Katrin Sigurdardottir at the Met
October 19, 2010-March 6, 2011
Two new site-specific sculptural installations created by Katrin Sigurdardottir, an Icelandic artist (born 1967) who lives and works in New York City and Reykjavik, are the focus of this exhibition. Sigurdardottir is known for her highly detailed renditions of places, both real and fictional, that often incorporate an element of surprise. Entitled Boiseries, the installations are interpretations of 18th-century French rooms preserved at the Metropolitan, one from the H?tel de Crillon (1777-1780) on the Place de la Concorde, Paris, and the other from the H?tel de Cabris (ca. 1775) at Grasse in Provence. The exhibition is the seventh in the Metropolitan's series of solo exhibitions of the work of contemporary artists at mid-career.
The exhibition is made possible in part by Sarah Peter.
Press preview: Monday, October 18, 10:00 a.m.-noon
The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs
October 19, 2010-January 23, 2011
This is a small, scholarly focused exhibition of about 50 pieces of the distinctive "artistic furniture" and related objects produced by the workshop of Charles Rohlfs (1853-1936) in Buffalo, New York. His unusually inventive forms and imaginative carving combined many influences, from the abstract naturalism of Art Nouveau to the bold forms of the Arts and Crafts movement. The exhibition explores Rohlfs's work in the context of new research that reveals his success in Europe as well as in America, and traces his influence on other 20th-century furniture designers. The exhibition will draw from many public and private collections.
The exhibition is made possible by Alamo Rent A Car. Additional support is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation. The exhibition was organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Chipstone Foundation, and American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Monday, October 18, 10:00 a.m.-noon
John Baldessari: Pure Beauty
October 20, 2010-January 9, 2011
This is the first major U.S. exhibition in 20 years to survey the work of legendary American artist John Baldessari, widely renowned as a pioneer of conceptual art. Baldessari (b. 1931, National City, California) turned from an early career in painting toward photographic images that he combined with text, challenging historically accepted rules of how to make art. In his groundbreaking work of the late 1960s, he transferred snapshots of banal Southern Californian locales onto photo-sensitized canvases and hired a sign painter to label them with their locations or excerpts from how-to books on photography. Throughout the whole of his career, Baldessari's sharp insights into the conventions of art production, the nature of perception, and the relationship of language to mass-media imagery are tempered by a keen sense of humor. The exhibition brings together a full range of the artist's innovative work over five decades, from his early paintings and phototext works, his combined photographs, and the irregularly shaped and over-painted works of the 1990s to his most recent production. A selection of his videos and artist's books will also be included.
The exhibition is made possible in part by The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Glenstone. The exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with Tate Modern, London.
It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Monday, October 18, 10:00 a.m.-noon
Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand
November 10, 2010-April 10, 2011
This exhibition features three giants of photography - Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Edward Steichen (1879-1973), and Paul Strand (1890-1976) - whose works are some of the Metropolitan's greatest photographic treasures. The diverse and groundbreaking photography by these artists will be revealed through a presentation of more than 100 works drawn entirely from the collection. Alfred Stieglitz, a photographer of supreme accomplishment as well as a passionate advocate for photography and modern art through his gallery "291" and his sumptuous journal Camera Work, laid the foundation of the Met's collection. He donated 22 of his own works in 1928 - the first photographs to enter the Museum's collection as works of art - and more than 600 by other photographers, including Steichen and Strand, in later decades. Featured in the exhibition are portraits, city views, cloud studies by Stieglitz, as well as numerous images from his composite portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe, part of a group selected for the collection by O'Keeffe herself. Stieglitz's protege and gallery collaborator, Edward Steichen, was the most talented exemplar of the Photo-Secession, with works such as his three large variant prints of The Flatiron and his moonlit photographs of Rodin's Balzac purposely rivaling the scale, color, and individuality of painting. By contrast, the final double issue of Camera Work (1917) was devoted to the young Paul Strand, whose photographs from 1915-1917 treated three principal themes - movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits - and pioneered a shift from the soft-focus and painterly aesthetic of Pictorialism to the straight approach and graphic power of an emerging modernism.
Accompanied by a publication.
Press preview: Monday, November 8, 10:00 a.m.-noon
Haremhab, The General Who Became King
November 16, 2010-July 4, 2011
The exhibition examines the Metropolitan's well-known statue of Haremhab as a Scribe, focusing on the historical and art-historical significance of the statue and of its subject: a royal scribe, and general of the army under Tutankhamun, who eventually became king (18th Dynasty, ca.1323-1309 B.C.).
Press preview: Monday, November 15, 10:00 a.m.-noon
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 6, October 11, December 27, 2010;
January 17, February 21, April 25, and May 30, 2011
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 Museum and Gardens 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 TicketWeb or 1-800-965-4827
No extra charge for any exhibition.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028
