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• Vermeer and the Delft School Opens at Metropolitan Museum March 8

  Monday, November 27, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Vermeer and the Delft School, a major international loan exhibition, premieres at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 8 through May 27, 2001. Best known for quiet, carefully described images of domestic life as seen in works by Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, and others, Delft masters also produced history pictures in an international style, highly refined flower paintings, princely portraits, and superb examples of the decorative arts. Featuring 85 paintings – including 15 Vermeers – by 30 artists, about 35 drawings, and smaller selections of tapestries, gilded silver, and Delftware faience, the exhibition will cast the familiar "Delft School" in a new light – one that emphasizes the roles of the neighboring court at The Hague, and of sophisticated patrons in Delft.

• Picturing Media: Modern Photographs from the Permanent Collection

  Monday, November 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Picturing Media: Modern Photographs from the Permanent Collection, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 31, 2000, is the second of an ongoing series of installations highlighting the Museum's rapidly expanding collection of contemporary photographs. This selection of 14 works, all acquired by the Metropolitan in the last decade, includes a number of very large photographs that are handsomely accommodated by the scale of the exhibition space on the first floor adjoining the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing for modern art. The exhibition remains on view through April 29, 2001.

• Summer Selections: American Drawings and Watercolors

  Monday, November 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Summer 2001 will mark the inaugural season of Summer Selections: American Drawings and Watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a series of annual exhibitions drawn from the Museum's collection of works on paper created by American artists between the 1780s and 1900. This summer's presentation will include some three dozen drawings, watercolors, and pastels, and will open to the public on May 29, 2001.

• Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection

  Monday, November 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  More than 90 Chinese paintings amassed by Robert H. Ellsworth will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, starting January 30. Drawn from the nearly 500 pieces in the Museum's collection, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art will focus on Chinese painting created during the period of clashing social visions and dramatic political change that marked China's entry into the modern world. In the arts, it is a time when the tensions between tradition and innovation, native and foreign styles reached an unprecedented level of intensity.

• Joel Shapiro on the Roof

  Monday, November 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will feature a selection of five sculptures by renowned American artist Joel Shapiro (born 1941) in the 2001 installation of The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening May 1. Drawn from public and private collections, Joel Shapiro on the Roof will include five large cast bronze and painted cast aluminum sculptures, dating from 1989 to the present – three have not been previously exhibited in New York, and two have been newly created. The works will be exhibited in the 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the New York City skyline. The installation will mark the fourth consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden.

• The Treasury of Basel Cathedral

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The medieval treasury of Basel Cathedral miraculously survived a devastating earthquake, the plague, and numerous wars, as well as iconoclasm, the Protestant Reformation, and secularization, only to fall victim to politics in the early 19th century, when it was dispersed. Period inventories identifying objects from the treasury have made it possible to locate numerous works. More than 75 of these splendid ecclesiastical and secular objects will be reunited for the first time in The Treasury of Basel Cathedral, an exhibition that will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 28. Almost none of the works have traveled before to the United States.

• First Major New York Exhibition of William Blake's Masterpieces Opens at Metropolitan Museum on March 29

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  William Blake, the first American exhibition of works in all media – drawings, paintings, and prints – by the legendary British Romantic, will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 29, 2001. More than 175 works, including all of the illuminated books, for which he is most widely known, will be on view in this first-ever exhibition to explore the artist's work within the context of the social, economic, and political upheavals of his times.

• Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draftsmen of the Renaissance Opens at Metropolitan Museum February 6

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Correggio and Parmigianino were two of the greatest masters of the Emilian school of early 16th-century Italy, renowned for their painterly effects and exquisite draftsmanship. A major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Correggio and Parmigianino: Master Draftsmen of the Renaissance, will mark the first time that a major selection of drawings by these two artists has been shown together. On view from February 6 through May 6, 2001, the exhibition will feature more than 130 drawings – many exhibited for the first time – from British and North American public and private collections.

• Richard Avedon Donates Pivotal 20th-Century Portraits to the Metropolitan Museum

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, November 17, 2000)—One hundred fifteen portraits by Richard Avedon, the celebrated photographer, have been given by Mr. Avedon to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by Philippe de Montebello, the Museum's Director.

• Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  A unique 2001 exhibition Beyond the Easel: Decorative Painting by Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and Roussel, 1890-1930, will provide American audiences a rare opportunity to experience the decorative projects carried out in France between 1890 and 1930 by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and Ker Xavier Roussel. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 26 through September 9, 2001, the exhibition will consist of approximately 80 paintings and folding screens on loan from international public and private collections.

• Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche

  Sunday, November 19, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The Christmas tree and Neapolitan Baroque crèche at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a long-established yuletide tradition in New York, will be on view for the holiday season beginning Saturday, November 25. The brightly lit, 20-foot blue spruce – with a collection of 18th-century Neapolitan angels and cherubs among its boughs and groups of realistic crèche figures flanking the Nativity scene at its base – will once again delight holiday visitors in the Museum's Medieval Sculpture Hall. Set in front of the 18th-century Spanish choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid, with recorded Christmas music in the background, the installation reflects the spirit of the holiday season. There will be a spectacular lighting ceremony every Friday and Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m., beginning Friday, December 1.

• Photographs: A Decade of Collecting

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Masterpieces of early French photography and American photographs since 1960 – two high points in the history of the 160-year-old medium – will be on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in an exhibition saluting the first decade of collecting by the Museum's Department of Photographs. Photographs: A Decade of Collecting will open on June 5, 2001.

• Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  An exploration of the technical history of photographic processes and of related conservation, preservation, and connoisseurship issues will be presented in an exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 30, 2001. Photography: Processes, Preservation, and Conservation, on view through May 6 in the Museum's Howard Gilman Gallery, will include approximately 35 works by some of the most revered names in photography, ranging from the superbly preserved to the unfortunately time-worn, with before-and-after treatment documentation, microscopic views, and examples of current methods for examination, analysis, preservation, and treatment. The exhibition celebrates the January 2001 opening of the Museum's new, state-of-the-art Sherman Fairchild Center for Works on Paper and Photograph Conservation.

