Curators Pay Tribute to Outgoing Director with Exhibition The Philippe de Montebello Years

Curators Pay Tribute to Outgoing Director with Exhibition The Philippe de Montebello Years

 

Exhibition dates: October 24, 2008 – February 1, 2009

Exhibition location: The Tisch Galleries

Press Preview: Monday, October 20, 10 a.m. – noon

(New York, June 2, 2008)-To celebrate Philippe de Montebello’s 31 years as

Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the curators of the Museum announced plans today to organize an exhibition of approximately 300 of the more than 84,000 works of art acquired during his tenure. This unique project – The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions, which will be on view in The Tisch Galleries from October 24, 2008, through February 1, 2009 – will be a collaboration of the curators currently working in the Museum’s 17 curatorial departments. Special emphasis will be placed on works that were transformative to the Metropolitan Museum’s collections by building on existing strengths and expanding into new areas of collecting. Mr. de Montebello – the eighth and longest-serving Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art – announced in January his plans to retire at the end of the year.

“We wanted to create an exhibition to celebrate Philippe de Montebello’s auspicious career by focusing on an area of spectacular achievement at the heart of the institution: acquisitions,” said Helen C. Evans, the exhibition’s coordinator, who is the Metropolitan Museum’s Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art. “The breadth and greatness of the works on display in The Philippe de Montebello Years will tell multiple stories – of his stellar leadership of the Museum’s more than 300 curators, conservators, scientists, librarians, and educators; of the excellence of the collections in representing 5,000 years of human artistic achievement around the world; and of the Museum’s vital evolution in terms of renovating, expanding, and reinstalling galleries, developing conservation and research facilities, and enhancing visitors’ understanding and experiencing of art.”

She continued: “Philippe de Montebello has declared that curatorial expertise is the Museum’s most valuable currency. The Philippe de Montebello Years above all represents the curators’ appreciation of his respect for the expertise of his staff and their recognition of his devoted and skillful stewardship over the past three decades in building the Metropolitan Museum’s collections.”

The works of art in the exhibition were selected by each of the curatorial department heads, working with the curatorial Director’s Council and the Museum’s Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Scientists – the group that proposed the idea for the exhibition. Pre-existing selections of significant works that had been published in the Metropolitan Museum’s Bulletin (which is devoted each fall to major acquisitions) were also incorporated. The contributions of conservators and scientists, as well as the Museum’s extensive publishing program, will be represented in the exhibition as well.

Some highlights of the exhibition include: a striding horned demon of arsenical copper (Mesopotamia or Iran, Proto-Elamite period, ca. 3000 B.C.); an Egyptian wooden statuette of a kneeling figure (wood, Late Period or Early Ptolemaic Period, 380-246 B.C.); a porphyry support for a water basin (Roman, second century A.D.); a standing Buddha in mottled red sandstone from India (Gupta period, fifth century); a leaf from a Spanish manuscript (Romanesque, ca. 1180); Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Madonna and Child (ca. 1300); the illustrated manuscript Allegory of worldly and otherworldly drunkenness (Islamic, Safavid period, ca. 1526-27); Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614-1673), and Their Son Peter Paul (born 1637) (oil on canvas, probably late 1630s) by Peter Paul Rubens; Giovanni Battista Foggini’s Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (marble, ca. 1683-85); the armor of Infante Luis, Prince of Asturias (French, 1712); Ralph Earl’s Elijah Boardman (American, oil on canvas, 1789); a salted paper print by Onésipe Aguado of a woman seen from the back (French, ca. 1862); a Kongo power figure (Nkisi N’Kondi) from the second half of the 19th century; Tahitian Faces (Frontal View and Profiles) (charcoal on laid paper, ca. 1899) by Paul Gauguin; a coat by Paul Poiret made in Paris in 1919; a guitar made by Hermann Hauser in Germany in 1937; and White Flag (1955) by Jasper Johns.

