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• Chinese 'Art of Writing' Is Explored in New Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Thursday, September 28, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Bringing together masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection with important loans from private collections, Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing explores the 1,600-year history of calligraphy from its genesis as a fine art in the fourth century A.D. The exhibition presents some 70 works of calligraphy executed by renowned traditional masters – Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Ni Zan (1306-1374), and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) – as well as by five contemporary artists. Early inscribed ritual bronzes, dynamic scholars' rocks, and objects made for the artist's study complement the calligraphy.

• Sean Scully: Wall of Light – Celebrated Artist's First Major Solo Museum Exhibition in New York – Features His Most Important Series to Date

  Thursday, September 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 15, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are 60 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Fall 2006 Schedule of Programs for Children and Families

  Thursday, September 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 12, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced its schedule of weekday and weekend programs for children, including special family activities, for the period September 30, 2006, through February 2, 2007. These drop-in programs are free with Museum admission. Reservations are not required unless otherwise noted, and all materials are provided.

• Robert Joffe Elected a Trustee at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, September 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 12, 2006)—Robert D. Joffe has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the September 12 meeting of the Board.

• Mrs. Russell B. Aitken Elected Honorary Trustee at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, September 11, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Irene Roosevelt Aitken has been elected an Honorary Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. The election took place at the September 12 meeting of the Board of Trustees.

• Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces the 2006-07 Season of Concerts

  Thursday, September 7, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The 53rd Season Features the Piano Forte Series with András Schiff, Ivo Pogorelich, and Ivan Moravec; Jordi Savall in Two Concerts; Bach's Mass in B Minor and Handel's Acis and Galatea; Anoushka Shankar, Richie Havens, and Patti Smith; and a Season Opening Concert by Orpheus in the Great Hall

• Olena Paslawsky Named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer At Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, September 6, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 12, 2006)—Olena Paslawsky has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced by Emily K. Rafferty, President of the Museum. She joined the Museum in August, and will oversee initiatives in finance, technology, purchasing, office services, and internal audit. Prior to coming to the Metropolitan, she was Controller of the Worldwide Securities Division of JP Morgan Chase & Company.

• New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori

  Monday, September 4, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  To mark the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent floods that devastated New Orleans, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present New Orleans after the Flood: Photographs by Robert Polidori. On view from September 19 through December 10 in The Howard Gilman Gallery, the exhibition will feature approximately 20 large-scale color photographs made by Robert Polidori on four extended visits to New Orleans between September 2005 and April 2006. The quietly expressive photographs present a candid and intimate look at widespread urban ruin — an incomprehensible, topsy-turvy landscape of felled oak trees, houses washed off their foundations, and tumbled furniture that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS SEPTEMBER — DECEMBER 2006

  Tuesday, August 22, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change. To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951. CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.

• Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s

  Monday, August 14, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Political, economic, and social turmoil shaped Germany's short-lived Weimar Republic (1919–1933). These pivotal years also became a most creative period of 20th-century German culture, generating innovation in literature, music, film, theater, and architecture. In painting, a trend of matter-of-fact realism took hold in Germany like nowhere else in Europe. Disillusioned by the cataclysm of World War I, the most vital German artists moved towards a Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), in particular its branch known as Verism. These artists looked soberly, cynically, and even ferociously at their fellow citizens and found their true métier in portraiture, as seen in the 40 paintings and 60 works on paper featured in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. The presentation, which opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 14, 2006, features gripping portraits by ten renowned artists: Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hubbuch, Ludwig Meidner, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz, and Gert H. Wollheim.

• Metropolitan Museum's Fall 2006 Lecture Series Features Director Philippe de Montebello Speaking on the Collecting of Antiquities

  Sunday, August 13, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Seventy lectures comprise the Fall 2006 schedule of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's stellar series, now in its 53rd season. Metropolitan Museum curators and educators, as well as guest speakers, will present talks on a broad range of exhibition- and arts-related topics.

• Art Traditions of Papuan Gulf Explored through Rare Objects and Photographs in Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Monday, July 31, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf will demonstrate how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

• Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde

  Wednesday, July 26, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) – the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14. One hundred paintings as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, from his appearance on the Paris art scene in the mid-1890s to his death in 1939, will comprise the exhibition Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, which will feature works by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, Vuillard, and others. Highlights will include six paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896-97 Van Gogh retrospective; the masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from his 1898 Gauguin exhibition; paintings from Picasso's first French exhibition (1901) and Matisse's first solo exhibition (1904); and three pictures from Derain's London series, painted in 1906-1907 at Vollard's suggestion. Also on view will be numerous portraits of Vollard by leading artists, among them Cézanne, Bonnard, Renoir, and Picasso.

