NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER TO PARTNER WITH LOUVRE MUSEUM ON URBAN SCULPTURE GARDENS SYMPOSIUM
5/3/2006 12:00:00 AM
Dallas, Texas– The Nasher Sculpture Center is organizing in partnership with the Louvre Museum a one-day symposium on urban sculpture gardens. The symposium will take place on March 14, 2007 as part of the Louvre's Museum-Museums lecture series.
The symposium will draw together curators, artists, landscape designers, and urbanists from the United States and Europe to discuss important issues surrounding the extensive growth of sculpture gardens within the fabric of modern cities. Attention will focus on prime examples such as the Nasher Sculpture Center, the gardens at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris and the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice.
Speakers will consider the history and design of such installations, new projects now underway, their importance to modern city life, and qualitative issues of design and installation. Special consideration will be given to the factors behind the expansive growth of urban sculpture gardens, both privately and publicly funded, in the United States and Europe.
Raymond Nasher, founder of the Nasher Sculpture Center notes, “We are extremely honored and excited to be working with the Louvre on this important program. It will be another major step in our growing educational mission and an important example of international museum cooperation.”
Under the supervision of Director Steven Nash, the Sculpture Center will collaborate with officials at the Louvre on planning the structure and contents of the symposium.
“We are working now,” says Nash, “to bring together the best possible group of international experts to examine our theme. Our particular subject has never before been addressed in a museum conference.”
This symposium is part of a well-known Museum-Museums lecture series at the Louvre, undertaken to examine in a public forum with experts in many different fields a wide spectrum of issues, developments, and opportunities shared by today’s art museums. Given the diversity and quality of this program, it has emerged as a major service to the museum field.
About the Louvre Museum:
Opened to the public in 1793, the Louvre in Paris, France, is one of the largest and most famous museums in the world. The building, a former royal palace, lies in the centre of Paris, between the Seine river and the Rue de Rivoli.
The Museum houses 35,000 works of art drawn from eight departments, displayed in over 60,000 square meters of exhibition space dedicated to the permanent collections. Its wide-ranging installations include many of the world’s greatest and most famous art treasures.
On January 1, 2005, Paris’ largest and oldest public park, the Tuileries Garden, was officially incorporated into the Louvre, reestablishing the historic coherence of the vast royal palace and its grounds. With their landscaping, vistas, and sculptures, the gardens provide the perfect complement to the buildings, and expand the Louvre’s scope of presentation to include landscape design and contemporary sculpture.
About the Nasher Sculpture Center:
Open since October 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is dedicated to the display and study of modern and contemporary sculpture. The Center is located on a 2.4 acre site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the heart of the Dallas Arts District. Renzo Piano, a world-renowned architect and winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1998, is the architect of the Center’s 55,000 square foot building. Piano worked in collaboration with landscape architect Peter Walker on the design of the two-acre sculpture garden.
The Nasher Sculpture Center is a longtime dream of Raymond Nasher and his late wife, Patsy, who together formed one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection includes masterpieces by Calder, de Kooning, di Suvero, Giacometti, Hepworth, Kelly, Matisse, Miro, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, and Serra, among others, and continues to grow and evolve.
The Nasher Sculpture Center presents rotating exhibitions of works from the Nasher Collection as well as special exhibitions drawn from other museums and private collections. In addition to indoor gallery space, the Center contains an auditorium, education and research facilities, a café, and a store. The Nasher Sculpture Center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm and on Thursday from 11 am to 9 pm. The Center also remains open until 10 pm during Thursday Night in the Center and 11 pm during Saturday Night in the City, which take place on the third Thursdays and first Saturdays of the month.
Admission is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students, and free for members
and children under 12.
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For more information, please contact:
Kristen Mills Gibbins
Communications Manager
214.242.5177
kgibbins@NasherSculptureCenter.org