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• METROPOLITAN MUSEUM ANNOUNCES WEEKEND & WEEKDAY "DROP-IN" PROGRAMS FOR FAMILIES IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 2003

  Tuesday, November 4, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  The following programs for children up to age 12 and their adult companions will be offered by The Metropolitan Museum of Art during November and December 2003. These drop-in programs are free with Museum admission, and all materials are provided.

• Medieval Gallery Re-Opens at The Cloisters

  Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The reconstructed 12th-century cloister from the French monastery of St.-Guilhem-le-Désert will return to view this fall – under a new skylight that will protect its fragile limestone carvings from the elements – at The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's branch museum for medieval art in northern Manhattan. The enclosed courtyard gallery from St.-Guilhem will reopen to the public on October 7 after nearly two years of construction, cleaning, and reinstallation. Also returning to view in this space will be the Museum's collection of Italian Romanesque architectural sculpture.

• Jackson Pollock Drawings, On View at Metropolitan Museum, Reveal El Greco's Influence on Modern Artist

  Thursday, October 2, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present five drawings by American Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) in connection with its landmark exhibition of works by the great 16th-century painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) -known to posterity as El Greco. The drawings will be on view in the Museum's Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery for the duration of the El Greco exhibition, from October 7, 2003 through January 11, 2004.

• Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford

  Tuesday, September 30, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The noted American painter Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) – a master of the atmospheric landscape, who was the subject of the very first monographic exhibition in the Metropolitan's history 123 years ago – will be the subject of a major new retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall. This showing of Gifford's work will be the first in more than 30 years and only the second since his Memorial Exhibition at the Museum in 1880. Opening on October 7, Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford will feature some 70 paintings reflecting the artist's travels in America, Europe, and the Middle East.

• $368 MILLION ECONOMIC IMPACT ON NEW YORK CITY AND NEW YORK STATE GENERATED BY METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S SPECIAL EXHIBITION MANET/VELáZQUEZ: THE FRENCH TASTE FOR SPANISH PAINTING

  Wednesday, September 10, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 9, 2003) – Tourists visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art's acclaimed Spring 2003 exhibition, Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, spent a combined $368 million during their visits to New York City, according to a Museum audience survey released today.

• New "Holiday Mondays" to Begin at Metropolitan Museum This Fall

  Tuesday, September 9, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, September 10, 2003) -- Philippe de Montebello, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today that, for the first time in three decades, the Museum will open its doors to the public this fall, winter, and spring on major Monday holidays: October 13 (Columbus Day), December 29 (the Monday between Christmas and New Year's Day), January 19 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), February 16 (Presidents' Day), and May 31 (Memorial Day). The Museum has been closed to the public on Mondays for some 30 years.

• A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University

  Thursday, September 4, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Two hundred nineteen works by leading 19th-century American, British, and French artists from the legendary collection formed by Grenville L. Winthop (1864-1943) will go on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 23, 2003. The exhibition, which marks the first time the collection has traveled since its bequest to Harvard in 1943, features paintings, drawings, and sculptures by more than 50 artists, including William Blake, Edward Burne-Jones, Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Winslow Homer, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Gustave Moreau, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Singer Sargent, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University will remain on view at the Metropolitan through January 25, 2004.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 2003

  Thursday, September 4, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  New Exhibitions
  Upcoming Exhibitions
  Continuing Exhibitions
  New and Recently Opened Installations

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS MAY-AUGUST 2003

  Sunday, July 6, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

• Central Park: A Sesquicentennial Celebration

  Sunday, July 6, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  This summer, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the legislation (July 21, 1853) that designated as "a public place" the lands that were to become New York's Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present an exhibition about the design and construction of the park. The Metropolitan Museum has been located in Central Park since 1880.

• El Greco

  Thursday, June 26, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The first major retrospective in more than 20 years devoted to the great 16th-century painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) – known to posterity as El Greco – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 7, 2003. One of the most original artists of his age, El Greco was celebrated for his highly expressive and visionary religious paintings. The international loan exhibition's approximately 80 works include an unsurpassed selection of his psychologically compelling portraits, as well as his rare incursions into landscape, genre, mythology, and sculpture. Particular emphasis will be placed on his late works, in which mystical content, expressive distortions, and monumental scale are taken to ever greater extremes, culminating in the Adoration of Shepherds, the spectacular nine-foot-tall painting created to decorate his own tomb.

