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Metropolitan Museum of Art, the

1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
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Statement of Purpose

5,000 years of art, architecture, history and archaeology.
Egypt, Greece, Rome, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Conversion by Candlelight. The Four Magdalens by Georges de La Tour brings together at the Metropolitan Museum -- by special arrangement for one month this spring -- four paintings of Mary Magdalen by the l7th-century French artist that are masterpieces of religious expression.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of The Cloisters, the Metropolitan's branch museum in Upper Manhattan devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. A series of special commemorative events is scheduled through the spring, including lectures and seminars, early- music performances, and family workshops.


The Museum

“blog.mode: addressing fashion” Sparks Dialogue at Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute

As a living art, fashion is open to multiple readings, and blog.mode: addressing fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 18, 2007, through
April 13, 2008, presents approximately 40 costumes and accessories dating from the 18th century to the present — all recent Metropolitan Museum acquisitions —
and invites the public to share their reactions via a blog on the Museum’s website.

Over the duration of the exhibition, which will take place in The Costume Institute galleries, individual costumes and accessories will be posted on the blog
periodically with commentary from curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton, and, where relevant, from contemporary designers.

The blog is the Metropolitan Museum’s first foray into the blogosphere, and can be accessed from the “Special Exhibitions” page of the Museum’s website
(www.metmuseum.org). Visitors can respond to the postings from anywhere during the run of the exhibition, including a “blogbar” of computer terminals in
the exhibition galleries.

The exhibition is made possible by Manolo Blahnik.

”Fashion, both a reflection and an expression of the zeitgeist, is open to a wide range of interpretations,” said Harold Koda, Curator in Charge of The Costume
Institute. “While painting and sculpture can sometimes seem to be at an intimidating conceptual remove, fashion is so familiar, so ubiquitous to our
experience that it is inherently and immediately accessible. Individuals who might shy away from commenting on the merits of a Juan Gris or Henry Moore will
readily disclose their thoughts on a gown by John Galliano or a mule by Manolo Blahnik. Unlike its ‘high art’ siblings, fashion, even in its most extreme and avantgardist expression, draws us in with its personal relevance.”

Garments acquired during the past seven years — from a 1730s English man’s suit of red wool lavishly embroidered with gilt paillettes to a 2005 John Galliano for
Christian Dior deconstructed ball gown — will be presented in chronological order to stimulate debate about the vicissitudes of fashion. Acquisitions of note come
from such houses as Adrian, Azzedine Alaïa, Miguel Adrover, Geoffrey Beene, Manolo Blahnik, Hussein Chalayan, Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, Comme des Garçons,
Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rudi Gernreich, Charles James, Donna Karan, Helmut Lang, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Hamish Morrow, Paul Poiret,
Zandra Rhodes, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, Charles Frederick Worth, and Yohji Yamamoto.

Notable acquisitions include a Miguel Adrover ensemble from 2001 made from Quentin Crisp’s old mattress, which Adrover found discarded outside the writer’s
Lower East Side apartment. A fashionable aristocrat’s opulently beaded dress from 1910, at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — which the museum
purchased in 2003 from a London auction house — was later discovered by The Costume Institute’s conservator to have a 24-carat-gold lining inside each bead.
This dress represents the end of an era: a pre-modern moment before women’s bodies were liberated from the constraints of corsets. In an avant-garde ode to the
corset, Jean Paul Gaultier’s 2001 “Des Robes qui se Dérobent,” a strapless palepink silk satin corset dress with a silk tulle overlay embroidered with seed pearls,
has laces that crisscross down an open back, pooling into a train of ribbons. The haute couture beadwork contrasts with the near-naked back, with its shocking rear view.

A jersey dress — from Comme des Garçons’s all-black Paris debut collection of 1983 — was donated by Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman, whose preeminent
collection of Abstract Expressionist art is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum through February 3, 2008. With its reference to Chanel’s “little black
dress” and its denial of an overt female sexuality, the dress epitomizes the art collector’s movement away from the haute couture toward an increasing
originality and experimentalism, and suggests the gutsiness of both client and designer.

A 1947 dress by Adrian provides an ideal example of surrealism on two levels – first in the textile Salvador Dalí created for Wesley Simpson that is printed with
surrealist rocks and boulders, and also in the black shoulder insert (a signature Adrian technique) that forms a woman’s profile on the left shoulder.
Two pairs of thigh-high leather boots made by a Parisian bottier in the 1920s reveal 4.5-inch heels, predating their emergence in high style by at least 20 years.
The boots, worn by demimondaines, provide evidence of the influence of marginal and fetishistic fashions on the mainstream.

A Simon Costin necklace invokes the dark sensibility of Elizabethan literary imagery. Entitled the Incubus Necklace, it incorporates five vials of human semen,
from which dangle baroque pearls. It was last seen in the Met’s AngloMania exhibition in 2005, where it was shown with a Vivienne Westwood gown inspired
by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, and where the necklace served as an ironic commentary on Elizabeth’s status as the widely hailed “Virgin Queen.”

This selection of new acquisitions reflects a fraction of The Costume Institute’s collection of more than 30,000 costumes and accessories spanning five continents
and as many centuries. blog.mode: addressing fashion continues The Costume Institute’s dedication to the acquisition, exhibition, and interpretation of historical
and contemporary fashion. It also reflects the Museum’s mission to actively seek out and obtain masterworks from all eras and corners of the world.

The exhibition is organized by Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, and Andrew Bolton, Curator, both of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute.
Exhibition design is by Michael Langley, graphic design by Sophia Geronimus, and lighting design by Clint Coller and Richard Lichte, all of the Metropolitan
Museum’s Design Department. Chris Paulocik is the Conservator for The Costume Institute.

A book, blog.mode: addressing fashion, published after the close of the exhibition by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. It
will include photographs of all of the garments and accessories from the exhibition, along with curatorial commentary and excerpts from the blog.

The blog for the exhibition will go online at www.metmuseum.org on December 18, 2007, and will accept new comments until April 13, 2008, when the exhibition
closes.


The New Galleries for 19th- and Early 20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture opened to the public on December 4, 2007 with renovated rooms and 8,000 square feet of additional gallery space—the H. J. Heinz II Galleries—to showcase works from 1800 through the early 20th century.

