Metropolitan Museum of Art

For over 100 years, artists have been flocking to the Provincetown art colony each summer to paint in relative isolation amid the stark light and natural beauty that outer Cape Cod has provided. With summer upon us this week, I would like to take the opportunity to revisit the impact that this art colony had on one particular artist, not only on his style, but on his contribution to many art students in the years following the closing of the Hans Hofmann School. Victor Candell was a New York modernist whose initial preoccupation with explosions, violence and the horrors of the period ...

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UPDATE (Oct. 8, 2009) - Jurors convicted Anthony Marshall, Brooke Astor's son, of 14 criminal counts, including fraud and grand larceny. He was found not guilty on charges of larceny, relating to the sale of his mother's Childe Hassam painting, and falsifying business records. The 85-year-old Marshall faces up to 25 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Dec. 8.  Read more on ABC News. **** A quintessential American painting, a coastal Maine summer house, one $920,000 yacht, and $60 million earmarked for charity: all enviable assets. And the source of controversy in the ...

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  At the March 16, 2010, meeting of the Board of Trustees of the American Federation of Arts (AFA), Thomas P. Campbell was elected a trustee. “The AFA has enjoyed a long and extremely fruitful relationship with The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” said AFA Director George G. King, “and we are delighted that Tom will be carrying on the tradition of representing the Metropolitan on the AFA Board. I know that with his talent and wisdom he will be a great asset in assisting the AFA with carrying out its mission.” The AFA Board is the first board Mr. Campbell has joined since assuming the directorship of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. About Thomas P. Campbell: Named Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in January 2009, Mr. Campbell previously was Curator in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, during which time he conceived and organized the major exhibitions Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art ...

Romare Bearden's vibrant mural-size tableau The Block (1971) and related sketches and photographs will be featured at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning January 15, 2010, in a small installation of works from the collection. The Block, an ambitious 18-foot-long collage, celebrates the Harlem neighborhood in New York City that nurtured and inspired so much of the artist's life and work. Romare Bearden (1911–1988) is best known for the colorful cut-paper collages that he began making in the 1960s. Elaborate works such as The Block (1971) elevated this genre to a major art form through its unusual materials, expressionist color, abstracted forms, flattened shapes and spaces, and shifts in perspective and scale—all the while maintaining focus on the human narrative being told within a single city block. Bearden described The Block in 1971: "…I was intrigued by the series of houses I could see from [the] windows. Their colors, their forms, and the ...

In recognition of a generous gift of $10 million from the Istanbul-based Vehbi Koç Foundation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the designation of two new galleries for Ottoman Art as the Koç Family Galleries. To be part of the Museum's galleries for the art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and later South Asia, scheduled to open in 2011, the two galleries will display works created within the borders of the Ottoman Empire between the early 14th and early 20th centuries.   "It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of the Vehbi Koç Foundation and our honorary trustee Rahmi M. Koç, and also to announce the naming of the Koç Family Galleries," commented Thomas P. Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum. "The Koç Family Galleries will provide the public with the first comprehensive overview of the multilayered nature of Ottoman patronage. We are delighted ...

Watteau, Music, and Theater, the first exhibition of Jean-Antoine Watteau's paintings in the United States in 25 years, will be presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 22 through November 29. The exhibition will demonstrate the place of music and theater in Watteau's art, exploring the tension between an imagery of power, associated with the court of Louis XIV, and a more optimistic and mildly subversive imagery of pleasure that was developed in opera-ballet and theater early in the 18th century. It will demonstrate that the painter's vision was influenced directly by musical works devoted to the island of Cythera, the home of Venus, and to the Venetian carnival, and will shed new light on a number of Watteau's pictures. The exhibition is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation. Watteau, Music, and Theater will feature more than 60 works of art, consisting of major loans of paintings and drawings by Watteau and his contemporaries from ...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today that a new gallery dedicated to Safavid and Later Persian Art (1500-1924) has been designated the Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Gallery. It is one of a suite of exhibition spaces—the Galleries for the Arts of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia—that are overseen by the Museum's Department of Islamic Art and are scheduled to open in 2011. In addition to funding the gallery naming, Mr. and Mrs. Mossavar-Rahmani's significant grant will fund the publication of a catalogue on the entire collection of the Department of Islamic Art and an endowment to support educational programming on Iranian art – all part of the overall project of $50 million including capital and endowment. "In announcing the naming of the new gallery, I am delighted to recognize the many years of generous and exemplary support of Bijan and Sharmin," commented Thomas P. Campbell, Director of the ...

Exhibition dates: June 18 – November 29, 2009Location: The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan, 2nd Floor An impressive group of Japanese mandalas—graphic depictions of the Buddhistuniverse and its myriad realms and deities—are featured in an exhibition on view atThe Metropolitan Museum of Art through November 29. Showcasing more than60 magnificent works—painting, sculpture, drawing, metalwork, stoneware, textile,and lacquer—drawn from major museums and collections in the United States,Japanese Mandalas: Emanations and Avatars illustrates the exceptional andcomplex world of Esoteric Buddhist art in Japan. Highlights of the exhibitioninclude a set of monumental 13th-century mandalas on loan from the BrooklynMuseum—this pair was selected by the Japanese government to be conserved inJapan. Displayed in tandem with iconographic drawings that explain the characterand placement of the deities, the mandalas introduce viewers to the supremeBuddha ...