Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
Name	The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Alt	Facade of imposing building with Greek columns. Large colored banners hang from the building's top. A crowd of people is in front.
Map type	New York City
Map caption	Location of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
Latitude	40.779447
Longitude	-73.96311
Established	1870
Location	5th Avenue and 82nd Street, Manhattan, New York
Visitors	5.2 million (2008) Ranked 1st nationally Ranked 3rd globally
Director	Thomas P. Campbell
Publictransit	86th Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)
Website	http://www.metmuseum.org/ }}

{{infobox nrhp | name	The Metropolitan Museum of Art
nrhp type	nhl
built	1874
architect	Calvert Vaux; Jacob Wrey Mould
architecture	Beaux-Arts
designated nrhp type	June 24, 1986
added	January 29, 1972
governing body	Local
refnum	86003556 }}

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially The Met) is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the world's largest art galleries. There is also a much smaller second location at "The Cloisters" in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art.

Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day, who wanted to open a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue.

As of 2007, the Met measures almost long and occupies more than .

Collections

thumb|right|The facade of the Met dominates the city's "[[Museum Mile, New York City|Museum Mile".]]The Met's permanent collection is cared for and exhibited by seventeen separate curatorial departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as four dedicated conservation departments and a department of scientific research.

Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of notable interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries.

In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts large traveling shows throughout the year.

At present (January 2009), the director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator, who replaced Philippe de Montebello following his retirement at the end of 2008.

American decorative arts

The American Decorative Arts Department includes about 12,000 examples of American decorative art, ranging from the late 17th to the early 20th centuries. Though the Met acquired its first major holdings of American decorative arts via a 1909 donation by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, wife of the financier Russell Sage, a decorative arts department specifically dedicated to American works was not established until 1934. One of the prizes of the Department is its extensive collection of American stained glass. This collection, probably the most comprehensive in the world, includes many pieces by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Henry E. Sharp, William Jay Bolton, and John LaFarge. The Department maintains twenty-five period rooms in the museum, each of which recreates an entire room, complete with furnishings, from a noted period or designer. The Department's current holdings also include an extensive silver collection notable for numerous pieces by Paul Revere as well as Tiffany & Co.

American paintings and sculpture

Since its founding, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has placed a particular emphasis on collecting American art. The first piece to enter the Met's collection was an allegorical sculpture by Hiram Powers titled ''California'', acquired in 1870, which can still be seen in the Met's galleries today. In the following decades, the Met's collection of American paintings and sculpture has grown to include more than one thousand paintings, six hundred sculptures, and 2,600 drawings, covering the entire range of American art from the early Colonial period through the early 20th century. Many of the best-known American paintings are held in the Met's collection, including a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart and Emanuel Leutze's monumental ''Washington Crossing the Delaware''. The collection also includes masterpieces by such notable American painters as Winslow Homer, George Caleb Bingham, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Thomas Eakins.

Ancient Near Eastern art

Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few cuneiform tablets and seals, the Met's collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. Representing a history of the region beginning in the Neolithic Period and encompassing the fall of the Sassanian Empire and the end of Late Antiquity, the collection includes works from the Sumerian, Hittite, Sassanian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Elamite cultures (among others), as well as an extensive collection of unique Bronze Age objects. The highlights of the collection include a set of monumental stone ''lammasu'', or guardian figures, from the Northwest Palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II.

Arms and armor

The Met's Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museum's most popular collections. The distinctive "parade" of armored figures on horseback installed in the first-floor Arms and Armor gallery is one of the most recognizable images of the museum. The department's focus on "outstanding craftsmanship and decoration", including pieces intended solely for display, means that the collection is strongest in late medieval European pieces and Japanese pieces from the 5th through the 19th centuries. However, these are not the only cultures represented in Arms and Armor; the collection spans more geographic regions than almost any other department, including weapons and armor from dynastic Egypt, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the ancient Near East, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, as well as American firearms (especially Colt firearms) from the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the collection's 15,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France and Ferdinand I of Germany.

Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas

Though the Met first acquired a group of Peruvian antiquities in 1882, the museum did not begin a concerted effort to collect works from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas until 1969, when American businessman and philanthropist Nelson A. Rockefeller donated his more than 3,000-piece collection to the museum. Today, the Met's collection contains more than 11,000 pieces from sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands and the Americas and is housed in the Rockefeller Wing on the south end of the museum. The collection ranges from 40,000-year-old Australian Aboriginal rock paintings, to a group of memorial poles carved by the Asmat people of New Guinea, to a priceless collection of ceremonial and personal objects from the Nigerian Court of Benin donated by Klaus Perls. The range of materials represented in the Africa, Oceania, and Americas collection is undoubtedly the widest of any department at the Met, including everything from precious metals to porcupine quills.

Asian art

The Met's Asian department holds a collection of Asian art that is arguably the most comprehensive in the US. The collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum: many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections. Today, an entire wing of the museum is dedicated to the Asian collection, which contains more than 60,000 pieces and spans 4,000 years of Asian art. Every Asian civilization is represented in the Met's Asian department, and the pieces on display include every type of decorative art, from painting and printmaking to sculpture and metalworking. The department is well known for its comprehensive collection of Chinese calligraphy and painting, as well as for its Nepalese and Tibetan works. However, not only "art" and ritual objects are represented in the collection; many of the best-known pieces are functional objects. The Asian wing even contains a complete Ming Dynasty-style Astor garden court, modeled on a courtyard in the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets in Suzhou.

The Costume Institute

The Museum of Costume Art was founded by Aline Bernstein and Irene Lewisohn. In 1937 they merged with the Met and became its Costume Institute department. Today, its collection contains more than 80,000 costumes and accessories. The Costume Institute used to have a permanent gallery space in what was known as the "Basement" area of the Met because it was downstairs at the bottom of the Met facility. However, due to the fragile nature of the items in the collection, the Costume Institute does not maintain a permanent installation. Instead, every year it holds two separate shows in the Met's galleries using costumes from its collection, with each show centering on a specific designer or theme. In past years, Costume Institute shows organized around famous designers such as Cristóbal Balenciaga, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent (designer), and Gianni Versace; and style doyenne like Diana Vreeland, Mona von Bismarck, Babe Paley, Jayne Wrightsman, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nan Kempner and Iris Apfel have drawn significant crowds to the Met. The Costume Institute's annual Benefit Gala, co-chaired by ''Vogue'' editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, is an extremely popular, if exclusive, event in the fashion world; in 2007, the 700 available tickets started at $6,500 per person. Exhibits displayed over the past decade in the Costume Institute include: Rock Style, in 1999, representing the style of more than 40 rock musicians, including Madonna (entertainer), David Bowie, and The Beatles, Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed, in 2001, which exposes the transforming ideas of physical beauty over time and the bodily contortion necessary to accommodate such ideals and fashion, The Chanel Exhibit, displayed in 2005, acknowledging the skilled work of designer Coco Chanel as one of the leading fashion names in history, Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, exhibited in 2008, suggesting the metaphorical vision of superheroes as ultimate fashion icons, and, most recently, the 2010 exhibit on the American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, which exposes the revolutionary styles of the American woman from the years 1890 to 1940, and how such styles reflect the political and social sentiments of the time. Each of these exhibits explores fashion as a mirror of cultural values and offers a glimpse into historical styles, emphasizing their evolution into today's own fashion world.

Drawings and prints

Though other departments contain significant numbers of drawings and prints, the Drawings and Prints department specifically concentrates on North American pieces and western European works produced after the Middle Ages. Currently, the Drawings and Prints collection contains more than 11,000 drawings, 1.5 million prints, and twelve thousand illustrated books. The collection has been steadily growing ever since the first bequest of 670 drawings donated to the museum by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1880. The great masters of European painting, who produced many more sketches and drawings than actual paintings, are extensively represented in the Drawing and Prints collection. The department's holdings contain major drawings by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Rembrandt, as well as prints and etchings by Van Dyck, Dürer, and Degas among many others.

