26 - PEM - Golden : Dutch and Flemish Masterworks

Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection (February 26 – June 19, 2011)

Seventy paintings from the internationally-acclaimed collection of Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo illuminate one of the greatest artistic and cultural chapters in history. The Van Otterloo collection is virtually unrivaled for its masterworks by the leading Dutch and Flemish artists of the 1600s: Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Aelbert Cuyp, and many others. At PEM, ten examples of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish furniture and decorative arts, also from the Van Otterloo collection, help to contextualize these glorious paintings.

Swiss artist, Marianne Mueller, delves into PEM’s collection vaults to create an installation work combining museum objects with the artist’s personal archive of photographs. Unexpected juxtapositions of time, place, and influence arise in this, the artist’s premiering solo U.S. museum exhibition. Organized by PEM’s curator of photography, Phillip Prodger, this project engages some of the central issues raised by a photo collection – the nature, definition, and purpose of an archive.

From 1929-32, Man Ray and Lee Miller –– two giants of the European Surrealism movement –– lived together in Paris, first as teacher and student, and later as lovers. Their mercurial relationship resulted in some of the most powerful work of each artist’s career, and helped shape the course of modern art. Combining rare vintage photographs, paintings, sculpture, and drawings, this exhibition tells the story of the artists’ brief but important association and reveals the nature of their creative partnership.

Susan Philipsz creates sound installations that explore ways in which the emotive and psychological properties of song alter a listener's perception of place and time. Hearing her disembodied voice - in settings where you least expect to have such an intimate experience - sets up a tension between the listener's private memories and the communal associations of song. At PEM, Philipsz creates a site-specific sound performance exploring collective memory and environment. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Philipsz is the 2010 recipient of the prestigious Turner Prize - an annual award bestowed to the best contemporary British artist under age 50.

Water serves as an inspiration, creative material, and metaphor for life. In its different states (as a gas, a liquid, and a solid), water presents unique properties for artistic exploration. Without water, life could not exist, and the availability of clean freshwater is an increasingly limited resource. Through artwork and varied interactive experiences in PEM’s Art & Nature Center, visitors will encounter water in a range of forms, discovering its allure to artists, its remarkable properties, and its increasing vulnerability.

In the mid-1800s, a loosely knit group of American painters—now known as the Hudson River School—forged a self-consciously “American” landscape. This vision was grounded in exploration of the natural world as a resource for spiritual renewal and an expression of cultural and national identity. Drawn from the extraordinary collection of the New-York Historical Society, this exhibition features 45 celebrated masterpieces of American landscape painting, including Thomas Cole's iconic series of monumental paintings, “The Course of the Empire,” as well as works by Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and Asher B. Durand.

Peter Hutton has spent nearly 40 years voyaging around the world, often by cargo ship, to create meditative, intimate, and luminously photographed film studies of place. At Sea (2007) depicts the life cycle of a container ship – from mechanized construction in Korean shipyards, to a journey across the Atlantic and ending with the manual labor of ship breakers in Bangladesh. The title of the film evokes a loss of perspective, a metaphor born from the experience of a sea journey and its ability to strip us of our sense of scale, time and distance––something that maritime artists have long struggled to depict.

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents art and culture from New England and around the world. The museum's collections are among the finest of their kind, showcasing an unrivaled spectrum of American art and architecture (including four National Historic Landmark buildings) and outstanding Asian, Asian Export, Native American, African, Oceanic, Maritime and Photography collections. In addition to its vast collections, the museum offers a vibrant schedule of changing exhibitions and a hands-on education center. The museum campus features numerous parks, period gardens and over 20 historic properties, including Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year-old house that is the only example of Chinese domestic architecture on display in the United States.

HOURS: Open Tuesday-Sunday and holiday Mondays, 10 am-5 pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

ADMISSION: Adults $15; seniors $13; students $11. Additional admission to Yin Yu Tang: $5. Members, youth 16 and under and residents of Salem enjoy free general admission and free admission to Yin Yu Tang.

CONTACT: April Swieconek | Public Relations Manager |978-745-9500 x3109 | april_swieconek@pem.org

Whitney Riepe | Senior Public Relations Associate | 978-745-9500 x3228 | whitney_riepe@pem.org

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The Peabody Essex Museum, East India Square, Salem, MA 01970 United States