The renovated and expanded galleries feature all of the Museum’s most loved 19th-century paintings by artists such as Cézanne, Manet, Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh, as well as major early-modern works by Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Picasso, and many others. 

Also newly on view: the fully assembled Wisteria Dining Room, a French Art Nouveau interior designed shortly before World War I that is the only complete example of its kind in the United States; Henry Lerolle’s large painting The Organ Rehearsal (a church interior of 1885); a group of newly acquired 19th-century landscape oil sketches; and a selection of rarely exhibited paintings by an international group of artists.

Metropolitan Museum Acquires Diane Arbus Archive

(New York, December 18, 2007)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that it has acquired the complete archive of Diane Arbus (1923-1971), the legendary American photographer known for her revelatory portraits of couples, children, nudists, carnival performers, and eccentrics.

The Estate of Diane Arbus has selected the Museum to be the permanent repository of the artist’s negatives, papers, correspondence, and library. The Museum will collaborate with the Estate
to preserve Arbus’s legacy and to ensure that her work will continue to be seen in the context of responsible scholarship and in a manner that honors the subjects of the photographs and the intentions of the artist.

The Estate’s gifts and promised gifts to the Museum include hundreds of early and unique photographs by Arbus, negatives and contact prints of 7,500 rolls of film, glassine print sleeves annotated by the artist, as well as her photography collection, library, and personal papers including appointment books, notebooks, correspondence, writings, and ephemera. The entire collection - which will be preserved, fully catalogued, and eventually made available for research to scholars, artists, and the general public – will be known as The Diane Arbus Archive.

The Museum has also purchased twenty of Diane Arbus’s most iconic photographs, including such masterpieces as Russian midget friends in a living room on 100th Street, N.Y.C., 1963, and Woman with a veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C., 1968.

Chosen to complement the Metropolitan’s noteworthy photography collection, the prints range in date from her earliest 35mm street photographs – such as Masked boy with friends, Coney Island, N.Y., 1956 – to one of her last pictures, Blind couple in their bedroom, Queens, N.Y., 1971.

Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum, stated: “These remarkable acquisitions will establish the Museum as the center for scholarship on Diane Arbus, and go to the heart of our mission to collect, preserve, study, and exhibit the highest achievements of artists from antiquity to our own age. The Museum is grateful that the artist’s estate has entrusted the Metropolitan with the stewardship of Diane Arbus’s legacy.”

Many of the original materials in The Diane Arbus Archive were featured in Diane Arbus Revelations, the traveling exhibition (2003-2006) that was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with the artist’s estate and presented at the Metropolitan Museum in spring 2005. As Doon Arbus, the artist’s elder daughter, wrote in the accompanying publication’s afterword, she and her sister Amy “kept an awful lot of stuff, partly out of diligence, or superstition, partly out of reverence for the kind of history that survives more or less intact in objects.” These items, the residue of the artist’s life, will be used by this and future generations to trace the evolution of the photographer’s visual ideas through a parallel understanding of the individuals and cultural conditions that molded and stimulated that development.

Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in the Museum’s Department of Photographs, will oversee the long-term effort to fully catalogue and preserve the collection, and to develop plans for future exhibitions and publications. He noted: “It is rare in any field that one of its greatest practitioners should leave behind her entire output.

Because this is the case with Diane Arbus, as it was with Walker Evans, whose personal archive came to the Museum in 1994, the Metropolitan will now have the opportunity to map the creativity of two great artists in the most complete way.

The Diane Arbus Archive will provide a contextual understanding of Arbus’ stunning achievement with the camera, and simultaneously offer fundamental insight into what it means to be an artist in modern times.”

Jasper Johns’s Shades of Gray Revealed in Major Metropolitan Museum Exhibition Opening February 5

 

Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 5, Jasper Johns: Gray will be the first exhibition to examine the use of the color gray in the work of American artist Jasper Johns. From the mid-1950s to the present, gray has been a consistent thread in Johns’s practice and an important means for the artist to evoke different moods and to explore a range of formal ideas. This major exhibition offers a new lens through which to see the work of this pivotal American artist, bringing together more than 120 paintings, reliefs, drawings, prints, and sculptures. Jasper Johns: Gray features masterworks of Johns’s career — such as Canvas, Gray Target, Jubilee, 0 through 9, No, Diver, and The Dutch Wives — as well as works from the artist’s recent Catenary series and new works never before exhibited. 

The exhibition in New York is made possible by United Technologies Corporation.

It was organized by The Art Institute of Chicago, in cooperation with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The exhibition is supported by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

“At the Museum we are especially pleased to be able to present the extraordinarily beautiful and enigmatic work of Jasper Johns, an artist who anticipated many of the dominant concerns of contemporary art, and who continues to astonish and disturb,” remarked Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Curator in Charge of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.

One of the most important American painters and printmakers of the 20th century, Jasper Johns (b. 1930) emerged in the 1950s as a leading artist of the generation that followed “The New York School” of Abstract Expressionists. Johns eschewed the highly subjective themes and expressive techniques of artists such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock and turned to a more conceptual approach to painting. Most widely known for his paintings of flags, targets, numbers, alphabets, and maps, Johns was a progenitor of Pop Art, incorporating elements of popular culture and everyday objects directly into his work. In addition, Johns’s use of language, his monochrome canvases, and his conception of the painting as a material object served as a catalyst for Minimal and Conceptual Art.

This exhibition is the first to focus on Johns’s varied use of gray, tracing the progression of this color throughout the work and highlighting its appearance in diverse media, such as encaustic, oil paint, Sculp-metal, aluminum, silver, lead, graphite, charcoal, and ink. As early as 1955, Johns was working in gray and finding infinite variety within a narrow color spectrum. With gray in particular, Johns’s sensuous, layered surfaces emphasize the physical properties of the work. When asked if gray draws attention away from figuration, for example, Johns replied, “The clues a range of colors gives are lost, of course. Gray puts perception on a more tactile level, perhaps.” He continues, “…through the use of gray, the object nature of the materials would come forward, their physical existence isolated or intensified.”

The exhibition also focuses on the intellectual and emotional significance of gray in Johns’s work, and how it has varied over the past five decades. The neutrality of gray distances his work from that of the Abstract Expressionists, whose paintings were often characterized by black and white compositions or bold colors. In the late 1950s, Johns also used gray to suggest skepticism or ambiguity. “It is the gray zone between two extremes that I’m interested in,” Johns has said. “…You can have a certain view of a thing at one time and a different view of it at another.” In later work, Johns’s use of gray may evoke an emotional coolness or suggest obfuscation, veiling, or concealment.

