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Cities and Culture
 
October, 2007


‘City Mist’ by Craig Mooney                     Printed courtesy of Jules Place, Boston                                                      

Cultural Briefs
2007 Art Fairs In Europe & the United States
Cultural Calendar

 

Cultural Briefs

Madrid’s 24th Fall Festival Offers Concerts, Theatre and Dance Performances
From October 15 to November 18, Madrid is offering up an exciting roster of concerts, dance and theatre performances during its 24th Autumn Festival, or Festival de Otoño. Artists from 13 countries performing in more than 140 shows in and around the Spanish capital at some 22 venues will showcase plays by Molière and Beckett, modern dance, contemporary flamenco, opera and jazz concerts – including 14 premieres for Madrid and another 19 for Spain.
Kicking off October 15 at the Teatro Albéniz, will be Oscar-winning composer Nicola Piovani and his Compagnia dell’Ambra in Concerto Fotogramma.  Acclaimed musician Philip Glass has put Leonard Cohen’s poetry to music in the Book of Longing (October 27 and 28). Other highlights include the sounds of samba, rock, blues, even folk, as Brazilian composer Caetono Veloso (October 19), Nosfell, an experimental ethnic rock duo from France (October 20; the eclectic Danish group Efterklang (October21), and British musician David Sylvian (October 24). Ensemble Modern, one of Europe’s top orchestras of modern music with the prestigious composer Heiner Goebbels directing will stage Schwarz auf Weiß (Black on Black) November 2-4.
Other performance groups include The National Theater of Great Britain ; the Teatro de la Zarzuela; and the Comédie Francais. The Quantum Theatre’s production of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by prize-winning author Michael Ondaatje with Dan Jemmett directing will take place at the Circulo de Bellas Artes November 8 to 11. Performances will be in English or French with Spanish subtitles.
Modern dance companies from Britain, Belgium, France, Japan and Spain will present contemporary pieces like “Import Export” by Les Ballets C de la B directed by Koen Augustijen at Casa Encendida (1October 16-18); three works by Japan’s Hiroaki Umeda at the Sala Cuarta Pared (October 18-20) and “Corazón Loca” by the Bianca Li Company (November7-11) at the Teatro Albéniz. Throughout the month, the Stardust Circus Company will perform “Pirates! Pirates!” featuring elite acrobats from China, India, Malaysia, Mongolia and Russia, at the Teatro Circo Price (October 17-November 18).
In addition to the 15 venues in the Spanish capital, shows will take place in six municipalities in the Madrid region: Alcalá de Henares, Getafe, La Cabrera, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Torrelodones and Tres Cantos.
Prices and times of Madrid’s Fall Festival (October 15 - November 18) vary by venue and performance. Information and the full schedule in English can be viewed at http://www.madrid.org/fo2007/en/elfestival.html.  

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Performs  At Carnegie Hall In October
Carnegie Hall presents soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in recital with pianist Warren Jones on Thursday, October 11 at 8:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. The program includes works by Mozart, Strauss, Duparc, Poulenc, Heggie, Britten, Copland, Wolf-Ferrari, and Puccini. Dame Kiri is joined by special guest mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade for a series of duets that will be announced the evening of the performance from the stage. This performance is the sole recital appearance that both singers will make in New York City during the 2007–2008 season. This season also marks Dame Kiri’s US Farewell Tour. More information/tickets at www.carnegiehall.org.
              
New Imax Film On Hurricane Katrina’s Effect On Louisiana Opens In October
Opening on October 12, 2007 at the Ontario Science Centre’s Shoppers Drug Mart® OMNIMAX®, a new IMAX® film Hurricane on the Bayou will carry audiences on a journey deep into the heart of Louisiana—before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. The film is both a musical celebration of New Orleans as well as a haunting document of Katrina’s powerful effects.
For centuries the Louisiana swamps have held ecological secrets of hurricanes: what drives a hurricane, when will they happen and how to protect from them. But the bayou is disappearing, at a rate of one acre every 30 minutes. Filmmaker Greg MacGillivray originally set out to tell the story and sound the alarm on this environmental calamity. He wanted to demonstrate what would happen if a hypothetical Category 5 hurricane were to hit New Orleans. Little did he and his crew know that one of the worst hurricanes in history was on the approach and their imaginary nightmare would soon become a reality.
The film follows a group of musicians who explore the beautiful alligator filled bayous, a fragile home to unique animals and plants and uncover the electrifying culture of New Orleans. By recounting their personal stories of Katrina the musicians bring the focus to the rapidly disappearing wetlands. Reunited a year later they see a city in the throes of recovery and hope for the future with concerted efforts of preservation and restoration of the wetlands. “Hurricane on the Bayou is not just the moving story of how four remarkable musicians survived Katrina and are facing the future, nor it is just the story of how the destruction of the wetlands is wreaking devastation for both humans and animals,” says Greg MacGillivray. “I think it is really about the tremendous value of New Orleans and Louisiana to our nation. To lose New Orleans would be an unthinkable tragedy.”
State of the art CGI effects recreates the fury of the storm made all the more dramatic by the size of the IMAX theatre screen. Eerie never-before-seen aerial footage of the storm’s aftermath provides a new perspective on the city that is different from what most people saw on television.
The Ontario Science Centre uses science as the lens to inspire and actively engage people in new ways of seeing, understanding and thinking about themselves and the world. The Centre is also a leading developer of interactive exhibitions for science centres around the world. Toronto’s Ontario Science Centre (http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca)
 is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Museum of Contemporary Art of Castile And León Presents Major Art Exhibit
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Castile and León (Museo de Arts Contemporáneo de Castilla y León) (MUSAC) which opened in the city of León in 2005, is presenting from now through January 6, 2008, 200 works drawn from its own collection by Spanish and international artists in Existencias, its third major exhibition.  Taking over the museum’s entire 43,000 square feet, the works will be hung in an arrangement resembling storage racks. Sculptures will be spaced as closely together as possible in order to stress the concepts of accumulation, diversity and blending of artistic disciplines – designed to reappraise the conventional methods of observing art. 
Artists whose works have been shown in the museum over the past two years as well as others that are new to the public will be on display. Monserrat Soto, Alicia Martín, Candida Höfer, Perejaume, Julian Rosefeldt, Marina Abramovic, William Kentridge, Christian Jankowski, Daniel Canogar, Wolfgang Tillmans, MP & MP Rosado, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno all have works in the exhibition.
The $45 million museum won the 2007 Mies van der Rohe Award’s European Union Prize.  Designed by award-winning architects Luis Mansilla + Emilio Tuñón, the structure includes a system of irregularly-shaped rooms, or rhomboids. Fifty-nine-foot skylights and almost 14,000 square feet of patios add to the feeling of light and space.  Its concave façade of huge colored panels of glass evokes the stained glass windows of the city’s 13th century Gothic cathedral. MUSAC has five galleries plus the Showcase Project and Laboratorio 987. Playing with the concept of a display window and relating to graphic design and fashion, the two grand glass cases of the Showcase Project welcome the public to the museum. Functioning independently from the general program of the Museum, Laboratorio 987 is a room for site-specific artistic projects.
Upcoming exhibitions from January 26 to May 4, 2008 include British installation artist Cerith Wyn Evans, American Dave Muller and Spanish choreographer and dancer Blanca Li. Website: www.musac.org.es  

Sir John Tomlinson Replaces Bryn Terfel In The Royal Opera’s Ring Cycle
Bryn Terfel has withdrawn from the forthcoming Ring Cycle being presented at the Royal Opera in London. Terfel was scheduled to sing the role of Wotan/The Wanderer. Sir John Tomlinson, who was sharing the performances with Bryn Terfel has agreed to take over all performances of Wotan/The Wanderer.
Tomlinson is regarded as one of the finest Wagnerian singers of our time. In 2007 he received the Society of London Theatres Special Olivier Award for Outstanding Contribution to Opera and The Arts.
Bryn Terfel gave personal family reasons for his decision. In a statement issued by his agent, he said: “I am deeply sorry that I feel it necessary to cancel my performances at Covent Garden this autumn. I have had a particularly stressful family situation involving one of my children this summer which has affected the time I had put aside to prepare for this challenging role. Having begun rehearsals it is clear to me that I would not be able to
perform at the standard I would wish to, and rather than progressing through rehearsal in the hope that I might make it, I feel it is better for The Royal Opera and the fantastic team working on this epic production that I withdraw at this stage.”
Sir John Tomlinson was originally scheduled to sing the role of Hagen in Gotterdämmerung.

New Show On Works Of Leonardo da Vinci At Brussels Koekelberg Basilica
The National Basilica of Koekelberg in Brussels, the world’s fifth largest church is currently presenting a blockbuster of a show on the genius of Leonardo da Vinci’s works—Leonardo da Vinci, The European Genius. On view until March 15, 2008, the exhibition provides a chance to view the full range of Leonardo's work: drawings, paintings, maps and designs of his inventions. Structured around five themes—Leonardo’s life, his paintings, his writings, his machines and Europe’s performances as the proud successor of the great master—it includes the original copy of the “Codex on the Flight of Birds”, the “Virgin on the Rocks,” his only self-portrait and 45 replicas of his inventions, ranging from bridges to the helicopter rotor. The show was coproduced by Europa 50 and the European Commission. The show is open daily and admission is €10. For more information visit http://www.expo-davinci.eu/en.htm.

Rock Festival Slated for Reykjavik In October
The Ninth annual Iceland Airwaves Festival will be held at different venues in Reykjavik October 17 to 21. Performers scheduled to appear at the Canadian rapper Buck 65 and British band Bloc Party. More information about the event is at www.icelandairwaves.com.

Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival At AMNH Celebrates 31st Season
The Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival—the longest-running documentary film festival in the United States, celebrating 31 years—will screen an outstanding and eclectic selection of 29 titles culled from over 1,000 submissions at the American Museum of Natural History, Friday to Sunday, November 9 through 11, 2007. The Festival was founded by the Museum in 1977. 
In conjunction with Water: H2O = Life, a major Museum exhibition opening November 3, the Festival features some compelling new films about social and environmental issues related to the precious resource of water. Other topics include user-generated Web content, disability and community, struggles with sexual identity in Iran, reincarnated Tibetan lamas, and the digital revolution in China. Films are set in Australia, Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, and the United States. 
The opening night film on Friday, November 9, presented in the Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Theater, is the New York premiere of Sleepwalking through the Mekong by John Pirozzi, about the California indie-rock band Dengue Fever’s tour through Cambodia with a repertoire of 1960s and 1970s Khmer pop music. A discussion with the director follows the screening. 
The closing night film on Sunday, November 11, Nömadak Tx, by Raul de la Fuente, follows two Basque musicians as they visit nomadic cultures around the world. A discussion with the director and a live musical performance by the Basque musicians featured in the film follow the screening. 
Many of this year’s festival highlights treat the growing worldwide importance of water, including:
-- Village of Dust, City of Water, directed by Sanjay Barnela, is a chilling yet poetic film about social exploitation over access to water in India, where rural water supplies are redistributed to serve booming cities and other communities are displaced to create dams. (US premiere)
--Thirst, directed by Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow. Is water part of a shared “commons,” a human right for all people? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold, and traded in a global marketplace? Thirst tells the stories of communities in Bolivia, India, and the United States that are asking these fundamental questions as water becomes one of the most valuable global resources of the 21st century. (New York premiere of the directors’ cut)
-- Gimme Green, directed by Isaac Brown and Eric Flagg, explores the American obsession with lawns and their impact on our environment, our wallets, and our outlook on life. From subdivisions in Florida to sod farms in the arid Southwest, Gimme Green peers behind the curtain of the $40-billion industry that fuels our nation’s largest irrigated crop—the lawn.
-- El Agua en Tiempos Extras (Water in Extra Times), directed by Dominique Jonard, is an experimental animation that considers global warming and its impact on water—from floods to droughts—and some of the solutions to help preserve this finite resource. Website: www.amnh.org

45th Annual New York Film Festival Opens At Lincoln Center.
The 45th New York Film Festival is premiere 28 films during the course of its run from September 28 to October 14 at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and sponsored by Sardinia Region Tourism and The New York Times, also features the 11th Annual Views from the Avant-Garde as well as two other showcases, three music documentaries and six retrospective films. This year's HBO Films Directors Dialogues will be with Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, Sidney Lumet and Julian Schnabel whose close encounters focus on their entire body of work & delving into the filmmaking process.
This year’s festival honors director and screenwriter Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, a renowned member of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. He solidified his place as a master filmmaker with his 1969 classic, Macunaima, for which he won Best Film at the Mar del Plata Film Festival.
Website for film showings: http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/program/films/program.html

New Associate Director Of Art Appointed At MoMA
New York’s Museum of Modern Art has brought on Kathy Halreich, the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis as an Associate Director. A new position, Halbreigh will work with MoMa’s curators on innovative programs crossing a range of disciplines. She begins her job in February, 2008. Prior to her directorship of the Walker Art Center, Halbreigh was an associate contemporary art curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

New German American Heritage Makes Its Debut
With the launch of its German American heritage website, www.germanoriginality.com , the German National Tourist Office and the German Information Center and their partners are riding the wave of heritage travel which is now at an all-time high. They are reaching out to German Americans, who at almost 15 percent of the U.S. population, make up the largest ethnic group in the United States.
The opening of two sophisticated heritage museums in Bremerhaven and Hamburg are highlights of any heritage trip to Germany. In Bavaria, the homes and museums dedicated to Levi Strauss (of Levis fame) and to Daniel Pastorius (the founder of Germantown) are must-sees. The nearby UNESCO heritage town of Bamberg and the towns of Fuerth and Regensburg are the birthplaces or erstwhile homes of Henry Kissinger, Sandra Bullock and Oskar Schindler. Further west, history comes alive in the town of Ulm, Einstein’s birthplace in Baden-Wuerttemberg. In and around the beautiful vineyards of the Palatinate, visitors can travel to a number of towns from where many Germans emigrated to America. Berlin offers a plethora of information and personalities on German American heritage especially in the 20th century.
On the new website, there are links to ancestry websites; the history of famous German Americans and inventions of German origin; German products; an emigration time line; an interactive map of important German American heritage places; as well as community features, including cooking ideas and recipes, German American festivals and events in the US and travel tips and places to share your travel and heritage stories and photos. 

Berlin In Lights To Be Presented At New York’s Carnegie Hall In November
An important festival to mark on the fall calendar is Carnegie Hall's Berlin in Lights, scheduled from November 2 to 18, 2007.
Berlin in Lights offers a snapshot of Germany’s vibrant capital city through classical, cabaret, world, and techno music concerts as well as film screenings, architecture and photography exhibits, and panel discussions. The festival centers around an eight-day residency by Berlin’s greatest cultural ambassador, the Berliner Philharmoniker and its music director Sir Simon Rattle, with residency activities to include orchestra and chamber music concerts, and special arts education projects in New York City public schools. Additional artists performing as part of Berlin In Lights include Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela; Max Raabe & Palast Orchester performing dance and film music; Nomad SoundSystem with a unique blend of world and electronic music; and the Nevzat Akpinar Ensemble, comprised of members of Berlin’s large Turkish and Kurdish community.
Central to Berlin in Lights’ programming is an increased number of Carnegie Hall collaborations with several of Berlin and New York City’s finest cultural organizations, including the American Academy in Berlin, Center for Architecture, German Consulate General, Goethe-Institut, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Neue Galerie, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Thirteen/WNET New York, WNYC, and World Music Institute.

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver Opens New Facility This Fall
The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA | Denver), the city's first institution devoted entirely to contemporary art, will inaugurate its new environmentally sustainable facility designed by David Adjaye, with an inaugural exhibition entitled Star Power: Museum as Body Electric and two permanent commissions. The exhibition, which opens October 28, will feature seven emerging and established artists from seven countries including: Carlos Amorales (Mexico), David Altmejd (Canada), Candice Breitz (South Africa), Rangi Kipa (New Zealand), Wangechi Mutu (Kenya), Chris Ofili (UK/Trinidad & Tobago) and Collier Schorr (United States).
The two permanent commissions, both by Colorado-based artists, include a collaborative design for The Gates Rooftop Garden by artist Kim Dickey and landscape architect Karla Dakin and an exterior site-specific work by artist Clark Richert.
Star Power, while exploring the body and its relationship to architecture, marks a new direction for MCA | Denver by featuring commissioned work by individual artists in an artist-centered program. The subtitle, Museum as Body Electric, is a direct homage to Walt Whitman's poem I Sing the Body Electric.
 In addition to the five galleries and rooftop garden pavilion, the building will also feature three education spaces, a bookshop, other public spaces, as well as office space for the museum staff. MCA's education programs for adults and children will increase substantially in the new building.
Founded in 1996, the Museum of Contemporary Art | Denver was created to provide Denver with its first and only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art.

