Updated: October 20, 2011
Advance Exhibition Schedule
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Picasso's Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition
The Frick Collection, New York, October 4, 2011–January 8, 2012
National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 29–May 6, 2012
Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait, 1901/1902, black chalk and watercolor, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) is generally acknowledged to be the greatest draftsman of the 20th century. Through some 55 works, the exhibition presents the dazzling development of Picasso's drawings over a 30-year period—from the precocious academic exercises of his youth in the 1890s to the virtuoso works of the early 1920s including the radical innovations of cubism and collage. Drawing served as an essential means of invention and discovery in Picasso's multifaceted art, connecting him deeply with the grand tradition of European masters of the near and distant past.
The exhibition is co-organized by The Frick Collection, New York, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
I Spy: Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938–2010
National Gallery of Art, Washington, April 22–August 5, 2012
Robert Frank, From the Bus, New York, 1958, gelatin silver print mounted on fiberboard, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Robert Frank Collection, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel. © Robert Frank
Since the invention of small hand-held cameras and faster films in the late 19th century, photographers have been fascinated with capturing everyday life in the urban environment. An exhibition of some 100 works will celebrate how photographers such as Harry Callahan, Bruce Davidson, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Beat Streuli creatively pursued a new genre of street photography, capturing the diversity and rapid pace of modern life.
Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape
Tate Modern, London, April 14–September 11, 2011
Fundacío Joan Miró, Barcelona, October 14, 2011–March 25, 2012
National Gallery of Art, Washington, May 6–August 12, 2012
Joan Miró, Head of a Catalan Peasant, 1924, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washingon, Gift of the Collectors Committee
Celebrated as one of the greatest modern artists, Joan Miró (1893–1983) developed a visual language that reflected his vision and energy in a variety of styles across many media. Through some 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints from a career spanning almost a century, the exhibition reveals a politically engaged side to Miró's work, reflecting his passionate response to one of the most turbulent periods in European history, as well as his sense of Spanish—specifically Catalonian—identity.
The exhibition was organized by Tate Modern, London, in collaboration with Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, and in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Buffy and William Cafritz.
Charles Marville: Photographer of Modernity
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Early 2013
Charles Marville, Hôtel de la Marine, c. 1872-1876, albumen print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Diana and Mallory Walker Fund
The first exhibition in the United States and the only scholarly catalogue on the renowned 19th-century French photographer Charles Marville (1813–1879) presents recent groundbreaking discoveries informing his art and biography, including the versatility of his photographic talents and his true identity, background, and family life. The exhibition features some 100 photographs covering the arc of his career, from his city scenes and landscape and architectural studies of Europe in the early 1850s to his compelling photographs of Paris and its environs in the late 1870s. Widely patronized and acclaimed during his lifetime, Marville continues to be recognized as one of the most accomplished and prolific photographers in the history of the medium.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
In the Tower: Mel Bochner
National Gallery of Art, Washington, November 6, 2011–April 8, 2012
Mel Bochner, Amazing!, 2011, oil and acrylic on canvas, two panels. Courtesy Peter Freeman, Inc © Mel Bochner
For 45 years Mel Bochner has explored the intersections of linguistic and visual representation. As one of the innovators of conceptual art during the 1960s, Bochner questioned the modernist inclination for a purely visual art by conjoining visual form and language. The exhibition will present some 40 works that span the artist's career, including four large vertical diptychs that have never been exhibited before (Master of the Universe, Oh Well, Amazing!, and Babble); four horizontal works (Money, Die, Useless, and Obscene); the red monochrome Blah; and the vertical painting Sputter. Also included is a large group of Thesaurus drawings, including several works that have never been shown from Bochner's private collection. Our In the Tower series of exhibitions centers on developments in art since midcentury.
Antico: The Golden Age of Renaissance Bronzes
National Gallery of Art, Washington, November 6, 2011–April 8, 2012
The Frick Collection, New York, May 1–July 29, 2012
Antico, Apollo Belvedere, c. 1497-1498, bronze with partial gilding and silver inlay, Leibieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main
For the first time in the United States, an exhibition will be devoted to the Mantuan sculptor and goldsmith Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, known as Antico (c. 1455–1528) for his expertise in classical antiquity. The technology for producing bronzes in multiples was refined and developed by Antico, who fostered the diffusion of the Roman statues that have become icons of western art. Enlivened with gilding and silvering, his exquisite bronze reductions of ancient Roman sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere (c. 120–140 AD) were created just as they were coming to light during the Renaissance. Antico's bronzes are among the first to exist in multiples, however they are currently so rare that the 40 works in the exhibition—including medals, reliefs, busts, and the renowned statuettes—constitute over three fourths of the sculptor's extant oeuvre.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with the Frick Collection, New York. The exhibition in Washington is funded by the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.
