Having attracted more than 1.3 million visitors during its three-year string of “Louvre Atlanta” exhibitions ending in 2009, the High Museum of Art plans to re-partner with the Musée du Louvre in Paris for a show opening next year.
The High will be the first stop on a three-city American tour of the exhibit “The Louvre and the Tuileries Garden,” featuring more than 100 works that explore the art, design and evolution of the landmark Paris public park. It will be on view November 2013 through January 2014.
The exhibit will chronicle how the 63-acre Tuileries, which extends from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde, has served as an inspiration for generations of artists as well as a showcase for sculpture.
Large-scale sculpture from the garden that were created between the 17th and 20th centuries by artists including François-Joseph Bosio, Antoine Coysevox and Aristide Maillol will be featured in the High exhibit along with paintings, photographs and drawings that depict the Tuileries.
“The Louvre and the Tuileries Garden” also will explore how the garden inspired works by painters including Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Childe Hassam and photographers such as Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson and André Kertész.
“As one of the earliest urban green spaces and public parks, the Tuileries has been the model for other formal public gardens in the U.S. and around the world," High director Michael Shapiro said in a statement. "This exhibition gives us a chance to tell an exciting story about the relationship between art, gardens, artists and the public.”
The Tuileries dates to 1564 when Catherine de Medici created the garden for the Tuileries Palace, which no longer exists. A century later, André Le Nôtre (1613-1700) was commissioned by Louis XIV to expand and transform the Tuileries into a formal French garden. The exhibit comes during Le Nôtre's 400th birthday year and is part of a larger French celebration of his influence on garden design worldwide.
After Atlanta, the show will travel to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.
