Opening of the new rooms devoted to Classical Greek and Hellenistic art | Louvre Museum

The museological approach

Housed in the southwest corner of the Cour Carrée (Sully wing), this ensemble comprises two galleries formerly part of the royal apartments and leading to the famous Caryatids Room, thus completing the chronological presentation of ancient Greek art.

The first gallery, to the north (Rooms 7–12) is part of the wing built for the Renaissance palace. This restructuring offers an authentic journey through the Greek world of the period from the Parthenon to the conquest of Greece by Rome. Each room brings together artifacts from a specific part of the Greek world in a range of materials and media, including vases, jewelry, sculpture and architecture. The visitor will discover art from Athens and central Greece, the Greek cities of southern Italy, Macedonia and northern Greece, Asia Minor and all of the Hellenistic Near East, and Greek Egypt and Cyrenaica (modern Libya). 

More recent and running parallel to the first, the second gallery, to the south (Rooms 13–16), was inaugurated in the early 19th century, with courtyards being transformed into the Musée des Antiques, whose contents included the Borghese Collection. Today's refurbishing presents Roman copies of vanished masterpieces of Classical Greek sculpture; it follows a thematic path dedicated to the gods and heroes of mythology and ending in the Venus de Milo room, with the famous statue returning to the place it occupied from 1824 to 1848. In the newly rediscovered niches of the original building the history of the statue's finding is shown, together with images of Aphrodite from the Hellenistic period.

The itinerary then continues through the remodeled Caryatids Room, where the replicas of Hellenistic Greek sculpture are on display. Highlighting some of the oldest rooms in the museum, this new project improves public access to works sometimes overshadowed by the fame of the Venus de Milo, while at the same time making the latter easier to find.

via louvre.fr

 

A picturesque time at the Impressionist Normandy Festival

 In the footsteps and on the canvases of Monet, Pissarro and provincial artists, past and present intertwine.

 

By Mike Ives Special to the Los Angeles Times

Last spring in the Paris Metro, I paused to admire a colorful advertisement for the Impressionist Normandy Festival, a celebration of the region's role in the Impressionist painting movement.

My brother Davey, an art history major at Connecticut College, was contemplating an ad for detergent. "Hey, bro!" I called. "Check this out."

Whenever I see Impressionist paintings at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the airy brushstrokes transport me to the late 19th century French villages. So I was intrigued to learn that until late September, the festival will celebrate Impressionist painters and their favorite muses: the Seine Valley, the medieval city of Rouen and seaside towns along France's northern coastline.

Impressionist Normandy presents linked museum exhibitions, concerts, outdoor balls and thematic "Impressionist Itineraries," or self-guided walking-driving tours. Over three days in June, I followed two of the itineraries highlighting two themes: "Gardens" and "The Moment."

Some of the gardens are in Giverny, a touristy town about 50 miles west of Paris and a former hotbed of Impressionist activity. Claude Monet lived in Giverny from 1883 until his death in 1926. After touring his house, Davey and I wandered through his backyard, where Monet composed some of his most iconic paintings. Walking among the artist's bamboo trees and azalea bushes, we followed a babbling brook until we reached his famous waterlily pond.

I had seen Monet's waterlily canvases at the Met in New York and the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, so his pond seemed vaguely familiar, like a place you remember from childhood. The scene probably didn't look too much different, I realized, than it had in the 1880s. I marveled at how the painter's hand had magically evoked all those subtle ripples and reflections —

Splash! Plunk!

"A fish!" a little boy observed. "Did anyone see?"

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more via latimes.com