Jasper Johns: Gray begins with the pairing of the colorful painting False Start (1959) — in which bursts of red, yellow, blue, and orange are surrounded by stenciled words naming but not labeling colors — and Jubilee (1959), its pendant painted in black, white, and gray. With these tactics and with his highly stylized brushstrokes, Johns makes the viewer aware of the arbitrariness of color and “expressive” painting.

The next section of the exhibition will focus on Johns’s early and groundbreaking practice of embedding objects in the paintings themselves, disrupting the illusionistic role of historical painting technique. Highlights include Canvas (1956), Tennyson (1958), and Coat Hanger (1959).

The exhibition continues with sections that demonstrate Johns’s serial practice in gray, objects in which the artist repeatedly reworks sets of favorite found images: flags, targets, numbers, alphabets, and maps. In addition to presenting several well-known paintings on these subjects, these sections will feature large-scale works on paper and a significant body of prints that will highlight the importance of other media in the artist’s oeuvre. Trial prints will be included to show the artist’s working process through these motifs.

In 1961, there was a noticeable change in mood in Johns’s work, and the exhibition will present in a number of significant paintings from this year — including No, Liar, and In Memory of My Feelings--Frank O’Hara — in which gray conveys an emotional tone of bleakness, froideur, or negativity. The exhibition continues with his Device paintings, such as Fool's House (1962), in which tools of the artist’s studio, such as wooden stretcher bars, rulers, or brooms, are agents for art-making and remain attached to the surface of the canvases.

The exhibition proceeds with Johns’s abstract Crosshatch paintings of the 1970s and early 1980s. Although the series is generally known for its bright coloration, among the Crosshatches are a number of important works in gray: The Dutch Wives (1975), an elegant work in encaustic and collage; Céline (1978), a nuanced oil; and Between the Clock and the Bed (1982–83), an encaustic triptych that is titled after a 1940 work by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.

Next, the exhibition follows the artist’s return to figuration in the 1980s. In works such as Racing Thoughts (1984) and Winter (1986), Johns incorporates art-historical and autobiographical motifs in his paintings and, in drawings, experiments with materials such as ink on plastic. The last section of the exhibition focuses on Johns’s Catenary series, which began in the 1990s, and more recent work. The name of the Catenary series refers to the artist’s use of the curve made by a cord hanging from two points — as in Bridge (1997). The exhibition concludes with two recent gray paintings, Beckett (2005) and Within (1983 and 2005), and a newly released lithograph, Within (2007), none of which have been exhibited before.

Jasper Johns: Gray is curated by James Rondeau, Frances and Thomas Dittmer Chair, Department of Contemporary Art, Douglas Druick, Searle Chair of the Department of Medieval to Modern European Painting and Sculpture and the Prince Trust Chair of the Department of Prints and Drawings, both of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Nan Rosenthal, Senior Consultant in the Met’s Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. Nan Rosenthal organized the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication that features an interview with the artist by Nan Rosenthal and essays by James Rondeau; Douglas Druick; Mark Pascale, Associate Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago; Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art, University of Texas, Austin; Barbara Rose, independent scholar; and Kristin Lister, Conservator of Painting, and Kelly Keegan, Assistant Conservator of Paintings, both at The Art Institute of Chicago. The catalogue will be published by The Art Institute of Chicago and distributed by Yale University Press ($65, hardcover).

The Metropolitan Museum will offer an array of education programs in conjunction with the exhibition. A Sunday at the Met program on March 2 will feature lectures by Catherine Craft and Harry Cooper, followed by a conversation between Richard Field and Richard Shiff. A second Sunday at the Met on April 13 includes lectures by Roberta Bernstein and world renowned author Michael Crichton, followed by a panel discussion with Douglas W. Druick, James Rondeau, and Nan Rosenthal. Due to popular demand, the April 13 program is ticketed; tickets are free with Museum admission.

An “Evening for Educators” teacher workshop on Friday, March 7, taught by Stella Paul, will examine the artist’s signature imagery: targets, flags, maps, and numbers — images drawn from commonplace encounters — and consider its meaning and context. Other events include gallery talks, Community and Workplace programs upon request, and the screening of the documentary films Jasper Johns: Take an Object and Artist: Jasper Johns on February 26 and 28 in the Bonnie J. Sacerdote Memorial Lecture Hall.  

An audio tour, part of the Metropolitan's Audio Guide program, will be available for rental ($7, $6 for members, and $5 for children under 12).

The Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg.

The exhibition will also be featured on the Museum’s website at www.metmuseum.org.

Jasper Johns: Gray is currently on view at The Art Institute of Chicago through January 6, 2008.

 

VISITOR INFORMATION

 

Hours

Fridays and Saturdays                                                                                                               9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.

Sundays, Tuesdays–Thursdays                                                                                                  9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

Met Holiday Mondays in the Main Building:

December 24 and December 31, 2007; January 21,

February 18, May 26, and September 1, 2008

Sponsored by Bloomberg                                                                                                            9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

All other Mondays closed; Jan. 1, Thanksgiving, and Dec. 25 closed

 

Suggested Admission (Includes Main Building and The Cloisters on the Same Day)

Adults $20.00, seniors (65 and over) $15.00, students $10.00

Members and children under 12 accompanied by adult free

Advance tickets available at www.TicketWeb.com or 1-800-965-4827.

For More Information (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org

No extra charge for any exhibition.


Ancestral Origins of African Masterpieces Explored in Major Metropolitan Museum Exhibition This Fall

Features Earliest African Creations to Capture Imagination of  Western Avant-Garde Artists
 
Exhibition dates: October 2, 2007 - March 2, 2008
Exhibition location: Special exhibition galleries, first floor
Press preview: Monday, October 1, 10 a.m. - noon

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a special exhibition of acclaimed sculptural masterpieces from the heart of Africa’s equatorial rainforest, beginning October 2, 2007. The exhibition explores not only the significance of the works presented in their countries of origin but also how their reception in the West led them to enter the mainstream of universal art. Organized thematically, Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary explains the sources of cultural and spiritual inspiration that led to their creation in equatorial Africa.

