Advance Exhibition Schedule

Press Release
Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634): The Little Ice Age
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam—November 21, 2009 through February 14, 2010
National Gallery of Art, Washington—March 21 through July 5, 2010

Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Games on the Frozen River Ijsel, c. 1626
pen and black and gray ink with watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Woodner Collection, Gift of Andrea Woodner

In the first exhibition devoted to Dutch landscape artist Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634), scenes of skating, sleigh rides, and outdoor games on frozen canals and waterways bring to life the lively pastimes and day-to-day bustle of the Golden Age. Displayed in the intimate Dutch Cabinet Galleries, some 15 paintings and 20 drawings capture the harsh winters of the period and the activities they made possible. Avercamp—the first artist to specialize in painting winter landscapes that feature people recreating on the ice—made the "ice scene" a genre in its own right. Within these winter scenes is a social narrative as well: unencumbered by status, all classes formed one community on the ice. Avercamp was also an outstanding draftsman who made individual figure studies that he utilized not only in his painted work but also in compositional drawings.

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Curator: Arthur K. Wheelock Jr, curator, northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art.

Catalogue: The catalogue is the first scholarly publication on Avercamp in some 25 years. Available in March 2010: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

Opening Day Lecture: Introduction to the Exhibition—Hendrick Avercamp: The Little Ice Age
Pieter Roelofs, curator of17th-century paintings, Rijksmuseum, and Bianca du Mortier, curator of dress and textiles, Rijksmuseum, on Sunday, March 21, at 2 pm. Book signing of catalogue follows. First come, first seated. East Building Auditorium.

Brochure: An illustrated informational brochure accompanies the exhibition.

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Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, 1953-1997
National Gallery of Art, Washington—May 2 through September 6, 2010

Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th street after visiting Burroughs at our pad…Fall 1953, Manhattan), 1953
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary S. Davis

In the first scholarly exhibition of American poet Allen Ginsberg's photographs, all facets of his work in photography will be explored. Some 70 works on display will range from the 1950s “drugstore” prints to his now celebrated portraits of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, snapshots of Ginsberg himself taken just before he achieved literary fame, and his later portraits of the Beats and other friends made in the 1980s and 1990s. Ginsberg (1926–1997) started taking photographs in 1953 when he purchased a small, secondhand Kodak camera. For the next decade he captured numerous intimate shots of himself as well as his friends and lovers. He abandoned photography in 1963 but returned to it in the early 1980s. Encouraged by photographers Berenice Abbott and Robert Frank, he reprinted much of his early work and began making new portraits, adding sometimes extensive inscriptions. Although Ginsberg's photographs form a compelling portrait of the Beat and counterculture generation from the 1950s to the 1990s, his pictures are far more than mere historical documents. The same ideas that inform his poetry—an intense observation of the world, a deep appreciation of the beauty of the vernacular, a celebration of the sacredness of the present, and a faith in intuitive expression—also permeate his photography.

The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Trellis Fund.

Curator: Sarah Greenough, senior curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art.

Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue will include an essay by Greenough and a 1991 interview with Ginsberg. Available in April 2010: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

Opening Day Lecture: Seeing with the Eyes of the Angels: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
Greenough, on Sunday, May 2, at 2 pm. Book signing of catalogue follows. First come, first seated. East Building Auditorium.

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American Modernism: The Shein Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington—May 16, 2010 through January 2, 2011

John Marin, Sunset, 1922
watercolor, graphite, and charcoal on paper
Collection of Deborah and Ed Shein

This exhibition explores the advent of modernism a century ago through 20 important paintings, sculptures, and drawings by the first-generation American avant-garde. Among the artists represented are Patrick Henry Bruce, Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marcel Duchamp, Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Man Ray, Morton Schamberg, Charles Sheeler, Joseph Stella, John Storrs, and Max Weber. All works are from the Edward and Deborah Shein Collection, which is distinguished by its remarkable quality and rigorous focus on early American modernism.

Curators: Nancy Anderson, curator, and Charles Brock, associate curator, department of American and British Paintings, National Gallery of Art.

Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue includes contributions by leading scholars of American modernism. Available in May 2010: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

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German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580–1900
National Gallery of Art, Washington—May 16 through November 28, 2010

Adolph Menzel, The Artist's Sister Emilie, 1851
pastel and black chalk on brown paper
National Gallery of Art, Wolfgang Ratjen Collection

This stunning exhibition of 120 of the finest German watercolors and drawings from the Ratjen Collection will showcase major works from the 17th-century baroque, the 18th-century rococo, early 19th-century romanticism, and late 19th-century realism. Passionately assembled by Wolfgang Ratjen (1943–1997) over three decades, the drawings will include rare and influential examples by Hans von Aachen, Johann Rottenhammer, and Adam Elsheimer; studies for soaring religious ceilings by some of the greatest Bavarian artists, such as Cosmas Damian Asam, Matthäus Günther, and Johann Baptist Enderle; delightful Augsburg designs for rococo prints by Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner, Johann Esaias Nilson, and Gottfried Eichler; evocative landscape watercolors by Johann Georg von Dillis, Johann, Christian, Reinhart, and Caspar David Friedrich; architectural watercolors by Balthasar Neumann, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Rudolf von Alt; and a stunning group of realist drawings and pastels by Hans Thoma, Otto Greiner, and Adolph Menzel.