San Francisco Ballet Celebrates Its 75th Anniversary In 2008
San Francisco Ballet, America's oldest professional ballet company, announced plans for its 75th anniversary in 2008. Highlights include a festival of ten world premieres by some of the world's top choreographers, appearances by three international ballet companies, a world premiere by San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and the Company premiere of Jerome Robbins' West Side Story Suite. Other major initiatives include a national telecast, a commemorative book/DVD and a four-city American Tour. The San Francisco Ballet School also celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2008.
The Ballet's 75th Anniversary Season, from January 29 to May 6, 2008, consists of six programs as well as a New Works Festival of 10 world premieres. The anniversary season also includes the revival of Filling Station, one of the oldest American folk ballets, by former San Francisco Ballet Director Lew Christensen; an all-Jerome Robbins Program, (commemorating the tenth anniversary of the choreographer's death) and the Company premiere of West Side Story Suite; appearances by three international companies, including Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, The National Ballet of Canada, and New York City Ballet; and the return of Tomasson's full-length production of the classic Giselle. Prior to the repertory season, Tomasson's Nutcracker runs from December 13 through 30, 2007.
The New Works Festival includes ten world premieres by ten renowned choreographers from April 22 through May 6, 2008. Participating choreographers are Julia Adam, Val Caniparoli, Jorma Elo, Margaret Jenkins (commissioned music by Paul Dresher), James Kudelka (commissioned music by Rodney Sharman), Mark Morris (commissioned music by John Adams and costumes by Isaac Mizrahi), Yuri Possokhov, Paul Taylor, Stanton Welch, and Christopher Wheeldon.
In fall 2008, San Francisco Ballet embarks on a four-city national tour at: Harris Theater in Chicago (September 16-21, 2008), New York City Center (October 8-19, 2008), Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California (November 11-16, 2008), and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. (November 25-30, 2008).
For more information, visit http://www.sfballet.org/at75  or call 415-865-2000.

 

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Art Fairs 2007 In Europe & United States


Friese Art Fair in London’s Regent Park

Some important Art Fairs are scheduled for the rest of 2007 in both Europe and the United States.

An offshoot of ArtBasel that was held in June is the ArtBasel Miami Beach fair that takes place this year from December 6 to 9. Art Basel Miami Beach is a new type of cultural event, combining an international art show with an exciting program of special exhibitions, parties and crossover events including music, film, architecture and design. Exhibition sites are located in the city's Art Deco District.  An exclusive selection of 200 leading art galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia will exhibit 20th and 21st century art works by over 1500 artists. Special exhibitions will feature young galleries and video art. The show will be a vital source for discovering new developments in contemporary art and rare museum-caliber art works. Art collectors, artists, dealers, curators, critics and art enthusiasts from around the world will participate in the event. Top-quality exhibitions in the museums of South Florida and special programs for art collectors and curators, will make this art show a special place for encountering art and the art world – the favorite winter meeting place for the international art world. Website: http://www.artbaselmiamibeach.com

The 52nd Venice Biennale opened June 12 and runs through November 21. This premier art show held at the Arsenale and in the Italian Pavilion at the Giardini Gardens in Venice presents about a hundred artists from 77 countries, the most ever. Website: www.LaBiennale.com

Turkey presents the 10th Istanbul Biennial from September 8 to November 4 organized by the ?stanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, and under the curatorship of Hou Hanru, currently Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at San Francisco Art Institute.
The Biennal will emphasize artistic production based on collective intelligence and the living process of negotiating with physical sites. The biennial will focus on urban issues and architectural reality as a means of exposing different cultural contexts and artistic visions regarding the complex and diverse forms of modernity. The conceptual framework of the 10th International Istanbul Biennial has been announced as Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary - Optimism in the Age of Global War. The venues of the Istanbul Biennial will be the former customs warehouse Antrepo no. 3 owned by the Istanbul Maritime Lines in F?nd?kl?, IMÇ - Istanbul Manifaturac?lar Çar??s? (Istanbul Textile Traders' Market) in Unkapan?, AKM - Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (Atatürk Cultural Centre) and santralistanbul the first power station built in Istanbul during the Ottoman period, now being converted into a Museum of Contemporary Arts under the leadership of Istanbul Bilgi University. Website: www.iksv.org/bienal

London’s Frieze Art Fair takes place October 11 to 14 this year in Regent’s Park. It features over 150 of the most exciting contemporary art galleries in the world as well as specially commissioned artists' projects and a prestigious talks program. Now in its fifth year, the Frieze Art Fair attracts scores of collectors eager to snap up the latest talents represented by galleries such as Hauser & Wirth, Lisson, White Cube and Gagosian. Website: www.FriezeArtFair.com.

 Another venerable art fair in London this fall is the Winter Fine Art & Antiques Fair at the Olympia Exhibition halls in Hammersmith, which runs from November 11 to 18. This show has long been considered one of the key art and antique events in the run-up to Christmas, set in the grand surroundings of the splendid domed Victorian exhibition halls.  Now in its 15th year, the fair is renowned for its exceptionally fine furniture, art and traditional antiques, loan exhibition and expert buying advice, offering endless inspiration for collectors, interior designers and Christmas shoppers. Website: http://www.olympia-antiques.com 

Fifty-four of the world’s leading dealers in 20th and 21st century art and design come together once again this autumn for the annual Haughton International Art + Design Fair in New York.  The fair takes place, at the venerable Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York, from October 5 through October 10, 2007.
The International Art + Design Fair celebrates the strength of the market for modernist works of art, with participating exhibitors from the US, Europe, Scandinavia and Australia displaying of art works from the  1900 to the present. Works include furniture, paintings, sculpture, photography, jewelry, textiles, glass, pottery and porcelain, metalwork, silver, books, watches, ethnographica and Asian art. Website: http://www.haughton.com/design/index.htm

Also in October, More than 50 of the nation’s leading art galleries from across the US will display more than 5,000 works by established and emerging artists at USArtists: American Fine Art Show.  The three-day show and sale presented by the Philadelphia Academy of Art offers an extraordinary collection of American art for sale, spanning the 18th to 21st centuries.  The 16th annual event runs Friday, October 19, through Sunday, October 21, 2007, at the 33rd Street Armory in Philadelphia. Website: http://www.usartists.org.

The twelfth Art Forum Berlin, international trade fair for contemporary art, will take place at the Berlin Exhibition Grounds from September 29 to October 3. Over 120 galleries from more than 25 countries showcase the works of established artists and newcomers in Berlin, ranging from paintings, sculptures and installations, to video and photography, works on paper, editions and multimedia. Website: http://www1.messe-berlin.de/vip8_1/website/MesseBerlin/htdocs/art-forum-berlin/index_e.html

First Asian Contemporary Art Fair Opens In New York November 8
The first Asian Contemporary Art Fair (ACAF) opens on Manhattan’s west side at Pier 92 on the Hudson. The four day event—November 8 to 12—will present new works by a front line of contemporary masters and a fascinating selection of work in varied media by emerging artists who are setting tomorrow's trends. ACAF brings to New York a vibrant, international art market, attractive to experienced collectors but accessible to those new to contemporary Asian art. ACAF will arrange special opportunities for dialogue and learning, and will become a point of convergence where some of the most respected dealers of contemporary Asian art will engage collectors and the general public. Website: http://www.acafny.com  

 

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Cultural Calendar

 


Acimboldo’s  Vertumnus                Frieda Kahlo’s Me and my Parrots    Berthe Morisot’s In Garden of Maurecourt

 

Cities featured this month are Amsterdam, Atlanta, Baltimore, Berlin, Bilbao, Boston, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dresden, Florence, Fort Worth/Dallas, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Miami, Milan, Montreal, Moscow, Munich, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore, Stuttgart, Sydney NSW, Tokyo, Toronto, Venice, Vienna, Washington, D.C. Williamstown, and Zurich.

 

Amsterdam

Rijksmuseum of Art & History
Website:  http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/index.jsp?lang=en
John Constable:  The Leaping Horse'
September 20 to December 17, 2007
This autumn, the masterpiece 'The Leaping Horse' by renowned English landscape painter John Constable will be on view in the Rijksmuseum. This impressive painting from 1825 is one of the masterpieces of the collection of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In the Rijksmuseum, Constable's painting will be juxtaposed with masterpieces from the 17th-century landscape painters Ruisdael, Hobbema and Koninck. The work of these Dutch painters formed a great source of inspiration for The Leaping Horse. Constable's 'Leaping Horse' will be the first work in an annual series of foreign masterpieces presented by the Rijksmuseum which focuses on the influence that Dutch 17th-century masterpieces have had on the art of painting.
The Riksmuseum is located at Jan Luijkenstraat 1 (Philips Wing). Tel: +31 (0)20 6747000. Accessible via public transportation.  Open daily from 9 am to 6 pm; until :00 to 18:00, on Fridays to 10 pm. Admission.
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Schiphol has a permanent exhibition of ten works by Dutch masters of the Golden Age from the Rijksmuseum collection and also holds temporary exhibitions throughout the year.
The museum branch is located beyond passport checkpoint between piers E and F. Open daily from 7 am to 8 pm. The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Schiphol is located on Holland Boulevard, in the area beyond passport checkpoint between the E and F Piers. The museum is open daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is free.

 

Atlanta

High Museum of Art
Website: www.high.org  
Inspiring Impressionism
October 16 to January 13, 2008
Inspiring Impressionism, featuring over 80 works, including paintings and works on paper drawn from more than 40 museums, is the first comprehensive survey to explore the influence of Old Master painters on Impressionist artists. This exhibition juxtaposes works by such artists as Monet, Cézanne and Degas with those by Titian, Rubens and Fragonard.
Louvre Atlanta: The Louvre and the Ancient World
October 16 to September 7, 2008
This exhibition features masterpieces from the founding cultures of Western civilization and will include more than 70 works from the Louvre’s unparalleled Egyptian, Near Eastern and Greco-Roman antiquities collections.
Louvre Atlanta: The Eye of Josephine
October 16 to May 18, 2008
The Eye of Josephine reassembles more than 60 masterworks from the collection of Greco-Roman and Egyptian antiquities that were installed by the Empress Josephine Bonaparte at Malmaison, her residence located on the outskirts of Paris.
Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art
December 22 to April 20, 2008
Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art will present approximately 70 works, exploring the spiritual significance of art in Yoruba culture—the most well-known African art tradition.
The High Museum is located is located at 1280 Peachtree Street between 15th and 16th Streets in Midtown Atlanta. Open Tuesday through Sundays.

 

Baltimore

The Walters Art Museum
Website:  http://www.thewalters.org
Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces
October 7 to January 01, 2008
The exhibition will feature works by many of the greatest artists of the 18th-20th centuries as it explores the changing significance of repetition and copying within the French painting tradition.
Daily Magic in Ancient Egypt
December 2 to November 18, 2007
This small exhibition of 46 objects illustrates the important role played by magic in ancient Egypt.
The Walters Art Museum is located 600 N. Charles Street; tel: 410-547-9000. Open Wednesdays to Sundays 11 am to 5 pm; Fridays 11 am to 8 pm. Free admission.

 

Berlin

Brucke Museum
Website: http://www.bruecke-museum.de/current.htm
Highlights From Brucke Expressionist Collection
To January 13, 2008
Brücke celebrates its 40th anniversary with a magnificent exhibition of 247 pieces from its huge German expressionist collection. Highlights include Kirchner's “Marcella (pictured), Erich Heckel's White Horse and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff's Red Gable.
BrückeMuseum, Bussardsteig 9, 14195 Berlin-Zehlendorf. Tel: +49 0(30) 831-2029. Open: daily (except Tues), 11am-5pm.

New National Gallery
Website:  http://www.metinberlin.org/en/home
19th Century French Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
To October 7, 2007
The focus of this remarkable exhibition is a collection of around 130 highlights of 19th century French art from the collections at the Metropolitan Museum, including paintings by Monet, Manet, Degas, Courbet and Delacroix, as well as 16 Rodin sculptures. Around 15 works by artists such as Picasso, Bonnard and Modigliani provide a forward look to the 20th century. Berlin is the only European stop on the exhibition's tour.
New National Gallery is located on Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin-Tiergarten.
Accessible by public transport: U-Bahn U2 (Potsdamer Platz); S-Bahn S1, S2, S25 (Potsdamer Platz); Bus M29 (Potsdamer Brücke); M41 (Varian-Frey-Straße); M48 (Kulturforum); 200, 347 (Philharmonie). Open Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission

Martin-Gropius-Bau
Website:  www.gropiusbau.de
Eugène Atget – Retrospective
September 28 to January 6, 2008
On the 150th anniversary of the birth of the French photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927) a selection of 350 works from Atget’s extensive oeuvre will be on display. The exhibition was mounted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Origins of the Silk Road
October 132 to January 14, 2008
Sensational finds of recent years from Xinjiang, China’s most northwestern province, are to be seen in this exhibition. The oldest object dates from 4000 years ago. The focus is on the people who have inhabited the area along the silk routes around the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan desert since the Bronze Age. The Taklamakan, the world’s second largest sandy desert, has a distinct continental climate characterized by extreme aridity. This aridity, with which those who live along the silk routes have had to struggle for millennia, is the reason for the unique state of preservation of the archaeological finds.
Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin is located at Niederkirchnerstraße 7 | Corner Stresemannstr. 110; tel: +49 (0)30 254 86-0.  Open Wednesdays through Mondays from 10 am to 8 pm.

Deutsche Guggenheim
Website:  http://www.deutsche-guggenheim-berlin.de/e/
Phoebe Washburn: Regulated Fool’s Milk Meadow
October 20 to January 31, 2008
Jeff Wall Exposure
October 10 to January 31, 2008
Deutsche Guggenheim is located on the ground floor of the Deutsche Bank premises, a sandstone building constructed in 192, located at Unter den Linden 13/1; tel: +49 - (0)30 - 20 20 93-0. Open daily 11 am to 8 pm; till 10 pm on Thursdays during exhibitions. Closed between exhibitions. Admission.

Jewish Museum
Website:  www.juedisches-museum-berlin.de 
Charlotte Salomon – Life? or Theatre? 
To November 25, 2007
Jewish Museum Berlin is located at Lindenstraße 9-14, 10969 Berlin. Open: Monday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admittance will be granted until 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, 9 p.m. on Mondays. Admission
Transportation: U1, U6 Hallesches Tor; U6 Kochstraße or Bus M29, M41, 26.5

The Kennedys (Museum)
Website:  http://www.thekennedys.de/english/begruessung/gruss1.html 
The Kennedys: Private collection of belonging to the Kennedys
Ongoing exhibition
The Kennedys museum, honoring the life and political career of President John F. Kennedy, displays a private collection of artifacts that include more than 1,000 photographs, historical documents, books and films. A major focus is JFK's visit to Berlin in June 1963, scene of his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech. For information, e-mail info@thekennedys.de.
Located on Pariser Platz 4A, the museum is close to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, Accessible by S-Bahn subway Unter den Linden. Open daily from 10 am to 6 pm. Admission

 

Bilbao

Guggenheim Bilbao
Website:  http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/ingles/home.htm
Art in America: Three Hundred Years of Innovation
October 11 to February 2008
The exhibition, previously presented at two venues in China and at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, presents approximately 100 works by artists who hold an important place in America's art history, and systematically outlines the developments of the last 300 years, from the colonial period of the 18th century to the present. Divided into six historical periods, the exhibition demonstrates how the art of each era both reflected and contributed to a complex visual narrative of the nation during times of discovery, growth, and experimentation. The exhibition explores issues of identity, creation, innovation, and scale—characteristics integral to the American consciousness and derived in part from the variety and vastness of the cultural, political, ethnic, economic, and natural landscapes of the United States. The six sections, each marking significant phases of the country's development, are: Colonization and Rebellion (1700-1830), Expansion and Fragmentation (1830-80), Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism (1880-1915), Modernism and Regionalism (1915-45), Prosperity and Disillusionment (1945-80), and Multiculturalism and Globalization (1980-present). Featured artists from the early 18th century to the present include, among many others: John Singleton Copley, Charles Wilson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Martin Johnson Heade, John Singer Sargent, Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Frederic Remington, Marsden Hartley, Robert Henri, George Bellows, Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, Lawrence Weiner, Richard Prince, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and John Currin.
Chacun à son goût
October 16 to April 2008
The exhibition is designed to promote the creativity of contemporary Basque artists by inviting them to produce specific works that interact with the exhibition spaces of the Museum. The selection of works will demonstrate that the artists chosen are authors of international vocabularies and respond to and question the tensions of their specific locus. The fundamental points for the critical debate on which the selection of artists is based will therefore include tensions and hybridizations between what is local and what is global, as well as the dialogue between the universalist will of western modernism and the questioning of its values from multiple post-modern subjectivities.
The Guggenheim Bilbao is located at Abandoibarra Et. 2. Accessible by public transportation. Open Tuesdays to Fridays 10 am to 8 pm. Admission. Information: informacion@guggenheim-bilbao.es.

