Jewish Museum Holds Edouard Vuillard Exhibition and Five Lectures, May/June

In conjunction with the new exhibition, Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940, The Jewish Museum is presenting five related lectures. Highlights include a three-pArt Daytime lecture series on May 7 and 21 and June 4 featuring historian Jane Becker and Vuillard exhibition curator Stephen Brown; artist Lisa Yuskavage in conversation with Norman Kleeblatt, The Jewish Museum's Chief Curator, about Vuillard's influence on contemporary art, on Thursday, May 24; and a discussion of Vuillard's career with The Art Institute of Chicago curator Gloria Groom on Thursday, May 31.

Edouard Vuillard, Lucy Hessel Reading, 1913, oil on canvas. The Jewish Museum, New York: Purchase: Lore Ross Bequest.For further information regarding programs at The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3337, or visit the Museum's website at www.jewishmuseum.org.

Program Schedule

Mondays, May 7, May 21 and June 4
11:30 am
DAYTIME LECTURE SERIES
EDOUARD VUILLARD: A PAINTER AND HIS MUSES, 1890-1940

May 7
Vuillard in Turn-of-the-Century France
Jane Becker
Edouard Vuillard was a practitioner of intimism - intense exploration of domestic interiors-at the end of the 19th-century in France. His focus on interior scenes and portraits was shared by friends such as Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Felix Vallotton, as well as by fellow Parisians Eugène Carrière and Medardo Rosso. This lecture will explore Vuillard's work in relationship to his associates and discover the social and political contexts for his artistic vision.

May 21
Edouard Vuillard: From the Interiors of Montmartre to the League of Nations
Jane Becker
This lecture will focus on the full trajectory of Vuillard's career from his small interior scenes to his numerous portraits. Vuillard's subjects included his family, society figures and his dealers. His decorative panels and late large-scale commissions will also be considered.

June 4
Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940
Stephen Brown
Curator Stephen Brown will discuss the Vuillard exhibition, highlighting themes such as the milieu of patrons and muses who became the artist's subjects; the emotional response of both artist and spectator; the styles and forms employed by Vuillard; and the trajectory of this exceptional artist's career, from the 1890s to his late portraits.

Jane R. Becker, PhD, is an independent art historian specializing in late 19th- and early 20th-century European painting and sculpture. She lectures at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She has published on academic and Impressionist artists, as well as Auguste Rodin, Eugène Carrière and Medardo Rosso.

Stephen Brown, PhD, is curator of Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940. He has worked on several Jewish Museum exhibitions including Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning and American Art, 1940-1976 and The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice.

Series tickets: $45 general public; $40 Jewish Museum members
Single tickets: $20 general public; $18 Jewish Museum members

Evening Lectures

Thursday, May 24
6:30 pm
ARTIST CONVERSATION: LISA YUSKAVAGE
Contemporary artist Lisa Yuskavage and Chief Curator Norman Kleeblatt will discuss the paintings of Vuillard and his influence on artists working today.

Lisa Yuskavage's works are characterized by an ongoing engagement with the history of painting. Her oeuvre bears witness to a re-emergence of the figurative in contemporary painting and takes its point of departure in part in the immediacy and tawdriness of contemporary life spurred by the mass media and the psycho-social realm of the individual. Over the past decade, Yuskavage's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at a number of prominent institutions worldwide, including the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2006); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2002); Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva (2001); and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2000).

Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator of The Jewish Museum, Norman Kleeblatt recently organized the award-winning exhibition, Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976. His exhibitions have ranged widely, historically and thematically, including The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice (1987), Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities (1996), and John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the Wertheimer Family (2000).

Tickets: $15 general public; $12 students/over 65; $10 Jewish Museum members

Thursday, May 31
6:30 pm
VUILLARD: DECORATIVE PAINTINGS AND HIDDEN PORTRAITS
Art historian Gloria Groom will explore the life and work of Edouard Vuillard, including portraits of his patrons and friends and the large-scale paintings made to decorate their homes.

Gloria Groom, PhD, is the David and Mary Winton Green Curator of 19th-Century European Painting and Sculpture at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Tickets: $15 general public; $12 students/over 65; $10 Jewish Museum members

The art of Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) - a painter who began his career as a member of the Nabi group of avant-garde artists in Paris in the 1890s - is being celebrated at The Jewish Museum in the first major one-person, New York exhibition of the French artist's work in over twenty years from May 4 to September 23, 2012. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 includes more than 50 paintings as well as a selection of prints, photographs and documents exploring the crucial role played by the patrons, dealers and muses who comprised Vuillard's circle. The exhibition examines the prominence of key players in the cultural milieu of modern Paris, many of them Jewish, and their influence on Vuillard's professional and private life. Vuillard's continuing significance from the turn of the 20th century to the onset of World War II is also being explored. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 brings together works from public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe. A quarter of the paintings have never been exhibited publicly in America before. Vuillard's career spans fifty years. During his lifetime, Paris was the capital of the international avant-garde, the laboratory of new styles in art, music, poetry, and prose. Vuillard had unusually close and sustained relationships with his patrons; some became intimate and lifelong friends. In this glittering cultural milieu he became romantically involved with two fascinating women, Misia Natanson and Lucy Hessel, each of whom served as both patron and muse. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 traces the entire arc of Vuillard's career, in which he pursued painterly experimentation in color, media, and ambience, especially in portraiture. Vuillard's late portraits are a revelation - among the great examples in the twentieth century and of dazzling virtuosity. Experimental, yet deeply committed to the old masters throughout his life, Vuillard maintained a continual tension in his work between tradition and modernism.

An infrared assistive listening system for the hearing impaired is available for programs in the Museum's S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Auditorium.

Widely admired for its exhibitions and collections that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring the intersection of art and Jewish culture from ancient to modern times. The Museum organizes a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed and award-winning temporary exhibitions as well as broad-based programs for families, adults, and school groups. The Jewish Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of 26,000 objects - paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media. The collection is among the three largest of its kind in the world and is distinguished by its breadth and quality. It is showcased in the vibrant, two-floor permanent exhibition, Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, examining the Jewish experience as it has evolved from antiquity to the present.

Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members. Admission is free on Saturdays. For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum's website at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200. The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.