| Fall 2005 Special Exhibitions | |
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A Compilation of Significant Shows by Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museums and Special Exhibitions |
Addison Gallery of American Art
Andover, Massachusetts
Chuck Close Prints: Process and CollaborationSeptember 6-December 4, 2005
For more than 30 years, Chuck Close has explored the art of printmaking in his continuing investigation into the principles of perception. This exhibition provides a comprehensive survey of Close's long involvement with the varied forms and processes of printmaking. The show illustrates his range of invention in etching, aquatint, lithography, handmade paper, direct gravure and silk-screen, designed to provide viewers with a seldom-seen view of the technical and creative process required to realize these complex images. 115 prints dating from 1972 to 1993 are featured in the presentation.
Amon Carter Museum
Fort Worth, Texas
In the American West: Richard Avedon,Photographs 1979-1984
September 17, 2005-January 8, 2006
The Amon Carter Museum commissioned photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) to create a portrait of the American West in 1979. The resulting 1985 exhibition, In the American West: Photographs by Richard Avedon, was widely regarded as a definitive expression of the power of photographic art. On the twentieth anniversary of his historic venture, the Amon Carter Museum presents a special exhibition of 78 of Avedon's 124 original photographs.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada
Catherine the Great: Arts for the Empire -Masterpieces from The State Hermitage Museum, Russia
October 1, 2005-January 1, 2006
The State Hermitage Museum, Russia will lend more than 200 of its priceless paintings, jewelry pieces, gems, examples of furniture, architectural models and more to this display of artworks commissioned and collected by Empress Catherine the Great (1729-1796). Much like Cardinal Richelieu in seventeenth-century France, the Empress understood the power of art as a tool for her political aspirations. Acquiring objets d'art from the past and employing some of the best artists of the Eighteenth Century, Catherine placed St. Petersburg on both the political and cultural maps of Western Europe during the age of the Enlightenment. The show's highlight will be the ornate Romanov Coronation Coach. Many of the splendid works in this ticketed show have never been seen on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Paris: Photographs of a Time That WasAugust 13-November 6, 2005
Eugène Atget, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész and Jacques Henri Lartigue are some of the artists represented in this show that examines how, in relative obscurity, these artists used the city of Paris as subject matter while experimenting with their photographic imagery. The 100 images of Paris (ca. 1850-1950) are drawn exclusively from the Art Institute's collection.
The British Museum, London
Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient PersiaSeptember 8, 2005-January 8, 2006
This major exhibition explores the artistic creativity of Persia, one of the ancient world's greatest empires, offering a unique opportunity to see treasures from the National Museum of Tehran, the Persepolis Museum and the Musée du Louvre. Magnificent tributes worldwide flowed into Persepolis, an architectural wonder and the royal treasury of the Achaemenid dynasty, whose greatest king was Darius I (550?-486 B.C.). The objects gathered there attest to the extraordinary developments in Middle Eastern art and culture that Persia’s flourishing trade encouraged, reflected in the British Museum's Oxus Treasure.
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
Dialogues: Duchamp, Cornell, Johns, RauschenbergSeptember 4, 2005-January 8, 2006
Examines the artistic dialogue and interactions of four major twentieth-century artists, exploring important themes common to their works.
Dayton Art Institute
Dayton, Ohio
The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient EgyptSeptember 1, 2005-January 3, 2006
The ancient Egyptian idea of the afterlife is dramatically explored through 143 magnificent objects, all from Egypt and many neither displayed publicly before nor been seen outside of their homeland. The show includes a life-sized reproduction of the burial chamber of the New Kingdom pharaoh Thutmose III (ca. 1479–1458 B.C.). The artworks exhibited, the largest selection of antiquities ever to be loaned by Egypt to North America, range in date from the New Kingdom (1550-1069 B.C.) through the Late Period (664-332 B.C.). They include luxurious objects that furnished tombs, including jewelry, painted reliefs, religious implements, a sarcophagus richly painted with scenes of the afterlife and a model of the royal barge that symbolically carried the pharaohs along the Nile River and into the afterlife.
The Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois
Pompeii: Stories from an EruptionOctober 22, 2005-March 26, 2006
The first special exhibition on this subject in the United States since 1978, the show explores the vibrant art and civilization of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Oplontis at the time of Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. The volcano's lava preserved precious frescoes and mosaics, marble and bronze sculptures, gold objects, exquisite jewelry and everyday household items, many recently discovered. The exhibition includes casts of some of the inhabitants killed during the disaster.
Fondation Beyeler, Basil, Switzerland
René Magritte: The Key to DreamsAugust 7-November 27, 2005
The Fondation Beyeler presents some 90 paintings and works on paper by René Magritte (1898-1967) spanning the artist's entire career, beginning with his student years at the Brussels Academy of Fine Art. The show continues with his Surrealist period in 1920s Paris, having been influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), and concludes with works from his later years in Belgium. Many iconic artworks are featured in the exhibition, a number of them from private collections rarely exhibited in public.
The Frick Collection
New York, New York
Memling's PortraitsOctober 12-December 31, 2005
The only American and last stop of this touring special exhibition of paintings by the Netherlandish artist Hans Memling (ca. 1440-1494), Memling's Portraits examines his successful career with more than 20 portraits by the master and his school, including portrait-wings from diptychs and triptychs, along with autonomous panels depicting individual patrons. Additional paintings unique to the Frick's presentation explore the role of the workshop in artistic production. The exhibition accurately describes the career of a Northern Renaissance master while defining the function of portraiture in the fifteenth-century Netherlands.
J. Paul Getty Museum
Malibu, California
Painted Prayers: Books of Hours from the Morgan LibraryOctober 18, 2005-January 8, 2006
This spectacular special exhibition previously at the Morgan Library in New York will display 58 of its greatest devotional texts and printed books produced in Belgium, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain between the Thirteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Masterpieces such as The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, The Hours of Henry VIII and The Farnese Hours will be displayed.
A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII
October 18, 2005-January 8, 2006
The manuscript called The Hours of Louis XII was painted by Jean Bourdichon (1457–1521) for King Louis XII in 1498/99, probably in honor of his coronation. It was dismembered by the end of the Seventeenth Century. 16 of the lost miniatures and parts of the text have been discovered within the past few decades. This exhibition reunites 15 of the miniatures and the text of the manuscript for the first time in more than 300 years.
Herbert F. Johnson Museum
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
Albrecht Dürer: The Master PrintsOctober 6-December 11, 2005
This special exhibition celebrates Cornell University's quest for a print of Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer's 1513 engraving of Knight, Death and the Devil to accompany the Johnson Museum's St. Jerome in His Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), all three recognized as the artist's greatest graphic accomplishments. These master prints will be displayed alongside other contemporary engravings and woodcuts from the museum's permanent collection. The prints' sensitivity to light makes this a rare opportunity to view all three works together.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, California
Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the PharaohsJune 16-November 15, 2005
This ticketed special exhibition features many objects from the boy-king Tutankhamun's tomb (some of which were here previously, minus his iconic Gold Mask) and another 80 (mostly funerary) artworks from his predecessors' reigns. They include splendid tomb furnishings of the lady Tjuya, including her gilded coffin. This time around, Tutankhamun is placed historically within the monotheistic maelstrom of his father, Akhenaten, by the presence of artworks that document his religious revolution. Objects specific to Tutankhamun's burial include his delicate royal diadem, discovered encircling the head of the king's mummified body that he possibly wore while still alive, and one of the miniature canopic coffins that contained some of his internal organs. The show climaxes with the recent forensic reconstruction of what Tutankhamun was supposed to have looked like.
Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship
September 10, 2005-January 2, 2006
150 objects, many never before exhibited here, explore the role of divine kingship in Maya society in a complex urban setting over 2000 years ago. The national museums of Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico have lent objects for this landmark special exhibition. Through examples of monumental art and royal portraiture, Lords of Creation... illustrates artistic innovations as they relate to the Maya king and his culture's cosmos as well as indigenous symbols of prestige and authority.
Pioneering Modern Painting:
Cézanne and Pissarro, 1865-1885
October 20, 2005-January 16, 2006
Some 80 paintings (approximately 40 by each artist) and 10 drawings focus on the years 1865–1885 when Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro worked closely with each other, often painting literally side-by-side. Their artistic interaction helped lay the foundation for Modernism in art.
