these manuscripts are so highly prized that they have never before been lent outside of their home countries.
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Michelangelo's First Painting
Thursday, June 11, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Michelangelo's First Painting, a special exhibition beginning June 16 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, presents The Torment of Saint Anthony, the first known painting by Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence 1475- Rome 1564), believed to have been created when he was 12 or 13 years old. Recently acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum, the painting has undergone conservation and technical examination at the Metropolitan Museum. Michelangelo's First Painting will run through September 7, after which the panel will return to the Kimbell Art Museum for display as part of its permanent collection.
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Photography Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Captures the Dramatic Transformation of Paris during the Rise and Fall of Napoleon III
Thursday, June 4, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
During the reign of Emperor Napoleon III, the narrow streets and medieval buildings of Paris gave way to the broad boulevards and grand public works that still define the urban landscape of the French capital. Napoleon III and Paris, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 9 through September 7, 2009, portrays the quickly changing cityscape of Second Empire Paris through a presentation of 40 photographs and 13 works in other media, all drawn from the permanent collection. Spanning the period from 1851 to 1871, the installation begins with a photographic introduction to Napoleon III and his family, then traces the radical transformation of the city under the emperor and his master urban planner Baron Haussmann, and concludes with depictions of the ruins of Paris in the aftermath of the Commune. Many of the works in the installation are by the preeminent photographers of the period, including Gustave Le Gray, Charles Marville, Edouard Baldus, Louis-Émile Durandelle, Alphonse Liébert, and Pierre-Ambrose Richebourg.
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New American Wing Galleries
Monday, May 25, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
When The Charles Engelhard Court—the grand, light-filled pavilion that has long served as the formal entrance to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing—reopens this spring after two years of construction and renovation, the Museum's unparalleled collections of American ceramics, sculpture, stained glass, architectural elements, silver, pewter, glass, and jewelry will finally be seen in all their glory. So, too, will its early American rooms—12 of the Met's historic interiors, mostly from the colonial period, located on three floors of the wing's historic core—that have been reordered, renovated, and reinterpreted. The popular American Wing Café will also reopen in its previous location on the park side of the court. The opening of the galleries marks the completion of the second part (begun in May 2007) of a project to reconfigure, renovate, or upgrade nearly every section of The American Wing by 2011.
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Roxy Paine Creates Monumental Sculpture for 2009 Installation of Metropolitan Museum's Roof Garden
Monday, May 25, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Conceptual artist Roxy Paine (American, b. 1966) has created a site-specific installation for the 2009 season of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, the most dramatic outdoor space for sculpture in New York City. Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom features a 130-foot-long by 45-foot-wide stainless-steel sculpture, Maelstrom (2009), that encompasses the nearly 8,000-square-foot Roof Garden, and is the largest sculpture to have been installed on the roof of the Metropolitan. Set against, and in dialogue with, the greensward of Central Park and its architectural backdrop, this swirling entanglement of stainless- steel pipe showcases the work of an artist keenly interested in the interplay between the natural world and the built environment, as well as the human desire for order amid nature's inherently chaotic processes.