Upcoming Events
American Identities: A New Look
This major installation of more than three hundred fifty objects from the Brooklyn Museum's premier collection of American art integrates a vast array of fine and decorative arts (silver, furniture, ceramics, and textiles) ranging in date from the colonial period to the present. For the first time, ... [ + ]major objects from these exceptional collections are joined by selections from the Museum's important holdings of Native American and Spanish colonial art. The galleries are organized according to a set of eight innovative themes, through which visitors can explore historical moments and crucial ideas in American visual culture over the course of nearly three hundred years. Featured within these sections are American masterworks for which the Museum's collections have long been known, by such artists and makers as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Herter Brothers, Union Porcelain Works, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Frank Lloyd Wright, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe, William Edmondson, David Smith, Richard Diebenkorn, and Robert Colescott. Visitors are invited to tour the galleries using an audio guide that offers a variety of voices and perspectives, or they may follow the comprehensive program of signage that provides detailed discussions of the gallery themes, individual object labels, and "Community Voices" labels written by members of the extended Brooklyn Museum community. Also included in the galleries are four video stations, one showing excerpts from the Museum-produced slide show Facing History: The Image of the Black in American Art and three others featuring continuous loops of early films by Thomas Edison that relate to the gallery themes. The tour begins in a gallery called A Brooklyn Orientation (just off the main elevator lobby on the fifth floor), offering an introduction to the Museum's collections of American art and to Brooklyn as a center of art making and production from the colonial era to the present. Introductory signage and a gallery map are also provided at the secondary entrance to the gallery (just off the Cantor Galleries). Visitors are invited to enjoy four seating areas within the galleries for comfortable extended viewing of the works on hand.
Students with valid I.D. and Seniors: $10
Ages under 19 and Members: Free
First Saturday of every month except January, July and September: Free
Small Wonders from the American Collections
This special exhibition celebrates a major new installation in the Luce Center for American Art: Visible Storage ? Study Center that gives the public access to more than 350 additional objects from the Museum’s collections. Since its opening in January 2005, the Luce Visible Storage ? Study Center h... [ + ]as housed approximately 2,100 objects in two types of storage units: vitrined cases and paintings screens. The facility also contains forty-two drawers for storage. Beginning in mid-October and in stages over subsequent months, they will be filled with works from the Museum’s renowned American holdings and opened to the public. Once the drawers are full, the number of objects on view in visible storage will rise to 2,500—an increase of almost 20 percent.
The drawers’ contents will encompass a variety of objects from the Americas—including art of the United States as well as of the indigenous and colonial peoples of North and South America—and dating from the pre-Columbian period to the present day. Although the works range widely in terms of medium, date, function, and geographical origin, they do share a diminutive scale and suitability for flat storage. Among the objects that will be installed in the drawers are: American and Hopi ceramic tiles; Mexican pottery stamps; jewelry and other ornaments from Native and South American cultures; Modernist jewelry; silverplated flatware and serving pieces; Spanish Colonial devotional objects; American portrait and mourning miniatures; commemorative medals; and embroidery. As in other sections of the Luce Visible Storage ? Study Center, objects in the drawers are densely installed to maximize the available space and are grouped by type, medium, or culture. Visitors can learn more about the works by using one of the nearby computer kiosks in the facility, or by accessing the Luce database online. To obtain a list of a drawer’s entire contents, use the Map feature and select numbers 41 through 47.
Held in conjunction with the drawers installation, Small Wonders from the American Collections features an eclectic selection of seventy works of art on the walls and in the display cases above the drawers. This exhibition both highlights objects that will be installed in the drawers and reveals a diversity of cultural traditions and artistic practices that constitute American art. A variety of jewelry and objects of personal adornment—although produced by different peoples—function similarly to signify information about the wearer’s identity. Flatware, pins, and other silver items on display reflect a broad array of forms, styles, and uses for this valuable metal. Ceramic tiles made contemporaneously by Native and non-Native Americans provide an interesting cross-cultural comparison with respect to the decoration and marketing of these wares.
Students with valid I.D. and Seniors: $10
Ages under 19 and Members: Free
First Saturday of every month except January, July and September: Free
The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago
The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with... [ + ] a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table.
Students with valid I.D. and Seniors: $10
Ages under 19 and Members: Free
First Saturday of every month except January, July and September: Free
Decorative Arts Galleries
The Brooklyn Museum's decorative arts collection occupies the fourth floor of the Museum. The focus of the collection is a group of American period rooms ranging in date from the 18th century to the 20th century. Interspersed with the period rooms are galleries that display an outstanding collection... [ + ] of American furniture, silver, pewter, glass, and ceramics. Additional objects from the decorative arts collection are on display in American Identities.
Students with valid I.D. and Seniors: $10
Ages under 19 and Members: Free
First Saturday of every month except January, July and September: Free
European Paintings
Although the collection of European paintings has often been presented in a chronological arrangement by school or style, this installation exploits the architecture of the soaring Beaux-Arts Court by devoting each wall to an exploration of the meaningful connections that the works display when arra... [ + ]nged according to theme. The section called “Painting Land and Sea” surveys the formal methods that painters have used to render their physical surroundings across the centuries. “Art and Devotion” considers the ways in which the artists of the early Renaissance expressed the central tenets of the Catholic faith. “Narratives Large and Small” shows how artists distill the elements of a story into a single telling moment. Finally, “Tracing the Figure” charts the enduring artistic interest in the human figure, from portraits that place an individual in a clearly defined place and time to timeless abstractions of the human form.
Students with valid I.D. and Seniors: $10
Ages under 19 and Members: Free
First Saturday of every month except January, July and September: Free
@brooklynmuseum
RT @Max_Kapusta: mugler at BK museum
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11 Hours Ago
Wine & conversation inspired by African Ancestors of Egypt and Nubia: From the Green Sahara to the Nile? Count us in!
#ArtHistoryHappyHour continues on 2/16. Shout out to Brooklyn-based wine club, Highly Recommended, for the delicious wine pairings.
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13 Hours Ago
POV: You and your Valentine are taking a stroll through the sexy and daring imagination of Thierry Mugler.
Do date night right with us on 2/11 from 6–10 pm with drinks at our restaurant, The Norm, followed by after-hours access to #Couturissime.
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17 Hours Ago
RT @Milancdior: Mugler Exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum is a must see if you live in NY 🤎 18 Hours Ago