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The Ages of the Sea
26 October 2012 – 27 January 2013
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation - Temporary Exhibitions Gallery
One hundred and nine works created between the sixteenth and the twentieth century originating from fifty-one institutions from ten different countries will be presented to the public at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as from 26th October.
The exhibition project, organized by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum with the support of the Musée d’Orsay, is based on an historical survey of the visual representation of the Sea and seeks to identify the major themes which led to its extensive and recurrent depiction in Western Painting. The exhibition will develop the concept that provides the title to the project in six sections: ‘The Age of Myths’, ‘The Age of Power’, ‘Sea and Labour’, Turmoil at Sea’, ‘The Ephemeral’, and ‘The Quest for Infinity’.
Van Goyen, Lorrain, Turner, Constable, Friedrich, Courbet, Boudin, Manet, Monet, Signac, Fattori, Sorolla, Klee, De Chirico, Hooper are some of the eighty-eight authors present in the exhibition with works of extraordinary quality. Portuguese painting, through works by Henrique Pousão, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, João Vaz, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and Menez, among others, will also contribute to this thorough and sometimes unexpected approach to such a fascinating subject.
Claude Gellée or Claude Lorrain (1604/1605-1682)
Landscape with the Embarkation of Saint Paula Romana at Ostia, 1639-1640
Oil on canvas, 211 cm x 145 cm. © Museo Nacional del Prado-Madrid (Spain)
Exhibition site
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Infinite tasks
When art and book unbind each other
20 July - 21 October 2012
Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Curated by Paulo Pires do Vale
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Dierick Bouts,
Annunciation (detail)
‘Bring together things that have not yet been brought together
and did not seem predisposed to be so’.
Robert Bresson
This exhibition is an expression in essay form of a twofold question: how does art put the book to the test, and how does the book put art art to the test? In this continuous mutual testing, the book and the work of art appear as ‘infinite tasks’ – a concept which Edmond Husserl used to define humanity after the development of philosophy.
Before philosophy, according to Husserl, culture and man were tasks completed within the realm of finitude. The ‘endless horizon’ that opened up all around man was not yet in evidence. With the emergence of philosophy, the closed and finite horizon was replaced by one of endless and endlessly reformulated possibility. Not only in the context of philosophy, science and theoretical knowledge but also in all cultural fields: infinity extended and contaminated the whole of human existence. It revolutionized man as the creator of culture.
This exhibition is not just an exhibition of books, but of works of art in which the book has a decisive presence. It encompasses paintings, films, sculptures and installations in a montage in which medieval illuminated manuscripts are to be found near contemporary works of art, seventeenth-century illustrated books alongside twentieth-century conceptual films or books, all with one intention: that of investigating what a book is and what it is capable of. What sort of a device is this?
We propose a reflection on the limits – which are constantly challenged and reconfigured – of art and the book to come (Blanchot). We show the book as a laboratory of aesthetic experiences, a medium that opens up an infinite horizon of possibilities to art while also questioning and extending our ‘safe’, traditional concept of the book: is this still a book? Is this still a work of art?
EThis exhibition takes place in the turning of a page. It is the unfolding of a simple turning of the page of a book: it is concentrated in the fold between two images from a book by Robert Fludd. From an infinite blackness to the explosion of light which occurs in that darkness. From the origin (obscurity) to the beginning (the initial explosion of light). From the absence of light, the darkness where everything begins, the essential obscurity, to the explosion of the beginning. In a turning of the page. This exhibition takes place within this fold. It is a com-mentary, a thinking-with that turning of the page. An essay, an exercise in thinking and feeling: what can a book do? What does it offer the work of art and what can it give to it?
In this fold our desire to find another fold intensifies: that of the relationship between the library and the museum. To turn the library into a gallery, and the gallery into a library. Freed from defined boundaries.
In this expositive essay, there are five core themes, like potential fragments for understanding what a book is (or what we are when faced with a book – that which opens in front of us/itself). One possible course among others. Engaged. Which accepts contradictions and dead ends as essential. Where, with the required obscurity (is it the light that books seek?), the question of what a book is or what it can be becomes clearer:
With infinity in your hands
The crack and the explosion: coming in / going out
Infinite line: never-ending story
Everything exists to become part of a book
The fire and the book yet to come
The starting points for this multiple journey, this wandering, were the collections of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and Art Library, institutions that carry on the task of collecting initiated by their founder.Infinite Tasks.
Exhibition site
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Treasures of the museum
A Greek vase in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
por Maria Helena Rocha-Pereira
29 March to 30 December 2012
Inaugurating a series of exhibits dedicated to a single piece or a small selection of works from the permanent collection, the museum publishes a study by Maria Helena Rocha-Pereira, the greatest Portuguese authority on Classical Studies, covering its fourth-century BC , Attic red-figure painted cályx-kratêr. The vase, considered the finest specimen of Greek classic ceramics in Portugal, was acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian at the important sale of T. Hope collection, through Christie’s, London, in 1917.
The installation of a touch screen in the proximity of vase will allow the visitor to explore its rich iconography.
Vaso (cályx-kratêr)
Attica, c. 440 B.C.
Terracotta. H. 42; Diam. 44 cm
Inv. no. 682
Website of the exhibition
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L’Hotel Gulbenkian, 51 Avenue d’Iena. Memory of the Place
21st October 2011 to 22 January 2012
Exhibition Gallery of the Museum
After Paris, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum will host the exhibition «L’Hôtel Gulbenkian, 51 avenue d’Iéna. Memory of the Place». The exhibition tells the story of the home of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian in Paris, located at no. 51, av. d’Iéna, in close connection with the exceptional path of the owner, a collector and a business man, and with the Foundation he left to Portugal.
Learn more about this exhibition
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In the Presence of Things. Four Centuries of European Still-Life Painting
Part Two: 19th - 20th Centuries (1840 - 1955)
21 October 2011 to 8 January 2012
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Temporary Exhibition Gallery
Following the show presented in 2010, the second part will focus on modern still life in the 19th century and on the fundamental changes which occurred during the first half of the 20th century.
A revival of interest in still life among avant garde painters in France will be illustrated through the works of the Realists and the new stylistic language of Impressionism. A centerpiece of this part of the show will be the museum’s own Still-life with Melon by Claude Monet. At the end of the 19th century still life was particularly appealing to Post-Impressionist painters like Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin, who will be represented by a number of key loans.
