Current

This overview of objects drawn from the collections of the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler museums features new acquisitions and rarely displayed works together with well-known objects. In the first-floor gallery, works by European, Latin American, and US artists represent major movements since 1900, and include surrealist and minimalist sculpture; cubist, De Stijl, and abstract expressionist paintings; and conceptual art that incorporates everyday objects and addresses sociopolitical issues. The galleries on the second floor showcase the Sackler Museum’s collections of Asian and Islamic art from 5,000 BC to the present. Objects on display include archaic Chinese jades and ritual bronze vessels, Chinese and Korean ceramics, and Buddhist sculpture from India, China, and Korea, alongside examples of Islamic ceramic vessels and tiles, and bronzes. The recently reinstalled fourth-floor galleries present a broad chronological survey of works of Western art from antiquity until around 1900 that are juxtaposed to initiate new dialogues. Rotations of drawings, prints, and photographs throughout the galleries further expand upon these exchanges. A special display features disparate objects made from the same material; the first rotation focuses on bronze (January 31–August 18, 2012), the second will concentrate on wood (September 4, 2012–January 19, 2013), and the third on wax (January 29–June 1, 2013).

SPECIAL NOTICE: A portion of the fourth floor of the Sackler Museum, which contains the Ancient to Modern installation of the exhibition Re-View, will be closed to the public temporarily from Tuesday, May 15, through Saturday, May 19, 2012, to accommodate the installation of the special exhibition Jasper Johns / In Press: The Crosshatch Works and the Logic of Print. Admission fees will be reduced (see rates in Admission section). The current exhibition Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939 will remain open. The entire fourth floor will reopen on Tuesday, May 22, along with the Jasper Johns exhibition.

Re-View is on long-term display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at 485 Broadway while the Art Museums’ building at 32 Quincy Street—the former home of the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums—is closed for renovation and expansion. The project will unite the three museums in a single, state-of-the-art facility designed by architect Renzo Piano, with completion anticipated in late 2014.

Re-View has been made possible by a generous grant from the NBT Charitable Trust, as well as the Art Museums’ Alexander S., Robert L., and Bruce A. Beal Exhibition Fund; Anthony and Celeste Meier Exhibitions Fund; Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Exhibition Fund; and the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer Jr. Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums.

Exhibition programming: Below is a list of the public events connected to the exhibition.

—June 9, 2012, 11am, Gallery Talk: Images of Christian Devotion, with assistant curator Elizabeth Rudy. More

—June 30, 2012, 2pm, Gallery Talk: Cultivating Virtue: Botanical Motifs in East Asian Art, with curator Robert D. Mowry. More

—July 14, 2012, 11am, Gallery Talk: The Portrait, with assistant curator Elizabeth Rudy. More

—August 25, 2012, 11am, Gallery Talk: Cosmopolitan Crosscurrents in a Safavid Painting, with assistant curator Mika Natif. More

Thematic Installations and Teaching Galleries

Thematic installations of objects within the exhibition Re-View are updated periodically, and a gallery on the fourth floor features installations tied to university courses (see separate listings for Thematic Installations and Teaching Galleries).