• Sean Scully: Wall of Light – Celebrated Artist's First Major Solo Museum Exhibition in New York – Features His Most Important Series to Date

  Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Wall of Light series by celebrated artist Sean Scully (born 1945) will be the focus of an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 26, 2006, through January 14, 2007. Sean Scully: Wall of Light will showcase the artist's most important series to date and highlight his mastery of color, light, gesture, and range of emotional and narrative themes. Scully works and exhibits throughout the world, yet this is his first major solo museum exhibition in New York. Featured are more than 50 works in the Wall of Light series — some 20 of which are large-scale oil paintings — that Scully has created in recent years, first inspired by his travels to Mexico.

• Impact of Paris on 19th-Century American Art Shown in Landmark Fall Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds – including such luminaries as James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer – were drawn irresistibly to Paris, the world's new art capital, to learn to paint and to establish their reputations. By studying with leading masters and showing their work in Paris, these artists aimed to attract patronage from American collectors who had begun to buy contemporary French art in earnest soon after the end of the Civil War. Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters' styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of more sophisticated art schools and higher professional standards back in the United States.

• Exhibition on the Face in Medieval Sculpture Opens at Metropolitan Museum in September

  Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  More than 80 medieval sculpted heads – half from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and half selected loans from American and European collections – are the focus of the upcoming exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, opening on September 26. The exhibition, which includes heads from the third century A.D. through the early 1500s, will consider such artistic and thematic issues as: iconoclasm and the legacy of violence, sculpting identity and the evolving notions of the "portrait," sculpture without context and the search for provenance, head reliquaries as power objects, and Gothic Italy and the antique. Created from materials as diverse as marble, limestone, polychromed wood, and silver gilt, the works represent mostly French, but also German, Italian, Spanish, Byzantine, English, and other sculptural traditions. By examining the works in different ways, the exhibition will draw together science and connoisseurship, archaeology and history. On view will be a recently acquired 13th-century limestone Head of an Angel, related to the sculpture from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The exhibition is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS MAY - AUGUST 2006

  Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: Information provided below is subject to change. To confirm scheduling and dates, call the Communications Department at (212) 570-3951. CONTACT NUMBER FOR USE IN TEXT IS (212) 535-7710.

• RICHARD L. CHILTON, JR. ELECTED TRUSTEE AT METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

  Saturday, June 3, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The election of Richard L. Chilton, Jr. to the Board of Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art was announced today by James R. Houghton, the Museum's Chairman. Mr. Chilton's election took place at the May 9 meeting of the Board.

• Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Raphael at the Metropolitan: The Colonna Altarpiece will highlight the Colonna Altarpiece, the only one by Raphael in America and, since 1916, a treasure of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. This exhibition will reunite the altarpiece's two main panels with the scenes from its predella, which were separated from the altarpiece in 1663. A select group of drawings and paintings by Raphael produced close in time to the Colonna Altarpiece, including a preparatory study for the Metropolitan's predella panel, will also be included. The exhibition will be on view at the Metropolitan from June 20 through September 3, 2006.

• On Photography: A Tribute to Susan Sontag

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  A major force in New York intellectual life for more than 40 years, the novelist, essayist, and critic Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was renowned for her brilliant and impassioned writing on photography. From June 6 through September 3, 2006, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition of some 40 photographs that celebrate Sontag's contribution to the history of the medium, featuring works from the Metropolitan's collection by a wide range of artists, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Steichen, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, and Peter Hujar.

• Laurelton Hall, Country Estate of Louis Comfort Tiffany, to be Featured in Major Fall 2006 Metropolitan Museum Exhibition

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Between 1902 and 1905, on more than 600 acres overlooking Long Island Sound, the noted American artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) built his dream home, an extraordinary country estate called Laurelton Hall. Every aspect of the project was designed by Tiffany himself, from the exotic 84-room, eight-level house surrounded by fountains, pools, and terraced gardens to the stables, tennis courts, greenhouses, chapel, studio, and art gallery also located on the property. Often cited as Tiffany's most important work, Laurelton Hall was destroyed by fire in 1957. Surviving architectural elements and windows salvaged by Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean are now part of the collections of the museum Mrs. McKean founded, The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida. The monumental four-column loggia with its colorful glass and pottery floral capitals was saved from Laurelton Hall and has graced the American Wing's Charles Engelhard Court since 1980, a gift of Mr. and Mrs. McKean.