The exhibition will show the transformation of the genre into a vehicle for ever more radical pictorial experimentation in the work of Picasso, Braque and Matisse. Still-life will be shown to have allowed artists to engage and critique contemporary society. It was also overlaid with the new realities of the subjective experience in the work of Magritte and Dalí. The fragmentation and reinvention of the very category of still life will be explored through sculptures and artists’ use of actual objects as works of art.
This is the proposed journey of stil-life painting in Western Art through different ages and geographical places, illustrated with major works by painters who have treated this artistic genre. Still life was the pretext for painters’ explorations, and it is the source of fascination to many museum visitors.
The exhibition is being curated by Professor Neil Cox, Graduate Director, University of Essex, a specialist in twentieth-century French art. He wrote his PhD thesis on Picasso, and is the author of a vast bibliography.
Exhibition site
Lectures series
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| Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) |
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CONSTANT LE BRETON (1895-1985)
Opens 20 May
21 May – 8 August 2010
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Temporary Exhibition Gallery – floor 01
Sixty-seven works, comprising fifty-two oil paintings and fifteen watercolours, complete the set of objects on show at this monograph exhibition devoted to the French painter Constant Le Breton, presented in Portugal for the first time.
The artist was born in 1895 at Saint-Germain-des Prés, Anjou. He was the son of sailors, who revealed from an early stage a particular enthusiasm for drawing and etching.
The show offers a retrospective of the major themes from his long artistic career – landscapes, portraits, interior scenes, still-lifes, views of Paris - and his divided into six different sections which document the variety of his production. It is possible to understand Le Breton’s artistic debt to painting from the second half of the 19th century – with the obvious influence of major painters such as Corot, Boudin or Manet – a period which received, as we know, a particular attention on the part of Calouste Gulbenkian in amassing his collection.
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| Constant Le Breton (1895-1985) |
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In the Presence of Things. Four Centuries of European Still-Life Painting
Part I: 17th – 18th Centuries
12 February 2010 to 2 May 2010
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Temporary Exhibition Gallery
The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is currently organising an ambitious international exhibition dedicated to the theme of European still life painting, the first of its kind to be held in Portugal.
Entitled “In the Presence of Things. Four Centuries of European Still-Life Painting”, the exhibition will be presented in two parts and will consist of a series of masterpieces by renowned European artists from the beginnings of the genre up to the mid-20th century.
The first part, which will be on show from February 12th to May 2nd, 2010, brings together 71 paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Works from the 19th and 20th centuries will be shown from October 21st, 2011 to January 8th, 2012.
This exhibition will explore the abiding themes of still life across nearly four hundred years: the fruit piece, the game piece, kitchen and banquet still lifes, the flower painting, musical instruments, the cabinet of curiosities, and the trompe-l’oeil. The diversity of artistic treatment of these themes in different countries will be shown through related works, such as the fruit still lifes of the female artists Louise Moillon and Fede Galizia or the kitchen scenes by Jean-Siméon Chardin and Luis Meléndez.
Other artists who cultivated this genre and who are also represented in the exhibition include Juan Sanchéz Cotán, Juan van der Hamen, Pieter Claesz, Juan Zurbarán, Rembrandt van Rijn, Antonio de Pereda, Nicolas Largillierre, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Luis de Meléndez and Francisco de Goya.
The show will examine the wide-ranging cultural and social significance of paintings of objects and foodstuffs, without the presence of the human figure. Still-life subjects contained diverse meanings for different audiences. The double-edged meaning of still lifes will be exposed: reassuring images of material contentment could also contain moral messages concerning abundance and consumption. The exhibition will include examples from the rich tradition of the Vanitas still life, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant cultures.
This exhibition has only been made possible due to the commitment of the many lending institutions, private collectors and museums, such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Metropolitam Museum in New York, The Louvre Museum, The Prado Museum, The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Mauritshuis in The Hague, The National Gallery in London and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, among so many others.
The exhibition is curated by Prof. Peter Cherry, currently professor and Head of Department of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and an expert in Spanish and Italian still-life paintings. In this first part of the exhibition Prof. Cherry will be assisted by Dr. John Loughman for Dutch, Flemish and German paintings, and Dr. Lesley Stevenson for French paintings. Professor Neil Cox, from the University of Essex, will provide the guidelines for the second part of the exhibition concerning the 19th-20th century.
The exhibition catalogue, which consists of two volumes, one for each of the two parts of the exhibition, will be published in both Portuguese and English. It will contain entries for all exhibited works. The different sections of the show are introduced by contextual essays, written in a scholarly, yet accessible form, by the specialists above.
Exhibition site
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| Abraham Susenier (c. 1620-1666/72) |
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| Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) |
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ART DECO, 1925
16th October 2009 to 3rd January 2010
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Temporary Exhibition Gallery
The evocation of the Art Deco period in France, through the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts from 1925, is widely justified by the confrontation between a moderate modernism and a more revolutionary front characterizing the Pavilion Doors and the formal vocabulary of the period decorators. The seven months during which the international exhibition was shown highlighted an underlying duality that came to characterize decorative arts until World War II.
The main purpose of that Exhibition, as defined by its Organizing Committee in a report dated from 1915, excluded all and any reference to tradition. In the formal plan, this initiative should present itself exclusively through “Modern Art”, a kind of artistic “Renaissance” which, from the social point of view, would create a response “both to the more modest needs and to the luxury whims”.
Paradoxically, from the study of the works shown in the different French Pavilions – furniture, decorative art objects, painting and sculpture – results a diversified set of pieces where a very particular modernism and a dominant neoclassicism, more exuberant than simple, coexist.
The purpose of the exhibition, to be presented at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, curated by Chantal Bizot and Dany Sautot, the invited experts, is based on this ambiguity – a “singular unit” - gathering only works from the best artists and the most famous manufactures and ateliers, selected for the 1925 Exhibition. Many of the works presented there integrate the current exhibition, such as Spring, from Janniot, a composition expressly created for the Ruhlmann Pavilion (Hôtel d’un riche Collectionneur), acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian in 1939.
