Displaying items by tag: tapestries

The Louvre announced that it will reopen its 18th-century decorative arts galleries on June 6 following an eight-year restoration and reinstallation. The Parisian museum’s sweeping collection of more than 2,000 decorative objects will be dispersed among 35 newly-renovated galleries in the north wing of the Louvre’s Cour Carrée. The galleries, which boast 23,000 square feet of exhibition space, were originally expected to reopen last year. Before this extensive restoration, the galleries had not been significantly updated since they were installed in 1966.

The Louvre’s collection of royal furniture, decorative bronzes, rugs, tapestries, gold and silver ware, porcelain, jewelry, and scientific instruments, will be grouped into three stylistic movements: the reign of Louis XIV and the Regency (1660-1725), Rococo (1725-1755), and the return of classicism and the reign of Louis XVI (1755-1790). The galleries also feature a number of period rooms including a drawing room from the nearby Hôtel de Villemaré, which was acquired by the Louvre in the 1800s but has never before been displayed in its entirety. Before being reconstructed in the museum, the room underwent a lengthy conservation.

Jannic Durand, director of the department of decorative arts at the Louvre, said in a statement, “We wanted to achieve a happy medium between period rooms and exhibition galleries. Each object benefits from being in relationship with other objects. In some cases, this means creating a period room so our visitors can understand how people lived with these objects or so they can appreciate holistically the elegance and refinement of the 18th century. In other instances, it means curating display cases devoted entirely to porcelain, silverware, and even some pieces of furniture to underscore the history of techniques and styles.”

The Louvre worked with the celebrated interior designer Jacques Garcia to create the new spaces for its collection of 18th-century decorative arts. The project was funded entirely by the patrons of the museum, including a $4 million donation from the American Friends of the Louvre.

Rubens, van Dyck and the Flemish School of Painting: Masterpieces from the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein is currently on view at the National Museum of China in Beijing. The exhibition features 100 works of Flemish art from the 16^th and 17^th centuries and marks the first time that such an remarkable selection of works from the Flemish Painting School has gone on view in China.

All of the paintings, prints and tapestries on view are part of the Princely Collections – the result of over 400 years of continuous art collection by the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. Prince Karl I of Liechtenstein laid the foundations for the collections, which include numerous masterpieces of European art, in 1600. Since then, the Princely House has supplemented, consolidated and expanded the collections.

The exhibition, which includes works by Peter Paul Rubens, Anthonis van Dyck and the Brueghel family of artists, will be on view at the National Museum of China through February 15, 2014. In March 2014, the exhibition will travel to the China Art Museum in Shanghai.

The Cloisters museum and gardens, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art located in northern Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, will celebrate its 75^th anniversary this year. Assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the 12^th through the 15^th century, the Cloisters houses approximately 3,000 works of art from medieval Europe.

To commemorate its 75^th year, the Cloisters has a number of celebratory exhibitions planned. Search for the Unicorn: An Exhibition in Honor of the Cloisters’ 75^th Anniversary will present the Unicorn Tapestries (1495-1505), a series of seven tapestries, which were a gifted to the museum by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. when the Cloisters opened in 1938. The Tapestries are the museum’s best-known masterpieces, but their history and meaning remain mysterious. The Unicorn Tapestries will be exhibited alongside approximately 40 works from the Metropolitan, sister institutions, and private collections. Search for the Unicorn will be on view from May 15-August 18, 2013.

In September, the Cloisters will mount an installation by Janet Cardiff (b. 1957). The Forty Part Motet (2001) is comprised of 40 speakers, each playing the sound of one singer in a 40-voice choral performing “Spem in alium numquam habui” (circa 1573) by the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (circa 1505-1585). The installation will play on a loop in the Cloister’s Fuentidueña Chapel through December 8, 2013. The Forty Part Motet is the first piece of contemporary art to be featured at the Cloisters.

The Cloisters will wrap up its anniversary celebrations with the exhibition of six near life-size stained glass windows on loan from England’s historic Canterbury Cathedral. It will be the first time the panels have left the cathedral since their creation in 1178-80. Current repairs to the cathedral’s stonework required the removal of the windows, which have recently been conserved. The stained-glass windows that will be on view at the Cloisters feature six figures from an original cycle of 86 ancestors of Christ, the most comprehensive stained-glass cycle known in art history. The Romanesque masterpieces will be on view from March through May 2014.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, unveiled on September 8 its newly renovated William I. Koch Gallery, one of the Museum's grandest spaces, evocative of a great hall in a European palace. Masterpieces from the 16th- and 17th-century Italy, France, Spain, and Flanders hang on walls covered in red damask, complemented by a spectacular display of German silver and four tapestries from the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.

"The Koch Gallery is the most majestic architectural space in the MFA, and the new installation enhances this effort, with an astonishing display of European paintings and silver, virtually unparalleled in America," said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA, who is overseeing the project and a team of Art of Europe curators and designers.

The iconic Koch Gallery features masterpieces drawn from the Museum's renowned European collection. Among the approximately 40 paintings on view are Nicolas Poussin's Mars and Venus (about 1630), Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez's Don Baltasar Carlos and Dwarf (1632), Peter Paul Rubens's Head of Cyrus Brought to Queen Tomyris (about 1622-23), and Guercino's Semiramis Receiving Word of the Revolt of Babylon (1624). A major conservation effort was undertaking to treat Anthony van Dyck's Isabella, Lady de la Warr (about 1638), which was acquired by the MFA in 1930. It was recently rediscovered in storage, badly in need of attention and a new frame. Also featured in the gallery are select loans, including Frans Francken's Allegory of Man's Choice between Virtue and Vice (Private Collection, 1635).

A 500-year-old sculpture looted by the Nazis for Adolf Hitler's planned “Fuehrermuseum” in the Austrian city of Linz was today returned to heirs of the original owner by Dresden’s state art collections.

The wooden sculpture of St. Peter was one of about 560 artworks seized from Jewish collectors for Hitler’s museum. The Germany-based family to whom the sculpture has been restituted does not wish to be identified by name and plans to keep the artwork, according to Gilbert Lupfer, the head of provenance research for Dresden’s public art collections.