• A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975, the third in a series of four exhibitions surveying design in the 20th century, opens November 28 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition will explore the ideas, influences, and technologies that transformed design – particularly modernism – after World War II. The mid-century period of unprecedented exchange among artists, architects, and designers yielded profound changes in the domestic landscape. More than 50 examples from the Metropolitan's modern design collection, including furniture, glassware, ceramics, textiles, and more, will be organized thematically and geographically in the exhibition, which will remain on view in the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing through April 1, 2001. The fourth and final exhibition in the series, surveying design from 1975 to 2000, will be on view May 1 through October 1, 2001.

• JACQUELINE KENNEDY: THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years--Selections from the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these five releases, to which you can link directly by clicking on their titles:
  Statement from L'Oréal
  Statement from Condé Nast
  Hamish Bowles
  Book Accompanying the Exhibition
  Related Programs

• Exhibition of Evaristo Baschenis Still Lifes Opens at Metropolitan Museum November 17

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Evaristo Baschenis (1617-1677), the preeminent still life painter of 17th-century Italy, is best known for his hauntingly poetic paintings of musical instruments. Although largely unfamiliar to American audiences, these lyrical masterpieces of composition and color harmony combine baroque splendor with a masterful, restrained geometry. Their quality of time arrested has led to comparisons with the paintings of Chardin and Vermeer. Now, 18 paintings from public and private collections in the artist's native Bergamo and throughout northern Italy are featured in The Still Lifes of Evaristo Baschenis: The Music of Silence, on view at the Metropolitan Museum from November 17, 2000 through March 4, 2001. The exhibition also includes books on perspective and important examples of period musical instruments from the Metropolitan's own collections.

• Leon Black Elected a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Tuesday, November 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Leon D. Black has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by the Museum's Chairman, James R. Houghton. Mr. Black's election took place at the November 14 meeting of the Board.

• The Annenberg Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces

  Sunday, November 12, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Fifty-three paintings, watercolors, and drawings by 18 of the greatest artists who worked in France in the 19th and early 20th centuries comprise the Annenberg collection, which returns to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for six months beginning in June 2001. This annual event, now in its eighth year, provides an exceptional opportunity for visitors to view this renowned collection, which is installed in three central rooms within the Museum's Nineteenth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture Galleries.

• The Onassis Library for Hellenic and Roman Art in the Department of Greek and Roman Art Opens at Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, October 24, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (October 25, 2000) The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced the opening of the Onassis Library for Hellenic and Roman Art in the Museum's Department of Greek and Roman. Scholars utilizing the Onassis Library will for the first time have access to the Met's rich and diverse collection of publications and its extensive historical archive of Greek and Roman art. In addition, because the library's resources are now available online, this extraordinary collection can be accessed by scholars, libraries, and databases worldwide.

• Metropolitan Museum of Art Debuts Timeline of Art History on Its Web Site October 3

  Monday, October 2, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (October 3, 2000) The Metropolitan Museum of Art will today debut a new Timeline of Art History on the Museum's Web site (www.metmuseum.org). The Timeline features works of art from the Metropolitan's encyclopedic collections, presented in a new chronological format giving browsers and scholars alike instant access to the art created at any given time in different cultures across the globe.

• Dramatic Readings by Metropolitan Museum's Philippe de Montebello and Actor Fritz Weaver Scheduled for October 15

  Sunday, October 1, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be joined by the distinguished actor Fritz Weaver in a program of dramatic readings, presented in conjunction with the special exhibition The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West. The program, The Year One: A Reading, will feature selections from works by Virgil and Horace and poems in the fu form from the Han Dynasty. It will take place on Sunday, October 15, at 7:00 p.m. in the recently opened Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery, a particularly appropriate setting with its long, dramatic vista and display of monumental ancient Roman statues.

• Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts and

  Tuesday, September 26, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Susan Weber Soros, Founder/Director of The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, have agreed to a joint project that will allow Bard Graduate Center students to work with objects from the Metropolitan's collections and to organize exhibitions based on and around these objects. The exhibitions will be presented in the gallery of the Bard Graduate Center at 18 West 86th Street in Manhattan on a biennial basis.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS SEPTEMBER—DECEMBER 2000

  Tuesday, August 29, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  New Exhibitions
  Upcoming Exhibitions
  Continuing Exhibitions
  New and Recently Opened Installations
  Traveling Exhibitions
  Visitor Information

• LANDMARK EXHIBITION ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY:

  Thursday, August 24, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  By the second quarter of the 19th century, New York City - already the nation's financial center - was poised to become a "world city" on a par with London and Paris. With the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, which linked the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, the great port of New York became the gateway to the West, assuring the city's commercial preeminence. Over the next 35 years, until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, New York grew rapidly, becoming the "Empire City" - the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, and the nation's center of domestic and foreign trade, culture, and the arts.

• QUEEN VICTORIA AND THOMAS SULLY

  Thursday, August 24, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A painting of England's 18-year-old Queen Victoria – the acknowledged masterpiece of Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully (1783-1872) and the work that catapulted him into national prominence – is the focus of an exhibition on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 19 through December 31, 2000. Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully documents the creation of this compelling portrait through some 35 works including oil sketches, paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and ephemera. The exhibition sheds new light on an image of one of history's most celebrated women, and commemorates the centennial of Victoria's death in 1901.

• THOMAS SULLY IN THE METROPOLITAN

  Thursday, August 24, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Thomas Sully in the Metropolitan, on view from September 19, 2000 through January 7, 2001, features a selection of approximately 30 paintings and drawings by this important and influential 19th-century American portraitist. Drawn exclusively from the Metropolitan's collection, the works span the most creative and productive years of the artist's career, from around 1810 through the 1840s, during which time he rose to a position of preeminence as America's leading portrait painter.

