Visitors to the Museum this fall will find exciting changes to the galleries exhibiting European art of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, including a complete reconsideration of the display and interpretation of some of the most beloved favorites—from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge and Vincent van Gogh’s Tarascon Diligence, to new acquisitions and works long held in storage. Landmarks of the refreshed galleries include a substantial remixing of media, with works on paper—most notably nineteenth-century photographs—incorporated more deeply for the first time, alongside paintings, sculpture, and works of decorative art. Such an approach, along with comparative material that includes Japanese prints and African sculptures, is designed to highlight what might be termed “the period eye,” and to underpin the visual sources that had a profound influence on European artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Visitors will discover a strong sense of the cultural, social, and political contexts of the period, including the interactions between industrial development and the fine arts, and of the impact of colonialism on visual practice. Research Curator of European Painting and Sculpture Betsy Rosasco comments: “We hope to provide a more complex and resonant vision of cultural history, while at the same time featuring many of the Museum’s strongest works of art. This has been an exciting team effort, and the visitor’s experience will benefit, we think, from the dialogue among works not previously seen together.

A major objective of the project has been the provision of fresh interpretive materials for all of the almost one hundred objects on view. Curator of Education and Academic Programming Caroline Harris and Rosasco headed a team that included the director, five curators, and Princeton University graduate and undergraduate student interns who have spent months researching and writing interpretive wall labels for the installation. During the academic year, the Museum will continue to roll out additional interpretive strategies for these galleries on a layered model offering different levels of interpretation for visitors of varied interests and experiences. Faculty and other experts from multiple disciplines will lend their voices to a series of “interventions” in the galleries, introducing visitors to a multiplicity of points of view and approaches to the visual arts of the period.

The galleries have been arranged in carefully considered thematic groupings that follow a general chronology from the late eighteenth century to the dawn of the twentieth century, while extracting specific themes for investigation and honoring visual affinities among works of art. One section, for example, delves into academic practice in the fine arts, while another features the nineteenth-century fascination with Orientalism—the depiction of Eastern cultures in the West—and includes artistic interpretations of the “exotic Other,” such as John Frederick Lewis’s A Gondolier, Venice or Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Napoleon in Egypt, as well as early attempts to document ancient sites in Egypt in photographs and prints. Another cluster focuses on the impact of café culture and the performing arts (such as opera and ballet) on the artists Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Such an approach more effectively mirrors academic practices that have emerged in recent decades in which scholars increasingly work across the disciplinary boundaries of art history, history, and comparative literature, of anthropology, philosophy, and Near Eastern studies.

Many visitor favorites remain on view, even if they find new positions within the galleries—including two Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin stilllife paintings, Edgar Degas’s Dancers, and three treasured works by Claude Monet. Masterpieces from the magnificent collection of the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation— including Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire and superb examples of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art by Van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and works by twentieth-century master Amedeo Modigliani—will provide key visual anchors in a number of galleries, including in the galleries of modern art, to be reinstalled later in the fall.

The selected works of art can be seen in a new light, with a new color palette on the walls, materially rich casework inspired by the galleries themselves, and other subtle changes necessitated by the low light levels required for highly fragile works on paper. Two windows are covered with scrims to lower the light levels to accommodate prints, drawings, and photographs. Such works must also be regularly rotated to assure their long-term preservation, affording the opportunity to incorporating new selections every three to four months. For example, audiences will have an opportunity to see Toulouse-Lautrec’s color lithographic poster of 1892 that announced the opening of the newly renovated Parisian nightclub the Divan-Japonais along with his color lithographic portrait of actor and dancer Marcelle Lender. When these works are rotated in December, the Museum will highlight more objects from its rich collections of nineteenth-century works on paper.

This project of enlivening the collections galleries and activating more deeply the use of the Museum’s extraordinary collections continues the work begun last winter with the reopening of the long-closed medieval galleries, and extends into the galleries for modern art named for benefactor Peter B. Lewis. As winter approaches, visitors will find further opportunities for new or renewed discovery, as a similar reinstallation gets under way for the galleries of European art from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century—a process that should be completed in early 2011. Museum visitors are encouraged to visit often and discover old favorites seen in a new light and make new friends as the galleries develop throughout the coming year.

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Caroline Harris Curator of Education and Academic Programming

Betsy Rosasco Research Curator of European Painting and Sculpture