These twelve massive carved alabaster panels, on view together for the first time, dominate the walls of the Brooklyn Museum's Hagop Kevorkian Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art. Originally brightly painted, they once adorned the vast palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II (883–859 B.C.), one of the greatest rulers of ancient Assyria. Completed in 879 B.C. at the site of Kalhu (modern Nimrud, slightly north of what is now Baghdad, Iraq), the palace was decorated by skilled relief-carvers with these majestic images of kings, divinities, magical beings, and sacred trees.
]]>An innovative installation, featuring some of the most important objects in the Brooklyn Museum collection, has been developed to create new ways of looking at art and exploring the Museum by making connections between cultures as well as objects. Scheduled to open on April 19, 2012, Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn, on long-term view in the newly renovated Great Hall, near the main entrance, provides for the first time a dynamic and welcoming introduction to the Museum's extensive collections, which range from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art, representing almost every culture around the world, both past and present. "This remarkable cross-collection presentation, built around some of the most exceptional works in the Museum, better enables the visitor to explore the collection galleries by providing a model of how to make connections between cultures and how to better understand the ways that different peoples have addressed many of the same issues throughout time," states Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman. "For the very first time, our visitors have the opportunity to sample the breadth and depth of our holdings as they enter the Museum." "Over the course of the twentieth century, the Museum collected on a grand scale, making works of art that had previously been reserved primarily for the elite available to the public. As works of art became available to the many rather than the few, their meanings often changed. Deconstructing those meanings on a basic level provides an understanding of the Brooklyn Museum's collections as a resource for study," comments Chief Curator Kevin L. Stayton, who has coordinated the presentation, working with the Museum's curators. The installation is organized around three main sections: "Connecting Places," "Connecting People," and 'Connecting Things." In viewing the juxtaposition and combination of works from different cultures around the world, the visitor will be asked to consider the importance of the idea of place to the definition of culture and the self; the ways in which people represent themselves in the works of art that help define them; and the role of objects, or things, in supporting identity, both personal and cultural. The "Connecting Places" section presents artworks that reflect the human fascination with the physical world around us and how it relates to spirituality. The landscapes in which people live and the elements of nature that surround them deeply affect the way people see the world and how they try to understand the universe. This section includes a four-legged bowl (circa 250-600 C.E.), made in what is now Guatemala, that reveals a Mayan concept of the cosmos; an eighteenth-century cosmic diagram, made in Gujarat or Rajasthan, that presents a unique worldview; the monumental 1765 painting Our Lady of Chocharcas Under the Baldachin showing the celebration of a pilgrimage in which Lake Titicaca is almost as significant as the statue of the Virgin herself; a festival hat, probably made around Potosi in the eighteenth century, depicting a triangular mountain that might be the Cerro de Potosi, the source of the silver that enriched the area; Louis Rémy Mignon's monumental painting Niagara (1866), which became a powerful symbol of natural resources that made their potential seem almost limitless; the renowned Century Vase made by the Union Porcelain Works of Brooklyn for display at the Centennial Exposition, in 1876, displaying native animals and scenes of progress unique to the American experience; and a contemporary work, Soundsuit by Nick Cave, that explores man's involvement with nature. The "Connecting People" section investigates the ways in which human beings have represented themselves in artworks, in various cultures through time. A number of the works address the journey from life to death, such as a stunning and rare Huastec stone statue that features a standing human figure on one side and a skeleton on the other. Other works include a kachina doll, in the Brooklyn Museum collection since 1904, that reflects the ways in which the human form can represent the spiritual and universal; and Gaston Lachaise's monumental Standing Woman, a modern work that dignifies the human form and raises it to a level that reflects the humanist tradition. The "Connecting Things" section includes works that carry particular significance to those who make and use them. Among the objects is a group of more than 100 pitchers to illustrate the many permutations of a single form; kero cups used in ritualistic ceremonies that were important to the Andean concept of reciprocity; a coffin in the form of a Nike sneaker, by Ghanaian artist Paa Joe, that reflects the importance of consumer society and global trade in the modern world; and an African staff, a symbol of authority that is the model for an African-American emancipation cane.
]]>The Brooklyn Museum's decorative arts collection occupies the fourth floor of the Museum. The focus of the collection is a group of American period rooms ranging in date from the 18th century to the 20th century. Interspersed with the period rooms are galleries that display an outstanding collection of American furniture, silver, pewter, glass, and ceramics. Additional objects from the decorative arts collection are on display in American Identities.
