A group of students recently got in touch to tell me about their involvement and learning in during the preparations for an exhibition of impressionist art soon to open. Reading their blog it sounds like they have innovative lecturers who have helped make the most of a wonderful opportunity. Rarely do we get to read about the preparations of an exhibition, and the excitement of the students is infectious – well, who would not be excited about experiencing behind the scenes as this class is. Read their introduction below, and have a look at their bog – it is a fascinating read.

Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists is coming to the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg, Virginia on October 22nd, 2011.

Featuring forty paintings including two by Monet, three by Pissarro, two by Boudin, a beautiful Bazille landscape based on a Monet sketch, two by Renior, and others, students enrolled in the museum seminar at The College of William & Mary have a rare and exceptional opportunity to work behind the scenes of this major exhibition. The class changes everyday so students never know exactly what to expect – a day in Professor John Spike’s class ranges from monographic lectures on the artists in the show, to talks from the Museum Director Dr. Aaron De Groft, to hands on work towards the hanging of the show. During the first week of class students chose their specific task teams including tour guides and docent training, public relations, creating education material, writing painting labels, and even putting together a musical tour to accompany the show, and they have been hard at work ever since.

The exhibition is on until 22 January 2012. For more information on what students are up to, countdown to the opening with the class blog.

Gustave Caillebotte, 1884, Man at His Bath. Oil on canvas 183 cm x 137 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Just a few days ago it was revealed that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was selling eight impressionist paintings to raise money to pay for a painting by Gustave Caillebotte. Man at His Bath, painted by Caillebotte in 1884, is widely recognised to be one of the artist’s finest pieces. The painting is the first impressionist nude in the museum’s permanent collection. But this decision of the MFA’s has vexed a few art bloggers and critics. Not everyone is happy that eight impressionist pieces have been sold for a painting of what Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe says “is not an eye-catching celebration of the human form, a la Michelangelo’s ‘David.’ Rather, it’s an everyday view of … well, mostly of an everyday butt.” [Read more →]

Claude Monet, Les Iles à Port-Villez, 1897. Oil on canvas. © Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Grace Underwood Barton.

There are only a few weeks left to catch the “Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism” exhibition on at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The show comprises 38 paintings from the Joslyn Art Museum’s Impressionist collection and the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, a selection of mid nineteenth to early twentieth-century French and American landscapes. The likes of Claude Monet and Gustave Courbet are joined by some of the more important American Impressionists of the time, such as Frederick Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. [Read more →]

“I think I am beginning to understand something about painting.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1919. A remark he apparently made while he covered up his painting for the day, on the day he died.

Towards the end of the 1880s it is said that Pierre-Auguste Renoir became dissatisfied with Impressionism, then still a relatively recent movement in the development of Western art. He began to travel more widely, first within France and then to Algeria, Spain and Italy, where he became influenced by other artists, including Delacroix, Velazquez and Titian. It is widely thought that his work during this time is his most fertile and innovative. And it is his paintings and sculptures from the final decades of his life that make up the Late Renoir exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [Read more →]

Have paintings will travel. The Birth of Impressionism exhibition, currently on show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, is headed next for the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. The exhibition, part of the Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay collection on the road while renovations in Paris are under way for the 25 anniversary in 2011, will open in Nashville 15 October 2010. [Read more →]

While the de Young museum in San Francisco has been hosting a globally advertised Impressionism exhibition from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, its sister museum, the Legion of Honor, has been keeping quite a secret. It, too, is exhibiting a show on the Impressionists, and some have argued it is even more exquisite than one at the de Young. [Read more →]

Frédéric Bazille Family Reunion. 1867. Oil on canvas. 152 cm x 230 cm. ©RMN, Musée d’Orsay.

The Birth of Impressionism exhibition currently showing at the de Young Museum in San Francisco is a big deal. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Make sure you visit the show this summer, or you may miss out on the most important show this museum has hosted since reopening its doors in 2005. [Read more →]

Édouard Manet, The Railway, 1873. Oil on canvas, 24 cm x 19.45 cm @ The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
“These are not things that are in storage and are sort of being hauled out. These are [the National Gallery's] masterpieces.” Helga Aurisch, MFAH curator of European art.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, will host a major exhibition of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces from the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. for the first half of 2011. [Read more →]

The two museums that make up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor, are hosting concurrently two exhibitions on Impressionist art. The Birth of Impressionism exhibition at the de Young has one hundred masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. And, to provide a historical context to these well-known paintings, the Legion of Honor is hosting Impressionist Paris: City of Light. [Read more →]

Oh to be in San Francisco this summer! The beautiful West Coast city aside, the two Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor, are hosting two major Impressionist exhibitions. At de Young is Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, while the Legion of Honor is hosting Impressionist Paris: City of Light, a special exhibition that provides historical background to de Young’s Birth of Impressionism show. [Read more →]