 

Boston

Institute of Contemporary Arts
Website: www.icaboston.org
Bourgeois in Boston
To March 2, 2008
In the sixty years since her first solo exhibition, Louise Bourgeois has become one of our most influential living artists. Her emotionally-charged body of work, a distinctive mix of abstraction and figuration, delves into childhood memories and the struggles of everyday life. Utilizing a variety of materials—wood, bronze, marble, steel, rubber, and fabric—she crafts highly symbolic and personally cathartic objects that reference the body, sexuality, family, trauma, and anxiety. Spanning six decades, the exhibition brings together sculptures, prints, drawings, and a rare, early painting, all lent from area museums and private collections. Among the works in the exhibition are a rare, early painting and more than 25 works on paper, which will be rotated over the course of the exhibition (new groupings will be presented on May 22, August 28, and November 26).
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston is located at 100 Northern Avenue on South Boston’s waterfront. Tel: 617-478-3100. Open Tuesdays to Sundays 10 am to 5 pm; till 9 pm Thursdays and Fridays. Admission.

Isabel Gardner Museum
Website:  http://www.gardnermuseum.org/ 
Stefano Arienti: The Asian Shore
June 29 to October 14, 2007
The Asian Shore is an installation work by Stefano Arienti that brings together new drawings, photocopies, a range of rugs by the artist, and a rarely viewed set of XVII century Japanese sliding doors (fusuma) from the Gardner Collection. These objects and drawings are positioned in a way to involve the viewer in an intimate and sensual encounter with art. The exhibition is a result of an autonomous investigation by the artist into the museum’s Asian collection and archives.
Cliff Evans: Empyrean
November 9 to January 13, 2007
Cliff Evans treats images like found objects, mined from the vast reference library that is today’s Internet. His exhibition Empyrean is a digital polyptych with photomontage animation which recalls the form of 15th-century Northern European altar-pieces merged with contemporary advertising narratives.
The Isabel Gardner Museum is located at 280 The Fenway. Tel: 617 566 1401. Open Tuesdays to Sundays 11 am to 5 pm. Admission.

Museum of Fine Arts
Website: www.mfa.org
Winslow Homer at the MFA
September 20 to December 31, 2007
This select installation in the Lower Rotunda features iconic paintings by Winslow Homer from the permanent collection, including Boys in a Pasture, The Lookout—“All’s Well,” and Driftwood. These are joined by the oil sketch The Dinner Horn and its related print as well as two Civil War works.
Walk This Way
September 27 to March 23, 2008
Whatever the materials or the cost, shoes always reflect the time and place in which they were made and worn and the culture that produced them. "Walk This Way," unlike any footwear exhibition in the past, places shoes—from ancient Egyptian and Nubian sandals to new acquisitions representing the best in contemporary design—throughout the MFA's galleries to illustrate their relationship to other works of art. These provocative juxtapositions provide insights into the history, ornamentation, and cultural importance of footwear.
Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815
October 21 to Sunday, January 27, 2008
Named for the Napoleonic Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Empire style is one of the grandest and most opulent in the history of decorative arts. Designs inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity were enlivened with bold colors, costly and elaborately worked materials, a massive scale, and ornate decoration that included animal and fantastical figures, such as lions and griffons, and symbolic references to Napoleon’s reign. Throughout his political career, Napoleon championed the Empire style, which became the embodiment of the new political order and an integral part of his program to legitimize his reign and promote the arts and economy of France. This exhibition examines how Napoleon appropriated emblems of power from antiquity, especially Egypt and Rome, and linked his reign with those of the great civilizations of the past, with a selection of approximately 190 objects—including furniture, silver, porcelain, bronzes, jewelry, textiles, wallpapers, metalwork, and painting. 
The Fine Arts Museum is located at 465 Huntington Avenue and easily accessible by the Green Line "E" train to the Museum of Fine Arts stop, or the Orange Line train to the Ruggles stop or by the 39 bus to the "Museum of Fine Arts" stop, or the 8, 47, or CT2 buses to the Ruggles stop. Open daily.

John F Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum
Website: http://www.jfklibrary.org
Jacqueline Kennedy Entertains: The Art of the White House Dinner
April 12, 2007- March 1, 2008
Elegant and uplifting entertaining was a hallmark of the Kennedy presidency. The special exhibit will portray Jacqueline Kennedy's distinctive and innovative approach to entertaining in the White House using the collections of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is located at Columbia Point, close to Interstate 93. Accessed by public transportation. Take the MBTA Rapid Transit, Red Line (any red line train) to JFK/UMASS Station. There is a free shuttle bus to the Library every 20 minutes beginning at 8:00 a.m. and running until Museum closing. Take the buses marked JFK. Tel: 1.866.JFK.1960 or 1.617.514.1600. Open 7 days per week, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with the exception of New Year’s, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. The Research Room is open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. by appointment only and is closed on weekends and federal holidays. To speak to our research room staff, please call 617.514.1629. Admission: Adults $10, Seniors and Students (with valid college ID) $8.00, Ages 13-17 $7.00, Children 12 and under are free. Group visits of 12 or more are eligible for a group visit discount with advance reservations.

Boston Symphony
Website: www.bso.org
The Boston Symphony opens its 2007/2008 season in Boston with a gala concert under the directorship of James Levine on October 4 in Symphony Hall. Information on the season’s offerings and tickets at  http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/perf_detail.jsp?pid=27400008.
The Boston Symphony performs at Symphony Hall located at Symphony Hall
301 Massachusetts Avenue Boston. Accessible by subway. Tel: 617-266-1492

 

Brussels

Palais des Beaux-Arts
Website:  http://www.bozar.be 
The Grand Atelier: Pathways of Art in Europe (5th - 18th century)
October 5 to January 1, 2008
Long before asserting itself as a political entity, Europe was an area of intense circulation of people and goods. Despite wars and conflicts, this exchange of ideas, goods and innovations established lasting bonds between human communities, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, from the Atlantic to the Urals. It is through past masterpieces and even modest works that one can grasp and appreciate what was even at the dawn of the Middle Ages, a European space of art and thought. The exhibition of about 350 works from over 100 European collections illustrates several particularly eloquent aspects of this artistic circulation and the various forms it took over a long period in the history of art (between the 5th and 18th centuries).
Portugal : Encompassing the Globe
October 16 to February 3, 2008
With more than 180 extraordinary masterpieces, this exhibition explores the unity and diversity of the cultures that contributed to Portugal's trading empire. From Africa to Brazil passing trough China, Japan and the Indian Ocean, it provides a wide-ranging and unforgettable image of the new world's great age of discovery.
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Rue Ravensteinstraat 23, 1000 Brussels. Open: Tue-Sun 10am-6pm (till 9pm on Thu). Tel: +32 (0)2 507 82 00.

Royal Museums of Fine Arts
Website: http://www.fine-arts-museum.be/
Rubens:  A Genius at Work
September 14 to January 27, 2008
The museum owns a remarkable collection of more than fifty works either painted by Rubens himself or in collaboration with the studio, in addition to paintings that the Antwerp master produced together with notorious colleagues like Jan Burgher the Elder and Cornelius de Voss. This collection, which contains oil sketches, paintings on a smaller scale as well as monumental altar pieces, has a unique character : it reflects Rubens’ most productive period during which his creative genius and his entrepreneurial spirit fully developed (1614-1640) at his big workshop on the Antwerp Wrapper Street.
The exhibition will reveal the results of an in-depth research project which studied the Museum’s own Rubens belongings during four full years. Quite a number of surprising discoveries will be presented at the exhibition as to the precise way in which Rubens and his team have produced these masterpieces. To put those works in context, the museum has secured the loan of about sixty additional paintings and drawings, most of them produced by Rubens himself. These artworks come from the greatest museums in the world such as the Louver (Paris), the Pardon (Madrid) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).
ALECHINSKY from A to Y
November 23 to March 30, 2008
The works of Pierre Alechinsky, a famous Belgian artist now aged 80, will be gathered in close co-operation with the artist: paintings, drawings, engravings and books illustrations will be selected in national and international collections.
Royal Museums of Fine Arts consists of four museums—Museum of Ancient Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, both located at Rue de la Régence 3. The Antoine Wiertz Museum is located at Rue Vautier 62  and the Constantin Meunier Museum at Rue de l'Abbaye 59. More museum information at http://www.kmskb.be/site/en/frames/F_infomus.html 

 

Buenos Aires

Centro Cultural Borges
Website: http://www.ccborges.org.ar   
The Borges Cultural Center is located inside Galerías Pacífico, entrance at the corner of Viamonte and San Martín, Centre. Tel: +54 (0) 11 5555-5359. Open: Mon-Sat 10am-9pm; Sun noon-9pm.

 

 Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago
Website: http://www.artic.edu/aic
The Silk Road and Beyond
Until October 2007
Silk Road Chicago is a year-long celebration of the art and culture that have flourished along the historic route from China to Asia Minor. The program is the brainchild of several leading city institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and, most importantly, the Silk Road Project, a foundation started by Yo-Yo Ma, a cellist and educator. “The Silk Road and Beyond” at the Art Institute comprises the visual part of the festival. The main exhibition, Travel, Trade and Transformation, features work that captures the region's vibrant cross-cultural fertilization. Smaller exhibitions include “Stories of the Silk Road”, with original illustrations of some of the route's most famous explorers.
Focus: William Pope.L—Drawing, Dreaming, Drowning 
 October 11 to January 21, 2008
William Pope.L is a prominent multidisciplinary artist known for his conceptual, often performance-based art practice, which actively confronts issues of race, sex, power, consumerism, and social class. As the self-proclaimed “friendliest black artist in America,” Pope.L invites dialogue through provocative performances, installations, and art objects. He is best known for a series of more than 40 “crawls” staged since 1978 as part of his larger eRacism project, in which he inched his way through busy city streets on his belly, back, hands, and knees in an attempt to draw attention to the plight of those members of society who are least empowered. At the center of Focus: William Pope.L—the artist’s first solo show at a major museum—is a selection of approximately 50 works from Pope.L’s ongoing series, Failure Drawings. Created only when he is traveling with whatever materials he has on hand, these intensely personal works reveal compelling mood shifts.
Jasper Johns: Gray
November 3 to January 6, 2008
Overview: As one of the most acclaimed and influential living artists, Jasper Johns has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, many of which have explored his signature use of flags, numbers, and other emblems. This exhibition emerges from broader studies of Johns’s approach to form, examining for the first time the artist’s use of gray in his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings from 1955 to the present. Featuring more than 130 works, the exhibition tracks Johns’s application of gray for more than five decades—an investigation that provides a framework for understanding the development of the artist’s entire oeuvre.
The museum is located at 111 South Michigan Avenue, at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street, on the eastern edge of Chicago’s famous downtown Loop. Open weekdays at 10:30 am and at 10 am on Saturdays and Sundays until 5 pm.

The Field Museum
Website:  http://www.fieldmuseum.org/
Darwin
To January 1, 2008

The Origin of Species stands as the foundation for all modern biology. Now, 150 years after its publication, discover the man and the revolutionary theory that changed the world. The exhibition, which originally opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is outstanding. It presents the most complete collection of Charles Darwin's manuscripts, artifacts, memorabilia, and other rare personal belongings. This extraordinary portrayal reveals Darwin's endless curiosity, exceptional power of observation, and scientific genius. Family photographs and letters reveal a different side of this famous scientist: Darwin as a family man, husband and father of 10 children. Trace the historic five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle that brought him to the Galápagos Islands, and experience some of the unique animals Darwin encountered on his journey, such as live South American horned frogs and a green iguana. This unique in-depth exhibition includes hands-on interactive displays and interviews with contemporary scientists.
The Ancient Americas
Ongoing
The Ancient Americas takes you on a journey through 13,000 years of cultural evolution in the western hemisphere, where hundreds of diverse societies thrived long before the arrival of Europeans. In this 19,000-square-foot exhibition, visitors will relive the epic story of the people of these continents, from the Arctic to the tip of South America. This exhibition allows you to step into the windswept world of Ice-Age mammoth hunters, walk through a replica of an 800-year-old pueblo dwelling, explore the Aztec empire and examine more than 2,200 fascinating artifacts.
The Field Museum is located at 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive.

 

Copenhagen

National Museum of Denmark
Website:  http://www.nationalmuseet.dk/sw20379.asp
The National Museum (The Prince's Palace) is located at Ny Vestergade 10; Tel.: (+45) 33 13 44 11. Open Tuesdays to Sundays 10 am to 5 pm. Free admission.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Website:  http://www.louisiana.dk/
Richard Avedon:  Photographs 1946-2004
August 24 to January 13, 2008
For more than fifty years Richard Avedon was one of the biggest names in the fashion industry with a star status that he maintained throughout all those years, and he was the first to break down the barrier between so-called serious and non-serious photography. He emerged as early as the 1950s as the world’s leading fashion photographer, and was on the staff of the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar, later on Vogue, ending in 1992 as the weekly The New Yorker’s first permanent staff photographer. Richard Avedon was awarded the Swedish Hasselblad Prize for photography in 1991.
The exhibition with more than 200 photographs shows portraits of Truman Capote, Charles Chaplin, Henry Kissinger, Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen, The Beatles, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, Samuel Beckett and many more. Not only the glamour aesthetics of fashion but the fascination of the expressive human face and the intensity of the look inspires Avedon.
The Frontiers of Architecture I: Cecil Balmond          
To November 4, 2007
The series The Frontiers of Architecture is about new and alternative architectural movements today. The series explores and reveals the potential of the new ideas and images generated by rapid technological development. This first exhibition should be seen as elucidating the relationship between science and architectural design, and gives a clue as to where architecture is heading today – implementing new geometries, ideas and computer-generated forms with close affinity to the way nature itself works. Cecil Balmond of ARUP is the leading figure in this development. 
Lousiana Museum Louisiana is situated 35 km north of Copenhagen along the motorway E47 / E55, or the coast road Strandvejen along the Sound. By train (ask for Kystbanen) 36 minutes from Copenhagen and a 10-minute walk from Humlebæk/Louisiana Station.
It houses a collection of modern art by international artists such as Arp, Francis Bacon, Calder, Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Sam Francis, Giacometti, Kiefer, Henry Moore, Picasso, Rauschenberg and Warhol. Open daily. Admission

Royal Danish Orchestra
Website:  http://www.kglteater.dk
The 2007/2008 season offers a number of symphonies including Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 with its existential fervor, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8
– a mighty cathedral of sound, which reaches the heavens to embrace both light and hope and hear or revisit one of the principal works of Romanticism, Brahms’
Symphony No.1. Soloists scheduled to appear this season include pianist Alfred Brendel; British Natalie Clein, who performs the solo in Elgar’s elegiac Cello Concerto and Nikolaj Znaider is set to make his first appearance in the double role of violin soloist and conductor at one of the season’s two chamber orchestra performances.
Copenhagen Opera House
Website:  www.operaen.dk
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Selected dates to November 21, 2007
Royal Danish Ballet
Website:  http://www.kglteater.dk/Forestillinger/Ballet.aspx
Det Kongliege Teater (Royal Danish Theater) is located at Kongens Nytorv in the center of Copenhagen since 1748. Tickets can be purchased online.

 

Dresden, Germany

Royal Palace
Websites: www.dresden-tourist.de  or  www.skd-dresden.de 
The Historic Green Vault
Created by August the Strong (1670 - 1733), the historic Green Vault was restored its ten rooms to its original splendor. Nearly 3,000 masterpieces crafted by jewelers and goldsmiths, precious objects made of amber and ivory, vessels made of precious stones, exquisite bronze statuettes and objects made of exotic materials like coral and shells from the South Seas are displayed. 

 

Florence

Palazzo Strozzi
Websites: http://www.palazzostrozzi.org
One Hundred Revolutionary Dresses
October 12 to January 20, 2008
The most elegant and innovative women's contemporary fashion in more than one hundred extraordinary dresses from the  Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The exhibition is a trip across the revolution of material and shapes interpreted by 40 international designers, including Azzedine Alaïa, Hussein Chalayan, Rei Kawakubo, Christian Lacroix, Hervé Léger, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Franco Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto.
Palazzo Strozzi is located at Piazza Strozzi, 1 - Florence Phone: 011 39 055 2645155
Open daily from 9 am to 8 pm; Thursday from 9 am to 11 pm. Admission allowed until one hour before closing-time.
 