Drawn from the most important collections of African art in Europe and the United States, the more than 130 works featured in the exhibition relate to 12 distinct traditions in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were created to celebrate the lives of an extended family’s most notable ancestors and to give expression to their ongoing role as advocates with the divine.  
 
Many of the works on view won renown as fresh sources of inspiration for early 20th-century Western avant-garde artists, who collected them and kept them in their studios. The excitement generated by those works when they first came to the attention of artists in Paris, Berlin, and New York is reflected in such colloquial names as “The Black Venus” and “Great Bieri,” titles by which they have been known ever since. Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Henri Matisse were among the many artists who not only collected African sculpture but who also carefully studied it in the newly formed ethnographic museums of the day.

The exhibition is made possible in part by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.

“Given that Western artists’ engagement with these African works was essentially concerned with their formal qualities – namely the dynamic portrayal of the human form as it was distilled into essential elements – and given this emphasis on their originality, both the origins and spiritual meaning of these great works for their creators were subsequently largely ignored,” said Alisa LaGamma, Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan and organizer of this exhibition. “Eternal Ancestors seeks to reveal the mystery behind the original spiritual and social imperatives that led to their creation by examining the history of the reception of these African artifacts in the West. I believe that an awareness of what inspired them allows us to appreciate Africa’s heritage in a meaningful context.”
 
In the traditions of central Africa, as in many other parts of the world, ties to notable ancestors have been maintained through preservation of sacred relics. The exhibition opens with a series of comparisons between celebrated sculptures, such as 19th-century Fang reliquaries created in Gabon with works from the Metropolitan’s superb medieval and Asian art collections. These comparisons afford a unique opportunity to appreciate conceptual parallels between some of the most exalted expressions of devotional art in the history of Western, Eastern, and African civilizations.  
 
Among the highlights of the exhibition are the wood heads, half-figures, and full figures carved by Fang masters. Created to be positioned at the summit of bark receptacles, the works are striking for their synthesis of intensely introspective contemplation and physical dynamism. In this exhibition, two of the most renowned Fang creations will be reunited for the first time since they were in the collection of the sculptor Jacob Epstein during the first half of the 20th century; they are the Female Figure once owned by Derain and now by the Metropolitan, and Seated Female (“Black Venus”), a stunning figure unrivaled in its synthesis of elegance, grace, and physical power, on loan from Musée Dapper in Paris. These two exceptional masterpieces were part of the early wave of African artifacts to arrive in Europe that came to be identified as muses to a new direction in the history of art.  
 
Also featured are two-dimensional wood figurative elements sheathed in precious metals created by the Kota and Mahongwe peoples in Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. Among the seminal examples on view is a Sculptural Element from a Reliquary Ensemble (Museé du Quai Branly) created by a Kota artist. Made of wood, brass, and copper, this historically important piece was collected over the course of an exploratory journey to the region by the French 1883 expedition led by Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza. It entered the French national collections and was included in the earliest exhibition of artifacts from the region sponsored by France to promote interest in its colonial expansion at the Orangerie du Jardin des Plantes in 1886.  
 
Yet another distinctive genre consists of Bwende and Bembe soft sculptures from the Republic of Congo, with their emphasis on a vibrant red palette, strategic use of contrasting textile patterns, and grand cosmic gestures that announce their role as active intermediaries with the divine. Among the most spectacular and rare examples is a life-size Female Figure by the Bwende master Makosa of Kingoyi that was collected by the Swedish missionary Efraim Andersson in 1938 (Museum of World Culture).  
 
Film
Film footage in the exhibition will emphasize the importance of performance rites
as devotional forms of expression and demonstrate the music and dance that are
integral parts of those ceremonies. While acknowledging that these works have
ultimately transcended their original cultural contexts, the exhibition seeks to
examine them on their own terms.  
 
Exhibition Catalogue
The illustrated catalogue Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African
Reliquary – with essays by specialists in various fields – will accompany the
exhibition. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by
Yale University Press, it will be available at the Museum’s book shops for $65.  
The catalogue is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the
Doris Duke Fund for Publications.
 
Organizational Credit
The exhibition is organized by Alisa LaGamma.
A variety of educational programs will be presented in conjunction with the
exhibition, which will also be featured on the Museum’s Web site

 

Magnificent, Rarely Seen Tapestries on View at Metropolitan Museum this Fall

Exhibition dates: October 17, 2007 – January 6, 2008
Exhibition location: The Tisch Galleries, 2nd floor


From the Middle Ages through the late 18th century, the courts of Europe lavished vast resources on tapestries made in precious materials after designs by the leading artists of the day, and works in this spectacular medium were prized by the aristocracy for their artistry and also as tools of propaganda. Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor – on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning October 17 – will offer the first comprehensive survey of high-quality 17th-century European tapestry, and will demonstrate the importance of tapestry as a prestigious figurative medium throughout that century. Organized by the Metropolitan Museum, it is a sequel to the ground-breaking exhibition, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence, that received widespread public and scholarly acclaim during its presentation at the Metropolitan in spring 2002.

“This exhibition will provide one of the grandest displays of Baroque tapestry that has been seen since Louis XIV strolled through the galleries of Versailles,” said Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. “As a visual experience, it will be without parallel for a modern audience.”

The exhibition is made possible by the Hochberg Foundation Trust and the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund.
Corporate support is provided by Fortis.
The exhibition is also made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Society of Friends of Belgium in America, and the Flemish Government.
It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with the generous participation of the Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid.
The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Drawing from collections in more than 15 countries, Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor presents 40 rare tapestries made between 1590 and 1720.
Commissioned by kings, popes, and noblemen, these woven frescoes embody the grandest artistic ambitions of their patrons. The pieces have been selected for their condition and color, and together will provide an unprecedented insight to the role of tapestry in 17th–century court culture.
The secondary theme of the exhibition is the stylistic development of tapestry during this era and the contributions of artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Simon Vouet, Charles LeBrun, Pietro da Cortona and Giovanni Romanelli, as they responded to the challenges of the medium in unique and individual ways. The exhibition will include about 25 designs and oil sketches, demonstrating the thought and artistry which these woven frescoes required.

