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16/12/2009

Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art - MET, New York

In 1975, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired, by gift and purchase, more than 400 works of Japanese art from collector Harry G. C. Packard (1914-1991). This daring acquisition instantly transformed the Museum into an institution with one of the finest collections of its kind in the West, comprised of encyclopedic holdings from the Neolithic period through the 19th century.

The Metropolitan Museum will celebrate the 35th anniversary of the acquisition with the installation Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art: Treasures from Packard Collection, opening December 17. Featuring more than 220 works, it will showcase the collection's particular strengths in archaeological artifacts, Buddhist iconographic scrolls, screen paintings of the Momoyama and Edo periods (16th—19th century), and sculptures of the Heian and Kamakura periods (ninth—14th century), as well as a comprehensive selection of ceramics.

Some of the works have never been on public display, while others have rarely been shown because of conservation considerations. Highlights will be a pairing of masterpieces by a Kano school master and his son: Old Plum, a set of sliding-door panels by Kano Sansetsu (1589-1651) in the Packard Collection; and One Hundred Boys, a pair of six-fold screens by Kano Einō (1631-1697), which was acquired this year.

The installation is made possible by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation. The installation is organized by Sinéad Kehoe with the assistance of Joyce Denney, both Assistant Curators, and Masako Watanabe, Senior Research Associate. All are from the Museum's Asian Art Department.

The installation will be accompanied by a variety of educational programs, including gallery talks and a "Sunday at the Met" lecture program on April 18. An Audio Guide of the installation will be available for rental ($7, $6 for members, and $5 for children under 12).
The Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg.

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Installation of Contemporary Aboriginal Painting Opens at Metropolitan Museum

Installation dates: December 15, 2009 – June 13, 2010

An installation of 14 bold and colorful paintings created by contemporary Aboriginal Australian artists will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 15. Drawn from a U. S. private collection, Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from Australia will provide an introduction to Aboriginal painting, which has become Australia's most celebrated contemporary art movement and has attained prominence within the international art world. The installation will present works created primarily over the past decade by artists from the central desert, where the contemporary painting movement began, and from adjoining regions, to which the movement spread. The works on view—all of which have never before been on public display—will feature paintings by prominent artists, including some of the founders of the contemporary movement, as well as emerging figures. This is the first presentation of contemporary Australian Aboriginal painting to be held at the Metropolitan Museum.

The origins of Australia's contemporary Aboriginal art movement can be traced largely to the remote desert community of Papunya in the Northern Territory. Here, in the early 1970s, with the encouragement of a local Euro-Australian schoolteacher, a group of Aboriginal men began to paint images from their sacred narratives and ceremonial life. Following the success in Papunya, artists of both sexes in other desert communities began to paint. Initially, most of the painters adopted the colorful, densely dotted style that became the hallmark of desert acrylic painting. At the same time, painters from neighboring areas, such as the Kimberley region of Western Australia, began to produce works on canvas employing different local styles.

Works on view will include: Sons and Orphans Near Kurlkurta by Anatjari Tjakamarra (ca. 1930–1992), depicting the journeys of ancestral beings through a complex composition of vibrant geometric motifs; Watiya-Tjuta by Mitjili Napurrula (born ca. 1945), a boldly colored canvas with rows of stylized foliate motifs showing trees, which are used for making spears; and Queensland Creek (Merrmerrji) by Paddy Bedford (ca. 1922-2007), whose stark minimalist works show both natural and supernatural features of the landscape.

Contemporary Aboriginal Painting from Australia is organized by Eric Kjellgren, the Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

Location: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing corridor, first floor, opposite Modern Art

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Recently Rediscovered Velázquez Painting Featured in New Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

Until February 7, 2010

Velázquez Rediscovered, a special exhibition on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until February 7, 2010, features a newly identified painting by Velázquez, Portrait of a Man, formerly ascribed by the Museum to the workshop of Velázquez and recently reattributed to the master himself following its cleaning and restoration. It will be shown alongside other works from the Museum's superior collection of works by the great Spanish painter.

In summer 2009, the arresting Portrait of a Man was taken off the walls of the gallery where it had been on view for many years and brought to the conservation studio for examination. Long obfuscated by thick, discolored layers of varnish and an old restoration that attempted to make it look more finished than the artist intended, the picture has emerged from its cleaning as an autograph work by the master: an informal portrait done from life, with parts left only summarily described, showing the hallmarks of Velázquez's sure touch of the brush. The painting is now confidently reattributed to Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599– 1660).