Egyptian art

Though the majority of the Met's initial holdings of Egyptian art came from private collections, items uncovered during the museum's own archeological excavations, carried out between 1906 and 1941, constitute almost half of the current collection. More than 36,000 separate pieces of Egyptian art from the Paleolithic era through the Roman era constitute the Met's Egyptian collection, and almost all of them are on display in the museum's massive wing of 40 Egyptian galleries. Among the most valuable pieces in the Met's Egyptian collection are 13 wooden models (of the total 24 models found together, 12 models and 1 offering bearer figure is at the Met, while the remaining 10 models and 1 offering bearer figure are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo), discovered in a tomb in the Southern Asasif in western Thebes in 1920. These models depict, in unparalleled detail, a cross-section of Egyptian life in the early Middle Kingdom: boats, gardens, and scenes of daily life are represented in miniature. However, the popular centerpiece of the Egyptian Art department continues to be the Temple of Dendur. Dismantled by the Egyptian government to save it from rising waters caused by the building of the Aswan High Dam, the large sandstone temple was given to the United States in 1965 and assembled in the Met's Sackler Wing in 1978. Situated in a large room, partially surrounded by a reflecting pool and illuminated by a wall of windows opening onto Central Park, the Temple of Dendur is one of the Met's most enduring attractions. The oldest items at the Met, a set of Archeulian flints from Deir el-Bahri which date from the Lower Paleolithic period (between 300,000 - 75,000 BC), are part of the Egyptian collection.

European paintings

Though the Met's collection of European paintings numbers only around 2,200 pieces, it contains many of the world's most instantly recognizable paintings. The bulk of the Met's purchasing has always been in this department, primarily focusing on Old Masters and 19th century European paintings, with an emphasis on French, Italian and Dutch artists. Many great artists are represented in remarkable depth in the Met's holdings: the museum owns thirty-seven paintings by Monet, twenty-one oils by Cézanne, and eighteen Rembrandts including ''Aristotle With a Bust of Homer''. The Met's five paintings by Vermeer represent the largest collection of the artist's work anywhere in the world. Other highlights of the collection include Van Gogh's ''Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat'', Pieter Bruegel the Elder's ''The Harvesters'', Georges de La Tour's ''The Fortune Teller'', El Greco's View of Toledo, Raphael's Colonna Altarpiece, Botticelli's ''Last Communion of St Jerome'', and Jacques-Louis David's ''The Death of Socrates''. In recent decades, the Met has carried out a policy of deaccessioning its "minor" holdings in order to purchase a smaller number of "world-class" pieces. Though this policy remains controversial, it has gained a number of outstanding (and outstandingly expensive) masterpieces for the European Paintings collection, beginning with Velázquez's ''Juan de Pareja'' in 1971. A more recent purchase is Duccio's ''Madonna and Child'', which cost the museum more than $45 million, more than twice the amount it had paid for any previous painting. The painting itself, which is only slightly larger than , has been called "the Met's ''Mona Lisa''".

European sculpture and decorative arts

The European Sculpture and Decorative Arts collection is one of the largest departments at the Met, holding in excess of 50,000 separate pieces from the 15th through the early 20th centuries. Though the collection is particularly concentrated in Renaissance sculpture—much of which can be seen ''in situ'' surrounded by contemporary furnishings and decoration—it also contains comprehensive holdings of furniture, jewelry, glass and ceramic pieces, tapestries, textiles, and timepieces and mathematical instruments. In addition to its outstanding collections of English and French furniture, visitors can enter dozens of completely furnished period rooms, transplanted in their entirety into the Met's galleries. The collection even includes an entire 16th century patio from the Spanish castle of Vélez Blanco, reconstructed in a two-story gallery, and the intarsia ''studiolo'' from the ducal palace at Gubbio. Sculptural highlights of the sprawling department include Bernini's ''Bacchanal'', a cast of Rodin's ''The Burghers of Calais'', and several unique pieces by Houdon, including his ''Bust of Voltaire'' and his famous portrait of his daughter Sabine.

Greek and Roman art

The Met's collection of Greek and Roman art contains more than 35,000 works dated through AD 312. The Greek and Roman collection dates back to the founding of the museum—in fact, the museum's first accessioned object was a Roman sarcophagus, still currently on display. Though the collection naturally concentrates on items from ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, these historical regions represent a wide range of cultures and artistic styles, from classic Greek black-figure and red-figure vases to carved Roman tunic pins. Highlights of the collection include the monumental Amathus sarcophagus and a magnificently detailed Etruscan chariot known as the "Monteleone chariot". The collection also contains many pieces from far earlier than the Greek or Roman empires—among the most remarkable are a collection of early Cycladic sculptures from the mid-third millennium BCE, many so abstract as to seem almost modern. The Greek and Roman galleries also contain several large classical wall paintings and reliefs from different periods, including an entire reconstructed bedroom from a noble villa in Boscoreale, excavated after its entombment by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. In 2007, the Met's Greek and Roman galleries were expanded to approximately , allowing the majority of the collection to be on permanent display.

Islamic art

The Met's collection of Islamic art is not confined strictly to religious art, though a significant number of the objects in the Islamic collection were originally created for religious use or as decorative elements in mosques. Much of the 12,000 strong collection consists of secular items, including ceramics and textiles, from Islamic cultures ranging from Spain to North Africa to Central Asia. The Islamic Art department's collection of miniature paintings from Iran and Mughal India are a highlight of the collection. Calligraphy both religious and secular is well-represented in the Islamic Art department, from the official decrees of Suleiman the Magnificent to a number of Qur'an manuscripts reflecting different periods and styles of calligraphy. As with many other departments at the Met, the Islamic Art galleries contain many interior pieces, including the entire reconstructed ''Nur Al-Din Room'' from an early 18th century house in Damascus. The Islamic Arts galleries have been undergoing refurbishment since 2001 and are to be reopened on 1 November 2011. Until that time, a narrow selection of items from the collection are on temporary display throughout the museum. However, the museum has confirmed to the ''New York Post'' that it has withdrawn from public display all paintings depicting Muhammad and may not rehang those that were displayed in the Islamic gallery before the renovation.

Robert Lehman Collection

On the passing of banker Robert Lehman in 1969, his Foundation donated close to 3,000 works of art to the museum. Housed in the "Robert Lehman Wing," the museum refers to the collection as "one of the most extraordinary private art collections ever assembled in the United States". To emphasize the personal nature of the Robert Lehman Collection, the Met housed the collection in a special set of galleries which evoked the interior of Lehman's richly decorated townhouse; this intentional separation of the Collection as a "museum within the museum" met with mixed criticism and approval at the time, though the acquisition of the collection was seen as a coup for the Met. Unlike other departments at the Met, the Robert Lehman collection does not concentrate on a specific style or period of art; rather, it reflects Lehman's personal interests. Lehman the collector concentrated heavily on paintings of the Italian Renaissance, particularly the Sienese school. Paintings in the collection include masterpieces by Botticelli and Domenico Veneziano, as well as works by a significant number of Spanish painters, El Greco and Goya among them. Lehman's collection of drawings by the Old Masters, featuring works by Rembrandt and Dürer, is particularly valuable for its breadth and quality. Princeton University Press has documented the massive collection in a multi-volume book series published as ''The Robert Lehman Collection Catalogues''.

Libraries

The main library at the Met is the Thomas J. Watson Library, named after its benefactor. The Watson Library primarily collects books related to the history of art, including exhibition catalogues and auction sale publications, and generally attempts to reflect the emphasis of the museum's permanent collection. The library has about 690,000 items. Several of the museum's departments have their own specialized libraries relating to their area of expertise. The Watson Library and the individual departments' libraries also hold substantial examples of early or historically important books which are works of art in their own right. Among these are books by Dürer and Athanasius Kircher, as well as editions of the seminal Surrealist magazine ''VVV'' and a copy of ''Le Description de l'Egypte,'' commissioned in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte and considered one of the greatest achievements of French publishing.

Several of the departmental libraries are open to members of the public without prior appointment. The Library and Teacher Resource Center, Ruth and Harold Uris Center for Education, is open to visitors of all ages to study art and art history and to learn about the Museum, its exhibitions and permanent collection. The Robert Goldwater Library in the department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas documents the visual arts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Native and Precolumbian America. It is open to adult researchers, including college and graduate students. Most of the other departmental libraries are for museum staff only or are open to the general public by appointment only.

Medieval art

The Met's collection of medieval art consists of a comprehensive range of Western art from the 4th through the early 16th centuries, as well as Byzantine and pre-medieval European antiquities not included in the Ancient Greek and Roman collection. Like the Islamic collection, the Medieval collection contains a broad range of two- and three-dimensional art, with religious objects heavily represented. In total, the Medieval Art department's permanent collection numbers about 11,000 separate objects, divided between the main museum building on Fifth Avenue and The Cloisters.

Main building

The medieval collection in the main Metropolitan building, centered on the first-floor medieval gallery, contains about six thousand separate objects. While a great deal of European medieval art is on display in these galleries, most of the European pieces are concentrated at the Cloisters (see below). However, this allows the main galleries to display much of the Met's Byzantine art side-by-side with European pieces. The main gallery is host to a wide range of tapestries and church and funerary statuary, while side galleries display smaller works of precious metals and ivory, including reliquary pieces and secular items. The main gallery, with its high arched ceiling, also serves double duty as the annual site of the Met's elaborately decorated Christmas tree.

