In addition to Jen Recommends every week, New York City is blessed with a plethora of choice art events at some of the premier art venues in the world.
Last week we started a multi-part series to help you plan your year in art, beginning with the Museum of Modern Art. Today, we continue with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, also known simply as, The Met!
[Editor's note: Show descriptions are excerpts from The Met's website.]
The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini
Featuring many rare international loans, this exhibition will present an unprecedented survey of the period and provide new research and insight into the early history of portraiture. It will be divided into three sections and will span a period of eight decades.
Started: Dec. 21, 2011
Ends: Mar. 18, 2012
"Shi Le Seeking The Way" by Fu Baoshi, ca. 1945. (Photo from The Met)
Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution
Perhaps the greatest figure painter and landscapist of China’s modern period, Fu Baoshi successfully integrated Western and traditional artistic influences to create haunting images that evoke a mood as much as a place or person. This exhibition, co-organized with the Cleveland Museum of Art, will treat Fu’s forty-year career with some seventy paintings, including many of the artist’s recognized masterpieces, drawn from the preeminent holdings of China’s Nanjing Museum, and a New York private collection.
Starts: Jan. 21, 2012
Ends: Apr. 12, 2012
Self-Portrait as a Young Man by Rembrandt, ca. 1628
Although it is well-known that Edgar Degas was inspired by Rembrandt, whose etchings he saw when he was in Rome as a young artist studying the Old Masters, this exhibition is the first to explore the phenomenon. Organized in association with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Met will show a series of self-portraits of the two artists when they were both starting out on their illustrious careers.
[To get a sneak preview of the show, head to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, where the works are currently on view until Feb. 5, 2012.]
Starts: Feb. 23, 2012
Ends: May 20, 2012
The Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, is a jewel among Italian museums and a haven for art lovers. Founded at the end of the eighteenth century by Count Giacomo Carrara and housed in a beautiful Neoclassical building, it contains a range of masterpieces dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. At its core is a group of outstanding pictures from the Renaissance. Because of closure for restoration, it has been possible for the museum to lend to The Metropolitan Museum of Art fifteen masterpieces by Venetian and north Italian painters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including works by Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.
Starts: May 15, 2012
Ends: Sep. 3, 2012
This exhibition brings together some 175 objects gathered from the Metropolitan Museum’s important collection of early art and from the collections of twelve other museums in the U.S. and Europe to illustrate the origins and early development of ancient Egyptian art.
Starts: Apr. 10, 2012
Ends: Aug. 5, 2012
Lion Cub, ca. 3100 B.C.
- James Wallace
