Category: Exhibitions

To commemorate this milestone, the Albany Institute has developed this exhibition centered around a partnership with The Leiden Collection, one of the preeminent private collections of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings in the United States.

In addition to twenty paintings from The Leiden Collection, Delights of the Senses will include several prints from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, along with objects from First Church, Albany, Friends of Historic Kingston, Historic Huguenot Street, Historic Hudson Valley, the New York State Museum, and from the rich holdings of the Albany Institute.

The exhibition will present paintings and objects that examine seventeenth-century Dutch culture through the five senses. On view will be paintings of everyday life by Dutch artists such as Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), Jan Steen (1626–1679), and Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667) alongside objects similar to those in the paintings. Displayed together, these paintings and objects will invite viewers to imagine daily moments in an earlier time—whether it be an encounter with lively music, soft fur, a fragrant bouquet, or a hoppy glass of beer—as they were perceived not just through the eyes, but all the senses.

Join us this summer as we celebrate the 300th birthday of artist, George Stubbs, by returning his paintings to Wentworth Woodhouse and displaying them here publicly in South Yorkshire for the first time!

George Stubbs has long been revered as a ground-breaking and curious artist, possessing an exceptional ability to present animals with a human-like quality. In 1762, Stubbs spent some time at Wentworth Woodhouse, working on paintings commissioned by the Second Marquess of Rockingham.

In our largest exhibition to-date, Beneath the Surface features Stubbs’ work alongside pieces by contemporary artists, including Ugo Rondinone, Mark Wallinger and Tracey Emin, who have drawn on similar themes. These artists also look beneath the surface, exploring animal and human experiences through their innovative and thought-provoking work.

The Oskar Reinhart Collection in Winterthur, Switzerland, is one of the most remarkable art museums of its kind, with a collection that ranges from superlative old master paintings and drawings to an exceptional group of Impressionist art.  

The works were assembled in the first half of the 20th century by Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965). Reinhart later opened the collection to the public in his beautiful villa on the outskirts of Zurich, called ‘Am Römerholz’, which, in 1958, became a museum of the Swiss confederation.   

For the first time in its history, a rich array of highlights from the Reinhart collection will be displayed outside Switzerland, making this exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery a unique opportunity to see some of its masterpieces.  

The exhibition will feature major paintings by artists of the generation preceding the Impressionists, such as Goya, Géricault and Courbet, but will focus especially on Reinhart’s extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.

A complex fashion icon, Marie Antoinette's timeless appeal is defined by her style, youth and notoriety. Explore the lasting influence of the most fashionable (and ill-fated) queen in history – with over 250 years of design, fashion, film and art.

It will feature oil paintings, a plaster cast sculpture, sketches, drawings and newly-painted artworks that recreate three of her original paintings which were lost in a 1991 fire. ...

Jean McMeakin, chair of the De Morgan Trustee Board, said she was delighted to bring the exhibition to Wolverhampton.

“The exhibition not only illuminates her talent, her inspirations and her influences but in so doing, her inner thoughts, social and ethical values are also revealed,” she said.

Scent is a key motif in paintings by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements. Fragrance is visually suggested in images of daydreaming figures smelling flowers or burning incense, enhancing the sensory aura of ‘art for art’s sake’. Scent was also implied in Victorian painting to evoke hedonism – pleasure in exquisite sensations – and a preoccupation with beauty; or to reflect the Victorian vogue for synaesthesia (evoking one sense through another) and the penchant for art, like scent, to evoke moods and emotions.

Motifs of scent and smell intersected with the most vociferous discourses of the day, including sanitation, urban morality, immigration, race, mental health, faith, and the rise in women’s independence. Many 19th- and early 20th-century notions about smell – that it is the manifestation of disease, that rainbows radiate the fragrance of dewy meadows, or that highly-perfumed flowers are asphyxiating – seem outlandish today.

Yet this exhibition demonstrates how an understanding of these and other largely forgotten ideas about smell bring to the fore significant aspects of these extraordinary artworks.

Long remembered only for her relationship with the Prince of Wales (later George IV) – who fell in love with her on stage as Perdita in The Winter’s Tale – in recent decades Mary Robinson has been reclaimed as one of the most important and overlooked writers of the late 18th century. This exhibition will trace the extraordinary journey of her life and artistic development from the most famous woman in England to social outcast, exploring her hard-won second career as one of the most popular and influential writers of her day.

Rare and early editions of her writing – from the debut novel that sold out by lunchtime on the day it was published to her impassioned argument for women’s rights – are brought together with scant surviving manuscript material from collections and archives across the UK. These will be interpreted alongside the portraits, engravings and caricatures through which her image was circulated and her reputation both shaped and ruined. Her compelling biography enables reflections on the complexity of female celebrity and sexuality, at the time and in society today.

