calendario eventi  :: 

X

8/12/2014

Four exhibitions

Metropolitan Museum of Art - MET, New York

Paper Chase
Two Decades of Collecting Drawings and Prints
December 9, 2014–March 16, 2015
Gallery 690

This exhibition of works of art on paper pays tribute to the esteemed connoisseur and brilliant curator George R. Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman of the Department of Drawings and Prints since 1993, who will be stepping down in early 2015. Under Goldner's leadership, the Department of Drawings and Prints has acquired—through purchases, gifts, and bequests—some 8,200 works on paper from Europe and the Americas dating from about 1370 to the present. These acquisitions range from famous works such as Leonardo da Vinci's studies for a statue of Hercules to those more esoteric such as Hans Christian Andersen's A Whole Cut Fairy Tale. There are rare works such as the subtle engraving Queen of Flowers by the Master of the Playing Cards and exceptional examples of an artist's oeuvre such as the majestic drawing Queen Esther Approaching the Palace of Ahasuerus by Claude Lorrain.

Upon joining the Metropolitan, Goldner set out to strengthen our extensive holdings of drawings and prints so that all important periods and schools were well represented. He undertook this mission with passion, instinct, and a shrewd knowledge of the art market, acquiring Netherlandish, German, British, and French drawings from collections, dealers, and auctions around the world. Goldner made remarkable discoveries, among them his first purchase for the Metropolitan—an exquisite landscape drawing by Pietro Perugino. Superb works by Titian (1999.28), Peter Paul Rubens (1996.75), William Blake (2011.448), and Paul Gauguin (1996.418) have also entered the collection under his stewardship. Presented here are highlights of the acquisitions made during George Goldner's twenty-one years at the Museum.

----

Ennion
Master of Roman Glass
December 9, 2014–April 13, 2015
Gallery 172

The most outstanding examples of first-century Roman mold-blown glass were produced by the master glassworker Ennion, the focus of this exhibition. With twenty-four examples from collections in Israel, Europe, and the United States, it will be the largest gathering of his work to be displayed in an exhibition. Works by other named glassworkers—such as Jason, Neikais, Meges, and Aristeas—will also be on view, along with a selection of unsigned mold-blown glass vessels that will illustrate the profound influence Ennion exerted on the nascent Roman glass industry.

----

Warriors and Mothers
Epic Mbembe Art
December 9, 2014–September 7, 2015
Gallery 359

The figures created by Mbembe master carvers from southeastern Nigeria are among the earliest and most visually dramatic wood sculptures preserved from sub-Saharan Africa. Created between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and striking for their synthesis of intense rawness and poetry, these representations of seated figures—mothers nurturing their offspring and aggressive male warriors—were originally an integral part of monumental carved drums positioned at the epicenter of spiritual life, the heartbeat of Mbembe communities.

When these electrifying creations were presented for the first time in a Paris gallery in 1974, they immediately caught the attention of the art world. That exhibition was a groundbreaking event that revealed a tradition unlike any that had defined African art until then. Dispersed internationally among private and institutional collections, these works will be reunited in New York for the first time in this exhibition.

----

The Winchester Bible
A Masterpiece of Medieval Art
December 9, 2014–March 8, 2015
Gallery 304

This exhibition will feature masterfully illuminated pages from two volumes of the magnificent, lavishly ornamented Winchester Bible. Probably commissioned around 1155–60 by the wealthy and powerful Henry of Blois (1129–1171), who was the Bishop of Winchester (and grandson of William the Conqueror and King Stephen's brother), the manuscript is the Winchester Cathedral's single greatest surviving treasure. Renovations at the Cathedral provide the opportunity for these pages, which feature the Old Testament, to travel to New York. This presentation marks the first time the work will be shown in the United States. At the Metropolitan Museum, the pages of one bound volume will be turned once each month; three unbound bi-folios with lavish initials from the other volume—which is currently undergoing conservation—will be on view simultaneously for the duration of the exhibition.

A highlight of the presentation will be the display of an elaborately illustrated double-sided frontispiece—long separated from the Bible and now in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York—that features scenes from the life of David and Samuel. Works of art from the Metropolitan Museum's own collection—medieval sculpture, goldsmith work, ivories, stained glass, and other examples of manuscript illumination—will provide a larger context for the two volumes.

The Winchester Bible consists of four bound volumes whose pages measure approximately 23 inches high by 15 inches wide (58 by 39 centimeters). The text of 468 folios was written over a period of thirty years by a single scribe with at least five different gifted painters applying expensive pigments, including lapis lazuli and gold, to calf-skin parchment. Their ambitious work was never completed.

Image: Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903). Tahitian Faces (Frontal View and Profiles), ca. 1899. Charcoal on laid paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1996 (1996.418)

Communications Department
Elyse Topalian tel (212) 570-3951 fax (212) 472-2764 communications@metmuseum.org

Opening: Tuesdat 9 december 2014

MET museum
1000 5th Ave, New York
Hours: Friday-Saturday 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m. Sunday-Thursday 10:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Admission: Adults $25.00, seniors (65 and over) $17.00, students $12.00

stampa

permanent link