"This reattribution to Velázquez of a work that has been in the Metropolitan Museum's collection for decades is the result of the fine collaborative work of two of the Museum's renowned experts: Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of European Paintings, and Michael Gallagher, the Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge of Paintings Conservation," stated Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "It highlights the depth of the Museum's collection as well as the acumen of its superb curatorial and conservation staff."

The painting's fascinating history is notable for the changes in attribution and identification, providing a case study in the ways critical opinion can alter over time. The picture entered the collection in 1949 as part of the bequest of Jules Bache, who headed one of the most successful brokerage firms in the country before the Second World War, and who was an art collector of great distinction as well as one of the major benefactors of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Acquired sometime before 1811 by Johann Ludwig Reichsgraf von Wallmoden-Gimborn (the illegitimate son of George II of Great Britain) and later in the collection of George V, King of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Duke of Cumberland (1857–d. 1878), the picture was acquired by Bache from the famous dealer Joseph Duveen in 1926. At the time, it was considered by a leading specialist as a self-portrait of Velázquez, and as such it entered the Museum. However, more recent scholarship has had a less favorable view of the picture. In the standard 1963 monograph on the artist by José López-Rey, it is described as a "school piece rather close to Velázquez's manner." In 1979, the Museum demoted the attribution to the workshop of Velázquez. What was not realized was the degree to which heavy retouching and a thick, discolored varnish obfuscated the qualities of the picture.

Jonathan Brown, author of the authoritative monograph in English on the artist and a professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, concurs that the work is indeed by the artist – most likely an informal, rapidly painted study, with the head more highly finished than the costume and background, which is a thinly painted gray over a warm pinkish-buff ground.

Many questions remain, the most intriguing of which is the identity of the sitter who gazes at the viewer with such intensity. As has long been recognized, the same person appears at the far right of Velázquez's masterpiece, The Surrender of Breda (Museo del Prado, Madrid), painted in 1634-35 to commemorate the Spanish victory over the Dutch. The placement of the figure—as an observer rather than a direct participant in the action, and the way he looks out at the viewer—has led some scholars to identify it as a self-portrait. The matter remains highly speculative. There is the question of his resemblance (or lack thereof) to bona-fide portraits of Velázquez and the fact that he is attired like other members of the Spanish contingent. Other depictions of Velázquez —most famously his inclusion of himself in his most celebrated masterpiece, Las Meninas— are all much later in date (Velázquez was 57 when he painted La Meninas). Thus the Museum has retained the title Portrait of a Man.

Velázquez Rediscovered, a small, focused exhibition, features other Velázquez paintings from the Metropolitan Museum's collection such as Don Gaspar de Guzmán (1587-1645), Count Duke of Olivares (1638), The Supper at Emmaus (ca. 1622-23), María Teresa (1638-1683), Infanta of Spain (ca. 1651), and the celebrated Juan de Pareja (ca. 1610-1670). Other works on view include María Teresa (1638-1683) by Velázquez's gifted pupil and son-in-law, Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo (1612- 1667).

Exhibition Credits and Publication
Velázquez Rediscovered is organized by Keith Christiansen, John Pope-Hennessy Chairman of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book Velázquez Rediscovered, with an introduction by Keith Christiansen and essays by Jonathan Brown and Michael Gallagher. This publication will be for sale only in the Museum's bookshops (paperback, $9.95).

Related Programs
A Sunday at the Met lecture program on January 24 will feature Keith Christiansen and Michael Gallagher, who will tell the fascinating story behind this discovery, and a lecture by Jonathan Brown who will highlight the significance of this important new attribution.

Location: European Paintings, Gallery 16, 2nd floor

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Opening December 17, 2009

Location: The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan, 2nd Floor
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street - New York
Hours Fridays and Saturdays 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Sundays, Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Met Holiday Mondays in the Main Building: December 28, 2009;
January 18, February 15, May 31, 2010 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
All other Mondays closed; Jan. 1, Thanksgiving, and Dec. 25 closed
Recommended Admission
(Includes Main building and The Cloisters Museum and Gardens on the Same Day)
Adults $20.00, seniors (65 and over) $15.00, students $10.00
Members and children under 12 accompanied by adult free

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