Displaying items by tag: periodicals

An exhibition organized in collaboration with Houston’s Menil Collection and the Art Institute of Chicago will open on September 28, 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Magritte the Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 is the first exhibition to focus on the pioneering Surrealist artist René Magritte’s formative years.

Beginning in 1926, Magritte embarked on a quest to “challenge the real world,” which concluded in 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II. Featuring 80 works including paintings, collages, and objects, the exhibition touches on the varying concepts Magritte explored during this time including displacement, transformation, metamorphosis, and representation.

The exhibition, which will be on view through January 12, 2014, will also include a selection of photographs, periodicals, and a number of Magritte’s early commercial works in an effort to convey the artist’s budding identity.

While a lot of time, thought, and care goes into the creation of exhibition catalogues, their lifespans tends to be short-lived. Unhappy with this accepted cycle, Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, decided to change things. The Museum’s new online resource, MetPublications, allows users to browse more than 600 catalogues, journals, and museum bulletins, including 368 out-of-print publications. It will even be possible to get copies of 140 of those out-of-print catalogues along with paperbound editions with digitally printed color reproductions through Yale University Press.

Spanning from 1964 to the present, topics covered include art, art history, archaeology, conservation, and collecting. MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for almost all of the periodicals and even offers information about the authors, reviews of the books, and links to related publications and art in the museum’s collection. The comprehensive resource will also provide links to purchase in-print books. If a reader is in need of a book but is not close to the museum or the book is not in the Museum’s holdings, MetPublications will direct them to WorldCat, a global library catalogue. Over time, the Met plans to add publications dating as far back as 1870, when then the museum was founded.

While other museums such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art already have scholarly resources online, it is a welcome addition to the Met’s offerings.