Louvre show coming to SAM
Seattle Art Museum has announced details of the most extensive - and expensive - traveling exhibition it’s ever hosted.
“Roman Art from the Louvre,” which opens Feb. 21, will include artifacts dating from the first century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. Among the 200 works in the exhibition: a seven-foot sculpted head of the daughter of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and sculptural depictions of emperors Augustus, Caligula and Nero.
A large-scale mosaic depicting the mythological judgment of Paris will take the spotlight, as well as frescoes, sarcophagi, marble reliefs and intricate gold jewelry.
Museum director Mimi Gates stressed that this exhibition, which she called “a coup” for SAM, would not have been possible before its expansion. The show will fill the special-exhibitions galleries of the museum’s fourth floor, built to accommodate the great weight of such massive stone sculptures.
While the famed Musée du Louvre is revamping its classical galleries, some of its holdings are on the road in the United States; SAM is the only West Coast venue for this show. The tour will raise money for conservation of artworks at the Louvre. SAM officials won’t release the loan fee for the show, but say it’s the most expensive they’ve ever mounted.
During the exhibit, museum admission for adults will be $20 rather than the usual $13.
The show runs here Feb. 21 through May 11 and later travels to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
SAM and Seattle Opera are joining forces to promote their upcoming programming, which shares an Italian theme. At a press luncheon Tuesday co-hosted by the two, Opera director Speight Jenkins talked about the three Italian operas scheduled here for early 2008: Ruggero Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci,” in January; Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” in March and Vincenzo Bellini’s “I Puritani” in May.
“Opera stems from things that belong to Italy,” Jenkins said. “Italian is the most singable language.”
SAM and Seattle Opera will share educational programming, including a talk at the museum by the opera’s Perry Lorenzo on Feb. 23, to complement the opening of “Roman Art from the Louvre.”
Also coming to SAM in early 2008 is the previously announced exhibition “The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece,” including three gilt panels of the exquisite doors created more than 500 years ago for the Baptistery in Florence.
SAM deputy director of art Chiyo Ishikawa calls the doors “one of the most celebrated works of art in the world.” The small exhibition has played to much fanfare at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it is now on view, and after the SAM exhibition will return to Florence, where the doors will be sealed in a special chamber to preserve them.
SAM also announced other upcoming exhibitions, beginning with a new take on the enormous popular appeal of the Impressionists. “Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past” opens June 19, 2008, and will examine the way the once provocative style developed out of earlier painting traditions. The show will be an art-history lesson that pairs early paintings by Titian, Francisco Goya and Jean-Honoré Fragonard with those by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas, among others.
Also on the lineup for 2008 is a show of “Black Art” opening March 25, 2008, in the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Gallery and “Kodiak,” opening April 19, featuring Tacoma brothers Oscar Tuazon and Eli Hansen. “Kodiak” is the first installment of the new SAM Next series, selected by contemporary art curator Michael Darling to introduce emerging artists from this region and beyond.
In October, Northwest Native American art will take the stage in “S’Abadeb (The Gifts): Coast Salish Art,” organized for SAM by curator Barbara Brotherton.
Sheila Farr: sfarr@seattletimes.com