The installation of the 300 works of art in The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions - which will create juxtapositions of centuries and cultures not normally possible within the organization of the collections galleries of the Museum – will be overseen by Jeff Daly, Senior Design Adviser to the Director for Capital and Special Projects. Graphic design will be by Sophia Geronimus, Senior Graphic Designer, and lighting will be by Clint Coller and Richard Lichte, Senior Lighting Designers, all of the Museum’s Design Department.

 

Related Programs

A subscription series of three evenings with Philippe de Montebello on the stage of the Metropolitan’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium – entitled Philippe de Montebello: A Triptych - has been organized on the initiative of the Museum’s Concerts & Lectures Department to reflect his involvement in and passion for the visual arts, music, and the spoken word. The three programs are: a conversation with award-winning art critic, author, and historian Robert Hughes on October 28; a performance of Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals (the Ogden Nash version, narrated by Mr. de Montebello) with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra on September 26; and a special reading of great Renaissance love poems and dialogues in Italian, English, and French with actress Isabella Rossellini (also in conjunction with the fall 2008 exhibition Art and Love in Renaissance Italy) on December 9.

The exhibition will also be accompanied by educational programs designed for a wide range of audiences, including lectures, panel discussions, films, and an interactive Web program for teachers.

A special feature on the Museum’s website at www.metmuseum.org will present information on all of these related programs, as well as photographs, audio podcast episodes, and videos about the Museum’s evolution over the past three decades, including in-depth discussions about key works of art that entered the collections during Mr. de Montebello’s tenure as Director.

An Audio Guide program will feature commentary by Philippe de Montebello and Museum staff on the works of art in the exhibition.

The Audio Guide program is sponsored by Bloomberg.

 

Philippe de Montebello

Philippe de Montebello began his career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1963 in its Department of European Paintings and rose steadily through the curatorial ranks. Except for four-and-a-half years as Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1969-1974), he has spent his entire career at the Met, returning in 1974 to assume the post of Vice Director for Curatorial and Educational Affairs, and then becoming the Museum’s Director in 1977. He assumed the additional role of Chief Executive Officer in 1998. He has not only served longer than any other director in the Metropolitan’s history, but has for several years ranked as the longest-serving leader at any major museum in the world. He leads a professional staff of more than 300 curators, conservators, educators, and librarians, as well as an administrative staff, reporting through the Museum’s President, consisting of more than 2,300 full- and part-time employees in the fields of operations, construction, development, marketing, finance, visitor services, systems and technology, human resources, and merchandising.

In announcing Philippe de Montebello’s upcoming retirement, Museum Chairman James R. Houghton stated in January: “To say that his decision marks the end of an era surely constitutes one of the great understatements, not only in the Museum’s life, but in the cultural life of the city, the state, the nation, and the world…He leaves an incomparable legacy of accomplishment that has significantly enhanced the institution and brilliantly served its vast international public. No museum director anywhere has done more to expand and enrich the appreciation of art for more generations and with greater taste, erudition, diplomacy, and vision than Philippe de Montebello.”

Mr. de Montebello plans to step down as Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art by December 31, 2008, or upon the arrival of his successor. He recently announced that he will then assume the first Fiske Kimball Professorship in the History and Culture of Museums at New York University’s renowned Institute of Fine Arts in Manhattan.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was founded in 1870 and now has around 4.5 million visitors annually, holds encyclopedic collections of more than two million works of art.

 

# # #

 

VISITOR INFORMATION

Hours

Fridays and Saturdays 9:30 a.m.-9:00 p.m.

Sundays, Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

Met Holiday Mondays in the Main Building:

September 1, October 13, and December 29, 2008;

January 19, February 16, and May 25, 2009

Met Holiday Mondays sponsored by CIT 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

All other Mondays closed; Jan. 1, Thanksgiving, and Dec. 25 closed

 

Suggested Admission (Includes Main Building and The Cloisters on the Same Day)

Adults $20.00, seniors (65 and over) $15.00, students $10.00

Members and children under 12 accompanied by adult free

Advance tickets available at www.TicketWeb.com or 1-800-965-4827.

 

For More Information (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org

No extra charge for any exhibition.