The exhibition includes furniture pieces from Ruhlmann, Leleu, Groult and Dunand, as well as silver and gold ware from Christofle, jewellery from Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier, Chaumet and Boucheron, ceramics from Jourdain and Braquemond, porcelains from Rapin, paintings from Le Corbusier, Léger and Laurencin, sculptures from Janniot and Joseph Bernard, glassware from Baccarat and Lalique, textiles from Dufrêne and Miklos, and also illustrated and hard-cover books (Schmied, Dunand and Legrain), from foreign public and private collections, mainly French, but also from national collections, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection.
Between the tradition myth and the quest for progress, the setting of the exhibition will allow for a stylistic reading of the works whilst trying to enhance similarities and differences.
The catalogue, reproducing all pieces, will include texts which are to be understood as reference. The exhibition will provide a better knowledge of an artistic period of significance and which was largely accepted and generated much curiosity towards the public.
Press Release
Images and additional information
Exhibition site
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Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)
June 26th to September 6th, 2009
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation will be showing a large monographic exhibition of the work by the French artist Henri Fantin-Latour. The exhibition which is jointly organised with Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, will be on display in Lisbon between June 25th and September 6th, 2009, and will then proceed to Madrid where it will remain on display from September 28th 2009 to January 10th, 2010.
Seventy five works among Fantin-Latour’s masterpiece paintings, as well as some of his sketches, will be grouped in eleven different sections, in the same chronological order as they were produced by the artist, including self portraits, copies made by the artist in the Louvre, intimist portraits, still-lives from his early years, studies and readings, portraits of contemporary artists and writers, bouquets of roses and different flowers, themes related to music, austere portraits and family portraits, Symbolist themes, and finally the still-lives of his later years. The exhibition is curated by Vincent Pomarède (Director of the Department of Paintings at the Louvre), who is also responsible for selection of works.
Music, which the artist constantly tried to evoke, was the main source of inspiration in Henri Fantin-Latour’s work, and this exhibition endeavours to reveal two of the main creative virtues of this independent painter who was part of the Impressionist generation: his ability to portray on canvas the silent poetry of an intimate universe which he captured in a unique way, and the rare capacity to represent that world in its purest essence. The aim of this exhibition is, in brief, to show how this naturalist painter was able to add “an act of consciousness”, like Émile Zola stated in 1880, to the visual content of each of his paintings.
Exhibition site
Press release (English)
Download images
Press release (Français)
Télécharger les images
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Work Art in Focus
The 53 Stations of the Tokaido
東海道五十三次
Tokaido no Gojyusan-tsugi
25th November 2008 to 31st May 2009
Permanent Exhibition Gallery
The "Stations of the Tokaido" series of prints acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian is part of a set of about 200 Japanese woodblock prints from the 18th and 19th centuries which is usually kept in storage due to conservation reasons. Signed by three great masters - Hiroshige (1797-1858), Kunisada (1786-1865) and Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) -, the 55 prints, published circa 1845 by different publishers, depict legends and tales related to the stations of the Tokaido.
The Tokaido (Eastern Sea Road) was feudal Japanfs main land route. It ran for about 500 km between the old imperial capital, Kyoto, and the then-capital - Edo (Tokyo), military capital of the Tokugawa. The 53 stations (excluding the first and the last ones), situated along the way, sheltered not only the delegations of feudal lords but also all kinds of travellers, merchants, pilgrims and peasants. To travel through this sought after road was an adventure, due to its surprises, risks and difficulties, and also to the unfavourable weather conditions that ravaged the region, especially during the winter.
The Tokaido road would probably have sunk into oblivion had it not been immortalized by the greatest masters of Japanese printmaking.
The complete, sequenced presentation of this famous series must be carried out rotatively due to conservation reasons although the public will be able to view the missing prints in a interactive multimedia presentation. Therefore, every month each set of 18 prints will be replaced by a new one until the end of the exhibition. The first print, the Nihonbashi station, marks the starting point at the Nihon bridge in Edo (Tokyo) and the last one, the 55th, the Kyoto station, in the city's bridge.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
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The Path of Princes
Masterpieces from the Aga Khan Museum Collection
From 14th March to 27th July, 2008
Temporary Exhibition Gallery, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Following Parma, London and Paris, “The Path of Princes. Masterpieces of the Aga Khan Museum Collection” is now shown in Lisbon. The exhibition comprises works of Islamic art from the collection of the future Aga Khan Museum, due0 to open in 2011 in Toronto, Canada. These works of art are a testimony of the great diversity of the cultural heritage and patrimony of Muslim civilisations, covering a wide geographical region extending from the Iberian Peninsula to China, over a thousand-year period of history, from the 9th to the 19th century.
This exhibition is organised in two main themes: “The Word of God” and “The Power of the Sovereign”, including a remarkable selection of miniature paintings, manuscripts, jewellery, ceramics, wood and metal objects among other artworks.
The exhibition is held under the High Patronage of His Highness the Aga Khan and His Excellency the President of the Republic of Portugal.
First: “The Word of God”, presents Qur’ans from different periods of history, illustrating how the sacred text inspired works in both art and architecture. This section also explores themes such as devotion and spirituality, culminating with highlights on the theme of the garden, often equated with Paradise in the Qur’an.
Second, “The Power of the Sovereign”, presents works of art from some of the major historical courts of the Islamic world, ranging from precious gold and rock crystal, objects produced for the Fatimids in the 10th and 11th centuries, to portraits of Ottoman sultans and Qajars shahs. This section concludes with references to the Path of Princes, in which aspects of medieval and early modern Islamic court life, ranging from education and learning to riding and hunting, from patronage and statesmanship to the enjoyment of literature and music, are explored through artworks including scientific texts, books of fables, miniatures paintings and drawings, albums of calligraphy, pen cases, stringed instruments, wood panels, tiles ceramics and metalwork.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
 
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| RUSTAM PURSUES THE DIV AKVAN DISGUISED AS AN ONAGER |
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The ’Greek taste’. The birth of Neoclassicism in France, 1750-1775
15th February – 4th May, 2008
Temporary Exhibition Gallery at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
The 'Greek Taste' exhibition, organised by the Department of Decorative Arts of the Louvre Museum, to be presented at the Royal Palace of Madrid (until January 6, 2008), will open to the public at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on the 15th February 2008, thanks to the excellent long-established cultural relationship between the Foundation and these two institutions.