The Cloisters

The Cloisters was a principal project of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who was a major benefactor of the Met. Located in Fort Tryon Park and completed in 1938, it is a separate building dedicated solely to medieval art. The Cloisters collection was originally that of a separate museum, assembled by George Grey Barnard and acquired ''in toto'' by Rockefeller in 1925 as a gift to the Met.

The Cloisters are so named on account of the five medieval French cloisters whose salvaged structures were incorporated into the modern building, and the five thousand objects at the Cloisters are strictly limited to medieval European works. The collection exhibited here features many items of outstanding beauty and historical importance; among these are the ''Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry'' illustrated by the Limbourg Brothers in 1409, the Romanesque altar cross known as the "Cloisters Cross" or "Bury Cross," and the seven heroically detailed tapestries depicting the Hunt of the Unicorn.

Modern art

With more than 10,000 artworks, primarily by European and American artists, the modern art collection occupies , of gallery space and contains many iconic modern works. Cornerstones of the collection include Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein, Jasper Johns's ''White Flag'', Jackson Pollock's ''Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)'', and Max Beckmann's triptych ''Beginning''. Certain artists are represented in remarkable depth, for a museum whose focus is not exclusively on modern art: for example, the collection contains forty paintings by Paul Klee, spanning his entire career. Due to the Met's long history, "contemporary" paintings acquired in years past have often migrated to other collections at the museum, particularly to the American and European Paintings departments.

Musical instruments

The Met's collection of musical instruments, with about five thousand examples of musical instruments from all over the world, is virtually unique among major museums. The collection began in 1889 with a donation of several hundred instruments by Lucy W. Drexel, but the department's current focus came through donations over the following years by Mary Elizabeth Adams, wife of John Crosby Brown. Instruments were (and continue to be) included in the collection not only on aesthetic grounds, but also insofar as they embodied technical and social aspects of their cultures of origin. The modern Musical Instruments collection is encyclopedic in scope; every continent is represented at virtually every stage of its musical life. Highlights of the department's collection include several Stradivari violins, a collection of Asian instruments made from precious metals, and the oldest surviving piano, a 1720 model by Bartolomeo Cristofori. Many of the instruments in the collection are playable, and the department encourages their use by holding concerts and demonstrations by guest musicians.

Photographs

The Met's collection of photographs, numbering more than 20,000 in total, is centered on five major collections plus additional acquisitions by the museum. Alfred Stieglitz, a famous photographer himself, donated the first major collection of photographs to the museum, which included a comprehensive survey of Photo-Secessionist works, a rich set of master prints by Edward Steichen, and an outstanding collection of Stieglitz's photographs from his own studio. The Met supplemented Stieglitz's gift with the 8,500-piece Gilman Paper Company Collection, the Rubel Collection, and the Ford Motor Company Collection, which respectively provided the collection with early French and American photography, early British photography, and post-WWI American and European photography. The museum also acquired Walker Evans's personal collection of photographs, a particular coup considering the high demand for his works. Though the department gained a permanent gallery in 1997, not all of the department's holdings are on display at any given time, due to the sensitive materials represented in the photography collection. However, the Photographs department has produced some of the best-received temporary exhibits in the Met's recent past, including a Diane Arbus retrospective and an extensive show devoted to spirit photography.

Roof Garden

The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden is located on the roof towards the southwestern corner of the museum. It offers views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, and features an annual summertime single artist sculpture exhibition. The Garden's cafe and bar is a popular museum spot during the mild-weathered months, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings when large crowds can lead to long lines at the elevators

Special exhibitions

The museum regularly hosts notable special exhibitions, often focusing on the works of one artist that have been loaned out from a variety of other museums and sources for the duration of the exhibition. These exhibitions are part of the attraction that draw people both within and outside Manhattan to explore the Met. Such exhibitions include displays especially designed for the Costume Institute, paintings from artists from across the world, works of art related to specific art movements, and collections of historical artifacts. Exhibitions are commonly located within their specific departments, ranging from American Decorative Arts, Arms and Armor, Drawings and Prints, Egyptian Art, Medieval Art, Musical Instruments, and Photographs. Typical exhibitions run for months at a time and are open to the general public. Each exhibition provides insight into the world of art as a transformative, cultural experience and often includes a historical analysis to demonstrate the profound impact that art has on society and its dramatic transformation over the years. .

Early History

The New York State Legislature granted the Metropolitan Museum of Art an Act of Incorporation on April 13, 1870 "for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said City a Museum and Library of Art, of encouraging and developing the Study of the Fine Arts, and the application of Art to manufacture and natural life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and to that end of furnishing popular instruction and recreations".

The museum first opened on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. John Taylor Johnston, a railroad executive whose personal art collection seeded the museum, served as its first President, and the publisher George Palmer Putnam came on board as its founding Superintendent. The artist Eastman Johnson acted as Co-Founder of the museum. The former Civil War officer, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, was named as its first director. He served from 1879 to 1904. Under their guidance, the Met's holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met's purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion at 128 West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations proved temporary, as the growing collection required more space than the mansion could provide.

The Present Building

After negotiations with the City of New York in 1871, the Met was granted the land between the East Park Drive, Fifth Avenue, and the 79th and 85th Street Transverse Roads in Central Park. A red-brick and stone "mausoleum" was designed by American architect Calvert Vaux and his collaborator Jacob Wrey Mould. Vaux's ambitious building was not well-received; the building's High Victorian Gothic style being already dated prior to completion, and the president of the Met termed the project "a mistake." Within 20 years, a new architectural plan engulfing the Vaux building was already being executed. Since that time, many additions have been made including the distinctive Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade, Great Hall, and Grand Stairway. These were designed by architect and Met trustee Richard Morris Hunt, but completed by his son, Richard Howland Hunt in 1902 after his father's death. The wings that completed the Fifth Avenue facade in the 1910s were designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. The modernistic sides and rear of the museum were the work of Roche, Dinkeloo, and Associates in the 1970s and 1980s.

As of 2010, the Met measures almost long and with more than of floor space, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building. The museum building is an accretion of over twenty structures, most of which are not visible from the exterior. The City of New York owns the museum building and contributes utilities, heat, and some of the cost of guardianship.

The Museum Corporation

The collections are owned by a private corporation of Fellows and Benefactors which totals about 950 persons. The museum is governed by a Board of Trustees consisting of 41 elected members, several officials of the City of New York, and persons honored as Trustees by the museum. The 2009-10 operating budget is $221 million. The museum's endowment is $2–3 billion and provides much of the income for operations while admissions account for only 15%.

Acquisitions and deaccessioning

During the 1970s, under the directorship of Thomas Hoving, the Met revised its deaccessioning policy. Under the new policy, the Met set its sights on acquiring "world-class" pieces, regularly funding the purchases by selling mid- to high-value items from its collection. Though the Met had always sold duplicate or minor items from its collection to fund the acquisition of new pieces, the Met's new policy was significantly more aggressive and wide-ranging than before, and allowed the deaccessioning of items with higher values which would normally have precluded their sale. The new policy provoked a great deal of criticism (in particular, from the ''New York Times'') but had its intended effect.

Many of the items then purchased with funds generated by the more liberal deaccessioning policy are now considered the "stars" of the Met's collection, including Velázquez's ''Juan de Pareja'' and the Euphronios krater depicting the death of Sarpedon (which has since been repatriated to the Republic of Italy). In the years since the Met began its new deaccessioning policy, other museums have begun to emulate it with aggressive deaccessioning programs of their own. The Met has continued the policy in recent years, selling such valuable pieces as Edward Steichen's 1904 photograph ''The Pond-Moonlight'' (of which another copy was already in the Met's collection) for a record price of $2.9 million.

Controversies

The book ''Rogues' Gallery'' by the journalist Michael Gross was published in May, 2009 focusing on the personalities behind the museum, showcasing their personal peccadilloes and charting the relationship between the public and private behavior and ambitions of its trustees and benefactors and their cultural philanthropy. A museum spokesman condemned the book as "misleading" and "insensitive", and the museum bookstore declined to sell it. The ''New York Times Book Review'' noted that the subjects of the book "form a blockbuster exhibition of human achievement and flaws," but ultimately criticized the book's focus on "lurid" matters unrelated to art.

The museum has been criticized for withdrawing images of Muhammad from public display.

In popular culture

In Edith Wharton's 1920 novel ''The Age of Innocence'' set in the 1870s the two main protagonists have a clandestine meeting in the museum, during which one says "Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum"

In ''Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief'' Percy goes there on a school field trip.

