Exhibition "Stare" Case
Thomas Rowlandson
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
One of Rowlandson's most ebullient designs, this etching simultaneously mocks the exhibition-going public and the London art establishment. Visitors eager to view the annual spring exhibition of the Royal Academy struggle to negotiate a steep spiral staircase at Somerset House on the Strand. Beginning in 1780, these displays were held in the Great Room of Sir William Chambers's grand Neoclassical building, but to reach the galleries, visitors had to climb three long, narrow flights – a challenging approach that Chambers hoped would suggest an ascent to Parnassus. Focusing on the practical difficulties the stairs presented for two-way foot traffic, Rowlandson imagines the cascade produced when a hefty lady trips on a dog, then knocks over her fellow climbers like ninepins, Most of the bodies upended are female, and since women at this date wore no lower undergarments, the general confusion grants nearby males a glimpse of female nudity before they even reach the art. By including the well-known sculptor SIr Joseph Nollekens (at the left, holding up a glass to inspect a fallen beauty), Rowlandson suggests the power of living flesh to trump artistic simulacrums. Even the Callipygian Venus, the classical statue in the niche, whose gaze should be fixed on her own beautiful posterior, has raised her eyes to smile at the human comedy flowing through the idealized setting.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.