An exhibition of around one hundred works of art, mainly from the Louvre Museum, associated with some pieces from the Patrimonio Nacional of Spain and from the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum itself, will illustrate 25 years of the History of French Art, dominated by Neoclassicism, and which was to make itself felt all over Europe in the period stretching from the mid-18th Century to the mid-19th Century.
The rupture with the Rococo, which had dominated the second quarter of the eighteenth Century with its decorative excesses, asymmetries and sinuosities, the archaeological discoveries of the cities of Herculaneum (1738) and Pompei (1748) completely destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and the decisive role of historians, collectors and amateurs d’art, heralded a return to the noble simplicity of the art of Classical Antiquity.
In France, during the period represented by the exhibition, all branches of art, starting with architecture and sculpture, then the decorative arts and, finally, painting, revealed the dominant influence of “Greek” taste. It was even felt in clothes, hairstyles, shop decorations and society parties. During this period, everything in France was done à la grecque. The works on display – sculptures, paintings, porcelain, furniture and jewellery – are excellent examples of this new decorative grammar.
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EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
Watch the vídeo
Exhibition organised with the exceptional collaboration
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The Greeks. Art Treasures from the Benaki Museum, Athens
28 September 2007 to 6 January 2008
Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Greece is the cradle of European Culture, whose presence is nowadays most visible through Philosophy, Mythology, Theatre and Art, which have been the object of contemporary studies and of the constant attention and curiosity among Western and Eastern peoples for over two thousand years.
‘The Greeks’, which this exhibition offers us a better understanding of, are evoked through objects which reflect their thoughts and actions, over a period of time extending from the Neolithic – represented by ceramics from the 6th Millennium BC – to the unification of these people as one Nation under a Hellenic State in 1830.
This is a collection of items, which is highly representative of their intensely rich history, loaned by the Benaki Museum, Athens, through a discerning and very generous selection of pieces from its collections.
Exhibition in association with Benaki Museum, Athens
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Female figurine
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Looped hanging
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Pectoral
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Portrait of a Man in Greek Dress
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A work of art in focus
Religion in Ancient Greece. Olympic Gods represented in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
From 17th July 2007
Permanent Exhibition Gallery
The subject of this work of art in focus is devoted to the religion in Ancient Greece through the images of the Olympic Gods represented in the Gulbenkian Collection of coins. The show which includes fifty-eight species anticipates and complements the forthcoming exhibition The Greeks. Art Treasures from the Benaki Museum, Athens – opening at the Temporary Exhibition Gallery, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, on the 27 September 2007.
SLIDESHOW
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L’Art Islamique dans la Collection Calouste Gulbenkian
From December 17th 2007
Palais de la Culture, Algiers
After the presentation in 2004 at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation and in 2006 at the Bait Al Zubair Museum in Oman, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with the support of its subsidiary Partex Oil and Gas (Holdings) Corporation, presents at the Palais de la Culture in Algiers, on the 17 December, a group of fifty art pieces from several areas of Islamic Art between the late 12th and early 20th century. The selected pieces not only document the artistic production from the represented peoples but also the refined taste of Calouste Gulbenkian.
The selected works are presented in different sections: ceramics from Seljuk Persia, Syria and Ottoman Turkey; a mosque lamp in enamelled glass from the Mamluk period; a group of illuminated manuscripts and bindings from Safavid and Qajar Persia; examples of the art of the book from Ottoman Turkey, and lacquered objects from Qajar Persia.
Included in the decorative arts section, the exhibition comprises also a group of carpets produced in Safavid Persia and Ottoman Turkey and a set of sophisticated silks and velvets made in Persia, India, Turkey and Central Asia.
A profusely illustrated catalogue accompanies this exhibition with texts written by the museum curators Maria Fernanda Passos Leite and Maria Queiroz Ribeiro (French and Arabic editions).
This exhibition is included in the programme Algiers, capital of arabic culture 2007
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Evocations, Passages, Atmospheres.
Paintings from the Sakιp Sabancι Museum, Istanbul
15th June – 26th August
Temporary Exhibitions Gallery at the Museum
The exhibition Evocations, Passages, Atmospheres. Paintings from the Sakιp Sabancι Museum, Istanbul brings together thirty-eight works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the predominant themes of which are views of the Bosphorus, seascapes and scenes from daily life. The exhibition also includes ten works from the CAM-JAP collection, painted by Portuguese artists who – like their Turkish counterparts – underwent their artistic education in Paris. The exhibition thus pays homage to Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, who was born in 1869 in what is now the Istanbul suburb of Üsküdar, on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus, and died in Lisbon in 1955.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
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Fausto Zonaro (1854-1929) |
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Inner landscape - José Pedro Croft
13 April to 15 July 2007
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Main hall
In this installation, commissioned by the Museum to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Foundation, the visitor’s body is confronted with objects whose spatial design takes the form of metallic structures bearing glass and mirrors. The strict geometrical forms generate uncertainties through the disconnection between spaces and the mobility of the reflected images, conveying the fleeting sensation that existence is by its nature circumstantial and ephemeral. The designed pieces stand out on the basis of the abstract geometry of their forms and the technical coldness of their materials, while constantly quoting the Museum as a building, the mechanisms by which objects are exhibited and the particular charisma of the Collection.
Slideshow
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Cartier 1899-1949. The journey of a style
15 February to 29 April, 2007
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
“Cartier 1899-1949. The journey of a style” brings together an outstanding set of 230 jewels, watches and personal objects from the Cartier Collection, as well as some of Calouste Gulbenkian’s acquisitions that now belong to the Foundation. The exhibition also includes original drawings – some of which are associated to the collector – moulds and a variety of documents.
Over recent years, the Cartier Collection has been in exhibition at the most prestigious museums in the world, including the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), the British Museum (London), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), and the Shanghai Museum.
Organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, in association with the Cartier Collection and the Skira responsible for publishing the catalogue, this project is part of the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
Press release
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
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| ‘Greek Column’ pendant |
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Scroll tiara |
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Dream Worlds:
Modern Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection
27 October 2006 to 7 January 2007
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
The “Dream Worlds” exhibition comprises a selection of almost 100 Japanese prints, masterpieces from the famous Robert O. Muller Collection at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington. Donated to the Sackler Gallery after the collector’s death in 2003, it consists of over 4,000 prints that record how the expressive qualities and functions of traditional Japanese woodblock prints adapted to the challenges posed by modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The exhibition includes some of the most outstanding works by artists from the shin hanga (“new prints” movement) and will be on display at the Museum’s Temporary Exhibitions Gallery as from 26 October.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
This exhibition has been produced in collaboration with
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| Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921) |
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A work of art in focus
Bacchus of Michael Rysbrack (1693-1770)
19 July 2006 to 22 of July 2007
Permanent Exhibition Gallery
Continuing the previous Works of Art in Focus, which aim to focus the public’s attention on a single work or a small group of works that are normally kept in the storeroom, this high quality sculpture of Bacchus will be in long-term exhibition as from 18 July. Exhibited as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the sculpture in question was executed in 1751 by Michael Rysbrack, a Flemish artist who worked in London and achieved great success during the first half of the eighteenth century.
This sculpture, which is hard to integrate fully into the discourse of the Gulbenkian Museum’s permanent exhibition and has consequently been kept in the storeroom, is a valuable complement to the exhibition Calouste S. Gulbenkian (1869-1955): The Collector and His Taste, which is open as from the same date in the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery on Floor 0 of the Foundation.
Calouste Gulbenkian mainly collected sculpture that was based on antiquity, partly as a result of his passion for art-forms from that period, as demonstrated by his outstanding collection of Greek coins. This work by Michael Rysbrack, an artist who drew his individual notion of the classical ideal from the Baroque period, is one of the most outstanding works in the collection assembled by Calouste Gulbenkian.
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From Paris to Tokyo: Art of the Book in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
19 July to 8 October of 2006
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
This selection of books, revealing a less known facet of Calouste Gulbenkian as a leading bibliophile, was exhibited in Istanbul during April and May. As from 19 July, it will be on display at the Museum’s Temporary Exhibitions Gallery.
The exhibition includes the masterpieces from the library that Calouste Gulbenkian assembled between 1899 and his death. The manuscripts and books selected illustrate the work produced in different geographical areas – Europe, Persia, Turkey, Armenia and Japan – expressing the collector’s eclectic tastes and sensitivity to both Oriental and Western culture.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
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The Collector and his Taste: Calouste S. Gulbenkian (1869-1955)
19 July to 8 October of 2006
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
This exhibition of works of art and documents aims to demonstrate how Calouste Gulbenkian’s artistic taste was formed. While accepting the artistic options adopted by Western collectors, Gulbenkian established his own collection using a spirit of selectivity and making exceptionally high demands regarding the artistic quality of the pieces he acquired. The items exhibited cover his earliest acquisitions, the journeys he took and how these influenced or confirmed the construction of a unique collection that embraced masterpieces ranging from Ancient Egypt to the most sophisticated Art Nouveau and Art Deco works from the early twentieth century.
The result of the work carried out by the team of curators at the Museum will be on display as from 19 July 2006 at the Temporary Exhibitions Gallery at the Head Office.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
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The Art of the Book from East to West and Memories of the Ottoman World
Masterpieces of the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
From 14 April to 28 May, 2006
Sakip Sabançi Museum, Istanbul
In the year when the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this exhibition hosted in the hometown of its founder, helps to reveal a lesser known aspect of Calouste Gulbenkian’s choices as a collector, displaying an exceptional selection of manuscripts and printed books from East and West, ranging from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. The exhibition is complemented by other works of art that help to give an insight into the man who, during his life-time, assembled an outstanding collection that ranges from classical antiquity to the twentieth century, reflecting the eclectic nature and varied influences that Oriental and Western cultures had on his character.
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| The Divan by Mir Ali-Shir Nava''i |
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Représentation des fêtes données par la Ville de Strasbourg pour la convalescence du Roi […] |
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Pierre Loti |
Islamic Art in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
18 February – 18 April 2006
Bait Al Zubair Museum, Oman
Developing the work done during the past years to encourage international awareness of its collection, from 18 February 2006, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in association with its subsidiary Partex Oil and Gas (Holdings) Corporation, will exhibit Islamic Art in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection at Bait Al Zubair Museum, Oman.
This exhibition includes pieces from a broad range of Islamic arts, produced between the late twelfth and the twentieth centuries in the same geographical areas as those represented in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum’s permanent exhibition.
The exhibition is accompanied by a profusely illustrated catalogue (English and Arabic editions).
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A work of art in focus
ANTOINE WATTEAU (1684-1721)
in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
25 October 2005 to 15 January 2006
Permanent Exhibition Gallery
A small group of works by Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) that is normally kept in the reserves will also be on show, complementing the major exhibition of drawings and as part of the Museum’s regular programme “A Work of Art in Focus”.
Watteau, who is considered to be one of eighteenth-century French painting’s greatest geniuses, produced his work during the period from 1700 to 1730, a time-span that corresponds to the first section of the exhibition “Designing the Décor. French Drawings from the 18th Century”. His thematically and technically innovative paintings reveal a poetic that immediately expresses the aesthetic ideal that emerged at the dawn of the eighteenth century and was constantly expressed within the decorative arts.
The choice of Watteau was also due to the influence of artists named in the exhibition, such as Claude Gillot (1673-1722), and in particular Claude III Audran (1658-1734) and Gilles-Marie Oppenord (1672-1742), whose drawings are on display in the main exhibition and whom the painter knew well.
This exhibition will include a drawing and a painting from Watteau’s mature period, as well as two luxurious volumes showing his work in engravings created by various masters from that period. These volumes, published in 1735, were the idea of Jean de Jullienne, one of the artist’s patrons and most loyal friends.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE |
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| Three studies of a woman’s head |
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Designing the decor
French Drawings from the eighteenth century
19 October 2005 to 15 de January 2006
Temporary Exhibition Gallery
Visitors to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum will immediately realise that eighteenth-century French decorative arts were dear to the collector’s heart and high on his list of acquisition priorities. In fact, alongside sculpture and painting from the same period, the decorative arts used in the French court and by the French aristocracy form one outstanding feature of the high-quality pieces that make up the permanent exhibition. Simultaneously, they also establish a clear contrast to the gallery of Islamic art, while both sections reveal Calouste Gulbenkian’s sophisticated intuition as he sought out the finest objects produced by the two cultures that most interested him.
