New York City — Fashionable Exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum

Two noteworthy exhibitions are on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City: “MANDALAS — Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet” and “SIENA: The Rise of Painting 1300 — 1350.”

The show entitled “SIENA: The Rise of Painting 1300–1350” possesses the good fortune that results when two venerable institutions — in this case The National Gallery, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (colloquially, “the Met”) — collaborate in order to break new ground in the understanding of Renaissance painting. Sienese artists such as Duccio di Buoninsegna, Pietro Lorenzetti and Ambrogio Lorenzetti played a pivotal role in the development of Western religious art at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. The Orsini Polyptych (pictured above and below) was created circa 1335–40 using tempera and gold leaf on panel. It is a fine example of the dramatic expressiveness of the artist Simone Martini (ca. 1284 — 1344).

The achievements and innovations of the painters from Siena were influential in Florence (considered the center of the Renaissance) and beyond. The motifs used by Martini in his Orsini Polyptych, for example, were admired and copied in Northern Europe, where his influence can been seen in the manuscript (below) created by the Franco-Netherlandish Limbourg Brothers over 60 years later.

Duccio di Buoninsegna

Considered the greatest of the Sienese painters, Duccio di Buoninsegna (known as “Duccio”) was born around the year 1255 when the Tuscan city of Siena was one of the great capitals of Italy, having defeated the Florentines in 1260. Before his death, circa 1319, Duccio founded the Sienese School, fused the fresh spirituality of the Gothic style with the formality of the Italo-Byzantine tradition, and painted the most important altarpiece for Siena’s cathedral. Duccio is widely regarded as one of the most influential Italian painters of the Middle Ages.

Simone Martini

Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti brothers, and the other artists on view here did not survive the catastrophic bubonic plague known as the Black Death that gripped Europe from 1346 to 1353 killing as many as 50 million people, perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th-century population.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1320 — 1348)

Pietro Lorenzetti (1280 — 1348)

“SIENA: The Rise of Painting 1300 — 1350” Will Close on January 26, 2025

A mandala is both a symbolic universe and a visual prayer that in Tibet is used to conceptualize a rapid path (or map) to spiritual enlightenment. The modern renderings of mandalas shown here are the result of a newly commissioned work of contemporary art by Tenzing Rigdol, a Tibetan artist. The bulk of objects and imagery in the “Mandalas” show explores Himalayan Buddhist devotional art through more than 100 artifacts and paintings, most dating from the 12th to 15th centuries.

“MANDALAS — Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet” Will Be on View at the Met in New York City through January 12, 2025

Previous Exhibitions at the Met

Through September 2024, the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented “SLEEPING BEAUTIES — Reawakening Fashion,” a large show featuring over 200 garments spanning four centuries, including the “Butterfly” ball gowns circa 1955 (below) designed by Charles James.

Fashion inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were on display as part of the show entitled SLEEPING BEAUTIES.

SLEEPING BEAUTIES: Reawakening Fashion Closed in New York City in September 2024

The hottest museum tickets in New York City during 2023-24 season were for exhibitions focused on THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE, KARL LAGERFELD, VINCENT VAN GOGH, and EDOUARD MANET & EDGAR DEGAS, all presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Even though those and other well-regarded shows have now closed, you can view highlights from “The Harlem Renaissance,” “Women Dressing Women,” “Manet / Degas,” “Karl Lagerfeld — A Line of Beauty,” and “Van Gogh’s Cypresses” in this article, plus you will learn about the permanent collection and various wings and departments within the Met, the premier art museum in New York City.

On view through July 28, 2024, the show entitled THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE contrasted the depiction of Black life by artists living & working in Harlem with the portrayal of the international African diaspora by their European counterparts, including Henri Matisse.

Harlem — known for jazz clubs, gospel choirs and African-American heritage — attracts tourists and locals alike. This vibrant New York City neighborhood is located in Upper Manhattan, bounded by Central Park North, Fifth Avenue, the Harlem River, and the Hudson River. Originally a Dutch village dating back to 1658, and named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, Harlem is home to the famous Apollo Theater located on 125th Street, the neighborhood’s main artery.

This groundbreaking and inspirational exhibit (featuring over 160 paintings, photographs and film) explored the development of Black modern art in New York City and Paris since 1920 and broke new ground regarding the international influence of African culture on 20th-century art.

The Harlem Renaissance Was on View in New York City Until July 2024

WEAVING ABSTRACTION

A Fresh Examination of Textiles as a Medium in International Art History

The dryness along the desert coasts of South America (in what is now Chile and Peru) has enabled the remarkable preservation of the natural camelid fibers used in these garments over millennia. The geometric wave pattern (above) used to create this tunic (shown below) differs from the checkerboard patterns which were a hallmark of Inca identity, even though the date of this shirt — 1460-1540 — indicates that it was fabricated during the period of Inca occupation of the central Peruvian coast, a century before the Spanish invasion. Therefore, the local weaving traditions continued to flourish in this region despite the imperial rule of the Inca.