About half of the tapestries in the exhibition derive from Flemish workshops, reflecting the preponderant role of the Low Countries in the greatest tapestry production of the day. Highlights of the Brussels tapestry industry include the Triumphs of the Church designed by Peter Paul Rubens for the archduchess Isabella in 1626, tapestries from the Austrian state collection designed by Jacob Jordaens and others in the 1630s and 1640s, and the Victories of the Duke of Marlborough woven in Brussels in the early 1700s for Blenheim Palace in England.
Migrant Flemish weavers also played a key part in the formation of new workshops elsewhere in Europe. The exhibition will include rare examples of this work, including a throne canopy made for the King of Denmark in 1584, tapestries made at Mortlake for Charles I, King of England in the 1620s, and exquisite tapestries from Florence, Rome and Paris. Some of the most ambitious tapestries of the day were woven for Louis XIV at the Gobelins manufactory, established in Paris in 1662. The exhibition will include a survey of the finest products of this enterprise.

The Metropolitan Museum’s Thomas P. Campbell, curator of the exhibition, noted: “For most rich 17th-century patrons, tapestry remained the principal medium of figurative decoration and propaganda. Yet the subject is barely mentioned in modern history books. Tapestry in the Baroque provides a counterbalance to this myopic vision of the past.”

Exhibition Overview and Highlights

The exhibition comprises nine sections that follow the development of the leading European tapestry centers between the mid-1580s and about 1720. The first section focuses on the diaspora of weavers from the Southern Netherlands during the civil war of the 1570s and 1580s and the creation of new workshops elsewhere. It opens with a spectacular throne canopy made by Flemish weavers in Copenhagen in 1584, and wall hangings from a manufactory established in Delft in about 1590 by Frans Spiering, formerly of Antwerp. The Spiering workshop enjoyed great success during the following 20 years, providing tapestries to the Protestant courts of northern Europe from designs by artists like Karel van Mander the Elder. This section will also include tapestries made in Munich in the early 1600s for Maximilian I by Flemish artists and designers.

The second section of the exhibition will focus on the revival of the Brussels industry in the early 1600s, under the patronage of the Archdukes, Albert and Isabella. Local artists lacked the design experience of their forebears, as evidenced by sets such as the Battles of Archduke Albert and, consequently, “old master” designs continued to play an important part in Brussels production throughout the first third of the 17th century, as various examples will illustrate. During the 1610s new life was introduced to Brussels tapestry design by Rubens’ Decius Mus designs (ca. 1616), which will be represented by an especially fine weaving from the Spanish royal collection. Rubens painted the cartoons for the Decius series in oil on canvas, rather than the traditional medium of watercolor on paper, with the consequence that the design was conceived in terms of color, light and shadow, which were challenging for the weavers to reproduce in wool and silk.

Nonetheless, the series provided an important new design to the repertory of the Brussels workshops and, in time, a significant model for other designers, both in Brussels and elsewhere.

The recession of the Brussels industry during the last quarter of the 16th century allowed the tapestry industries in other countries to grow and flourish (often with the aid of immigrant Flemish weavers). The most important of these competing centers was Paris, which will be the subject of the third section of the exhibition.

Here again, the challenge was to reference good designs. Late 16th-century artwork provided some models, such as a manuscript Story of Artemisia created in the 1560s for Catherine de Medici with illustrations by Antoine Caron. Forty years later, this was used as the basis for cartoons painted by Toussaint Dubreuil, among others. A new repertoire was introduced from the early 1600s by artists such as Henri Lerambert, who was responsible for completing a Story of Diana series conceived by Dubreuil. This will be represented by an especially fine weaving from the Kunshistorisches Museum, Vienna. The continuing quest for new designs led Louis XIII to commission a Story of Constantine series from Rubens in 1622. The resulting work is one of Ruben’s greatest contributions to the tapestry medium, although it failed to capture the royal appointment for which the artist hoped, partly because Louis and his courtiers perceived some of the same design flaws in the compositions as those already noted in the Decius series. It was not until the late 1620s that the Paris ateliers found their true champion with the work of Simon Vouet. Like the most successful tapestry designers of the mid-16th century, Vouet produced his cartoons in collaboration with a team of artists, some skilled in landscapes, others in border design, ensuring that the whole surface of the completed cartoons was well drawn, richly patterned, and visually engaging.

The exhibition will include one tapestry and various engravings from Vouet’s Story of the Old Testament.

Henri IV’s patronage of the Paris workshops provided an example for other courts of the day. In 1619, James I, King of England, founded a new manufactory at Mortlake on the outskirts of London, staffed with Flemish weavers who were enticed to England in great secrecy. The fourth section of the exhibition will consider the production of this workshop before the outbreak of the English civil war in the early 1640s. During its early years, Mortlake also depended for models on “old master” designs, such as Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles, the original cartoons of which were purchased in Genoa in 1623. The first set of this design was woven for Charles I (king from 1625) between 1626 and 1636, with elaborate allegorical borders designed by the German artist Frans Cleyn. The exhibition will include one piece of this set. During the following decade, Cleyn developed new series for the English court under the influence of work by Rubens and Van Dyck. Rare examples of his work will be included in the exhibition.

The fifth section of the exhibition will return the focus to Brussels. In 1626 the Archduchess Isabella commissioned Rubens to create a series of tapestries for the convent of the Descalzes Reales in Madrid. The resulting Triumph of the Eucharist series, Rubens’ most ambitious tapestry scheme, is an all-surrounding, trompe l’oeil ensemble that blends biblical and allegorical figures with contemporary portraits. The ensemble survives in its entirety and the Spanish royal collection has agreed to lend two key pieces to the exhibition. These will be displayed in the context of oil sketches by Rubens so that the project can be followed from conception to final design. The second part of this section will feature work by Rubens’ contemporaries and followers, such as Jacob Jordaens and Jan van den Hoecke, who combined the tromp l’oeil and bravura of Rubens designs with more decorative and anecdotal elements. The tapestry designs of these and other artists ensured the continuing vitality of the Brussels workshops during the mid-16th century.

