Cantor Foundation Sponsors Carpeaux Exhibition and Catalogue at Metropolitan Museum
The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux opened to critical acclaim on March 10 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Sponsored by the Cantor Foundation, with additional support provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, the show is another in a series of important exhibitions about sculpture that have been presented to the public through significant support from the Cantor Foundation.
This exhibition of 160 works (including sculptures, paintings, and drawings) is organized around major projects that Carpeaux (1827–1875) undertook during his brief career. Groupings of drawings and models trace the evolution of such masterpieces as the Musée d’Orsay’s marble Prince Impérial with his Dog Nero and the Metropolitan’s own Ugolino and His Sons, also in marble. The artist’s genius for portraiture and modeling in clay shines particularly in this major retrospective. (Carpeaux’s work was to be an important influence on Rodin, who was a child of 13 when Carpeaux died. The older artist was to Rodin a technical marvel whose aesthetic choices represented much that the younger artist spent his career working to change.)
Writing in the exhibition’s catalog, also sponsored by the Cantor Foundation and by the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc., Iris Cantor expressed her admiration for the project: “This exhibition and this catalogue have been monumental undertakings. We congratulate all who have contributed to this effort. We are proud to play a role in sharing it.”
The exhibition was curated by James David Draper of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Edouard Papet of the Musée d’Orsay, and organized by the Met and the Musée d’Orsay. It closes in New York on May 26.
No Comments