The Exhibit “Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art” Was on Display in New York City Through June 2024

“Indian Skies” Closed in New York City in June 2024

In 2023-24, with so many fashion houses managed by men in New York City and throughout Europe, the Met decided to present “Women Dressing Women” to set the record straight on contributions made by female designers.

In October 2023, when Sarah Burton departed Alexander McQueen — where she worked for 26 years, and served as the brand’s creative director since its founder committed suicide in 2010 — the fashion world asked “Where are the women in positions of power in our industry?”

Since the fashion conglomerate Kering announced that Ms. Burton was replaced by Sean McGirr (a white man), the top positions at Rochas, Tod’s and Moschino have been filled by three more white men, all Italians. It is perhaps even more astounding to recognize that “Women Dressing Women” marked the first time the Met devoted a show solely to female fashion designers in the 85 years since the Costume Institute joined the museum.

This exhibition, which was on view in New York City through March 2024, served as more than a celebration of talented female designers from the early 20th century to the present. “Women Dressing Women” represented both an awakening and a timely provocation about equality and power in a multi-trillion-dollar industry that caters primarily to women!

The exhibit “Africa and Byzantium” explored the profound artistic contributions from North and East Africa — Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia and other powerful kingdoms — on the Byzantine Empire (330 — 1453). This special exhibition closed on March 3, 2024.

While art history has long emphasized the glories of Byzantium, this show shed new light (with art rarely or never seen before in public) on the staggering artistic achievements of medieval Africa.

“British Vision 1700 — 1900”

Department of Drawings & Prints, Closed March 5, 2024

VERTIGO OF COLOR — Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism

The Met presented a special exhibit entitled “VERTIGO OF COLOR — Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism” from October 13 through January 21, 2024. Co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 65 works of art (watercolors, drawings and paintings) by Henri Matisse and André Derain revealed how these two great Fauvists manipulated colors in radical ways — where nature took on hues responding to the artists’ sensations, rather than reality — to create the first important modernist movement of the 20th century.

“Matisse, Derain & the Origins of Fauvism” Closed in January 2024 in New York City

Exhibition Space in the Lehman Wing

This exhibit dedicated to Fauvism was presented in the Lehman Wing, one of the most serene areas inside the Met. The Lehman Wing possesses two levels of gallery space, and we encourage you to stop in to unwind and to view some of the fine pieces of art that are regularly on display, plus the “Mandalas” exhibit on display through January 12, 2025.

Masterpieces in the Lehman Wing

The New British Galleries

Exhibits Presented in New York City During 2023

A blockbuster exhibit on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 7, 2024 was entitled “MANET / DEGAS,” a collaborative effort with the Musée d’Orsay.

The Manet / Degas show highlighted two significant (and contrasting) contributors to the “new” style of painting explored in Paris between the 1860s and 1880s. It was displayed at the Musée d’Orsay during the summer of 2023 before traveling to New York City.

“Lagerfeld’s fluid lines united his designs for Balmain, Patou, Chloé, Fendi, Chanel, and his eponymous label, Karl Lagerfeld, creating a diverse and prolific body of work unparalleled in the history of fashion,” according to the Met Museum. The 150 creations by the German-born designer assembled by the Met’s Costume Institute, dating from the 1950s through 2019, were on view in New York City until July 16, 2023.

“Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” Closed in New York City in July 2023

Through August 27, 2023, the Met displayed a tightly-conceived thematic exhibit of “Van Gogh’s Cypresses.” Some 40 works of art, including “The Starry Night” (above) from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, illuminated Vincent van Gogh’s fascination with the distinctive evergreen trees that sparked his creativity during his two years in the South of France.

“Van Gogh’s Cypresses” Was on View in New York City During the Summer of 2023

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is open from 10:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon, closed on Wednesdays, and we suggest you plan a visit in the early evening on a Friday or Saturday when the Met museum offers extended hours from 10:00 in the morning until 9:00 in the evening!

Enjoying the Permanent Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

While some of the possessions of the Met may also be commonly found in other Western museums — such as furniture, tapestries, and antique weapons / armor from around the world — the most wonderful quality of museums in the United States in general is the broad range of ceramics, jewelry, timepieces, glass, fashion, photographs, mathematical & musical instruments, and architectural elements on display. In other words, art museums in North America are often surprising (and never boring) because they do not limit their purpose to the exhibition of sculpture and painting.

“The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing” (opened in 1982) housing fine art from Africa, Oceania and the Americas is unique; unfortunately, this section of the museum is closed for renovation through 2025. The good news is that a number of pieces from the Rockefeller Wing may be seen in a room adjacent to Egyptian art under the title “The African Origin of Civilization.”