In E. L. Konigsburg's children's book (made into a film in 1973 and made for TV movie in 1985), ''From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler'', the main characters run away from home to live in the museum

See also

Education in New York City

List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City

References

External links

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a Timeline of Art History

Chronological list of special exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art NY

Watsonline: The Catalog of the Libraries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Artwork owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tom Hoving, obituary from ''The Daily Telegraph''

For Art's Sake: Inside the Met - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Category:Richard Morris Hunt buildings Category:Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan Category:National Historic Landmarks in New York City Category:Art museums in New York Category:Museums in Manhattan Category:Egyptological collections in the United States Category:Museums of Ancient Rome Category:Museums of Ancient Greece Category:Textile museums in the United States Category:African art museums in the United States Category:Asian art museums in New York Category:Musical instrument museums in the United States Category:Fashion museums in the United States Category:Institutions accredited by the American Association of Museums Category:Rockefeller family Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1880 Category:Central Park Category:Fifth Avenue (Manhattan) Category:Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España recipients

ar:متحف المتروبوليتان للفنون az:Metropoliten muzeyi be-x-old:Мэтраполітэн (музэй) bg:Музеят на изкуствата "Метрополитън" ca:Metropolitan Museum of Art cs:Metropolitní muzeum umění da:Metropolitan Museum of Art de:Metropolitan Museum of Art el:Μητροπολιτικό Μουσείο Τέχνης (Νέα Υόρκη) es:Museo Metropolitano de Arte eo:Metropolita Muzeo de Arto eu:Metropolitan Museum of Art fa:موزه متروپولیتن نیویورک fr:Metropolitan Museum of Art fy:Metropolitan Museum of Art ko:메트로폴리탄 미술관 hy:Մետրոպոլիտեն թանգարան (Նյու Յորք) hr:Metropolitan id:Metropolitan Museum of Art it:Metropolitan Museum of Art he:מוזיאון המטרופוליטן לאמנות ka:მეტროპოლიტენის ხელოვნების მუზეუმი (ნიუ-იორკი) la:Museum Artium Metropolitanum hu:Metropolitan Művészeti Múzeum mk:Метрополитен (музеј) nl:Metropolitan Museum of Art ja:メトロポリタン美術館 no:Metropolitan Museum of Art oc:Metropolitan Museum of Art pl:Metropolitan Museum of Art pt:Metropolitan Museum of Art ro:Metropolitan Museum of Art ru:Метрополитен-музей scn:Metropolitan Museum of Art simple:Metropolitan Museum of Art sk:Metropolitan Museum of Art sr:Музеј Метрополитен sh:Metropolitan fi:Metropolitan Museum of Art sv:Metropolitan Museum of Art th:พิพิธภัณฑ์ศิลปะเมโทรโพลิทัน tr:Metropolitan Museum of Art uk:Музей мистецтва Метрополітен vi:Metropolitan Museum of Art zh-yue:大都會藝術博物館 zh:大都會藝術博物館

Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
{{infobox museum |name	Museum of Arts and Design |image MAD logo.png |imagesize 200px |map_type |latitude |longitude |established 1956 |dissolved |location 2 Columbus CircleManhattan, New York City |type Art museum |visitors |director Holly Hotchner |curator David Revere McFadden, Lowery Stokes Sims |website http://www.madmuseum.org/ }}

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan in New York, New York, is a center for the collection, preservation, study, and display of contemporary hand-made objects in a variety of media, including: clay, glass, metal, fiber, and wood. It accommodates 300,000 visitors per year, however, touring exhibitions, outreach efforts, and off-site programs effectively double that audience.

The museum was founded in 1956 by philanthropist Aileen Osborn Webb, as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. In 1986, it relocated to 40 West 53rd Street and was renamed the American Craft Museum. In 2002 it changed its name again to the Museum of Arts and Design. In 2008, the museum moved to 2 Columbus Circle.

2 Columbus Circle

The new location, with more than , more than tripled the size of the Museum’s former space. It includes: four floors of exhibition galleries for works by established and emerging artists; a 150-seat auditorium in which the museum plans to feature lectures, films, and performances; and a restaurant. It also includes a Center for the Study of Jewelry, and an Education Center that offers multi-media access to primary source material, hands-on classrooms for students, and three artists-in-residence studios.

However, the museum's plans to radically alter the building's original design by Edward Durell Stone touched off a preservation battle joined by Tom Wolfe, Chuck Close, Frank Stella, Robert A. M. Stern, Columbia art history department chairman Barry Bergdoll, New York Times' architecture critics Herbert Muschamp and Nicolai Ouroussoff, urbanist scholar Witold Rybczynski, among others. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Ada Louise Huxtable, and others, however, supported the redevelopment of a long neglected site.

The museum's new location was developed by Brad Cloepfil and his Portland, Oregon-based firm Allied Works Architecture. The redesigned building replaced the original white Vermont Marble with a glazed terra-cotta and glass facade. Its nacreous ceramic exterior is said to change color at different viewing angles.

Against Cloepfil's wishes, the museum's board and its director, Holly Hotchner, ordered that a band of windows be added to the building's top floor. This added a horizontal strip which connected a pair of vertical bands to create the shape of a letter H. Another vertical band on the western side of the building, reads as an I. Of the addition to the word "HI" to his design, Cloepfil said that "he has never felt more violated in any way."

The architecture critic for the LA Times, Christopher Hawthorne, wrote: :It's as if Stone, his architecture muffled and disregarded by Cloepfil, MAD and the city of New York, managed to have the last word on the preservation controversy, popping up from beyond the grave to say hello. The fact that the word in question is unpretentious and loosely informal makes it deliciously Stone-like, and allows it to undermine the severity and cold perfectionism of Cloepfil's exterior all the more.

An article in the New York Times acknowledged that when Holly Hotchner first became the director of the institution ten years ago "few people seemed to have heard of it." Today the museum may be best known for "the bitter preservation battle arose over its purchase and planned renovation of 2 Columbus Circle, the 1964 'lollipop' building near Central Park designed by Edward Durell Stone." Ms. Hotchner said she "hopes it will become known for what it does, not where it is."

See also

American craft

References

;Notes

External links

Museum website

Untold Stories: The American Crafts Council and Aileen Osborn Webb

A New Face on Columbus Circle

Renovation Adds Light to Lollipop Building

Interactive Video of Transformation

Missing the Marble at 2 Columbus Circle

Images

Essay: Modernism Endangered

Article by Tom Wolfe

Force Behing 2 Columbus Circle: Interview with the Director

Report by NY1 of a rally

Men's Vogue on Brad Cloepfil

Recent Past Preservation Network

The Architect's Newspaper

Eyesore or Icon?

'Second Lives' Exhibit Fall 2008

The Rape of 2 Columbus Circle

Category:Museums established in 1956 Category:Decorative arts museums in the United States Category:Landmarks in New York City Category:Contemporary crafts museums in the United States Category:Design museums in New York Category:Art museums in New York Category:Museums in Manhattan Category:Edward Durell Stone buildings

Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
Nationality	British
Birth date	March 17, 1969
Birth name	Lee Alexander McQueen
Birth place	Lewisham, London, United Kingdom
Death date	February 11, 2010
Residence	Mayfair, London
Years active	1989 - 2010
Death place	Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
Education	Central Saint Martins
Label name	Alexander McQueen, McQ
Awards	British Fashion Designer of the YearCommander of the Order of the British Empire Council of Fashion Designers of America International Designer of the Year 2003
Parents	Ronald McQueenJoyce McQueen (deceased 1934-2010) }}

Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE (17 March 1969 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier best known for his in-depth knowledge of bespoke British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose strength with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows. He is also known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own label under the name Alexander McQueen. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards (1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003), as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003.

Early life and education

Born on 17 March 1969 in Lewisham, London, to Scottish taxi driver Ronald and social science teacher Joyce, McQueen was the youngest of six children. He grew up in a council flat in a tower block in Stratford. He attended Carpenters Road Primary School. He started making dresses for his three sisters at a young age and announced his intention to become a fashion designer.

McQueen attended Rokeby School and left aged 16 in 1984 with one O-level in art, going on to serve an apprenticeship with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard, before joining Gieves & Hawkes and, later, the theatrical costumiers Angels and Bermans. The skills he learned as an apprentice on Savile Row helped earn him a reputation in the fashion world as an expert in creating an impeccably tailored look.

Career

While on Savile Row, McQueen's clients included Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Charles. At the age of 20 he spent a period of time working for Koji Tatsuno before travelling to Milan, Italy and working for Romeo Gigli.