• ROMANTICISM AND THE SCHOOL OF NATURE:

  Thursday, August 24, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  One hundred fifteen exceptional 19th-century paintings, drawings, and oil sketches – many never before publicly exhibited – will be featured in this exhibition of selected works from the holdings of noted New York collector Karen B. Cohen. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 17, 2000 through January 21, 2001, Romanticism and the School of Nature: 19th-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection will include landscapes, portraits, figure compositions, and still lifes by the great artists of the Romantic period, the School of Barbizon, the Realist movement, and their followers, from Prud'hon to Seurat. At the center of the exhibition will be a selection of 20 images by Eugène Delacroix, ranging from pencil sketches to oil paintings and fully worked watercolors.

• HAROLD KODA NAMED NEW CURATOR-IN-CHARGE OF THE COSTUME INSTITUTE AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Tuesday, June 13, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, June 14, 2000) — Harold Koda, who served for four years during the 1990s as Associate Curator of The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will rejoin the Museum as Curator-in-Charge of the Costume Institute effective November 6, it was announced today by Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan.

• JAMES C. Y. WATT NAMED CHAIRMAN OF DEPARTMENT OF ASIAN ART AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Tuesday, June 13, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, June 14, 2000) — James C. Y. Watt, the longtime Brooke Russell Astor Senior Curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one of the world's most respected authorities on Chinese art, has been named Brooke Russell Astor Chairman of the Museum's Department of Asian Art, effective July 1.

• THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART TO OPEN LAS VEGAS STORE AT DESERT PASSAGE

  Sunday, June 4, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, NY, June 5, 2001)— The Metropolitan Museum of Art Store – renowned for its gifts and reproductions – debuted in Las Vegas June 4 in a new location at Desert Passage at the Aladdin Resort & Casino.

• YUNGMAN F. LEE ELECTED TRUSTEE OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Monday, May 29, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (May 30, 2000) — Yungman F. Lee, President and Chief Executive Officer of the United Orient Bank, has been elected a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. His election took place at the May 9 meeting of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Lee will serve as the Queens borough representative on the Museum's Board.

• ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY: NEW YORK, 1825-1861

  Friday, May 19, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these four releases, to which you can link directly by clicking on their titles:
  Statement from Fleet
  Curatorial Biographies
  Student Pass Program
  Exhibition Catalogue

• FREE ADMISSION FOR 1.5 MILLION NEW YORK CITY STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

  Friday, May 19, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York City, April 14, 2000)-The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fleet today announced an innovative "student pass" program that will provide free admission to the Metropolitan for schoolchildren and their families from all five boroughs of New York City this fall. Expected to reach the 1.5 million kindergarten through high-school students in public, private, and parochial schools, this is the broadest school pass program yet undertaken by the Metropolitan Museum. This outreach program will coincide with the Museum's presentation of Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861 - a landmark exhibition of the visual arts in America between the opening of the Erie Canal and the start of the Civil War - that will be on view from September 19, 2000, through January 7, 2001. The announcement was made at a news conference today at which the Museum unveiled plans for the exhibition.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS

  Thursday, May 18, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

• THE GOLDEN DEER OF EURASIA

  Thursday, May 18, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Between 1986 and 1990, hundreds of astonishing objects — ornately carved and decorated in a unique style and covered in gold — were excavated from an archaeological site outside the village of Filippovka, located in Bashkortostan on southern Russia's open steppes. Representing one of the most important caches of early nomadic Eurasian art, these treasures date from the first millennium B.C. and are characterized by the extensive use of animal imagery — most notably that of a deer. This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present nearly 100 of these dazzling works — none of which has ever been shown anywhere — in a dramatic display, The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes, opening on October 12.

• THE STILL LIFES OF EVARISTO BASCHENIS AND THE MUSIC OF SILENCE

  Wednesday, May 17, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Evaristo Baschenis (Bergamo, 1617-1677), the preeminent still life painter of 17th-century Italy, is best known for his hauntingly poetic paintings of musical instruments. Although unfamiliar to American audiences, these lyrical masterpieces of composition and color harmony have been compared to Chardin's paintings, especially for their geometric structure and careful simplicity. Approximately 15 paintings from public and private collections throughout northern Italy will be featured in The Still Lifes of Evaristo Baschenis and the Music of Silence, on view at the Metropolitan Museum November 21, 2000 through March 4, 2001. Several works, which have never before left Bergamo, will be loaned from the descendents of the families that commissioned the paintings more than three centuries ago.

• A CENTURY OF DESIGN, PART III: 1950-1975

  Tuesday, May 16, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975 November 28, 2000 – May 27, 2001 Lila Acheson Wallace Wing A Century of Design, Part III: 1950-1975, the third in a series of four exhibitions surveying design in the 20th century, opens November 28 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition will explore the ideas, influences, and technologies that transformed design – particularly modernism – after World War II. The mid-century period of unprecedented exchange among artists, architects, and designers yielded profound changes in the domestic landscape. More than 50 examples from the Metropolitan's modern design collection, including furniture, glassware, ceramics, textiles, and more, will be organized thematically and geographically in the exhibition, which will remain on view in the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing through May 27, 2001. The fourth and final exhibition in the series, surveying design from 1975 to 2000, will be on view June 26, 2001 through January 6, 2002.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OPENS NEW GALLERIES FOR BYZANTINE ART

  Monday, May 15, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exceptional collection of Byzantine art will return to public view this fall with the inauguration of the new Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries. The installation — in dramatic Beaux Arts spaces that have been restored and redesigned to evoke the original architectural plan of 1902 — will showcase outstanding works of art from the transfer of the capital of the Roman empire to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in 330 through the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Also included in the new Jaharis Galleries will be art of the Bronze and Iron Age in northern Europe, the provincial Roman world of the Latin West, and the new cultures that developed in Western Europe with the transfer of the capital of the Roman empire from Rome to Constantinople. A highlight of the new Jaharis Galleries will be the opening, for the first time, of gallery space beneath the Grand Staircase.