The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries
National Gallery of Art, Washington, September 18, 2011–January 8, 2012
Meadows Museum, Dallas, TX, February 5–May 13, 2012
Attributed to Pasquier Grenier, Siege of Asilah (detail), 1475-1500, wool and silk, Museo Parroquial de Pastrana
The Pastrana Tapestries—four monumental works on loan from the Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Pastrana, Spain—are among the finest Gothic tapestries in existence. This exhibition represents the first time that the set will be on view in the United States. Depicting the conquest of two strategically located Moroccan cities by the king of Portugal, Afonso V, in 1471, the tapestries are highly unusual for their portrayal of contemporary events. Exquisitely rendered in wool and silk threads by Flemish weavers in Tournai, Belgium, the recently restored works teem with vivid and colorful images of knights, ships, and military paraphernalia set against a backdrop of maritime and urban landscapes.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Fundación Carlos de Amberes, Madrid, in association with the Embassy of Spain, the Spain–USA Foundation, and the Embassy of Portugal and with the cooperation of the Embassy of Belgium and the Embassy of Morocco in Washington, DC.
The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the government of Spain; the government of Portugal, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Instituto Camões; and the government of Belgium, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The conservation of the tapestries was undertaken at the initiative of the Fundación Carlos de Amberes, with support from the Belgian InBev-Baillet Latour Fund, and the following Spanish institutions: Fundación Caja Madrid, Region of Castilla–La Mancha, Provincial Council of Guadalajara, and Diocese of Sigüenza-Guadalajara / Church of Our Lady of the Assumption.
Warhol: Headlines
National Gallery of Art, Washington, September 25, 2011–January 2, 2012
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, February 11–May 13, 2012
Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome, June 11–September 9, 2012
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, October 14, 2012–January 6, 2013
Andy Warhol, A Boy for Meg, 1962, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine. © 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
This is the first exhibition to fully examine the works that Andy Warhol created on the theme of news headlines. It defines and presents some 80 works—paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, film, video, and television—based largely on the tabloid news, revealing the artist's career-long obsession with the sensational side of contemporary media. Warhol's headline works also chart the great shift in mainstream media's technological means of delivering news: from a two-dimensional printed format to a time-based, electronic format. The headline motif proves at once fresh and familiar, and it encompasses Warhol's key subjects, including celebrity, death, disaster, and contemporary events.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, the Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome, and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The Terra Foundation for American Art is the foundation sponsor of the international tour of the exhibition.
The exhibition in Washington is made possible by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.
Harry Callahan at 100
National Gallery of Art, Washington, October 2, 2011–March 4, 2012
Harry Callahan, Eleanor, Chicago, 1947, gelatin silver print mounted on paperboard, Gift of The Herbert and Nannette Rothschild Memorial Fund in memory of Judith Rothschild
Harry Callahan (1912–1999) was one of the most innovative and influential photographers of the 20th century. Celebrating the centenary of his birth, the exhibition of some 110 photographs explores all facets of Callahan's art from its genesis in Detroit in the early 1940s to its flowering in Chicago in the late 1940s and 1950s and maturation in Providence and Atlanta from in the 1960s through the 1990s. Throughout his long career, he repeatedly explored new ways of looking at and presenting the world in photographs that are elegant, visually daring, and highly experimental.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
A New Look: Samuel F. B. Morse's "Gallery of the Louvre"
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, March 1–June 12, 2011
National Gallery of Art, Washington, June 25, 2011–July 8, 2012
Samuel F. B. Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1831–1833, oil on canvas, Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection
Better known for his invention of the telegraph and the Morse code, Samuel Morse intended this painting to inspire American audiences by emphasizing instruction and learning from masterpieces. Executed in Paris and New York in 1831–1833, it depicts his own imaginative installation of masterworks from the Louvre's collection, with copyists and instructors in the foreground. The newly conserved painting is on loan from the Terra Foundation of American Art.
The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Terra Foundation for American Art and is organized in partnership with the National Gallery of Art.
