Though the Cincinnati Art Museum still has a full fall season ahead now that it has finished its record-breaking Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China exhibition, it is beginning to plan for what could be its 2019 ticketed blockbuster, Paris 1900: City of Entertainment. It provided some initial information.
Organized by the Petit Palais Museum of Fine Arts in Paris with loans from the Musée Carnavalet – History of Paris and the Palais Galliera Museum of Fashion, Paris Musées, it will include more that 250 works. It has already been presented at the Petit Palais Museum.
The show comes to the Frist Museum in Nashville first — it will be there Oct. 12, 2018 to Jan. 6, 2019. This is the Frist's website description:
"This exhibition will allow audiences to relive the splendor of the French capital at the time of the Paris Exposition Universelle, when it heralded the arrival of the 20th century. More than ever before, Paris was seen throughout the world as a sparkling city of luxury with a sophisticated way of life. More than 250 works—paintings, decorative art, costumes, posters, photographs, jewelry, and sculptures, mainly kept by the Paris city museums—will immerse visitors in the atmosphere of Belle Époque Paris. They will be presented in six groupings: Paris, Showcase of the World; Art Nouveau; Paris, Capital of the Arts; The Parisienne; A Walk in Paris; and Paris by Night. The Frist Art Museum is one of three venues in the United States to present this iteration of an exhibition that was on view at the Petit Palais in 2014."
According to Wikipedia, "The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 14 April to 12 November 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next. The style that was universally present in the Exposition was Art Nouveau. The fair, visited by nearly 50 million, displayed many machines, inventions, and architecture that are now nearly universally known, including the Grande Roue de Paris Ferris wheel, Russian nesting dolls, diesel engines, talking films, escalators and the telegraphone (the first magnetic audio recorder)."
There were previous large expositions in Paris; the show features a painting by George Roux of a night party under the Eiffel Tower during the one of 1889.
Cincinnati Art Museum cautions that the groupings in Nashville may change for Cincinnati. The curator here, Peter Jonathan Bell, is working on a catalogue.
Meanwhile, the museum here is also busy opening these shows before Paris 1900:
• Collecting Calligraphy: Arts of the Islamic World, September 7, 2018 – January 27, 2019
• Life: Gillian Wearing, its ticketed FotoFocus 2018 exhibit, October 5 – December 30, 2018
• The Fabric of India, also ticketed, October 19, 2018 – January 6, 2019
• Art Academy of Cincinnati at 150: A Celebration in Drawings and Prints, February 1 –April 28, 2019
For more information as it becomes available, visit cincinnatiartmuseum.org.