• SCULPTURE BY DAVID SMITH OPENS AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S ROOF GARDEN THIS SUMMER

  Monday, May 15, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  One of the 20th century's greatest and most influential American sculptors, David Smith (1906-1965), will be the subject of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's year 2000 installation on The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. David Smith on the Roof , on view beginning May 16, will be devoted entirely to the welded and burnished stainless steel sculptures the artist created between 1959 and 1965 at the height of his career. The installation, drawn from public and private collections, marks the third consecutive single-artist annual installation on the Roof Garden, a 10,000-square-foot open-air space that offers a spectacular view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.

• SILVER IN ANCIENT PERU

  Sunday, May 14, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  An unprecedented exhibition devoted solely to ancient Peruvian silver dating from the early part of the first millennium to the 16th century will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 3. Bringing together more than 100 works from public and private collections, Silver in Ancient Peru will explore the two-thousand-year-old tradition of sophisticated silver-working in Precolumbian Peru.

• ROMANTICISM AND THE SCHOOL OF NATURE: 19TH-CENTURY DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS FROM THE COLLECTION OF KAREN B. COHEN

  Saturday, May 13, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  One hundred fifteen exceptional 19th-century paintings, drawings, and oil sketches — many never before publicly exhibited — will be featured in this exhibition of selected works from the holdings of noted New York collector Karen B. Cohen. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 17, 2000, through January 21, 2001, Romanticism and the School of Nature: 19th-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Collection of Karen B. Cohen will include landscapes, portraits, figure compositions, and still lifes by the great artists of the Romantic period, the School of Barbizon, the Realist movement, and their followers, from Prud'hon to Seurat. At the center of the exhibition will be a selection of 20 images by Eugène Delacroix, ranging from pencil sketches to oil paintings and fully worked watercolors.

• THE YEAR ONE: ART OF THE ANCIENT WORLD EAST AND WEST

  Friday, May 12, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  In celebration of the new millennium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an unprecedented exhibition — drawn almost entirely from its own collections — of nearly 150 works of art that were produced some 2,000 years ago in the period just before and after the Year One. On view October 3, 2000 through January 14, 2001, The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West will feature magnificent and distinctive works of art from Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Southeast Asia, and the Americas.

• EGYPTIAN ART AT ETON COLLEGE: SELECTIONS FROM THE MYERS MUSEUM

  Thursday, May 11, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  This fall, some 150 works from the Myers Museum — one of the world's finest collections of ancient Egyptian decorative arts — will travel outside Eton College (England) for the first time to form a landmark exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Named for Major William Joseph Myers (1858-1899), an alumnus who bequeathed his extensive and highly regarded collection of Egyptian antiquities to the college, the Myers Museum represents a rare example of a private 19th-century art collection that has remained substantially intact to our day.

• "LA DIVINE COMTESSE," PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE COUNTESS DE CASTIGLIONE

  Wednesday, May 10, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Some 90 works from a remarkable series of photographic portraits documenting the public life and private fantasies of a legendary 19th-century beauty go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 19, 2000, in the exhibition "La Divine Comtesse," Photographs of the Countess de Castiglione. Commissioned by the countess herself and created under her supervision, the images — more than 400 in all — were the result of a 40-year collaboration, from 1856 to 1895, with French court photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson.

• THE EMBODIED IMAGE: CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY FROM THE JOHN B. ELLIOTT COLLECTION

  Tuesday, May 9, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  The most important and comprehensive exhibition of its kind ever assembled in the West, The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection — opening September 15 — will bring together some 120 works of art from the two principal collections of Chinese calligraphy that were formed in the United States. More than 55 masterworks from the John B. Elliott Collection of The Art Museum, Princeton University — perhaps the finest such collection outside Asia — will be integrated with a similar number of masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, most notably from the John M. Crawford Jr. Collection, and loans from six private collections. Spanning the period from the fourth century to the modern era, the exhibition will explore the stylistic range and individuality of many of the leading artists of the last 1,000 years.

• PARKS AND PROMENADES: MAURICE PRENDERGAST IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Monday, May 8, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Parks and Promenades: Maurice Prendergast in The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924) as painter, watercolorist, draftsman, and book illustrator. Gathered from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, Department of Drawings and Prints, and Robert Lehman Collection, the exhibition will be the first to present the Museum's entire collection of Prendergast's work. Cursory pencil drawings of incidental Parisian life; luminous, large-scale watercolors from the Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook (1895-97); and oil paintings of recreational activities on the Massachusetts shore and in New York's Central Park will chronicle a lifetime of plein-air observation. On view July 25 through October 22, 2000, the exhibition will feature some 70 works, including many of Prendergast's most acclaimed watercolors, which, because of their sensitivity to light, have not been shown together for more than a decade.

• SIR JOSEPH HOTUNG BECOMES TRUSTEE OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Monday, May 8, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, May 9, 2000) — Sir Joseph Hotung has been elected a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman, following the May meeting of the Board of Trustees.

• FIREWORKS! FOUR CENTURIES OF PYROTECHNICS IN PRINTS AND DRAWINGS

  Sunday, May 7, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  In celebration of the new millennium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Fireworks! Four Centuries of Pyrotechnics in Prints and Drawings, on view June 6 through September 17, 2000. Drawn primarily from the Museum's collection, the exhibition will feature more than 100 prints and drawings depicting fireworks displays from the 16th to the early 20th century. Artists represented will include Antonio Tempesta, Jacques Callot, Claude Lorrain, Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, Jean-Louis Desprez, Francesco Piranesi, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, and the lithographers Currier and Ives, among others.

• OTHER PICTURES: VERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE THOMAS WALTHER COLLECTION

  Saturday, May 6, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Photographs by anonymous amateurs whose "happy accidents" and "successful failures" resulted in surprising and tantalizing works of art are the subject of Other Pictures: Vernacular Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 6, 2000. Dating from the 1910s through the 1960s — a period that saw the camera's emergence as a nearly ubiquitous and easy-to-use accessory of modern life — these photographs reflect the spirit of their time in refreshingly honest and often unexpected ways. Although never intended for public display — most of the approximately 90 photographs on view were discovered at flea markets, in shoeboxes, or in family albums — these found images often bring to mind the work of such master photographers as Walker Evans, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus.