• First Survey of French Daguerreotypes—Many Among the Earliest Photographs Ever Taken—Opens at Metropolitan Museum on September 23

  Thursday, June 26, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Some 175 of the best surviving examples of a medium that changed the history of art and visual representation forever will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 23, 2003, through January 4, 2004. The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839-1855 is the first survey of key monuments from photography's first moments, when its pioneers used the invention for artistic, scientific, ethnographic, documentary, and other purposes. The exhibition will employ state-of-the-art display and lighting techniques to reveal the incomparable detail and sculptural quality that distinguishes this process and which led one of its earliest champions, Jules Janin, to describe the daguerreotype as "divine magic."

• The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art

  Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Some 200 American Indian objects assembled over almost half a century by the renowned Santa Fe authority and collector Ralph T. Coe will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning September 9. Featuring objects dating from 3000 B.C. to the present, The Responsive Eye: Ralph T. Coe and the Collecting of American Indian Art will display a wide-ranging selection of works representative of most of the diverse Native American regions and periods. Objects on view will range from authoritative masks and headdress frontlets of painted wood made by peoples of the Pacific Northwest, to splendidly ornamented deerskin shirts and smoking pipes of the high Plains, to delicate and carefully wrought works of the Northeast region made with a clear understanding of European taste and acquisitiveness.

• Dreams of Yellow Mountain: Landscapes of Survival in Seventeenth-Century China

  Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  An exhibition focusing on the 17th-century landscape painting of China's Nanjing School will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning September 13. Comprising nearly 60 works, Dreams of Yellow Mountain: Landscapes of Survival in Seventeenth-Century China will highlight works created by "leftover subjects" of the Ming dynasty, who lived in and around Nanjing during the early years of the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1911). For these loyalist artists, images of landscape – often inspired by Yellow Mountain – symbolized survival, resistance, and reclusion in response to alien rule. Including works from the Museum's permanent holdings as well as loans from East Coast collections, the exhibition will be the most comprehensive presentation of such landscapes ever mounted in the United States.

• Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

  Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The first-ever public presentation of 101 works from the impressive group of Italian illuminated manuscripts assembled by Robert Lehman (1891-1969), one of the foremost American collectors of his day, opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 30, 2003. Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, on view through February 1, 2004, features some of the finest examples of the illuminator's art—many of them previously unknown even to scholars—produced in Italy from the 13th through the 16th century. Among the many important new discoveries presented in the exhibition is the only known illumination by the great Sienese master Duccio di Buoninsegna.

• Urban Art by Christo and Jeanne-Claude The Gates Project for Central Park, 1979-2005 Previews at Metropolitan Museum in April 2004

  Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The evolution of the widely anticipated outdoor work of art for New York City initiated in 1979 by the husband-and-wife collaborators Christo and Jeanne-Claude will be the subject of the exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates, Central Park, New York, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 6 through July 25, 2004. Some 45 preparatory drawings and collages by Christo, 40 photographs, and 10 maps and technical diagrams will document the soon-to-be-realized work of art, which when completed will consist of 7,500 saffron-colored gates placed at 10- to 15-foot intervals throughout 23 miles of pedestrian walkways lacing Central Park from 59th Street to 110th Street and from Central Park West to Fifth Avenue.

• Philip Guston

  Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The American painter Philip Guston (American, b. Canada, 1913-1980) will be the subject of a major retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 27, 2003, through January 4, 2004. The exhibition will include more than 75 paintings and drawings dating from 1930, when he was 17, to 1980, the year of his death. Beginning with his childhood fascination with popular American comic strips, through mural painting laden with political imagery, to easel painting and a burgeoning interest in, advancement of, and ultimate disenchantment with abstraction and Abstract Expressionism, through his invention of a highly controversial figurative mode of painting and drawing that influenced younger artists, Guston courageously changed styles according to his beliefs and in response to social and political issues of the day.