• Americans in Paris, 1860–1900

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  In the late 19th century, American artists by the hundreds – including such luminaries as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer – were drawn irresistibly to Paris to learn to paint and to establish their reputations. The world's artistic epicenter, Paris inspired decisive changes in American painters' styles and subjects, and stimulated the creation of newly sophisticated art schools and professional standards back in the United States.

• Rembrandt Drawings and Prints, A Selection in Honor of the Artist's 400th Birthday

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates the 400th birthday of Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn with the display of a selection of 58 drawings and prints from its extensive collection of works by the great 17th-century Dutch master and artists of his school. Forty-four of the works on view are by Rembrandt himself. The exhibition has been drawn primarily from the holdings of the Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints and the Robert Lehman Collection. One sheet, a charcoal sketch of a lioness, has been borrowed from a New York private collection.

• Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Ambroise Vollard (1867-1939) – the pioneer dealer, patron, and publisher who played a key role in promoting and shaping the careers of many of the leading artists during the late 19th and early 20th centuries – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 14. One hundred paintings as well as dozens of ceramics, sculpture, prints, and livres d'artistes commissioned and published by Vollard, from his appearance on the Paris art scene in the mid-1890s to his accidental death in 1939, will comprise the exhibition Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, which will feature works by Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, Vuillard, and others. Highlights will include seven paintings from Vollard's landmark 1895 Cézanne exhibition; a never-before-reassembled triptych from his 1896 Van Gogh retrospective; the masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? from his 1898 Gauguin exhibition; paintings from Picasso's first French exhibition (1901) and Matisse's first solo exhibition (1904); and three pictures from Derain's London series, painted in 1906-1907 at Vollard's suggestion. Also on view will be numerous portraits of Vollard by leading artists, among them Cézanne, Renoir, Bonnard, and Picasso.

• Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  More than 80 medieval sculpted heads – half from the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and half selected loans from American and European collections – are the focus of the upcoming exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture, opening this fall. The exhibition, which includes heads from the third century A.D. through the early 1500s, will consider such artistic and thematic issues as: iconoclasm and the legacy of furor, sculpting identity and the evolving notions of the "portrait," sculpture without context and the search for provenance, head reliquaries as power objects, and Gothic Italy and the antique. Created from materials as diverse as polychromed wood, silver, silver gilt, marble, and limestone, the works represent mostly French, but also German, Italian, Byzantine, and English sculptural traditions. By examining the works in different ways, the exhibition will draw together science and connoisseurship, archaeology and history. On view will be a recently acquired 13th-century limestone Head of an Angel, newly identified as having come from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

• Major Maya Exhibition at Metropolitan in June Explores Fascinating Ancient American Civilization

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  Treasures of Sacred Maya Kings – opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 13, 2006 – will explore the growth of the concept of divine kingship among ancient Maya peoples. Featuring some 150 objects – from large-scale relief sculpture in stone to small precious pieces of worked jade – the exhibition will display the grandiose ambitions of earthly rulers when they transformed themselves into gods. Dating principally from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D., the works in the exhibition are lent primarily from public collections in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, as well as from collections in Europe and the United States. Emphasis will be placed on recently excavated objects that will be on view for the first time in the United States. Notable among them are pieces from the renowned Maya sites of Calakmul in Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala, and Copan in Honduras. Maya jade objects discovered in tombs in the famous Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan – the contemporary but distant central Mexican city – will also be included.

• Café and Audio Guides Available at The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  An Audio Guide and a café are among the visitor amenities now available at The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art located in northern Manhattan and dedicated to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages.

• Metropolitan Museum Announces Appointment of Christina Alphonso as Associate Manager for Administration at The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art has appointed Christina Alphonso to the position of Associate Manager for Administration at The Cloisters, effective December 19. (A branch of the Metropolitan, The Cloisters is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages.)

• The Cloisters: A History

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is America's only museum dedicated exclusively to the art of the Middle Ages. Picturesquely overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan, the Museum derives its name from the portions of five medieval cloisters incorporated into a modern museum structure. Not replicating any one particular medieval building type or setting, but rather designed to evoke the architecture of the later Middle Ages, The Cloisters creates an integrated and harmonious context in which visitors can experience the rich tradition of medieval artistic production, including metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles. By definition, a cloister consists of a covered walkway surrounding a large open courtyard providing access to other monastic buildings. Similarly, the museum's cloisters act as passageways to galleries; and they provide as inviting a place for rest and contemplation for visitors as they often did in their original monastic settings.