• ANNENBERG COLLECTION OF IMPRESSIONIST AND POST-IMPRESSIONIST MASTERWORKS

  Thursday, April 27, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Fifty-three paintings, watercolors, and drawings by 18 of the greatest artists who worked in France in the 19th and early 20th century comprise the Annenberg collection, which will return to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for six months beginning June 6, 2000. This annual event, now in its sixth year, provides an exceptional opportunity for visitors to experience this renowned private collection. The works are shown in the Museum's Nineteenth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture Galleries, hung together in three central rooms, surrounded by the Met's own collection of 19th-century European paintings.

• AFTER NICOLAS POUSSIN: NEW ETCHINGS BY LEON KOSSOFF

  Wednesday, April 26, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A series of 14 recent etchings by London painter Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning March 28. Based on paintings by the 17th-century French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the etchings are the result of a period of intense, first-hand study of the Baroque master's canvases during the 1995 Poussin exhibition at London's Royal Academy. After Nicolas Poussin: New Etchings by Leon Kossoff, which will be installed in the North Mezzanine Gallery of the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, runs through August 13.

• CHARDIN

  Tuesday, April 25, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  In celebration of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the 18th-century French artist Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779), The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major loan exhibition of 66 works that will survey the artist's distinguished career as a still-life and genre painter. On view from June 27 through September 3, 2000, Chardin will be the first exhibition in New York devoted to the artist and the first in the United States in more than 20 years.

• VÉLEZ BLANCO PATIO REOPENS MAY 12 AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM AFTER THREE-YEAR RENOVATION

  Wednesday, April 12, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Two special exhibitions celebrate the reopening:
  The Forgotten Friezes from the Castle of Vélez Blanco
  Sculpture and Decorative Arts of the Spanish Renaissance

• STATEMENT BY PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, DIRECTOR, THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, AT A HEARING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORY COMMISSION ON HOLOCAUST ASSETS IN THE UNITED STATES, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12, 2000, THE ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

  Tuesday, April 11, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  Mr. Chairman, I am grateful to the Presidential Commission for the invitation to testify this morning. I appreciate this opportunity to update you, and through you, the public, on the efforts that The Metropolitan Museum has undertaken to re-examine its collections in order to ascertain whether any of its works were unlawfully confiscated by the Nazis and never restituted.

• A CENTURY OF DESIGN, PART II: 1925-1950

  Monday, April 10, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part II: 1925-1950 — the second in a four-part series of exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art surveying design in the 20th century — will display more than 50 objects from the Museum's collection to demonstrate the dynamic rise of Modernism and its influence on public perception of everyday objects, such as furniture, housewares, and decorative objects. On view in the Museum's Gallery for Modern Design and Architecture from May 9 through October 29, 2000, the exhibition will follow the advancement of design in Europe during the second quarter of the 20th century — from Art Deco through the influences of the Bauhaus school, Functionalism, Russian Constructivism, and organic Scandinavian design.

• AMERICAN MODERN, 1925 — 1940: DESIGN FOR A NEW AGE

  Monday, April 10, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  American Modern, 1925 — 1940: Design for a New Age, an exhibition tracing the rise of a distinctively American modern design aesthetic through the efforts of approximately 50 of its creative pioneers, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 16, 2000 through January 7, 2001. Drawn exclusively from the Museum's collection and from the John C. Waddell Collection, a major promised gift to the Metropolitan, this landmark exhibition features more than 150 objects — including furniture, clocks, appliances, posters, textiles, radios, tableware, and even a bathroom sink — by such leading designers as Norman Bel Geddes, Donald Deskey, Paul Frankl, Raymond Loewy, Isamu Noguchi, Eliel Saarinen, Walter Dorwin Teague, Walter von Nessen, and Russel Wright.

• WEN C. FONG TO RETIRE FROM METROPOLITAN MUSEUM AFTER THREE DECADES OF PIONEERING LEADERSHIP IN THE FIELD OF ASIAN ART

  Thursday, April 6, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (April 7, 2000) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the retirement of Wen C. Fong, its first and longtime Consultative Chairman of the Department of Asian Art, and the Museum's Douglas Dillon Curator of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy. Dr. Fong's retirement will take effect at the close of the Museum's fiscal year on June 30.

• KLEE'S LINE

  Tuesday, April 4, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum's series of thematic installations devoted to the art of Paul Klee (1879 — 1940) continues with Klee's Line, on view March 17 through July 9, 2000. The selection of 21 works explores Klee's varied use of line, which evolved over the years from exact naturalism to spidery playfulness to thick contours. In addition, Klee used different types of line for different subjects.

• SANDRA PRIEST ROSE ELECTED HONORARY TRUSTEE OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Tuesday, April 4, 2000, 4:00 a.m.

  (April 5, 2000) — Sandra Priest Rose has been elected an Honorary Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced this week by Museum Chairman James R. Houghton. Mrs. Rose's election took place at the March 14 meeting of the Board of Trustees.

• MICHAEL BELKIN NAMED CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Sunday, March 26, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (March 27, 2000) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art today named Michael Belkin to the post of Chief Technology Officer, effective April 24.

• MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE ART FROM THE MARY GRIGGS BURKE COLLECTION

  Tuesday, March 21, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Masterpieces of Japnaese Art from the Mary Griggs Burke Collection includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as these four releases, to which you can link by clicking on their titles:

• ART AND ORACLE: SPIRIT VOICES OF AFRICA

  Monday, March 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  A figure sculpted in central Africa's rainforest to determine guilt or innocence, a maternity image made by an Igbo potter to enable a woman to conceive children, and a set of dice carved to decide the destiny of a Shona chief will be among the works featured in Art and Oracle: Spirit Voices of Africa, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 26 through July 30, 2000. Throughout history and around the world, peoples have sought the intervention of divine powers to understand their fate, and this exhibition will demonstrate the dynamic relationship between ritual practice and creative expression through some 200 artifacts from more than 50 African cultures.

