Tag Archives: Max Hollein

The Met Acquires Monumental Tiffany Window

(New York, December, 2023)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the acquisition of a monumental Tiffany three-part window, Garden Landscape. The window—over ten feet wide and nearly seven feet tall—was designed by Agnes Northrop in the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany, the attribution of which is based on a signed design drawing for the center panel that resides in The Met collection.

As part of the Museum’s American Wing 100th anniversary, the window will be installed in the Charles Engelhard Court in November 2024. The window will be dramatically framed by the columns from Laurelton Hall, Tiffany’s Long Island country estate.

The acquisition is made possible by Alan Gerry Gift; 2023 Benefit Fund; Louis V. Bell, Harris Brisbane Dick, Fletcher, and Rogers Funds and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest; funds and gifts from various donors, by exchange; Ronald S. Kane Bequest, in memory of Berry B. Tracy; Lila Acheson Wallace, several members of The Chairman’s Council, The Erving and Joyce Wolf Foundation, Martha J. Fleischman, Elizabeth J. and Paul De Rosa, Women and the Critical Eye, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Lockwood Chilton Jr., Cheryl and Blair Effron, The Felicia Fund, Julie and James Alexandre, Elizabeth and Richard Miller, Anonymous, John and Margaret Ruttenberg, and The Gerald H. Ruttenberg Foundation Gifts.

Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO, said: “This stunning work of art is an extraordinary example of the transformational creativity of Agnes Northrop and Tiffany Studios. Magnificent in concept and execution and more than grand in size, it deepens the American Wing’s Tiffany holdings and will enhance the already stunning Engelhard Court with a powerful, immersive viewing experience.”

Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing at The Met, said: “Northrop’s remarkable environmental work further strengthens our representation of women artists in the American Wing and allows us to share broader stories of early-20th-century culture with our visitors.”

The window was originally commissioned by Sarah Cochran, Pittsburgh businesswoman and philanthropist, for Linden Hall, the grand Tudor-Revival estate she had built in 1912 in Dawson, Pennsylvania. She personally requested the subject of the window, which represents a lush landscape and garden suggestive of her own at the estate. Placed on the stair landing of the house, the window enticed the viewer up marble steps and offered a long vista through tall, majestic pines flanking a central fountain amidst profuse flowers—pink and blue hydrangeas, poppies, and nasturtiums. The two side panels depict, on the left, foxglove and peonies, and on the right, hollyhocks, exquisitely rendered in glass. These were subjects favored by Northrop and American Impressionist painters.

Northrop was one of the most important designers in Tiffany’s employ and his preeminent woman designer. In a field dominated by men, Northrop established herself as one of the leading designers of windows, and was recognized for her work by winning a prestigious award at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. She helps shed light on the critical and often unrecognized role played by women in the art of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Northrop and Tiffany pioneered new landscape and garden subject matter for stained glass, and the window reveals Northrop’s careful observations of nature and her gift for translating it into glass.

Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts, said: “This extraordinary evocation of a garden landscape is Northrop’s masterpiece. Made during the height of Louis Tiffany’s career, it was conceived, commissioned, and crafted by women. Featuring flowers in bloom from spring through summer, seen in the enigmatic light of approaching twilight, the window presents a luxuriant garden perennially in bloom.”

Tiffany’s opalescent glass shares a zeitgeist with American Impressionism, merging imagery with chromatic light. Northrop exploited the varied textures, lush colors, and light effects that were only possible with Tiffany’s special Favrile glass made at his furnaces in Corona, Queens, utilizing especially innovative and unusual techniques, some unique in a stained-glass window. The ingenious selection of the glass as well as the cutting of the glass into often thousands of pieces of almost impossible shapes was done by Tiffany’s skilled artisans, who were also largely women. Tiffany deemed the Linden Hall window of such note that he put it on public view in his New York showroom before shipping it to Cochran’s Pennsylvania home.
Featured image: Image: Three-part Garden Landscape window for Linden Hall, Designed by Agnes F. Northrop (1857–1953), Tiffany Studios (1902–32), New York, 1912. Leaded Favrile glass. 124 × 82 inches; 88 3/4 × 81 5/8 inches; 88 3/4 × 81 5/8 inches; center panel: 124 × 82 in. (315 × 208.3 cm); side panels: 88 3/4 × 81 5/8 in. (225.4 × 207.3 cm)

