Masterworks from Oberlin College's Museum Summer at The Met

Written by Ellen Freilich Tuesday, 26 July 2011 16:22

NEW YORK (REUTERS).- One museum's renovations are another's exhibition. Thus, 20 masterworks from  Allen Memorial Art Museum in Ohio will summer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York while the Allen Museum is closed for renovations. From March 16 through August 29, 19 paintings and one sculpture from one of the finest college or university collections in the United States will be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met museum officials said.

Each Allen Museum work will be juxtaposed with a Metropolitan Museum piece to create the most exciting conversation between the two works, said Maryan Ainsworth, curator of European paintings at the Metropolitan Museum.

"We will be able to see the Allen Museum's 'Saint Sebastian Tended by Irene' by (Hendrick) ter Brugghen, one of the most important North Baroque paintings in the United States, next to ter Brugghen's 'Crucifixion' from the Met Museum," she said.

For that reason, the exhibition is called "Side by Side."

A special brochure about the works with maps of where to find them in the Metropolitan Museum's galleries will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Besides the ter Brugghen painting, works visiting from the Allen Museum include Cezanne's "Viaduct at l'Estaque" and Kirchner's "Self-Portrait as a Soldier" as well as works by Altdorfer, Turner, Monet, and Rothko.

The exhibition is organized at the Metropolitan Museum by Maryan Ainsworth, Curator in the Department of European Paintings, and an Oberlin College alumnus.

Following the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, a collection of works from the Allen Memorial Art Museum will be on view at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. for several months.

The Allen Memorial Art Museum, founded in 1917 at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, is in an Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Cass Gilbert and named after its founder, Dr. Dudley Peter Allen (B.A. 1875), a distinguished graduate and trustee of Oberlin College. In 1977, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates designed an addition that represents one of the earliest examples of postmodern architecture in the United States.

The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is one of the finest college or university collections in the United States. Comprising nearly 14,000 works of art from virtually every culture and spanning the history of art, the AMAM's collection  is a vital cultural resource for the students, faculty, and staff of Oberlin College as well as the surrounding community. Notable strengths include seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, nineteenth and early twentieth-century European and contemporary American art, and Asian, European, and American works on paper. The collection is housed in an impressive Italian Renaissance-style building designed by Cass Gilbert and named after its founder, Dr. Dudley Peter Allen (B.A. 1875).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's largest and finest art museums. Its collections include more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe.

Founded in 1870, the Metropolitan Museum is located in New York City's Central Park along Fifth Avenue (from 80th to 84th Streets). Nearly five million people visit the Museum each year.  Visit : www.metmuseum.org/

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