• RIDING ACROSS CENTRAL ASIA: IMAGES OF THE MONGOLIAN HORSE IN ISLAMIC ART

  Monday, March 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The Mongolian horse — a small, tireless, and agile animal that was instrumental to the movement of the Mongol armies across Central Asia — has also come to symbolize the introduction of new cultures and traditions to the eastern Islamic world. The depiction of horses in Islamic art — both realistic and symbolic — will be examined in the exhibition Riding across Central Asia: Images of the Mongolian Horse in Islamic Art, which will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 26.

• SUBJECTS AND SYMBOLS IN AMERICAN SCULPTURE: SELECTIONS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

  Monday, March 20, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Nineteenth–century American artists regarded "ideal themes" — those inspired by mythology, history, and literature — as the most challenging and venerable in the hierarchy of genres. Such subjects provided an opportunity for sculptors to demonstrate their familiarity with allegorical, historical, and literary topics, their skill at incorporating identifying attributes into their compositions, and frequently also their expertise in rendering the nude.

• SALLY PEARSON NAMED GENERAL MANAGER OF MERCHANDISING AND RETAIL AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  Tuesday, March 14, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 15, 2000) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art today named Sally Pearson to the post of General Manager of Merchandise and Retail, effective April 3. She will be recommended for election to the additional post of Museum Vice President at the next meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees in April. Ms. Pearson will assume responsibility for the management and marketing of the Museum shops, mail order, and wholesale businesses, and will also concentrate on building the sale of Museum merchandise on the Metropolitan's Web site (www.metmuseum.org).

• STATEMENT BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ON THE PROVENANCE OF RUBENS'PORTRAIT OF A MAN

  Monday, March 13, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 14, 2000) — Last Friday, in a news story reported by the Associated Press and subsequently printed in the New York Times (March 12), the executive director of the World Jewish Congress, Elan Steinberg, suggested — apparently relying on a brief provenance listing in an 18-year-old-catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art — that a painting in the Museum's collection "may have been stolen from Jews" during the Nazi-World War II era: Portrait of a Man, a 1597 work by Peter Paul Rubens.

• PAINTERS IN PARIS: 1895-1950

  Sunday, March 5, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Painters in Paris: 1895-1950 includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as a statement from Aetna, the exhibition's sponsor.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ANNOUNCES SPRING 2000 LECTURE SCHEDULE

  Thursday, February 17, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  More that two dozen museum curators, distinguished scholars and celebrity speakers — discussing such diverse topics Africa's Muses, Painters in Paris, Fireworks, and Elvis in History — are featured in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Spring 2000 lecture series. Many of the lectures are presented in conjunction with exhibitions on view at the Museum, others focus on art and architecture around the world, and some are music-related.

• ANCIENT FACES: MUMMY PORTRAITS FROM ROMAN EGYPT

  Sunday, February 13, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Roman Egypt
  Mummy Portraits
  Dating and Styles
  Early European Interest in Mummy Portraits
  

• YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS TO DISTRIBUTE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM PUBLICATIONS AS OF MAY

  Tuesday, February 8, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, February 9, 2000)—Yale University Press will become the exclusive worldwide distributor of scholarly publications and exhibition catalogues published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, effective in May 2000. The Museum currently issues around 20 to 25 such publications per year, and in the new arrangement, Yale University Press will also be responsible for the distribution of nearly 150 of the Museum's previously published titles.

• TILMAN RIEMENSCHNEIDER: MASTER SCULPTOR OF THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

  Monday, February 7, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Tilman Riemenschneider: Master Sculptor of the Late Middle Ages includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as a statement from Bayerische Landesbank, the exhibition's sponsor.

• WALKER EVANS PRESENTS CLASSIC PHOTOGRAPHS OF AMERICA THROUGH THE LENS OF CELEBRATED ARTIST

  Thursday, January 27, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Walker Evans includes a general release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as a statement from Prudential Securities, the exhibition's sponsor.

• PERFECT DOCUMENTS: WALKER EVANS AND AFRICAN ART, 1935

  Thursday, January 27, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a group of distinctive and relatively unknown works by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), beginning February 1, 2000. Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935 will examine in detail the history of Evans's African art photographs through 50 vintage images from the portfolio that Evans created in conjunction with a landmark exhibition of African art. Complementing Perfect Documents will be a selection of sculptures that Evans photographed in 1935, many of which will be on loan from public and private collections.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM LAUNCHES NEW AND EXPANDED WEB SITE

  Monday, January 24, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, January 25, 2000)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today launches online a new and entirely redesigned Web site — www.metmuseum.org — that will offer Internet users throughout the world unprecedented access to the Museum's collections, exhibitions, educational resources, calendar of programs, publications, reproductions, and full range of activities and holdings. The site — which has been designed and developed by the Metropolitan Museum in cooperation with the leading Internet professional services firm, Icon Nicholson (formerly Nicholson NY) — is visually rich with works of art from the Metropolitan's collections, and will have special features created specifically for the Web site, including an interactive Museum calendar, memberships, exhibition previews, educational features, and newsletters, as well as personalized areas in which visitors can, for example, store images of their favorite works of art and create a customized calendar. New features and information will be added on a continuing basis.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM EXPANDS FUND FOR THE MET CAPITAL CAMPAIGN

  Saturday, January 8, 2000, 5:00 a.m.