M.H. de Young Memorial Museum
San Francisco, Califiornia
Daughter of Re: Hatshepsut, King of EgyptOctober 15, 2005-February 5, 2006
As the inaugural special exhibition at the new M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, this show examines Hatshepsut, the great female pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty, who ruled for two decades—first as regent for and then as co-ruler with her nephew Thutmose III. During her reign, trade relations with other lands were expanded extensively. Innovations in sculpture (Hatshepsut assumed the regalia of a pharaoh in art), architecture (most notably in the queen's remarkable mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri) and the decorative arts reflect the prosperity of her time. After Hatshepsut’s death, her name and image were ruthlessly obliterated by her nephew in a vain iconoclastic attempt to erase her memory. This unprecedented exhibition assembles a vast treasury: royal statues and reliefs; monumental sculpture representing members of the royal court; and ceremonial objects, finely crafted furniture, dazzling jewelry and personal items that tell the compelling story of Hatshepsut’s enigmatic reign and reveal the exquisite artistic production during it. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's extensive holdings of objects related to Hatshepsut, excavated by its Egyptian Expedition in the 1920s and 1930s, comprise a significant portion of the show. They will be supplemented by loans from other American and foreign museums.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
The Art of Medicine in Ancient EgyptSeptember 12, 2005-January 15, 2006
The causes of illnesses, their prevention and cures were little understood by most Egyptians—concerns that influenced much of ancient Egyptian art, yet have very rarely been studied. This show will display objects from The Met's collection that address this subject, allowing visitors to appreciate them in novel ways. Included will be the rarely seen 15-foot Edwin Smith Papyrus, on loan from the New York Academy of Medicine, that describes the treatment of wounds both practically and magically.
Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 1347-1437
September 20, 2005-January 3, 2005
This highly anticipated Fall exhibition explores the remarkable flowering of art in Prague in the Late Middle Ages during the reigns of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, crowned king of Bohemia in 1347, and his two sons, Wenceslas IV and Sigismund, through some 200 stunning artworks that include panel paintings, goldsmiths' work, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, silk embroideries and stained glass. Shown exclusively in this country at The Met, the show draws on numerous collections in the Czech Republic as well as from European and American sources.
The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult
September 26-December 31, 2005
Contradictory to its ability to record the material world with truth and accuracy, advocates of spiritism at the end of the Nineteenth Century used photography to provide manifest proof of the immaterial: auras; thoughts, hallucinations and dreams; or the spirits of the deceased. Closer to the scientific revelations of the X-ray (discovered in 1896) than to the double-exposure parlor tricks of 1850s ghost photographs, the more than 60 stunning and surprising works in this exhibition reflect an attempt to reconcile the physical and spiritual worlds.
Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings
October 12-December 31, 2005
Vincent van Gogh's decade-long achievement as a draftsman (1880–1890) will be traced in the first major American retrospective devoted to his drawings. This large-scale special exhibition will feature approximately 110 of the artist's finest works in pen and ink, graphite, chalk, charcoal and watercolor, along with a group of related paintings.
Fra Angelico
October 25, 2005-January 29, 2006
The first major exhibition in this country of Italian Early Renaissance master Fra Angelico’s work will bring together approximately 70 paintings, drawings and manuscript illuminations, covering all periods of the Angelic Painter's career from ca. 1415 to 1455. Included will be several new attributions and paintings never before exhibited publicly, as well as reconstructions of larger works, their pieces reunited for the first time since their creation. An additional 40 works by Angelico's assistants and closest followers will illustrate the spread and continuity of his artistic influence well into the second half of the Fifteenth Century.
Clouet to Seurat:
French Drawings from The British Museum
November 8, 2005-January 29, 2006
Nearly 100 highlights representing four centuries of French master drawings from The British Museum comprise this show, many of which are rarely exhibited because of their sensitivity to light. Reflecting the courtly world of sixteenth-century France to nineteenth-century café society, masterpieces from the French Renaissance to Postimpressionism include works by Jean Clouet, Claude Lorrain, Antoine Watteau, Edgar Degas and Georges Seurat, all exceptional in their artistic achievement.