McQueen returned to London in 1994 and applied to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, to work as a pattern cutter tutor. Because of the strength of his portfolio he was persuaded by the Head of the Masters course to enroll in the course as a student. He received his masters degree in fashion design and his graduation collection was bought in its entirety by influential fashion stylist Isabella Blow, who was said to have persuaded McQueen to become known as Alexander (his middle name) when he subsequently launched his fashion career.

Icelandic singer Björk sought McQueen's work for the cover of her album ''Homogenic'' in 1997. McQueen also directed the music video for her song "Alarm Call" from the same album.

right|thumb|Camilla Belle in a 2009 dress by Alexander McQueen, listed among "100 Best Dresses of the Decade" by ''InStyle'' Magazine. McQueen's early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics (earning the title "l'enfant terrible" and "the hooligan of English fashion"), with trousers aptly named "bumsters" and a collection entitled "Highland Rape". In 2004, journalist Caroline Evans also wrote of McQueen's "theatrical staging of cruelty," in 032c magazine, referring to his dark and tortured renderings of Scottish History. McQueen was known for his lavish, unconventional runway shows: a recreation of a shipwreck for his spring 2003 collection; spring 2005's human chess game; and his fall 2006 show "Widows of Culloden," which featured a life-sized hologram of supermodel Kate Moss dressed in yards of rippling fabric.

McQueen's "bumsters" spawned a trend in low rise jeans; on their debut they attracted many comments and debate. Michael Oliveira-Salac, the director of Blow PR and a friend of McQueen's said that "The bumster for me is what defined McQueen." McQueen also became known for using skulls in his designs. A scarf bearing the motif became a celebrity must-have and was copied around the world.

McQueen has been credited with bringing drama and extravagance to the catwalk. He used new technology and innovation to add a different twist to his shows and often shocked and surprised audiences. The silhouettes that he created have been credited for adding a sense of fantasy and rebellion to fashion. McQueen became one of the first designers to use Indian models in London.

McQueen also designed a range of dresses under the name of "manta", priced at around £2800. The line, named after the manta ray, was inspired by a holiday McQueen took in the Maldives in 2009. The designs have been worn by various models and celebrities, including Lily Cole. McQueen stayed with Givenchy until March 2001, when the contract he said was "constraining his creativity" ended.

Accomplishments

Some of McQueen's accomplishments included being one of the youngest designers to achieve the title "British Designer of the Year", which he won four times between 1996 and 2003; he was also awarded the CBE and named International Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers in 2003.

December 2000 saw a new partnership for McQueen, with the Gucci Group acquiring 51% of his company and McQueen serving as Creative Director. Plans for expansion included the opening of stores in London, Milan and New York, and the launch of his perfumes Kingdom and, most recently, My Queen. In 2005, McQueen collaborated with Puma to create a special line of trainers for the shoe brand. In 2006 he launched McQ, a younger, more renegade lower priced line for men and women.

McQueen became the first designer to participate in MAC's promotion of cosmetic releases created by fashion designers. The collection, McQueen, was released on 11 October 2007 and reflected the looks used on the Autumn/Winter McQueen catwalk. The inspiration for the collection was the Elizabeth Taylor movie ''Cleopatra'', and thus the models sported intense blue, green, and teal eyes with strong black liner extended Egyptian-style. McQueen handpicked the makeup.

Company

By the end of 2007, Alexander McQueen had boutiques in London, New York, Los Angeles, Milan and Las Vegas. Celebrity patrons, including Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz, Sarah Jessica Parker and Rihanna, J-Pop Queens such as Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, and Koda Kumi have frequently been spotted wearing Alexander McQueen clothing to events. Björk, Ayumi Hamasaki and Lady Gaga have often incorporated Alexander McQueen pieces in their music videos. By wearing his designs, celebrities such as the above mentioned have further increased the notability of the McQueen brand.

Personal life

McQueen was openly gay and said he realized his sexual orientation when very young. He told his family when he was 18 and, after a rocky period, they accepted his sexuality. He described coming out at a young age by saying, "I was sure of myself and my sexuality and I've got nothing to hide. I went straight from my mother's womb onto the gay parade".

In the summer of 2000, McQueen had a marriage ceremony with his partner George Forsyth, a documentary filmmaker, on a yacht in Ibiza. The marriage was not official, as same-sex marriage in Spain was not legal then. The relationship ended a year later and McQueen and Forsyth maintained a close friendship.

McQueen received press attention after the May 2007 suicide of international style icon Isabella Blow. Rumours were published that there was a rift between McQueen and Blow at the time of her death, focusing on McQueen's under-appreciation of Blow. In response to these rumours, McQueen told an interviewer:

McQueen was an accomplished scuba diver and used his passion as a source of inspiration in his designs, including spring 2010's "Plato's Atlantis." Much of his diving was done around the Maldives.

Death and memorial

McQueen's death was announced on the afternoon of 11 February 2010. He was found hanged that morning in his wardrobe by his housekeeper at his home on Green Street, London W1. Paramedics were called and they pronounced him dead at the scene.

McQueen died days before London Fashion Week, though he was not scheduled to show, and nine days after the death of his mother, Joyce, 75, from cancer. David LaChapelle, a friend of the designer said that McQueen "was doing a lot of drugs and was very unhappy" at the time of his death.

McQueen left a note saying "Look after my dogs, sorry, I love you, Lee." The Metropolitan Police stated that the death was not suspicious, but did not confirm that the death was a suicide. On 17 February 2010, Westminster Coroner's Court was told that a post-mortem examination found that McQueen's death was due to asphyxiation and hanging. The inquest was adjourned until 28 April 2010, where McQueen's death was officially recorded as suicide. McQueen, who had been diagnosed with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder took an overdose prior to hanging himself. He had taken drug overdoses in May and July 2009. Prior to hanging himself with his "favourite brown belt", the inquest recorded that he had slashed his wrists with a ceremonial dagger and a meat cleaver. Coroner Dr Paul Knapman reported finding "a significant level of cocaine, sleeping pills, and tranquilisers in the blood samples taken after the designer's death."

On 3 February 2010, McQueen wrote on his Twitter page that his mother had died the day before, adding: "RIP mumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx." Four days later he wrote that he had an "awful week" but said "friends have been great", adding: "now i have to some how pull myself together". His mother's funeral took place on 12 February 2010. McQueen is survived by his father, three sisters, and two brothers.

McQueen's funeral took place on 25 February 2010 at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, West London. His ashes were later scattered on the Isle of Skye.

A memorial was held for McQueen at Saint Paul's Cathedral on 20 September 2010. It was attended by Björk, Kate Moss, Sarah Jessica Parker, Naomi Campbell, Stella McCartney and Anna Wintour amongst 2,500 other invited guests. On 18 February 2010, Robert Polet, the president and chief executive of the Gucci Group, announced that the Alexander McQueen business would carry on without its founder and creative director.

The BBC reported that McQueen had reserved £50,000 ($82,000) of his wealth for his pet dogs so that they can live in the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. He also bequeathed £100,000 ($164,315) each to four different charities; these include the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in south London, and the Blue Cross animal welfare charity in Burford, Oxfordshire.

Tributes

On 16 February 2010, pop musician Lady Gaga performed an acoustic version of her pop hit Telephone and segued into Dance In The Dark at the 2010 Brit Awards. During the performance, Gaga honored McQueen, saying, "this is for Alexander McQueen." She also commemorated McQueen after accepting her award for Best International Artist, Best International Female and Best International Album.

Gaga dedicated a song on the special edition of her third album, Born This Way, to him entitled "Fashion of His Love".

Bjork sang her rendition of Gloomy Sunday at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. She wore an outfit created by McQueen where many mourners came to gather.

Various other musicians, who were friends and collaborators with McQueen, commentated on his death, including Kanye West, Courtney Love, and Katy Perry.

In March 2010, a visual tribute to McQueen and his "manta" design was organised featuring Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Annabelle Neilson, among others.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City hosted a posthumous exhibition of McQueen's work in 2011 titled ''Savage Beauty''. Despite being open for only three months, it was one of the most popular exhibitions in the museum's history. The exhibition was so successful that Alexander McQueen fans and industry professionals worldwide began rallying at Change.org to "Please Make Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty a Traveling Exhibition" to bring honor to McQueen and see his vision become a reality: to share his work with the entire world.

The final show

Right before Alexander McQueen's death he had an eighty percent unfinished autumn/winter collection, 16 pieces, presented during Paris Fashion Week on March 8th 2010, to a select handful of fashion editors in a mirrored, gilded salon at the 18th-century Hôtel de Clermont-Tonnerre.

Fashion editors picked his final designs. Editors said the show was hard to watch because it showed how McQueen was obsessed with the afterlife. The clothes had a medieval and religious look. Basic colours that were repetitively used were red, gold and silvers with detailed embroidery. His models were accessorized to show his love for theatrical imagery. "Each piece is unique, as was he," McQueen's fashion house said in a statement that was released with the collection.

