Displaying items by tag: head of a woman

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. has organized several installations throughout the museum showcasing recent acquisitions alongside popular masterpieces and rarely exhibited works from its permanent collection. Divided among several intimate galleries, the installations are organized by theme, including sculpture, drawings, and portraiture.

Perpetual crowd-pleasers such as Edgar Degas’ “Dancers at the Barre,” Joan Miró’s “The Red Sun,” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party” will appear next to rarely seen works, including Jean-Honore Fragonard’s drawing “Odorico Kills Corebo and Sets Out in Pursuit of Isabella” and Pablo Picasso’s bronze sculpture “Head of a Woman,” promoting the rediscovery of treasures in the museum’s holdings. Showing support for established and emerging artists alike, recent acquisitions, including contemporary works by living artists, will be exhibited on the museum’s second floor.

Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, the Phillips Collection’s director, said, “The juxtaposition of provocative new additions with iconic European masterworks demonstrates the museum’s commitment to founder Duncan Phillips’s mission to create an ‘intimate museum combined with an experiment station.’”

The Phillips Collection plans to display a selection of new acquisitions throughout the spring and summer, with a rotation of artworks in May.

Officials at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have announced that philanthropist and cosmetics mogul Leonard Lauder will donate $1 billion worth of art to the museum. The gift includes 78 Cubist paintings, drawings, and sculptures and will significantly improve the Met’s 20^th century holdings. The Leonard A. Lauder Collection includes 33 works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), 17 by Georges Braque (1882-1963), 14 by Juan Gris (1887-1927), and 14 by Fernand Léger (1881-1955); for a private Cubist collection it is unmatched in its quality and breadth.

Highlights from the Lauder Collection include Picasso’s landscape The Oil Mill (1909), which was one of the first Cubist images to be reproduced in Italy; Braque’s Fruit Dish and Glass (1912), the first Cubist paper collage ever created; and Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1909), which is considered the first Cubist sculpture. Together, these works tell the story of a movement that transformed the landscape of modern art. Cubism departed from the traditional interpretations of art, challenged conventional perceptions of space, time, and perspective, and paved the way for abstraction, a concept that dominated the art world for much of the 20^th century.

Lauder acquired his first Cubist works in 1976 and has maintained his remarkable dedication to collecting for nearly 40 years. He continues to collect and is committed to looking for new opportunities to add to his gift to the Met. In coordination with Lauder’s remarkable gift, the Met is establishing a new research center for modern art. The center is supported by a $22 million endowment that Lauder helped spearhead. Grants for the center came from various trustees and supporters of the Met, including Lauder.

The Lauder Collection will be exhibited for the first time at this Met during the fall of 2014.