Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces Full 2011 Schedule

NEW EXHIBITIONS

Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century
April 5-July 4, 2011

During the Romantic era, the Open Window appeared either as the sole subject or main feature in many pictures of interiors that were filled with a poetic play of light and perceptible silence. Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century will be the first exhibition to focus on this motif as first captured by German, Danish, French, and Russian artists around 1810-20. The exhibition will include some 31 oil paintings and 26 works on paper, including two seminal images by Caspar David Friedrich, shown for the first time in this country, as well as works by the many artists of the period who were influenced by him, including Carl Gustav Carus, Johan Christian Dahl, Georg Friedrich Kersting, Léon Cogniet, and others. The works will be shown in distinct groupings: austere hushed rooms with contemplative figures reading, sewing, or writing; studios with artists at work; and windows as sole motif. These pictures may shift from early Romantic severity to Biedermeier coziness to poetic Realism, yet they all share a distinct absence of anecdote or narrative.
The exhibition is made possible by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation and The Isaacson-Draper Foundation.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Monday, March 28, 10:00 a.m. - noon

Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art
April 7-August 14, 2011

This exhibition focusing on Buncheong ware, the bold and dynamic ceramic art that flourished in Korea during the 15th and 16th centuries, will feature approximately 60 works from the renowned collection of the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, Korea. Included in the exhibition will be select works by modern/contemporary potters, highlighting how this tradition, which had
disappeared in Korea for 400 years, has been revived and transformed by today's artists. In addition, the exhibition will feature a handful of Edo-period Japanese ceramics from the Museum's Permanent Collection, to illustrate Japanese revivals of the Buncheong idiom.
The exhibition is made possible by the Korea Foundation.
It was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Wednesday, April 6, 10 a.m. - noon

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective
April 13-August 28, 2011

This first retrospective of the drawings of American contemporary artist Richard Serra traces his investigation of drawing as an activity both independent from and linked to his sculptural practice. Serra's drawings have played a crucial role in his work for more than 40 years, yet they have not been as widely recognized as his sculptures. This major exhibition features 60 works from the 1970s to the present, including many loans from European and American public and private collections. Serra's drawings from the early 1970s began as a means of exploring formal and perceptual relationships between his sculpture and the viewer; with time they evolved into autonomous works of art and increased in scale. In the mid-1970s, Serra made the first of his monumentally scaled Installation Drawings, some of which hang from floor to ceiling. To make these works, the artist attached linen directly to the wall and applied black paintstick using repetitive and vigorous physical gestures. Over the last 25 years, working primarily on paper, Serra has continued to invent new drawing techniques and to radically change the practice and definition of drawing. The exhibition will culminate with new large-scale works completed specifically for this presentation.
The exhibition is made possible in part by the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund.
It was organized by the Menil Collection, Houston.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
Press preview: Monday, April 11, 10:00 a.m. - noon

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
May 4-July 31, 2011

The exhibition, organized by The Costume Institute, will celebrate the late Alexander McQueen's extraordinary contributions to fashion. From his postgraduate collection of 1992 to his final runway presentation, which took place after his death in February 2010, Mr. McQueen challenged and expanded the understanding of fashion beyond utility to a conceptual expression of culture, politics, and identity. His iconic designs constitute the work of an artist whose medium of expression was fashion. Approximately 100 examples will be on view including signature designs such as the bumster trouser, the kimono jacket, and the Origami frock coat, as well as pieces reflecting the exaggerated silhouettes of the 1860s, 1880s, 1890s, and 1950s, which he crafted into contemporary silhouettes that transmitted romantic narratives. Technical ingenuity imbued his designs with an innovative sensibility that kept him at fashion's vanguard.
The exhibition is made possible by Alexander McQueen^TM.
Additional support is provided in partnership with American Express® and Condé Nast.
Press preview: Monday, May 2, 10:00 a.m. - noon
Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe
May 17-August 14, 2011

By 1750, almost 2,500 professional artists and amateurs were working in pastel in Paris alone. Portraits in pastel were commissioned by all ranks of society, but most enthusiastically by the royal family, members of the court, and the wealthy middle classes. Eighteenth-century pastels are brightly colored, highly finished, often of large dimensions, and elaborately framed, evoking oil painting, the medium to which they were invariably compared. The powdery texture of pastel and its diffuse, velvety quality were particularly suited to capturing the fleeting expressions that characterize the most life-like portraits. Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe will include some 40 pastels belonging to the Metropolitan Museum and, with important exceptions, to museums and private collections in the New York area. It presents Italian, French, and English works, supplemented by several German, Swiss, and American examples.
The exhibition is made possible by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund.
Accompanied by a publication.
Press preview: Monday, May 16, 10:00 a.m. - noon

Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age:
The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son
May 17-November 13, 2011

This exhibition features a selection of early 20th-century reproductions of now-famous works of art from Sir Arthur Evans's historic excavations of Minoan Crete and Heinrich Schliemann's Mycenaean Greece. Emile Gilliéron and later his son were the senior draftsmen for Evans responsible for reconstructing the fresco paintings in the palace at Knossos. The Gilliérons formed a thriving business selling original watercolors after the frescoes and other reproductions of three-dimensional artworks, which they made directly from the originals. Their work influenced the study of Aegean art and was integral to its widespread introduction throughout Europe and America. The installation draws from the Metropolitan Museum's own collection of Gilliéron reproductions, which is the largest in existence.
The exhibition is made possible by The Vlachos Family Fund.
Press preview: Monday, May 16, 10:00 a.m. - noon

The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
April 26 - October 30, 2011 (weather permitting)

An installation in the most dramatic outdoor space for sculpture in New York City: The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, which offers a spectacular view of Central Park and the New York City skyline. Beverage and sandwich service will be available from 10:00 a.m. until closing, including Friday and Saturday evenings.
Made possible by Bloomberg.
Additional support provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.
Press preview: Monday, April 25, 10:00 a.m. - noon
Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum
July 26-October 10, 2011

The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the most important collection of paintings in America by the celebrated Dutch artist Frans Hals (1582/83-1666), whose portraits and genre scenes were famous in his lifetime for their immediacy and dazzling brushwork. Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum will present 13 paintings by Hals, including two lent from private collections, and several works by other Netherlandish masters.
Several of the Museum's paintings by Hals are famous, especially the early Merrymakers at Shrovetide (ca. 1616) and the so-called Jonker Ramp and His Sweetheart (1623), both bequeathed to the Museum by Benjamin Altman in 1913. Also included in the exhibition will be two loans from private collections in New York-the small, exquisite Portrait of Samuel Ampzing (1630), on copper, and the well-known Fisher Girl (1630-32). A selection of other Dutch paintings from the Museum's collection and a few engravings will set Hals's work in the context of his native Haarlem and will help clarify how exceptional his animated poses and virtuoso brushwork were at the time. A portrait by Manet, inspired by Hals, will also demonstrate how strongly Hals anticipated Impressionist effects.
Accompanied by a Bulletin.
Press Preview: Monday, July 25, 10:00 a.m. - noon

NEW GALLERIES

New Galleries for the Arts of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran,
Central Asia, and Later South Asia
Opening November 1, 2011

More than 1,000 works from the preeminent collection of the Museum's Department of Islamic Art-one of the most comprehensive gatherings of this material in the world-will return to view this fall in a completely renovated, expanded, and reinstalled suite of 15 galleries. The organization of the galleries by geographical area will emphasize the rich diversity of the Islamic world, over a span of 1300 years, by underscoring the many distinct cultures within its fold.
Press preview: Monday, October 24, 10:00 a.m. - noon

New American Wing Galleries for Paintings,
Sculpture, and 18th-Century Decorative Arts
Opening January 16, 2012

This third and final phase of the overall American Wing renovation project comprises 24 entirely new galleries on the wing's second floor. Twenty-one of the galleries are for the display of the Permanent Collection of American paintings-including the rich holdings of such masters as Gilbert Stuart, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent. Centered in the Grand Gallery will be Emanuel Leutze's monumental and iconic Washington Crossing the Delaware. Interspersed among the pictures will be American sculptures, notably the work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Three other galleries, together with a grand pre-revolutionary New York interior, will display 18th-century American decorative arts, principally treasures of colonial furniture and silver. In the Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art, on the mezzanine level, a concurrent renovation includes additional casework, touch-screen case labels, and upgraded computer access.
Part 1 of the American Wing renovation project opened in January 2007 with galleries dedicated to the classical arts of America, 1810-1845. Part 2, inaugurated in May 2009, included the renovated Charles Engelhard Court and the Period Rooms. After Part 3 is completed, nearly all of the American Wing's 17,000 works will be on view, constituting an encyclopedic survey of fine art in the United States.