After company owner Gucci confirmed that the brand would continue, McQueen's long-term assistant Sarah Burton was named as the new creative director of Alexander McQueen in May 2010. In September 2010, Burton presented her first womenswear collection in Paris.

References

External links

Alexander McQueen's home page

Alexander McQueen – Daily Telegraph obituary

In pictures:Alexander McQueen exibition - The BBC- Entertainment and Arts - Around 100 examples of Alexander McQueen's work are to be displayed at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in May 2011 in a major celebration of the late British fashion designer.

Metropolitan Museum of Art retrospective

Category:1969 births Category:2010 deaths Category:Alumni of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Category:English businesspeople Category:English fashion designers Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:LGBT businesspeople Category:LGBT fashion designers Category:LGBT people from England Category:People from Stratford, London Category:Suicides by hanging in England zh-min-nan:Alexander McQueen be:Аляксандр Маккуін br:Alexander McQueen bg:Александър Маккуин ca:Alexander McQueen cy:Alexander McQueen da:Alexander McQueen de:Alexander McQueen es:Alexander McQueen fr:Alexander McQueen gan:阿歷山德·麥琨 ko:알렉산더 맥퀸 id:Alexander McQueen it:Alexander McQueen he:אלכסנדר מקווין ka:ალექსანდრ მაკქუინი hu:Alexander McQueen nl:Alexander McQueen ja:アレキサンダー・マックイーン no:Alexander McQueen nn:Alexander McQueen pl:Alexander McQueen pt:Alexander McQueen ro:Alexander McQueen ru:Маккуин, Александр fi:Alexander McQueen sv:Alexander McQueen th:อเล็กซานเดอร์ แม็กควีน uk:Александр Макквін vi:Alexander McQueen zh:亞歷山大·麥昆

Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
bgcolour	#6495ED
name	Roxy Paine
nationality	American
field	Sculpture,
training	College of Santa Fe, Pratt Institute
awards	}}

Roxy Paine (born 1966, New York) is an American artist. He was educated at both the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico and the Pratt Institute in New York.

Since 1990, his work has been internationally exhibited and is included in major collections such as the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. His dendroid sculptures can be found at various museums and foundations including the Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, WA; Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden; Montenmedio Arte Contemporaneo NMAC, Cadiz, Spain; the St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis, MO; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON. Roxy Paine lives and works in Brooklyn and Treadwell, New York.

Work

In his body of work, Roxy Paine mirrors natural processes, drawing increasingly on the tension between organic and man-made environments, between the human desire for order and nature's drive to reproduce. His highly detailed simulations of natural phenomena include an ambitious series of hand-wrought stainless steel trees, vitrines of mushroom and plant life in various states of decay and several large-scale machines designed to replicate creative processes. Collectively, his works demonstrate the human attempt to impose order on natural forces, depicting the struggle between the natural and the artificial, the rational and the instinctual. Paine has said, "I’m interested in taking entities that are organic and outside of the industrial realm, feeding them into an industrial system, and seeing what results from that force-feeding. The end results are a seamless containment of these opposites."

Paine is represented by the James Cohan Gallery.

Early work

Paine began showing his work in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1990 and 1991 at an artist run collective called Brand Name Damages (which he helped to found) and he had his first solo exhibition at the short-lived Herron Test-Site in October 1992. His early work consisted of kinetic and time-based sculptures such as ''Viscous Pult'', 1990, which consisted of a paint brush smearing ketchup, white paint and motor oil on the gallery space’s front window; and ''Displaced Sink'', 1992, which had a leaking pipe in the ceiling dripping water on a tall stack of soap bars, leaving a pool of semi-liquid soap to collect on the gallery floor.

His next solo exhibition was at Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1995, and it included other kinetic works, but the central and most critically acclaimed work was a piece called ''Dinner of the Dictators'', 1993–95, a vitrine enclosing the taxidermied favorite meals of infamous dictators, ranging from Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler to Napoleon Bonaparte and Suharto. The research alone took eight months, and overall, the work took two years to produce, opening Paine to new approaches and processes in his work.

From this point onwards, Paine’s work separated into a few distinct but nevertheless related categories. The first involves naturalistic works: minutely precise reproductions of natural objects like mushrooms, leafy plants or poppies. A second category consists of machine-based works: he has devised a number of conceptually-challenging art-making machines, like the ''SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker)'', 1998, ''PMU (Painting Manufacturing Unit)'', 1999–2000, and the ''Erosion Machine'', 2005. Bridging the gap between the naturalistic and mechanized works, Paine also creates large-scale stainless steel trees and boulders of varying sizes (ranging from 8 – 50 feet in height).

Replicants

Paine's vitrines and botanical works often feature replicas of plants that have been discovered as extremely poisonous or have been used by humans for experimental hallucinogenic or drug experiences. The living plants are cast and subsequently rendered in thermoset polymers, paint, lacquer, and epoxy, among other materials. ''Crop'', 1997–98, shows a field of poppies, with ripened pods exposing the evidence of raw opium being readied for harvest. The piece embodies the shifting views of the beauty of a field of wild flowers and the grave potential of drug addiction. ''Amanita Muscaria Field'', 2000, shows a field of psychoactive mushrooms that appear as if they are sprouting from the gallery floor. This field might present multiple readings: are these works a hallucinogenic vision on their own or do they represent the plant life that offers the possibility of arriving at that vision? Another related series of works is that of the ''Dead Amanita'' vitrines, life-like mushrooms seem to be decaying under glass. The genus ''Amanita'' is a group of poisonous and psychoactive mushrooms that has some species that are among the deadliest if ingested by humans.

Another example is the leafy plant genus ''Datura,'' which has long been used as a poison and hallucinogen; many species are known by common names such as Hell’s Bells or Devil’s weed. Paine’s re-creation of various species of ''Datura'' take on a state of potential, presenting us with a deceptively simple plant that nonetheless contains complex molecules that can give rise to an altered state of consciousness.

Machines

Removing the artist's hand in the creative process and replacing it with a computer program is the crux of Roxy Paine's machine-based works. His first art-making machine, ''Paint Dipper'', 1997, employed a steel armature that continuously dipped canvases into a vat of paint over the course of time, creating works that collect latex paint stalactites along the bottom edge. ''SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker)'', 1998–2001, melts plastic with pigments and periodically extrudes them onto a conveyor belt, creating bulbous shaped sculptures that are each unique.

''PMU (Painting Manufacturing Unit)'', from 1999–2000, involves a metal painting arm that is programmed to expel white paint onto a canvas according to specific instructions programmed into the machine. The resulting works often can evoke landscapes or possibly layers of geological sediment.

Most recently, Paine introduced his ''Erosion Machine'', 2005, which consists of a robotic arm that traces and cuts patterns into large blocks of stone. The course of the arm's movement is determined by data sets, such as weather conditions and school test results. The work suggests the corrosive effects of human imposition on the environment while at the same time represents the transformation of the banal into the beautiful.

About the ''SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker)'', art historian Jonathan Fineburg wrote that "The beauty of the machine and the eccentricity of the results are also a paean to the romantic. Paine positions both his gardens and his machines at a fluid interface of man, nature, and science; they take the viewer to an intuitive experience of the liminal place at which scientists have arrived as they begin to redesign the human genome and connect living neurons with silicon chips."

Dendroids

Roxy Paine uses both mechanical means and the innate logic of natural forms to create his "Dendroid" tree-like sculptures. Paine's meticulous research and observation of a variety of tree species help him to understand the "language" of how a tree grows, and from there he creates fictional tree species that grow to a logic of their own. Paine has said:

I've processed the idea of a tree and created a system for its form. I take this organic majestic being and break it down into components and rules. The branches are translated into pipe and rod.

Employing the language that he has invented pertaining to each of these fictive species, Paine's trees are "grown" through a laborious process of welding together the cylindrical piping and rods of diminishing size. He has also described his aims with the ''Dendroids'' series by saying, "I have been seeking to expand the edges of the language, and send the work outward into those edges. Essentially, I am establishing the rules of a language, only to then break those rules."