  Acquisitions
  Gallery renovations and reinstallations
  Greek and Roman project
  The Cloisters
  Other gallery projects
  Thomas J. Watson Library renovation and expansion
  Collections management system
  Improvement of public spaces
  Great Hall
  Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
  The Museum's Web Site

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS JANUARY - APRIL 2000

  Tuesday, December 28, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  New Exhibitions
  Upcoming Exhibitions
  Continuing Exhibitions
  New and Recently Opened Installations
  Traveling Exhibitions
  Visitor Information

• MASTERPIECES FROM LISBON'S GULBENKIAN MUSEUM ON VIEW AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  Friday, December 3, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian Biography
  Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

• ROCK STYLE IS THEME FOR METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S DECEMBER COSTUME INSTITUTE EXHIBITION

  Thursday, December 2, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  This press kit for Rock Style includes a general press release about the exhibition, immediately following, as well as statements from the exhibition's sponsors:
  Tommy Hilfiger USA, Inc.;
  Condé Nast;
  The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

• A CENTURY OF DESIGN, PART I: 1900-1925

  Tuesday, November 30, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  A Century of Design, Part I: 1900-1925 — the first in a four-part series of exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art surveying design in the 20th century — will present some of the Museum's finest examples of furniture, metalwork, glass, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, and drawings from the first quarter of the 1900s. Highlighting the Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco movements, the exhibition will be on view in the Metropolitan Museum's Gallery for Modern Design and Architecture from December 14, 1999, through March 26, 2000.

• CELEBRATING THE AMERICAN WING: NOTABLE ACQUISITIONS 1980-1999

  Monday, November 29, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  American Wing galleries and The Henry R. Luce Center for the Study of American Art On November 10, 1924, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing — the first permanent installation in an American art museum of American colonial and early Federal decorative arts and architecture — opened to the public. Seventy-five years later to the day, in celebration of this landmark anniversary, the Museum will present an exhibition of notable works acquired by gift or purchase since 1980, when spacious additional galleries designed to house American decorative arts, as well as American paintings and sculpture, were opened.

• KOREAN CERAMICS FROM THE MUSEUM OF ORIENTAL CERAMICS, OSAKA

  Sunday, November 28, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a selection of Korean ceramics from the renowned collection of the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, beginning January 25. Representing the periods of highest achievement in the peninsula's long ceramic tradition, the 48 exquisite works in Korean Ceramics from the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka will explore a variety of ceramic forms and techniques. Dating from the 12th to the 19th century, the works on view will include luminous jade-green celadon wares of the Koryo dynasty (918-1392) as well as superb examples of the innovative stoneware known as punch'ong and white porcelains of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). The objects will be exhibited alongside the Metropolitan's own Korean art collection in the Museum's permanent Arts of Korea gallery, which was inaugurated in June 1998.

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM PARTICIPATES IN A DAY WITHOUT ART IN OBSERVANCE OF WORLD AIDS DAY ON DECEMBER 1

  Sunday, November 28, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will participate in World AIDS Day for the 11th consecutive year by observing "A Day Without Art" on Wednesday, December 1, 1999. This year's theme is AIDS — End the Silence. Listen, Learn, Live! and is designed to open communication about HIV/AIDS, especially among those under age 25. It also aims to increase awareness of prevention strategies, encourage caring attitudes toward people with AIDS, and help dispel the stigma of HIV/AIDS.

• EUROPEAN HELMETS, 1450-1650: TREASURES FROM THE RESERVE COLLECTION

  Saturday, November 27, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum will present European Helmets, 1450-1650: Treasures from the Reserve Collection, the third in a series of thematic installations drawn from the Museum's extraordinary collection of European headpieces, beginning January 25, 2000. Featuring some 70 helmets, many of them to go on display for the first time, the exhibition will explore the evolution, technology, form, and fashion of European head defense over two centuries. The majority of the helmets have rarely been exhibited or published in the last 50 years and, therefore, constitute a collection virtually unknown to Museum visitors, scholars, and collectors.

• THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART OPENS WALKER EVANS ARCHIVE ON FEBRUARY 1

  Friday, November 26, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open the Walker Evans Archive, one of the most complete single-artist archives of the 20th century, as a special research center devoted to the American photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), on February 1, 2000. Acquired in 1994 by the Museum's Department of Photographs, the Walker Evans Archive includes Evans's black-and-white negatives, color transparencies, and motion-picture film from the late 1920s to the 1970s; the artist's original manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, and audiotape recordings of interviews and lectures; and his personal library and collections. This extraordinary trove will provide artists and scholars with a rare insight not only into the artistic achievement of Walker Evans, but also into the cultural, intellectual, and personal context of his career. The opening of the Archive coincides with the premiere of Walker Evans, the Museum's retrospective exhibition of the photographer's work, on view from February 1 through May 14, 2000.

• THE WORLD OF SCHOLARS' ROCKS: GARDENS, STUDIOS, AND PAINTINGS

  Wednesday, November 24, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present for more than six months beginning in February an exhibition of some 90 Chinese paintings, featuring images of ornamental rocks or landscapes inspired by the fantastic forms of such stones, complemented by more than 30 actual scholars' rocks. Drawn primarily from the Museum's holdings, and supplemented by a select number of loans from private collections, The World of Scholars' Rocks: Gardens, Studios, and Paintings – opening at the Metropolitan Museum on February 1, 2000 – will examine the Chinese taste for strangely shaped rocks during the last 1000 years, tracing through pictorial images as well as actual examples the evolution and transformation of the genre from the 11th to the 20th century.

• NORTHERN DRAWINGS FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S ROBERT LEHMAN COLLECTION TO BE SHOWN IN TWO ROTATIONS

  Tuesday, November 23, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Opening February 8, 2000, the second rotation of Northern drawings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Robert Lehman Wing will feature 15th- and 16th-century German, Netherlandish, and French drawings and manuscripts that have not been exhibited in nearly a decade. Selected from the trove of treasured master drawings and illuminations assembled by Robert Lehman, the works on view in Northern Drawings of the 15th and 16th Centuries in the Robert Lehman Collection will be complemented by several loans from the Museum's Department of Medieval Art. Four autograph sheets by Albrecht Dürer will be among the highlights of the presentation. Works by Martin Schongauer, Hans Baldung Grien, and Maerten van Heemskerck will also be featured, in addition to drawings from the Circle of Jan van Eyck and the Circle of Rogier van der Weyden.