• The Gardens of The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  In formal terms a cloister is a quadrangle enclosed by a roofed or vaulted passageway. It is the heart of the monastery, usually placed in the sunniest location and providing the connection, physical and psychological, between the church and the more domestic areas such as the refectory and chapter house.

• Metropolitan Museum Publishes New Guidebook to its Holdings of Medieval Art at The Cloisters

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  A new, lavishly illustrated guidebook called The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture – co-authored by the head of the department of medieval art and a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art – provides in-depth information on highlights of the collection of The Cloisters, which is the only museum in North America devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. (The Cloisters is a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum.)

• Metropolitan Museum Announces New Schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays"

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, May 15, 2006) – The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the new schedule of "Met Holiday Mondays" for the one-year period beginning Memorial Day 2006. This popular program, which opens the Museum to the public on selected Monday holidays throughout the year, began in fall 2003; prior to that, the Museum had been closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years.

• Gallery of Early Gothic Art and Architecture

  Thursday, May 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  The Early Gothic Hall at The Cloisters will reopen this summer after a five-year renovation. Completely refurbished 13th-century limestone windows and two dozen panels of newly conserved and reinstalled stained glass, primarily from the 13th and 14th centuries, are among the objects on view. Four recently acquired and exceptional examples of German stained glass from the late-13th-century glazing program for the convent church in Altenberg-an-der-Lahn will be reunited in this new installation. The renovation of the Early Gothic Hall also features construction of two new limestone apertures in an interior wall (for the display of grisaille glass windows) and new lighting.

• AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion

  Tuesday, April 25, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

  AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion, opening on May 3, 2006, will present a wide range of works by British designers in The Metropolitan Museum's English Period Rooms – The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries. A pendant to the acclaimed 2004 Costume Institute exhibition Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century, AngloMania will examine ideals, stereotypes, and representations of Englishness by juxtaposing historical costume with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions.

• Rehabilitating Historic Cairo to be Theme of April 23 Lecture at Metropolitan Museum

  Sunday, March 26, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The historic development of Cairo and its growing, shifting, and transforming urban fabric will be the focus of a lecture by Swiss architect/urban designer Dr. Stefano Bianca at 2:00 p.m. on April 23 in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is free with Museum admission.

• Renowned Chinese-born Artist Cai Guo-Qiang to Create 2006 Installation for Metropolitan Museum's Roof Garden

  Thursday, March 23, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Cai Guo-Qiang, the acclaimed Chinese-born artist known internationally for his elaborate sculpture installations and gunpowder projects, has been invited to create a site-specific exhibition for the 2006 season of The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The four works comprising Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument were inspired by the dramatic setting of the Roof Garden, an open-air space atop the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, and by the artist's reactions to issues of present-day concern.

• Metropolitan Museum Establishes International Office in Geneva

  Tuesday, March 21, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 22, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the establishment of its first full-time representative office overseas, located in Geneva, Switzerland. The Metropolitan further announced that Mahrukh Tarapor, who has served for 11 years as the Museum's Associate Director for Exhibitions, has been named to the additional post of Director for International Affairs, Geneva Office.

• Survey Shows Van Gogh Drawings Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum Generated $251 Million Economic Impact for New York

  Monday, March 20, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 21, 2006)—The acclaimed and widely attended fall/winter special exhibition Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings generated $251 million in spending by regional, national, and foreign tourists to New York, according to a Metropolitan Museum of Art visitor survey released today. Using the standard ratio for calculating tax revenue impact, the study found that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from visitors who declared that seeing the exhibition was a deciding factor in their decision to visit New York totaled some $25 million.

• Kara Walker Exhibition at Metropolitan – Inspired by Hurricane Katrina - Explores Theme of "After the Deluge" through Works by Artists through the Ages

  Sunday, March 19, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, contemporary American artist Kara Walker (b. 1969) – widely recognized for her explorations of issues of race, gender, and sexuality through the 18th-century medium of cut-paper silhouettes – has selected a variety of objects from the Museum's collection and from her own work in order to explore, in her words, "the banality of everyday life, water, and its impact." The exhibition, entitled Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge, will be on view from March 21 through July 30.

• Sight Unseen: Photographs from the Gilman Collection

  Tuesday, March 7, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now presenting Sight Unseen: Photographs from the Gilman Collection as part of its continuing series of installations of works from its recent landmark acquisition of 8,500 photographs spanning the first hundred years of the medium. The photographs in the exhibition have never been shown publicly at the Metropolitan and will remain on view through May 21, 2006.