The first of these dendroids was ''Impostor'', 1999, now at the Wanas Foundation, in Knislinge, Sweden. Roxy has gone on to create twenty-five of these sculptures, including ''Bluff'', 2002, which premiered in New York's Central Park during the Whitney Biennial in 2002, and the very ambitious ''Conjoined'', 2007, recently on display in Manhattan's Madison Square Park (through December 31, 2007). ''Conjoined'' is a 40 ft tall by 45 ft wide sculpture of two trees whose branches cantilever in space and connect in mid air. Paine creates two different fictional tree species where each branch from one tree joins with a branch from the other. For the observer, it is unclear where one tree begins and the other ends. "Conjoined" was acquired in 2008 by and is on display at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Paine's recent sculpture, ''Inversion'', 2008, was installed in the Public Art Projects section of Art Basel 39, in Basel, Switzerland in June 2008. It was also part of ''FREEDOM: Den Haag Sculptuur 2008'' in The Hague, Netherlands through August 2008.

''Maelstrom,'' 2009, was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 28 - November 29, 2009 and ''Graft,'' 2009 was installed at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2009. When asked about ''Maelstrom'' Paine described it as existing on five "levels" at once:

"On one level, it’s a forest that has been downed by an unseen force—a force of nature or, perhaps, a force of man. I also want the sculpture to be the force itself, a swirling, churning force. The word 'maelstrom' actually has a Dutch root; it literally means 'grinding stream,' …The third state is trees in the state of becoming abstractions. There are areas with recognizable tree parts and then others where representation is stretching, breaking apart, and coalescing again… I want the fourth state to be a pipeline in a factory that’s run amuck. This is getting back to the root of the material, so to speak, which is purely industrial. Here the piece is embracing its source. And, finally, the fifth state is that of a mental storm, or what I envision happens during an epileptic seizure."

Spring 2009, retrieved July 27, 2011 ''Distillation,'' 2010, was on view at James Cohan Gallery in New York from October 16 - December 11, 2010, and ''One Hundred Foot Line,'' 2010, was installed permanently at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa, Ontario.

''Distillation,'' as described by Hilarie Sheets in ''The New York Times,''

pushes the metaphoric content that underpins these sculptures to new extremes. It still uses arboreal forms, but they now mesh with other overtly defined branching systems: a vascular network of arteries and veins with two plump kidneys, mushroom colonies and their germinating mycelia, neuron bundles and taxonomic diagrams, and raw pipelines connected to steel tanks and industrial valves.

Gallery

Selected exhibitions

;Solo Exhibitions

2010 ''Roxy Paine: Distillation'', James Cohan Gallery, New York

''Roxy Paine'', Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden

''Roxy Paine: Scumaks'', The Mill, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut

2009 ''Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom'', The Metropolitan Museum of Art Roof Garden, New York, NY, April 28 - October 25, 2009

2007 ''Roxy Paine'', Madison Square Park, New York, NY, May 15 – December 31, 2007

2006 ''Roxy Paine: PMU'', curated by Bruce Guenther, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, February 25 – May 28, 2006

''Roxy Paine: New Work'', James Cohan Gallery, New York, January 14 – February 25, 2006

2002 ''Roxy Paine: Second Nature'', co-curated by Joseph Ketner and Lynn Herbert, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA. Traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands (April 2002 through January 2004)

''Roxy Paine'', James Cohan Gallery, New York, November 8 - December 22, 2002

2001 ''Roxy Paine'', Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL, November 11, 2001 - January 27, 2002

''Roxy Paine'', Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany, February 13 - April 20, 2001

1999 ''Roxy Paine'', Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, January 9 - February 13, 1999

1998 ''Roxy Paine'', Musee D'Art Americain Giverny, Giverny, France, June 1 - November 15, 1998. Traveled to Lunds Kunsthall, Lund, Sweden, March 6 - April 18, 1999

1995 ''Roxy Paine'', Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, April 29 - June 3, 1995

1992 ''Roxy Paine'', Herron Test-Site, Brooklyn, NY, October 9 - November 8, 1992

;Group Exhibitions

2008 ''FREEDOM,'' Den Haag Sculptuur, The Hague, The Netherlands ''Public Art Projects,'' Art Basel 39, Basel, Switzerland ''Art Machines/Machine Art'', Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland

2007 ''Art Machines/Machine Art'', Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany

2006 ''Meditations in an Emergency'', Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI ''A Brighter Day'', James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY ''Garden Paradise'', curated by Lacy Davisson Doyle and Clare Weiss, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, New York, NY ''Uneasy Nature'', curated by Xandra Eden, Weatherspoon Art Museum, The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC

2005 ''Ecstasy: In and About Altered States'', organized by Paul Schimmel with Gloria Sutton, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA ''Extreme Abstraction'', Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY ''Material Terrain: A Sculptural Exploration of Landscape and Place'', curated by Carla Hanzal, commissioned by Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO. Traveling to Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, CA; University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL

2004 ''The Flower as Image'', Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humlebaek, Denmark ''Natural Histories: Realism Revisted'', Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ

2003 ''Work Ethic'', Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, Traveled to the Des Moines Center for the Arts ''UnNaturally'', organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), curated by Mary-Kay Lombino. Traveled to Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL; H & R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO; Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, Napa, CA; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL

2002 ''The Whitney Biennial in Central Park'', curated by Tom Eccles, organized by the Public Art Fund, New York in collaboration with The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York ''Early Acclaim: Emerging Artist Award Recipients 1997-2001'', The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT

2001 ''Brooklyn!'', Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL ''Waterworks: U.S. Akvarell 2001'', curated by Kim Levin, Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, Skarhamn, Sweden ''01.01.01: Art in Technological Times'', San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA ''All-Terrain'', Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA ''Give and Take'', Serpentine Gallery in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum

2000 ''From a Distance: Approaching Landscape'', curated by Jessica Morgan, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA ''Working in Brooklyn: Beyond Technology'', Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY ''5th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art: Sharing Exoticism'', Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France ''Greater New York: New Art in New York Now'', PS1 Contemporary Art Center in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, New York

1999 ''Best of the Season: Selected Work from the 1998-99 Gallery Season'', The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT

1998 ''Interlacings: The Craft of Contemporary Art'', Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Stamford, CT ''Nine International Artists at Wanas, 1998'', Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden

1997 ''9 to 5 at Metrotech: New Commissions for the Common'', The Public Art Fund, Brooklyn, NY ''Best of the Season 1996-97'', The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT

1996 ''Human/Nature'', The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY

1994 ''Garden of Sculptural Delights'', Exit Art/The First World, New York, NY

1993 ''Popular Mechanics'', Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT

1990 ''Roxy Paine and David Fasoldt'', Brand Name Damages, Brooklyn, NY

Awards

2006 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

1997 Trustees Award for an Emerging Artist, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT

Public collections

De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, The Netherlands

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON

The New School for Social Research, New York, NY

Fundación NMAC, Cadiz, Spain

Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA

University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

References

External links

James Cohan Gallery

Roxy Paine in Madison Square Park

Public Art Fund: Whitney Biennial in Central Park, 2002

National Gallery of Canada: Roxy Paine - One Hundred Foot Line, 2010

Interview with Roxy Paine at ARTINFO.com

Roxy Paine at NMAC Foundation

Maelstrom at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Ken Johnson's review of Maelstrom, The New York Times

Blake Gopnik's review of Graft, National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, The Washington Post

Hilarie Sheet's feature 'Man of Steel's Industrial Web Mirroring Nature,' The New York Times.

Category:1966 births Category:American artists Category:Living people Category:Pratt Institute alumni Category:Santa Fe University of Art and Design alumni Category:Guggenheim Fellows

sv:Roxy Paine zh:罗克士·潘尼

Philippe de Montebello (born May 16, 1936 in Paris) served from 1977 to 2008 as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. On his retirement, he was both the longest-serving director in the institution's history, and the longest-serving director of any major art museum in the world. From January 2009, Montebello took up a post as the first Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

Born to a French aristocratic family, de Montebello immigrated to the United States of America in the 1950s, and became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1955. He was educated in New York City at the Lycée Français, graduated from Harvard University with a degree in art history, and earned an MA from New York University, after which he embarked on a career in Fine Arts. He became the Director of the Metropolitan Museum in 1977 and has become widely known as the public face of the museum.

He announced his retirement on 8 January 2008, stating that he intended to step down by the end of 2008 after more than 31 years at his post.

Biography

Early life

Born Count Guy Philippe Henri Lannes de Montebello in Paris in 1936 to a family descended from the Napoleonic aristocracy, de Montebello was the second of four sons. His father, Count André Roger Lannes de Montebello (Biarritz, July 6, 1908 - New York City, December 2, 1986), was a portrait painter, art critic, and a member of the French Resistance during World War II. His mother, Germaine Wiener de Croisset (born in Paris, October 26, 1913 and married in Paris, November 30, 1933), was a descendant of the Marquis de Sade, a daughter of the playwright Francis de Croisset, and a half-sister of the arts patron Marie-Laure de Noailles. One of de Montebello's great-great-great-grandfathers was Jean Lannes, Duke of Montebello and Marshal of France.