BELOW: 1st century B.C. Roman Wall Frescos

European Paintings 1300 — 1800

If you plan to visit New York City and you’re in the mood to see paintings, fortunately you can head to the top of the Met’s Great Hall staircase and enter the 45 galleries devoted to European Paintings. After a five-year renovation project, this suite of galleries dedicated primarily to German, French, British, Italian, Spanish and Netherlandish art has recently reopened, with a few surprises sprinkled into the mix, such as “The Beginning” (below) painted between 1946 and 1949 by Max Beckmann.

BELOW: The Actor, 1904-05 by Pablo Picasso & The Vision of Saint John, 1608 by El Greco

With a Collection Numbering over 2,000,000 works of art, where to begin at the Met

The permanent collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is curated by 17 departments, and the main building on Fifth Avenue in New York City is by area one of the largest art museums in the world.

Some departments, housing art from classical antiquity (Greece and Rome) as well as the ancient Near East, for example, cannot compare with stronger collections found in Europe. We therefore recommend you begin with the Met’s impressive holdings of Netherlandish art inside the “European Paintings from 1300 — 1800” galleries.

After seeing art from Western Europe, Japan, China and Egypt, we decided to view European paintings from the early part of the nineteenth-century (below), when many artists from Scandinavia and France would embark on sojourns to Italy and North Africa for inspiration. We also had a keen interest in seeing stained glass, seascapes, portraits and landscapes by some of the most talented artists from the United States, notably Tiffany, Homer, Twachtman, Sargent and Inness — so we added the American Wing of the museum to our agenda.

Planting the Seeds of Impressionism

In 1830, the 18-year-old Frenchman Theodore Rousseau ventured into the rugged terrain of the Auvergne region to draw and paint from a high perch in the hills. Shortly thereafter, Rousseau’s panoramic view (shown above) of a hamlet at the base of a steep cliff was celebrated in Paris by leaders of the ascendant Romantic movement. As a result, the French countryside would soon take its place as the equal of Italy’s in terms of artistic inspiration and innovation, and the en plein air sketching expeditions of Rousseau and Charles-Francois Daubigny (below) would profoundly change the course of landscape painting over the next 60 years in France, North America and even Italy where in the late 1850s a group of Tuscan painters known as the Macchiaioli broke with the antiquated conventions taught by the European academies in order to paint outdoors to capture natural light, shade and color.

Édouard Manet & Claude Monet

While both Manet and Monet achieved initial success by submitting their paintings to the official Salon, their modernist tendencies and styles would eventually lead them down independent paths. In 1861, Manet submitted two paintings to the Salon; both were accepted and one — The Spanish Singer (on view at the Met) — won an honorable mention. Manet would not receive unequivocal recognition from the Salon for another 20 years. Luncheon on the Grass {Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe}, Manet’s 1863 submission to the Salon, was rejected and the scandal caused by the presentation of Olympia (below right) prompted Manet to flee to Spain.

In 1866, Claude Monet’s Woman in the Green Dress was accepted by the jury at the Salon and received positive reviews. In the following year, however, Monet’s submission was rejected and Monet proposed the idea of exhibiting independently — together with other painters who would one day be called the Impressionists — a proposition that would not be realized due to a lack of funds until 1874.

The Impressionists organized eight exhibitions between 1874 and 1886 but Manet never exhibited with them. Manet was one of the first nineteenth-century artists to paint modern life and his alla prima {at once} technique was adopted by the Impressionists because this style allowed them to paint quickly enough to capture on canvas the changing effects of light. In retrospect, Édouard Manet was the most pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

The Busy “Great Hall” Inside the Met in New York City

The main entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as the Great Hall, opened to the public in December 1902. At that time, the Evening Post newspaper announced that New York City finally had a neoclassical palace for the display of art, “one of the finest in the world, and the only public building in recent years which approaches in dignity and grandeur the museums of the old world.”

During this visit to the Met Museum, we explored some of the artistic movements which enabled France to become the creative center of Europe during the 19th century, displacing Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Guardians of Neoclassicism such as Ingres in France and Navez in Belgium and leaders of Orientalism like Gérôme would gradually see their traditional movements wane in influence as proponents of Naturalism and Romanticism (Dagnan-Bouveret and Rousseau, respectively) gained recognition.

Of course, French Impressionism would surpass all of these 19th-century artistic trends in popularity and longevity.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art possesses the finest holdings of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting in New York, so please take a look at our article entitled “New York City — 4 Incredible Art Museums” to enjoy the depth of the Met’s collection of art from the 1860s through the beginning of the 20th century.

Remember, the Met’s Roof Garden will be open (weather permitting) from May through the end of October. The Met Museum’s popular Holiday Tree and creche, shown below, are on view every Christmas season (from late November through the first week of January).

We sincerely look forward to seeing you in the future.