Exhibition Explorer

The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond

Venues

*Explore a remarkable collection of artworks that span the centuries and discover how it was assembled over seven decades.*_The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond_ celebrates a significant recent bequest to the Harvard Art Museums from passionate collectors Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon. The exhibition spotlights over 135 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints by some of the most significant artists from the Renaissance to the 20th century, and offers visitors an intimate view into the highly personal yet inherently collaborative nature of art collecting.The artists featured span six centuries and include virtuoso printmakers, from the pioneers of engraving such as Sebald Beham, Martin Schongauer, and Albrecht Dürer to inventive painter-etchers like Salvator Rosa, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes; provocateurs of 19th-century painting such as Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cézanne; groundbreaking sculptors like Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Henry Moore, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, David Smith, and Anthony Caro; trailblazers of abstraction like Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Larry Poons; and stalwart Boston artists Marjorie Minkin and Peter Lipsitt.An accompanying print catalogue highlights works in the Solomon Collection with entries written by curators, former and current postdoctoral fellows, and Harvard faculty and graduate students. The volume also includes a history of the couple’s lifelong engagement with art and the dealers, professors, and curators who helped inform their collecting.Curated by A. Cassandra Albinson, Margaret S. Winthrop Curator of European Art and Head of the Division of European and American Art; Marina Kliger, Rousseau Curatorial Fellow in European Art; and Casey Kane Monahan, Cunningham Senior Curatorial Assistant for the Collection in the Division of European and American Art, Harvard Art Museums.The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond is made possible through the generosity of Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon, whose extraordinary bequest demonstrates their deep commitment to the study of art. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon Care of the Collection Endowment Fund, the Mariot F. Solomon Care of Collections Fund, and the Martha Tedeschi Exhibition Fund, made possible by the Lunder Foundation—Peter and
Paula Lunder Family.*Online Resources*Browse the majority of the Solomons’ collection of more than 260 works gifted to the museums in 2021 by visiting our Collections page through this link.  Watch the roundtable discussion between artists Peter Lipsitt and Marjorie Minkin and art critic Karen Wilkin, held in conjunction with the exhibition’s opening, on YouTube or Vimeo. 

Images

Jules Olitski, “April Dream, Lavender and Black,” 2003. Opaque watercolor on heavy weight white wove paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon Collection, 2021.233. © 2024 Jules Olitski Art Foundation/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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135 objects are associated with the exhibition. They are viewable on Harvard Art Museums website.

Here's a sample.

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