Both parents were involved in a project to develop a form of three-dimensional photography, and it was in search of venture capital for this enterprise that the family came to New York in 1951. Whereas his brothers would all eventually return to France to take up jobs in banking, Philippe stayed in the United States and became an American citizen in 1955.

De Montebello was educated at the Lycée Français in New York, where he received his ''baccalauréat'' in 1958. He then went on to study art history at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude, before continuing his studies at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts under Charles Sterling, an expert in French Renaissance art.

Early career

In 1963, he was given the opportunity to work for the Met as a curatorial assistant in the Department of European Paintings. Thus began his career at the institution to which he was to dedicate his entire professional life, with the exception of a four-and-a-half-year stint (1969–1974) as Director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

Before his sojourn in Houston, de Montebello had risen through the ranks in the Department of European Paintings at the Met, eventually becoming full curator. He returned to New York in 1974 (he has since remarked that "the happiest moment of my life was booking a one-way ticket out of Houston"), as vice director for curatorial and educational affairs. He became director in 1977.

Family

On June 24, 1961 in New York, he married Edith Myles (born in New York, October 20, 1939), who is the financial-aid director of the Trinity School in New York City. They have three children: Count Marc André Marie (born in New York, October 11, 1964), married civily at Choiseul and religiously at Marnes La Coquette, November 28, 1986 and divorced Laure Marie Dauphine de Sabran-Pontèves (born at Neuilly, February 26, 1966), by whom he had a son Alexandre (born in New York, May 9, 1987); Laure (born in New York City, May 5, 1968) married to Robert Bernstein, M.D., with two children, Claire and Maximilian (Max); and Charles (born in Houston, Texas, January 16, 1971), married to Raasa Leela Shields (born in Richmond, Virginia) with two children, Kivlighan Finch and Everest Leo Myles.

Curator of the Metropolitan Museum

Under his directorship the Metropolitan Museum has nearly doubled in size to two million square feet. Notable changes have included the opening of the beloved Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court in 1990, the widely acclaimed new galleries for Greek & Roman art, the recently opened Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education, the remodelled and reinstalled galleries for Oceanic and Native North American art, and expanded galleries for Chinese, Cypriot, Ancient Near Eastern, and Korean art. In 2007, the Metropolitan reopened its expanded galleries for 19th- and early 20th-century century European paintings and decorative arts, formerly Modernist, in a historicizing Beaux-Arts style, and a new high-ceilinged gallery to show off Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's monumental paintings to their best advantage. Occasional criticism of de Montebello has focused on his alleged conservatism regarding modern and contemporary art: in a 1999 op-ed piece in the ''New York Times'' he lauded the city's mayor Rudy Giuliani for rubbishing Chris Ofili's infamous painting ''Holy Virgin Mary'', which used elephant dung as one of its materials. In the early years of his tenure, the Department of Modern Art was said to lag behind the museum's other departments in its spending power. But in recent years, the Museum has purchased iconic works by Jasper Johns, Damien Hirst, and Robert Rauschenberg, and mounted exhibitions by contemporary artists like Johns, Rauschenberg, Tara Donovan, Sean Scully, and Kara Walker.

Mr. de Montebello's other major building programs have included the expansion and renovation of period rooms and galleries for the decorative arts, the opening of new permanent exhibition galleries for drawings, prints, and photographs (supplemented in 2007 with the new Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography), the conservation and installation of the Gubbio Studiolo, the opening of the Antonio Ratti Textile Conservation Center, the opening of the new Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery for Byzantine art, and the installation of Coptic art in an evocatively designed, crypt-like gallery carved out of former storage space beneath the museum's Great Hall staircase. Current renovation programs underway at the Met will enhance its Medieval art galleries and expand and reinstall the American Wing—projects that will add space without breaking the outside footprint of the building in Central Park.

Under de Montebello's directorship, the Met acquired many major private collections, notably the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection of European Paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts; the Heinz Berggruen collection of works by Paul Klee; the gift of 10 paintings by Clyfford Still by the artist's widow; the Annenberg Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings; the Florene Schoenborn collection of 20th-century works; the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of modern paintings; the Gilman Paper Company Collection of 19th-century photographs; the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection of Abstract Expressionist and other modern works; and most recently, the Diane Arbus archive.

De Montebello also worked to acquire a number of individual masterpieces over the years,including works by Vermeer, Rubens, Guercino, and Nikolaus Gerhaert von Leiden. Among the most celebrated of these acquisitions have been the 11th-century gilt-bronze Cambodian deified king known as the "Golden Boy" in 1988; Vincent Van Gogh's "Wheat Field with Cypresses" in 1993, Jasper Johns' masterwork "White Flag" in 1998, and in 2004 the much-applauded Madonna and Child by the Renaissance master Duccio di Buoninsegna.

Throughout this period, the Met under de Montebello's leadership mounted some 30 special exhibitions annually, involving not only all the museum's 17 curatorial departments, but also presenting works of art on loan from public and private collections around the world (current shows listed on the museum's website, metmuseum.org). Many of the shows were accompanied by the publication of major catalogues. Under de Montebello, the Met has become the leading art book publisher in the U.S., issuing some 25-30 lavishly illustrated volumes each year, most carrying an introduction by the director.

Long the "voice of the Met," de Montebello also narrates the Met's audio guides for both exhibitions and the permanent collection. He lectures on museological matters throughout the world, and has also given public readings of French poetry by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and others at the museum.

Retirement

On January 8, 2008, he announced his intention to retire by the end of 2008 (). Commenting on his announcement, James R. Houghton, chairman of the institution's board of trustees, stated: "To say that his decision marks the end of an era surely constitutes one of the great understatements, not only in the Museum's life, but in the cultural life of the city, the state, the nation, and the world. Philippe de Montebello's manifest contributions to the Met span four decades bridging two different centuries. He leaves an incomparable legacy of accomplishment that has significantly enhanced the institution and brilliantly served its international public. No museum director anywhere has done more to expand and enrich the appreciation of art for more generations and with greater taste, erudition, diplomacy, and vision. As much as we regret his planned departute, we join in celebrating achievements that will sustain the Metropolitan—its collections, and its magnificent galleries—for generations to come." He was succeeded by Thomas Campbell in September 2008.

Association of Art Museum Curators

De Montebello assisted in the formation of the Association of Art Museum Curators in 2001, and later helped forge its policy on spoliated World War II-era art, advocating transparent research into the ownership history of museum collections, and testifying on Capitol Hill. In August 2006 he successfully negotiated the precedent-setting agreement with the Italian government that ended years of disputes regarding the legal ownership of several works in its Greek and Roman collections. Under the terms of the historic pact, Italy provided long-term loans to the Met in exchange for the return of these works.

Teaching

De Montebello will use his 30 years of experience as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as he will become the first professor to teach the history and culture of museums at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. In addition to being a full-time professor at the IFA, where he will discuss topics such as the history of collecting and the progression and modernization of museums, de Montebello will also advise NYU on its planned overseas campus and curriculum in Abu Dhabi, which is scheduled to begin enrolling students in 2010. He plans on teaching a shortened version of his course at the new campus when it opens. He begins teaching at NYU in January 2009 as well as consulting and lecturing at several museums on the modernization of their collections.

De Montebello sometimes servse as host of SundayArts, a weekly program highlighting current New York City exhibitions, cultural institutions and profiling relevant contributors to the arts on WNET.ORG's Thirteen.

Honors

Among the numerous accolades that have been bestowed on him, Montebello was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1991 (he was promoted to the rank of Officier in 2007). His adopted home country followed suit by awarding him the National Medal of Arts in 2002, the National Humanities Medal in 2010, and the Mayor's Arts Award in 2007. De Montebello has also earned the Order of Isabel la Catolica, Encomienda de Numero; the Spanish Institute Gold Medal Award; Knight Commander, Ponitifical Order of St. Gregory the Great; the 2002 Blerancourt Prize; the 2004 Amigos del Museo del Prado Prize; and in 2007 the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold & Silver Star, from the Government of Japan. He has received honorary degrees from New York University, Dartmouth College, Lafayette College, Bard College, Iona College, the Savannah College of Art and Design, and his alma mater, Harvard. De Montebello is a recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.

References

External links

''The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions'' Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Biography, Dartmouth News

Interview with de Montebello, ''Apollo'' magazine

Category:1936 births Category:People from Paris Category:American curators Category:Harvard University alumni Category:New York University alumni Category:Directors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Category:French emigrants to the United States Category:Directors of museums in the United States Category:Living people Category:Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Category:Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun Category:National Humanities Medal recipients Category:New York University faculty

ca:Philippe de Montebello fr:Philippe de Montebello