• MASTERPIECES OF JAPANESE ART FROM THE MARY GRIGGS BURKE COLLECTION

  Friday, November 19, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  More than 200 works of Japanese art from the renowned collection of Mary Griggs Burke — a selection of ceramics, sculptures, paintings, and lacquers dating from the earliest cultures of around 3000 B.C. to the Edo period (1615-1867) — will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 30 through June 25, 2000. Organized chronologically, the exhibition will provide an overview of the development of Japanese art and will also explore the use of divergent artistic traditions, including those adapted from other cultures and those that reflect native tastes, within Japan.

• THE NEW CYPRIOT GALLERIES

  Thursday, November 18, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  THE CESNOLA COLLECTION
  

• SUBJECTS AND SYMBOLS IN AMERICAN SCULPTURE: SELECTIONS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

  Wednesday, November 17, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Nineteenth-century American artists regarded "ideal themes" — those inspired by mythology, history, and literature — as the most challenging and venerable in the hierarchy of genres. Such subjects provided an opportunity for sculptors to demonstrate their familiarity with allegorical, historical, and literary topics, their skill at incorporating identifying attributes into their compositions, and frequently also their expertise in rendering the nude.

• ART AND ORACLE: SPIRIT VOICES OF AFRICA

  Tuesday, November 16, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  A figure sculpted in central Africa's rainforest to determine guilt or innocence, a maternity image made by an Igbo potter to enable a woman to conceive children, and a set of dice carved to decide the destiny of a Shona chief will be among the works featured in Art and Oracle: Spirit Voices of Africa, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 26 through July 30, 2000. Throughout history and around the world, peoples have sought the intervention of divine powers to understand their fate, and this exhibition will demonstrate the dynamic relationship between ritual practice and creative expression through some 200 artifacts from more than 50 African cultures.

• DAVID SMITH ON THE ROOF

  Monday, November 15, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  A selection of works in burnished stainless steel by David Smith (1906-1965) — considered one of the most original and influential American sculptors of his generation — will be on view beginning May 15, on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. David Smith on the Roof will mark the third consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden, a 10,000 square-foot open-air space that offers a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline and Central Park.

• AMERICAN MODERN: 1925-1940 — DESIGN FOR A NEW AGE

  Sunday, November 14, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  American Modern: 1925-1940 — Design for a New Age, an exhibition tracing the rise of a distinctively American modern design aesthetic through the efforts of 40 of its creative pioneers, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 16, 2000 through January 9, 2001. More than 100 objects, including furniture, clocks, appliances, lamps, textiles, posters, and more, from the Museum's collection and from the John C. Waddell Collection — a major promised gift to the Metropolitan — will reveal the aesthetic, cultural, and economic forces that ultimately shaped the modern design movement in America.

• ANNENBERG COLLECTION OF IMPRESSIONIST AND POST-IMPRESSIONIST MASTERWORKS

  Saturday, November 13, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Fifty-three paintings, watercolors, and drawings by 18 of the greatest artists who worked in France in the 19th and early 20th century comprise the Annenberg collection, which will return to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for six months beginning in May 2000. This annual event, now in its sixth year, provides an exceptional opportunity for visitors to experience this renowned private collection. The works are shown in the Museum's Nineteenth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture Galleries, hung together in three central rooms, surrounded by the Met's own collection of 19th-century European paintings.

• FIREWORKS

  Thursday, November 11, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  No form of entertainment involves so much ingenuity at so great a cost for such a dazzling — but woefully ephemeral — effect as fireworks. Many attempts have been made over the centuries to create for posterity a visual record of fireworks displays, especially those mounted in connection with official occasions, such as a noble marriage, the entry of a ruler into a city, military victories, and coronations. Before photography became prevalent, these records were most often made as prints — woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs — since these could be made in multiple impressions and could thus be distributed to a wide audience as a document or souvenir of the occasion. In celebration of the new millennium, the exhibition Fireworks will feature more than 100 prints and drawings depicting firework displays from the 16th to the early 20th century.

• CHARDIN

  Wednesday, November 10, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Chardin — a major loan exhibition of more than 65 works that will survey the great 18th-century artist's distinguished career as a still-life and genre painter — will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 27 through September 3, 2000.

• ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY: NEW YORK, 1825-1861

  Tuesday, November 9, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  In America in the second quarter of the 19th century — between 1825, when the Erie Canal was built, and 1861, when the Civil War began — the visual arts proliferated. On September 19, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a landmark exhibition, Art and the Empire City: New York, 1825-1861, which will explore in unprecedented depth the history of American art of this period, as epitomized in New York City.

• CHRISTMAS TREE AND NEAPOLITAN BAROQUE CRÈCHE

  Tuesday, November 9, 1999, 5:00 a.m.

  Christmas Concerts at the Met
  Christmas at The Cloisters
  

• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES REOPENING OF GALLERIES FOR ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN ART

  Sunday, October 17, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  October 19 marks the culmination of an 18-month-long renovation and reinstallation project at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as nearly 1,500 works from the permanent collection of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art return to public view. The newly reorganized galleries feature the monumental sculpture, distinctive metalwork, delicately carved ivories and seals, exquisite jewelry, and other works of art made in the ancient Near East over nearly nine millennia. A highlight is the dramatic renovation of the Assyrian relief gallery, evocative of an audience hall in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II.

• CARLETON WATKINS: THE ART OF PERCEPTION EXPLORES WORK OF VISIONARY 19th-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHER

  Sunday, September 26, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition of 98 images by Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), America's greatest landscape photographer, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception. The first large-scale examination of an often under-recognized artist, the exhibition includes more than 85 mammoth prints, including work from his famous series of the pristine and then virtually unknown Yosemite Valley, as well as many other lyrical views of the American West.

• WILLIAM RUDIN AND ANDREW SAUL ELECTED TRUSTEES, DIANE BURKE ELECTED HONORARY TRUSTEE OF

  Thursday, September 23, 1999, 4:00 a.m.

  (September 24, 1999) – William C. Rudin and Andrew M. Saul have been elected Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Diane W. Burke an Honorary Trustee of the Museum, it was announced recently by James R. Houghton, Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan. The elections took place at the September 14 meeting of the Board of Trustees.