The Metropolitan Museum of Art's galleries for its world-renowned collection of European Old Master paintings from the 13th through the early 19th century will reopen today, May 23 after an extensive renovation and reinstallation.
This is the first major renovation of the galleries since 1951 and the first overall reinstallation of the collection since 1972. Increased in size by almost one-third, the space now accommodates the display of more than 700 paintings in 45 galleries, including one rotating special exhibition gallery. The galleries are organized both chronologically and geographically to provide an overview of painting in Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain. Many of the galleries have new floors and moldings and the suites of galleries unfold with a new logic and grandeur. Sculpture, medals, ceramics, and other decorative arts have been judiciously incorporated where their presence adds a layer of meaning to the display of paintings. Key works have been conserved or embellished with period frames. Important loans complement the permanent collection and celebrate the reinstallation.The gallery dedicated to landscape painting in Rome, where the outstanding figure was not an Italian but the French painter Claude Lorrain, leads into French painting of the 17th and 18th centuries, with one gallery given over to cabinet painting and another to the Metropolitan's outstanding collection of Neoclassical painting-the finest outside France.
Goya, the protagonist of the Enlightenment in Spain and a painter who spent the last years of his life in Bordeaux, France, is shown in a gallery strategically located between the great figures of 17th-century Spanish painting-Ribera, Velázquez, and Murillo-and his contemporaries in France. In these galleries, one of the Metropolitan Museum's most beloved Goya portraits, the boy Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784-1792), is poignantly reunited with the Goya portrait of his mother and sister Condesa de Altamira and Her Daughter, María Agustina, on loan from the Museum's Lehman Collection. To celebrate the opening of the new galleries, a number of special loans from private collectors will be on view for the next six months to a year, filling gaps in the Metropolitan Museum's collection. Among the many highlights on loan are Orazio Gentileschi's spectacular Danaë, Ribera's Portrait of the Count of Monterrey, Manfredi's Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus, Poussin's The Agony in the Garden, Giovanni da Milano's Resurrection, Pseudo-Dalmasio's The Descent from the Cross, Botticelli's Portrait of a Young Man, Bernard van Orley's The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, Jan Gossart's Christ Carrying the Cross, Paulus Potter's Cattle in a Field with Travelers in a Wagon, Carl Fabritius's hauntingly beautiful Hagar and the Angel, Peter Paul Rubens's Commander, and Goya's extremely rare Still Life of Dead Rabbits. Thanks to the generosity and support of the Department of European Paintings' Visiting Committee, ten of the Met's Old Master paintings have been refitted with period frames. The new frames are of exceptional quality. Three striking examples are Carpaccio's Meditation on the Passion, newly cleaned and restored and displayed in a Venetian frame of ca. 1500, Murillo's large canvas Don Andrés de Andrade y la Cal, now in a beautiful black-and-gold painted contemporary frame, and Frans Hals' Portrait of a Man, formerly in an elaborate gilded 19th century frame and now in a simple, elegant fruitwood frame that is certainly closer to the manner in which would have been framed in 17th century Holland. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Walking Guide, published to coincide with the opening of the New European Paintings Galleries, 1250-1800, is edited by Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman, and Katharine Baetjer, Curator, both in the Department of European Paintings, and will be sold in the Museum's book shops ($9.99). The fully illustrated guidebook serves as a personal guide through the new galleries, providing itineraries for the collection of Old Master paintings and for the Galleries for 19th-and Early 20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture. Also published in conjunction with the opening of the new galleries is German Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1350-1600, by Maryan W. Ainsworth and Joshua P. Waterman, a rigorous review of past and current scholarship and a monumental study of German, Austrian, and Swiss works in the Museum's collection by such towering figures as Dürer, Cranach, Holbein, and Schäufelein. The publication is distributed by Yale University Press and is on sale in the Museum's book shops ($75.00). All of the wall labels have been rewritten to reflect the latest research. Online catalogue entries are available for all website highlights, as well as for many other paintings. Online catalogue information, as well as reconstructions of altarpieces and occasional technical information are all directly accessible in the galleries, which are equipped with Wi-Fi. Website information is immediately accessible through Google Goggles. The renovation and reinstallation of the galleries were overseen by Keith Christiansen, working with the Department of European Painting's team of curators- Maryan Ainsworth, Katharine Baetjer, Andrea Bayer, Walter Liedtke, Xavier Salomon-as well as the curatorial staff of the departments of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Medieval Art, and Greek and Roman Art, under the leadership of Luke Syson, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in Charge; Peter Barnet, Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge; and Carlos Picón, Curator in Charge, respectively. The Department of Paintings Conservation, under the direction of Michael Gallagher, Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge, has played a key role. Gallery design is by Michael Langley, Exhibition Design Manager; lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers; and graphics are by Sophia Geronimus, Graphic Design Manager, Mort Lebigre, Graphic Designer, and Norie Morimoto, Graphic Designer, all of the Museum's Design Department. A new audio tour of the New European Paintings Galleries, 1250-1800, will be offered as part of the Museum's Audio Guide Program. It will be available for rental ($7, $6 for Members, $5 for children under 12). The Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg. Met Museum Presents will celebrate the reopening of the galleries with "Old Masters, New Quarters," a series featuring an evening of music in several locations within the new galleries, two concerts in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium that will spotlight related musical traditions, and talks. A special page on the Museum's website will be dedicated to the new galleries-including audio messages from the curators, details about related programming and publications, and more. It can be found at www.metmuseum.org/europeanpaintings.Videos