Antonello da Messina:
Sicily’s Renaissance Master
December 13, 2005-February 28, 2006
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's second-floor European Paintings Galleries will play host to three magnificent paintings by the Italian Renaissance master Antonello da Messina (ca. 1430–1479). Trained in Naples, he traveled to Venice in 1475, where his art profoundly influenced Giovanni Bellini (1432?-1516) and other Venetian painters. Antonello's famous Virgin of the Annunciation is among the three works on loan to The Met from Italy.
Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Rembrandt and His Time:Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna
October 8, 2005-January 8, 2006
This special exhibition of 112 drawings and prints from the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria, along with a number of related paintings, explores some of the greatest artworks produced by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and his Netherlandish contemporaries. 27 drawings and prints by Rembrandt, the largest number of his works ever lent by the Albertina to another museum, are the focal point of the show.
Museum of Arts and Sciences
Daytona Beach, Florida
Glories of Ancient EgyptNovember 18, 2005-May 7, 2006
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will graciously lend more than 200 ancient Egyptian artworks and artifacts from its world-renowned collection for this museum's fiftieth anniversary. Relief sculpture, sarcophagi and mummies comprise the exhibition. The show will cover every period of ancient Egyptian art from 4000 B.C. to 50 A.D., except for the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period.
The Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
Beyond the Visible:The Art of Odilon Redon
October 30, 2005-January 23, 2006
The drawings, illustrated books, paintings, pastels, prints and watercolors of French Symbolist artist Odilon Redon (1840-1916) will comprise this retrospective. MoMA's Redon holdings were greatly augmented in 2000 by a substantial donation of more than 100 of his works from the Ian Woodner Family Collection. Beyond the Visible... will cover the entire range of the artist's creative output, including Redon's collaborations with literary figures of his day.
National Gallery, London
Rubens: A Master in the MakingOctober 26, 2005-January 15, 2006
The exhibition describes Rubens' dramatic rise from pupil of a minor Antwerp artist to dominant international painter of his time. The most thorough explanation of the flowering of his artistic genius ever attempted, the show traces his hesitant beginnings in Antwerp (1598-1600) to his eight-year study trip to Italy (1600-1608), where he embraced the achievements of the Renaissance greats Michelangelo and Raphael and the revolutionary style of Caravaggio. A dazzling group of Genoese portraits from 1606 marks Rubens' irresistible bravura with the brush. These offer an exciting and indeed rare opportunity to focus on works that are by his hand alone, undiluted by any workshop assistance. The exhibition culminates in a group of heroic images Rubens created from his extensive collection of sources on returning to Antwerp (1609-1614). These include Samson and Delilah and The Massacre of the Innocents, works that were last seen together in Rubens' studio.
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
The Origins of European Printmaking:Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and Their Public
September 4-November 27, 2005
The phenomenon of mass-producing images first occurred in fifteenth-century Europe, making it possible for people of all stations to own a picture. This international loan exhibition of some 140 early woodcuts, books, printed textiles and other related objects examines the role of replicated images in late-medieval culture. These inexpensive early prints provided an affordable way for people to obtain an easily available religious picture for private devotion. They also made possible the improvement and circulation of maps and the broader dissemination of intellectual ideas such as how to commemorate pilgrimages, transmit the touch of a holy relic, exorcise demons and reduce the time of one's stay in purgatory. Approximately one-third of the exhibition comes from the National Gallery of Art's outstanding collection, together with works from the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg and loans from many other public and private collections throughout Europe and America.
Monumental Sculpture in Florence:
Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco and Verrocchio at Orsanmichele
September 18-December 31, 2005
Three monumental masterpieces of Italian Renaissance sculptors Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), Nanni di Banco (ca. 1380/1385-1421) and Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) will travel to the National Gallery of Art to celebrate the completion of their restoration. It is the first time that major works by Ghiberti and Nanni di Banco have traveled to the United States. Ghiberti's St. Matthew (1419-1421), Nanni di Banco's Quattro Santi Coronati (Four Martyred Saints) (ca. 1409-1416) and Verrocchio's Christ and St. Thomas (1466-1483) were originally created for the exterior of Orsanmichele in Florence. They represent the highest achievement of fifteenth-century Florentine sculpture. Orsanmichele, one of the most important Renaissance structures, was both a a church and a grain storage and market facility; the Florentine trade guilds chose it as the site for statues of their patron saints. Since 1982 the statues have been undergoing much-needed restoration, and the building has been closed to the public. Once the statues return to Florence, Orsanmichele will reopen, making it highly unlikely that its sculptures will ever travel again.