Uffizi Gallery
http://www.uffizi.com 

One of the most famous museums of paintings and sculpture in the world, its collection of Primitive and Renaissance paintings comprises several universally acclaimed masterpieces of all time, including works by Giotto, Simone Martini, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Caravaggio. German, Dutch and Flemish masters are also well represented with important works by Dürer, Rembrandt and Rubens. The Uffizi Gallery occupies the top floor of the large building erected by Giorgio Vasari between 1560 and 1580 to house the administrative offices of the Tuscan State. All the artwork are divided into rooms in chronological order.
The Uffizi is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 8:15 am to 6: 50 pm. Admission. Tickets may be purchased in advance online to avoid the long queues awaiting entry.

 

Fort Worth/Dallas

Kimbell Art Museum
Website: www.kimbellart.org
Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art
November 18 to March 30, 2008
The first major exhibition to reexamine this phenomenon in over thirty years, it draws on new historical research and the latest archaeological discoveries. It tells the story of how the earliest Christians first gave visual expression to their religious beliefs in works of art. The exhibition brings an unprecedented range of these exceedingly rare and treasured objects together, throwing new light on the much-debated questions of how Christians and Jews of Roman times illustrated their religious beliefs and what these images signified. Frescoes, marble sculpture and sarcophagi, silver vessels and reliquaries, carved ivories, engraved gold glass cups, bronze statuettes, seals in semiprecious stones, decorated crosses, and illuminated Bibles, all of the finest quality and of great rarity, recreate the spiritual and artistic world of the early Christians as has never been possible before. Assembled from major museums in Europe, North Africa, and the United States—including the Vatican Museums and other cathedral treasuries in Italy, as well as London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and New York—the exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see in one place many of the greatest masterpieces of Early Christian art. Many of these works have never before been seen in America, and some have never left their churches.
The exhibition is organized by the Kimbell Art Museum, which, because of the difficulty of securing such treasured loans, will be the only venue.
Kimbell Art Museum is located at 3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard; tel: 817-332-8451
Open Tuesdays to Thursdays at varying times. Free admission except for special exhibits.

 

Hong Kong
/
Hong Kong Science Museum
Website: http://hk.science.museum/eindex.php 
Soaring Dinosaurs: Chinese Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life
To November 25, 2007
The exhibition features about 200 exotic fossils of dinosaurs and other ancient animals and plants unearthed in China. The fossils offer clues to the evolution of the dinosaurs and shed new light on the rise of birds, mammals and flowering plants. Among the precious collection of fossils is the Jeholf Biota unique to the province of Liaoning in northern China. During the early Cretaceous Period about 120 million years ago, the area was warm with lush vegetation around lakes and rivers. Prehistoric animals and plants flourished on this landscape until massive volcanic eruptions took place. Dinosaurs with feathers and ancients birds were among the victims of the prehistoric catastrophe. Without any warning and before they could take wing, the animals were buried alive in a layer of fine volcanic ash. Since the discovery of feathered dinosaurs in Liaoning in the early nineties, the exotic finds have commanded international attention and have become a focus of scientific research. This exhibition showcases latest discoveries and research by the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Museum, Chongqing Museum of Natural History and Lufeng Dinosaur Museum.
Hong Kong Science Museum is located at 2 Science Museum Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui East, Kowloon. Tel: +852 2732 3232. Open daily Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 1 pm to 9 pm; Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays from 10 am to 9 pm. Admission.

 

Las Vegas

Guggenheim Hermitage Museum
Website: http://www.guggenheimlasvegas.org /
Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collections: Monet, Cezanne, Picasso
July 27 to April 27, 2008
This exhibition presents 37 treasured masterpieces from the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, that chart modern artists’ experimental interpretations of the academic themes of portraiture, landscape, still life, and genre. The juxtaposition of works on the same theme by artists associated with Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism invites consideration of the evolution of style during this dynamic period in art history as well as the timelessness of these subjects.
The Guggenheim Hermitage is located at The Venetian hotel, 3355 Las Vegas Blvd South
Open daily from 9:30 am to 7:30 pm. Admission.

 

Lisbon

Berardo Collection Museum
Website: http://www.museuberardo.com
The new Berardo Collection Museum is now open at the Exhibition Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon. Dedicated to modern and contemporary art, the museum displays 862 works in a rotation representing the art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries that compose the Coleccão Berardo Collection. with the greatest names of the national and international art scene from of the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

London

British Museum
Website: http://www.britishmuseum.org/
The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army
September 13 to April 6. 2008

Terracitta armored general
This exhibition explores one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century, giving an insight into China’s First Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, and his legacy. The exhibition includes a number of the world-famous terracotta warriors from Xian, China, which were buried alongside the First Emperor in readiness for the afterlife, as well as some of the most striking recent discoveries made on the site.
In introducing the idea of a unified state and effectively creating China in 221 BC, the First Emperor of Qin created what is today the oldest surviving political entity in the world. How that state has survived, developed and is viewed today is explored through events, lectures and debates around the exhibition. Tickets required.
The main entrance for the British Museum is located on Great Russell Street, WC1. Galleries open daily from 10 am to 5:30 pm, sometimes later on Thursdays and Fridays. Free admission except for select exhibitions. Accessible by public transportation.

Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery
Website:  www.courtauld.ac.uk
Walter Sickert: The Camden Town Nudes
October 25, 2007 to January 20, 2008
This exhibition will be devoted to a remarkable group of paintings of nudes by Walter Sickert (1860-1942), one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century. These paintings are among his most beautiful and complex works; admired both for their virtuoso brushwork and their highly original approach to the nude genre. The exhibition will bring together around fifteen of the principal canvases and will assemble for the first time Sickert’s four so-called Camden Town Murder paintings. Based on new and recent research, the exhibition traces Sickert’s reinvention of the nude from 1905-1912, exploring the ways in which these paintings addressed pressing artistic and social concerns of the early twentieth century.
The Courtauld Institute of Art is located in Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, tel. 020 7848 2526

Imperial War Museum
Website: http://www.iwm.org.uk   
Camouflage
To November 18, 2007
The first major exhibition to explore the impact of camouflage on modern warfare and its adoption into popular culture. Find out how and why a revolution in camouflage occurred during the First World War; how teams of artists and designers were employed to design camouflage and how it has influenced contemporary art and fashion.
The Children's War
To March 1, 2008
A major exhibition looking at the home front in Britain through the eyes of children.
Falklands 25th Anniversary Exhibition
To January 6, 2008
Explore the experiences and personal memorabilia of those involved from politicians and Service personnel to Falkland Islanders and war widows.
The main museum is located on Lambeth Road. Near the Thames Path (http://www.thamespathlondon.co.uk ). Open daily (except 24, 25 and 26 December) 10.00am - 6.00pm. Entrance fee is £7 for adults and £5 for concessions.

Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms
Website: http://cwr.iwm.org.uk/
The Churchill Museum, the world’s first major museum dedicated to life of Winston Churchill, is a permanent exhibition housed within the unique setting of the historic Cabinet War Rooms.
Shortly after becoming Prime Minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill visited the Cabinet War Rooms to see for himself what preparations had been made to allow him and his War Cabinet to continue working throughout the expected air raids on London. It was there, in the underground Cabinet Room, he announced “This is the room from which I will direct the war.”
A branch of the Imperial War Museum, the Churchill Museum is located at Clive Steps, King Charles Street in London’s Southwest End. Open daily 9:30 am to 6 pm. Admission tickets will admit visitors to both the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum.

National Gallery of Art
Website: http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Renaissance Siena: Art for a City 
October 24 to January 13, 2008
This exhibition offers the first opportunity in the UK to see Sienese Renaissance works of art in the artistic, cultural and political context of the volatile last century of the Sienese Republic. The exhibition will showcase the bravura techniques and virtuoso inventiveness of two of the greatest Sienese artists of this period, Francesco di Giorgio and Domenico Beccafumi, alongside many of their contemporaries. Around one hundred beautiful paintings, sculptures, drawings, manuscripts and ceramics will be included in the exhibition.
The National Gallery is located at Trafalgar Square, London WC2. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7747 2885. Open: daily 10am-6pm (until 9pm Wed and Sat). Entry: £12. Tube: Charing Cross, Leicester Square.

Royal Academy of Arts
Website: http://www.royalacademy.org.uk 
Georg Baselitz
 September 22 to December 9, 2007
Georg Baselitz is one of Germany's most prolific and well-known living artists. The first major UK retrospective of his work, this exhibition features over 60 paintings, together with a significant number of sculptures, prints and drawings.
Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1. Tel: +44 (0)20 7300 8000. Open: daily, 10am-6pm (until 10pm on Fridays).  Entrance costs £10, £7 for students, £3 for 12-18 year olds, £2 for 8-11 year olds and under 7s go free

Somerset House-- Hermitage Rooms
Website: www.hermitagerooms.com
France in Russia: Empress Josephine's Malmaison Collection
To November 4, 2007
Malmaison was the country retreat of Empress Josephine, where she lived with her husband Napoleon Bonaparte. The château was decorated and furnished in the latest antique taste providing a luxurious setting for Josephine's burgeoning art collection. Many of the works she collected were gifts from Napoleon which he had acquired during his various military campaigns in Europe. After her death, Tsar Alexander I bought an important part of the Malmaison paintings and sculpture collection and shipped it to St Petersburg to be installed in the Winter Palace. This exhibition brings together for the first time in this country a significant part of the The State Hermitage Museum's Malmaison collection.
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA, tel. 020 7485 4630 

Tate Modern 
Website: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern
Louise Bourgeois
October 10 to January 20, 2008
Tate Modern presents the first major survey since 1995 of the work of the French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (b.1911). Over a long career, Bourgeois has worked in dialogue with most of the major international avant-garde artistic movements of the twentieth century, from Surrealism to Conceptual art, but has always remained uniquely apart, powerfully inventive and often at the forefront of contemporary practice. Engaging in a wide variety of both modern and traditional techniques, Bourgeois has explored her themes in a great variety of styles from abstraction to the realism of the ready made.
The World as a Stage
October 24 to January 1, 2008
The World as a Stage brings together a key group of international, contemporary artists whose works investigate ideas of ‘theatre,’ staging and performance. This is the first exhibition at Tate Modern to bring the realm of performance into dialogue with gallery-based work. The World as a Stage includes large installations, sculptures, performances, participatory works and events and new pieces made specifically for the exhibition. The artists featured are Pawel Althamer, Cezary Bodzianowsky, Ulla von Brandenberg, Jeremy Deller, Trisha Donnelly, Geoffrey Farmer, Andrea Fraser, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Jeppe Hein, Renata Lucas, Rita McBride, Roman Ondák, Markus Schinwald, Tino Sehgal, Catherine Sullivan and Mario Ybarra Jr.
UBS Openings: Drawings From The UBS Art Collection
To November 4, 2007
This display presents a selection of drawings from The UBS Art Collection profiling two distinct, yet interrelated, modes of drawing. The first is concerned with instinctive drawing; highly reflexive, sometimes map-like and often abstract. The second mode establishes drawing as the perfect vehicle for the exploration of content, readily lending itself to expressing personal and intimate thoughts. It can be inspired by personal experience, observation or popular culture. By bringing together works which exhibit the characteristics of these two paths, the display explores how they relate to each other.
Tate Modern is located on the south bank of the River Thames at Bankside, near Blackfriars Bridge, opposite St Paul's Cathedral and next to the Globe Theatre. email: visiting.modern@tate.org.uk. Accessible by the underground, boat, train and bus—see instructions at the museum website.  Open Sunday – Thursday, 10 am to 8 pm; Friday and Saturday, 10 am to 10 pm. Admission

Tate Britain
Website: http://www.tate.org.uk/britain 
Millais
September 26 to January 13, 2008

Millais’ Orphelia
Millais was the greatest painter and founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which burst upon the British artistic scene in the mid-19th century. His magnificent jewel-like paintings have shaped our vision of Victorian womanhood, and cemented impressions of Shakespearian heroines Ophelia and Mariana in our minds. He was an artist engaged with modern developments in art as much as with the old masters, and this is the first major solo survey of his art since the Royal Academy retrospective of 1967, and the first exhibition since 1898 that examines the entirety of his career. The exhibition reveals how Millais made the dramatic shift from his early academic paintings to develop his audacious Pre-Raphaelite works, such as the controversial Isabella, and how he instigated the Pre-Raphaelite movement with Rossetti and Holman Hunt.
NOTE: Millais will also travel in 2008 to the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam from February 15 to May 18, 2008; and two venues in Japan: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art from June 7 to August 17, 2008, and The Bunkamura Museum of Art, August 30 to October 26, 2008.
Tate Britain is located at Millbank in London’s southwest end. Open daily, 10 am to 5:50 pm. More information at email: visiting.britain@tate.org.uk

Victoria and Albert Museum
Website: www.vam.ac.uk 
The Golden Age of Couture: Paris & London 1947 to 1957
September 22 to January 6, 2008
The launch of Christian Dior's New Look in 1947 marked the beginning of a momentous decade in fashion history, one that Dior himself called the 'golden age'. Celebrating the end of war and the birth of a new era, it set a standard for dressmaking and high fashion that has rarely been surpassed. In Paris, couture houses such as Balenciaga, Balmain and Fath attracted worldwide attention for elegance and glamour. London was renowned for formal state gowns by court dressmakers and impeccable tailoring by designers like Hardy Amies.
The production of couture was important to the prestige and economy of both France and Britain. While traditionally catering for wealthy private clients, the couture houses also sought new markets. As the decade progressed, they created perfumes, opened boutiques and licensed their designs to foreign manufacturers. By the late 1950s, the leading couture houses had become global brands.
The Art of Lee Miller
September 16 to January 6, 2008
Lee Miller (1907 - 1977) is one of the most remarkable female icons of the 20th century - an individual admired as much for her free-spirit, creativity and intelligence as for her classical beauty. Charting her transformation from muse to ground-breaking artist, this centenary exhibition provides a unique exploration of her life and unprecedented career as a photographer.
Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Miller began her modeling career on the cover of American Vogue before meeting Man Ray in Paris in 1929. She became both his lover and muse and under his guidance started to produce her own imagery.
Victoria and Albert Museum is located on Cromwell Road, London SW7. Tel:
+44 (0)20 7942 2000. Open daily 10 am to 5:45 pm, Fridays until 8 pm. Admission.
Getting there:  London Underground: South Kensington; Buses: C1, 14, 74 and 414 stop outside the Cromwell Road entrance.

Performing Arts in London:
London Philharmonic
Website:  http://www.lpo.co.uk
The 75th anniversary season opens September 26 at Royal Festival with the world premiere of Tavener's Lalishri Violin Concerto and music by Vaughan Williams and Elgar under the baton of Andrew Litton. There is a 75th Anniversary Birthday Concert: on Sunday October 7 with Vladimir Jurowski conducting Bissill, Mozart, Beethoven and Rachmaninov.
Royal Festival Hall is located at Southbank Centre (http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk) on the Thames riverside between Golden Jubilee and Waterloo Bridges, in Central London. The Southbank Centre also includes the performance venues the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room, and The Hayward. Accessible by buses on Waterloo Bridge, in York Road, in Belvedere Road and in Stamford Street and the underground—- Waterloo (Bakerloo, Northern, Jubilee and Waterloo & City lines); - Embankment (Circle and District lines). Check http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk for the events scheduled for 2007/08.

Royal Opera House
Website: http://info.royaloperahouse.org.uk /
The 2007/2008 season has begun. Highlights include the performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, ballet performances of La Bayadere and Balanchine’s Jewels and the works of four new composers. Check the website for scheduled performances for the Royal Opera, Royal Ballet and other musical events. Tickets can be purchased online.
The ROH is located at Covent Garden. Main entrance is on Bow Street between Russell and Floral streets. Accessible by the underground Piccadilly Line to Covent Garden station.

Royal Albert Hall
Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/
The season has just concluded but you can check the website for information about the concerts and future news on next year’s Proms.
Royal Albert Hall is located at Kensington Gore, SW7. Tube: South Kensington.