Curator: Andrew Robison, A. W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art.

Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue includes comprehensive entries for each drawing in the exhibition by an international team of scholars, including introductions on the collecting of German drawings in the United States and Europe. Available in May 2010: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

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Edvard Munch: Master Prints
National Gallery of Art, Washington—July 31 through October 31, 2010

Edvard Munch, Madonna, 1895
color lithograph and woodcut [1902 printing] on oriental paper: lithograph printed from 3 stones in beige, red, and black; woodcut printed from 1 block in blue
National Gallery of Art, The Epstein Family Collection

The central ideas and accomplishments of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) will be illuminated in an exhibition that brings together 60 of his rare color prints and hand-colored variations of these prints. Munch's greatest artistic legacy is his series of prints depicting the basic human themes of attraction, love, and union; jealousy and separation; birth and awakening; and anxiety and death. His stylistic approach to each of these themes involved transforming ideas into an evocative image and exploring the image through numerous variations over a lifetime. Major loans from two of the world's finest private collections will be joined by exquisite works from the Gallery's own collection.

Curators: Andrew Robison, A.W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, and Elizabeth Prelinger, Keyser Family Professor of Art and Art History, Georgetown University.

Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue will include essays by Prelinger and Robison. Available in July 2010: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

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The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848-1875
National Gallery of Art, Washington—October 31, 2010 through January 30, 2011
Musee d'Orsay, Paris—March 6 through May 29, 2011

Julia Margaret Cameron, The Sunflower, c. 1866–1870
albumen print from a wet collodion negative
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Paul Mellon Fund

In the first survey of British art photography in the 1850s and 1860s, some 130 photographs, paintings, and watercolors chronicle photography's relationship with Pre-Raphaelite art and its consequent role in changing concepts of vision and truth in representation. Photography's ability to quickly translate the visual world into an image challenged painters to find alternate versions of realism. Photographers, in turn, looked to Pre-Raphaelite subject matter and visual strategies in order to legitimate photography's status as a fine art. As the exhibition will show, Lewis Carroll, Julia Margaret Cameron, Roger Fenton, H. P. Robinson, O. G. Rejlander, and many lesser known photographers had much in common with such painters as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John William Inchbold, as all wrestled with the question of how to observe and represent the natural world and the human face and figure. This rich dialogue between photography and painting is examined in the exhibition's thematic sections on landscape, portraiture, literary and historical narratives, and modern life subjects.

Curator: Diane Waggoner, assistant curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art

Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue will be available in October 2010: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

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Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals
National Gallery, London—October 13, 2010 through January 16, 2011
National Gallery of Art, Washington—February 20 through May 30, 2011

Canaletto, The Square of Saint Mark's, Venice, 1742/1744
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mrs. Barbara Hutton

Venice, one of the most beautiful of all European cities, inspired a school of view painters whose achievements are among the most brilliant of 18th-century art. This exhibition deals exclusively and extensively with these Venetian scenes, bringing to American shores for the first time since 1967 some 60 paintings that highlight the rich variety of the genre. Juxtaposing major works by Canaletto (1697–1768) and his rivals, the exhibition demonstrates different approaches to similar views of the city, with each artist responding to a market driven largely by the British Grand Tour. Canaletto's major rivals included Luca Carlevarijs, Gaspare Vanvitelli, Michele Marieschi, Bernardo Bellotto, and Francesco Guardi. Also featured are approximately 20 of Canaletto's greatest masterpieces, including The Stonemason's Yard (1727–1728).

Curators: Charles Beddington is guest curator for the exhibition. The exhibition is coordinated for the National Gallery, London, by Dawson Carr, curator of later Italian and Spanish painting, and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, by David Alan Brown, curator of Italian paintings.

Catalogue: A fully illustrated catalogue includes essays and biographies on the artists. Available in February 2011: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

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Gabriel Metsu, 1629–1667
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin—September 4 through December 5, 2010
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam—December 16, 2010 through March 21, 2011
National Gallery of Art, Washington—April 17 through July 24, 2011

Gabriel Metsu, The Intruder, c. 1660
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) is one of the most important Dutch genre painters of the mid-17th century. His ability to capture ordinary moments of life with freshness and spontaneity was matched only by his ability to depict materials with an unerring truth to nature. Although his career was relatively short, Metsu enjoyed great success as a genre painter, but also for his religious scenes, still lifes, and portraits. Featuring some 40 paintings, this exhibition will be the first monographic show of Metsu's work ever mounted in the United States.

Curator: Arthur K. Wheelock Jr, curator, northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art.

Catalogue:The scholarly catalogue accompanying the exhibition will include a catalogue raisonné of Metsu's paintings as well as scholarly essays that examine, among other subjects, Metsu's clientele, his drawings, the influence of his work on French 18th-century artists, and the techniques with which he painted. Available in April 2011: Gallery Shops, http://shop.nga.gov/, or 1-800-697-9350.

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov. The Gallery is now on Facebook—become a fan at www.facebook.com/NationalGalleryofArt.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

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