The recent hubbub over Andrew Wyeth`s ”Helga” suite was only a prelude: Next summer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington the public will be able to see what all the hubbub was about.
The gallery has tentatively scheduled an exhibition of the ”Helga”
drawings and watercolors for late May. On July 4, the ”Three Generations of Wyeths” show that will open its world tour in Leningrad in March will go up at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, giving Washington two summer Wyeth shows.
If Wyeth doesn`t pull in the biggest crowds of the art season, then Vincent van Gogh probably will. On Nov. 25, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will open a sequel to its 1984 ”Van Gogh in Arles,” this newest show tracing the final 14 months of the artist`s life.
Expect ”Van Gogh in Saint-Remy and Auvers” (through March 22) to be every bit as popular. Expect to have to fight your way in, through, and out. But also expect to see some of van Gogh`s most powerful work.
Retrospectives for Oskar Kokoschka at the Guggenheim Museum in December and Paul Klee at the Museum of Modern Art in February could be almost as popular among New Yorkers and visitors, and more significant.
This season`s major theme exhibitions along the Amtrak corridor will be
”Treasures of the Holy Land” and ”Americans and the Aesthetic Movement”
at the Metropolitan, ”The Machine Age in America” at the Brooklyn Museum,
”The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent” at the National Gallery and
”American Landscape Before 1830” at the Corcoran.
A new American Craft Museum will open in New York Oct. 26 with one of the largest displays of contemporary crafts ever organized in this country.
”Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical” will feature more than 300 craft objects created since 1980 by 286 artists.
Briefly, here`s what to look for at the major museums in New York and Washington between now and next summer:
— New York: The Metropolitan will open its season Sept. 25 with
”Treasures of the Holy Land,” an archaeological collection from the Israel Museum. Nearly all the 200 objects come from biblical sites excavated during this century. The largest collection of ancient art ever to leave Israel, it can be seen through Jan. 4.
The Metropolitan`s next show (Oct. 23-Jan. 11) will examine the Aesthetic Movement in America during the second half of the 19th Century. ”In Pursuit of Beauty” will focus on the domestic interior as an expression of popular taste.
The museum`s major spring show will consist of 48 impressionist and post- impressionist masterpieces from the Courtauld Institute in London. The Courtauld collection is one of the finest of its kind in the world and well worth a look. Opening April 4, the show will be on view through June 28.
Morris Louis, one of the most prominent of the color-field painters, will be the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art from Oct. 6 to Jan. 4. (The exhibition will be at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington from May 21 to July 26.)
The Modern`s big production of the year will be the Klee retrospective from Feb. 12 to May 5. Among the more than 300 works will be a group from the Klee Foundation in Switzerland that is rarely lent.
Equally important will be the Kokoschka retrospective of about 150 works at the Guggenheim from Dec. 9 through Feb. 16. It will mark the first time this Austrian master, who died six years ago, has ever been seen in such depth in the United States.
The largest John Singer Sargent show in 60 years will open at the Whitney Museum of American Art on Oct. 7. Sargent was the most respected American artist of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries; this collection of about 160 works will attempt to show why. It runs through Jan. 4.
On Oct. 17, the Brooklyn Museum will open ”The Machine Age in America 1918-1941,” the first major museum exhibition to focus on the machine as a unifying influence on American life between the World Wars. The exhibition
(through Feb. 16) will include about 275 examples of fine and decorative arts, architecture, fashion, industrial design, transportation and
communication.
— Washington: Henri Matisse, like Vincent van Gogh, is an artist who never seems to wear out his welcome. The National Gallery, which hasn`t lacked for crowds the last two years, should draw another with its survey of Matisse`s early years in Nice, 1916-30.
Consisting of more than 170 paintings, the show will focus on five major themes of the period: still lifes, models posed in apartments, landscape views, family activities and nude odalisques. It will run from Nov. 2 to March 29.
The gallery`s major international production this season, ”The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent,” will describe the aesthetic and technical achievements of the Ottoman Empire during the 16th Century. Two-thirds of the more than 200 objects will come from Turkish national museums in Istanbul.
The Corcoran Gallery`s major in-house show of the season will be a survey of American landscape painting between 1790 and 1830. Artists represented include John Trumbull, Washington Allston, Thomas Doughty and John Neagle. The dates are Jan. 17 to March 29.