 

Madrid

Museo del Prado
Website:  http://museoprado.mcu.es/home.html
Patinir and the Invention of Landscape
July 3 to October 7, 2007
The exhibit features a total of 48 paintings, of which 22 are by Flemish painter Patinir and the remainder by his most important predecessors and followers. Patinir is little known to the wider public, possibly due to his small oeuvre and the fact that few collections contain a sizeable group of his paintings. This has made the study of his art difficult up to now, even for specialists.
Among the paintings by Patinir to be included in the exhibition, six come from Spanish collections (four from the Prado, one from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and one from the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial). Patinir is particularly well represented in Spain and almost a quarter of his entire oeuvre is now to be found in the region of Madrid. The Prado, which houses one of the best collections of 15th- and 16th-century Netherlandish painting worldwide, has the largest collection of Patinir’s works in any collection.
The Prado Museum is located on Paseo del Prado, call: 011-34-91-330-28-00, fax: 011-34-91-330-28-56 or e-mail: museo.nacional@prado.mcu.es.  Open .daily, except Mondays, from 9 am to 8pm.  Admission is about $8, or 6 euros, except Sundays (9 AM to 7 PM) when it is free. Visitors under 18, over 65 and students from EU countries are admitted free of charge. Students from non-EU countries pay about $4 or 3 euros

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Website: www.museothyssen.org 
Durer and Cranach: Art and Humanism in Renaissance Germany
October 9 to January 6, 2008
This exhibition centers on German art from the late 15th to the mid-16th centuries with a particular focus on two issues: the artist’s image of his world and the role that these images played in particular areas such as religion, politics and war. It also analyses the relationship between the autochthonous ideas of German culture at this period and exterior influences, principally those of the Italian Renaissance. The two key figures in the exhibition are Dürer and Cranach the Elder but visitors will also see works by other important artists of this lengthy period.
Modern Masters of Drawing
November 27 to February 17, 2008
A selection of around 70 works on paper focuses on the 19th and 20th centuries by artists such as Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Miró, Freud or Warhol, among others.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is located at Paseo del Prado, 8 and is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 AM to 7 PM and during July and August the temporary exhibitions will remain open until 11 PM Tuesdays to Saturdays.  (Closed Mondays.)  Admission to the temporary exhibition is about $5.14 and about $3.85 for students and seniors. Combined tickets for the temporary and context exhibitions and permanent collection range from $9 to $14.50 ($6.40 to $10.30 for students and seniors).  

 

Mexico City

Old College of San Ildefonso
Old College of San Ildefonso is located at Justo Sierra 16, Centro. Tel: +52 (55) 5702-3254. Open: Tue-Sun 10am-5.30pm.Admission: 35 pesos.

 

Miami

Miami Art Museum
Website: www.miamiartmuseum.org 
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: The Killing Machine and Other Stories
October 21 to January 20, 2008
Enrique Martínez Celaya
November 2 to January 13, 2008
Herzog & de Meuron
November 30 to April 6, 2008
Miami Art Museum is located at 101 West Flagler Street. Open daily except Mondays from 10 am to 5pm; until 9 pm Thursdays. Admission

 

Milan
Castello Sforzesco
Website: http://www.milanocastello.it 
Indoamerica: Archeologia ed etnografia del Sud America al Castello Sforzesco
To October 28, 2007
Castello Sforzesco is located at Piazza Castello, 3. Open: Tues-Sun, 9am-1pm, 2pm-5.30pm.

International Center For Photography
Website: http://www.formafoto.it
Mimmo Jaudice: Lost In Seeing
September 13 to November 25, 2007
The exhibition provides a original, wide-ranging and absorbing “Grand Tour” of Italy. The images span the long career of this great photographer and cover the Italian peninsula from Turin to Trieste and Bolzano to Stromboli; the collection is being presented here for the first time. Mimmo Jodice, one of Italy’s most important photographers, has never ceased to observe and explore the beauty and remarkable harmony of all things visual, their sudden divergences and magic have always amazed him. The 160 photographs on show, all large format black and white images, include both famous photographs and images being shown in public for the first time, united here through visual and aesthetic association. Little known scenes from Naples alongside unusual views of Rome or Milan, ever-changing landscapes, squares and backstreets, almost forgotten monuments are rediscovered by Jodice’s refreshing and objective eye.
International Centre for Photography is located at Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro 1. Tel: +39 (0)2 5811 8067. Open: Tues-Sun 11am-9pm (Thurs until 11pm). Admission: €6.50.

 

Minneapolis

Walker Art Center
Website: www.walkerart.org
Frida Kahlo
October 27 to January 20, 2007

Kahlo’s Me and my Parrots
Few artists have captured the public’s imagination with the force of Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). Curated by art historian and world-renowned Kahlo biographer Hayden Herrera and Walker associate curator Elizabeth Carpenter, the presentation will include approximately 50 paintings from the beginning of Kahlo’s career in 1926 to the year of her death in 1954. While concentrating on Kahlo’s hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits, the exhibition will also include those particular portraits and still life paintings that amplify her own sense of identity. The peculiar tension between the intimacy of Kahlo’s subject matter and her insistence on a mask of reserve give Kahlo’s self-portraits the impact of icons. As the artist’s practice progressed, her images grew in confidence and complexity, reflecting both her private obsessions and political concerns. While struggling to gain visibility and recognition both as a woman and an artist, Kahlo was a central player in both the political and artistic revolutions occurring throughout the world. The show later travels in February to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and in June to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The Walker Art Center is located is located in Minneapolis at 1750 Hennepin Avenue, where Lyndale and Hennepin avenues merge. Open Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 11 am to 9 pm. Admission

 

 

Montreal

Museum of Fine Arts (Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion)
Website: http://www.mbam.qc.ca 
The Famous Gilded Bronzes of Cartoceto di Pergola
July 7 to December 2, 2007
The celebrated group of the Gilded Bronzes of Cartoceto di Pergola — two larger-than-life men on horseback accompanied by two standing women — are being displayed outside Italy for the first time. This is one of the very rare large sculptural groups to have survived from the Ancient Rome. For grandeur and splendor they are matched only by the Horses of Saint Mark’s in Venice and the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, both of which are also gilded.
The Artistic Legacy of the Montreal Sulpicians
September 12 to December 9, 2007
The Company of the Sulpician Fathers was founded as part of the great movement of Christian evangelization and renewal that grew up in seventeenth century France. In 1657, fifteen years after the founding of Ville Marie, the first Sulpicians arrived in the New World, where they became Seigneurs of the island of Montreal and were appointed priests in perpetuity of the parish of Notre Dame, the only one on the island until 1866. 
The Museum is located at 1380 Sherbrooke Street West. Open Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission is suspended now until January 27, 2008.

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
Website:  www.macm.org
Karel Funk
September 20 to January 6, 2008
Karel Funk produces portraits of men shown in head-and-shoulders view, painted in acrylic on wood panels. Dressed in protective outdoor clothing, the subjects are often seen in three-quarter profile or from behind, with their heads bowed or covered with a hood, so that we are rarely allowed to meet the models’ gaze. Each of them is set against a neutral, all-white background, setting off the figure in a vague space that lacks any real depth. His paintings suggest multiple references to art history, in particular to certain Renaissance portraits, but remain firmly rooted in the present. The fascination exerted by Karel Funk’s work stems in large part from the tensions between the extreme precision of the rendering and the imprecision of the space, between the revelation of the body and the restraint of the pose, between the personal and the anonymous.
Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal is at 185 Sainte-Catherine Street West. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Admission: (Can)$8; group rate available.  Free admission for all every Wednesday evening, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Open holiday Mondays. Information:  (514) 847-6226 (Telephone) or info@macm.org

Biodôme de Montreal (Botanical Garden)
Website: www.museumsnature.ca                    
A Desert at the Montréal Biodôme!
The Montréal Biodôme is presenting an immersion semi-desert habitat, where visitors can discover such animal species as prairie dogs, burrowing owls, and greater roadrunners. Meet our common chuckwallas, desert box turtles, blue spiny lizards and gopher snakes.  To introduce visitors to these species, the Biodôme has created a semi-desert “dryland” habitat and prepared some fascinating activities on the animals' fabulous underground world. Children can see the animals up close, thanks to a special tunnel. Events include capsule presentations on how animals adapt to their arid environment, the social organization of prairie dogs, biodiversity and endangered species.
The Montréal Biodome complex also includes the Botanical Gardens, the Insectarium, and the Planetarium. Check the website for exhibitions and events. It is located at 4101 Sherbrooke Street East. Open: Tuesday to Sunday. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed on December 24 and 25. Information:  (514) 872-1400 (Telephone)

Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal
Website: www.grandsballets.com
The 2007/2008 season opens October 18 with the ballet Cinderella.
Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts at 175 Sainte-Catherine Street West.
Tickets: (CAN) $29 to $95; Group Rate available; telephone: (514) 842-2112 / 1 866 842-2112 (Toll Free)

Montreal Symphony Orchestra
Websites: http://www.osm.ca  or http://www.osm.ca/index_en.cfm
Kent Nagano launched his second season as Montreal Symphony music director on September 4 and 5. Highlights of the 2007/08 season include the continuation of The Beethoven Cycle; major works by great composers, including Brahms, Mahler and Bruckner; soloists include  Peter Serkin, Alfred Brendel, Evgeny Kissin, Hilary Hahn, Viviane Hagner and James Ehnes; New World Music, inspired by Canadian folklore; a concert version of Wagner's opera Tannhäuser; and Zubin Mehta conducting OSM’s annual benefit concert.
The OSM is located at Place des Armes. Tickets are on sale at: 514-842-9951 or www.osm.ca

 

Moscow

Pushkin Museum/Gallery of European & American Art of the 19th–20th Centuries
Website:  http://www.museum.ru/gmii/defengl.htm
European & American Art of 19th & 20th Centuries
In the Pushkin Museum complex, the Gallery of European and American Art of the 19th - 20th centuries covers main currents of the period from Romanticism & Barbizon School through Impressionists, Post-impressionist and Avant-Garde painters to the trends of the second half of the last century.
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts consists of six buildings. Four are located on Volkhonka Street and two more in other parts of the city. The Museum Complex at Volkhonka includes Main Building, Gallery, Museum of Private Collections & Educational Center "Museion".
Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10 am to 7 pm. Admission.

 

Munich

Lenbachhaus
Website: www.muenchen.de
PERSPEKTIVE07
June 30 to November 25, 2007
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus is located at  Luisenstraße 33; tel +49 89 233 32 00 0; email: lenbachhaus@)muenchen.de  

 

New York

American Museum of Natural History
Website: www.amnh.org    
The Butterfly Conservatory
October 6 to May 26, 2008
Celebrate the tenth annual return of this re-created tropical forest environment filled with over 500 live butterflies.
Water: H2O = Life
November 3 to May 26, 2008

Upper Lake, Glendalough, Ireland

Water: H2O = Life will explore the beauty and wonder of our planet’s “lifeblood” using an innovative combination of cutting-edge presentation techniques, including live fishes and frogs, images projected on a curtain of fog, a six-foot globe displaying satellite images of Earth, immersive dioramas, and interactive exhibits that will allow visitors to experience firsthand the power of water. The exhibition will also examine the most compelling challenges that people and ecosystems around the globe face with respect to water quality and availability. Artifacts from the Museum’s and other collections will highlight diverse cultural and spiritual aspects of water. Throughout the exhibition, visitors will be challenged to reconsider the way they view water—to see it not as a limitless resource to be taken for granted, but as the limited and life-sustaining resource it truly is.
Mythic Creatures:  Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids
May 26, 2007 to January 6, 2008
Mythic Creatures:  Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids is the first-ever exhibition to trace the cultural and natural history roots of some of the world’s most enduring mythological creatures, this enchanting exhibition highlights legendary beasts of land, sea, and air such as dragons, griffins, mermaids, sea serpents, and unicorns.
For thousands of years, fantastical creatures have been a part of human experience through legends and fables, ancient and contemporary art, performance, and even in the accounts of early naturalists.  Mythic Creatures will include spectacular sculptures, paintings, and textiles, along with a number of cultural objects from around the world ranging from shadow puppets to ceremonial masks and helmets that will bring to light surprising similarities—and differences—in the ways peoples around the world have envisioned and depicted these strange and wonderful creatures.
Mythic Creatures will also feature preserved specimens from the Museum’s collections and even fossils of prehistoric animals to investigate how they could have, through misidentification, speculation, and imagination, inspired the development of some legendary beasts.  For example, visitors will discover how narwhal tusks from the North Sea introduced by Scandinavian traders lent credence to the centuries-old belief in the unicorn (a beast that was probably originally a misunderstanding of a rhinoceros), and how dinosaur fossils uncovered by Scythian nomads may have been mistaken as the remains of living, breathing griffins.  And persistent tales of undersea monsters may simply be sightings of real creatures that are just as fantastic as any imaginary beast, including the oarfish, great white shark, and giant squid.
The Unknown Audubons: Mammals Of North America
March 31 to January 6, 2008
In the renovated and restored Audubon Gallery, a classic, high-ceilinged salon space on the Museum's fourth floor next to the fossil halls, the inaugural exhibition highlights the Museum's rarely displayed collection of original paintings, drawings, and prints by John James Audubon and his sons John Woodhouse Audubon and Victor Gifford Audubon, one of America's most famous families of naturalists and wildlife artists. The exhibition also succeeds in placing Audubon's life and art in the context of a dramatic environmental story—protecting endangered ecosystems—a cautionary scientific message addressed in other Museum galleries, particularly the Hall of Biodiversity.
The exhibit introduces visitors to an unfamiliar side of Audubon and his family. Most identify him with his monumental and groundbreaking work, the 435-plate Birds of America (1827–1838), and even today his name remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation. However, soon after the publication of Birds of America, Audubon decided to pursue an even more challenging project—the documentation of all known North American mammals—an ambitious undertaking that included a six-month expedition to the Missouri River valley in 1843.
Hall of Human Origins
Permanent
See the remarkable history of human evolution, from earth’s earliest ancestors to modern man. The new exhibit combines the most up to date discoveries in the fossil record with the latest in genomic science to explore the most profound mysteries of humankind—who we are, where we came from, and what is in store for the future of man. The new 10,000 square foot Spitzer Hall of Human Origins offers the most comprehensive evidence of hum an evolution ever assembled with over 200 casts of the rarest hominid fossils and artifacts documenting how modern humans evolved over millions of years from earlier species and showing how new DNA evidence reveals how closely related we are to each other and to our primate ancestors. There is an educational center within the Spitzer Hall where hands-on experiments are conducted.
The American Museum of Natural History is located at Central Park West and between West 77 and 79 Streets. Open daily, 10:00 am to 5:45 pm. Admission.

Asia Society
Website: www.asiasociety.org/arts  
Zhang Huan: Altered States
September 6 to January 20. 2008
This exhibition is the first ever museum retrospective of Zhang Huan, encompassing major works produced over the past 15 years in Beijing, New York, and Shanghai. Born in 1965 in Henan Province, China, Zhang Huan is best known for his controversial early works of performance art, most of which focus on physical endurance. In 1998 he moved to New York and established himself as one of the most important and widely recognized among expatriate Chinese artists. More recently, Zhang returned to China and established a studio in Shanghai, where he has begun to create large-scale sculpture. The exhibition includes more than fifty works of photography, sculpture, and painting.
The Arts of Kashmir
October 3 to January 6, 2008
The Arts of Kashmir is a major international loan exhibition of objects of exemplary quality devoted to the rich artistic tradition of Kashmir. For centuries the Kashmir valley has been a burgeoning arts center and cultural magnet. Covering the fourth century to the twentieth century, this exhibition is the first ever to be devoted to the extraordinary arts of this highly lauded location. Premier examples of Kashmir’s little-known works of Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic art along with famed craft works ranging from furniture and papier-mâché to carpets and embroidery will be included to provide a sense of the broad artistic production of this region. The 136 works in the exhibition come from collections in the United States, Europe, and India.
Javeed Shah: A Celebration of Life: Photographs of Kashmir
This selection of photographs by photojournalist Javeed Shah highlights everyday life, which perseveres in Kashmir despite the conflict that has plagued the region.
October 3 to January 6, 2008
Asia Society and Museum is located at 725 Park Avenue at 68th Street. Open Tuesday - Sunday, 11:00 am - 6:00 pm, with extended evening hours Fridays until 9:00 pm. Closed on Mondays and major holidays.  Admission.

Brooklyn Museum of Art
Website: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/
Brushed With Light: American Landscape Watercolors from Museum’s Collection
September 14 to January 13, 2008

Winslow Homer’s Homosassa River
This exhibition features eighty important works from the Brooklyn Museum's collection of American watercolors with a focus on landscape imagery. Ranging in date from 1777 to 1952, the selection represents major movements in American landscape painting: late eighteenth-century topographical and picturesque view painting; the Hudson River School and Pre-Raphaelitism; post-Civil War realism; American Impressionism; modernist abstraction; and American Scene painting. Among the featured artists are William Trost Richards, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, John Marin, and Edward Hopper. The subjects represented range from Coney Island to Yosemite.
The Brooklyn Museum of Art is located on Eastern Parkway at Washington Street in the borough of Brooklyn. Accessible by public transportation. Open Thursdays to Sundays 11 am to 6 pm; Wednesdays 10 am to 6pm. Admission.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
Website: www.cooperhewitt.org
Piranesi as Designer
On view September 14, 2007–January 20, 2008
This exhibition examines the artist's role in the reform of architecture and design from the 18th century to the present. This is the first museum exhibition to show Piranesi's full range and influence as a designer of architecture, elaborate interiors and exquisite furnishings. On view are etchings, original drawings and prints by Piranesi, as well as a selection of three-dimensional objects. In addition to his better-known architectural projects, Piranesi also designed fantastic chimneypieces, carriage works, furniture, light fixtures and other decorative pieces.
Cooper-Hewitt is located at 2 East 91 Street. Open Mondays to Thursdays 10 am to 5 pm; Fridays to 9 pm, Saturdays and Sundays to 6 pm. Admission.