• $220 MILLION ECONOMIC IMPACT ON NEW YORK CITY AND NEW YORK STATE GENERATED BY METROPOLITAN MUSEUM'S RECENT SPECIAL EXHIBITION LEONARDO DA VINCI, MASTER DRAFTSMAN

  Wednesday, June 25, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, June 18, 2003) – National, regional, and foreign tourists spent a combined $220 million in New York City during their visits to see The Metropolitan Museum of Art's acclaimed winter exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, according to a Museum audience survey released today. The visitor spending generated an estimated $12 million in direct tax revenues for the City and State.

• Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture

  Thursday, June 12, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  More than 75 exceptional examples of sculpture from some of the finest public and private collections of African art in the United States will be shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Genesis: Ideas of Origin in African Sculpture, opening to the public on November 19. The works relate to traditions that interweave elements of myth, history, religion, and contemporary experience to address universal questions: How did the world begin? What is our ancestry? What is the source of agriculture, kingship, and other societal institutions? The exhibition represents the first time that 17 distinct sculptural traditions that take their inspiration from myths of origin will be considered together. Examined in particular depth will be that of the Bamana (Bambara) people of Mali. Forty stunning ci wara (Chi Wara) antelope headdresses – a classical sculptural form from the Bamana – will constitute the largest assemblage of such works and will allow viewers an appreciation of this tradition in its fullest expression. These works will be introduced by 35 rarely seen masterpieces from 16 distinct cultural traditions from sub-Saharan Africa.

• African-American Artists, 1929-1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Thursday, June 12, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  More than 70 works—drawn extensively from 204 prints donated to the Museum by Reba and Dave Williams in 1999—will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from January 15 through May 4, 2003.

• Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting to Open at Metropolitan Museum March 4

  Thursday, June 12, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The first major exhibition ever to examine the impact of 17th-century Spanish painting on 19th-century French artists will feature nearly 240 paintings and works on paper spanning several centuries of European art at the most astounding levels of achievement. On view will be some 130 paintings by Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, El Greco, Zurbarán, and other masters of Spain's Golden Age as well as masterpieces by the 19th-century French artists they influenced, among them Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Degas, and, most notably, Manet. On view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 4 through June 8, 2003, Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting will also include works by American artists such as Sargent, Chase, Eakins, Whistler, and Cassatt, who studied in France but learned to paint like Spaniards.

• Metropolitan Museum of Art Creates Spacious Public Cafeteria, Centerpiece of New, Expanded Museum Restaurant Program

  Tuesday, June 10, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  New York, June 4, 2003 – A spacious, attractively informal new public cafeteria for visitors to The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open on Tuesday, June 17. Located at the very center of the Museum, on the ground floor beneath the Medieval Sculpture Hall, this handsome cafeteria—which comfortably seats 440—replaces the long-time first-floor restaurant adjacent to the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery for Greek and Roman art. At the same time, the existing Petrie Court Café—located along the glass wall facing west into Central Park from the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court—will reopen concurrently as a full-service restaurant for Museum visitors, featuring café cuisine accompanied by breathtaking views of the park.

• Celebrating Saint Petersburg

  Thursday, May 29, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The 300th anniversary of the founding of Saint Petersburg will be celebrated at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with a display of the Museum's important holdings of sculpture and decorative works of art, either made in the imperial Russian capital or formerly included in Saint Petersburg collections.

• Metropolitan Museum Extends Popular Landmark Exhibition Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting through June 29

  Thursday, May 29, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  (New York, June 2, 2003)—Due to the exceptionally strong public response to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's acclaimed international loan exhibition Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, the Museum announced today that it will extend the run of the show through June 29. It was originally scheduled to close on June 8.

• First Major Retrospective of Dutch Master Hendrick Goltzius To Open at Metropolitan Museum June 26

  Wednesday, May 21, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The first major retrospective devoted to the virtuoso Netherlandish mannerist Hendrick Goltzius – one of the most versatile and accomplished figures in the history of art – will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 26, 2003. Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch Master (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings, an international loan exhibition of more than 160 works, spans the artist's entire career and demonstrates his legendary mastery of a remarkably wide range of media, subject matter, and styles – from extravagantly complex mythological scenes in prints, to sensitively observed studies from nature, to sumptuously colored oil paintings on canvas and copper. The exhibition remains on view at the Metropolitan through September 7, 2003.

• Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries

  Monday, May 12, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Some 40 vintage photographs from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gilman Paper Company will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003, complementing The Photography of Charles Sheeler. Ranging from Frederick H. Evans's rich platinum prints of the interior of William Morris's home (1896), to Ralph Steiner's Power Lines and Insulators (1929), Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries will feature works by early 20th-century photographers who drew inspiration from the American city, the machine, and the radical innovations of European modernists.

• Goddess to be Theme of Costume Institute's Spring 2003 Exhibition and Gala at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, May 5, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  From the clothing of ancient Greece to such modern evocations as Madame Grès's emblematic creations and Versace's Neoclassical loincloths, classical dress has profoundly inspired and influenced art and fashion through the millennia. Goddess – a major exhibition opening in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute on May 1, 2003 – will present clothing, prints, photographs, and decorative works of art from the 18th century onward, to reveal the many ways in which classical dress has become a truly timeless style.

• Civilizations of Ancient Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Pakistan Featured in Landmark Metropolitan Museum Show

  Sunday, May 4, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  The remarkable flowering of the world's earliest civilizations some 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia—present-day Iraq—will be the focus of a landmark exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 8. The culmination of years of planning and research, Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus will survey the evolution of art and culture in the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and their impact on the emerging cities of the ancient world—from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia and along the Gulf to the Indus Valley—during one of the most seminal and creative periods in history. Some 50 museums from more than a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East will participate in this ambitious exhibition, lending national treasures that have rarely, if ever, been sent outside the walls of their art institutions.

• Statement by Philippe de Montebello, Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, On the Looting of the Baghdad Museum

  Sunday, April 20, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Even as the Metropolitan Museum continues working to open on May 8 its long-scheduled, and now providential international loan exhibition "Art of the First Cities," featuring so many masterpieces of art from ancient Iraq, we join the greater museum community in mourning the horrifying plunder of the Baghdad Museum. And we stand prepared to join our fellow institutions to begin restoring the Baghdad Museum at the earliest possible opportunity.

• The Photography of Charles Sheeler

  Saturday, April 12, 2003, 4:00 a.m.

  Nearly 100 works, including 90 photographs, by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), one of the most important American artists of the first half of the 20th century and a pioneer of American modernism, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003. The Photography of Charles Sheeler, is the first major exhibition to concentrate on each of Sheeler's landmark photographic series made between 1915 and 1939, and will consist of rare vintage prints. The exhibition will reveal the full significance of Sheeler's photographs as the foundation from which his better-known works in other mediums were derived.

• Metropolitan Museum to Expand Hours for Final Weekend of Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman Exhibition

  Monday, March 24, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  (New York, March 25, 2003)—In response to the record-breaking attendance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's special exhibition Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman, the Museum announced today that it will extend its visiting hours on the exhibition's final weekend until 10:00 p.m. on both Saturday, March 29, and Sunday, March 30.

• Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection of Modern Art Donated to Metropolitan Museum

  Wednesday, February 26, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  More than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and original prints by some of the most prominent artists of the 20th century have been donated by the Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. These works – by such modern art icons as Henri Matisse, Balthus, Chagall, Derain, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miró, and Tanguy, as well as several pivotal but lesser-known artists – were collected by the New York art dealer Pierre Matisse (1900-1989).

• Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan

  Monday, February 10, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  An exhibition examining the successive waves of artistic influence that flowed from China eastward to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago over the past 1,000 years will take place at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning in March 2003. Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan, drawn from the Museum's unparalleled collection of East Asian painting, will explore how Chinese pictorial themes – Buddhist iconography, landscape imagery, flower and bird subjects, and figural narratives – were adopted selectively and reinterpreted by native artists in Korea and Japan. Organized thematically, the exhibition will focus on landscapes and images from nature in the Douglas Dillon Galleries for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy (opening March 1), and on the figural arts, including religious and narrative themes, in The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan (opening March 15). Works from China, Japan, and Korea will be shown in both gallery areas.