The Gothic Spirit of John Taylor Arms
National Gallery of Art, Washington, May 8–November 27, 2011
John Taylor Arms, The Gates of the City, 1922, color etching and aquatint on laid paper, National Gallery of Art, Gift (Partial and Promised) of Judy and Leo Zickler
With astonishing dexterity and an eye for minute detail, John Taylor Arms (1887–1953) created prints of monumental presence despite their modest size. The exhibition features some 55 prints, drawings, and etching plates that span the artist's career from his early New York series to his finest images of cathedrals. Born in Washington, DC, Arms gave up a successful career as an architect to become a printmaker, devoting many years of travel and study to rendering architecture, touring England, France, Italy, and other countries. Arms conveyed a deep reverence for his subjects, which he scrutinized acutely to translate into prints of dazzling brilliance.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Italian Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection: 1525–1835
National Gallery of Art, Washington, May 8–November 27, 2011
Canaletto, The Maundy Thursday Festival before the Ducal Palace in Venice, c. 1765, pen and brown ink with gray wash, heightened with white gouache, over black chalk on laid paper. National Gallery of Art, Wolfgang Ratjen Collection
The splendors of Italian draftsmanship from the late Renaissance to the height of the neoclassical movement are showcased in an exhibition of 65 superb drawings assembled by the European private collector Wolfgang Ratjen (1943−1997) and acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 2007. Works by many of the most important artists of the period are featured, from Giulio Romano to Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. Outstanding examples include those by such leading Venetian masters as Domenico Tintoretto, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Canaletto, whose elegant rendering of the "Giovedì Grasso" festival in Venice is one of his finest surviving drawings.
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the STIFTUNG RATJEN, Liechtenstein.
From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 31, 2010–January 2, 2012
Diego Rivera, Chester Dale, 1945, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Chester Dale Collection
Chester Dale's magnificent bequest to the National Gallery of Art in 1962 included one of America's most important collections of French painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This special exhibition, the first in 45 years to explore the extraordinary legacy left to the nation by this passionate collector, features some 83 of his finest French and American paintings. Among the masterpieces on view are Renoir's A Girl with a Watering Can (1876) and Picasso's Family of Saltimbanques (1905).
The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.The exhibition is made possible by United Technologies Corporation.
UPCOMING SPECIAL INSTALLATIONS
The Solemnity of Shadows: Juan Laurent's Vision of Spain
National Gallery of Art, Washington, November 7–December 30, 2011
J. Laurent and Company, General interior view of the new plaza de toros, Madrid, c.1874, albumen silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Department of Image Collections
Juan Laurent (1816–1886) is a preeminent figure in the history of Spanish photography. The Gallery's Department of Image Collections presents a selection of 23 rare albumen photographs and two albums by Laurent and his company, with particular focus on his photographs of Spanish art and architecture. Through the successful commercialization of Laurent's excellent archive of photographs of historic monuments and city views as well as through his reproductions of works of art from the Museo del Prado and the Royal Palace in Madrid, Laurent became the most important and recognizable trade photographer in 19th-century Spain. His city views include Toledo, Segovia, Salamanca, Valladolid, Sevilla, Madrid, El Escorial, Barcelona, Elche, Granada, Burgos, and Valencia.
CURRENT SPECIAL INSTALLATIONS
Artists' Books and Literature
National Gallery of Art, Washington, July 30, 2011–January 29, 2012
Ronald King, b. 1932, and Roy Fisher, b. 1930, Anansi Company : a collection of thirteen hand-made wire and card rod-puppets animated in colour and verse, London: Circle Press, 1992, National Gallery of Art Library, Gift of Patricia G. England
The artists' books in the collection of the National Gallery of Art Library include fine press books, livres d'artiste, and fine printed books. Focusing on plays, novels, and other books with literary themes, the 14 books exhibited here are created by artists that include Barry Moser, Claire Van Vliet, Susan Johanknecht, Susan Allix, and Ken Campbell. The volumes are bound, sewn, folded, constructed, printed, and colored to convey the artists' own definition of a book and to show how it intersects with their art.
Modern Lab: The Found Alphabet
National Gallery of Art, Washington, May 14–November 13, 2011
Claes Oldenburg, The Letter Q as Beach House, with Sailboat, published 1972, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of Gemini G.E.L. and the Artist
The alphabet and letters have long beguiled artists, who in modern times have treated them like found objects, isolated from their workaday contexts, and appealing in their own right. In this special installation, artists take both fanciful and analytic approaches to rendering the alphabet in 20 works, from Claes Oldenburg's letter "Q"— upended and repurposed as a beach house—to James Castle's own invented alphabetic system. Modern Lab is a small gallery dedicated to focused installations of modern and contemporary objects from the Gallery's collection.
Landscapes from the Armand Hammer Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington, through November 2011
Hubert Robert, Architectural Fantasy with a Triumphal Bridge, c. 1760, red chalk on laid paper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Armand Hammer Collection
The Armand Hammer Collection of old master and modern drawings consists of more than 50 works by some of the greatest draftsmen of all time, from Leonardo to Picasso. With works spanning five centuries, the collection features a range of studies and finished compositions drawn in a variety of styles and techniques. Since their arrival at the Gallery in 1986, the drawings have been shown continuously in a series of small exhibitions. To avoid overexposure to light, the selection of drawings is changed every six months. The current selection features landscapes and town scenes by notable artists ranging from Rembrandt to Andrew Wyeth.
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