Frick Museum
Website: www.frick.org  
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780)
October 30 to January 27, 2008

Saint-Aubin’s Sheet of Studies Including a Portrait of Mademoiselle
An important exhibition and catalogue devoted to the art of Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, co-organized by The Frick Collection and the Louvre Museum, has its exclusive North American showing in New York in the fall of 2007 (opening in Paris in February 2008). The show will bring long overdue recognition to one of the European Enlightenment’s most original and innovative artists. Although highly esteemed by scholars and admirers of eighteenth-century French art, Saint-Aubin is little known to the general public or even to specialists in other fields. The exhibition will present a selection of Saint-Aubin’s prolific and varied oeuvre in the media of painting, etching, and drawing, and is the first effort to include works from both European and North American collections. The exhibition will provide modern visitors with the opportunity to glimpse Paris as it was two hundred and fifty years ago, through appealing depictions of the city’s architecture, theater, the Salon, domestic life, and popular entertainment, each a subject that Saint-Aubin rendered in an immediate, impressionistic style that anticipates those of artists of the late nineteenth century.
The Frick is located at 1 East 70 Street. Open Tuesday to Sunday. Admission.

Guggenheim Museum of Art
Website: www.guggenheim.org
Richard Prince: Spiritual America
September 28 to January 9, 2008

Richard Prince’s Untitled (Upstate)
The exhibition highlights Prince's contributions to the development of contemporary art, bringing together key examples of his photographs, paintings, sculptures, and works on paper in an installation that integrates the various series comprising his oeuvre.
The Guggenheim is located at1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St., 212-423-3500.

Japan Society
Website: www.japansociety.org
Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York
September 28 to January 13, 2008
To celebrate the strong and historic cultural links between Japan and New York, Japan Society presents this large-scale group exhibition featuring the work of 33 contemporary Japanese artists who call New York City home, including Yoko Ono, Ushio Shinohara and Kunie Sugiura. The show comprises a broad range of media—from painting and sculpture to video and photography—and covers diverse age groups, identities, experiences, and styles that will show the breadth and depth of contemporary Japanese art as developed, practiced, and presented in New York. Visitors will go on a conceptual journey through multifaceted “homes” installed throughout the Society, illuminating the ways in which Japanese artists have made their homes and careers here since the 1950s, often bringing with them and maintaining aesthetic vocabularies that reveal their Japanese roots.
Japan Society is located at 333 East 47 Street between Second and First Avenues. Tel: (212) 832-1155. Gallery hours (during exhibition dates) are Tuesday through Thursday, 11 am - 6 pm; Friday, 11 am to 9 pm; Saturday and Sundays from 11 am to 5 pm.

Metropolitan Museum Of Art
Website: www.metmuseum.org 
The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
September 18 to January 6, 2008
The Metropolitan Museum is home to the finest collection of Dutch art outside of Europe—including 20 works by Rembrandt himself—and all 228 of these masterpieces are displayed together for the first time in this major special exhibition. The exhibition, which coincides with the publication of the first catalogue of the collection, celebrates Rembrandt's 400th birthday. On view is a rich array of works dating mostly between 1600 and 1700—landscapes, genre pictures, still lifes, marine views, portraiture, and historical and biblical paintings—by Rembrandt and other celebrated Dutch masters such as Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch, Pieter de Hooch, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Aelbert Cuyp. Broadly outlining how the collection was formed, the exhibition reflects the taste for Dutch art in America and among New York's great collectors of the past two centuries.
Rumi and the Sufi Tradition
October 2 to February 3, 2008
The mystic writings of the Persian poet known as Rumi (1207–1273) are generally considered to be the supreme expression of Sufism, the mystical trend in Islamic thought and culture. This exhibition coincides with the 800th anniversary of the poet-philosopher’s birth. On view will be nearly three dozen works from the Museum’s Islamic art collection—including miniature paintings, Islamic calligraphy, ceramics, metalwork, glass, and textiles created between 13th and the 19th centuries—that evoke the world in which he lived and suggest the scope of his enduring legacy.
Greek and Roman Sculpture Galleries

These majestic new galleries, more than a dozen years in the making, brings one of the world's great collections of classical art to light in a new way. Thousands of pieces from the museum’s collection of Greek and Roman sculpture are handsomely displayed in an area that was once the museum’s major restaurant. The centerpiece is the spectacular Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, a monumental peristyle area for the display of Hellenistic and Roman art with a soaring two-story atrium. Displays the colossal statue of the young Hercules, a lion skin draped over his arm, along with many other works, including great Badminton sarcophagus decorated with more than 40 figures—including Dionysus, the god of wine, shown riding his panther—and the seasons. Visitors will also come to learn about the emperors of Imperial Rome: Augustus, Caligula, the young Nero, Antoninus Pius, Caracalla; and a pantheon of great figures from ancient times: Herodotus, Epicurus, and many others.
Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor
October 17 to January 6, 2008
From the Middle Ages until the late 18th century, the courts of Europe lavished vast resources on tapestries made of precious materials after designs by the leading artists of the day. This international loan exhibition, conceived as a sequel to Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (spring 2002), is the first comprehensive survey of high-quality 17th-century European tapestry. Drawing from collections in more than 15 countries, it will present 40 rare tapestries made in Brussels, Delft, Florence, London, Munich, Paris, and Rome between 1590 and 1720, along with approximately 25 drawings, engravings, and oil sketches. The exhibition will investigate the stylistic and technical development of this prestigious figurative medium and will explore the contributions of artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Simon Vouet, Charles Le Brun, Pietro da Cortona, and Giovanni Romanelli, as they responded to the challenges of the medium in unique and spectacular ways. A two-day symposium will be held in connection with this exhibition on Saturday and Sunday, October 20 and 21, 2007
New Galleries for Oceanic Art
Opens November 14, 2007
The Pacific encompasses more than a thousand distinct cultures and hundreds of artistic traditions in an area that covers about one-third of the earth’s surface. The Museum’s new permanent galleries for Oceanic art, completely redesigned and reinstalled, will display a substantially larger portion of the Museum’s Pacific holdings than was previously on view. Featuring renowned masterworks from the Metropolitan’s Oceanic collection as well as recent acquisitions, the installation will present sculpture and decorative arts from the regions of Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Australia. The displays will also feature the Museum’s first gallery devoted to the arts of the indigenous peoples of Island Southeast Asia.
The Metropolitan Museum is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue at East 82 Street. Museum is open daily except Mondays from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm; Fridays and Saturdays it remains open to 9 pm. Parking facilities available.

The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park (An extension of the Met Museum)
The Abbey At Saint-Guilhem-Le-Désert
Ongoing
The Abbey located near Montpellier, France, was a regular stop on the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The 140 architectural elements from Saint-Guilhem that were used to reconstruct the 12th-century cloister in New York were acquired by George Grey Barnard around 1900 and purchased for The Metropolitan Museum of Art by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The stone has recently been cleaned by Museum conservators, the plaster walls have been resurfaced, and a new lighting system has been put into place to supplement the natural light, creating the sense of an outdoor cloister as the Museum’s original designer intended.
The Cloisters opened as a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1938 devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. 
Recorded Information: 212-923-3700. To get to the Cloisters, take the M4 public bus a block east from the Met Museum at Madison Avenue and 93rd Street to the bus’s last stop (Fort Tryon Park–The Cloisters).

The Morgan Library
Website: www.themorgan.org
Painted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Émile Bernard
To January 6, 2008
The exhibit is a compelling look at Vincent van Gogh's correspondence to his young colleague Émile Bernard between 1887 and 1889. Van Gogh's words and sketches reveal his thoughts about art and life and communicate his groundbreaking work in Arles to his fellow painter. Unseen for nearly seventy years, and never before exhibited, the twenty letters document the close, vital friendship of the two artists.
Throughout the letters are no less than twelve sketches by van Gogh meant to provide Bernard with an idea of his work in progress, including studies related to the paintings The Langlois Bridge, Houses at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Boats on the beach at Saintes-Maries, The Sower, and View of Arles at Sunset.
To complement the letters, more than twenty paintings, drawings, and watercolors by van Gogh and Bernard are on view. These works document their dynamic exchange of ideas—among them are paintings and drawings discussed and sketched by van Gogh in his letters to Bernard. The works of art are drawn mostly from collections outside of New York, and feature numerous works not recently shown in the U.S.
America’s Founding Fathers
Ongoing
Three important items associated with America's Founding Fathers are now on view at the Morgan. In the rotunda of the McKim Building, a plaster life mask of George Washington (1732–1799) is on display. Created by French sculptor, Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), the cast was made in 1785 when the artist visited Washington at his Mount Vernon home. A unique item and considered the truest likeness of the country's first president, Houdon later made a clay bust of Washington based on the mask as well a life-sized sculpture now in the Richmond, Virginia, capitol building.
Also on view in the rotunda is a letter from Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) to his daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph. Written in 1797 from Philadelphia, Jefferson laments the "rancorous" political scene in Philadelphia and looks forward to the "pleasure of my family society."
The Declaration of Independence, drafted by Jefferson and approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, is the most timeless and eloquent of American historical documents. The Morgan copy, on view in the Annex building, is considered one of the finest of the twenty-five recorded copies of the first printing of the Declaration.
The Morgan Library is located on 225 Madison Avenue at East 36th Street. Open Tuesdays through Thursdays 10:30 am to 5 pm; Friday to 9 pm; Saturdays and Sundays to 6 pm. Admission.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Website: www.moma.org
Georges Seurat: The Drawings
October 28, 2007 to January 7, 2008
Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive exhibition—the first in almost twenty-five years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings—will present over 135 works, primarily the artist's incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. Surveying the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training through the emergence and elaboration of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases (such as the renowned A Sunday on La Grande Jatte), the exhibition will also present important new research on his artistic strategies and materials.
New Photography 2007: Tanyth Berkeley, Scott McFarland, Berni earle
September 30 to January 1, 2008
New Photography is the annual fall showcase of significant recent work in contemporary photography. This year's exhibition includes work by three artists—from the United States, Canada, and South Africa, respectively—working in a variety of techniques and across a range of themes. Tanyth Berkeley's (American, b. 1969) compelling portraits of a variety of people, from transgender women to street performers to close friends, celebrate unique beauty. Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) uses digital technology to seamlessly stitch together negatives made over a period of weeks and months to create exquisitely detailed large-scale works that subtly record the passage of time. Berni Searle (South African, b. 1964) probes the processes of recollection and forgetting with the beautifully realized series of photographs About to Forget, based on the memory of her own fractured family.
Focus: David Smith
To November 26, 2007
Focus: David Smith is part of The Museum of Modern Art's series of special collection displays highlighting noteworthy aspects of the Museum's extensive collections. Focus: David Smith presents a selection of work by the American sculptor David Smith (1906–1965), drawn from the Museum's permanent collection. With its forceful and energetic presence, Smith's sculpture conceptually and physically grapples with themes including nature, life, and the self. These ideas ultimately defined the underpinnings of Smith's art and found articulation in his work as well as that of his Abstract Expressionist colleagues.
Present Tense: Photographs by JoAnn Verburg
July 15 to November 5, 2007
The exhibition includes some 60 photographs highlighting JoAnn Verburg's diverse subject matter and personal, intimate approach to portraits, still lifes, and landscapes
MoMA is located at 11 West 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Open Wenesdays to Mondays 10:30 am to 5: 30 pm; Fridays to 8 pm. Admission

Museum of City of New York
Website: http://www.mcny.org/
The Glory Days: New York Baseball 1947–1957
To December 31, 2007
The exhibition documents such milestones as the breaking of the color barrier in New York City, revolutions in print and broadcast media, and the creation and disappearance of hallowed stadiums. It also spotlights the game's major moments and sensational plays, and celebrates the fans, the larger-than-life managers and of course the outstanding athletes themselves.
The Museum of City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St. Open Tuesday - Sunday: 10 am to 5 pm. Admission.

Neue Galerie New York
Website: www.neuegalerie.org
Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder And Serge Sabarsky Collections
The exhibition presents eight paintings and more than 120 drawings by the controversial artist, on view together for the first time. The exhibition will also feature a reconstruction, with original furnishings, of the receiving parlor from the second Klimt studio. The Klimt show unites the collections of Ronald Lauder and Serge Sabarsky, co-founders of the Neue Galerie, and will fill all the gallery spaces in the museum. Together their collections comprise the finest gathering of works by Klimt in the United States.
October 18, to June 30, 2008
Neue Galerie is located at 1048 Fifth Avenue & East 86 Street. Open Thursday to Monday 11 am to 6 pm’ and Friday 11 am to 9 pm. Admission is $15 (students and seniors, $10), which includes the use of the audio-tour. Children under 12 are not admitted and those under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

The New York Botanical Garden
Website www.nybg.org 
Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Chrysanthemum
 October 20 to November 18, 2007.
This special, month long show is the culmination of a five-year cultural exchange and collaboration with the Shinjuki Gyoen National Garden in Tokyo. It will include an extensive display of chrysanthemums, including several in the traditional Japanese styles, distinguished by their dramatic shapes, vibrant colors and numerous blossoms.
The Botanical Garden is located in the Bronx and easily accessible from Manhattan via Metro-North train service from Grand Central Station. Open Tuesdays to Sundays year round. Admission.

New York Historical Society
www.nyhistory.org
Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11
September 11 to December 31, 2007
Voices, images, and objects: our memories of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath are grounded in tangible things, many of them rendered unforgettable by the events they summon up for us.  The exhibit takes as its starting point this grounding in the materials of history, grieving, and memory.  One of the largest photographic archives in world history devoted to a single event, this exhibition captures the grief, shock, courage and beauty that speaks to both the horror of what happened on 9/11 and to the positive ways in which New Yorkers responded. In addition to photographs, the show displays artifacts (for example, a piece of landing gear – from United Airlines Flight 175 or American Airlines Flight 11), artwork, videotapes, and audiotapes.
Nature And The American Vision: The Hudson River School At The New-York Historical Society
June 8 through January 13, 2008
The New-York Historical Society will continue showcasing together more than 100 famous paintings by artists of the Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, John F. Kensett, Jasper F. Cropsey and Albert Bierstadt, in a series of exhibitions drawn from the Society’s extraordinary American art collection.
The New York History Society offers historical lectures, art exhibits, musical explorations and much more centering on both the city and the state’s rich heritage.
Located at 170 Central Park West at77 Street. Open Tuesdays to Sundays 10 am to 6pm.

The Whitney Museum of American Art
Website: www.whitney.org
Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love
October 11 to  February 3, 2008
The artist's first full-scale American museum survey, features works ranging from her signature black-paper silhouettes to film animations and more than 100 works on paper. Among the most complex and prolific American artists of her generation, Walker has gained international recognition for her room-size tableaux depicting historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence, and subjugation, but made using the genteel 18th-century art of cut-paper silhouettes. Over the years the artist has used drawing, painting, colored-light projections, writing, shadow puppetry, and, most recently, film animation to narrate her tales of romance, sadism, oppression, and liberation. Walker's scenarios challenge conventional readings of American history and expose the collective, and ongoing, psychological injury caused by the legacy of slavery. After its presentation at the Walker and the Whitney, the show will travel to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Lawrence Weiner: As Far As The Eye Can See
November 15 to February 10, 2008
This is the first major retrospective mounted in the United States of the work of New York-based artist Lawrence Weiner (b.1942), one of the key figures associated with the emergence and foundations of ConceptualArt. Weiner has defined art as "the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings," and that premise remains at the core of all of his work, from the Propeller and Removal paintings of the 1960s, to his "specific and general" works-language-based pieces that have played a defining role in his work since 1968.
Neither New nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford
September 14 to December 2007
The latest body of work by Mark Bradford, recipient of the Whitney's 2006 Bucksbaum Award, goes on view in the Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Lobby Gallery on the museum's main floor. Bradford's works allude to the physical layers of the metropolitan environment of South Central Los Angeles, where the artist lives and works.  Repurposing the advertising posters that he finds built up in layers on walls, windows, and light posts in his neighborhood, Bradford creates collage works of extraordinary impact, exploring the concept of place, and reflecting on the social and economic patterns of his community.  Evocative of archeological excavation and the language of maps, these works delve into personal and collective memory, suggesting hidden histories and submerged traces of the past.  Bradford's collages recall the torn-poster works of French affichiste artists such as Raymond Hains and Jacques de la Villeglé, who worked in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s.
Rudolf Stingel
June 28 to October 14, 2007
Employing such materials as rubber, carpet, painted aluminum, Styrofoam, and paint, Rudolf Stingel's work questions and disrupts the viewer's understanding and experience of an art object. Although Stingel's work does not always involve paint on canvas, it continually reflects upon some of the fundamental questions concerning painting today, including authenticity, hierarchy, meaning, and context. This is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, surveying his career to date and including a new site-specific work.