The sixth section of the exhibition will consider contemporary developments in Italy. The Italian nobility and clergy continued to place a high premium on tapestry throughout the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Nonetheless, because of the cost of production, most of the princely manufactories established in the 1530s and 1540s had long since closed, with the exception of the Medici manufactory, which continued to make tapestries for the ducal family and a handful of private clients. Various products of the Medici works drawn from the collection of the city of Florence will be featured, including works by Lodovico Cardi and Lorenzo Lippi. These reflect the stylistic development of Florentine art during the first decades of the 17th century. Inspired by the example of 17th-century Italian patrons, and by the contemporary enterprises in Paris, London, and elsewhere, the Barberini family established a new manufactory in Rome during the late 1620s. Tapestries produced at this workshop from designs by artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Giovanni Romanelli were a key component of the visual propaganda with which the Barberini family promoted their status in Baroque Rome. The exhibition will include rare examples of this work from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and from the Vatican collections.

The seventh section of the exhibition will concentrate on the Gobelins manufactory, created by Jean Baptiste Colbert in Paris in the early 1660s. Colbert amalgamated the existing Paris workshops at a single site, under the direction of the versatile and gifted artist Charles Le Brun, with the intention of devoting their energies to the production of splendid tapestries to aggrandize Louis XIV.
Benefiting from royal funding and the combined efforts of the most skilled artists and weavers in the country, the tapestries produced at the Gobelins during the following three decades are as fine as any tapestries ever produced. The exhibition will feature pieces from some of the most ambitious and artistic series made for Louis, including the Elements, the Story of Alexander, the Story of the King, and the Royal Residences. Colbert died in 1683 and under his successor, Louvois, Le Brun fell from royal favor. During the 1680s a significant portion of the Gobelins production was dedicated to the reproduction of some of the finest tapestry designs of the 1520s and 1530s, as well as various fresco schemes by Raphael and Giulio Romano, in an attempt to appropriate the riches of past patrons to the court of Louis XIV. Key examples will be included. A number of new designs were also developed from a variety of sources, including a series depicting the exotic landscape and animals of Brazil, inspired by paintings of the Dutch artist Albert Eckhout.

At the same time that Colbert established the Gobelins, he also established the Beauvais manufactory to produce tapestries for the commercial market. The eighth section of the exhibition will focus on this production, which had a more modest and decorative character than that of the Gobelins. Series such as the Berain Grotesques and the Chinoiseries introduce a decorative character that reflects the changes in contemporary court taste.

With the example of the French court and the Gobelins, tapestry remained a central component in the decoration of the courts and great houses throughout Europe during the last quarter of the 17th century and the opening decades of the 18th century. Meeting this demand, the Brussels workshops enjoyed something of a second renaissance, producing exquisite tapestries from designs by artists like Jan van Orley and Philippe de Hondt. The exhibition will conclude with some of the most ambitious of these works, such as the Victories of the Duke of Marlborough from Blenheim Palace and a Naval Battle from Neues Schloss, Schleissheim. The latter is the size of a modern-day cinema screen and just as dramatic as a Hollywood movie.

Exhibition Credits and Catalogue
Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor is organized by Thomas P. Campbell, Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, edited by Thomas P. Campbell with essays by an international team of experts. It will be the first history of Baroque tapestry available in English. The catalogue will be available in the Metropolitan Museum’s book shops.
The catalogue is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc., and the Doris Duke Fund for Publications.

Audio Guides
An audio tour, part of the Metropolitan’s Audio Guide program, will be available for rental ($7, $6 for members, and $5 for children under 12).
The Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg.

Educational Programs
A variety of education programs will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition, including a two-day symposium on October 20-21 and two sessions of a teacher workshop on November 3. The symposium will bring together noted scholars to present current research on 17th-century European tapestry, while the workshops will offer teachers an opportunity to explore the tapestries’ narratives and artistic achievement with instructors Thomas P. Campbell and Rika Burnham, Associate Museum Educator at the Metropolitan.

The exhibition will also be featured on the Museum’s Web site at www.metmuseum.org.
A version of this exhibition will be on view at the Patrimonio Nacional in Madrid in Spring 2008.

Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute Salutes Power of “Superheroes” Imagery in Fashion

As superheroes enjoy a surge in mass popularity not seen since the golden age of
comic books in the 1940s, The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of
Art will explore the symbolic and metaphorical associations between these fictional
characters and fashion in Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, an exhibition at the
Museum from May 7 through September 1, 2008. The exhibition will feature
approximately 70 ensembles including movie costumes, avant-garde haute couture,
and high-performance sportswear to reveal how the superhero serves as the
ultimate metaphor for fashion and its ability to empower and transform the human
body.
The exhibition is made possible by Giorgio Armani.
Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.
“Today, superhero imagery has suffused almost every aspect of popular culture,”
said Andrew Bolton, Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute.
“The superhero’s iconic costume of cape, mask, and bodysuit finds many
fashionable permutations. But fashion’s embrace of the superhero extends beyond
iconography, to issues of identity, sexuality, and nationalism. Fashion shares with
the superhero an inherent metaphorical malleability which fuels its fascination
with the idea and the ideal of the superhero.”
To celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the Museum's Costume Institute Gala
Benefit will take place on Monday, May 5, 2008. Giorgio Armani will serve as
Honorary Chair of the Gala. Co-Chairs will be actor George Clooney; actress
Julia Roberts; and Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.
The exhibition, in the Museum’s first-floor special exhibition galleries, will include
movie costumes as well as radical fashions that literally and figuratively reference
superhero iconography, including Bernhard Willhelm’s 2006 royal blue dress
emblazoned with a red-and-yellow “S” emblem, a 1996 Walter van Beirendonck
pink vinyl inflatable jacket, and a John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture
corset and bikini bottom from his 2001 “Wonder Woman” collection. A Thierry
Mugler motorcycle bustier with polychrome handlebars and side-view mirrors
evokes Ghost Rider in its comic-strip exaggeration, while a Hussein Chalayan
Airplane dress with battery-operated moveable flaps shares the Flash’s streamlined
aerodynamics. Also included is an array of second-skin body suits for extreme
sports, as well as luminous, glow-in-the-dark clothing.
Other designers in the exhibition include Giorgio Armani, Balenciaga, Pierre
Cardin, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Rudi
Gernreich, Givenchy, Eiko Ishioka, House of Harlot, Michiko Koshino, Martin
Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Moschino, Nike, Gareth Pugh, Paco
Rabanne, Jeremy Scott, Speedo, and Three As Four.

