Displaying items by tag: Morgan Library and Museum

Old Master works by artists including Durer, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens and François Boucher will be coming to New York in 2017, some for the first time, in an exhibition of paintings and drawings from Sweden’s Nationalmuseum, the Morgan Library & Museum announced.

While it is closed for renovation the Nationalmuseum, in Stockholm, is lending 76 works – 14 paintings and 62 drawings — to the Morgan for a show scheduled to run Feb. 5-May 14, 2017.

“Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil” ostentatiously combines two museum trends: exhibitions built around one important painting, and the growing urge of museums of all kinds to feature modern and contemporary art. Here the yen for newness is lavishly advertised by a show centering on the billboard-size painting “Treatise on the Veil (Second Version),” a panoramic canvas measuring nearly 33 feet across that Cy Twombly (1928-2011) made in Rome in 1970.

The painting, from the Menil Collection in Houston, is displayed in what seems like splendid isolation despite the presence of 10 large related collages, some of which incorporate cardboard and plywood.

Lewis Carroll's original handwritten, illustrated manuscript for "Alice in Wonderland" will travel to the U.S. to mark its 150th anniversary.

The British Library said Thursday it will loan the book -- presented by the author to Alice Liddell, who inspired it -- to New York's Morgan Library and Museum and the Rosenbach Museum of the Free Library of Philadelphia next year.

The tenth edition of Master Drawings in New York January 24 – February 1, 2015 promises to be the best ever. More than thirty of the world’s leading dealers are coming to New York City to offer for sale master art works in pencil, pen and ink, chalk and charcoal, as well as oil on paper sketches and watercolors, created by iconic artists working in the 16th to 21st centuries. Each exhibition is hosted by an expert specialist and many works on offer are newly discovered or have not been seen on the market in decades, if at all.

In addition, Margot Gordon and Crispian Riley-Smith, co-founders of Master Drawings in New York, announced that John Marciari, the new head of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, will provide the introduction for the 2015 Master Drawings in New York brochure.

Esther Bell, a former Fulbright scholar and current curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum, was named on Wednesday as the new curator in charge of European paintings at The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Bell, who specializes in 17th- and 18th-century European art, has more than a decade of experience at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York.

Colin Bailey, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – which includes the de Young in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor, said, “We are delighted to appoint someone of Bell’s caliber who brings a depth of knowledge and expertise that will benefit our future exhibitions and the museums’ permanent collections.”

New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission would do well to turn down the Frick Collection’s proposed expansion, which imagines replacing a prized garden on East 70th Street in Manhattan with a clumsy addition. The city should avoid another self-inflicted wound, and there are other options.

The plan, announced last month, ran into early headwinds. New Yorkers have seen the consequences of trustee restlessness and real estate magical thinking, which destroy or threaten to undo favorite buildings. Not so long ago, the Morgan Library & Museum, another Gilded Age landmark, built an addition that flopped. The New York Public Library wanted to disembowel its historic building at 42nd Street before thinking better of it.

Scholars tend to seek out the Morgan Library & Museum’s archives as a place to research old masters and 19th-century drawings, or to peek at the letters that modern masters like Chagall and Dubuffet wrote to the art dealer Pierre Matisse. But a recent gift from the Roy Lichtenstein estate will now make the Morgan a destination for classic contemporary artists, too.

While organizing the Morgan’s 2010 exhibition “Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968,” Isabelle Dervaux, curator of modern and contemporary drawings, and William M. Griswold, the Morgan’s director, got to know Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist’s widow. It is because of that friendship, Mr. Griswold said, that Ms. Lichtenstein recently donated a group of sketchbooks and drawings from her husband’s estate to the Morgan.

The Morgan Library and Museum announced today that it has tapped John Marciari to lead its department of drawings and prints. Mr. Marciari, who is currently an independent curator, previously worked as curator of European art and head of provenance research at the San Diego Museum of Art.

“I am delighted that John Marciari will be joining the talented team of curators in our department of drawings and prints,” William M. Griswold, the Morgan’s director, said in a statement. “John is a noted scholar and curator with an exceptional record of achievement in the areas of connoisseurship, collection-building, and public engagement.” (Mr. Griswold announced last month that he will leave the museum to become director of the Cleveland Museum of Art.)

The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that it has completed the digitization of its entire collection of Rembrandt etchings: nearly 500 images of works by the Dutch master are now available online. According to the Morgan, “Rembrandt used the process of etching to test concepts and themes, and the digitized works offer the opportunity to explore up-close his use of line, shading, and subject matter.” The prints feature Biblical scenes, self-portraits, and depictions of the Dutch countryside and society in the artist’s day (including both beggars and art patrons).

The Morgan holds in its collection most of the roughly 300 known etchings by Rembrandt, including rare, multiple versions (hence the discrepancy in number of etchings versus number of images). Their digitization is part of a larger effort by the museum “to expand access to its holdings,” says the press release. This includes the digitization of over 500 music manuscripts begun in 2010 and the ongoing digitization of the institution’s collection of nearly 12,000 drawings.

Seven months after David Franklin abruptly resigned as director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, with museum officials later saying he had lied to them about his extramarital affair with an employee, the institution has named a high-profile successor from New York, signaling a new chapter in its 98-year history. He is William M. Griswold, who has led the Morgan Library & Museum for nearly seven years. Mr. Griswold, 53, who will start his new job in the fall, said he decided to leave New York because he relishes running a bigger institution, with one of the most encyclopedic collections in the country.

“All told, I’ve been at the Morgan for 13 years,” Mr. Griswold said, including his years as head of its drawings department, from 1995 to 2001, as well as his years as director, from 2008. “I’m ready for my last big challenge.” Mr. Griswold also ran the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for two years.