This year, which sees the fiftieth anniversary of the collector’s death in 1955, the Museum has decided to make his presence felt through an exhibition of French drawings showing ornamental and decorative arts from the period between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution. This exhibition will open in October and close at the start of 2006, when the Foundation celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its creation.
Alongside the many drawings that are being exhibited and studied here for the first time, the selection - gathered by Peter Fuhring, the leading expert in French and Flemish drawings, engravings and decorative arts - also includes decorative objects, some from the Gulbenkian Collection itself, that are very similar to those depicted in the drawings.
The exhibition also demonstrates the different functions of drawing when used for decorative objects, covering the initial idea, the project and the spread of tastes in ornaments. This has been mainly achieved by using the excellent collections from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Bibliothèque nationale de France, all in Paris, as well as the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, the Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen and several private collectors. The pieces from Lisbon come from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga and the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
EXHIBITION'S MINISITE
Press release
Related themes:
THE WORLD OF DRAWING – FORM AND FUNCTION
Meeting on drawing
A selection of 18th-century pieces in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
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| Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695-1750) |
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A work of art in focus
Carpet with floral decoration
10 of May to 2 of October of 2005
Within the context of the exhibition Heaven in a Carpet – Islamic Carpets from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century, organised by the Institute of the Arab World, Paris in partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, it was decided that another rare India carpet from the collection should be exhibited. Produced in the seventeenth century in Kashmir or Lahore, this piece is also kept in storage for the same reason.
This exhibit turns the spotlight on an important work from the group of seven Indian carpets that Calouste Gulbenkian collected, which all come from a geographical area not represented in the Heaven in a Carpet exhibition.
This magnificent fragment of a Mughal carpet was produced in Kashmir or Lahore in the middle of the seventeenth century, during the reign of Shahjahan. It is part of the group of most sophisticated carpets with a velvety pile created by using pashmina, (the Persian word for wool) on silk warp and weft threads.
The extremely fine wool comes from the chest of the Himalayan goat (capra hiscus laniger), and given both the material used and the beauty of the composition, this carpet must have been produced at a royal workshop. The cherry-red field is decorated with a system of lattices in shades of gold that form cartouches.
This is the largest fragment of several others dispersed in other collections.
Know more about this exhibition
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| Carpet with floral decoration |
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“Heaven in a Carpet”
Islamic carpets from the fifteenth to the twentieth century
In collaboration with the Institut du monde arabe (Paris)
Temporary Exhibition Gallery,
Lisbon, 6 May to 31 July 2005
This exhibition – jointly organised by the Institute of the Arab World, Paris, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – was open to the public in the French capital until the end of March. It will move to Lisbon, opening at the Foundation’s Temporary Exhibition Room on 6 May and closing on 31 July.
Starting before the Foundation’s fiftieth anniversary and half a century after the death of Calouste Gulbenkian, the exhibition pays tribute to a great collector who always showed such an interest in Oriental carpets. It will also make a major contribution to improving knowledge of a type of art that is so characteristic of Islamic culture yet little known in the West.
The pieces on display come from a vast range of regions stretching from Morocco to Central Asia. Produced between the fifteenth and the twentieth century, these exhibits – carefully selected by exhibition curators Roland Gilles and Joëlle Lemaistre, both leading specialists in this field – reflect the dominant decorative characteristics of Oriental carpets and simultaneously demonstrate the evolution of this art.
The carpets, whether produced in urban workshops using cartoons by artists and designers or produced in rural or tribal environments using the same motifs, all reveal the powerful influence of strong, incisive forms that seem to have fallen “from heaven”.
This selection of 56 carpets comes from some of the most prestigious public collections in the world, including the Museum of Islamic Art (Berlin), the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Museum of Decorative Arts (Paris) and the Textile Museum (Lyon). In conjunction with carpets from the Gulbenkian Collection, they demonstrate the decorative and symbolic richness of Oriental carpets.
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7000 Years of Persian Art
Masterpieces from the National Museum of Iran
6 April – 5 June 2005
Temporary Exhibitions Gallery
For the first time since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a collection of one hundred and seventy-eight exceptionally important and diverse works of art has left the National Museum and the Rezza Abbasi Museum in Iran on an international tour entitled “7000 Years of Persian Art”.
This collection is of enormous archaeological and historical value, bearing unique testimony to Iran’s magnificent past and bringing its impressive pre-Islamic culture closer to the world. The exhibition, already seen by over around 1,200,000 visitors on its world tour, aims to bring us closer to that past and revive the fascination that Europe has felt for Ancient Persia since Herodotus and the journeys of Marco Polo.
The time span of this exhibition covers Iran’s ancient legacy, from the technological and cultural transformations of the Neolithic through to the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Arsacid (Parthian) and Sassanian dynasties.
“7000 Years of Persian Art” organised by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, involves the participation of numerous specialists and would not have been possible without the essential co-operation of the National Museum of Iran, which loaned these precious works of art so that they could be exhibited for a long period of time, with Lisbon as the final stop on this tour.
Given the quality of the pieces and the academic standards of the project, this exhibition – organised by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation with the support of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran – will undoubtedly be a huge success.
Press Release
Know more about this exhibition
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| Wall relief. Medean soldier with short sword (fragment) |
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Container in the shape of a winged lion |
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Disk with winged bull in relief (fragment) |
Work of Art in Focus
ALBUM OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH PRINTS
MEMORIAL OF PAINTINGS FROM THE WALPOLE COLLECTION
26 October 2004 to 10 April 2005
A recent acquisition
Given the broad variety of issues raised by this two-volume album, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation purchased A set of prints engraved after the most capital paintings in the collection of Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of Russia, lately in the possession of the Earl of Orford at Houghton in Norfolk, with plans, elevations, sections, chimney pieces and ceilings, known as “Houghton Gallery”, at the auction of the Salema Garção Library, held in Lisbon during the summer.