New York Performing Arts Websites

Lincoln Center For The Performing Arts
Website: www.lincolncenter.org
Websites for other departments in the center complex are:
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center www.chambermusicsociety.org
The Film Society of Lincoln Center www.filmlinc.com
Jazz at Lincoln Center www.jalc.org
The Juilliard School www.juilliard.edu
Lincoln Center Theater www.lct.org

The Metropolitan Opera
Website: www.metopera.org
2007/2008 Season
September 24 to May 17, 2008
The Metropolitan Opera’s 2007–2008 season features seven new productions, the most in more than 40 years. The new productions include Mary Zimmerman’s new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Verdi’s Macbeth staged by former Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Adrian Noble and Britten’s Peter Grimes directed by John Doyle.
New York City Ballet
Website: www.nycballet.com
New York City Opera
Website: www.nycopera.com
New York Philharmonic
Website: www.nyphil.org 
2007/2008 Season
September 18 to June 13, 2008
Classical music enthusiasts can look forward to diverse programming from the New York Philharmonic under the baton of music director Lorin Maazel's  and other leading conductors including Ricardo Muti, Charles Dutoit, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Kurt Masur.
Carnegie Hall
Website: www.carnegiehall.org
The 2007/08 subscription season has kicked off with the opening night concert presented by the Luzerne Symphony Orchestra. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performs October 16 to 18; and the 17-day Berlin In Lights Festival opens November 3.
Check the hall’s website for other concert listings.
Carnegie Hall is located on West 57 Street and Seventh Avenue.
Websites for Information on Broadway/Off Broadway Theater Offerings:
http://www.broadway.com/
http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/

 

Paris

Centre Georges Pompidou (Beauborg)
Website: http://www.centrepompidou.fr/
Erice – Kiarostami: Correspondances
September 19 to January 7, 2008
The cinema directors and artists Víctor Erice and Abbas Kiarostami both work on the hazy frontier that separates cinema from video installations, photography and painting. The 'Correspondences' exhibition, presented by the Centre Pompidou, creates a dialogue between the works by Erice and Kiarostami, revolving around the themes and issues they so often share: childhood, landscapes, roads, trees, silence, etc. It is also an opportunity to screen all of the works the two directors have produced over their careers, and to provide Víctor Erice with carte blanche to present around twenty films that are linked to childhood and which have inspired his own work.
Centre Georges Pompidou is located on Place Georges Pompidou. Tel: +33 (0)1 44 78 12 33. Museums open daily 11 am to 9 pm; Atelier Brancusi: daily except Tuesdays, 2-6 p.m. Admission.

Louvre
http://www.louvre.fr
Islamic Art: the Song of the World
October 5 to July 1, 2008
With a sumptuous array of works, this exhibition outlines the evolution of art in Iran under the Safavid Dynasty (1501–1736). Visual arts are inextricably linked to the written word in Iranian culture, and the ultimate theme remains the greatness of the world, a divine creation.
Biedermeier, from Craftsmanship to Design
October 18 to January 14, 2008
An aesthetic trend descended from neoclassicism, the Biedermeier style developed in central Europe between 1815 and 1848, the period of peace following the Napoleonic Wars. The Biedermeier style was highly original, at once simple and full of imagination.
The Louvre located off the Place de la Concorde on the Right Bank is open daily from 10 am to 6 pm, till 10 pm Wednesdays and Fridays. Admission. Accessible by public bus and metro (Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre station).The Golden Age – the Age of Enlightenment
July 12 to October 15, 2007
The exhibit displays Spanish drawings from the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Louvre is located at 99 rue de Rivoli. Tel: 33(0)1 40 20 53 17 (information). Open daily Thursdays to Sundays 9 am to 6 pm; until 9:45 pm Mondays and Wednesdays
Admission.
   
Musée Jeu de Paume
Website: http://www.jeudepaume.org
Steichen: A Photographic Epic
September 10 to December 20, 2007
Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was one of the most prolific and influential photographers of the 20th century. This is the first European retrospective of his work and features 450 vintage prints plus a selection of documents. He produced portraits, landscapes, still lifes and nudes, and demonstrated his talent photographing fashion, dance, theatre, flowers and commercial images, as well as in war and aerial photography. With Alfred Stieglitz he helped set up the Photo-Secession group and the journal Camera Work. In 1923, Condé Nast was sufficiently impressed by his pictorialist photos to make him art director of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Steichen became one of the leading figures of modernism. He also served as photography curator at New York's MoMA, where he organized the famous exhibition The Family of Man. This show began touring internationally in 1955 and attracted over 11 million visitors worldwide. It was the crowning event of Steichen's career. 
Jeu de Paume, 1, place de la Concorde. Open daily except Mondays.

 

Musée du Luxembourg 
Website: http://www.museeduluxembourg.fr/
 Arcimboldo
September  15 to January 13, 2008

Famous for his composite heads made up of a combination of plants, fruits, animals and other elements, Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) remains something of a mystery. The exhibition presents one hundred works. In addition to the well-known composite heads on loan from private collections and museums around the world, an important group of paintings (including numerous portraits on view for the first time), tapestries, and drawings pay tribute to the extent of the artist's extraordinary pictorial universe, unequalled in allegorical and formal richness. Other works, including objects originating from the famous Hapsburg Kunstkammer and illustrated works directly connected with the artist, shed light on the socio-cultural context of the period and the Hapsburg court, thus heightening one's understanding of Arcimboldo's work. Tickets required.
The exhibition was co-organized by the Musée du Luxembourg and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, where it will be presented from February 11 to 1 June 2008.
Musée du Luxembourg, 19 rue de Vaugirard, 75006 Paris. Tel +33 (0) 1 42 34 25 95. Metro: Saint-Sulpice or Mabillon. Open daily Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays from 10:30 am to 10:00 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 10:30 am to 7 pm; Sundays from 9 am to 7 pm. Admission

Musée Maillol
http://www.museemaillol.com
Named after the sculptor Maillol, the museum offers a wide selection of contemporary art.
Musée Maillol is located at 61 rue de Grenelle in the 7th arrondisement. Open Wednesdays to Mondays from 11 am to 6 pm. Admission. Metro stop: Rue du bac

Musée de l’Orangerie
Website: http://www.musee-orangerie.fr
Monet’s Water Lilies
Ongoing
Monet’s water lilies artworks languished for decades in a gloomy netherworld in the Orangerie after a botched museum renovation in the 1960s. However, a major revamp of the museum, which reopened on May 17th after eight years, has changed all that.
The eight works, painted between 1914 and 1926, were donated by the artist and hung at the Orangerie in 1927, a year after his death. Impressive in size—each is two meters high; and one is 17 meters long—the paintings help illustrate Monet's influence on nudging art towards abstraction. Some even capture the mysterious sunset light at Giverny, an effect that could woo even jaded anti-Impressionists. The museum also houses the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works by Cézanne, Renoir, Soutine, Picasso, Modigliani and others.
Musée de l’Orangerie, Jardin des Tuileries. Tel: +33 (0)1 44 77 80 07. Métro: Concorde. Open: Weds-Mon, 12.30pm-7pm (until 9pm on Fridays)

Musée D’Orsay
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html
Courbet
October  13 to January 28, 2008
Drawings by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
October 16 to January 6, 2008
Located in a former railroad station, the Musée d’Orsay is located at rue de Bellechasse on the Left Bank across from the Tuileries gardens. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9 am to 6 pm, till 9:45 pm on Thursdays. Admission. Accessible by public transportation.

Musée de Quai Branly
Website: http://www.quaibranly.fr 
The museum’s permanent collections area presents the great geographical regions in which the Musée de quai Branly’s remarkable collections originated: Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The visitor makes his way fluidly across them, taking in the major crossroads between civilizations and cultures: Asia-Oceania, Insulindia, and Mashreck-Maghreb. The 3,500 artifacts are presented so as to highlight the historical depth of the cultures that produced them, and the many different meanings that the works themselves possess. The museography encourages the visitor to take the time to inform himself on major thematic areas: masks and tapa in Oceania, costume in Asia, and African musical instruments and textiles form the subjects of a series of fascinating video presentations.
The museum is located at 27, 37, 51 quai Branly 206, 218 rue de l'Université 75007 Paris. Phone: 01 56 61 70 00. Open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.
Admission fee.

Musée de Rodin
Website: www.musee-rodin.fr 
Rodin And Photography
November 14 to March 2, 2008
This large-scale exhibition, devoted to the photographic collection of the Rodin Museum, will present 200 photographs for the first time since the Salon des Pictorialistes held in 1993. The artist was by no means oblivious to the practical and aesthetic appeal of this new medium, and the approximately 7,000 pictures he amassed between 1879 and 1917 illustrate both his own story and the history of photography. Photography has opened the doors of his studio, which lay at the heart of his creation during the 1880s. This is where lumps of clay took shape, The Burghers of Calais were modeled naked before being clothed, and The Gates of Hell covered with a multitude of figures. Rodin started by hiring unknown photographers from the neighborhood, Bodmer, Pannelier and Freuler who, unlike him, remained in the shadows. And then the clay figures were transformed into plaster, bronze and marble,
The museum is located at Place Hôtel Biron. Tel:  33(0)1 44 18 61 10 (Information).Open daily except Mondays from 9.30 am to 5.45 .m (April 1-Sept.30t; ) and from 9.30 am to 4.45 pm (Oct.1- March 31h)

National Museum of Natural History
http://www.mnhn.fr
Betes Et Hommes  
September 12 to January 20, 2008
Pearls: A Natural History
October 25 to March 10, 2008
Muséum Nationale de l’Histoire Naturelle, Grande Galerie de l’Evolution, 36, rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 5th arrondissement. Métro: Jussieu or Gare d’Austerlitz. Open: Sun-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 10am-8pm. Tel: +33 (0)1 40 79 30 00.

 

Philadelphia

Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art
Website: www.philamuseum.org
Notations: Kiefer, Polke, Richter
July 21 to November 25, 2007
Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter are undoubtedly three of the most important German painters of the post-war period. Working in Germany after World War II—a historical moment characterized by philosopher Theodor Adorno as marking the death of lyric poetry after the atrocities of Auschwitz—these artists mounted a vigorous reconsideration of the possibilities of pictorial practice.
This exhibition explores the dynamically different approaches through which Kiefer, Polke, and Richter each question the relevance of history painting, examine the relationship between painting and photography, and redefine the technical possibilities of painting through experimentation. The works on display, ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s, represent the ways in which the artists have restored a profound significance to the act of painting as a means to unearth and transform the collective consciousness.
Renoir Landscapes
October 4 to January 6, 2008
This exhibition is the first to explore the inventiveness and importance of landscapes during the first 30 years of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's (1841–1919) career. Approximately 70 paintings reveal the subtlety of touch, vaporous effects, and lush, full-blown color that mark the painter as one of the most audacious and original landscape artists of his age.  
The museum is located at 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Open Tuesdays through Sundays.

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology
Website: http://www.museum.upenn.edu 
Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun
Exhibition extended
Tutankhamun, ancient Egypt's famous boy pharaoh, grew up 3,300 years ago in the royal court at Amarna, the ancient city of Akhetaten, whose name meant the Horizon of the Aten. This extraordinary royal city grew, flourished - and vanished - in hardly more than a generation's time. A new exhibition offers a rare look at the meteoric rise and fall of this unique royal city during one of Egypt's most intriguing times. Talks, tours, Saturday rash courses on ancient Egypt, theater in the galleries, family workshops, even a "Hollywood on the Nile" film series, are all part of the Year of Egypt.
The exhibit will feature more than 100 ancient artifacts, some never before on display - including statuary of gods, goddesses and royalty, monumental reliefs, golden jewelry, as well as personal items from the royal family, and artists' materials from the royal workshops of Amarna. Most of the show's artifacts date to the time of and the Amarna Period, including many objects excavated almost a century ago from this short-lived royal city. With background information about the childhood home and unique times in which Tutankhamun lived, Amarna is a complementary exhibition to the nationally traveled, blockbuster exhibition from Egypt, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.
Penn Museum's renowned Upper and Lower Egyptian galleries, recently refurbished, offer visitors a rich opportunity to view a wide variety of ancient Egyptian artifacts from several millennia. Materials range from monumental architecture to sculptures, pottery, jewelry, tomb goods, and mummies.
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, located at 3260 South Street in Philadelphia. Tel: (215) 898-4000. Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays, holidays and summer Sundays, Memorial Day through Labor Day weekends. Admission

Franklin Institute Science Museum
www.fi.edu/
Identity: An Expedition of You
Opens November 16, 2007
This unique exhibit takes the science behind identity and makes it personal, engaging you and your students with hands-on interactive components that challenge us all to see ourselves from a different perspective. Identity is divided into three areas. Explore the extent to which inherited genes determine our physical identity. Observe how chemical balances in the brain affect our psychological identity. Evaluate how the people around us modify our social identity. Students can compare their fingerprints, measure whether they are introverted or extroverted, and rethink the ways they interact and identify with particular social groups
The Franklin Institute Science Museum is located at 222 North 20th Street in Center City Philadelphia, at the intersection of 20th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Open daily. Admission.

 

Rome

Scuderie Papali al Quirinale
Website: www.scuderiequirinale.it  
Pop Art! 1956 - 1958
October 26 to January 27, 2008
The most important exhibition ever organized in Italy on international pop art presents over 100 works by some 50 artists is designed to tell the story of the movements that made art history and culture in the second half of the 20th century in the four corners of the Western world.
Scuderie Papali al Quirinale is located at 16, Via XXIV Maggio - Rome
Phone: +39 06 69 62 70

National Gallery of Modern Art/ Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
www.gnam.arti.beniculturali.it
Emilio Vedova 1919-2006
October 7 to January 6, 2008
Francesco Somaini: Il periodo informale 1957 - 1964
September 21 to November 25, 2007

 

San Francisco

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Website:  http://www.sfmoma.org/
Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson 
September 8 to February 24, 2008
Widely heralded as one of the most important artists of his generation, Olafur Eliasson nimbly merges art, science, and natural phenomena to create extraordinary multisensory experiences. Challenging the passive nature of traditional art-viewing, he engages the observer as an active participant, using tangible elements such as temperature, moisture, aroma, and light to generate physical sensations. The works assembled for this presentation — the first U.S. survey of this Icelandic artist's oeuvre — date from 1993 to the present and reflect all facets of his creative practice.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St, San Francisco. Tel: +1 (415) 357-4000. Open: Thurs-Sun 11am-5.45pm (till 8.45pm Thurs).

San Francisco Symphony
Website: http://www.sfsymphony.org 
San Francisco Symphony’s 2007/08 Season
Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Celebrate the Opening of the 2007–08 Season with a Gala Concert on September 19 Featuring Soprano Renée Fleming  performing Ravel’s Shéhérazade plus additional arias to be announced.  The concert will also include Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Andante and John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Prokofiev’s Scenes from Romeo and Juliet.
San Francisco Symphony performs at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave. Tel: +1 (415) 864-6000.

 

Shanghai

Shanghai Museum
http://www.shanghaimuseum.net/
Rembrandt and the Golden Age: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum
November 2 to February 13, 2008
The exhibition was put together by the Rijksmuseum and consists of over 100 paintings and other works of art, including several works by Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Ruisdael and Frans Hals.

 

Singapore

Asian Civilisations Museum
Website: http://www.nationalmuseum.sg/
Masterpieces From The Louvre
December 12 to March 16, 2008
Presented for the first time in Southeast Asia, some 130 pieces of marbles, sculptures, vases, terracotta figurines and jewelry from the fifth to the first century BC bring the story of Athens to life.
The Prince of Gowns: Selections from Benny Ong’s work from 1988-1989
To December 31, 2008
Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place, Singapore 179555. Tel: +65 6332 7791. Entry: S$8. MRT: Raffles Place.