• SCHEDULE OF EXHIBITIONS JANUARY-APRIL 2003

  Wednesday, January 8, 2003, 5:00 a.m.

  New Exhibitions
  Upcoming Exhibitions
  Continuing Exhibitions
  New and Recently Opened Installations

• Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617): Prints, Drawings, and Paintings

  Tuesday, December 31, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The first major retrospective devoted to the virtuoso Netherlandish mannerist Hendrick Goltzius will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 26, 2003. Hendrick Goltzius, Dutch Master (1558-1617): Drawings, Prints, and Paintings—a selection of some 80 prints, 69 drawings, and 13 paintings, including loans from collections throughout Europe and the United States—spans the artist's entire career and demonstrates his legendary mastery of a remarkably wide range of media, subject matter and styles.

• Rare Porcelain Made in China for Export to Go on View at Metropolitan Museum

  Monday, December 16, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.

• New Installation of Indian Paintings Now on View in Metropolitan Museum's Irving Galleries

  Monday, December 16, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Purists at the Hindu Courts – a new installation of paintings from the Hindu courts of India, dating from the 17th to the 19th century – will be on view in Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for South and Southeast Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 6, 2003. Drawn from the Museum's collection, and including many recent acquisitions, the installation features 18 works depicting hunting scenes, garden parties, and historical events. This exquisite grouping explores the interconnections between the Muslim and Hindu court traditions.

• Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Forty vintage photographs from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Gilman Paper Company will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003, complementing The Photography of Charles Sheeler. Ranging from Frederick H. Evans's rich platinum prints of the interior of William Morris's home (1896), to Ralph Steiner's Power Lines and Insulators (1929), Charles Sheeler's Contemporaries will feature works by early 20th-century photographers who drew inspiration from the American city, the machine, and the radical innovations of European modernists.

• Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  One of the most important and comprehensive collections of Chinese export porcelain in America will go on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 14, 2003. Featuring more than 80 works drawn from the Museum's own collections, Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will examine the precious porcelain created in China for export to Europe and America. Dating from the mid-16th century through the third quarter of the 19th century, the exhibition includes bowls and vases, services and tureens, reverse glass paintings, and works in ivory. Together with the Metropolitan's winter 2003 Bulletin on the subject, the exhibition will spotlight this little-known facet of the Museum's collections.

• Manet and the American Civil War: The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama"

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  In June of 1864, an important episode in the American Civil War took place in international waters off the coast of Cherbourg, France. The duel between the U.S.S. Kearsarge and the C.S.S. Alabama created a sensation in Europe and America alike, and caught the imagination of the French artist Édouard Manet (1832-83), who made a painting of the battle before rushing to Boulogne to see the victorious Kearsarge. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently acquired Manet's portrait of the Kearsarge and to celebrate the acquisition will present a small exhibition devoted to the battle, Manet's response, and the effect of Manet's paintings on his immediate friends. Manet and the American Civil War: The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama" is a dossier exhibition that opens on June 3.

• Celebrating Saint Petersburg

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The 300th anniversary of the founding of Saint Petersburg will be celebrated with a display of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's important holdings of sculpture and decorative works of art, either made in the imperial Russian capital or formerly included in Saint Petersburg collections. Reflecting the splendor and cosmopolitan culture of the czarist court, the selection of approximately 65 objects, dating from about 1700 to the early 20th century, includes exquisitely crafted furniture, silver, porcelain, jewelry, and other luxury items of Russian, as well as French and German manufacture. On view from late spring 2003 through fall 2004, Celebrating Saint Petersburg inaugurates the Metropolitan's new European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department's Special Exhibitions Gallery.

• Roy Lichtenstein on the Roof

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Six sculptures by the celebrated American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) will go on view in The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1. Selected from the collections of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and the estate of the artist, Roy Lichtenstein on the Roof will highlight brightly painted or patinated bronze and fabricated aluminum sculptures. Created in the 1990s, each work makes witty reference to Lichtenstein's own painting or to the work of such modernist artists as Picasso and Brancusi. 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 sixth single-artist installation on the Cantor Roof Garden.

• Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The remarkable flowering of the world's earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago will be the focus of a landmark exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 8. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus will survey the evolution of Mesopotamian art and culture and its impact on the cities of the ancient world – stretching from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Central Asia to the Indus Valley – during one of the most seminal and creative periods in history.

• The Photography of Charles Sheeler

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  One hundred and twenty photographs by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), one of the most important American artists of the first half of the 20th century and a pioneer of American modernism, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 3 through August 17, 2003. The Photography of Charles Sheeler is the first major exhibition to concentrate on each of Sheeler's major photographic series made between 1915 and 1939, and will consist of rare vintage prints. The exhibition will reveal the full significance of Sheeler's photographic works as the foundation from which his better-known works in other mediums were derived.

• Thomas Struth

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Seventy works—many grandly scaled—by photographer Thomas Struth (German, born 1954), one of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from Europe in the past two decades, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from February 4 through May 18, 2003. From his early black-and-white streetscapes of European and American cities to his recent mural-sized color views of primeval landscapes in Asia, Australia, and South America, Struth's superb photographs explore the traditions and the actual conditions of our world on the cusp of this newly global millennium.

• Three Stellar Acquisitions Join Collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Sunday, November 24, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Three works of art of exceptional importance have been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was announced today by the Museum's Director, Philippe de Montebello. In making the announcement, Mr. de Montebello stressed the high quality of the works, which come from different centuries and cultures, and reinforce the Museum's ongoing commitment to continually refining and augmenting its encyclopedic collections with what he termed "the best of kind." The new acquisitions are: a 14th-century Crucifixion scene in tempera and gold leaf on wood by the Italian master Pietro Lorenzetti; a bust of the mythological figure Marsyas by the late-Baroque sculptor Balthazar Permoser; and a set of three late-14th-century handscrolls from Japan illustrating the Tale of Aki-no-yonaga (Tale for the Long Autumn Night).

• Metropolitan Museum Participates in 14th Annual "Day Without Art" Observance of International AIDS Awareness Day

  Thursday, November 14, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art will participate in International AIDS Awareness Day for the 14th consecutive year by observing Day Without Art on Tuesday, December 3. In recognition of the devastating losses suffered by the cultural community as a result of AIDS, the Metropolitan will remove from view or shroud at least one object in each of its 18 curatorial departments. In addition, the Museum will lower the flags on its plaza to half-mast to symbolize the losses due to AIDS-related deaths in the art community.

• Barrie A. Wigmore Elected a Trustee at the Metropolitan Museum

  Tuesday, November 12, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  Barrie A. Wigmore 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 November 12 meeting of the Board.

• French Nineteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection

  Thursday, November 7, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  This is the first exhibition in 20 years to survey the rich holdings of French 19th-century drawings and watercolors in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's renowned Robert Lehman Collection. On view from November 19, 2002, through February 9, 2003, French Nineteenth-Century Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection will feature more than 80 works by most of the leading artists — Ingres, Delacroix, Rousseau, Degas, Renoir, and Seurat, to name just a few — of this pivotal epoch in the history of French art. Organized to coincide with the publication of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Drawings, volume IX in the complete series of Robert Lehman Collection scholarly catalogues, both the exhibition and the book will reveal yet another facet of the taste of one of the great American collectors of the 20th century.

• Metropolitan Museum to Show Medieval Masterworks from New York City's Morgan Library

  Wednesday, October 30, 2002, 5:00 a.m.

  For a period of two-and-one-half years beginning this fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will display seven superb examples of medieval art from the Morgan Library, while that facility undergoes a major expansion project. The long-term loans include some of the favorite works of the noted financier and collector J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), a past President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. After Morgan's death, nearly 7,000 paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from his astonishing collection were given to the Metropolitan, while his private library – and the illuminated, literary, and historical manuscripts, early printed books, and Old Master drawings and prints it contained – became The Pierpont Morgan Library. Most of the works that are being lent to the Metropolitan had been kept in Mr. Morgan's study during his lifetime and, since his death, have been displayed in the room with other personal belongings.