This exceptional collection of prints, mostly by English artists from the second half of the eighteenth century, includes pieces by some artists whose work is also part of the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection. As a whole, the album recalls the outstanding collection of paintings assembled in England by Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the first Earl of Orford, and sold in 1779 to Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796). The provenance of these paintings immediately brings to mind other works in the Gulbenkian Collection that also belonged to that great Russian empress. Moreover, Rubens’ painting Portrait of Helena Fourment, which Calouste Gulbenkian acquired in 1930 and is now exhibited in the museum, was part of the Walpole collection before belonging to Empress Catherine.
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| London: John & Josiah Boydell, 1788 |
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Goa and the Great Mughal
9 June to 5 September, 2004
Temporary Exhibitions Gallery, Headquarters Building
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Relief portrait bust of Shahjahan
Mughal India, second quarter of the 17th century
Alabaster with remains of gilding and polychromy
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. AK-NM-12249 |
Goa and the Great Mughal highlights different aspects of the relationship established between Portuguese India and the Mughal empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Mughals saw the Portuguese as another neighbour, one that was certainly less dangerous than the Safavids, Uzbeks or Ottomans, and indeed rather ‘exotic’, especially as the Portuguese were the first Europeans to come into direct contact with Emperor Akbar. While the writings of the Mughal chroniclers do not reflect this, the work of the court artists would long continue to recall the presence of these foreigners in the empire. In turn, the Portuguese – who established their capital in Goa from 1510 and held a string of maritime settlements stretching all the way to Gujarat – knew that their very survival in South Asia depended on their relations with the Mughals.
This formed the backdrop for an association that lasted for over two hundred years and was expressed in various fields: in trade, as carried on in the ports of Gujarat and Bengal; in politics and diplomacy, as confirmed by the vast body of documents on embassies, treaties, mediators and spies; in religion, through the influence of the Jesuits at the courts of Akbar and then Jahangir; and in culture and art, as demonstrated in the mutual interchange of objects, ideas, tastes and styles.
Curated by Jorge Manuel Flores and Nuno Vassallo e Silva and supported by an international team the exhibition will be accompanied by a book which includes a group of essays by acknowledged specialists as well as the description and bibliography on all the pieces displayed. The book is being published in Portuguese and English versions, together with Scala Publishers, London. An exhibition guide is also being published..
Press Release
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A European
Mughal India, c.1610–20
Gouache and gold on paper
London, Victoria and Albert Museum, inv. no. IM 386-1914 |
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Darbar of Jahangir
Attributed to Manohar
Mughal India, c.1607
Watercolour, ink, silver and gold on paper
St Petersburg, The St Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ms E-14, f. 22r |
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Work of Art in Focus
Scenes from Family Life
Engravings by Francesco Bartolozzi (1728-1815) in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
18th May to 10th October
On the Tenth Anniversary of the International Year of the Family
As from 18 May, International Museum Day, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum continues its Work of Art in Focus programme by exhibiting a set of engravings by Francesco Bartolozzi.
A native of Florence, where he completed his artistic training, Bartolozzi was mostly famous for his unparalleled engravings using the stipple technique. In 1764, at the invitation of King George III’s librarian, he moved to England, where he had a brilliant career. In 1802, King João VI of Portugal invited him to come definitively to Lisbon, where he directed the 'Aula de Gravura da Impressão Régia' (Engraving Class at the Royal Printworks).
The set in exhibition depicts the twelve months of the year, using scenes of rural tasks or entertainments that characterise the months. The scenes portrayed also summon up memories of family life that hark back to our origins or experiences of social interaction.
The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum also aims to link this to the commemorations to celebrate the Tenth International Day of the Family, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 to promote progress and development in family-related matters and first held in 1994.
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Islamic Art in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
17 January – 18 February 2004
Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation
Developing the work done during the past years to encourage international awareness of its collection, from 17 January, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, in association with its subsidiary Partex Oil and Gas (Holdings) Corporation, will exhibit Islamic Art in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, Abu Dhabi.
This exhibition includes pieces from a broad range of Islamic arts, produced between the late twelfth and the twentieth centuries in the same geographical areas as those represented in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum’s permanent exhibition, which demonstrates the exceptional quality of the Islamic section of the Collection. It simultaneously confirms the firm belief that culture is one of the finest means of communication between different peoples.
The exhibition is accompanied by a profusely illustrated catalogue (English and Arabic editions).
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Lâmpada de Mesquita
Egipto ou Síria, c. 1354-1361, período mameluco
Vidro esmaltado e dourado
Lisboa, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian
Inv. 1022 |
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A work from the Palace of Versailles - Apollo
Guillaume II Costou (1716-1777)
April 2003 – May 2004
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian - Main Entrance
Regular visitors to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, by now used to the new reception area following remodelling work in 2001, will certainly be surprised to see Apollo, the protector of the arts, welcoming them in, for this statue is clearly different from the usual Apollo by Jean-Antoine Houdon.
The reason behind this change is that Houdon’s Apollo has been loaned to form part of a monograph exhibition on the sculptor’s work that will be on tour from May 2003 until May 2004. This exhibition will be on display at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, then at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and finally at the Palace of Versailles.
The National Palace of Versailles has counterbalanced Apollo’s lengthy absence from its home by loaning this Apollo, by Guillaume II Coustou, which is currently part of the palace’s collections.
While the temporary absence of Houdon’s Apollo is regrettable – since it is one of the symbols of the Calouste Gulbenkian collection, alongside the same artist’s figure of Diana – this is probably a unique occasion for an enriching dialogue between these two statues and other works from the Museum.
Learn more about this sculpture
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An Ancient Tradition - Embroideries from the Ottoman Empire to India: 18th and 19th centuries
Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
8 October 2003 – 29 February 2004
The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum Temporary Exhibition Gallery
Starting on 8 October, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum Temporary Exhibition Gallery is exhibiting a group of forty-three Oriental embroideries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These belong to the collection assembled by Calouste Gulbenkian and mainly come from his birthplace or from regions that were ruled or influenced by the Ottoman Empire.
Given the delicate nature of these embroideries cloths “for domestic use” and for reasons of preservation and museum selection policy, they have been kept in storage. The opportunity has now arisen for them to be displayed in a temporary exhibition that coincides with the 20th General Meeting of the Centre International d’Étude des Textiles Anciens (CIETA), held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which will bring together a large number of international specialists in ancient textiles.