New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces 2023 Exhibitions

(New York, June, 2023)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today its upcoming summer and fall exhibitions along with new live arts performances and summer initiatives, including the return of the bike valet program, ongoing date night offerings, and more.

“The stories we tell at The Metropolitan Museum of Art are ever expanding,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met. “Through groundbreaking exhibitions, compelling displays, and powerful performances and programs, this upcoming season is sure to delight, inspire, and engage audiences from near and far.”

Highlights of The Met’s summer exhibitions include: Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery(opening July 14), a presentation of Pueblo Indian pottery and the first community-curated Native American exhibition in the history of The Met;Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE (opening July 21), featuring never before publicly exhibited masterpieces that trace the aesthetic impact of the religion on Indian art; Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s(opening September 7), surveying how artists searched for cultural identity during a decade of political and social upheaval in the United States; The Facade Commission: Nairy Baghramian, Scratching the Back(opening September 7), the fourth in a series of contemporary commissions for The Met’s facade and the artist’s first public installation in New York City; and Picasso: A Cubist Commission in Brooklyn (opening September 14), a focused exhibition dedicated to a captivating, but lesser-known chapter of the artist’s Cubist period. It will bring together for the first time six paintings linked to Picasso’s unrealized decorative commission for the Brooklyn residence of artist, collector, and critic Hamilton Easter Field (1873–1922).

Fall season highlights include: Manet/Degas (opening September 24), the first major exhibition examining one of the most significant artistic dialogues in the genesis of modern art; The Great Hall Commission: Jacolby Satterwhite, A Metta Prayer(opening October 2) an immersive multi-channel video installation and a series of performances that will transform the Museum’s iconic Great Hall; Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism (opening October 13), exploring how the artists manipulated and experimented with color to create a new artistic vocabulary; Proof: Maxime Du Camp’s Photographs of the Eastern Mediterranean (opening October 23), the first exhibition to focus on The Met’s rare collection of photographs made by Du Camp in advance of his landmark 1852 book, Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie; and Lineages: Korean Art at The Met (opening November 7), which will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Museum’s Arts of Korea gallery with a collection of works tracing the history of Korean art.

Additionally, Africa & Byzantium (opening November 19), a major exhibition of nearly 200 works that explores the tradition of Byzantine art and culture in Africa from the 4th through the 15th century and beyond, will be presented at The Met Fifth Avenue through March 3, 2024, and feature many international loans being exhibited in the United States for the first time.

On November 20, 45 galleries dedicated to European Paintings, 1300–1800 will reopen, following the completion of an extensive skylights renovation project that began in 2018. The major reinstallation will highlight fresh narratives and dialogues among more than 700 works of art from the Museum’s world-famous holdings.

The 2023–24 season of MetLiveArts will include music, dance, and theatricalized culinary experiences that will invite deeper connections and make powerful observations about relevant cultural narratives as well as the Museum itself.

Upcoming public programs include Short Films for Short Nights, screenings of early video art accompanied by live music (July 7-9); the grand opening of the 81st Street Studio, a new children’s library and multipurpose active learning center (opening September 9); and the return of MetFest, the Museum’s community-wide block party (October 21).

The Museum also announced a continuing tradition of the summer season: the return of its popular bike valet program, which will be offered on Saturdays, Sundays, and select holidays through Labor Day (September 4). Guests visiting the Museum, regardless of transportation method, have the opportunity to experience The Met’s current blockbuster exhibition program, including Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty(through July 16), with extended viewing hours until 9 p.m. on Sundays, and Van Gogh’s Cypresses (through August 27).