Objects will be organized thematically around specific superheroes, whose movie
costumes and superpowers will be catalysts for discussion of key concepts of
superheroism and their expression in fashion. Superman and Spiderman costumes
will address the subject of The Graphic Body, relating Superman’s ‘S’ chevron to
designer logos and branding. Batman and Cat Woman will represent The
Fetishistic Body – their sexually charged costumes have inspired a variety of PVC,
rubber, and leather fashions. The stars and stripes of Wonder Woman’s uniform,
a composite of the American flag, epitomize The Patriotic Body and designs that
appropriate patriotic emotions implicit in the character. The Hulk, a metaphor for
male potency, will introduce a section on The Phallic Body, which includes
inflatable clothing that swells to exaggerate the male physique.
The Flash – a character who possesses superhuman speed -- will address the
Aerodynamic Body as manifest in high-tech sportswear such as Nike’s “Swift Suit”
and Speedo’s “Fastskin Suit,” which enhance athletic performance in sprinters and
swimmers respectively. Iron Man’s costume will represent The “Mechatronic”
Body, and examine avant-garde fashion that combines mechanical and electronic
components. The Mutant Body, denoted by the X-Men, will highlight clothing
that morphs men into beasts. Ghost Rider, the biker-demon with flaming skull,
and The Punisher, the vigilante who sports a giant death-skull emblem on his Tshirt,
will symbolize The Postmodern Body that suggests an anti-hero identity
through the eclectic mixing of street styles.
The exhibition is organized by Andrew Bolton, Curator, with the support of
Harold Koda, Curator in Charge, both of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume
Institute.
A book, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, published by The Metropolitan
Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, will accompany the
exhibition, and will feature an introduction by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Michael Chabon. The book will also be excerpted on the Museum’s website


August 1, 2007
VISITOR INFORMATION
Hours
Fridays and Saturdays 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Sundays, Tuesdays–Thursdays 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Met Holiday Mondays in the Main Building: September 3, October 8, 2007
Sponsored by Bloomberg 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
All other Mondays closed; Jan. 1, Thanksgiving, and Dec. 25 closed

Recommended Admission (Includes Main Building and The Cloisters on the Same Day)
Adults $20.00, seniors (65 and over) $15, students $10.00
Members and children under 12 accompanied by adult free
Advance tickets available at www.TicketWeb.com or 1-800-965-4827.
For More Information (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org
No extra charge for any exhibition.

For More Information (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org

No extra charge for any exhibition.

Highlights & Collections


Greek Amphora
8th century B.C.

OF SPECIAL NOTE:

The Private Colleection of Edgar Degas, October 1, 1997-January 11, 1998 gathers together for the first time in almost 80 years the extraordinary and vast collection of art -- long since dispersed in public and private collections around the world -- that Degas assembled during his lifetime. On view will be more than 250 works by such artists as Ingres, Delacroix, Gauguin, Manet, Cezanne, and Van Gogh.


La Maison aux murs craques
by Paul Cezanne, 1894. The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection. Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1993.

The Howard Gilman Gallery

Opened October 16,1997
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened its first gallery designed for and dedicated exclusively to the presentation of photographs. The inaugural exhibition, on view through February 1, features rarely seen treasures recently acquired by the Gilman Paper Company Collection, the finest privately owned collection of photographs. The 55 European and American works on view present a dialogue between the ambitious compositions of professional photographers and the intimate photographs of gentleman amateurs from the 1840s to the 1860s. The second installation, on display through June 14, features masterpieces of American pictorialist photography of the years 1895-1915 drawn from the Gilman Paper Company Collection and the Museum's Alfred Stieglitz Collection. The selection serves as a preamble to the special exhibition Paul Strand circa 1916, opening March 10 in the adjacent galleries for drawings, prints, and photographs (see page 3). The Howard Gilman Gallery is located on the Museum's second floor at the crossroads of the galleries devoted to the 19th-century paintings and those devoted to works on paper.

Sculpture and Decorative Arts of the Quattrocento

Opened September 30,1997
The gallery adjacent to the studiolo of Federico da Montefeltro at Gubbio (see page 17) has reopened as a gallery devoted to sculpture and decorative arts of the 15th century in Italy -- the period of the studiolo itself. Some of the gallery's treasures have not been seen for many years, such as the marble Madonna by Benedetto da Maiano and the glazed terracotta lunette with Saint Michael by Andrea della Robbia. A number of portrait medals bring leading personalities to light: Federico da Montefeltro himself, Francesco Sforza, popes Pius 11 and Paul II, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Savonarola. The Metropolitan's distinguished holdings of goldsmiths's work from this period are back on view, notably the Florentine Processional Cross from Santa Chiara. A strong Tuscan accent is detected throughout the gallery, as Florentines influenced the art of most of the Italian cities during the Quattrocento.

New Chinese Galleries

Opened May 22,1997
After two years of major reconstruction, the Museum reopened its galleries for later Chinese art -- a superbly renovated and significantly expanded 13,400-square-foot exhibition space housing the Metropolitan's extensive and world-renowned collection.
The new galleries showcase the Museum's important holdings of Chinese painting and calligraphy dating from the 8th through the 20th century as well as a magnificent selection ofjades, lacquers, textiles, metalwork, and other decorative art objects from the 12th through the 18th century. Following the inaugural installation, a program of thematic rotations and special exhibitions will highlight different facets of the permanent collection.
Made possible by Mrs. Vincent Astor and The Vincent Astor Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Dillon and The Dillon Fund, Florence and Herbert Irving, Oscar L. Tang, and Charlotte C. Weber.

The New Arnarna GaHeries: Egyptian Art 1353 - 1295 B.C.

Opened October 8,1996
The Museum owns an exceptional collection of works of ancient Egyptian art from the reigns of King Akhenaten (Amarna period, ca. 1353-1336 B.C.) and his successors (post- Amarna period, ca. 1336-1295 B.C.). Primary works are the yellow jasper head fragment, the purple quartzite head of a queen, the scribe statue of Haremhab, the head of Tutankhamun, and objects of glass, ivory, Egyptian alabaster, and gold. The reinstallation of The Amarna Galleries has been made possible by Judith and Russell Carson.

Phase I of the New Greek and Roman Art Galleries:

The Robert and Rene'e Belfer Court

Opened June 1, 1996
The Belfer Court constitutes Phase I of the renovation of the Greek and Roman Galleries and reinstallation of the Greek and Roman collections. The western section of the court, devoted to the earliest Greek art, contains Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenaean, and Geometric objects, while the eastern section documents the rich and colorful picture of Archaic Greece, with a comprehensive representation of major regions and centers.