 

Stuttgart

Art Museum Stuttgart
Website: http://www.kunstmuseumstuttgart.com/
Baumeister as a Set Designer
September 29 to  December 9, 2007
Willi Baumeister (1889-1955), a painter and typographer who came to be known as one of the most important representatives of abstract painting, designed his first stage set for the Deutsche Theater Stuttgart in 1919. Up until the outbreak of World War II he was able to realize another seven stage sets, followed by ten more stage projects after the war had ended. The exhibition will show expressive sketches and striking designs for a range of theatre productions. Photos of theater rehearsals and performances, press reviews, and correspondence containing humorous, private sketches will supplement the exhibition material.
Josephine Meckseper
July 14 to October 28, 2007
A German-born artist who has lived and worked in New York since the early 90s, Meckseper has achieved international recognition with her participation in noteworthy exhibitions and biennial contemporary art shows such as the Whitney Biennale in 2006 and the Moscow Biennale in 2007. The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is the artist's first solo museum exhibition. More than 150 works from Meckseper's oeuvre consisting of her earliest creations, to new work created especially for the Stuttgart exhibition will be on display. Meckseper is a multimedia conceptual artist using a variety of techniques: She creates large installations, window displays, sculptures, paintings, photographs and films.
The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is located at Kleiner Schlossplatz 1. Phone: +49 (0) 711 - 216 21 88; email: info@kunstmuseum-stuttgart.de. Open Tuesdays to Sundays 10 am to 6 pm; Wednesdays and Fridays until 9 pm. Reachable by Bus 42 or 44 to Schlossplatz; Underground lines U5, U6, U7and 15 to Schlossplatz; and S-Bahn transit to Stadtmitte station

Le Corbusier House/The Weissenhof Museum
Website: www.weissenhof.de  
Ongoing 
The Weissenhof Settlement has opened its museum in the Le Corbusier House. When it was founded in 1927, the Weissenhof Settlement was considered the most progressive architectural initiative of its time. In 33 houses with 63 apartments, a total of 17 architects from Germany, France, Holland, Belgium and Austria implemented their ideas of "functionalism." Among the architects, all of whom were under 45 years of age, were Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Hans Scharoun and others. 

Mercedes Benz Museum
Website: www.stuttgart-tourist.de
A prominent local landmark for car lovers of all ages since its opening earlier this year.  Nearby is the Gottlieb Daimler Memorial Sight, where one can visit Daimler’s former workshop in his garden house where he and Wilhelm Maybach secretly invented the world’s first sprinting motor in 1883. 

 

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Website: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au  
Translucent World: Chinese Jade from the Forbidden City
To November 11, 2008
A unique presentation of Chinese jade from the outstanding collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, the exhibition features the manifold uses of jade to depict nature. Often natural forms are used to symbolize the various popular ideas concerning human beliefs and emotions. The group of more than 180 works is representative of all periods of Chinese jade carving, from Neolithic times to the Qing dynasty and illustrates the different uses of this most precious stone and the variety of carving techniques used across history.
Sidney Nolan Retrospective 
November 22, 007 to February 3, 2008

Sidney Nolan’s Colonial Head
This exhibition, the first major retrospective since Nolan's death in 1992, presents a selection of his most important masterpieces of landscape, Ned Kelly, and other themes of Australian and European history. Consisting of approximately 135 paintings, this new retrospective underlines the evolution of Nolan's vision from its genesis in St Kilda during the late 1930s to the United Kingdom a half a century later when the artist finally released his passion for large-scale spray-painted abstractions.
Mountains and Streams: Chinese Paintings from the NGV Collection 
November 29 to February 10, 2008
This exhibition draws upon material from the National Gallery of Victoria’s important collection of Asian art. It includes objects from the 14th to the 21st century such as landscapes or 'mountains and streams' depicted in paintings on scrolls and on porcelains, Daoist mountains carved in jade, cosmic bronze mountains as well as black-and-white photographs of sacred mountains in China. It also includes so-called 'dream stones' (marble plaques evocative of misty mountains).
Art Gallery is located on Art Gallery Rd, The Domain, Sydney. Tel: +61 (0)2 9225 1744. Admission: A$10. Open: daily, 10am-5pm.

 

Tokyo

Mori Art Museum
Website:  http://www.mori.art.museum/english/
Roppongi Crossing 2007: Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art
October 13 to January 14, 2008
Roppongi Crossing is a series of exhibitions produced by the Mori Art Museum to introduce Japanese creative talent working in a wide range of genres. The first in the series was held in 2004 – and is to this day used as a reference point for contemporary Japanese visual culture. For “Roppongi Crossing 2007” four curators focused on the idea of 'intersection,' selecting 36 artists whose work has an energy and sphere of influence that spreads beyond the confines of conventional artistic categories. Their art takes a variety of forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, design, video, manga, games, and even unlikely genres such as doll making and bathhouse mural painting. In addition to artists who are emerging on the scene right now, the list also includes others who drove the scene in its formative period in the 1960s and 1970s, and whose feverish output continues unabated today.
Mori Art Museum is located at Roppongi Hills Mori Tower 53F, Roppongi 6-10-1, Minato-Ku, Tokyo 106-6150. Tel: + 81 (0)3 6406-6100. Subway: Hibiya Line to Roppongi station; followed by a 3-5 minute walk. Open: daily 10 am to 10 pm (Tuesdays 10 am-5 pm).

Suntory Museum of Art
Website:  http://www.suntory.com/culture-sports/sma/
National Treasure, Choju-Jinbutsu-Giga Emaki
 November 3, 2007-December 16
Surrounding the four scrolls entitled Choju-Giga (a.k.a. Choju-Jinbutsu-Giga/Frolicking Animals and Figuresemaki) of the Kosanji Monastery in Kyoto's Togano-o district, existing fragments and copies will be on display to reveal the entire picture of the Choju-Giga. While multilaterally grasping the fascination of the Choju-Giga and categorizing articles by pedigree, the exhibition studies the essence of Japanese culture through the Choju-Giga legacy.
WA-Mode -The Elegant Costumes Of Japanese Women-
December 23 to January 14, 2008
The term WA-mode refers to traditional Japanese fashion, and this exhibition introduces the culture of the colorful and gorgeous clothing and accessories worn by Japanese women through kosode kimono, hair accessaries, makeup tools, Edo and Meiji period ukiyoe woodblock prints from the museum's collection, and Suntory Museum Tempozan posters as well.
Biombo: Japanese Heritage as Legend of Gold
To October 21, 2007
A special exhibition celebrating the opening of the new Suntory Museum
The new address for the Suntory Museum is Tokyo Midtown Gardenside 9-7-4 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-8643. Subway: Hibiya. Open Wednesday to Saturdays 10 am to 8 pm;  Sundays and Mondays 10 am to 6 pm. Admission.

 

Toronto

Art Gallery of Ontario
Website: http://www.ago.net/navigation/flash/frameset.cfm
The Art Gallery of Ontario is located at 317 Dundas Street West at the corner of Dundas and McCaul streets. Open Wednesdays to Fridays from noon to 9 pm; Saturdays and Sundays until 5:30 pm. Admission.

Ontario Science Centre
http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca
Hurricane on the Bayou
Opens October 12, 2007
This new IMAX® film centers on Louisiana before, during and after the disasterous Hurricane Katrina. An emotional journey through the wetlands of Louisiana and a tribute to the undying spirit of New Orleans, the film is both a musical celebration of New Orleans as well as a haunting document of Katrina’s powerful effects.
The Ontario Science Centre is located at 770 Don Mills Road (at the corner of Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue East) in Toronto. Open seven days a week except December 25, CAN$17 (adults) / $12.50 (youth / seniors) / $10 (children)

 

Venice

Museo Correr
www.museiciviciveneziani.it 
Art Tempo: Where Time Becomes Art
Extended to November 5, 2007
The exhibition examines the relationship between art, time and the power of display, representing a breadth of cultures and periods and featuring over 300 objects ranging from rare archaeological materials to contemporary installations. The work of over 80 artists will include Francis Bacon, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, James Turell, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.
Museo Correr is located at Piazza San Marco 52 Phone: +39 041 5209070

52nd Venice Biennale
Website: www.LaBiennale.com
June 12 to November 21, 2007
Held at the Arsenale and in the Italian Pavilion at the Giardini Gardens, the biannual exhibition will present about a hundred artists from 77 countries.
Other festivals in Venice running concurrently with the Biennale are:
51st International Festival of Contemporary Music —October 4 to 13

 

Vienna

Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
Website: http://www.khm.at/homeE/homeE.html
The Late Titian and the Sensuality of Painting
October 18 to January 6, 2008
The exhibition, the result of extensive research, scholarship and planning, brings together about sixty paintings, among them more than thirty loans. It focuses on a wide range of topics ranging from the fertile cultural conditions found in Venice during the third quarter of the 16th century to Titian’s patrons and colleagues (especially Sciavone, Tintoretto and Jacopo Bassano) to the figure of the artist himself. The main focus is on the last twenty-five years of Titian’s creative life, which will be viewed against the background of the master’s family circumstances, questions of inheritance, and the role of his studio assistants. In addition, the exhibition includes around fifteen sixteenth-century graphic works from the Albertina that document the overwhelming popularity of Titian’s compositions, and illustrate how his inventions were translated into a simpler pictorial language that appealed to a wider public.
In February, the exhibition moves too Venice’s Gallerie dell’Accademia.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum’s main building is located at Maria Theresien-Platz. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10 am to 6 pm except Thursdays when it closes at 9 pm. Admission. Note: The Lipizzaner Museum in the Stallburg as well as Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, although operated as independent museums, are also part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Since January 2001, the Museum of Ethnology and the Austrian Theatre Museum have also been part of the group.

 

Washington, D.C.

National Gallery of Art
Website: www.nga.gov 
J.M.W. Turner
October 1 to January 6, 2008

Turner’s Snow Storm
Rising from a modest background, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) became the leading British artist of his era. Over the course of six decades, he transformed the genre of landscape through works that proclaimed him heir to the old masters even while they heralded a new and visionary direction in 19th-century painting. Known for his technical brilliance and startling use of light and color, he incorporated learned references to literature, mythology, and historical events in his pictures. His commitment to the idea that watercolor equaled oil painting in complexity and expressive power raised the standard for others working in the medium. This exhibition is the most comprehensive survey of Turner's work ever presented in the United States. More than 145 paintings and watercolors reveal the astonishing talent and imagination of this artist—whom Alfred, Lord Tennyson called "The Shakespeare of landscape."
Edward Hopper
September 16 to January 21, 2008
This is the first comprehensive survey of Edward Hopper's career to be seen in American museums outside New York in more than 25 years. Focusing on the period of the artist's great achievements—from about 1925 to midcentury—the exhibition will feature such iconic paintings as Automat (1927), Drug Store (1927), Early Sunday Morning (1930), New York Movie (1939), and Nighthawks (1942).
States and Variations: Prints by Jasper Johns
March 11 to October 28, 2007
East Building, Upper Level, North West
The focus of this exhibition is 1st Etchings, 2nd State, a portfolio of 13 prints by Jasper Johns that was published in 1969. It includes a title page and two versions each of six motifs: Ale Cans, Paint Brushes, Flag, Light Bulb, Flash Light, and 0 through 9, the latter being a configuration of overlapping numerals. Also featured in the exhibition are prints and two sculpture reliefs, made before and after the 1969 portfolio, presenting variations on the six motifs. In addition, annotated working proofs and trial proofs selected from the National Gallery of Art's recent and ongoing acquisition of Johns' personal collection are on view throughout the show.
The National Gallery is located on the National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW. Open: Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.  Free admission.

The Phillips Collection
Website:  http://www.phillipscollection.org
Impressionists by the Sea
October 20 to January 13, 2008
The quality of light and movement are among the hallmarks of impressionism, and during the last half of the 19th century the seacoasts of northern France offered artists ample opportunity to utilize their novel techniques, as they attempted to capture the effects of weather and light on the coastline. They also explored their interest in contemporary life; the seaside had become a major holiday destination, and the beaches were transformed as vacationers flocked to areas that previously were of interest only to local fishermen. With approximately 60 works by major figures of 19th-century French painting, the exhibition will focus particularly on the work of Claude Monet, and will also feature major works by Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, and Gustave Courbet, along with James Abbott McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent.
The Phillips Collection is located at 1600 21st Street, NW. Open daily except Mondays with extended hours Thursday and Sundays. Admission

Smithsonian Museum
Website: www.smithsonian.org
Sep 27, 2007-Feb 10, 2008
Legacy: Spain and the United States in the Age of Independence, 1763-1848
Through some 70 portraits and compelling authentic documents, this exhibition unveils Spain's key role in the Revolutionary War and the founding of the new nation
Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World
October 10 to January 27, 2008
On view in the African Art Museum for the first time in the US are some 200 works disclosing the art and culture of the Tuareg of Mali, Niger, and Algeria
The Smithsonian Information Center in the institution's first building, popularly known as the Castle, which is open daily 8:30 am-5:30 pm. The Center serves as the focal point for information about the Institution's 17 museums and National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and two museums in New York City. This distinctive red, sandstone building is centrally located on the National Mall, and may be entered from either Jefferson Drive on the north or through the Enid A. Haupt Garden on the south. Admission free at most of the museums.

 

Williamstown (Massachusetts)

The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute
Website: www.clarkart.edu
Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner: The Manton Collection
To October 28, 2007
The works of art on display in this exhibition are drawn from one of the most important private collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British art assembled in recent decades. Created by Sir Edwin A. G. Manton, a business leader and arts patron who died in 2005 at the age of 96, the collection is particularly rich in the works of John Constable, the leading painter of the English countryside in the first half of the nineteenth century and one of the great landscapists of the Romantic Movement.
Consuming Passion: Fragonard's Allegories of Love
October 28 to January 21, 2008
When the great eighteenth-century French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard died in 1806, he had long ceased to be a central figure in the Parisian art world. His most characteristic work—brightly hued and fluidly painted pictures of courting aristocrats, scenes of rustic life, pleasure gardens, and erotic mythologies made in the 1760s and 1770s—seemed irrelevant after the political, social, and cultural upheavals of the French Revolution. Yet his obituary in the Journal de Paris lamented that, “the French school has lost a justly admired painter,” whose works associated him with “the very idea of the Graces.” The writer cited in particular two paintings, The Fountain of Love and The Sacrifice of the Rose, pictures from Fragonard’s late career that are relatively little known today.
Clark Institute is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts.  Tel. +1 413-458-2303. 

 

Zurich

Beyeler Foundation
http://www.beyeler.com/fondation/e/html_01start/01_sta__main.php
The Other Collection: Homage to Hildy and Ernst Beyeler
August 19 to January 6, 2008
At Galerie Beyeler, where it all began, will have been in existence for sixty years in 2007, a selection of the finest works of art that have passed through its hands will be made, bringing a dialogue about and placing these works in the historical context of the museum's collection.
Forests of the World: The Other Commitment
August 19 to January 6, 2008
Forests of the World presents a spectacular portrait of the trees and forests of our planet in 100 mostly large-format photographs. The exhibition is not just aimed to please on a superficial level, but to jolt us and draw attention to the urgent need to protect one of the most important foundation stones of our existence. Pictures by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Ernst Haas, Frans Lanting, and numerous other photographers represented in well-known international museums and collections, are included.
Beyeler Foundation, Baselstrasse 101, 4125 Riehen/Basel. Tel: +41 (0)61 645 9700. Tram number 6 from Basel SBB main train station (around an hour’s ride from Zurich). Open: daily 10am-6pm; Wed until 8pm. Entry: SFr21.

Kunsthaus
Website: http://www.kunsthaus.ch/
Video Lounge
September 7 to November 18, 2007
An exhibition of artists’ videos from the 1970s to the present day., the videos belong to a collection begun by Kunsthaus Zürich as one of the very first Swiss art museums to focus on the genre, a collection expanded to this day. The collection, now largely restored, newly catalogued and digitalized, is once again accessible to the general public.
Félix Vallotton
October 5 to January 13, 2008
Shortly before the opening of the new Kunsthaus building in 1909, the first exhibition of works by Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) took place. Young girls were refused entry because the material was not deemed suitable for their eyes. Opinions of this artist’s work have changed in the meantime. Nowadays he is seen not only as a versatile painter and draughtsman but also as an intelligent observer of his own time, whose artistic representation of bourgeois convention is both critical and ironic. The pointed nature of his imagery – which impossibly overstepped the mark in the eyes of many of his contemporaries – earned him an international reputation as a Swiss exponent of the avant-garde. In this carefully selected presentation of 90 paintings from the full range of his output—many from private collections—Félix Vallotton is seen as an important Symbolist in Swiss art in the early days of Modernism.  
Kunsthaus Zurich is located at Heimplatz 1, 8001 Zurich. Open: Tue-Thu 10am-9pm; Fri-Sun 10am-5pm. Tel: +41 (0)44 253 8484. Tickets: SFr16.