The exhibition naturally recalls Gulbenkian’s childhood experiences and family roots, while simultaneously complementing the significant collection of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ottoman textiles that he assembled, which can be seen in the Islamic Art Gallery at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.
Guided tours:
Public: Tuesday and Thursday - 3.00 p.m.;
groups: please contact the Museum's Education Dept.;
(bookings at the exhibition reception desk up to 15 min.in advance)
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| Towel / napkin |
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Sash |
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Towel / napkin |
Félix Ziem in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
23 December 2003 to 28 March 2004
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
The Calouste Gulbenkian Collection owns six works by Félix Ziem (1821-1911), a French painter whose work places him at the crossroads between the Barbizon school’s naturalism and the innovations brought by Impressionism, a position that fully justifies the special approach taken in this exhibition. Unlike most “Works of Art in Focus”, in this case, the Museum offers a broad-ranging vision of the body of work produced by the artist, since the reserves hold fine examples of the main themes that Ziem painted during his long career. These are mainly views of Marseilles, Venice and Constantinople, as shown here by three chromatically rich paintings. Interestingly, the last of the three was painted from Scutari (Üsküdar), on the opposite bank of the Bosphorus, where Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was born. As Ziem’s body of work is so vast and extends beyond painting, the Museum has decided to show a lesser-known facet by exhibiting his graphic art. A drawing of Marseille and a watercolour based on one of La Fontaine’s fables offer an enlightening image of the artist’s high quality work in this field.
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Sea and Light
Turner’s Watercolours from Tate Collection
20 February - 18 May 2003
Museum’s Temporary Exhibition Gallery
This exhibition, jointly organised by Tate and the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum,
has already been - in slightly different form - on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art (17 February - 26 May 2002) and the Fundación Juan March, Madrid
(20 September 2002 - 19 January 2003) under the title Reflections of Sea and
Light: Paintings and Watercolours by J. M. W. Turner from Tate. Curated by
Ian Warrell, from Tate Britain's Watercolours Department, this exhibition marks
the return of particularly significant work by the most representative English
painter from the first half of the nineteenth century to the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, coming thirty years after Turner (1775-1851): desenhos, aguarelas
e óleos. Almost one third of Turner's oil paintings depicted the coast
or the sea, the common theme of the seventy-three works exhibited, of which seventy belong to Tate. Indeed, a large number of these works - mainly watercolours - form part of the Turner Bequest (1856). The works exhibited bring visitors into contact with two fundamental phenomena: the painter's compositional methodology at different phases and the development of a particularly free register that derives from the spontaneous nature characteristic of the technique used in watercolour painting.
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Turner at the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection
Catalogue
Leaflet
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| Plymouth with a rainbow |
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| Quillebeuf, Mouth of the Seine 1833 |
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Ancient Greek Coins - Electrum Coinage from Kyzikos (c. 550 - c. 330 BC)
From February 11 until June 22, 2003
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (permanent exhibition galleries)
This exhibition, part of a project involving several European museums during the Greek presidency of the European Union, includes 39 staters divided into four chronologically distinct groups. The coins minted reveal noteworthy individual features in the manufacture and types, specifically the range of formal solutions that the die-casters adopted to create the varied iconography within the restricted space available on the flans.
Learn more about this exhibition
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Capriccio with ruined arch and circular temple
Francesco Guardi (1712-1793)
From November 5, 2002 until January 26, 2003
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (permanent exhibition galleries)
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| Capriccio with ruined arch and circular temple |
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Capriccio |
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Work of art in focus
From July 11th to 20th October of 2002
(Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Permanent exhibition galleries)
Exotica, the Discoveries and Renaissance kunstkammer collections
October 17th, 2001 to January 6th, 2002.
(Museu Calouste Gulbenkian)
The impact of the Portuguese Discoveries, was reflected in the most diverse areas, particularly, on the evolution of collecting in Europe. The flow of exotic products, which arrived in Europe via the Cape Route, not only fascinated the reigning houses, but also contributed to an increase in knowledge. Objects from the most diverse origins were kept together in the kustkammer or chambers of marvels, silent witnesses of a world in a state of rapid acceleration.
The exhibition organised in collaboration with the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna will bring together 120 pieces from institutions such as the Kunsthistoriches Museum; the Museum für Völkerkunde; MAK; Museen des Mobiliendepots, Museum und Schatzkammer des Deustchen Orders, Vienna; Sammlungen Scholß Ambras, Innsbruck; the Museu Nacional de Artes Decorativas; and the Monastery de las Descalzas Reales, Madrid; the Monastery de San Lorenzo de El Escorial; the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich; the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden; the Museu de São Roque and the Treasury of Cathedral, Lisbon; the Museu Nacional Machado de Castro, Coimbra; the Museu Grão Vasco, Viseu, as well as a number of items from Portuguese and foreign private collections.
Among the many pieces to be exhibited is one of the most important groups of oriental works of art from the former Hapsburg collections, including a lacquered Chinese wooden chair that belonged to Philip II of Spain; a rock crystal and gold salt-cellar belonging to Catherine of Austria; a series of works in mother-of-pearl set in silver, precious stones, and gold filigree from India; lacquer from the Far East, as well as a remarkable collection of caskets in ivory, and objects in rock crystal enriched with gold and precious stones from Ceylon.
The exhibition first opened in Vienna, Austria (April to May 2000), and will be at Ambras Castle, in Innsbruck from June to October 2000.
A catalogue will be available in both Portuguese and English documenting all the exhibits that will be on display in Portugal for the first time.
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The World of Lacquer, 2000 years of history.
March 29th to June 10th, 2001
(Museu Calouste Gulbenkian)
This exhibition was aimed at introducing the public to the production of lacquerware in different parts of the world from two thousand years ago up to the present time. Chinese, Japanese, and South East Asian lacquers produced for the local and export market were displayed along with a selection of Islamic, Portuguese and English japanning, and Art Deco French lacquerwork. Many of the 106 pieces exhibited were part of the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection, which is particularly strong in Islamic and Japanese lacquers. The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, were among the institutions that lent a number of their treasures, as did several Portuguese private collectors. A fully illustrated catalogue was published in Portuguese and English.
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