Studiolo from the Palace of Duke Federico da Montefeltro at Gubbio

Opened May 21,1996
After almost 30 years in storage, a room of rare, intricately inlaid Renaissance trompe l'oeil panels -- masterpieces of wall design and linear perspective -- is installed permanently in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The panels once constituted the wainscoting of the studiolo built for Duke Federico da Montefeltro's palace in Gubbio, Italy, between 1475 and 1482. The works entered the Metropolitan's collection in 1939 and were displayed until 1967, when they were placed in storage. For eight years, in preparation for reinstallation, an extensive conservation treatment campaign stabilized the panels and the ceiling and restored them to their l5th-century character. The panels, designed to create the illusion of an interior with open trompe l'oeil cupboards, depict, among other things, books, musical instruments, Federico da Montefeltro's coat of arms, parts of his ar-mor, and, in the center panel, the Order of the Garter, which he received from the king of England.

The African Gallery

Reopened February 1, 1996
The reopened permanent installation of the art of Equatorial and Central Africa, featuring sculpture from the Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria) given to the Museum in 1991 by Klaus and Dolly Perls. Carved ivory tusks, bronze palace plaques, queen mother heads, and court and ceremonial objects given by Mr. and Mrs. Perls have joined the Museum's collection in the renovated gallery. Approximately 400 works, from elaborate masks to power figures to household objects, are included.

Antonio Ratti Textile Center

Opened December 14,1995
The Antonio Ratti Textile Center is the largest, most technically advanced, and best-equipped textile study, storage, and conservation center in any art museum.
Occupying more than 25,000 square feet on the Museum's ground level, the center functions as a storage facility, conservation laboratory, and computerized study center for almost all of the 36,000 textiles in the Metropolitan's encyclopedic collections, which include textiles from civilizations around the world created over three millennia. Among the works in the collection are tapestries, carpets, embroideries, lace, ecclesiastical vestments, and archaeological fragments.
The center is made possible by a major grant from the Fondazione Antonio Ratti of Como, Italy.
Additional support has been provided by the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, Toyota Motor Corporation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Exhibits & Special Events

http://www.metmuseum.org/calendar/index.asp

 

Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine art

Opened November 14, 2000

This past fall, the new Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine art opened in a dramatically expanded and redesigned space that includes an intimate, cryptlike gallery under the Grand Staircase in the Great Hall—an area never before accessible to the public. Featured in the installation is the Museum's extensive collection of superb secular and religious art produced in the Byzantine Empire from its capital in Constantinople to its southern border in Egypt. Some of the earliest images developed by the Christian church are on display as well as contemporary works from the surviving Greco-Roman tradition and examples of Judaica. Selections from the Museum's rich collection of provincial Roman and barbarian jewelry demonstrate the accomplished artistry of the diverse people beyond the western borders of the Byzantine state who helped shape early Europe. The opening of the Jaharis Galleries constitutes the first phase in the planned reinstallation of the permanent collection of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters.

 

Vélez Blanco Patio

Reopened May 12, 2000

The early 16th-century Fajardo castle at Vélez Blanco was an important landmark in the history of the Spanish Renaissance. The delicate ornamental carved marbles that composed the castle's magnificent arcaded patio were acquired early in the 20th century for installation in the Park Avenue home of George Blumenthal, a future president of the Metropolitan Museum, and were bequeathed to the Museum at the time of his death in 1941. The patio, which was reconstructed at the Museum in 1964 and became commonly known as the Blumenthal Patio, has for the past three years undergone conservation and refurbishment with the addition of a new marble floor more in keeping with the original structure. In celebration of the reopening of the patio, The Forgotten Friezes from the Castle of Vélez Blanco and Sculpture and Decorative Arts of the Spanish Renaissance are also on view

The New Cypriot Galleries

Opened April 5, 2000

With the opening of the Cypriot Galleries, some 600 works from the historic Cesnola Collection—comprising antiquities from Cyprus in all major media and ranging in date from ca. 2500 B.C. to ca. A.D. 300—have returned to public view. The newly designed installation marks the end of Phase II in the renovation of the Greek and Roman Galleries. Acquired by Luigi Palma di Cesnola while he was serving as American consul in Cyprus, these works were purchased by the newly formed Metropolitan Museum between 1874 and 1876 and constituted its first large collection of archaeological materials. In 1879, Cesnola was named the Museum’s first director. The new presentation emphasizes the collection's particular strengths in the areas of sculpture, bronze, and precious metals.

Accompanied by a publication.

 

New Galleries for Ancient Near Eastern Art

Opened October 19, 1999

Newly renovated and reinstalled, with natural light now illuminating the Assyrian reliefs within, the galleries that house the permanent collection of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art have reopened to the public. The installation displays sculpture, metalwork, seals, and other objects dating from 8000 B.C. to A.D. 700 from ancient Mesopotamia, Iran, and their neighbors, ranging from Anatolia and the Arabian Peninsula to the Indus Valley, and Central Asia to the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout the galleries, these works of art are set in contexts that illuminate their use and significance in antiquity as well as their connections to the art of neighboring cultures.

Among the strengths of the collection are objects excavated by Museum-sponsored projects at Nippur, Nimrud, and Hasanlu; superb ivories from Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia; silver and gold objects from Iran; and foreign long-term loans from the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology of the Academy of Sciences, Tajikistan, the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, and the British Museum, London.

Support for the reinstallation of the Galleries for Ancient Near Eastern Art has been provided by The Hagop Kevorkian Fund.

 

The New Greek Galleries

Opened April 20, 1999

Seven completely renovated and reinstalled galleries for Archaic and Classical Greek art are now open to the public on the Museum’s first floor. This stage in the three-phase expansion of the exhibition space devoted to Greek and Roman art comprises the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery—the grand vaulted gallery that was formerly known as the Cypriot corridor, now fully skylit and clad in limestone walls as originally envisioned by McKim, Mead and White in 1917—and the six flanking galleries. Refurbished to their original Neoclassical grandeur, the galleries house a generous selection of the Museum’s finest works from the sixth through fourth century B.C. The new galleries constitute the largest and most comprehensive permanent installation of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.


Key Personnel:

Philippe de Montebello, Director

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