Typically Dutch – that’s how many people see Rembrandt and his work. Unlike many artists of his era, Rembrandt never travelled abroad. But make no mistake. A lot of the world is reflected in his etchings, from lions, exotic shells and turbans, to mountainous landscapes and Italian buildings.

The Rembrandt & the world exhibition will take you on a journey past more than forty of Rembrandt’s etchings from the Rembrandt House Museum collection, etchings that always reveal something that is not typically Dutch. Discover where Rembrandt got his knowledge and inspiration, and how worldly-wise (or unworldly?) he really was. 

MOU is staging a first: an international exhibition dedicated to an exceptional woman, Margaret of Parma, daughter of Charles V and Johanna Van der Gheynst, in her hometown of Oudenaarde.

Portraits and splendid objects that Margaret cherished or commissioned will be brought together for the first time in 500 years. A magnificent banquet evoking “the feast of the century” will be organized for the occasion. All further enlivened by contemporary interventions by photographer Lieve Blancquaert and lutenist Floris De Rycker.

Margaret of Parma (1522–1586) was no minor figure: she was governor of the Netherlands during a turbulent time at the beginning of the Eighty Years’ War. She was also a society figure in Italy. Moreover, she was a true art lover and patron. It is high time this fascinating figure was given her proper place in history.

Sarah Purser (1848 – 1943) was a hugely influential figure in Irish artistic circles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both as an artist and as an organiser. She played an important role in the founding of Hugh Lane Gallery and helped secure Charlemont House as the gallery’s permanent home. It also marks the centenary of the founding of the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, which Purser established in 1924.

Sarah Purser was born in 1848 in Dún Laoghaire and studied in Switzerland, Dublin and Paris, where she studied at the Académie Julian. On her return to Dublin, she established herself as one of the leading portraitists in the city. Hugh Lane Gallery has a fine collection of her work, with sensitive portraits of Jane Barlow, Edward Martyn, Maud Gonne and W. B. Yeats along with the figure studies, Portrait Study, Mother and Child and Painting of a Woman. [...]

Imagine Me and You traces these multiple encounters through the world of Netherlandish artworks and their varied representations of the Islamic realm. Looking also at the ways in which contemporary Ottoman fashion played a role in biblical and historical scenes by Netherlandish artists, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the profound impact these interactions have had on crafting our shared history. This dynamic interplay between cultures unearths revelations about individual heritage and the broader global community. While acknowledging the complexity of establishing the origin of certain hybrid objects, the exhibition ultimately suggests that it is more important to amplify and celebrate these objects’ multicultural and multifaceted characteristics.

The approximately 120 objects in the exhibition include drawings, prints, paintings, textiles, and more; the works come from the collections of the Harvard Art Museums as well as from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, The Tobey Collection, other Harvard institutions, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In addition to sumptuous textiles and striking wool carpets from Türkiye (Turkey) and intricate album paintings from the Ottoman and Mughal periods, there is a range of drawings and prints from Dutch, Netherlandish, and other artists, including Margaretha Adriaensdr. de Heer, Haydar Reis, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Melchior Lorck, Nicolas de Nicolay, Lucas van Leyden, Jacob Marrel, Rembrandt, and many more. A display of historical pigment samples sheds light on some of the materials these artists used.

Watteau’s Pierrot, formerly known as Gilles, is one of the most famous masterpieces in the Louvre’s collection. This enigmatic work, which has long raised questions for art historians, is currently undergoing conservation treatment at the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, after which time it will be the focus of a spotlight exhibition.

Nothing is known about the painting before it was discovered by the artist and collector Dominique Vivant Denon (1747–1825), Director of the Louvre under Napoleon. It soon came to be regarded as a Watteau masterpiece and garnered praise from renowned writers and art historians. It has often been seen as reflecting a certain image of the 18th century – mischievous, cynical or melancholy, depending on the author and the era. Its fame boosted the return to favour of 18th-century art in the age of Manet and Nadar.

The exhibition will present the findings of the conservation project. It will approach this wholly original work – whose attribution to Watteau has sometimes been questioned – both as part of the artist’s oeuvre and in the cultural and artistic context of the time. Alongside many other paintings and drawings by Watteau, there will be works by his contemporaries – painters, draughtsmen, engravers (Claude Gillot, Antoine Joseph Pater, Nicolas Lancret, Jean Baptiste Oudry, Jean Honoré Fragonard, etc.) and writers (Pierre de Marivaux, Alain-René Lesage, Jean-François Regnard, Evaristo Gherardi), with special emphasis on the rich theatrical repertoire of the time.