The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Bulletin

Director's
Note
The cover of this Bulletin devoted to recent acquisitions not
only represents a detail of a major work by Peter Paul Rubens,
but also exemplifies the collaborative generosity that enables
the Museum to make notable purchases of works of art despite
severely limited funds. Indeed, the careful reader will note that
other important acquisitions this year also bear credit lines
with multiple donors, testifying to the enlightened support of
many friends of the Museum. Chief among the works they
have helped to acquire, in addition to the Rubens, are a Paul
Revere tea urn, the largest piece of American silver in the
Neoclassical style of the early Federal period, as well as the
over-life-size Roman marble statue of Dionysos, which, throughout
the nineteenth century, was one of the most famous sculptures
in the Hope collection, London.
We continue to be indebted as well to individual donors, many
of whom, through specified funds or special gifts, are responsible
for the particular distinction of many of the works
reproduced in this publication. To Jan Mitchell we owe the
second-century A.D. Roman bust of Sarapis, which may be the
only extant silver bust of this Greco-Egyptian deity. A gift
from Mrs. Charles Wrightsman allowed us to purchase the
elaborate and finely wrought clock of i88 i by Lucien Falize, a
nineteenth-century masterpiece of metal and enamel work.
It is a special pleasure also to extend thanks to Annalee
Newman for her gift of Barnett Newman's major late work,
Shimmer Bright, of I968. We are equally grateful to all
anonymous donors, who, although not identified, are no less
deserving of our thanks for gifts of the highest quality, such as
the impressive red sandstone Gupta Nagarajas.
Frequent visitors to the Metropolitan will surely be surprised
to see illustrated here the large, sixth-century Chinese limestone
pagoda sanctuary that has been on exhibition for decades.
Indeed, it has been on loan all these years. That this imposing
monument, the finest and most complete of its kind outside
China, will remain permanently in our galleries is due to the
generosity of Henry and Ruth Trubner and the Astor Foundation.
Other works whose presence in this recent acquisitions Bulletin
may be surprising are the large terms of Flora and Priapus by
Pietro Bernini that had been on loan for some years, installed
in the Blumenthal Patio, to which they were ill-suited both in
scale and in style. They were acquired through a gift of the
Annenberg Foundation and are now shown to full advantage
in the spacious Petrie Court.
Finally, it is a pleasure to announce in this publication, by
illustrating three outstanding sculptures, the gift of 163 objects,
primarily of brass and ivory, from the Royal Court of Benin.
With this magnificent donation, Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls
have literally transformed our fine but small collection of
Benin objects into a substantial holding that will raise the
Metropolitan, in the area of Benin art, to a level almost equal
to that of the renowned collections in Berlin, Boston, and the
Field Museum, Chicago.
PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO
Director
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