Manuscripts in Miniature: Italian Manuscript
Illumination from the J. Paul Getty Museum
September 25, 2005-January 2, 2006
Explores the development and rich artistic variety of manuscript illumination in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This version of a special exhibition from the J. Paul Getty Museum is supplemented by works from the National Gallery of Art.
Orlando Museum of Art
Orlando, Florida
M.C. Escher: Rhythm of IllusionAugust 13-October 30, 2005
Organized by the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was one of the most popular graphic artists of the last century. His optically perplexing images have stirred many an imagination. Through 80 prints and drawings spanning from the 1920s through the 1960s, this show examines Escher's artistic ideas over the course of his career.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Looking at AtgetSeptember 10-November 27, 2005
This exhibition will display some of the most interesting images of the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927), who produced one of the most influential bodies of photography in the Twentieth Century, providing a close look at the museum's recently acquired group of 350 works by the artist from the estate of the influential art dealer Julien Levy. A commercial photographer by trade who made studies for artists, designers, librarians and antiquarians of Paris and its surroundings, Atget also photographed the shop fronts, tradespeople and crowds of Paris for the same clientele.
Jacob van Ruisdael: Dutch Master of Landscape
October 23, 2005-February 5, 2006
Often regarded as the single most important landscape painter of the seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age, Jacob van Ruisdael (1628?-1682) is the subject of this exhibition. The show will include some 45 paintings, 30 drawings and all 13 of Ruisdael’s rare etchings. It covers his densely wooded scenes, conceived and executed early in his career, to the more spacious and diverse compositions of his later years. Ruisdael painted the seashore and forests around Haarlem, but also the more rigorous topography of Germany and Scandinavia, places he depicted from other artists’ works. His breathtaking landscapes were especially sought after by collectors in seventeenth-century Holland.
The Saint Louis Art Museum
St. Louis, Missouri
Treasures From the Royal Tombs of UrOctober 21, 2005-January 15, 2006
This special exhibition explores the spectacular art and material culture of ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) through more than 200 objects from Ur. Featured in the show are: the recently reconstructed Ram in the Thicket (actually a goat); the musical Great Lyre; and the ornate headdress, jewelry and precious accessories from the tomb of Lady Puabi, dating back to the Third Millennium B.C.
Tate Modern, London
Frida KahloJune 9-October 9, 2005
The first British show devoted exclusively to Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) in more than 20 years includes several poignantly beautiful self-portraits, lush and erotic still lifes, watercolors and drawings among the show's 80 artworks.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Diane Arbus RevelationsOctober 13, 2005-January 15, 2006
Explores the dynamic artistry of award-winning American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) through her images of middle-class families, carnival performers, everyday people, celebrities and transvestites. The show sheds light on the inner workings of Arbus' creative genius through the inclusion of her contact sheets, notebooks and other belongings.
Wadsworth Atheneum
Hartford, Connecticut
Dalí, Picasso and the Surrealist VisionOctober 8, 2005-January 1, 2006
The Atheneum’s world-renowned collection of Surrealist and Modern art returns home after nearly two years of an American tour. Featured in Dalí, Picasso and the Surrealist Vision will not only be such longtime favorites as Dalí’s Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, de Chirico’s Endless Voyage, Magritte’s The Tempest, and Max Ernst's Europe after the Rain, but also drawings by Miró and Tanguy not usually on view, and works by American artists who dabbled in the Surreal, such as Alexander Calder and Joseph Cornell. Accompanying these treasures from the Atheneum will be loans from regional collections by Surrealist masters not often seen in Hartford, including Man Ray and Masson.
Yale Center for British Art
New Haven, Connecticut
Sensation and Sensibility:Viewing Gainsborough's "Cottage Door"
October 6-December 31, 2005
This show focuses on The Cottage Door (1780) by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). It assembles for the first time a group of paintings, prints and drawings related to Gainsborough's larger theme of the cottage and cottage life, borrowed partly from Dutch art of the Golden Age.