]]>In April, 2003, the Brooklyn Museum completed the reinstallation of its world-famous Egyptian collection, a process that took ten years. Three new galleries joined the four existing ones that had been completed in 1993 to tell the story of Egyptian art from its earliest known origins (circa 3500 B.C.) until the period when the Romans incorporated Egypt into their empire (30 B.C.–A.D. 395). Additional exhibits illustrate important themes about Egyptian culture, including women's roles, permanence and change in Egyptian art, temples and tombs, technology and materials, art and communication, and Egypt and its relationship to the rest of Africa. More than 1,200 objects— comprising sculpture, relief, paintings, pottery, and papyri—are now on view, including such treasures as an exquisite chlorite head of a Middle Kingdom princess, an early stone deity from 2650 B.C., a relief from the tomb of a man named Akhty-hotep, and a highly abstract female terracotta statuette created over five thousand years ago.
]]>Although the collection of European paintings has often been presented in a chronological arrangement by school or style, this installation exploits the architecture of the soaring Beaux-Arts Court by devoting each wall to an exploration of the meaningful connections that the works display when arranged according to theme. The section called “Painting Land and Sea” surveys the formal methods that painters have used to render their physical surroundings across the centuries. “Art and Devotion” considers the ways in which the artists of the early Renaissance expressed the central tenets of the Catholic faith. “Narratives Large and Small” shows how artists distill the elements of a story into a single telling moment. Finally, “Tracing the Figure” charts the enduring artistic interest in the human figure, from portraits that place an individual in a clearly defined place and time to timeless abstractions of the human form. [Image: Frans Hals "Portrait of a Man" Oil on canvas 29 x 21 3/4 in.]
]]>This exhibit highlights key moments in our nation's history and how they played out in Brooklyn. Through artifacts from the Brooklyn Historical Society's permanent collection such as photographs, artworks, and documents, visitors will meet a diverse range of residents from Brooklyn's earliest Native American settlements, to the men and women who fought in the Revolutionary War on Brooklyn's shores, to the Brooklynites who worked to abolish slavery, immigrants from all over the world who made Brooklyn home, and the women who kept America going by working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II.
]]>This special exhibition celebrates a major new installation in the Luce Center for American Art: Visible Storage ▪ Study Center that gives the public access to more than 350 additional objects from the Museum’s collections. Since its opening in January 2005, the Luce Visible Storage ▪ Study Center has housed approximately 2,100 objects in two types of storage units: vitrined cases and paintings screens. The facility also contains forty-two drawers for storage. Beginning in mid-October and in stages over subsequent months, they will be filled with works from the Museum’s renowned American holdings and opened to the public. Once the drawers are full, the number of objects on view in visible storage will rise to 2,500—an increase of almost 20 percent. The drawers’ contents will encompass a variety of objects from the Americas—including art of the United States as well as of the indigenous and colonial peoples of North and South America—and dating from the pre-Columbian period to the present day. Although the works range widely in terms of medium, date, function, and geographical origin, they do share a diminutive scale and suitability for flat storage. Among the objects that will be installed in the drawers are: American and Hopi ceramic tiles; Mexican pottery stamps; jewelry and other ornaments from Native and South American cultures; Modernist jewelry; silverplated flatware and serving pieces; Spanish Colonial devotional objects; American portrait and mourning miniatures; commemorative medals; and embroidery. As in other sections of the Luce Visible Storage ▪ Study Center, objects in the drawers are densely installed to maximize the available space and are grouped by type, medium, or culture. Visitors can learn more about the works by using one of the nearby computer kiosks in the facility, or by accessing the Luce database online. To obtain a list of a drawer’s entire contents, use the Map feature and select numbers 41 through 47. Held in conjunction with the drawers installation, Small Wonders from the American Collections features an eclectic selection of seventy works of art on the walls and in the display cases above the drawers. This exhibition both highlights objects that will be installed in the drawers and reveals a diversity of cultural traditions and artistic practices that constitute American art. A variety of jewelry and objects of personal adornment—although produced by different peoples—function similarly to signify information about the wearer’s identity. Flatware, pins, and other silver items on display reflect a broad array of forms, styles, and uses for this valuable metal. Ceramic tiles made contemporaneously by Native and non-Native Americans provide an interesting cross-cultural comparison with respect to the decoration and marketing of these wares. [Image: Unknown Artist "Fan" (1822–31) Ivory sticks and painted paper mount. ]
]]>Dedicated in 1966, the Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden at the Brooklyn Museum is a preeminent collection of terracotta, stone, and metal architectural elements salvaged from now-demolished structures throughout the metropolitan area and reinstalled outside the Museum's Norman M. Feinberg Entrance. Most of these remarkable objects date to the period between 1880 and 1910, recording a great era in the cultural, architectural, and industrial history of New York City.