• Metropolitan Museum Formally Unveils Glittering, Restored Fifth Avenue Façade

  Sunday, March 5, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (NEW YORK, March 6, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today officially unveiled and dedicated its newly renovated and freshly cleaned landmark Indiana limestone façade – the historic, century-old "face of the Museum" that fronts Fifth Avenue from 80th to 84th streets. Its restoration – marking the first comprehensive cleaning in its history – comes more 100 years after the iconic central façade was completed in 1902.

• 大都会艺术博物馆接受唐骝千先生捐赠
  十世纪中国绘画钜迹《溪岸图》

  Thursday, March 2, 2006, 5:30 p.m.

• STATEMENT BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ON ITS AGREEMENT WITH ITALIAN MINISTRY OF CULTURE

  Monday, February 20, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  (NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 21, 2006)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today signed an agreement in Rome that formalizes the transfer of title to six antiquities—including a group of 16 Hellenistic silver pieces—to Italy.

• A Taste for Opulence: Sèvres Porcelain from the Collection

  Thursday, February 16, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  A Taste for Opulence: Sèvres Porcelain from the Collection presents a selection of objects such as vases, dinner and tea services, furniture decorated with porcelain plaques, and other luxurious wares produced in the 18th century by the Sèvres porcelain factory. Established in the Château of Vincennes just outside Paris in 1740, the factory quickly became the preeminent producer of porcelain in Europe. Supported in its early years by the patronage of Louis XV, the factory was named the manufacture du roi in 1753 and was purchased by the king in 1759. Catering in large part to the tastes of the court, the factory strove for constant innovation and originality throughout the 18th century, frequently employing the leading artists and designers of the day to provide models and inspiration for the factory's artisans. A Taste for Opulence, which focuses on the diversity of the factory's production, will include approximately 90 objects drawn entirely from the Museum's superb holdings of Sèvres porcelain and from its unparalleled collection of 18th-century French furniture decorated with Sèvres plaques. The exhibition will be on view from February 21 through August 13, 2006.

• Works by French Romantic Painter Displayed in Girodet: Romantic Rebel at Metropolitan Museum

  Thursday, February 16, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Girodet: Romantic Rebel is the first retrospective in the United States devoted to this celebrated French artist, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, a favored but rebellious student of Jacques-Louis David. Girodet's idiosyncratic style fuses David's Neoclassical ideal with his own prescient Romantic vision. The exhibition brings together approximately 110 paintings and works on paper that reflect the artist's originality and the diversity of his works, from mythological subjects to portraits and representations of Napoleon's military triumphs.Girodet will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from May 24 through August 27, 2006.

• Los jardines en el Met Cloisters

  Friday, February 3, 2006, 8:38 p.m.

• El Met Cloisters: Reseña

  Friday, February 3, 2006, 8:25 p.m.

• The Fabric of Life: Ikat Textiles of Indonesia

  Thursday, February 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The first exhibition to examine ikat textile traditions across the breadth of Indonesia will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 28, 2006. Featuring more than 25 outstanding ikat textiles, most never before exhibited, The Fabric of Life: Ikat Textiles of Indonesia explores the imagery, forms, and roles of what is perhaps the single most important, widespread, and technically sophisticated of all Indonesian textile traditions. They are drawn primarily from the Metropolitan's extensive collection of Indonesian textiles.

• The Art of Betty Woodman

  Thursday, February 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first U.S. retrospective of the work of noted artist Betty Woodman (American, b. 1930) from April 25 through July 30, 2006. The Art of Betty Woodman will span the artist's career, from her early works of the 1950s and 1960s through her most recent mixed-media pieces of 2005-2006, and will assess her contributions to contemporary ceramic art and her importance among post-World War II artists.

• Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet

  Thursday, February 2, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

  Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet is the first comprehensive study of armor, weapons, and equestrian equipment from Tibet, a subject that has remained virtually unexplored until now. Many rare or previously unknown objects will be exhibited and published for the first time. Presenting more than 130 works, the exhibition will examine various types of unique arms and armor used in Tibet, the world's highest plateau, between the 13th and the 20th century. The objects are drawn mostly from the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and include many key loans from the Royal Armouries Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Royal Museum of Scotland, the National Museums Liverpool, Pitt Rivers Museum, British Museum, University of Aberdeen, Smithsonian Institution, Yale University, and Newark Museum. The accompanying catalogue will include the first Tibetan-English arms and armor glossary of terms and a selection of excerpts from some of the few surviving Tibetan texts relating to the subject.