]]>The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating biographical gallery shows relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses is the first such exhibition.
]]>This installation of more than 170 objects from the Brooklyn Museum’s world-famous holdings of ancient Egyptian material explores the complex rituals related to the practice of mummification and the Egyptian belief that the body must be preserved in order to ensure eternal life. On view are the mummy of the priest Thothirdes; the mummy of Hor, encased in an elaborately painted cartonnage; and a nearly twenty-five-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll. Also in the installation are canopic jars, used to store the vital organs of mummies, as well as several shabties, small figurines placed in tombs, each of which was assigned to work magically for the deceased in the afterlife. The installation includes related objects, among them stelae, reliefs, gold earrings, amulets, ritual statuettes, coffins, and mummy boards. [Image: "Coffin and Mummy Board of Pa-seba-khai-en-ipet." Egypt, from Thebes. Third Intermediate Period, circa 1070–945 B.C.E. Wood, painted, 76 3/8 x 21 5/8 x 12 5/8 in. (194 x 55 x 32 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 08.480.2a–c]
]]>Due to installations in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, twelve bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin have been installed in the Rubin Entrance Pavilion. This newly excerpted presentation of the Museum's large holdings by Rodin includes The Age of Bronze, a signature conception from the early years of the sculptor's career, as well as other works from his most significant commissions, including The Burghers of Calais, The Gates of Hell, and the Monument to Balzac. These casts came to the Brooklyn Museum through the generosity of Iris and B. Gerald Cantor.
]]>Life, Death and Transformation in the Americas will present one hundred-two masterpieces from the Arts of the Americas permanent collection that exemplify the concept of transformation as part of the religious beliefs and social practices of the region’s indigenous peoples. Themes of life, death, fertility, regeneration, and spiritual transformation will be explored through pre-Columbian and historical artworks including twenty-one objects that have not been on public view for decades or have never been exhibited. This long-term installation, which will open on January 18, will be on display in the Museum’s recently re-opened galleries on the fifth floor adjacent to American Identities. Highlights include the Huastec Life-Death Figure, a carved stone statue that juxtaposes images of life and death and is one of the finest of its kind; the Kwakwaka’wakw Thunderbird Transformation Mask (pictured), a carved wood mask in the form of an ancestral being that opens to reveal a second, human face; and two eight-foot-tall, carved nineteenth-century Heiltsuk house posts made to support the huge beams of a great Northwest Coast plank house. Other featured objects include examples from the extensive Hopi and Zuni kachina collection; masks from all over the Americas; Aztec and Maya sculptures; pre-Columbian gold ornaments; and ancient Andean textiles including the two-thousand-year-old Paracas Textile, the most famous piece in the Museum’s Andean collection, which illustrates the way in which early cultures of Peru’s South Coast envisioned their relationship with nature and the supernatural realm. Among the objects that have rarely been on public view are a full-body bark-cloth mask made by the Pami’wa of Colombia and Brazil; a Paracas painted textile mask that was most likely associated with a mummy bundle; a Northwest Coast Kwakwaka’wakw Wild Man Mask by John Livingston; a Maya effigy vessel in the form of a hunchback wearing a jaguar skin; a large, elaborately-painted Paracas jar; a Maya warrior figure with removable headdress; two contemporary kachinas by the Hopi carver Henry Shelton; Anasazi and Valdivia clay figurines, the oldest types found in North and South America; Paracas textile fragments from South America; an aquamarine grasshopper pendant from Mexico; ceramic bird whistles from Costa Rica and Panama; Moche stirrup-spout vessels from Peru; and a large, woven Apache basket with spirit figures. Life, Death and Transformation in the Americas is organized by Nancy Rosoff, Andrew W. Mellon Curator, Arts of the Americas, Brooklyn Museum; and Susan Kennedy Zeller, Associate Curator, Native American Art, Brooklyn Museum. This installation will be accompanied by a series of educational programs to be announced at a later date.
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